iPad 2

The Apple iPad is truly an awesome device.  Running Apple’s iOS operating system, it’s like a big iPhone, and then some.  I was given one this past Christmas, and turned on the 3G access for the first time this weekend.

I have been using my iPad in the house since Christmas.  With WiFi, I’ve downloaded a number of magazines, books, newspaper apps, games, etc.  It’s been a great “couch companion” to go with watching TV or Podcasts.

After almost a month of having it, the time finally came for me to turn on the 3G access.  It really was a simple matter, after just a few minutes, I had setup a 1GB per month account.

This was very useful for my fiancé I this weekend while we were house hunting.  Victoria was my navigator, leading the way and pulling up listings on the Internet.  We were on the web all day long, and still only used 1MB of data.  Not bad at all.

While Victoria used the iPad, the boys were in the back seat using our iPhones to play games.  Seven year old Jacob was playing Plants vs. Zombies and three year old Christian was playing Angry Birds, listening to Music, and shopping in the iTunes store.  Yes, three year old Christian.

I know my experience was nothing special, but it shows one of the many ways that the iPad is a truly awesome device, that definitely has a place in our household.

Today was bonkers, but in a good way. Victoria and I, kids included, went house hunting. It was a long but good day, and another done of those good family experiences.

Almost immediately after filing for her tax return, Victoria began working on looking for a place. She has already done the math for our budget, and came up with a figure that tells us what we can afford per month for rent.

We looked at a few houses she found on the Internet, but quickly found out that what we want to live in is going to cost us a little more than we first wanted to spend per month.

After a long day of searching, we have found a handful of great houses on our side of town. One in Coral Creek… a 4 bedroom, 2 bath home with huge kitchen, living room, and back yard. It’s a tad old looking, but with that space it’s great! I love the kitchen and living room especially with this house. Plus, it keeps the kids in the school district we want them to be in.

We found three more houses in a neighborhood off of Muldoon Rd. All are nice, but 3 bed instead of 4, and a bit smaller overall. If the house in Coral Creek falls through, these are great options as well.

Also, I found a two story house in The Floridian off of Blue Angel Parkway. 3 bed, 2 bath, and a bit of a terror of a back yard, but it’s a nice house in our price range and a very acceptable option.

All these were found after we ate a great lunch at Ruby Tuesday’s. I really like that restaurant. I had steak and shrimp, Vic had buffalo chicken sandwiches and the kids had chicken too.

On thing that really worked out was the iPad. I turned on the 3G for today and it was awesome. Victoria used the iPad to look up houses on the fly, and we gave our iPhones to the kids to play games. Thank you Steve Jobs (RIP).

Daniel Vining | dan@danielvining.com

I Got an iPad!

Christmas time has come and gone once again and I am now left with all the spoils of a great holiday season.  I didn’t ask Santa for much, but he definitely delivered this year, which was one of the best years in recent memory.

My parents made out very well themselves.  Mom got the new Stephan King and John Grisham novels, a new set of pots and pans, and few other goodies… like enough Post-It sticky notes to last a decade.

Dad got a brand new Zippo lighter, and a new TV for his truck, plus a Blu-Ray player.  It’s the first time he’s had one in his truck, which is great because now we won’t have to buy the DVD/Blu-Ray combo just so he can watch too.

My spoils were unexpected to say the least.

27” iMac – i7

Yep, that’s right… I got an iMac for Christmas, several months early in fact.  Knowing that the 44th Annual Snowball Derby, and a fast approaching 2012 racing season was approaching, Santa delivered the iMac several months early.  Having this beauty early was great because I was able to get it setup the way I wanted to, in my own time.  I’m now fully migrated to using this machine full time, just in time for the new racing season.

iPad 2 – 16G WiFi + 3G for Verizon

I got an iPad!  I don’t need an iPad, but having one is very, very awesome!  While at the onset this will be for playing games, reading books and magazines, and surfing the web from the couch… I know I’ll find endless ways to use it both at home and at the race track or photo shoot location.

iHome Tablet Stand, Rocketfish Car Charger, Incase iPad Case, and Just Air Sleeve

Mom and Dad equipped me with all the accessories I need to get started using the iPad.  The iHome Tablet Stand is cool because not only does it give me a stylish place to put the iPad, it also has a speaker built in.  Simply plug an included cord into the headphone jack, turn it on and your pumpin’ out the Pandora tunes.

iTunes and Old Navy Gift Cards

Last but not least in this year’s spoils are gift cards.  Ah, sometimes these are some of the best gifts.  My wonderful girlfriend hooked me up with an iTunes card, which I’ll use to get a few apps that we can both share and love, like Scrabble for example.  My awesome parents are going to help me refresh my wardrobe with a trip to Old Navy.  I really like their jeans and I am sure I can walk out with some cool tees.

All and all this was an awesome holiday.  I spent a ton of time with my family, ate a mountain of great food, and was once again spoiled to death.  I know it’s not about the material things we get this time of year, and I am so very thankful to be fortunate enough to not only receive such great gifts, but give back some cool stuff too.  It is, however, pretty neat to share with you what I got… and possibly hear about your spoils from this year.  What did you get?  I’ll be on the social feeds checking it all out.

Now, back to the iPad… my newest addiction.

I am a motorsports journalist.  In that capacity, not only do I write the story, I am also my own photographer and videographer.   That means that I have my camera, always at the ready to capture that shot or sound bite.  Over the course of a day at the race track, I shoot upwards of 300 photos and sometimes three or four hours of video footage.  That takes a toll on my poor battery, of which I only have one right now.

In racing, fuel strategy can play a huge roll in the outcome of a race.  The driver that saves the most fuel, even if only by one lap, can win if his competitors are forced to duck off onto pit road for a splash of gas.  In photography, battery management is key if you as the photographer want to be able to capture the event in it’s entirety.

Ideally, a photographer should have ample battery supply to meet the needs of the event being shot.  That means having enough spare, fully-charged batteries to last the whole day, and night.   In my case, I only have one battery, and for now, must make sure that one battery lasts all day, and night.

I ran into my first case of coming close to running my only battery dry this past weekend in Montgomery.  My assignment allowed me the freedom to practice on my video shooting.  Turns out that shooting video uses a lot more battery, a lot faster.  With about a quarter of the race left on Saturday night, I noticed that precious battery supply was coming awfully close to running dry.  I managed to make it through the race, and post race.  I got all my interviews and victory lane photos, but I was nervous the whole time.

The point of this post is to say that one, I’m glad I made it through the night.  Second, shame on me for not being better prepared.  Third, it’s a warning to others to remember to keep your battery charged, turn off the camera when you don’t need it on and have spare batteries.

That said, I’ll be making a purchase this week.  It’s time to get the battery grip for my Nikon D7000, and a couple spare batteries.  It’s getting to the point in the season where the races are longer than 100 laps, and the weekends are over the course of a couple days.  Stay Charged!

Alabama 200 Event Logo in Action on the Montgomery Motor Speedway Website

The Alabama 200 at Montgomery Motor Speedway is just a few short weeks away.  The speedway commissioned DanielVining.com to create an event logo for the race.  The logo is currently being used as the header to MontgomeryMotorSpeedway.com and will be featured in banners, flyers, score sheets, or anything else they come up with.  This very active logo presents the famous red and white outside wall, the speedway’s catchfence, the state of Alabama and is tied together with some mechanical gears.  See this logo in action at www.MontgomeryMotorSpeedway.com and shoot an email to dan@danielvining.com if you’d like a dynamic graphic such as this as well.

After making my radio debut the night before, I had a pinch of momentum going into the next day at Mobile.  This was a pretty darn good race.  Bubba Pollard claimed his 12th win of the season, and continued his dominance of Mobile International Speedway.  The race would see Mike Garvey lead the first half of the race, but then loose second and third gears.  He battled back to finish second… strong run.  Chase Elliott, the winner at Pensacola the night before, was taken out in a pile up on lap 51 that was caused when Garvey had his transmission issues.  The same wreck took out DJ VanderLey.  While all that was going on, Bubba Pollard sped away and took the checkers ahead of the rest.

After making my Speed51.com Radio debut working alongside Matt “Duke” Kentfield, I found out that yes, I have a lot of work to do.  It was an exciting experience but at the same time I found myself totally lost at some points.  Not good when on the radio.  Even still, I learned quite a bit, and broke the ice with the radio gig.  The next time will be better, and hopefully I won’t be as nervous, or as lost.

The race was pretty good.  Chase Elliott won after chasing down Augie Grill, who dominated the event.  With one lap to go, Elliott used lapped traffic to work his way around Grill, and went on to take the checkers.

I shot a ton of awesome photos from the day, which can be viewed on the Speed51 Facebook feed, or here!  Check out the gallery.  Prints and downloads can be purchased by clicking through to the individual photo’s gallery page.

Click this link to view the complete gallery from Blizzard Series round four!

The calm.  It’s the evening before a big race weekend.  After work, I’m going to Five Flags (Pensacola, FL) for the Blizzard race where I’ll be making my Speed 51 Radio debut.  I’ve covered all the races there this season as a reporter, but this will be my first foray into radio.  You’ll find the link to the broadcast tomorrow on Speed51.com.  After the Blizzard race, I travel to Mobile (AL) for another Super Late Model race, where it’s back to my normal reporting gig.

In addition to the Speed 51 assignments, I’m also working on retouching photos from two photo shoots, three t-shirt designs, a business card design, and a website “coming soon” splash page for a more distant project.

Finally, I may be adding some photo retouching of photos I did not shoot (customer wants some Photoshop editing) and writing a couple of press releases.

Business has really began to pick up.  I’ve come a long way from where I was this time last year and it looks like it’s upward and onward from here.

Once the madness settles this weekend, maybe I’ll have a little fun, and update all my social media profiles, which I haven’t done in a long time.

Life is Good.

The deep metallic blue in Kyle Bryant's paint scheme burst with vividness as the evening sun cast it's light onto it. (Photo by www.DanielVining.com)

For the first time this year, I posted a gallery that contained zero post edited photographs.  Everything in the the gallery is just how it was shot at the event, on location.  The ideal situation is to be able to set my camera so that all I have to do is pick the winners, resize and post.  This time around, I was able to do that.  It’s cool to tinker with adjustments in post, but it’s really gratifying to and satisfying to have grabbed not just the moment, but grabbed the right light, the right exposure, the right blur.