Stan and I went down again this week to photograph some of the interiors for the Virtual Congress project. We were lead through a number of different areas of the Capitol including some things that the public doesn’t normally pass through. I was able to get a lot of decent reference and texture shots for the modeling we’ll be doing down the road but right now I’m still focusing on the exterior of the Rayburn building and the Capitol Complex.

Here’s a shot of the Capitol Building dome from inside the rotunda:

And here’s a screenshot of the exterior model of the Rayburn building:

Over the past two weekends I’ve planted three new trees around our yard: a red maple, a plum, and a kwanza cherry. All three were about 11 – 12 feet in height. You don’t realize how heavy those root balls can be until you’ve had to deal with one. To move the two into our backyard ot took me and my neighbor’s son, literally running the wheel barrel up the backyard to get enough momentum to get them up on our hill. My father helped me with the cherry – that one wasn’t too bad because it had a short trip from the back of my truck to our front yard. We replaced a dying blue spruce that we had transplanted to this particular spot three years ago when we moved here. After cutting it down we had to use a 2×4 to give us enough leverage to pry it out of the ground. Even then it was a bear to roll out of the hole and onto the grass.

A while ago I received an email from the folks at Keystome Homebrew saying that they were taking orders for fresh Chilean grapes and juice. Chile has a different growing season over there so around this time of year is when their fresh stuff comes in. I placed an order for a six gallon bucket of Merlot and got a message yesterday saying the shipment arrived. This afternoon I picked up my order along with a few other things and brought this home:

This evening I didn’t waste any time and got things cleaned up and started right away. I have another container that I’ve used as a primary fermenter but the bucket the juice came in will do just fine. My initial hydrometer reading is apx. 1.090 and the temperature in that back room of my basement is about 68 degrees.

Everything sealed back up after adding the yeast:

This evening I spent some time trying to figure out one of the issues I have with my flash. I seem to have fixed the firing problem where the two contacts weren’t touching - I cut a short piece of a paper clip and more or less just wedged it into the hynge opening of the flash housing, making sure it stuck out just enough to catch the end of the long contact. Wedging it in there like I did was enough to hold it in place, even while the flash was up, but I thought perhaps a little something extra might be helpful… so I mixed up some two part epoxy and added it in around the paperclip and inside the hinge area, making sure not to get it on any moving parts. It seems to have done the trick.

Flash down. Arrows pointing to the longer of the two contacts, the end of the paper clip, and the point at which the two contacts meet.

Flash up. Arrow pointing to the two contacts now touching, due to the paperclip pulling on the longer of the two contacts.

As for the issue I’m having with the flash not able to close anymore, I’ll probably just end up using some tape to hold it down until I can figure out a better way to engage the latching mechanism on the other side of the housing.