The picture is a cobweb that was on the fence the other morning.  We had a lot of fog overnight and as soon as it lifted I noticed that the cobwebs were weighted down with water drops.

Different forms of cobwebs have plagued me lately.  I had loaded software updates for my photography software … Lightroom 4 and ProShow Producer 5 … and my computer was really dragging and was having trouble performing various functions.  It seemed that the only solution was to get a new computer.  I had replaced a laptop with a tower desk-top system many years ago when I had similar performance problems, and now I had to upgrade again; but this time I went back to a laptop.  Some of the new laptops are quite powerful and I took advantage of the need to upgrade, to also reduce the amount of my “stuff”.

I bought a new HP laptop and am in the process of getting rid of my old tower, keypad, monitor, and speakers … all replaced with one device with a smaller footprint.  My only concession to the old computer was to continue using the wireless mouse, but in conjunction with the laptop touchpad.  By the way, all the upgraded software runs nicely on my new machine.

The reduction in computer stuff is also going to enable me to replace my home-built 7 ft. computer table with a full 7 ft. long shelf along the back, with a mobile 3 ft., adjustable height table.  I have learned that having lots of flat table space just means that it gets junked up.

My mind has also seemed to be clogged with cobwebs relative to my Panasonic G3 camera.  Occasionally I have inadvertently made changes to the camera settings without being aware that I did it.  The above cobweb picture is a good example.  I grabbed my camera and quickly ran across the street to take some cobweb pictures, and when I later loaded them on my new computer, I discovered that I had taken them all at an ISO of 6400.  I don’t know how or when that setting was made.  My suspicion is that I had accidentally touched the LCD and made the changes.  I have since disabled the touch screen.  At first I didn’t expect to be able to recover the pictures since I expected them to be noisy … and they were.  In addition they were all taken at extremely small apertures and high shutter speeds since it was pretty bright out.  I therefore expected the background to be in focus and distract from what I was trying to achieve.  All I can say is that Lightroom 4 is a marvelous program as it enabled me to clean up these cobwebs.

After I get my new computer table, I’m looking forward to cleaning out more stuff that has probably been collecting cobwebs lately.