Sunday, April 26, 2009

FCC Phragmipedium



Phrag. Penn's Creek Cascade
'Island Ghost' FCC/AOS, 90pts
(Phrag. Grande x Phrag. wallisii)
Exhib: Bernard Lavaud
W. Palm Beach; 4-25-09

NS=6.2, NSV=44.0; DSW=3.2, DSL=16.3; PW=2.1, PL=42.0; LSW=6.1, LSL=13.2; LW=3.5, LL=7.8

Monday, April 20, 2009

FCC Cattleya




Cattleya mossiae var. semi-alba
'Taylor' FCC/AOS, 90pts
Exhib: Peter Von Scholl
Florida-Caribean judging; 4-18-09

NS=18.4, NSV=19.0; DSW=2.7, DSL=11.1; PW=6.9, PL=10.8; LSW=2.8, LSL=9.3; LW=6.3, LL=8.9

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Space. The final frontier.

The web pages for the Pacific Central and the California Sierra Nevada judging centers are experimenting with award data optimized for 3G mobile phones. To date only the Pacific Central's April award data is available. http://www.aospacificcentral.org Click on the link to the optimized pages, then click on the individual thumbnails for award information. Images have successfully been seen on Kindles (black & white). I'm interested in feedback.

K Barrett
mormodes@hotmail.com

Rhynchorides Norma



This plant received a lot of oooohs and ahhhs from some judges at last month's West Palm Beach regional judging so I thought I would post the award photo. Next week I will post a shot of the C. mossiae that got an FCC at today's Fl-Carib judging.

Rhynchorides Norma'Sweet Fragrance' AM/AOS, 85pts
(Aer. Bangkok x Rhy. gigantea)
Exhib: Carol Joyce
West Palm Beach judging; 3-28-09
NS=4.2, NSV=4.1; DSW=1.3, DSL=2.1; PW=1.2, PL=1.4; LSW=1.8, LSL=1.6; LW=1.7, LL=1.8
Sixty two flowers and forty two buds on three slightly arched inflorescences.


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Friday, April 3, 2009

Laptops

Since we all need a laptop these days, shall we talk about laptops?

I usually tell people to buy the lightest one they can afford. Lifting a 9-10 lb laptop over the center console of the car gets old really fast, not to mention dragging one through an airport. You begin to feel like Quasimodo after walking down one causeway. Lighter ones can be costly. There are so many deals these days it almost seems stupid to pay a lot for a laptop. But remember you could potentially be dragging a laptop around a show floor to judge-in-place. So its a trade off. Maybe we should start recruiting students under the age of 30 so they can carry the computers.....

AQ+ and Vista seems to have different installation requirements. I don't know how much trouble that is (if at all). Dell still offers downgrades to XP, but I don't know for how long they'll continue to do that or whether these operating system differences are even important.

Many of the newer laptops come with internal modems that connect to the internet using free WIFI. Very cool for judging purposes, if slow. (We used a shopping mall's WIFI to connect to the internet to look information at the Stockton show)

With this freedom comes the bane of virus security. I get MacAfee security free from Comcast and it never fails that it'll install a security upgrade in the middle of judging or start scanning the harddrive right in the middle of my work such that the computer really slows down. AFAIK MacAfee won't let you disable this feature, but you can stop it once it starts.

I've tried turning on the computer *before* I leave for judging so it'll get these installations/scans finished before I start work, but no. The computer is craftier than I am. It still scans and searches and tries to protect me like a dedicated minion. If you ever wonder 'WTF is slowing down this freaking computer' look at the lower toolbar and I'll bet your computer is scanning for viruses.

Well, I didn't mean to turn this into a gripeing session. But figured I can't be the only one out there with 'issues' LOL!! And I've never been too proud to show my lack of knowledge.