Saturday, December 30, 2006
Taken a few weeks ago while having brunch with Alissa. This was another experiment with my Wacom tablet as this shot took a lot of masking to get the exposures to come out right.
“Please wait to be seated” by sparktography
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Another old shot I touched up today. It reminds me a lot of some of my more recent work with my Lensbaby, but this shot was taken years ago when I first got my Digital Rebel with it’s EF-S lens.
“Do not park here” by sparktography
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Brien got me a Wacom drawing tablet for Christmas and I finally got it yesterday. I spent much of my day today experimenting with it on old photos. Having a pressure sensitive pen makes masking and color correction so much easier - I had forgotten how much I love Photoshop with a pen interface.
This was an old shot from over 2 years ago. I don’t know how I missed it back then, but somehow I did and it has sat all that time in my archives collecting dust. I’m just glad I found it so I could get it ready for it’s big day on the internet - today!
“Lonely yellow” by sparktography
Friday, December 29, 2006
Being a parent can be rough at times - particularly when your child is a precocious 75 pound pit bull. I’ve been neglecting Skype a little bit in the last week and spending a lot of time trying to recharge my batteries glued to my couch working on a few projects on my laptop, and playing a lot of Civ 4. He has not been getting the attention he wanted and started to chew on things again. Yesterday he chewed his way through a bunch of Wii games and books and really sent the message home to me.
Good thing is that hopefully this will be a quick lived thing - I am trying to take the next few days of my holiday and spend some quality time with him. Nothing like a good dose of daddy and dog parks to make a growing boy happy again.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Damn Civilization 4 is addictive. It’s got that “just one more turn” mentality. Even in the face of competition for my attention from such things as my brand new Wii, Twilight Princess, and hanging out with a bunch of friends Civilization 4 has won! I’ve spent almost the entire last two days playing nothing but it.
Turn after turn of nurturing my civilization from the most meager of beginnings to a culturally sophisticated and dominant force to be reckoned with. It shares some of the best qualities of Sim City, Sim Earth, and Age of Empires - a great AI and automated queueing system, detailed control structures and play mechanisms, and a great interface.
At least I a managing to get out of the house a bit - I just got done having brunch at Charlies with Brien and now we are headed up to Northgate to brave the wilds of consumerism and find him a HD-DVD player. Want, buy, have! Merry Christmas!
Friday, December 22, 2006
It’s been almost a week since I’ve had a chance to sit down and post to my blog. I’ve been super busy and exhausted at work, and when I’m not at work I’ve been feeding my video game habit. Things have been kind of crazy at work trying to get things ready for the holidays, and managing a project that got handed to me that’s mid cycle. Luckily the project ships in a few months and hopefully I’ll be able to go back to working on a project start to finish.
Earlier in the week I got Civilization IV for the mac and found myself hopelessly addicted to it. It’s a well thought out turn based strategy game. As proven by my recent Gears of War experience I’m not much for twitch based games, but on a game that’s 100% turn based and entirely self paced is awesome. It’s very strategic and makes you think about how you want to grow your civilization from being a hunter-gather based society to the stars.
As excited as I am about CIV4 I won’t actually be playing it much over my 4 day weekend I suspect: I finally got my Wii! I haven’t had that much time with it, but I got it set up and spent a little time this afternoon playing with Wii Sports and Twighlight Princess.
I have to say for the record that I’m impressed. The Wii’s graphics are decent (not good), but their gameplay is fantastic. Having a controller that is so motion based is highly intuitive and makes even simple games fun.
More on the Wii soon I promise - gotta go play it now!
“Wii!!” by sparktography
Sunday, December 17, 2006
For some reason this shot of one of the aging relics at Gasworks Park reminds me a lot of the video game Riven. I think the textures are what make me think of it - or perhaps it simply looks rendered to my eyes.
I took it just after noon today. The hard shadows cast by all the protruding walkways and pipes are really what fascinated me about the machines on my little photography outing. It’s very geometric.
“Rivens boiler” by sparktography
