Photography
« Previous Entries Next Entries »An evening of photography with Alissa
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Although I’m exhausted today thanks to an evening of night photography with Alissa, it was totally worth it. The idea begun ages ago when she pointed out the shadows cast by the wiring shown in the above photo and ended up being one of my 101 goals. Alissa best captured the beautiful shadows better than I did, but I really enjoyed the evening and the shots that I did get.
Time to get more coffee - I’m too old for this whole staying up late thing!
Becoming my father?
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
My sister says I’m starting to look like my father. Looking at this image objectively I have to admit that it’s true. Add a few pounds and a little gray hair and I would _become_ my dad!
Metaspark
Thursday, May 1st, 2008Or: Further experimentation with personal aggregation services
After my initial experimentations with personal aggregation basically failed I’ve decided to take another stab at it, but this time with a DIY bent. I registered metaspark.net and am working a complicated series of Wordpress plugins to attempt to create the functionality I want.
Unfortunately it’s not entirely baked yet, but keep your eye on that domain - once I get a few RSS aggregation, twitter update, and posting date issues sorted out it should be ready to go fully live, and with style no less.
Stay tuned!
Experimenting with aggregation
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008In an effort to bring together the wonderful wide world of Sparky* I’m experimenting with Tumblr as an aggregation service. The hopes of my experimentation is to create a single point of contact for all my personal web content. Currently to get every last drop of Sparky goodness (and who doesn’t want that) visits to my blog, Flickr stream, Facebook profile, and Twitter are necessary. By providing this aggregate source of Sparky - henceforth referred to as Meta-Sparky - a single website can be visited to consume Sparky, Sparky, Sparky, and more Sparky.
Without further ado: http://sparktography.tumblr.com/
Update: Tumblr ended up being close to what I want, but not quite it. Tumblr will only allow short form content and won’t import long format blog posts. I also noticed it copies Flickr photos locally and re-compresses them which adds a slight color cast and loses the tack-sharpness that so much effort goes into on the front end.
Anyone know of a better aggregation service with similar features that I could check out? Leave a note in the comments with a link to it. If I don’t find anything readymade I guess I’ll have to roll up my sleeves and make something.
*wonder, wonderment, and wonderfulness not guaranteed. All Sparky all the time has been known to cause health complications in certain situations. If you experience a Sparky lasting more than 4 hours consult with a physician immediately.
Red point
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
A sunset inspired photo from my downtown jury duty adventures last week. This is from a giant wall of red glass downtown. I’m also a fan of this photo of a very different part of the same building but red point is my favorite of the two.
Two Union Square by Aperture 2.0
Saturday, March 8th, 2008I recently discovered Apple Aperture 2.0 and have simply fallen in love with it. It’s hands down the most performant and powerful photo management software out there. Coupled with Adobe Photoshop CS3 (technically the entire Creative Suite) my workflow has been entirely revolutionized. Aperture makes managing a set of 5 photos as easy as managing 10,000. By stacking and grouping photos it’s possible to quickly triage a shoot, find the good shots, and archive the bad shots all with GPU accelerated speed.
Unfortunately I’m come to realize just how unorganized my photos were in iPhoto and am being forced to go on a holy reorganization quest - luckily a not quite as monumental now that I have Aperture to help me out. As a bonus I’m finding lots of old photos that with a little tweaking come out great. It’s like finding rough jewels in a mine, only I don’t have to get all dirty and sweaty - I can just dig away at my desk.
A new entry into my series of Two Union Square
Feeling caught up
Sunday, February 17th, 2008After several crazy weeks I’m finally starting to feel caught up this weekend. Throughout the course of the weekend I’ve completed lots of little tasks and chores that have been slowly building up in my life since my career got crazy (both work to do right now, and finding new work for a few months in the future) everything else seemed to get put on hold.
Having caught up my stress levels are slowly returning to a more manageable level. This is a good thing as my health tends to suffer when I get too stressed out and in a case like this getting sick would only increase how far behind was. I’m starting to get more energy back and feeling more social as a result. Traskpro development may slow down slightly in the coming weeks if I end up being out of the house more when not at work.
I even found the time to take a few photos in the last few days. The above shot of Mike being Mike was taken from joining him, Cyn, and Charlotte at Cal Anderson park for some impromptu picnic play this morning. I’m also a fan of this new addition to my sticker series, and to this shot from the Pink Parasol - a cute little boutique a couple of blocks from my house.
You know you have become an adult when…
Sunday, December 30th, 2007…you spend more than $1k on lighting equipment for your home. I’ve made a few big home improvement purchases and yesterday added lighting to the fray. I’m replacing all of the lighting in the living room with theater style lighting as another step towards my eventual home theater living room. All this home improvement is very adult, very unlike me.
The new lighting will arrive in 2-3 weeks and consists of track lighting over the couch, decorative accent lighting for near the screen, and Lutron Maestro home automation switches to let my Logitech Harmony programmable uber-remote control the lighting for home theater macro’s.
Best part of it is this light, the Lightstik. The base is electrified (very weak current - you can’t feel it with your fingers) and the LED sticks just sit in there. The moment they make contact with the base unit they light up.
Home at last
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007I just got home from quite the whirlwind weekend. It all started when Skype split one of his nails open to the wick Thursday night which necessitated a trip to the vet and a little anesthesia on Friday. After putting Skype under (pic below) the vet cut off the nail above where it broke and got him all bandaged up.
With a little help from the veterinary technician we poured the still woozy Skype into the back seat of my car and drove down to Walla Walla where the rest of the family awaited. It was good to see them - it’s been a while since all 5 of us (mom, dad, my sister, and her husband) had been together.
Between his paw, the stress of being away from home, and the slight humiliation of having to wear a bootie Skype has been very high maintenance all weekend. Due to that and the fact that I have a ton of stuff to do at work and really should do some work tomorrow I came home today rather than on Christmas day.
The pass was kind of dicey on the way home but thanks to my A6’s Quattro 4WD we made it back safe and sound. Now I’m kicking back on the couch relaxing a little so as to be ready for being productive tomorrow.
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