Picture of the day
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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.
Your Apple ID requires harvesting?!
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
While at the Leopard launch last night Mike picked up an 8Gb 3rd generation iPod Nano for his daughter. While over at their house this morning I was amused to see he was having trouble registering the Nano. Every time he tries to sign in with his Apple ID he gets the puzzling error “This person record requires harvesting.” (click the image above for a full sized view).
While I’m sure it has a valid technical meaning it’s a strange message to show to an end user. It almost makes me wonder – what kind of harvesting is Apple talking about here, a kidney or a crop?
Skitch: reviewed recursively
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007
Shortly after putting the finishing touches on my glowing review of Skitch for Gear Live I was fooling around and created this meta-skitch recursive image. Oh the idle joy’s of modern computing! Seriously though – check out the Skitch review, it’s one of those apps that you likely haven’t heard of yet won’t be able to live without once you try it. If you want a beta invite follow the instructions on the review for an opportunity to win one from me. You might also want to check out the Skitch website or my expose-screengrab experiment with Skitch.
“meta-skitch” by sparktography
Akiva and Shae get hitched!
Monday, September 24th, 2007
Yesterday brought the marriage of Akiva and Shae in a beautiful ceremony. Attending was an interesting experience for me as this is the first Jewish wedding I’ve ever attended. While I didn’t directly understand any of the Hebrew prayers or blessings it was still fun to observe. I was very touched by how emotional Akiva got – he was shaking during the ceremony, and you could tell it really was a bit overwhelming for him.
The photo above is my favorite couples shot. I also really liked this shot of Eric, my capture of Shawna’s back, and this trippy twin-like shot of Troy. For all photos from the wedding check out my Flickr set of their wedding, or check out their Flickr wedding pool where hopefully other guests will also post some of their photos.
Congrats guys – myself and all your friends are wishing you the brightest of futures and the best of lives together!
A triptych of iPhone wallpapers
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
I did a little work on some old photos tonight to work them up as Apple iPhone wallpapers. I ended up selecting two of them as my favorites, and am posting them here as a triptych with sunlit frond which I posted about two weeks ago. They were all selected for their central composition, and color pallets to go with the frosted grey and blue popups that appear on the homescreen. All three of them have been resized to 320×480 pixels from the original version and I adjusted the colors to look their best on the iPhone screen.
To set one of these as your iPhone’s wallpaper click the thumbnail above, then save the origional version from the pop-up to your hard drive. Save it to the location your iPhone syncs photos from (the folder of your choice on Windows or a Mac, or into iPhoto on Macs) and sync it to your iPhone. Once it’s there you can select it by clicking on Settings then Wallpaper to get to your photo library then selecting the photo of your choice.
“Chain link iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography
“Sunlit frond iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography
“Contrail to God iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography
Many things are happening
Sunday, September 16th, 2007
Further experimentation with my 20mm lens. This lens makes it much easier to work with reflections than the lensbaby did. I’m going to have to try this shot again at a higher fstop to make both the primary subject and the reflection be in sharp focus, but for now I’m really happy with the hypnotic effect. Image inspired by Myla Kent.
The long weekend is at an end – I wish I could take tomorrow off as well, but when work calls I unfortunately must answer. Hopefully I’ll be able to take another long weekend soon enough.
“Many things are happening” by sparktography
Consumerist pleasures
Friday, September 14th, 2007As stressful as work has been the last couple of weeks I’m actually having a good couple of days recently. Today is the first day of my 3 day weekend (which was supposed to be a 4 day weekend but things are too busy at work to take the 2nd day off) and I’ve been taking advantage of it to catch up on some tasks around the house and play with my new toys.
Toys you say? Why yes – I’ve been playing the good consumer and picked up a few things in the last couple of days. Yesterday I picked up a Canon EF 20mm f2.8 lens for my camera from a co-worker. It’s a fun lens, but I can tell I have a lot of learning to go with it. I’m so used to using 50mm lenses (both my EG 50mm f1.4 lens and my Lensbabies) that it’s almost a little disorienting to use. Below is the first shot I processed (and my favorite from todays shots), taken at the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park.
While out and about I dropped by the Apple Store to claim my $100 store credit for being an iPhone early adopter. I had been looking at the V-Moda Vibe Duo earbuds and with their $99 price tag it worked out to being quite the steal when I factored in the store credit – I paid about $8 out the door once tax was added to the purchase price. I wrote a quick review of the Vibe Duos so check it out!
“Ironwork” by sparktography
Spontaneous car combustion
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
While driving slowly home on 520 today the car in front of me literally CAUGHT ON FIRE! I smelled gasoline and was wondering if my car was leaking when the car in front of me suddenly erupted into a fireball. Luckily the big ball of fire was short lived and it quickly subsided enough for the occupant to escape. A passerby had a fire extinguisher and the fire was mostly out long before I got the opportunity to inch around him fearing for my precious paint-job.
I managed to grab a few snaps with my iPhone while trying to stay out of the way of the people present who seemed much more capable of dealing with a flaming SUV than myself. I’m glad nobody was hurt and I certainly can understand that it sucks for the poor lad who’s car this was – but it’s not every day you get to see a car catch fire!
“Spontaneous car combustion” by sparktography
It’s cold out here, no kind of atmosphere…
Saturday, September 8th, 2007I’ve actually been enjoying myself quite a bit the last few days. My project shipped at work, and although it was a rough couple of days it’s done now and I’m feeling much more relaxed as the result. From Friday night through to this fine Sunday afternoon I’ve been distracting myself with the Red Dwarf Complete Collection on DVD. I’d always loved the PBS Red Dwarf telethons as a kid, but am discovering I must have missed episodes as particularly some from the later seasons I hadn’t seen before.
Today I woke up early for brunch at the B&O with Brien (mmm Beni Thai Crabcake Benedict!) and then to go for a photo walk. I had to pick up some food for Skype so I decided to start out in my car and after picking up the food went back to my perennial favorite location to shoot: the conservatory.
My favorite shot of the day – a backlit palm frond in the conservatory. I actually shot it specifically with an iPhone wallpaper in mind (and tried to frame it correctly for the overlays at the top and bottom) and am quite pleased with the results. You can check out the iPhone specific version here, and the rest of the shots I liked from todays walk can be found here in my Flickr archives.
“Sunlit frond” by sparktography
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