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How Does This Happen? Note too, in the background, what looks to be yellow overspray...
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Cinema4D UV Mapping Sometimes I even amaze myself! ;)
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Cinema4D UV Mapping You continue to amaze me!
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Oakland Skyline Panorama I have a client that would like to use this image on their hom...
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Category Archives: New Friends
Bird Fight!
The normal state of affairs as up to eight birds jostle for a seat on one of the two perches.
Posted in Loft Life, New Friends
4 Comments
Interloper
A couple of these buggers probably eat half of the seed I put out.
Anyway, I had no idea how pretty doves are until I saw this shot.
Posted in Loft Life, New Friends, Photography
2 Comments
A Little Birdie I Actually Like
I mostly prefer birds that live outside to those that will live indoors with us – forever, it seems.
Here’s one I shot through the living room window.
Posted in Bay Area, Loft Life, New Friends, Photography
2 Comments
He’s a Happy Boy!
Posted in Bay Area, Holidays, New Friends
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Face the Facebook
I’ll admit it – I’ve been spending time on Facebook in the last week. (OK – I’m a little slow when it comes to adopting certain technologies.) I’m conducting a little research to see why this social networking site is so popular. What’s that? 200 million active users??? I’m slowly beginning to understand its appeal. It’s dead simple for anyone to “publish” their thoughts and whereabouts. It’s easy to share images and video clips. Grampa can see the latest image of the kids, we can all see what our friends ate for dinner. Long-lost friends can be located – and then (thankfully) just as easily removed from our Facebook feeds forever.
The question I seek to answer concerns the value of time spent on Facebook. I’m sure I have the world’s greatest friends and am subscribed to all the right groups, but still, less than one entry in twenty posts leads me to anything memorable or worthwhile. The rest of the time is well, I won’t say “wasted”, but something close to that. Sort of like the time spent watching YouTube Featured Videos – 20% entertainment, 80% annoyance.
Another problem with Facebook can be blamed on Twitter culture. Too much of Facebook content consists of 140 or fewer character rants or blurbs. Facebook and its ilk have sucked a lot of blogs dry as ex-bloggers now devote too much of their time to sharing iPhone snapshots of their pets.
Whenever I hear something described as the latest craze in social networking I’m reminded of the CB radios we all had to own in the seventies. We all loved imagining all those other CB’ers clinging to our words as we revealed the location of the smokey in the westbound lane. What power! What fun! Eventually though, CB channels became “intolerably noisy“, and the fad died out.
So, is Facebook a fad? Yes, but it will be supplanted by something similar. Intolerably noisy? Guess that depends on your friends. Does this sort of application have a role in the workplace? Most definitely!
Bottom line? Would I recommend Facebook? Yes, actually, I would! For most people – especially those who never will have a blog – it’s better than nothing.
Posted in Computing, New Friends
2 Comments
Cherubs with Face Paint
Andrew caught this fantastic shot of Sophie and Ursula on their first visit to Disneyland.
thedude and Kellster like the shot so much that we made a magnet out of it and hung it on our refrigerator. That’s saying quite a lot, because like at least nine other people on planet Earth, thedude also hates refrigerator magnets!
Posted in Contributed, New Friends
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Xenophon Gala 2009
As you know, thedude and Kelly volunteer some of their time in support of an amazing organization called Xenophon Therapeutic Riding. Last night we attended their annual fundraiser. The Xenophon Gala is always fun, and this year’s event was no exception, as you can clearly see from the photos.
Please visit the Xenophon web site to view the rest of the images.
Posted in Bay Area, Holidays, New Friends
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Xenophon Featured on Local News
Xenophon Therapeutic Riding was featured on a local news channel last night. This is the organization Kelly has been working with for a few years. They do wonderful work with children and horses. Watch the video now!
Posted in Bay Area, Family, New Friends
2 Comments
Walk on the Wild Side
I enjoyed last weekend’s bug trek so much that we decided to do it again today. This time we brought along a few of our favorite people and, of course, my camera.
We found our ladybug friends again, but in smaller numbers. This time they had begun to swarm – behavior we didn’t see last weekend. They might be looking for moisture. They may need a little extra luck this year, as California is in the midst of what is shaping up to be the the worst drought on record. We didn’t let this news dampen our spirits though, and thoroughly enjoyed our hike. Hey, I think we should do this every week!
Posted in Bay Area, New Friends
5 Comments
Magic Camera + ImageMagick
We’ve been spending a lot of time with our neighbors Jack Tres and Olive lately. That’s a good thing. I shot this picture at Flora on Thursday night. The light was provided by a single candle on the table in front of Tres. I used my old manual-focus f1.4 Nikkor wide open, at 1/15th of a second with the Magic Camera set to ISO 3200. This image is to me, nothing short of amazing. It’s as if the camera added light to the scene. I could not see her this well with my naked eye!
Then, I added the neat little border and drop-shadow to the above thumbnail without ever opening any image editor. Instead of PhotoShop, I used ImageMagick on my Linux server to create the effect at the command line! The command I used to do this:
convert image.jpg -resize 605x \
-unsharp 0.5x1.2+0.5+0.1 -matte \
-bordercolor white -border 8 \
-bordercolor grey85 -border 1 \
\( +clone -background grey60 -shadow 80x3+6+6 \) +swap \
-background white -mosaic image-thumb.jpg
Why would I do this? A few reasons.
- It’s very fast – it takes just 2 seconds to create this nice effect.
- I can create this effect form anywhere without any special tools.
- The effect can be applied very quickly to a whole directory of images.
- I can add a “create pretty thumbnail” option to WordPress.
I have a lot to learn before I have item 4 working, but the challenge is half the fun of it!
Posted in Computing, Holidays, New Friends, Photography
4 Comments
We Had This Idea for a Shot
Olive said she wanted a shot of her jumping in the air, and I had in mind what I thought was a cool way to frame the shot. Olive braved frigid temperatures at sunset tonight, but the wind and the light conspired against us. And though none of the pictures turned out exactly as I had hoped, we both had fun during our 20 minute shoot.
Posted in New Friends, Photography
5 Comments
