April 24, 2008
Driving Ms. Kelly
The verdict is in. Kelly loves driving her new car!
Posted by thedude at 9:29 AM | Comments (1)
April 21, 2008
Blackhawk Museum
The Blackhawk Museum in Danville, California is home to what is allegedly the world's best car collection. After visiting it today, it's hard to imagine a more spectacular collection of rare vehicles anywhere else!
We've known of its existence for many years, but put off visiting he museum since we're not really car-enthusiasts. It turns out that this was not a good reason to stay away so long. Even if cars are not your thing, you will be amazed at the outlandish designs of these one-of-a-kind machines.
Admission to this wonderful museum is just ten bucks - well worth it. When you go, do what we did. View the cars on the first floor, then have a nice lunch at the Blackhawk Grill before returning to view the second floor.
View a PicLens-enabled gallery of images here.
Posted by thedude at 7:41 PM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2008
Dogs Take Two From Spartans
The Fresno State Bulldogs beat the San Jose Spartans twice today, 1-0 and 5-3.
This was thedude's first girl's softball game and first attempt at shooting one. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has attempted to photograph a fast-moving athlete pushing herself hard that there is only a tiny fraction of a second during which they don't look totally ridiculous. Pitchers look particularly odd when winding up to deliver a blistering underhand pitch like San Jose's Deanna Mauer is here.
Posted by thedude at 7:42 PM | Comments (1)
April 17, 2008
A Sneak Peak
I had few hours to myself tonight. The girls are at a Mudcrutch concert at the Fillmore. They were soooo excited when they left. I'm sure they're having a great time!
So what did I do for excitement tonight? Well, I experimented with design ideas for the old blog.
I've pretty much settled on WordPress because it's free, well-supported and has a huge user community. Some kind WordPress users are very creative and seem willing to share their excellent work. I found this super-clean theme designed by Chromatic Sites. I had to make only slight tweaks to get things lined up. And the WordPress Import process worked beautifully. But perhaps the biggest surprise is the performance. I had expected WordPress' dynamically-generated pages to render more slowly than MoveableType's static pages, but this does not seem to be the case.
I like it. What do you think?
Posted by thedude at 10:29 PM | Comments (1)
April 15, 2008
MōNo Grand Opening Soiree
The Grand Opening at our favorite new restaurant appeared to be a smashing success. Lots of delicious food, wine and a few of our favorite neighbors. Thanks, Todd and Eloisa!
BTW, I went "old school" when I shot these. Just to see what kind of results I could get, I mounted an older Nikkor 50 mm 1.4 lens and focused manually! It was a lot of fun, and when I got the focus right, the results are very pleasing. This old lens looks great at 4.0! The only bad part is that it takes two hands to do this, so I couldn't easily carry a glass of wine while shooting. :(
View the rest of the images from the Grand Opening here.
Posted by thedude at 8:19 AM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2008
Banner Ideas
I'm considering upgrading my MoveableType installation or possibly converting to WordPress. There's no compelling reason to do this except as a possible motivator to make me redesign at least some elements of thedude.com. We'll see...
Here's a fun page banner idea that I won't use. Reload this page for typographic fun!
Posted by thedude at 4:21 PM | Comments (1)
April 9, 2008
Strike a Pose
Olive and an over-abundance of hair products? How could that not lead to some fun?
Want more fun? Click here.
Posted by thedude at 7:43 PM | Comments (3)
April 8, 2008
D3 Saves the Night
I was asked at the very last moment to shoot a few pictures of the new restaurant for an upcoming issue of Bon Appétit. With the deadline literally hours away, I went downstairs to see what I could do. The funny thing is that I was apologizing for the photos all the while I was shooting them, fearing that I'd get lousy results in the less-than-ideal lighting.
Shots like these are simply not possible without the Nikon D3 and the its spectacular 14-24 mm lens.
Posted by thedude at 4:30 PM | Comments (6)
April 6, 2008
Happy Birthday Ben!
All of us - including Orion - love you very much!
Posted by thedude at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)
April 5, 2008
Stone Circles - Beauty and Mystery
Andrew took these awesome panoramic shots on a recent vacation trip. The arrangement on the left is the Ring o' Brodgar, the Stone Circle at Castlerigg is on the right. I don't know much about how the circles came to be, but then, neither does anyone else.
Posted by thedude at 9:14 AM | Comments (1)
April 3, 2008
More Snow Blankets from Wisconsin
Thanks, Bob for the very cool shots!
Posted by thedude at 9:08 AM | Comments (0)
