Archive for October, 2010
Technically not the best picture I’ve ever taken, but probably one of my favorite. Over the significant other’s house taking advantage of some recently purchased fireworks (roman candles). Took my best guess at exposure, lit the area up with a flashlight to lock in focus, and snapped a bunch of pictures (12fps ftw). Increased the exposure a bit (in shadows) and straightened out things a little. All in all, a nice shot in my opinion.
Continuing on the automotive theme, I decided to try out a taillight shot as well. For this, I pulled the car in straight (worlds easier than trying to back it in), with the rear just barely out the garage door. I found a small piece of 2×4 and propped it between the seat and the brake pedal, pushing the seat just forward enough to get the lights to activate. Got out the fog machine, turned it on, and snapped a few shots. Got about 75 in all, most with varying amounts of smoke, angles, and exposures. Liked this one the best.
As some of you may know, I have a bit of a love affair with Yelp. While I’ve used it for quite a while to find various hidden gems and know which places to stay away from, I only last month started sharing my opinions in the form of reviews. Yelp allows you to give a 1 to 5 star rating to almost anything you can think of (restaurants, doctors, stores, towns, etc) and attach along some text on your experience there. Should you contribute enough to the site, Yelp rewards you by selecting you for Elite; a promotion of sorts that distinguishes you as one of the more helpful contributors, granting you access to Elite only events held regularly. These events are ususally fully comped, with free drink and food, and are a great way to get out, meet new people, and try some different places.
About 3 weeks ago, I applied to become an Elite. I sent a short email to my cities manager, stating my name, a link to my profile, and a short description of why I thought I deserved it. Two weeks later, I got an email, congratulating me on my acceptance. So how did I go from a new users to Elite in record time? Read more
I’ve had this clogged oil duct in my eye for a few months now and finally got around to getting it taken care of. Without going into too much detail, it required a shot of novocain, scalpel, and worst of all, having my mother drive me home from Boston.
Surprisingly, I was completely fine within an hour or two, and stopped by this skin care shop to look for some new face wash. I’ve tried a few things, but haven’t really been completely happy with anything. The women I spoke with recommended I tried Dermalogica and gave me a bunch of free samples to go home and try. Stuff looks great, but costs more than gold; we’ll see if it’s worth it or not.
My mom pointed out a nice spot down the street from us that would make a great photo op. Going to try and get down there tomorrow and grab a picture of it. Classic rows of trees with fall leaves type thing.
Going down to CT for the Halloween weekend, hopefully the weather will cooperate. Bound to be an entertaining time none the less.
These two were taken today at around 5PM. I waited until the light was just bright enough to illuminate the exterior, but not enough so to light the interior. I backed in the Porsche (which is harder than it sounds given the edge of the garage and clutter inside), turned the high beams and running lights on, and snapped a few. Did some minor burning of the garage and dodging of the emblem, but nothing too major. Leaves were added to the floor inside to give a little color. All in all, I’m happy with both. I’d like to try again soon with the taillights instead, when I have someone available to press the pedal to turn them on.
Don’t know who came up with these first, but I love the idea. They’re essentially stickers you place over your existing Apple logo on your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook to spice things up a bit. I personally like the retro rainbow looking ones, but they come in all sorts of colors and what not. I found a huge selection of them on Etsy.com for not too much (~$3), but I’m sure you could find them on eBay or the like with a little searching. They have some other interesting designs as well, including entire scenes for the lids of MacBooks.
Haven’t had a chance to pick some up yet, but I think I think the iPhone one would look great behind my smoke colored case. Wouldn’t do you much good, I suppose, unless you had a somewhat transparent case or were crazy enough to go naked.
This theme of “productivity” seems to be continuing nicely.
Had to drive into Boston today to take care of some arrangements for an upcoming party. Traffic wasn’t too bad, but taking my mother along for the ride was a nightmare. She has what I call the “wet noodle syndrome” in that every time you make a turn, she sways and flops limply around, as if she lacks any muscles to stabilize herself. She complains if you go over a bump, and if you swerve to avoid the bumps. Literally thought about crashing just to get some quiet.
Came home and decided my car needed a wax before it got too late (cold) in the year to do so. Broke out my stuff and went at it. Two hours and a wash later, the car looks exactly the same. I’m hesitant to use any power tools, and the paint was already in pretty good condition, so I’m not too surprised. Read more
Busy day today. I really didn’t do that much, but it still feels like I did. Started out my day by changing the oil on the Audi, which is always a fun adventure (can you say tight spaces). I’ve had this annoying spider the past week take residence in the Porsche, so I decided to take some time today to get rid of it. I vacuumed the entire cabin and gave everything a once over. Washed the outside while I was at it, taking a clay bar to the dirtier parts. Looks like new, and hopefully the rain will hold off long enough for me to enjoy it a little.
Boredom has taken the better of me and I decided a job may be the only cure. I finished up my resume today and sent it off to a few places. Hopefully I can get some interesting research work for the next couple of months to keep me busy with.
Slightly older, but great none the less. A perfect summary to my week, and life in general:
Ask and you shall receive. For some time now, on the iPhone you’ve been able to chat phone-to-phone with FaceTime or various other 3rd party applications. What’s been missing until a few days ago is the ability to chat phone-to-computer. Yahoo recently put out an update to their Messenger app which allowed you to chat via 3G or Wifi to and from any device or computer able to run the Yahoo Messenger app. The great thing is that it doesn’t just work for the new iPhone 4, but even lets you utilize the camera on an iPhone 3G(S), letting you steam live video to whoever you want. It’s completely free, and can work across a ton of devices. Quality over 3G is acceptable, but nothing to write home about, while Wifi is significantly better. Kudos Yahoo.
