I know it's been forever since I blogged ANYTHING, so here's something. I was inspired to try photoshop cloning and the technique turned out to be fairly simple. It was the composition and planning that turned out to be the hard part. There are mistakes in the picture, but I still like how it turned out. Maybe my next one will be a bit more elaborate. I mean, even if I was triplets I wouldn't wear the same clothes. Would you?
This year I decided to go all out for Halloween. My costume was the Brother Ignacio version of Nacho Libre. I couldn't find a wig suitable, but eh. And I didn't really want to wear tights and no shirt! But the best part was growing a beard so that I could shave it down to a mustache. As you can clearly see, it is Halloween creepy. I can't believe guys still grow mustaches. Weird.
Yesterday I posted some pictures from a trip that Lisa and I took to Franconia Notch State Park in New Hampshire. It's where the Old Man of the Mountain used to be - apparrently his face finally slid off the mountain. I had planned on taking lots of pics that included the fall colors but we were about one weekend too late, and we actually drove through a brief snow storm on the way up there. The highlights for me were the Flume Gorge and Kinsman Falls. Lots of good pictures in this set, so be sure to click!
One of those crazy Interweb fads going around right now is the face recognition software at MyHeritage.com. After seeing lots of results on flickr I can't help but think it matches the pose/angle of the picture more than it is able to actually identify facial features. Case in point: The celebrity I most resemble in this picture is Ruben Studdard!
As part of Josh's visit and our trip to D.C. we took in a game at Fenway. Actually, the game is what sparked the idea for the trip in the first place. I had tickets to the Red Sox/Yankees game on that Tuesday and invited him to fly all the way from out West to join me. I knew we would need a better exc- er, reason to get him out here so we fabricated an entire weekend of a roadtrip for something "educational" so Lisa would let him get away for that long. But really it was all part of the plan to get to spend an entire day doing nothing but drinking beer and watching baseball!
I think I've blogged about it already but I finally have the pictures up for viewing. After seeing the pictures again, the thing that struck me most was the art that demonstrated the values of the founding fathers. They had specific ideals that still ring true to this day. Convictions that charted the course of the nation for hundreds of years to follow. Will we look back on our own history 50 years from now and find that same kind of admiration from today's leaders? Sadly, I doubt it. But I think that's why we honor great leaders like Abraham Lincoln, because we know that people like him come around so rarely. Men who are shaped from adversity and rise to the challenge with a dedication to the ideals and principles upon which this country was founded.
And, yea, did the photographer say, "Let there be pictures!" And it was so.
Justin and Kate's wedding pictures are finally up. It was a really fun wedding, even though I spent most of it "working". It's always great to see two good friends fall in love and get married.
We got a little behind schedule on the formal pictures, so the majority of the pictures are actually candids and events. A lot of photographers intentially shoot weddings in a photojournalism style, but this time it was more of a necessity than a conscious decision. In the end, I think I took more pictures of this wedding than any other that I've done before. I think it had more to do with embracing digital rather than just making it about quantity vs. quanitity (although you can't have the latter without the former). Plus, our circle of friends has gained quite the reputation for knowing how to party at a wedding reception, so I didn't dare put my camera down while things were going on.
Enjoy!
They're finally here. I spent an evening and an afternoon getting these ready. I blame Cort and his "blemish" for all the extra Photoshop stuff I had to do. Lisa (Josh's wife) took the photos during the ceremony and I am grateful for her help.
Tonight I started looking through all the wedding pictures from Cort & Emily's wedding. I haven't had time to process them all (it's already 1am), and so I picked a personal favorite. I'll add more gradually over the next week or so. Keep checking my flickr pages for updates!
I also included a few pictures I had taken on a hike to Silver Creek Falls. I'll comment more on that later.
using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
namespace MyProject
{
///
/// This class is derived from the DataGrid class so that I can disable the "feature" that selects
/// a row by using SHIFT+SPACE
///
public class DataGridFix:System.Windows.Forms.DataGrid
{
// a couple of setup bits
const int WM_KEYDOWN = 256;
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
public static extern int GetKeyboardState(ref Byte pbKeyState);
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
public static extern int SetKeyboardState(ref Byte bpKeyState);
// over-ride the 'ProcessCmdKey' method
protected override bool ProcessCmdKey(ref Message msg, Keys keyData)
{
Keys keyCode = ((Keys)msg.WParam.ToInt32()) & Keys.KeyCode;
if (msg.Msg == WM_KEYDOWN && keyCode == Keys.Space)
{
if (Control.ModifierKeys == Keys.Shift)
{
// if the keystate is SHIFT+SPACE, make it just a SPACE
byte[] keystates = new byte[255];
GetKeyboardState(ref keystates[0]);
keystates[16] = 0;
SetKeyboardState(ref keystates[0]);
SendKeys.Send(" ");
return true;
}
}
return base.ProcessCmdKey(ref msg, keyData); // let the base method handle everything else as-is
}
}
}
I took advantage of the clear, warm night after the Red Sox game and got some night photos. Night photography is something that I've been experimenting with ever since I got a digital camera. There's no film to waste, so these tricky exposures are no longer a risk. I just do it until I start to get something I like and learn a lot in the process.
These kayaks are part of rental place in Newton on the Charles river. I've actually been out there before to go boating - it's good times. I was actually hoping for no artificial lighting at all at the pond, but got stuck with the porch light from the house on the docks. The light was actually a good thing as it lit up the colored boats nicely to give this pic some extra zing. Click the picture to see more of them on my flickr account.
I took this pic while on a walk with Mom through some cherry trees in Vancouver, WA. I've been taking pictures of these trees for several years, and I think I have shots of every season. Some are unscanned film, so I'm not sure if they'll make it up here, but these were definitely worth sharing!
I've updated my flickr pages with photos that I took in NYC last spring at the Cloisters. This is a separate campus, but part of the Met Museum of Art which showcases Medieval art. Most of the rooms, including the walls, tiles, and stonework were taken from buildings in Europe and reassembled here to create the Museum itself. Located in Fort Tryant park, it's a cool place to visit on a spring day!
I finally got around to processing the pics from Rob & Angie's wedding. Enjoy!
I've added more pictures to my flickr account from my NYC vacation with my parents. In this installment, you'll see a TON of pics of the Statue of Liberty. The first few photos are kind of unusual in that you will see the viewing area devoid of people because we managed to catch the first ferry over to the island that day.
I was so close to buying a new piano last week. But I happened to make one last check on craigslist for a piano I've been searching for for the last year or so. Lo and behold, there was the object of my quest, in amazing condition, a mere 8 miles from my home. I went to see it in person and could not have been more impressed with its condition. I made arrangements that night to pay the guy as soon as possible (thanks Dad!) and picked it up the next day. You can follow the link in the pic above for more pics.
The Yamaha CP70 is a stage piano that was sold in the late 70's and early 80's. It was used primarily for concerts and tours where a full size piano was too impractical. It would be years before synthesizers could replace these, but they were eventually obsoleted. Finding one without battle scars (like this one) from constant touring is a rare thing indeed. The reason why it is considered "portable" is because the piano disassembles into two halves. The bottom half holds the keys and hammers, and the top half holds the harp section and electronics. The top half is slightly heavier than the bottom half at around 110lbs. This is manageable by two people but not something I'd want to move solo.
The piano is like an acoustic electric guitar, in that it plays real strings but uses electronics to pick up the acoustic sounds. Instead of a mic or two, each string has a piezo pickup kind of like an electric guitar. The sound is definitely like a real piano. The strings are much shorter than even console pianos, but the electronics make up for the loss of volume and sustain. It's no baby grand, but you can't put a baby grand in your van and take it to a show.
I'm getting it tuned this Thursday, and according to what I've read, it should hold its tune fairly well even after being moved, as long as the harp section isn't subjected to a lot of banging around or vibration. It hasn't been tuned in over 3 years, so it sounds rather twangy at the moment.
You've probably heard this piano without realizing it. The band "Keane" currently uses this piano in all their songs on the debut album. U2 featured the piano in several of their songs, most prominently in "New Years Day".
This weekend I gave my ride some TLC. On Saturday, I changed the brake pads on the front. I had a little phone coaching from Cort, but did all the work myself. Except when I needed to bleed the brake lines, and managed to find a neighbor to push the brake pedal for me. What should have taken about 2 hours took about 3.5, but I blame the fact that it was about 20 degrees out and I had a rather primitive jack for the heavy lifting. New England rust is a pain. On one of the brakes I couldn't remove the pins so I had to dismantle the caliper (hence, the need to bleed the brake line). But I feel good about accomplishing something like that, even if it is a simple job.
Today I got new tires. I've been riding on a spare for about a year and a half (it's a long story) and I finally found the tires I needed at Costco and got a great deal. They're an odd size, so just the fact that they had them in stock was a big deal. I just took her down to the car wash and got these pics. Not bad for 10 years and 150k miles.
Well, I survived the blizzard OK. My town got about 10" but there were places that got a lot more. Sunday night after things had settled down the landlords decided they wanted to plow the lot. So, I had to dig out my car in the dark and cold, but it meant I didn't have to do it this morning to get to work (as you can see in the pic). I took the opportunity to run down to Wendy's rather than eat more leftovers. I also found a couple of empty parking lots and did the mandatory cookies until I was dizzy.
I've included a new album set from my last big trip to New York City from the summer of '04 with my parents. This is only the first half of them - more to come!
This is a set of pictures I took the summer of '04 at Newport, RI. Most of the pics are from The Breakers mansion. I didn't take a single picture inside, but I went nuts with the architecture outside.
One of the cool things about joining flickr is that I've been going through all my pics from the last 2.5 years and finding gems like this one. Some of these pictures I probably viewed once and never looked at them again. Now I have a way to share them with everyone, so I'm going to continue to delve into my archives to bring you more like this one. I've added a few dozen pictures today, and I'm still back in June of '04, so there's lots more to come. Stay tuned!
Taken in July of '05. Hiked the Multnomah Falls area with Mom. Climbed 1000 vertical feet on the hike to get here.
