Writings & Photography of Derek Dysart, some dude you’ve never heard of.

Despite the gorgeous weather on Saturday, we had a great turnout for PhotoCamp Milwaukee. I haven’t checked out the final numbers, but we had 75 for the opening session.  I’ve got a few photos from the event I threw up on Flickr quickly, but will have a few to post here once I have sometime to process them a little more critically.

We’re already getting asked when the next PhotoCamp is, and while it probably won’t be for another year, there is definately an interest in setting up a monthly meeting ala Web414. Stay tuned, and if you’re interested in helping out with something like that, definately get a hold of me.

We’ve got registration open for PhotoCamp Milwaukee.  Head over to http://photocampmilwaukee.org/register to sign up and I’ll see you at Bucketworks on May 2, 2009!

I’m currently on my way back from attending the 2009 South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, TX.  This was the first time I’ve attended the event and it was everything I expected and more. I accomplished my main objective, to meet a bunch of new people in the web development and design industry and there were many informative sessions.

I’ve got a bunch of photos from the closing party that I need to process, as well as other photos I took around Austin.  Watch my SXSW 2009 Flickr set for updates

It’s gonna take a while to fully digest everything I took in, but I’m thinking about presenting some of the material from the panels I attended at a future Web414 meeting.  Stay tuned.

I inadvertantly “launched” my photography site today when I sent an image to WMSE to use from their excellent chili contest this past weekend. I told them if they wanted to give my photo credit, they could link back to my new photography site, which as of this morning when I left Brookfield for downtown Milwuakee was almost ready to go.  They got back to me with a hearty thanks and told me the image was on the front page (I got lucky and snagged a photo of the winning restaurant).  I went to see it and saw the link, and that is when it hit me that I was about to get traffic.

I scrambled to get the rest of my content shaped up and am actually pretty happy with the site.  I’m probably going to start full on marketing in a week or so.

I run my email for this domain through Google Apps for domains. I like the GMail web interface, plus the huge IMAP accessable mailbox I get with it.  The only challenge has been I also have a Google Account under the same email address.  The biggest challenge is that means there are two Google Document repositories.  As we’ve been collaborating on getting sponsorship for upcoming PhotoCamp here in Milwaukee I’ve run into issues where I can get to the document.

After some digging I found something on the "Settings" page of my Google Apps Documents page that allows you to move your documents over.  I clicked on this and after some time got the following:

Am I to truely believe that Google is investigating this "immediately"?  Did someone’s screen at the Googleplex light up and the war room spring into action?  I don’t work there, so I can tell, but I’m not holding my breath that they are fixing this "immediately."

Somewhere back in December I had the idea that it would be cool to host a big, free to attend, photography event, ala BarCamp but focused only on photography (nice pun, eh?).  Around the same time (quite litterally), fellow Web414 member Raster posted something on Twitter about it.  A few direct messages later and I was the defacto organizer of the event.

Fast forward to today, we’ve set the date and have a site up will all the details at photocampmilwaukee.org.  If you’re a photographer in the greater Milwaukee area (and I’d include Madison and north Chicagoland in that), save Saturday, May 2, 2009.

We’ll have sign up information soon, but right now we are looking for sponsors.  If you’re interested contact all of the organizer of the event on the sponsor information page, or hit me up directly on my about page.

I did this for the kids yesterday at lunch and shared it on Twitter & Facebook and just about everyone I know living in the current deep freeze went and tried it. (I didn’t get a photo of it, the one at the left is courtesy of Andy Langager)  If the temp is significantly below zero (say -5F or so), take boiling water outside and toss it in the air.  Most if not all of it will appear to freeze before hitting the ground.

I wish I could say I came up with the idea, but I got it from local meteorologist Vince Condella who blogged about it earlier this week.  It is sort of a parlor trick in that since the water is boiling, it is close to evaporating already.  The cold (and importantly) dry air will cause the water to evaporate instantly. 

The kids still watched out the window, slack jawed saying "Wow!  Do that again!"

So with little fan fare, I just posted the final two images for my 2008 photo project, Project 365.  Due to 2008 being a leap year, there are actually 366 images.  You can check them all out below:

And so it is done. The last photo of 2008. We were packing up to head to Chicago to celebrate the new year at my sister-in-laws when I remember I hadn’t paid our property taxes yet. Granted they are due January 31st, but it’s a substantial tax deductions, so I rushed off to City Hall to pay them. I guess a resolution to stop procrastinating is in order.

The only thing he asked Santa for this year when he got his picture taken was a chess set.

Thankfully Santa told Grandma. He is bound and determined to master the game.