Posts from — January 2008

Since I get a fair amount of Mike Rowe traffic from Google, here he is today - miles away from QVC being photographed by the amazing Jill Greenberg for Fast Company Magazine. Enjoy.

As I’ve posted in the past, I’m a sucker for stuff people playing songs from video games on analog musical instruments, but here’s something fresh. Italian drummer, Andrea Varducci plays accompaniment on music from Super Mario.

I’m not a drummer, but that is one huge drum set. The guys has a ton of other videos up on YouTube if you’re looking to waste an afternoon.

No more snow pictures for a while I promised myself. I decided to dust off the strobe tonight and revisit doing a spectral highlight portrait. I found the perfect backdrop - a copper sculpture in our front entry that has a sealant on it that makes it pretty shiny.

I’m much happier with this vis-a-vis my earlier attempt.

My son will only model if he a) gets to be a goof ball, and b) gets to take a picture as well:

Winter rears it’s other head. After sub-zero temperatures yesterday, it started snowing today. This is shot by the side door of my office. I’ve wondered what good that hydrant is on the other side of the fence (I’m on the inside).  The nearest gate is quite a ways away.

Pop Photo Flash has been talking a lot recently about exposure and snow. It’s not easy - I ended up pushing this two full stops in Adobe Camera Raw to make the snow white (it’s not blown out either).

What is not conveyed in this image is how great the fresh air is. Something with our building lately has it smelling like poo. The plumber was called in and is blaming it on a dry trap, but most of us are not buying it. The sewer smell is too strong for it to be just a dry sink trap.

My lazy dog.

Much to my co-worker’s surprise, I’m sure, I ran in the 28th Annual Samson Stomp 5K run at the Milwaukee Couty Zoo this morning and lived to tell about it. How cold was it? The crappy camera phone pic to the left shows my car thought it was -3 F when I parked at the Zoo this morning. This was definitely the coldest weather I’d ever run in, but with probably 5 layers of clothing, it wasn’t that bad.

How did I do? Much better than I thought. The race wasn’t chip timed, but the stop watch on my heart rate montior says I ran the 5K in 30:18. (the 166 was my average heart rate.) I was going to be happy with anything under 40min, since that has been roughly my time on the treadmill lately, so to just barely miss a sub-30 5K was surprising. My official time, which is based off the race start time, will be a little higher, but not much. Probably under 32:00.With the cold, my son was unable to run, so I’m still looking for a race for him to run. I did give him my t-shirt since I probably wouldn’t wear it (I’m not a long sleeve t-shirt person.)

The race is organized to support the Gorilla’s at the zoo. Samson was a fairly well loved guy whose descendants still live amongst what is the largest Gorilla population in any Zoo in the US. My wife informed me the Milwaukee Public Museum just finished up a big exhibit on Samson.  There was one guy dress in a Gorilla costume that ran today. I managed to get a quick shot of him:

Update: My official time came in at 30:56

I attended my first Open Source “conference” today - DrupalCampWI.  This is Karen Stevenson, CCK contributor/maintainer presenting on CCK basics.

I’m still going to attempt the Samson Stop 5k tomorrow at the Milwaukee County Zoo.  Current forecast has the temperature at the start at -5° F (-24°F wind chill).  I consulted with cold weather runner extraordinare Nat and I think I’ve got the gear to stay warm.  Plus it’s only a 5K - even in my current state I’ll be out there less than an hour (hopefully much less, but I’ve been a slug for a while).

Nervous

My son’s school class had a poetry recital today - this was my attempt to capture the nervous energy beforehand.  The shot out of the camera was so-so, so I applied a simple Lomo effect to make it a bit more interesting.

This is the courtyard at work.  It started snowing and were supposed to get a non-trivial amount of it, but so far the stuff that is falling doesn’t seem to be staying.