DPC: Bokeh 5

Typo

Sonya gave me the title for this shot (my first take was "one letter off"). The color is a little flat; the ambient light was filtered through heavy clouds, and I was trying to get the snow exposed correctly.

Gnome Trains!

Well, not really Gnome trains, but both trains and gnomes were on display at the Morton Arboretum. We took Jason primarily to see their train setup, but we had more fun trying to find all of the hidden gnomes around the park. Our recent warm weather melted most of the snow, making this kind of scavenger hunt more enjoyable.

DPC: Free Study (November)

Patriarch

My grandpa, on Thanksgiving. This shot didn't score well in the "Free Study" challenge, but I thought I got the effect I was aiming for. Click on the image to see my notes on how I set up the lighting for this one.

Santa's Gmail screenshot

Fun stuff, seen over at DPC.

Speaking of DPC, I have an entry in the November Free Study which isn't doing great, but it's a picture I like. I'll post it once voting has finished on the 8th.

Noodles

Last night I did a product shot for a parent of another child at Jason's school. It's really my first "commercial" shoot, and I got noodles and sauce (and photography credit) in exchange.

The company is Aldente Pasta, located up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I set up my DIY backdrop (a sheet on a PVC frame held with clamps) on the kitchen table, added a couple lamps to even out the light, and tried to remember all the techniques I learned through DPC and the CDP meetup classes. I was hoping to shoot with my camera tethered to my laptop, but I didn't have the right cable for that.

Starting from Scratch

With Jason home recovering from pneumonia*, and no sane daycare provider willing to take a child with the contagious strain of pneumonia, I'm spending the day helping him learn how to write. I used to teach programming classes at U.C. Berkeley as a teacher assistant (I led discussion sessions, labs, etc). Motivating college students is only slightly easier than motivating a four year old, but the tasks Jason's learning now are more about muscle memory in his fingers than complex problem solving.

* I'd like to thank all of the scientists, researchers, and doctors who studied this disease and developed antibiotics and treatments to make pneumonia an annoyance instead of a tragedy. I encourage everyone to contribute to the National Center for Science Education, so the next generation's doctors and scientists will have the right knowledge and skills to keep making the world better for everyone.

Which Classic Arcade Game are you?

Which Classic Arcade Game Are You?

No surprises here. I still enjoy that DigDug was a game where you INFLATE your enemies until they EXPLODE, but everyone gets all bent out of shape about GTA and fighting games being too violent.

Myths about Democrats and Spending

I watched one CNN's "analysts" explain how independents might be afraid of Democrats spending too much, and I knew this wasn't grounded in reality. Going back to the Kennedy administration, and not even counting the massive Wall Street bailout, here's actual data. Take a few minutes and read the whole thing, but here's the part I wanted to bring to your attention:

The twenty years of budgets prepared by Republican presidents increased the national debt by $3.8 trillion. The average yearly deficit under Republican budgets was $190 billion.

The twenty years of budgets prepared by Democratic presidents increased the national debt by $719.5 billion. The average yearly deficit under Democratic budgets was $36 billion.

DPC: Free Study (September)

Lakeside Parking

I took this shot from outside the Chicago Field Museum last month while I was on my way to the planetarium for the fireworks show.

City of Inspiration

Fall Fireworks at Navy Pier


Looking north from Roosevelt St bridge

Photographic inspiration, that is. While the family is away, I've been able to head downtown a couple nights with my camera and have fun being a photographer. I have some of my better images in my DPC portfolio, here and here. I got myself signed up for a portrait class taught through the Chicago Digital Photography meetup.com group, which I'm excited about.

Earthquakes

Jason, born in Hayward, ended up playing for a team named "Earthquakes" here in Chicago. I'm not making this up, and I had no input on the team name. His first real game is this coming Saturday.

Barack's Speech

Geeky Networking

Yep, that's a Twitter widget on the right. As I post "tweets" (essentially very short blog posts) they'll get copied to the widget. I've also been pulled into Facebook (my page). Stalk me like celery!

The Eyes have it!

LeapPads are all fun and games until someone LOSES AN EYE, or at least gets a painful poke in the eye with the Leap Pen. Such was my fate sitting next to the boy, while he struggled to do something with that damn pen with his left hand. I'm hardly blameless in this I guess, since I've often said I'd give my right eye to have a lefthanded son..

Indiana Sand Dunes

Jason likes sand, so in a cruel twist of fate I took him to a place with so much sand he hated it. We trekked over to Indiana to Mt Baldy, along Indiana's sand dune park system. The "mountain" is about a hundred feet tall, and offers some nice views (which would be nicer without so much cloud cover casting shadows on everything).

I hear the refinery in the background spews out so much radioactive waste that locals have grown gills and can swim like fish!

We picked a good day to not be in Chicago, as when we looked out over Lake Michigan we could see Chicago was submerged!!

This is what we get for not taking mass transit to the sand dunes. Fortunately, traffic was heavy and with the delay getting home Chicago had time to dry out.

Eggs?

It reminds me a bit of Schoolhouse Rock, but in a kids anime style.
I love eggs

Preseason Thoughts: Chiefs vs Bears

I caught most of the Chiefs/Bears preseason game last night, tuning in to catch Grossman's missteps. Hadie looked really good, showing some pocket presence avoiding the pass rush, and making good decisions and fairly accurate throws. Some caveats though:
1. It's preseason. Teams are playing to see which players are worth keeping, not so much to win the game.
2. It's the Chiefs, not exactly a dominant team.
3. It wasn't even the Chief's starters on defense against Hadie. Then again, he didn't have the Bears starters on offense. It's hard to tell sometimes with the Bears, since their offensive players are, well, offensive.

I'd like to see Hadie get some more time in the next preseason games. From what I saw last night, he shows more potential than both Orton and Grossman. Those other two "starters" really lower the bar for what we in Chicago want from our quarterbacks. If Hadie ends up being below average, it would be a huge step forward for the team.

Floods in Iowa

If you lived there, you'd remember last month some severe flooding in the midwest. Last weekend we visited my Grandpa in northeast Iowa, and we didn't have to travel very far to see some spectacular flood damage: ruined fields, collapsed bridges, washed out roads.. I got a few pictures.











These pictures, and a few more, are also up on my DPC portfolio.

The Internet is for Sick People

When I was in high school, we had a physics program that let students create objects by joining blocks with springs and applying forces at various points. I'd made a person looking thing and send him tumbling down a flight of stairs, followed by a large ball (think: Indiana Jones), into a spiked pit.

I see I'm not the only one to put simulators to good use.

How to Abuse Rollercoaster Tycoon 3: Massacre

Big Bugs!

This weekend we discovered the Morton Arboretum just outside of Chicago, and caught the Big Bug exhibit. We had a blast, and maybe only saw a tenth of the park. We'll be returning often, especially in the fall.

Traditional Anniversary Gifts

New 7th Anniversary Gift: Matching iPhones!

Yep, I stood in line for four and a half hours at the Apple store on North Michigan Ave in Chicago, but unlike many people (particularly those at AT&T stores) I did not come home empty handed. I was surprised there were no hot dog or other food peddlers feeding people in the line; they would have made almost as much money as Apple did that day.

DPC: Urban Landscape 3

Financial Giants

See, I told you I'd have a better picture to show tonight. This is looking up from Adams St, and yes, that's the Sears Tower on the left. I don't know what the building on the right is called.

Supported by SCIENCE

There's only one right way to spool toilet paper!

DPC: Free Study (June)

Martian Flora

This was a poor shot of a glass bowl at the Museum of Science and Industry's Glass exhibit. Tomorrow I'll post a better entry, I promise.

Birthdays and Board Games

This last weekend we celebrated Sonya's birthday. I know better than to post her age (suffice to say "old enough to know better, young enough to still have fun"). We had some of her friends over for Wii games and (amazingly!) board games! The board game fest started off with Fearsome Floors, then we worked into Uptown and had a truly cut-throat game of Blokus.

Jason and I saw Wall-E yesterday, and we both enjoyed it. As I expected, it didn't take long for right wing whackjobs to criticize the movie for not glamorizing consumerism.

We also picked up Rock Band and Aerosmith Guitar Hero for the Wii yesterday. The timing of the guitar controllers is slightly different between the two games, but not so much that I'm unable to do well with both. The drums are going to take some getting used to.

I'm hoping to get some good fireworks pictures next weekend.

Happy Father's Day

Just Grandpa and Me

With my wife's help, my son got me a stack of Buckethead CDs (Pepper's Ghost is amazing!) for my Father's day. We picked out a Chicago Bears bean bag toss for my dad, and Jason got his first bike. Yeah, he's not a father yet, but he was ready for a bike and I was in a generous mood (especially after listening to all that Buckethead).


First Bike

Grandma Visits

"Nonny" came to visit us last weekend! The picture is at a moon rock outside of the Shedd Aquarium.

DPC: Free Study (May)

Fallen

For the first time on DPC I got two entries in a row that scored over 6! This didn't do as well as Death below, but still finished in the upper 17%.

DPC: Female Portrait

Death
The comic book character the girl is portraying is Death from the Sandman series. While I did get 9th overall, I think I might have scored higher if I picked a better title. Many of the voters didn't recognize the character.

FAnime 2008!

My FAnime pictures are up at anywhere.generic.org. There are some that are probably not "work safe", so if you get into trouble over your web surfing it's your own fault. I warned you.

Fast Fingers

Think Speedracer and head over to typeracer.com. Sadly, my typing speed (and accuracy) had diminished greatly since high school.

FAnime 2008

Last weekend I took my annual trip to San Jose, CA, for FAnime. For four days, I photographed hundreds of people in costume, many very eager to model and pose for the camera. Some of them are either trained or natural models, and can pose themselves well.

Surprisingly, there were some people who recognized me from last year. I'll grant that I don't carry around the most common point and shoot camera, but there are nearly as many photographers as there are people to shoot. This year I came prepared with actual business cards with my name and website address instead of pieces of scratch paper.

I had studied more portrait photography techinques in the weeks leading up to this event, and modified my own style of setting up a shot. I brought a reflector meant to bounce light up as fill light, hoping to brighten up the faces of my models posing outside. For the first time in my life I set my flash to manual mode, and adjusted flash power and aperture to try to isolate my subjects.

All told, I took nearly 1600 pictures over three days (Monday was a loss; the hotel wasn't staffed to handle everyone leaving on the same day), compared to about 600 that I took last year. I'm much more comfortable having my flash on manual, and am glad I just jumped in the deep end in that regard. I only took short breaks to sleep for a few hours, eat with my anime-fanatic friends, and even watched some myself. I was able to do some very basic processing of my pictures where I could take advantage of Aperture to automate simple tasks. My laptop lacks the RAM to quickly do more--those corrections will have to happen once I get home. Sometime over the next few days I'll be uploading many of my images to anywhere.

DPC: ABC...XYZ

Help, I'm Juxtaposed!

The challenge was to present a picture with a title that started with consecutive letters. I was contrasting the bright blue and yellow of Jason to the flat green of the waterfall scene.

DPC: Every Picture Tells a Story

Tradition

Korea Culture Day

Jason and I went to the Korean culture exhibition at the Children's Museum.

DPC: Negative Image 2

Aquarium

DPC: Water 3

Eels in the Red Sea

This was taken at Shedd Aquarium, last time I went with Jason.

Another Presidential Debate

Abraham Lincoln vs Stephen Douglas, from Obsidian Wings, putting ABC's horrific moderation into historical context. Hilarious!

Just an observation

Taking macro pictures of one's eyeball is really difficult. If I could do it I'd post some shots. Maybe I'll try again after my eyeball recovers from camera flash.

DPC: DNMC

Naked Ambition

"DNMC" is shorthand for "does not meet the challenge," in the humble opinion of some voter who can't think creatively. I thought a Woody shot would do well, since the voters hate those things, but my entry was found lacking.

Support Science

Make a donation to the National Center for Science Education. I learned about this organization from the Atheist Ethicist post on Expelled and "Truth Tickets", and strongly agree with his argument about supporting evidence based thinking.

Make the world a better place.

DPC: Free Study (March)

Missing California

Jason was the only kid in the playground this early day in March. It had started to snow heavy flakes, so called "heart attack" snow to the people who shovel it.

DPC: Patterns

Get Into a Groove

Field Museum

Didn't I just post about rites of Spring? Yesterday about six inches of snow dumped on Chicago! I had the day off, and had plans to take Jason to the Field Museum. Yesterday's weather gave too many other people the same idea, and it was crowded like a weekend afternoon.


Even though we had just been to the museum recently, we were still able to spend hours there and not see anything that we saw on our last visit. The Field Museum is just that big and that impressive!

DPC: Blurry Mess

Quantum Crash

This was taken from the back of a mostly empty CTA bus, with a long exposure time while I twisted the camera around the lens axis. I adjusted the color map a bit in Photoshop until I found ones that I liked.

Rites of Spring

Warm weather the previous week deluded me into think winter was over. It didn't snow this weekend, but not because it wasn't cold enough for snow. Undeterred, I opened up the grills and cleaned both out, and grilled up salmon and steaks for dinner tonight.

I didn't realize Buckethead had a song on Guitar Hero 2 until last night. That alone was enough to convince me I needed to get that game for my PS2 (and thus get another guitar controller).

Apple Pie Tamales

Today I made a new variant of the tamale recipe. In true "old school" fashion, nothing was measured precisely, nor was any of this written down. It was a small batch, only about 35 tamales, but that was enough to keep me busy all afternoon. They turned out great (obviously!), and I'll probably make these again. As far as tamale recipes go, this one was less labor intensive. Dicing apples is much easier than dicing raw meat.

DPC: Silverware

Forbidden Lovers

My first idea for this challenge was to get a fork and a spoon wrapped around each other at the "neck" of the handle, but I knew better than to do that with our own utensils, and couldn't find malleable ones at any of the discount stores. Fortunately, my cooperative model was up to the task of some dinnerware erotica.

Lately

I took the family up to Iowa recently, and totally forgot to blog about it. Apparently I'm too far removed from the days of working for a search engine company or an email startup. I'm sometimes surprised I manage to get more than a couple posts on this blog each week.

You've probably noticed the "Worth Reading" sidebar. You should be reading those articles. I only share the good stuff because I like you.

This week's challenge for DPC was Blurry Mess, and it was a lot of fun to shoot for it. You can expect to see my entry for that after voting ends next Tuesday.

Chemistry

HIgh school chemistry was never this much fun.

10 chemical reactions.

Toys Reflecting Reality

I found this through a link on BBSpot. Read some of the comments, they're hilarious.

DPC: Pet Portrait

"Don't listen to those voters, my freaky pet. I still like you."

I've been on a roll with the "Woody" shots for DPC lately. A few of the voters mistook me for one of the prominent personalities of the site, which more than makes up for almost getting last place in the challenge.

Remember, clicking on these pictures will take you to the actual DPC page, where you can see what other DPC types thought of it.