I don’t often talk about work online, mainly because it can come back and bite me on the ass if I do. However, I’ve been increasingly interested in green building and urban planning, which are both related to work, but not work exactly. So I’m creating a new category for interesting things and thoughts related to these subjects. I’m also going to add this to my sidebar so it can more easily be found (at least for now, I’m in the initial stages of redesigning the site entirely, and the sidebar will go away if that happens.)
I’ve posted a number of photos from our group camping trip to Joshua Tree from this past weekend. I’ve started to use Adobe Lightroom to organize and edit my photos, and so far I’m loving it. It also has the option to post both HTML and Flash based pages to a site via FTP, which I’ve used to create a gallery for this trip. As I get better and take more photos I’ll post more of these types of galleries.
I’m quite happy with some of these photos, but of the 257 photos that were taken only 17 were good enough to post online for others to see. Most of my exposures are being done through trial and error, I’m trying to pick the shutter speed and aperture I think is right, take the picture and then adjust as needed. Sometimes I’m way off on my first guess. But all of these photos were taken on a manual setting, so I can at least say I chose the exposure that you end up seeing.
So I’m learning, but slowly. I still need to get a better eye for seeing pictures. Jill took some pictures of the same events I did and hers are much better in composition. As she mentioned to me, I tend to take pictures too close, she gets further back and shows the whole scene.
Generally, I need to start taking technically correct photos that show the scene, then I can start taking artsy pictures.
Yes, yes, I know I haven’t posted a real entry in umpteen billion seconds. Or more precisely, just about 11,000,000 seconds (that’s orders of magnitude more precise, even though it’s still very round.) I haven’t been talking the time out of life to write, as was the intention of this site. It’s one goal of mine that I’m failing at, and I think I just found another that will suffer the same fate.
Not long ago, I made a list of life goals on my online notebook. One of those goals I’ve had for a long time now, it’s one of those goals that can only be accomplished in death. My goal is to only shave half the days of my life.
Of my life goals, this seemed to be the most achievable. It’s the only one I had a real plan for. I figure I have 15 years of built up time on the front end, and I’m not wasting shaving days on weekends. Then, once I’m rich and have a fancy car collection, I wanted to grow a beard like Billy Gibbons. That will hopefully build up another 15 or 20 years on the back end. But now I’m thinking of abandoning this goal because of Esquire.
Thankfully, I have a week and a half to think about this before I’m faced with making a decision. This weekend I’m headed out to Joshua Tree, where it is perfectly acceptable to go unshaven and “look tired and sloppy,” as Esquire describes it.
…is the most under appreciated instrument ever. A while back I saw a retrospective of Leonard Cohen songs and one of them was a guy playing Leonard Cohen songs on a ukulele. It was awesome.
A friend of mine asked me, “What do you believe in?” This is something I’ve given some thought to so I had an answer for him, but it wasn’t as coherent or thought through as I would have liked. I highly enjoy the radio segment on NPRThis I Believe. It’s interesting to hear other’s beliefs in their own words and is one of the reasons I’ve put some thought into my own beliefs. In order to force myself to think through my beliefs and to be able to express them more clearly, I’m going to make it a project of mine to write essays about all the things I believe in. Thankfully for you, This I Believe’s website has essay writing tips that I’ll likely need.
CAPBlog linked to this great segment about CAP’s efforts in the search for Steve Fosset.
I haven’t talked about CAP at all since relaunching this site, but it’s an organization I’m a part of and very proud of my service to it. I have friends that are out there helping with this search and I truly wish I could be out there with them. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to train up for Search and Rescue operations. Even though we likely won’t have another search of this magnitude for quite some time, it will probably prompt me to work towards getting qualified to help in the future.
