Hey folks. I just wanted to post a quick entry. Life has been crazy lately and while I would be silly to say everything was peachy, certain aspects have been wonderful and are clearly compensating :)

Photography continues at a rapid pace. I ended up picking up a wide-angle lens, the EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, which has been fun to work with, although it is taking some getting used to. I am trying o force myself to take different kinds of pictures to stretch myself. For example, I instituted a “no flowers” rule the last time I went out to CW. The results weren’t great, but practice is the only way I will get better. Feel free to follow the flickr link at right to see what I’ve been up to.

When I was 10 years old, I went to a summer program that was run out of a local school system. Among the activities that included playing with colored sand, we made a radio production. I have had the audio tape (yes, tape, those things you really can’t buy anymore) in my closet for nearly 22 years gathering dust. But no more! It has been faithfully digitized and linked below for your enjoyment amusement. Why am I posting this? I have no idea.

Getting Away from it All - A radio production starring, well, me. (13.4 MB AAC mp4)

Yesterday I went up to Richmond to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens with Tiffany and Q and aside from the colder than we would have liked it weather, it was a great trip. We spent most of our time in the conservatory surrounded by thousands of beautiful flowers. They had a large collection of orchids that were amazing subjects. The shear variety of orchid flowers amazes me every time I see them. They range from stunningly beautiful to flowers that appear insect-like. It was a gorgeous setting and one that holds much promise as the year progresses.

As is to be expected, I posted a subset of the pictures I took. I am still staying around the 10% yield rate on my pictures, which just means I need to take more. Enjoy.

Lewis Ginter Photos

Hey everyone. I wanted to post to let you know that I am in fact not dead yet. Life has been anything but boring lately. Work, school, personal; all have had ups and downs over the last few weeks. But spring is just about here and I can finally get outside. Regardless of the ups and downs, things are really going well and I am feeling good about the direction I am moving. Spring is always a time for fun and excitement.

I’ve been going crazy with my camera. Last night’s opener of Big O’s soccer against VIMS was a chance to try a different kind of event. I think I got a few good shots, not many though. Between the low light and the fact that I don’t have a very long lens (I used my 17-85 IS lens) I was a limited to taking shots that got near to the sidelines where I was standing. But it was still fun and I am happy with the shots I posted.

Aside from the soccer photos I have posted lots of other items from around town. So go and check them out.

• Big O’s 2007
• Full gallery

The idea of providing presence data is an interesting one; basically providing a service so that my friends know what is going on with me at any given time. Figuring out who is doing what in an easy way makes it simpler to make plans more spontaneously. Right now, the best method that exists amongst my friends is IM away messages. Works ok when people are online, but most people don’t leave themselves logged in all the time, so the system falls down.

Enter twitter. It provides persistent storage of presence data. It can be delivered via the web, via IM, or even via SMS. It seems like a great solution, but granted it only works if people you know also use it. Classic chicken and egg problem. In an effort to start things up, I have signed up and I will try to start using it.

• My twitter page
• Twitterific - A great (free) OS X app for interfacing with twitter

tweet tweet

I’m back. I made it. I didn’t freak out and get thrown off the plane. I even had a great time. The week was long but productive. Not much point in talking about the work stuff as no one who reads this really cares. Suffice to say it was geat to put faces to names and meet new faces and forget their names.

Tuesday after work, Andrew and I wandered down to Pier 39 and along the waterfront which is where I took most of the pictures. The big excitement for me at least came Thursday night, when I got to go to both Macworld and the EFF’s Sweet 16 party.

Macworld was just cool. It is the ultimate Apple person’s destination. I have been to Macworlds in New York before, but the one in San Francisco is just better, no questions asked. It really is an overload of stuff. I was looking through my bag-o-schwag when I got home and I found things I had put in it from vendors I don’t even remember visiting. As for the big ticket items? The iPhone looks very cool, I am going to seriously consider getting one. The Apple TV also looks very cool, although I think my current set up is more than suffiecient for now. But maybe when I finaly splurge for an HD TV, the extra $299 will be worth it.

The EFF Party was very exciting and a bit unnerving. It was clear to me that most of the people who come to these events are regularls, so I felt out of place a little. But I eneded up meeting a very nice woman who authors A Dress a Day. This is obviously not my thing, but she is apparently near the top of the game for her genre. We had a great time talking about all sorts of things. (And when I got home and mentioned it to Rachel, she was like “Oh yeh, I used to read that a lot.”) As I looked around the crowd, I realized there were many people present that I was used to seeing either as subject matter or posters for sites like Boing Boing. Not to mention that for most of the evening, Bruce Schneier was maybe 5 feet away from me bad cameraphone picture). I could get very used to going to events like that.

So I had a great time. I have linked to pictures I took and to pictures others took of the EFF event (as I didn’t have my camera). Enjoy

Some links

• My trip pictures - This is the sorted picture sets and has what I think were the good shots
• All my Macworld pictures, unedited - Many out of focus and bad shots, but if you want to see everything, here you go
• Vallywag pictures of EFF Party

• More pictures from the EFF Party (I found me in one of these, can you?)

• Even more pictures from the EFF Party

Just a picture I took while on the way to work this morning. I stopped at College Landing Park because there was some amazing mist rising over the water. Those pictures didn’t come out quite as well as I would have liked, I’ll have to try again some other morning as I think I was a little late for it.

There are a few more posted over at flickr. Enjoy!

Oh, and happy new year!

Hello everyone. I know I haven’t posted in a while. Things have been very busy around here. Between work, school finishing up, and social things, I haven’t had a lot of time to post. But here is a quick one.

My mom’s birthday is in December, and this year, being a momentous and serious event, she wanted to go in to New York. She got tickets to see Wynton Marsalis at Lincoln Center and was kind enough to invite Rachel and I to come too. So up we went and wow was it amazing.

We stayed in the Library Hotel, which is a small boutique hotel right in midtown (41st and Madison). The hotel as its name implies, is library themed. Each floor represents a subset of the dewey decimal system and each room is assigned a subsection. We stayed in 500.002, which is Geology. Every room has in it books appropriate for its section. The whole library is only 12 floors of rooms with only 4 rooms per floor, so it is quite cosy. There is a big lounge area that has many more books and they serve breakfast every morning.

Aside from Jazz, we visited the Museum of Modern Art in their new location. Lots of very cool art and lots of very very odd art. Ask me about the piece entitled “The Lights Going on and Off,” it was classic.

Enough talk, look at the pictures.

[New Yor Trip Pictures](http://flickr.com/photos/confusticate/sets/72157594430663429/)