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My new laptop, thanks to Noam, is a wonder of small form and weight for little $. I just got the webcam working by finally figuring out that I had to press a keyboard toggle. Fun with photobooth.

High Dynamic Range

My images are not uploading right now. I spent the evening taking pictures with varying shutter speeds and then feeding the resulting images into the HDR creator in Photoshop. I got some neat pictures and a much better understanding of what I might do to improve. Hopefully I'll add more photos later when Blogger doesn't spit them back out at me.

Edit: Two of the house images used to create the picture above.

Time for Walkies

Today I walked with Rose to Harvard Square. It has been a while since I have done this. Travel to Australia, illness, and massive snowfalls have all contributed to less walking time. Cambridge finally opened the Walden Street bridge that they have been working on for years. It is great for driving over the train tracks. The girders you see behind the bridge are for the pedestrian walkway that stayed open during construction.
Million Year Picnic. Love the place. I have been reading comics since college where I helped run the Haverford College Comic book collection. Today I get my books from MYP in Harvard Square. Great store, great atmosphere.


On the way out, I was enchanted by the little lights in the trees in Harvard Square (Brattle Square, actually) This shot was taken with a long exposure with the camera resting on the baby carriage.
At the bottom of the street where we live, there were some massive snowballs that had been rolled on the tennis courts. Two kids were tying to add to them, but the weight was a little too much. You'd need a forklift to get these stacked for a larger-than-life snowman.

School at Night

After a day of shoveling snow and writing student recommendations, I went to school to set up for the professional day I am taking tomorrow. Had to get the room ready and drop of materials for the person covering. I will be continuing to work on recommendations tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get to report writing, too.

While at school, I took some night photos. I really like taking night photos. I love my gorilla pod! It can do such neat tricks.
After taking some building shots, I played around with making prints in the snow using the bottom of one of the safety cones.

Clippings, indeed

Hey all,

I hope people are catching on to the daily posts and enjoying them. If so, please let me know by making a comment now and then. I'd love to hear from you. I added a service to see where people are located who look at my blog. Barcelona? Who dat?

Today's post reflects what I suspect the nature of this spurt of blog activity will be. Some art, some fun, some mundane...
On the mundane edge, I found my side view mirror cracked this morning. Whether from the intense cold of last night or by foul play, I don't know. It is very disconcerting, though, to watch cars pass from one segment of the mirror to the next.

As I was driving around today, I saw this sign encouraging folks to walk upside down or to do fancy ski tricks.My penchant for patterns was satisfied by a trip to the hardware store. Had to return some hose clamps of the wrong size for a project I was doing and pick up some brushes for a school art project. The pipes caught my attention.One of the blogs I read, Art from Pushing Buttons and Turning Dials, has some of my favorite art out there. I was inspired by recent posts to play with a picture I took of copper pipes.

Mountains to Move

As I get closer to the day the baby is born, it feels like there are mountains to move. Some, I am sure, are not needed, yet I construct them and am forced to move them. They, along with the important things, will be left behind when my priorities and time are reapportioned. I would love to see now from the future to know which mountains to move. Instead, I just shove ineffectually at all of them simultaneously. There are so many mountains to move.

A photo from the family vacation in Cornwall when I was in 6th grade. The scan is more grainy than the photo, but I still love this shot.

Digitized Photos

I recently sent my old negatives to Scancafe to have them digitized. They just came back, and now I have access to all of the photos I have taken (minus a few b&w rolls that were part of high school photo class and yearbook class). The photos stretch from my 110 camera back in 1982(?) until I transitioned to getting my negatives returned with a cd of the images. The cds are not as good quality scans, but they'll do.

As I began to explore these images, all 4 dvds of them, I happened upon this photo of the spiral stair within The Monument in London. This column commemorates the Great Fire of London. Clearly this photo shows my fascination with things helical, so I ported it to my store and stuck it on several items to see how it would look.

Bees are lazy cads today!

Usually I get a few things done each day and am happy, but today I am outpacing the bees. I have oiled hinges, replaced light diffusers, put down non-slip material under bath mats, run around town shopping for things to do chores with, got new parking tags for both my car and Reena's as well as putting them in, changed my voter registration address, and the list goes on. Buzz Buzz.

Recently I posted much stuff on Craig's list. Reena and I had culled this stuff from the rest for getting rid of before the move, but it came with us and sat in a room. More than half of it has already been picked up. I am ready to give anyone who shows as much of it as they want to carry off. Yay Craig's List.

The last push to organize the basement storage/work room and get stuff down there from the dining room where it has been hulking in the shadows will happen in the next few days. I will also be writing student recommendations for next schools, doing curriculum, and some of my own art. Plenty of feet up and watching movies, too.

So here I am, a year older, perhaps wiser, perhaps more foolish, and looking at fatherhood.

Oh, I posted house pictures on the other website. Very messy, but I hadn't gotten around to it, so there they are.

Sunrise in New Hampshire

I awoke after having a hard time sleeping this morning. I caught a glimpse of sunrise about to happen, so I got my camera and gorillapod and went out to catch the event. This is from Wendy's family's cabin in New Hampshire. It is on a lake. This morning, well after sunrise, we went to the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen Fair. Beautiful craft items. I especially was into the wood, quilts, and stained glass this year.