Photo assignment #5: Creative use of color

We learned all about white balance last week, and our assignment this week was to use color in an image to evoke an emotional response. I think I'm going to use this image for one part of the assignment (an otherwise bland 4 p.m. water shot turned dark and mysterious by skewing the white balance to indoor lighting levels):


I also like this picture, but it doesn't really fit the assignment:

(Click each picture to go to a bigger shot on my Nikonians photo gallery page.)

Laurel's running log for Wednesday, October 27

Laurel's run at 1:50 PM on 10/27/2004:

• Time: 01:25:03
• Distance: 8.24 miles
• Average speed: 5.81 mph
• Average pace: 00:10:19 / mile
• Calories: 948

Run was in Seattle, WA, United States.

Satellite map:

Street map:

Laurel's running log for Saturday, October 30

Laurel's run at 2:06 PM on 10/30/2004:

• Time: 00:37:34
• Distance: 3.87 miles
• Average speed: 6.18 mph
• Average pace: 00:09:42 / mile
• Calories: 398

Run was in Seattle, WA, United States.

Satellite map:

Street map:

ER

Last night, while sitting in the worst traffic jam ever (and that's saying something for Seattle!), I started having chest pains. Other than that, I felt fine -- no sweating, no shortness of breath, no shooting pains down my arm. So I got through traffic and went to the emergency room.

It was a quick visit, only there for two hours, and they did an EKG, x-rays, and blood tests. Everything turned out normal (well, we're waiting on the results of one test -- I have the raw numbers, which look normal to me, but haven't heard the doctor's interpretation).

I feel much better today but still feel something there.

The doctor figured that it was an inflammation of a chest lining due to a cold I had several weeks ago ... unless the other test result shows that I have inflammation of the heart lining itself (which again, the results I've seen, data-wise, appear not to indicate).

At any rate, the prescription is rest and Alleve, no matter what the actual cause was -- at least it was NOT a heart attack!

Some nice photo feedback

After we did our class-wide "crits" of our photographs tonight, my photography teacher said to me privately about the pic a few posts ago with the lens flare on the statue: "That kicks ass."

I was pretty happy with it, although I admit it was just a lucky accident -- the trick I'm trying to learn is doing those accidents on purpose!

At any rate, I like that picture more and more and have submitted it to a couple of online photo contests, just to see what happens.

The rest of the class was really interested in the spider closeup, but the teachers weren't as impressed, I think.

Still, most of the other folks in the class have a much better creative eye than I do, so mostly it is a learning experience for me to look at what they come up with.

It's not a gang, it's a club

Dead again?

Couldn't resist another one.

It's kind of morbid ...

But on the bright side, I live to be 216!!!

Photo Class: Assignment #4 posted

Week Four's assignment for my photography class was to take some shots with a deep depth of field (as well as a shallow depth of field, but I'm using my previous spider shot for that one).

For the rest of the shots, my art director (Laurel) and I went to the Lakeview Cemetery, Volunteer Park, and Harbor Island to find shots like this one:

See the best of the rest at my Nikonians gallery space.

Happy Birthday, Sadie Hale!

Found out via Text Message today that Sadie Hale was born, making this her first birth day (or zeroth birthday?) ... 7 lbs, 14 oz. Now Dave Hale of "bell bottom blogs" fame has a daughter, Henry Hale has a sister, and Kelsey Vaughn has the chance to wear normal-waisted pants again.

My private gallery space

It isn't that impressive, actually. My online photo gallery at Nikonians.

Spilled some milk, but I'm not crying

I took the following shots for my photography class assignment ("freeze motion with a fast shutter speed"):

Silence of the Clams

We're back from a mostly successful visit to the beach. We went clam-digging (well, actually, Ryan, Rhonda, and Andrew got clams and the rest of us just got cold and wet). Pictures here.

Other activities included: A delicious chicken dinner, karoake, spiced wine, "bunny trail" ice cream, frying of said clams, and absolutely no free apple cider (but not for lack of trying!)

Ocean!

We're heading to Long Beach tomorrow night (as in Long Beach, WA, not CA). We'll be staying with our friends Ryan and Nila -- their family has a house on the beach. The last time we stayed there, I put my head through the window (not on purpose), so I'm glad that we're invited back.

The boy is back in town

Thanks to Mr. Jimmo for pointing out that I neglected to mention I was now back in Seattle ;-)

The Big D

As in Dallas, not Dave. I'm here in Dallas, just waiting for the next plane. Of course, when you make a connection in Dallas, the plane you need to catch is never in the same terminal as where you land. I don't know how they always manage that. Oh well, a little extra exercise, and since we got here early, no rush. I think I was awake for about 2 seconds of the flight from Austin, but it is only 30 minutes long. Why can't I sleep like that on a 12-hour flight?

My plane broke

Fortunately, we found this out on the ground long before it left. I'm glad I got to the airport early now, as I can hop on a different flight to Dallas. However, there is no earlier flight to Seattle, but that's OK, the time between flights was a little too tight before.

Dogville

I plan to watch the movie Dogville while I'm on the Dallas-to-Seattle leg of my trip, if I can stay awake that long. It's a 3-hour movie and a 3.5-hour flight, so that should work out great. I had really been looking forward to Dogville coming out in the theaters, so imagine my surprise when I saw it out on DVD already -- turns out, it was yanked from US distribution. Makes me even more eager to see it!

Here I sit, all broken-hearted

I had one last-minute interview at UT, which ended up pushing me out to almost 5 p.m., so the day turned out to be about as long as yesterday. I had heard so many horror stories about the traffic to the airport that I left right away for my 7:50 p.m. flight. Well, it is now only 6 p.m. and I've already done every possible thing you can do in the Austin airport except get a shoe shine (and that, only because I'm wearing sneakers). So I guess I'll just sit here and surf the web till boarding time -- at least there is good wifi and a power outlet.

Schedule gone crazy!

I got up at 6 a.m. today, worked out, got back to the room just in time for my 7 a.m. breakfast order to show up, checked out of the hotel at 8 a.m., checked in to the UT Austin at 8:30 a.m., and am minutes away from my first interview at 9 a.m. Phew! That would normally be a full day for me already ;-) ... and I still have 10 interviews to conduct before rushing to the airport and finally getting home at midnight (or 2 a.m. Austin time) ... and then up again tomorrow for an 8 a.m. workout in Seattle!

Printing on the road

On a lark, I bought a portable printer called the SiPix Pocket Printer A6. It is a thermal printer (meaning it needs no ink, but uses special paper which is pretty easy to find). It is very portable and only prints pages that are about 1/4 the size of a standard 8.5 by 11 page, but it comes in very handy when you are traveling and get things like schedule updates or need to print out a paper map. I've gotten a bunch of use from it on this trip -- and best of all, it cost like $20.

Tomorrow just got worse

I was supposed to have a pretty short day tomorrow, with interviews ending at 2 p.m. But more people signed up, and now I'm booked till 4 p.m. At least that gives me less time to fill wandering the streets of Austin aimlessly.

Interview Day 1 Done!

Made it through the first big day of interviewing UT college students. It goes by fast! Got back to the hotel, worked out for an hour, and now I'm about to go see some bats.

Interview 'em Horns!

I'm at the University of Texas at Austin, sitting in my interview office for the day. It's a great setup here at UT, with power and wired internet access for my laptop, so I can check email between interviews (not that I have much "between interview" time -- our schedules are packed just about full, with less than 30 minutes to do an entire interview before moving on!)

Christopher Reeve is dead

According to the Defamer website, Superman star Chris Reeve died on Sunday. I haven't seen this anywhere else yet, though.

Nikonians

If you like Nikon cameras as much as I do, check out the Nikonians, a website with great forums and a "Pro Shop" for Nikon shooters (both film and digital).

Austin night life

I spent Saturday night on Austin's 6th Street, the popular "bar-hopping" area just next to my hotel. Warning, the pictures includes some adult content -- well, at least PG-13.

Austin, TX

I'm here! If you're watching at the right time, you may catch me with my laptop camera streaming from the lovely Driskill Hotel. Oddly enough, it looks almost exactly like the room in the Fairmont Royal York where I stayed with Laurel on our last college recruiting trip (unfortunately, this time Laurel is not with me). Seems like a cool place so far, and I can't wait to hit the streets tomorrow with my camera to get some pix of the scene.

Get ready, Texas!

I'm going to Austin, TX, tomorrow. On Monday and Tuesday, I'll be interviewing college students for potential internships or full-time jobs at Microsoft. I'm going a little early to potentially see my brother (if he can make to to Austin; he lives in Houston). Otherwise, it will be nothing but work -- interviewing about 25 people in two days is probably easier for the interviewees than the interviewer!

Hello Kitty, Goodbye Money!

Thankfully, even with our recent windfalls from my motorcycle being totalled and such, we still don't have enough "fun" money to buy this: a Hello Kitty Airstream trailer that Laurel describes as "awesome" ... it is for charity, though ... hmmmm.

Randy

The development lead for the area of Mobile Devices I used to work on (previously known as pIE but now called IEMo or something not as double-entendre-ish as pIE was) is so starved for attention that he actually wants me to "blog" about him. I used to think Randy was a little odd, but then I saw how he was even a bigger freak for Jerry "Seven of Nine" Ryan than I was, so now I know he is very odd. So there you go, Randy.

It's a sickness

In the nonsensical tradition of "lather, rinse, repeat," we seem to be in the cycle of "get sick, go to work, repeat" at Microsoft this past couple of weeks. A cold/flu wave has gone through our building and it's like some Middle Ages plague ward in our hallway sometimes. The worst part is that once you start feeling better, you go in and get bad again. Oh well, the price we pay with our fragile lives to bring you, dear reader, little portable toys.

VP Debate - score: meh

But before I answer your question, let me go back to what the Vice President/ Senator Edwards just said on Iraq/healthcare/lawsuits. Dick Cheney has scared me for the last 4 years. Tonight didn't change that. John Edwards seemed smarmy during the primaries. And he still does. Not that the debate tonight was going to change my vote or anything. My vote is going to Gwen Ifill for attempting to keep it on track. There was one point at the very end of the debate where both candidates had a chance to say something positive instead of pointing fingers at the other side. That was the question "this country is very divided - what would you do if you were elected to change that?" Neither party picked up on the obvious. Even though I seem to be out of step with every person in this country who lives east of the Cascade Mountains and west of New York City, I can still think of some goals for this country that we most likely share. We may not agree on how to achieve them, but they are still shared: Americans are safe in the world, our country is respected by other countries, our children get a decent education, people have jobs, people have access to healthcare. The candidate who actually would state this would get some respect from me.

But the ladies love a listener!

I found out yesterday, through a rather brutal six-hour process, that everyone else notices the same thing I've noticed about myself but no one has ever bothered to mention to me before -- that I don't make good eye contact while I'm talking to someone. I figured maybe it wasn't that noticeable, but I guess people are just too polite! To save my ego, I'm trying to focus on the positive feedback I got, which is that I do make good eye contact while listening, and hey, everyone likes a man who can listen, right? Right? Huh? I wasn't listening. Still, though, I guess now that I know it is bothering other people, I can work harder on correcting my bad habit. The good news: That wasn't a bad enough problem for me to fail the overall goal of the aforementioned brutal six-hour process, but that's a blog post for another day.

Father and son

We had a visit from friends Dave, Kelsey, and three-year-old Henry this evening! We finally got to give Henry his Koala Bear puppet gift from Australia, and he liked it (and named it "Lolanda"). I also got some nice side-lit portraits of father and son Hale:


Dave Hale


Henry Hale

Volcano Cam

Watch Mt. St. Helens here, and see if it blows its top again today!

Ichiro: American Idol

Ichiro ties the record with hit #257.


Ichiro hits #258, setting a new record!


Fireworks at Safeco Field


Do you think they were prepared for this to happen?


The Sisler Family was on-hand to witness their relative's record being broken.


Ichiro pads the record to 259.


It was fan appreciation night, but we appreciated Ichiro!


Oh, and the Mariner's won, thanks to lots of great hitting from the rest of the team, not to mention Ichiro's other great plays on offense and defense.