Thing #5 - Pictures, Flickr and Ansel Adams

My maternal grandparents lived in a beautiful house in the Rockridge area of Oakland, CA. In the family room hung an original Ansel Adams picture of "Moon & Half Dome" (a similar photo can be found at: http://www.anseladams.org/poster-9.html). As a kid, I remember staring at that photo and thinking about the beauty of the granite surface lit by the moon. The picture is magnificent and I wanted it, although the photo was lost sometime between the time the house was sold and my grandparents passed away (oh what the photo would be worth today, both personally and financially!) On family trips to Yosemite (we stayed in the tent cabins at Camp Curry) I would use my little Kodak camera trying to catch that same picture, but never had much luck. On family trips, I would shoot everything but the cost of developing and storage of the good and bad pictures became a problem...shoe boxes only hold so much.

Anyway, I have been in search of the perfect "Ansel Adams" like photo and, last year to my fortune, Katy gave me a Canon EOS digital SLR camera. Staying true to my adolescent photographer self, I shoot everything because, heck its digital and I can delete what I don't like. I have found that for every twenty shots, I get one that I like. I store the pictures on the external hard drive now in hopes of one day printing out, matting and framing the good ones so that I can display (and sell) them. Katy and I debate what "good" looks like...she has her list, I have mine...but maybe someday I will exhibit the photos on the blank wall in my office.

Along the same lines, Connor is about the join Boy Scouts and I am looking forward to the adventure because backpacking, camping, etc. will provide the opportunity for a father and son to hang out for quality outdoor time, but also the backdrops will be a great opportunity to shoot more photos! (Madison just joined Girl Scouts (Daisy Scout)...they don't camp, but I can't wait for the cookie sales...mmmmmmmmmm!)

To the matter at hand, I could use Flickr to do a digital exhibit to share with everyone. I will need to experiment with it, but it seems pretty easy to use at this point. I'll let you know when its posted and you can give me your definition of "good"...I'd love the feed back!

Thing #3 - Avatar, my sweet Avatar

Avatar...Avatar...where for art thou my Avatar? After much trial and error, I created my mini-me Avatar today. Creating the Avatar was a lot of fun and provoked much laughter from my office as I changed and adjusted the image...lots of choices and lots of possibilities. Through the laughter I realized that the Avatar itself represents much more than just an image, it mimics the overall entirety of the Internet - the choices and combinations of stuff that almost seem unlimited...or at least only as limited as the mind can configure the images, ideas, questions and code.

Speaking of code, I am constantly amazed by the "thing(s)" that make up the Internet...it reminds me of the movie series "The Matrix" and often makes me wonder how many layers there is to Internet onion...are we all just code and a long series of binary 1's and 0's??? Are we being harvested for our collective brainpower by an MCP (master control program)? OK...I'm sorry...I'm mixing my movie metaphors (Matrix vs Tron) in trying to describe the complexity of the "thing" that is the internet. All I know, it was super smart people at CAL that helped develop the darn thing...GO BEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!

When its all said and done, I just hope that the darn thing works when I turn it on and does the things I want it to do when I want it to do it.

Thing # 2

Hi! Happy Technological New Year!

While working on Thing #2, I found that you can't download the attachments (learning contract & 7 1/2 habits) while using a PC. Mildly frustrated, and in between dealing with girl drama which always tends to happen around school between 1:30 - 2:45, I kept trying to load the attachments...over and over and over again I tried...I even reloaded Adobe Flash Player and temporarily allowed access to restricted content...jeez, c'mon PC just load the _ _ _ _ attachments already! Anyway, after all that, Lisa was able to download the attachments for me...on a mac.

Maybe someday I'll be converted to the mac...until then...I'll keep being PC!