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Dec. 24th, 2007 10:26 amI haven't kept up here since going on vacation, so I want to recap.
I've received a few really really nifty early Christmas presents!
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laureth bought me a book about the storm drains and tunnels under Las Vegas called Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the tunnels of Las Vegas. I've read a bit of it and it's pretty nifty! It's too bad there aren't more photographs, but it's fun to read. Thank you Laureth! That was really nice of you!
awful_horrid, while at the solstice celebration at his house, gave me a copy of Ninjalicious' book Access All Areas: A User's Guide to the Art of Urban Exploration. I was passingly familiar with Ninjalicious as a well-known urban explorer in Toronto, and had even thought about going to one of the meetups up there while I was living in Michigan. After reading his book, I really wish I had. It's informative, direct, and really damn funny. He definitely had a talent for writing, and it's truly a shame that he's no longer in this world to continue sharing it. Thank you, Awful_Horrid, for the gift; it's really great! It will definitely be read multiple times and possibly loaned out to a few people.
The combination of these two gifts, plus my gift to myself (well, really from Andrea 'cause I bought it with her approval!) of a nice tripod that I don't have to bend over to use, has been really inspirational. I haven't been in the drains for a couple of years, but I'm definitly going to go back this Spring. I want to try a few live target infiltrations around Kenosha too. There's an interesting building downtown that used to be a hotel that I'd really like to see the inside of. I'm not quite sure what it is now; I think it's time to start research.
I also have a very very pretty jeweled copper windchime with a dragonfly design thatposicat and tybis gave me. He remembered that I like dragonflies! *bounces* It's quite pretty and I was excited to open up his bag and see it.
serinthia and todd_riverden gave me a tin of peppermint hot chocolate mix. I just had my first cup of that; yummy!
I now have a working copy of Adobe Lightroom that I'm having a really fun time entering pictures into and setting up keywords. I'm not sure when I'm going to be done; my picture count stands at 10,614 and growing, so keywording all of them is going to take some time. That said, I've got 1,088 of them done and I'm not slowing down. The most fun, and challenging, part of databasing my images is looking at them and deciding how I would try to look for them in the future and what other images I would expect them to be associated with in various ways. There are a couple of tweaks I'd like to see implemented to the databasing system, but it's leaps and bounds above just sorting them into folders by date or event like I have been. If I want to see all the pictures I've shot in Chicago's Millennium park, for instance, that have both Cloudgate and Andrea in them, all it takes is a little query and it arranges them in a numbered grid for me with the option to easily export some or all of them to a web gallery. That's pretty awesome, and you may be seeing more pictures, or even a web page, from me soon.
I mentioned a Solstice celebration; that was pretty neat.moiracoon and I got up early (like five o' clock) and drove out to awful_horrid's place in Bristol so we could stand at the shore of the lake the defines his backyard with assorted noisemakers to wake the sun from its slumber on the year's longest night. As it turned out, there was so unbelievably much fog that we couldn't really tell when the sun had woken. Even by the time noon rolled around, it still looked like a gray drizzly dawn. It was oddly warm that day and the vast fields of snow were sublimating right into water vapor. The fog is a contender for the thickest I've ever seen and it never did manage to burn off; it persisted through the entire day.
So the group of us stood in the backyard with various noisemakers in hand. Andrea had her thrift store drum, while I had the windchimes I'd received just that past day hanging from the hook of my tripod while I took pictures of our gathering. The chimes looked oddly at home there, sort of like a fetish hanging from a shaman's staff. If they weren't so loud, I might take them with me when I go out to photograph things.
I wish I could remember all the names of the folks we met up with and had delicious omlettes (of awful_horrid's making) with, but I'm very bad with names. I know some of them are on LJ, so I will find them and add them shortly, but in the meantime I want to express what a wonderful time I had. I really hope we can get together again soon, and wish we could have stayed longer and played some games.
But instead, we moved on totybis' graduation party; he is finally a certified and degreed professional geek! It was really nice seeing he and Posi, and we met up with a few other people we hadn't seen in a while, like magicpaw and, um, the girl we met at Chase bank a few months ago whose name I can't remember and who works at an auto parts store. shaleari and Xander were there too. Tybis' mom made hors d'oeuvres and barbecued pork and we had a very nice dinner with friends before going home for the night. We left a little early, but we'd been up since five o' clock, so I guess that's understandable.
Yesterday, I spent a while working with my parents on out Christmas gift for grandma and grandpa while Andrea and the newly arrivedmocha_mephooki went out for last minute shopping at Gurnee Mills. After having experienced the place just before Tybis' part yesterday, I'm quite glad I missed out on what they told me was a mad house. Instead, the three of us met up at Fazoli's as they got back into town for all you can eat pizza and pasta. I'd never tried it there, but it was cheap ($4.99!), pretty decent though not stellar, plentiful, and quick. Definitely worth while.
After that we all went back to the house to generally bum around 'till late that night when Mocha had to leave. It was really nice to see him again, and I'm looking forward to our scheduled photography trip to Gary to take dawnlight pictures of the Methodist church out there on the 27th.
I haven't done as much cleaning as I'd like to have at this point, so I'm going to get back to that now. We have house guests coming for New Years celebrations!
'Till later!
I've received a few really really nifty early Christmas presents!
laureth bought me a book about the storm drains and tunnels under Las Vegas called Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the tunnels of Las Vegas. I've read a bit of it and it's pretty nifty! It's too bad there aren't more photographs, but it's fun to read. Thank you Laureth! That was really nice of you!awful_horrid, while at the solstice celebration at his house, gave me a copy of Ninjalicious' book Access All Areas: A User's Guide to the Art of Urban Exploration. I was passingly familiar with Ninjalicious as a well-known urban explorer in Toronto, and had even thought about going to one of the meetups up there while I was living in Michigan. After reading his book, I really wish I had. It's informative, direct, and really damn funny. He definitely had a talent for writing, and it's truly a shame that he's no longer in this world to continue sharing it. Thank you, Awful_Horrid, for the gift; it's really great! It will definitely be read multiple times and possibly loaned out to a few people.The combination of these two gifts, plus my gift to myself (well, really from Andrea 'cause I bought it with her approval!) of a nice tripod that I don't have to bend over to use, has been really inspirational. I haven't been in the drains for a couple of years, but I'm definitly going to go back this Spring. I want to try a few live target infiltrations around Kenosha too. There's an interesting building downtown that used to be a hotel that I'd really like to see the inside of. I'm not quite sure what it is now; I think it's time to start research.
I also have a very very pretty jeweled copper windchime with a dragonfly design that
posicat and tybis gave me. He remembered that I like dragonflies! *bounces* It's quite pretty and I was excited to open up his bag and see it. serinthia and todd_riverden gave me a tin of peppermint hot chocolate mix. I just had my first cup of that; yummy!I now have a working copy of Adobe Lightroom that I'm having a really fun time entering pictures into and setting up keywords. I'm not sure when I'm going to be done; my picture count stands at 10,614 and growing, so keywording all of them is going to take some time. That said, I've got 1,088 of them done and I'm not slowing down. The most fun, and challenging, part of databasing my images is looking at them and deciding how I would try to look for them in the future and what other images I would expect them to be associated with in various ways. There are a couple of tweaks I'd like to see implemented to the databasing system, but it's leaps and bounds above just sorting them into folders by date or event like I have been. If I want to see all the pictures I've shot in Chicago's Millennium park, for instance, that have both Cloudgate and Andrea in them, all it takes is a little query and it arranges them in a numbered grid for me with the option to easily export some or all of them to a web gallery. That's pretty awesome, and you may be seeing more pictures, or even a web page, from me soon.
I mentioned a Solstice celebration; that was pretty neat.
moiracoon and I got up early (like five o' clock) and drove out to awful_horrid's place in Bristol so we could stand at the shore of the lake the defines his backyard with assorted noisemakers to wake the sun from its slumber on the year's longest night. As it turned out, there was so unbelievably much fog that we couldn't really tell when the sun had woken. Even by the time noon rolled around, it still looked like a gray drizzly dawn. It was oddly warm that day and the vast fields of snow were sublimating right into water vapor. The fog is a contender for the thickest I've ever seen and it never did manage to burn off; it persisted through the entire day. So the group of us stood in the backyard with various noisemakers in hand. Andrea had her thrift store drum, while I had the windchimes I'd received just that past day hanging from the hook of my tripod while I took pictures of our gathering. The chimes looked oddly at home there, sort of like a fetish hanging from a shaman's staff. If they weren't so loud, I might take them with me when I go out to photograph things.
I wish I could remember all the names of the folks we met up with and had delicious omlettes (of awful_horrid's making) with, but I'm very bad with names. I know some of them are on LJ, so I will find them and add them shortly, but in the meantime I want to express what a wonderful time I had. I really hope we can get together again soon, and wish we could have stayed longer and played some games.
But instead, we moved on to
tybis' graduation party; he is finally a certified and degreed professional geek! It was really nice seeing he and Posi, and we met up with a few other people we hadn't seen in a while, like magicpaw and, um, the girl we met at Chase bank a few months ago whose name I can't remember and who works at an auto parts store. shaleari and Xander were there too. Tybis' mom made hors d'oeuvres and barbecued pork and we had a very nice dinner with friends before going home for the night. We left a little early, but we'd been up since five o' clock, so I guess that's understandable.Yesterday, I spent a while working with my parents on out Christmas gift for grandma and grandpa while Andrea and the newly arrived
mocha_mephooki went out for last minute shopping at Gurnee Mills. After having experienced the place just before Tybis' part yesterday, I'm quite glad I missed out on what they told me was a mad house. Instead, the three of us met up at Fazoli's as they got back into town for all you can eat pizza and pasta. I'd never tried it there, but it was cheap ($4.99!), pretty decent though not stellar, plentiful, and quick. Definitely worth while.After that we all went back to the house to generally bum around 'till late that night when Mocha had to leave. It was really nice to see him again, and I'm looking forward to our scheduled photography trip to Gary to take dawnlight pictures of the Methodist church out there on the 27th.
I haven't done as much cleaning as I'd like to have at this point, so I'm going to get back to that now. We have house guests coming for New Years celebrations!
'Till later!
