Our little guy just finished making himself a drink. It started with him pointing up at our liquor shelf and demanding something up there. Eventually we understood that he wanted to get a paper drinks umbrella, and gave him one.

Next he asked for his mama to peel him a clementine, demanding "one piece." She did so, getting the skin off in one piece.

Finally, he asked for a cup of orange juice, which befuddled us a little bit, since he had just asked for a clementine that he hadn't yet eaten.

Well, he put it all together - the cup of orange juice with a straw, with a paper umbrella hanging on the rim of the cup, with one wedge of the clementine perced on the rim of the cup too. It was incredibly cute.

On the drive home from seeing Astro Boy with our son, tigira observed to me that, "you can't give Samuel Jackson a large part in a children's movie."

This morning I saw a link to a sale for a camera flash. I followed the link to find this:



I think I prefer to buy new.

Current Mood: amused

This morning I picked up a used lens for my camera. For any who know about photographic equipment, this is an 85mm prime (not zoom) lens, with a 1.8 maximum aperture.

I took a first sample photo. ( Then I hid it behind a cut, because I care. )

It has his picture on it (complete with the patch of skin still healing from his fall), and these words printed out below it:

My Dad's name is Mark.
My Dad's job is to drive the car to work.
My Dad is funny when he makes funny noises.
I love my Dad because he gives me hugs and kisses.

Awww.

Firespinning at sunspiral's party

On Saturday night I got a phone call from the lovely sweetmmeblue telling me that the firespinning was about to begin at sunspiral's party. I quickly grabbed my gear and headed over. Since I'd never attended the firespinning at his party, I wasn't sure what to expect, so I took enough gear to cover a few bases. Here follows a few of the ( resulting photos )You can see the full set of photos on flickr.

Daphne: Look! The hooded man. We'll never catch him - he's on a unicycle!

How often do you hear something like that?

I'm currently in Las Vegas because of RailsConf, a software development convention. The convention ended this afternoon, but I'm staying on until tomorrow evening.

This evening, I went out and took some photos of Nevada's Valley of Fire. It was pretty cool. But, tomorrow I have until about 5:00 to have fun.

Some ideas that I've had:

• Go back out to the Valley of Fire tomorrow at dawn, since I didn't get all that much time out there this evening.


• Head down to Hoover Dam


• Visit Lake Mead


• Kick back and relax at the pool


• Do some shopping


• Visit the spa in the hotel

Current Mood: curious

I got to showcase my Y chromosome this morning.

It's been raining around the Boston area today, so the worms have found their way out of the ground. This morning as I was dropping off my son at his day care program, and I told him that he should be careful not to step on (and kill) any of the worms on the pavement.

He saw the worms and started to freak out, so I got my inner boy on - I picked up a worm (it took a couple of tries; they're slippery!), and got him to touch it. Mission accomplished! He knows that worms aren't frightening.

And I got to play with a slick, slimy worm. Sometimes my inner boy shows.

Then again, his mother's inner boy shows when she picks up frogs for him to pet.

Yesterday I got approval to head to RailsConf, a conference for programmers who use the Ruby on Rails programming framework, to be held in Las Vegas, on the strip, on May 4-7. It will be fun, but I have a more general question for Ask Dr. LJ:

What should I do around Vegas while I'm there? I'm probably going to take a couple of days on one side or another to enjoy the change of scenery, and I want to figure out what to do. I'd like at least some of my time to be spent on photography - I hear that there are some beautiful national parks in the area. I could take in a show or two, so what would you recommend? Do people know good places to eat?

Thus far I've only looked at WikiTravel, so I've only just begun looking. But, I'd love to hear ideas from the gallery.

Current Mood: weird

Thanks to the lovely kyrian03 who will be providing last-minute babysitting, I'll be treating tigira to tonight's Chieftains concert at Symphony Hall. (I just read about it, and there are some seats available!) I hope she enjoys it!

Inspired by Mr. Gazongas himself, I felt an urge to post an exchange from this weekend:

Me: Walks out of the bathroom, dejected.
tigira: Did you only fart?
Me: Giggling: Yeah.
tigira and I collapse into each other's laughter.

I do love how tigira and I laugh with each other.

Current Mood: amused

My son and his mother, tigira, are currently reading a book about bats. Given that bats hang from their feet, son and mother are fighting over which way is properly "up" in the book.

It's very cute.

This photo was taken while my family and I were out apple picking in the fall of 2005, shortly after I bought my digital camera. I encountered a pile of old, weather worn apple crates that probably never saw another day of use. However, they did strike me as essentially monochromatic within the scene of the lusciously fertile colors of the orchard. I tried to capture that here by placing one of my picked apples on top of the crate and framing the shot to be otherwise gray. It makes me think of something young and vital juxtaposed with something decrepit.

This was lit solely with natural light, on an overcast day. The 60mm focal length eliminated any distortion of the lines of the box - anything you see now is solely the warping of the wood.

A photo of the nobleman’s Ganesha at Hampi, Karnataka, India. This Ganesha was in a single-room structure that sheltered the statue from the elements, and provided more protection over time than some of the other statues in the area. Off the top of my head I can no longer remember exactly how large the statue is, but it was pretty big.- it looks like my head comes up to about the mid-belly of this statue. I was somewhat awed at the moment that I first saw the statue - which is pretty appropriate, I think. It’s obvious that people still respect it today, even though (as I recall) this is one of the many buildings around Hampi that were profaned by invaders around 1565.

This was photographed with ambient light, because my flash wasn’t working for some reason. Actually, I think it turned out better without the flash - I would not have gotten the effect of the statue being lit but the background fading to black without it. The EXIF tells me that it was made at 1/20 and f/3.5; I think I had cranked the ISO on my D70s up all the way I could, to 1600. The dark areas near the bottom are probably the shadows of other people in the area.

I spied a set of decorated lampposts in nearby Malden, Massachusetts, on January 15 (the Martin Luther King day holiday), and had to photograph them. This particular one balanced nicely with the background sky. I especially liked how the sky plays off the warm glow of the lamp.

This image was taken in my house, using a mirror and a single flash.  The result was far too bright and well-balanced for the effect that I wanted, so I brought it into PSP (Paint Shop Pro Photo XI) and darkened it with a couple of multiplication layers.

Strobist lighting information: Lit with a single Vivitar 285HV, set camera right but to the left of the subject (me).

I was just heading home from watching the children of my friends sweetmmeblue and drwex, and since it's 01:00 I didn't feel a need to speed down the roads. Well, there was someone riding my tail a bit, so I braked enough to let the driver know that I would appreciate a little more room.

The driver sped up to pass me, which I half expected, but then tried to shove me off the road, which I didn't. I probably should have called the cops on the driver, but it didn't occur to me.

I hope that I'll be able to fall asleep within half an hour or so.

I called a serviceman in to look at our house's boiler (used for hot water and home heating, for those who aren't familiar with them). The end conclusion is that it was out of heating oil to use for fuel.

The only thing I can really say in my defense here is that the gauge on the oil tank states quite clearly that there are twenty-five gallons of oil left. It just reports all values less than or equal to twenty-five gallons as twenty-five gallons.

It's somewhat reasonable to assume that the gauge is accurate, but I still feel dumb over it.

Featuring Jack Black looking like a stoned out Jesus, and a special guest spot by Neal Patrick Harris.