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Summer Entertainment

July 9, 2008

Yikes, it’s been a while since I’ve written. It’s summer time and I seem to be taking full advantage. That’s not to say that I’m spending a bunch of time in the sun. Actually, I’ve done a mighty fine job of keeping myself OUT of the sun. Having had skin cancer a couple times has definitely made me more aware of the time I spend outdoors.

Since it’s been almost a month since I’ve written, so much has gone on. I’m not even sure where to begin.

Last I wrote we had just finished our cruise to Alaska. We had an amazing time. I was going to write a follow-up blog post about our trip, but just never really got around to it. Now, I’m not so sure that post will ever get written. Ahh well, I’ll have to save it for returning from our next cruise.

4 days after returning home, my Mom and my Son hopped on a plane and headed to California. This will likely be my Son’s last summer without a job as he will graduate high school next year [I just threw up in my mouth a little bit] so I hope he has a great time. Since being there he’s been to Knott’s Berry Farm, Universal Studios, the water park, the beach and he’s spent a bunch of time with his cousins. That sounds like a pretty great trip if you ask me.

A couple weeks after we got back, my wife and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. My mother-in-law hung out with our daughter and the wife and I went out for a nice dinner. For the life of me, I can not remember where in the hell we went for dinner. Man, I’m getting old.

That same week I took my wife and daughter to see Stomp Out Loud at Planet Hollywood. We got seats in the 5th row but off to the side. These are NOT the best seats. We would have much preferred to sit in the middle even if it meant sitting farther back. We were cut off from too much of the action. Regardless, we all still enjoyed the show.

This summer was also the first time we put our daughter on an airplane by herself. She can’t handle being away from mom and dad for as long as our son can, so we let him visit grandma for a couple weeks before sending her out. Then, we ship her out there and a couple weeks later we go pick them all up. We’ve done it a few years in a row now and it’s always worked out for the best. So far, this year is no exception.

Just this past weekend we celebrated my birthday. I managed to turn it in to a 2 day extravaganza. On Saturday night we played a couple poker tournaments at the house, then went to a casino to watch an ’80s hair metal band play until 3 am, then went to breakfast and made it to bed around 5 am. Woke up around 10 am, saw the movie “Hancock” in the afternoon and then spent the evening with a group of friends having dinner and drinks at the Yard House and the Blue Martini. The Yard House may be one of my new favorite places. Great food, 160+ beers on tap and it was pretty reasonably priced for as much as we consumed. The Blue Martini, on the other hand, I have to say that I’m not a fan. It seems a bit too high-brow for my taste. But, the live blues band sounded great.

Speaking of movies, I’ve seen a few so far this summer. Here’s a quick rundown:

Wall-E – I liked it pretty well. Cute story, amazing animation (it’s Pixar, so what do you expect) and I liked the message they were trying to convey (take care of yourself and your Earth or both are going to end up in really bad shape).
Wanted – Loved it! I enjoyed the story (as unrealistic as it was) and it had some pretty cool fight/chase scenes. I’m pretty easy to please with this type of movie, but still, this one was pretty darn good.
Hancock – Liked it. This really felt like two movies stuck together. The first half is pretty funny and has a pretty good pace. The second half is a little darker and felt pretty rushed. I think they could have added another 20-30 minutes to the movie, fleshed out the story a little better and it would have been a GREAT movie. Still, definitely worth seeing.
The Illusionist – Yeah, I know it’s old. I really liked it. Edward Norton is one of my favorite actors and I thought he did great with the roll. I also really liked Paul Giamatti in his roll.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing Hellboy 2 this weekend and The Dark Knight the following weekend. Everything I’ve heard so far about both movies says they are going to both be awesome.

And finally, my new hobby. Photography. I’ve been carrying my camera with me everywhere I go lately. I am really enjoying the learning processes. I’ve been reading dozens of blogs from other photographers and have been checking out thousands of photos on flickr. A few weeks back I had some friends over and we spent an entire evening setting up shots and just working through different lighting scenarios. I think a big part of my enjoyment with this new hobby is the fact that I’ve got a few friends who are in to it as well. They really help to ratchet up the level of fun and definitely help to keep me motivated to improve. Hell, I have to just to keep up with them.

You can follow the link to check out my photostream on flickr.

I promise to make an effort not to take so long between posts. I know how you miss me when I do. :)

Filed Under: Entertainment, General, Movies, Photography

Project 365, do I dare?

May 25, 2008

I have been toying with the idea of following along with the hundreds thousands of people who take part in photo-a-day projects online. If you search groups on flickr.com you’ll find over 3600 groups with “365″ in the description. This is not new territory, but it is certainly an undertaking not to be taken lightly. If I start this project, I want to complete it.

Like I said, there are thousands of these groups available. Some want you to take a shot of yourself doing something different every day. New place, new pose, new angle, etc… Some want you to take a photo of a new object. I guess the first thing I need to do is decide what I want to get out of it. I do know one thing, if I take a photo a day for the next year, by the time I’m done I should definitely improve as a photographer. Honestly, that is my greatest inspiration for starting this project.

I’ve decided I definitely want to take on the project. I don’t think it’s going to be easy. I’m sure there will be days where I either just don’t feel like shooting, or perhaps I’ve taken a few dozen photos and none capture what I’m trying to convey. Regardless, I believe the project will be worth it in the end. The only thing to do now is pick the project and group I want to take part in.

My first thought was to do a self portrait every day. But, I’m just not that narcissistic. If I were to do something like that, I would want to do something silly like Running From Camera. Since that’s already been done, I’ll have to do something different. I could take a shot every day at the same time like Todd over at 606diaries.com. But, I’m just not the social butterfly that Todd is. I believe even I would get tired of checking out 365 shots of my computer screen. So, what to do?

So, my theme? 365 shots. Yep, that vague. So be it. I’m going to focus (no pun intended) on taking one quality photograph every day for the next year. I already take part in several photo-a-week projects that all center around a specific topic. My daily shots may come from those photo shoots. They may be of a doorknob. I don’t know what each day will bring. But, I’m excited to get started. All the shots will be posted here on the 365 shots page.

Wish me luck.

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: , ,

The Painful Side of Social Webbing

May 11, 2008

There are so many social network sites these days that it’s almost impossible to keep active on all of them. I have, or have had accounts on just about all of them. But, the list of sites I stay active with is very very short.

Today I logged in to Facebook to find that I had a new friend request. By photo alone, I had no idea who the person was. I followed the link to their profile and it was clear that they only requested to by my friend for the sole purpose of padding their friend count and to eventually send me ads at some point down the line. I spend more time on social network sites doing this than I do actually staying in touch with long distance friends & family members. It’s for this exact reason that I deleted my account on MySpace just last week.

With Facebook, the thing that has the biggest ability to waste your time is the massive amounts of third party applications that are available. Rate movies, rate your friends, movie quotes and surveys, before you know it you’ve spent two hours telling people how much you loved the movie Weekend at Bernie’s. A while back I made a choice to remove any of the apps that are time-sucks and I will ignore all requests from friends to add new ones. If you’re a contact of mine on Facebook and I ignore your request, please don’t be upset. I’m just trying to save my sanity.

I’ve found that I no longer have much interest in keeping up with any of my social network accounts. I’ll keep my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, but it’s VERY unlikely that I’ll join any new ones. I’m much happier using my blog here, my photo blog at slackerphotos.com, my twitter account to let everybody know what I’m up to. I then use netvibes.com to read close to 70 RSS feeds. I also use Twirl to follow a few dozen other people’s tweets (a post on twitter is referred to as a ‘tweet’).

If you haven’t already checked out twitter, I strongly suggest it. I realized something about twitter the other day that has really increased it’s usefulness for me. As you may know, I’ve taken up photography as a hobby recently. While checking out some photos on flickr.com, I found a link to a photographer’s blog. When I checked it out, I saw that he also was active on twitter. I started following his tweets. Then, I checked out the list of people he followed. I went through his list and found 5 or 6 other photographers to start following. Also, when checking out their twitter profiles I found links to their photo blogs. Some of them are absolutely amazing. So I add those to my RSS feed list on Netvibes. Now when these people post a tweet or a blog post with a juicy tip, I’m being spoon-fed information on how to improve as a photographer. I have to say that’s better than any class I could possibly think to enroll in. Not to mention being 100% totally free.

Be careful that your social webbing isn’t eating up all your time and not providing you with any benefits. Don’t forget that your time is valuable.

Filed Under: Photography, Ranting Tagged With: ,

Photography as a hobby

April 27, 2008

I may have spoke about it before, but when I get in to something, my addictive personality tends to take over and I REALLY get in to it. One hobby that I have been interested in for a LONG time, but haven’t really dove in to. Until recently, that is.

We are planning a trip to Alaska and since I figure it’s basically a once in a lifetime trip, I want to make sure I capture it properly. With that in mind I went out and bought a Canon Digital Rebel. Once it arrived, I realized I don’t know the first thing about photography. This lead to the first purchases for my new hobby; 2 photography books. Reading the books lead to the next three purchases; Polarizer filter, remote control for the shutter and a GPS location recorder. It surprises me to say this, but so far, that’s where the purchases have stopped. And, until I learn a bit more and really figure out what type of photography I’m interested in, that’s where the purchases will stay.

I’m quite interested in becoming a decent photography. Selling my photography or having it published has nothing to do with it. But, I’ve had decent cameras in the past and I’ve taken a dozen or so photographs that I consider great. That’s a dozen great ones out of a couple thousand not so great ones. I would just like to increase the number of great shots I have in my collection.

The only way I’m going to get better is to keep shooting. But, I think it’s important to also expand on the types of shots I’m taking. To help out with the diversity, I set up a photo-a-week group on Flickr. Each week a new topic is chosen and all the members of the group have to go out and take a photo on the specific topic. I’ve also been taking part in a weekly photo assignment from digital-photography-school.com just for the extra practice. If you enjoy taking photos and want to take part in our weekly group shots, definitely sign up for our group.

Another way that I’m progressing my photography skills is by checking out other great photographers. There is no shortage of them on the internet. I’ve found several new photo blogs to check out on CoolPhotoBlogs.com. Very inspiring. You can check out my photo blog, which is still in it’s infancy, at SlackerPhotos.com. You can also check out my more of my photographs on my flicker.com account.

If things go well, by this time next year I’ll have a collection of photos worth showing off. We’ll see how that goes.

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: