Take a picture once a day, whether you need to or not

[photek]

Took some photos last week sometime this month for the various birth announcements and like.

Wow. Just wow 

[Lantyssa]

Wow.  These are some awesome photos from the past few days.  Great nature shots and the lighting on the Oregon picture makes it spectacular.  I'm getting jealous of Sky though, what with all the wildlife he has.

The two dogs are Seileighe and Sunny, my smart little border collies.  This is them after two of five Munro peaks that day.   Annoyingly, even after the next three, a snowstorm and a total of nine hours climbing, they were still sprinting around.  Then they slept for two days.

Edit: almost none of those Gaeilc words sound like they look when written.  Their spelling system is daft.

Those are pretty dogs.  Are they companions or also work dogs?  It's amazing the things border collies can be taught to do.

Gaelic words amuse me, but I'm thankful my middle name isn't my first.

[Salamok]

I did a 360 banner for this site (flash warning) a few years ago, just photochopped it by hand not really a panaoramic format.  Just getting the light levels to match on 25 or 30 photo's was enough of a pita to convince me to never go down that route again and to prove to myself how insanely anal I really am I went ahead and hand edited out (at full 100+megapixel res) all the phone&power lines too.  Pretty stupid considering the final result is maybe 25 inches long and 1 inch high.

Battlenet->EQ->wow->meaningless time consuming photochop almost like I am in search of ever increasingly stupid timesinks.

[Samwise]

Autostitch.  Srsly.

[Salamok]

Autostitch.  Srsly.

I don't think it was around in 2005 and if it was I certainly didn't know to look for it.  A cheap cannon powershot I bought in 07 had some autostitch type software included with it that opened my eyes and got me looking for alternatives.

[Samwise]

Autostitch.  Srsly.

I don't think it was around in 2005 and if it was I certainly didn't know to look for it.  A cheap cannon powershot I bought in 07 had some autostitch type software included with it that opened my eyes and got me looking for alternatives.

Since 2004 according to archive.org.  I found it in a Google search after spending some time grappling with that same crappy Canon panorama software.  Autostitch is about 1000x better than the Canon software, and about 10000x better than photochopping it by hand.  Look at the example on the website.  It's fucking awesome.  Also, the free demo version you can download from that page is fully functional.

[stu]

A beautiful CNY day in my front yard (not green text, love the rain):

Damn, you're actually making me miss Upstate a bit. I went through much of grade school and high school in Salem. When I left Washington County, people seemed to be into clearcutting expanses of woodland for personal golf courses. 

[Mortriden]

Manzanita, Oregon taken last week on vacation.

You were in Oregon for a vacation and didn't look up VL or me?  Tsk, tsk.  The girlfriend and I were at Crater Lake last weekend, would have loved to have a few extra peeps along.

[Engels]

Hah hah, sorry, wasn't that sort of vacation. Was sorta a second honeymoon. Or first honeymoon type thing.

Nothing would have put a blush to my girl's cheeks like me saying I wanted to go hang with some f13ers. A blush of homicidal rage, but a blush nontheless.

[apocrypha]

Are you using Autostitch?  That thing is rad.

(edit) Here's something I put together with 16 photos from my cheap little camera.  Not inlined because it's goddamn huge.

That's cool, I love the ghost effect of the moving people :)

I got up at 3am today to do this (larger version here):

Not quite what I was after but fairly happy for a first attempt.

[Samwise]

Purty.  Backlit trees look  .

I found another photostitch panorama.  Only 6 pictures used to make this one.  It's a view of SF bay stretching from Berkeley to San Francisco to Sausalito, taken from the top of Mt. Livermore on Angel Island.

[Endie]

The two dogs are Seileighe and Sunny, my smart little border collies.  This is them after two of five Munro peaks that day.   Annoyingly, even after the next three, a snowstorm and a total of nine hours climbing, they were still sprinting around.  Then they slept for two days.

Edit: almost none of those Gaeilc words sound like they look when written.  Their spelling system is daft.

Those are pretty dogs.  Are they companions or also work dogs?  It's amazing the things border collies can be taught to do.

They're companions, but I like to keep them out in what I think is their "natural" environment (the hills) as much as possible.  I've taught also taught them all the "proper" herding commands ("Come by", "away to me" etc) by voice and gesture (my whistle is awful  ).  They love learning stuff, though they're headstrong as hell.  I teach them new commands every couple of weeks to keep them challenged and interested.  That said, they're domesticated, but they're not really tame.

Heh.. that and the "the legs on one side are shorter than the other" thing are myths told to (American) tourists.

Well, I know that.  I'm married to a man from Glasgow, after all, but you didn't have to tell everybody else!  I don't like haggis.  It's nasty.  I won't cook it, either.  Poor Righ.

I was attempting to be droll and to suggest that only the elements about leg size were fictional.

[apocrypha]

Purty.  Backlit trees look  .

I found another photostitch panorama.  Only 6 pictures used to make this one.  It's a view of SF bay stretching from Berkeley to San Francisco to Sausalito, taken from the top of Mt. Livermore on Angel Island.

Very nice :)  Got a couple of plans for more of these however one of them requires the local ASDA supermarket to let me into their premises when they're closed and the other requires a nice sunny day. So no breath holding :D

And Endie, your dogs are awesome. So is haggis.

[Signe]

I agree with Endie!  He is droll!     It also doesn't surprise me that Endie does the whole "One Man and His Dog" thing.  It's just the sort of thing a droll man would do. 

And I love the doggies, too.  Border collies are one of my favs because I like dogs who are smarter than me. 

However, haggis is still nasty. 

[Samwise]

Haggis is just Scottish meatloaf.  Of course, some people don't like meatloaf either.  Freaks.

[voodoolily]

Manzanita, Oregon taken last week on vacation.

You were in Oregon for a vacation and didn't look up VL or me?  Tsk, tsk.  The girlfriend and I were at Crater Lake last weekend, would have loved to have a few extra peeps along.

I didn't know you were here, too, Mort. I know Stephen Zepp's in Eugene, but where you at?

[Signe]

Haggis is just Scottish meatloaf.  Of course, some people don't like meatloaf either.  Freaks.

Well, I think I make nice meatloaf.  Of course I don't use a sheep's pluck, lungs, livers or hearts.  Haggis is NASTY!  I promise!  I think you've not eaten traditional haggis if you think it's anything at all like meatloaf. 

Righ bought one ONCE and I stuck it in the freezer and left it behind a year later when we moved house.  It really IS nasty, Sam.  Really.   

[rattran]

I once bought a dented can of haggis at a Chicago high-end grocery store. Sat on the shelf for years as a cheap amusement.
Then when I was away for show for a few months, one of my housemates got drunk and ate it.

A pic to show how tired I am of summertime already.

[Samwise]

It might not have been traditional.  I admit I'm not an expert.  It was authentically Scottish, though, in that I got it in a pub in Scotland.  Seemed to me like it was just ground mystery meat with some flavoring to cover up the mysterious bits.  Which is also what meatloaf is, at least in meatloaf's traditional middle-class incarnation.  Hence my conclusion that haggis = meatloaf.

Now I'm thinking I need to take a wider sample, though.

[NowhereMan]

I've always thought of Haggis as a large white pudding. Of course I'm aware more people may have heard of Haggis than white pudding so the comparison could be less than enlightening...

[Samwise]

White pudding is  .

Black pudding only slightly less so.

[Signe]

My mystery meat for meatloaf is pork, veal (sorry about that!) and beef.  I've not made it with minced lamb, but I bet it would be good, and I mix it with bread crumbs not oatmeal, but I know people who do.  Using all lamb for haggis isn't bad if you leave out the organs, most leave out lung these days, I think, but I would have thought the other organ meat is pretty standard still.  I'm not a big fan of organ meat, really.  Maybe it was watching my aunties and Grandmother make tripe for holidays when I was a kid.  Yuck.  I do, however, feed my kitties organ meats although it is a gagful endeavour for me!

I don't like black pudding and I won't make it.  White and red is okay as long as it doesn't have brains in it and isn't deep fried.  I don't much care for the Scottish tradition of deep frying everything.  I prefer the plain oatmeal sort of white with no meat at all, though, and prefer the red not to be so heavily seasoned as usual.  I think I might be kind of particular about my sausage.  Actually, if I'm going to go to a chip shop for food, and you would have to force me, I'll just have the fish.  I don't have to wonder about it so much that way.

[Mrbloodworth]

Just watch out for the wild Haggis!

[Sky]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding_(Dungeons_&_Dragons)

[voodoolily]

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.

[Signe]

He didn't even read it! 

[Merusk]

Apple strikes again and beats down Sky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29

Spaces? What're those, we only do %2x here in windowsland.

[apocrypha]

It resembles a bubbling, heaped pile of thick, black, pudding-like goo, roughly fifteen feet across and two feet thick and is often be found coated in batter and deep-fried in Scottish chippies.

[Der Helm]

(edit) Here's something ...

Brian is still there ?

Awesome.

[apocrypha]

Technically this is a shot from yesterday but I'm sure we cover enough timezones that it was somebody's today.

[Ookii]

It certainly is a picture of a guy with a Gas Mask on.

What are you trying to convey with this?

[Sky]

He ate at taco bell.

[Signe]

Is that you?  Nice collar bone!

[apocrypha]

Not trying to convey anything really, just playing around with lighting & photoshop and quite liked the way this came out. Lots of my photos are at this stage at the moment - trying to produce images that look exactly how I pre-visualize them. Slowly getting there :p

And yeah, it's me, I know, I'm a bony git!

[Signe]

I like that picture a lot.  And I was serious about the collar bone, it's excellent.