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

[Samwise]

All you Canadians sound alike.

[Merusk]

3 bricks = 8", so that's about 32" high.

Looks sharp, nice work, Sam.

[NiX]

All you Canadians sound alike.

 

[Quinton]

I took a 90 minute airship tour of silicon valley today.  Airships are fun!  http://frotz.net/pics/airship

My home (the ranch, near center) and office (hello, bugdroid) from above:


Airship fun:

[Selby]

Heh.  You can see my office from the airship ;-)

[Quinton]

MSM7x30 dsp/lpa/mi2s audio subsystem bringup:

(there are so many better ways to spend your Sunday evening, but having a few hours of uninterrupted debugging time is priceless)

[Sky]

Get an aluminum keyboard, those white ones are some of the worst things ever made. Let's have a clear plastic lint catcher! I have a stack I don't know what to do with because they're so grody.

[Quinton]

I don't even particularly *like* the keyboard.  It came with my last desktop box (quadcore macpro made a pretty nice linux workstation at the time, but the new dual-quadcore HP Z600 is snappier) and I never got around to getting a new one.  It is in fact pretty disgusting now.  I really don't like chiclet keyboards though.

[Teleku]

They don't seal off the pilots behind a locked door?  What if terrorist try to hijack the airship!

I'd love to do that, but the prices are a bit  for me, especially for the amount of time you get.

Also, you need to water your lawn.

[Quinton]

I'll admit that I would probably not have paid for it out of pocket (it was a team offsite sorta thing in recognition of some recent milestones), but it was a helluva lot of fun.  They also do tours starting from Oakland and spending more time over the bay and seeing the sights up near SF, which might be a bit more scenic, but I enjoyed flying over silicon valley quite a bit.

The lawn is being watered pretty heavily at the moment (new sod in a couple areas).  Not sure why it looks the way it does from the air -- the grass seems reasonably healthy from the ground.

[climbjtree]

A picture and a video from a static line Casa 212 jump earlier today.

Apologies for iPhone quality.



And a decent landing.

[Viin]

Fun fun. Do you guys ever use elliptical canopies?

Edit: and tell your friend to stop turning his video camera 90*, he's not taking pictures! :P

[climbjtree]

All of the static line jumps I've ever done are circular canopies. They range from the T-10 which is the most basic and most reliable, to the MC-6 (as seen in the video). It's steerable with a forward air speed of 10 kts. It also has brakes and is generally very maneuverable.

The ram air stuff is for HALO/HAHO, but I'm not sure if that's what you're asking.

And yeah - sorry for the cameraman too! I don't even know the guy. He walked over, told me it was on video and I had him send it over.

[Viin]

Yeah, with sport jumping you typically use ram-air elliptical canopies. Was curious if the Army was using them beyond HALO/HAHO but apparently not. Those MC-6's look pretty advanced compared to the basic ones (T-10s, I guess).

[Mosesandstick]

Does this mean you've finished your tour?

From climbing Snowdon last week:

[Samwise]

Jesus fuck, for a second I thought those first two were one picture and it broke my head a little bit.

[climbjtree]

Does this mean you've finished your tour?

Yep - I've been back a while now, actually. I got home a few days before Thanksgiving of last year.

[Strazos]

Hooray! 

[nurtsi]

Has anyone tried any "artsy" techniques while taking pictures? Something like impressionist photography (out-of-focus, shaken, burry stuff), smearing vaseline on their lens filter, hyper-detailed HDR images, cutting odd-shaped apertures from cardboard to use in front of the lens, etc.

If so, have you gotten any cool pictures as a result or figured some neat weird ideas by yourself?

[Bunk]

Only thing I've really played with would be long exposure light effects. Long exposures of rides at fairs is fun. Also learned how to shoot fireworks using a long (30 second +) exposure and holding a piece of cardboard infront of the lens.

[Sky]

Long exposure is also cool at night in the winter. I took a couple cool shots last winter when we got dumped on with heavy snow and part of my tree came down in the yard. I was just playing with the long exposures and noticed the branch down. Backed up in the camera...branch still up! Fell while I was resetting in a different location.

[apocrypha]

I've done a few strange things in the name of experimentation and fun. Whether or not they're any good is a matter of taste... 

Long exposures in a moving car:


Weird panorama constructions with fisheye lens (think I've posted this before):


Smoke shots:


And lots of random light-painting:

[Engels]

very cool

[Mosesandstick]

Funky. Your friend's expression is 

[apocrypha]

Which one? The last one? That's my brother   

[Mosesandstick]

Whoops! Looks like you drugged him so you could play around. I'm guessing funky flourescent thing in the darkness and then flash afterwards?

[apocrypha]

There.... may... have been some drugs involved... possibly... 

And yeah, pretty much, although I think the flash was fired at the start of the exposure not the end. And the light was just from an LED torch being moved around.

[Sky]

Newest addition to the backyard, 4 face cords delivered last thursday and put up over the weekend. The middle part with the tarp is the tree I took down this spring and hand-split, about 3/4ths of a face. In the foreground of the second pic you can see my struggling honeycrisp apple treeling. Several frosts and right now it's coming back from it's second denuding by deer varmints.


I'm planning on setting up next year to get me a year ahead, meaning in the spring I hope to get wood for 2011/12 and 2012/13, so it's better seasoned. I'm already late stacking this year, the white oak in there is going to be a pita, since the whole pile is 34-38% moist and needs to be 15-20% by the end of Novemeber.  The plan is to fence my yard with wood stacks, 5 face cords is pretty light burning (below 40º when I get out of work, no 24/7 burn or night stuffing) and that's just over half the length of my property line on the short side. Got some old pool liner from a neighbor to cap the pile at some point (to cap or not cap; a debate).

[Lantyssa]

Cool idea for a wall.  Make sure to show us when the yard is enclosed.

[Sky]

Probably never since that section cost me $240 and will be gone in November.

[Lantyssa]

That, that was a joke, son.  A joke I say.

Though I do think it would be an awesome look for a short wall if you could get rocks cut in a similar fashion.

[Righ]

[Sky]

 

[Engels]

Who is that?

[Righ]

Karolina Mlodecka of Forgas Band Phenomena.