I took the plunge, and ported the # from my Sprint phone to my work BlackBerry. It’ll be nice to only have to (drunkenly) keep track of one phone.
Nothing against Sprint - I’ve been with them for 7 years or so now (thanks Roger), and I’ve been overall pretty happy with them. I did just look at my Feb bill and notice that I was ~200 minutes over equating to over $100 in extra charges (40¢/minute)!
Anyways, if you had my 940 cell #, delete it. I ain’t be havin’ no none more.
Well, it would appear that I have taken a bit of a blog vacation as of late - there’s been much going on, and I really haven’t felt much like writing.
So, I’ll dedicate one new post per event/happening over the next few days to catch up.
Up first (in non-chronological / importance-level):
I’ve joined a kickball team: Pal’s Lounge Hooked on Tonics. While riding a bike is comfortable on my knee, running isn’t quite there yet. The few practices I’ve been to, the kicking has not been an issue and I find I can slowly/moderately jog around the bases without discomfort. But even then, I can’t do it too many times.
While in the infield, I’ve been spending a good bit of time on the pitcher’s mound, which I find to be a bit odd - I am, afterall, a belly-itcher. It’s actually a hard position, but I enjoy it so far.
Sunday afternoons in Audubon Park with Highlife is hardly a bad time.
I just clipped my toenails.
All ten of them.
By myself.
This is an accomplishment.
I’n currently on Earhart, not moving. Why? Stupid fucking rush hour.
For a long time, I’ve said that traffic congestion is worse than genocide. You can really only fully kill a group of people off once, and traffic is everywhere.
When was the last time you banged your fists in anger and aggravation over Darfur? How about your steering wheel over traffic?
At least I have Radiohead and my crackberry. Heh, I initially mis-spelled crackberry as “crackbert”. Looks like my phone has a name.
Well, one month ago tonight, I busted my knee open. When sitting, I can bring it to an almost 90° angle, and when walking, I’d say I’m down to a smaller limp. Stairs, however, make me feel like I should have been cast in Freaks.
Usually throughout the day, I gradually stretch the ligament instead of the three times a day the orthopedist asked. I will sometimes do the stronger stretch, but I think the slow-cook method seems to be working quite well. Don’t get me wrong, I think the recovery is going well - I just can’t wait to get on a bike again, and I think that day nears, my friends.
Till next time:
The picture doesn’t accurately show the swelling that remains.
Mike and Andee, I hope that all goes well today, and look forward to seeing ten new fingers and toes tomorrow.
You two will be wonderful parents.
Well, I beat Portal in a little over 5 hours, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Looking at my stats, I see there are 14 different achievements, of which I have completed 4. These look to be some fun additional challenges.
As for the NOMMUG meeting, well, I think they should change their name to the New Orleans Adobe/Macromedia User Group. While presenter/organizer did mention something about drinking said Kool-Aid, I’d rather just call an orange an orange, and be done with it.
It was pretty much an hour or so PowerPoint presentation on the new Adobe Air / Flex. Cool stuff, free t-shirt. I think I’ll keep going, especially if they keep giving away free PSPs / Adobe software / shirts / etc. And while Jonah, Ben, Oscar, and myself did not go to the meal afterwards, pizza and refreshments (beer?) were available on Adobe’s dime at the Boot.
I’ve made it almost 28 years now without going into the Boot, and let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, that was not going to change yesterday.
Let’s face it - a nerd meeting (esp. with web-dev specific nerds) is a nerd meeting. Methinks I need to start hitting up 2600 meetings again.
I know I have written about Portal (watch the trailer (again) dammit) before.
Well, I just bought it and am itching to play it, except before I do that I have work here, some side work, and then some web nerd meeting before I start dreaming in portals.
Since I actually have Half-Life 2 (the single-player game), I decided to give it a go last week. I’m about 7 hours in and halfway through, and am enjoying it so far. I’m not one who is usually one for the single-player story mode, but hey. Leveling-up my skills is leveling-up my skills. Y’heard?
What can I say. I’m a sucker for brain teasers in 3-D interactive environments.
I don’t remember where I got the original link, but this picture really got me interested in HDR Photography:
Not that I’m a photographer, or have a tripod, or anything really other than a point and shoot camera, but it really intrigued me. That photo, and many others (Flickr HDR pool) show the stunning results achieved by High Dynamic Range Photography. It’s a pretty simple method, depending on your available equipment, but here’s the basic idea: take multiple photos of the same subject, all at different exposure levels, then combine them in your darkroom (digital or traditional). I’m not even going to touch the traditional method here, that’s not for me.
Photoshop CS2 and later have built in partially automated methods for merging your photos to one single picture, but I tried it, and it didn’t really do anything for me - I’m not that into tweaking various levels and whatnot. There are other apps that work with varying degrees of success, and to be honest, I didn’t even look at them. There doesn’t seem to be a real need now, as there appears to be a new, mean, powerful kid on the block. The name is Enfuse, and it started on Linux, but lives happily on OSX and Win32 also.
You can read a bit more about it and HDR basics (along with some screenshots and software/result comparisons) at this article on linux.com.
So, maybe you photo nerds will have some fun with this. Everyone else should go browse that pool, as there are some really amazing pictures.
