Category: Idle

Categories
Dogs

This is going to take some practice…

… and a faster shutter speed.

I made my first attempt to take pictures of Finney playing in the yard today, but most of the results were blurry. In retrospect I should have set the camera to shutter priority before getting him worked up (I just used full auto for my first try to see what came of it). When trying to chase a dog who can go over 40 Mph it’s just not going to cut it if your shutter speed is 1/90. Um duh. Oh, also, if you’re chasing a fast dog with a camera, you better not be worried about looking like an idiot.

When he’s not romping, Finney’s preferred place is Velcroed to my thigh.

Another photographic note for myself: If I want a keeper picture, don’t wear an old sweatshirt with frayed sleeves. 🙂

Categories
Dogs

Finney settling in

It’s been a while since we had a dog and this past summer Paula and I started researching greyhounds. It took us a while to be ready to get a new dog, but this past weekend Paula and I adopted an ex racer from from a local greyhound rescue organization.

Ex-racers are very used to competing with other dogs for human attention, so they tend to be very attentive. They do, however, need some time to get used to being a member of a family and living in a new environment. So right now, he just sleeps most of the time. 

Our new family member has a number of Irish ancestors, and since we had been in Ireland for a while we decided on an Irish name for him. Finian (pronounced fin-yan) is Irish for “white haired”.

Categories
Video Games

Won’t be long now

After setting it aside to prepare for Christmas, I finally shipped off my Xbox for [free] repair of the three rings of death. It’s now in the hands of the hardware pixies and I hope to have it back soon!

Fortunately I haven’t been completely without fraggy goodness, I do have a second Xbox. It is, however, a European Xbox so won’t play some titles. I don’t think I’ll get to see Trina online again until I can play Rock Band.

Categories
Life

Washington’s been buried!

There was a snowstorm predicted for Wednesday… but it waited until Thursday instead.


I went into work in the morning for a bit to get some work done, the remote connection servers are swamped by everyone trying to WAH (work at home).  To make sure I didn’t get trapped at the office I left at lunch time.  All the stranded cars and the continued snow assured me I made the right decision.


Other than peaceful white coating, the weather has another fun benefit: wildlife. Our bird feeder has a constant crowd of patrons and our hummingbird feeders are helping the littlest customers stay warm (yeah, who knew that hummingbirds stayed here year round?). The cold also brought us a brand new visitor: a pair of coyotes. They must have come up from the park at the end of our street looking for food.


I was able to get some quick pictures of the hummingbirds, quail and coyote, they’re in our big snow gallery.


With the fierce competition for connectivity to Microsoft I won’t get much work done… but that does free me up to watch the show.



Categories
Friends

Congratulations Mike and Bunny!

The newlyweds after their beach wedding this morning:

Categories
Life

Farewell to a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend

My parents were in town for Thanksgiving and I’ve been enjoying Thanksgiving dinner for four days now, but it all started with Thursday’s spread.

 

(Before and after… yum)

Categories
Movies

King of Kong: a great story for gamers and non-gamers alike.

I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of documentaries… but I can’t say I don’t like them either.  Given the choice, however, I’m much more likely to pick an action adventure.  But who could pass up a story with a likable underdog, down on his luck and fighting against the establishment for recognition?

King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters tells the story of an out of work guy from Seattle who decides to beat the world record score for Donkey Kong.  The documentary follows his progress as he strives to take the crown from a champion who, it seems, may not deserve it. 

Steve Wiebe isn’t your average gamer, he’s attractive, was a jock and has a beautiful family. When Steve looses his job he decides to focus his competitive energy on something he can do from home, while caring for his children: beat a world record on a classic video game.  When he wades into the world of competitive video games, populated with… well… people who weren’t jocks, it’s almost like high school all over again, only this time, the geeks have the upper hand.  Can Steve prevail? Watch and find out, you never can tell how it may end.

 

My rating: worth the cost of a rental and the time to watch it.

Categories
Photography

Random picture from a SmugMug gallery

Random SmubMug picture

It’s been almost two years since I posted a random picture from our trip to Salzburg, but strangely enough I never posted the mini-tip for inserting a random picture from a SmugMug gallery.  It’s actually simple enough.  Just insert an image link which points to random.mg with the album id and desired image size.  The URL ends up looking like this:

http://pictures.little.org/photos/random.mg?AlbumID=1886470&Size=Thumb

You can find the AlbumID by browsing to one of your SmugMug albums then examining the URL.

Go forth and randomize!

Categories
Idle

I think met net presence is spread too thin

I realize that it’s incredibly important for absolutely everyone to know what’s going on in my life… I’m concerned that the plummeting DOW is due to my lack of blog posts. It’s now clear I need to hire a personal assistant to act as my PR rep and keep all the important place on the net up to date.  To that ends I’m compiling a list of all the places I share info so my new slave can keep all in order.

Here’s my current accounting:

Blogs:

Social networks:

Aggregators:

Linking / News /Reviews

Picture Sharing

  • SmugMug
  • flickr (long since abandoned… but it’s still there)

Music

Categories
TV

Use Media Center to see only the Olympic events you enjoy

Now this is just pretty damn cool, Windows Media Center, NBC and TVTonic have collaborated to provide Summer Olympic coverage delivered direct to your Media Center (and through that to your Xbox too). 

Paula asked the important question: “Why should I care? I’ll just TiVo it.”

True, you can get the Olympics via TV broadcast (and time-shifted via your PVR of choice) or on demand from NBC’s site.  The thing I think is a killer feature is that you can specify the events you want to watch instead of having to fast forward through an hour of equestrian events just to watch track and field (or vice versa).  Heck, you don’t even need a TV tuner card to get the programming (most of it in ED and lots in HD).

Sure, there are limits: you have to be in the US and you have to have Vista Media Center (32 bit only).

Get the full run down from TVTonic’s site.