Dad-in-law's birthday

Zane with Daddy by Corinne S.

Today was my father-in-law's birthday and we celebrated by having brunch at my sister-in-law's house. I took a lot of photos today since the kids and I were having fun with it.

I've been playing around with the beta of Photoshop CS3 and Bridge CS3 with the Camera Raw beta. Overall, it's an improved experience and I'm really enjoying it. I have a few nitpicks, but nothing major. I guess the biggest thing is that they still don't have any presets for multi-mon. I'll have more photos from today later, but you can more photos from today on Flickr.

Sights from lands far away

My former coworker Niels recently left Microsoft to spend a year with his wife Amy in the South Pacific. Here's a gorgeous photograph Niels took on his first day in French Polynesia. Niels has a Nikon D200 and is a great photographer with a very high quality bar. You can check out Niels' and Amy's site at www.2explore.net.

Another great ad seen on design fckr.

Creative Advertisement

This really effectively gets to the heart of what American Apparel is all about. Very effective in reinforcing why it's worth buying from them even though their clothes are much more expensive than the equalivent stuff made overseas. Not that I've shopped there... Seen on design fckr.

Lost in cyberspace (and badges)

Okay, so I use a personalized Google home page. But the number of RSS feeds on my Google home page was getting out of hand. So I decided to try Google Reader and put only the Google Reader deal to my homepage. This is working out well. Now that I've got all my blogs added to reader, I'm adding some new blogs and even categorizing. I added a few things to a new "design" category. One of those is design fckr. Staying up past bedtime, I just discovered Prickie though design fckr. Then I found out from the Prickie News tab that Random Good Stuff is having a contest to win free Prickie badges (which are actually pretty neat). Which brings me here. There are so many badges (aka pins) on Prickie that I couldn't get through the A's. But, from the few thousand I must have seen so far, this one is my favorite. It's by an artist called annejulie. I'm really loving her work online. Gorgeous! I hope I win the Random Good Stuff contest so I can pick out my 24 badges. In fact, I think I already picked them. :-D Although the lack of per-page URLs for bookmarking in all-Flash sites drives me bananas, Prickie actually has a unique and effective preview and add to cart functionality that I'm quite fond of. Check it out if you care about that sort of thing.

For photography nerds

Rob recommends a blog called Petteri's Pontifications, for photography essays and how to's. I just looked at it for the second time ever, and I'm really impressed with the latest article, Simulating Film Effects with Curves. This is a high investment technique that only photography buffs would consider, but the output is so impressive to me. I hope to find some of my own pictures worthy of trying out these techniques on and time to do just that.

Night night iPod?

Last night at bedtime I ran my iPod battery out. Not too unusual. Today when I connected it to my PC, I saw this animation, and later the Apple logo. That was it. An hour later, still none of the normal UI. I tried resetting, same. I tried another USB port. Same. I tried another PC. Same. Reset. Reset. Same. Follow online support instructions. Same. I went by the Apple Genius Bar in University Village after work. The Genius got my iPod to work by plugging it into the wall (that's an extra $30 accessory to you), resetting it, and waiting a good while. He asked if I knew that there are more than 17,000 tracks on my iPod. My response: "But it's not full yet, right?" The outcome: Watch and wait, or consider restoring (read: reformatting) your iPod. The good news: I thought ahead and bought the extended warranty on this specific purchase because I knew this would happen someday.

Sushi night

JOSHUA TRUJILLO/P-I Tonight I had dinner with Claire at Mashiko in West Seattle. We ate sushi at the bar and if you'd known you could have seen me on their web cam (which resides on their offensively-named website, sushiwhore.com). I look at the web cam now and see two blond women who arrived shortly before we left. They must be having a really nice time (it's been hours). I saw Claire's litle girl Amelia briefly between bath and bed. She's a very talkative and social girl. I miss seeing Claire more often and she is contemplating moving farther away rather than closer by. Bah humbug! Why must adult life (or is it just life) present such obstacles? Ah well. Another opportunity to recognize my lack of control over the universe.

Another group of pics

Zane's rose by Corinne S.

Tonight I posted photos from the blessing ceremony for our new niece and younger nephew. More photos.

Christmas, part I, belated

Baby Jessa, eyes wide open by Corinne S.

Tonight I posted photos from the first of our 2006 Christmas gatherings (not counting the Holiday Potluck on December 10th). I think this is the best photo, though the one of the dueling father-son Nintendo DSs is also precious in it's own way.

More Sherry Christmas photos.

Cutting into the backlog

I am so excited...I have no photos awaiting processing now except the ones from Christmas and a few from Piper's birthday party. That's a major improvement and a doable task. w00t!

More photos on Flickr

Jessamyn's half smile by Corinne S.

I posted various recent photos on Flickr today, including this cute one of baby Jessamyn from a couple of Sundays ago.

In utero

Pregnancy Favs by Amelie81 So many women in Benjamin's social circle and mine are currently pregnant. There are actually four that I am aware of, but that feels like a lot. I think our "group" is about to explode with babies, as it were.

A quick visit is often a good visit

"Oh, that's fun!" by Corinne S.

On Saturday I slept late and then found myself wanting to get out of the house. I called Leanne to ask if she had any free time this weekend, since I had no plans at all for once, and she said "Yes, I'm free now. Come over." And so I did.

We hung out for about two hours, sitting on the floor with little Asha Ruby and chatting. I also gave their kitty Johnny some love since he thought he needed it. ;-)

Then Leanne made dinner, wearing Asha in her Ergo Baby thinger, and I kept them company. When Asha's daddy and grandma came home and dinner was ready, I went home to my own cute family of Benjamin and Maple. It was a great, short, spur-of-the moment visit. And I even got a few cute shots of the little one.

Movie: Pan's Labyrinth

Very good, but brutal I saw this movie last night with Benjamin and my in-laws. It was beautiful and amazing. The young star actress did a fabulous job. A couple of things I didn’t know about the movie before I saw it: it’s in Spanish with English subtitles and it’s surprisingly, brutally violent at several points. Regardless of that, it’s still very worth watching.

Is anyone out there?

A funny bit of info appeared in the New York Times' political blog.

Mr. Schmidt [chief executive officer of Google] said that by by Google's calculation, a new blog is being created every second of every day. He said that Google now estimates that the average blog is read by one person. One person. Hello? Is anyone out there? Mom?