The Humans Are Dead

Well it finally happened. The entire Midwest (possibly the entire world) has been destroyed by a catastrophic earthquake. I believe I may be the only survivor. I have already stockpiled food, supplies and weapons and have begun fortifying my home for the impending zombie attack I know will come with the setting of the sun today (zombies tend to take advantage of these types of world ending disasters). Above is a photo I took moments ago of me walking thru downtown West Salem, Ill with a kick ass stray dog I found.

I’m going to try to make my way to Effingham Ill. I’ll be on the boat dock at Lake Sara everyday at mid-day, when the sun is highest in the sky. If you are out there… if anyone is out there… I can provide food, I can provide shelter, I can provide security. If there’s anybody out there… anybody… please. You are not alone.

put this together real quick last night to assist the robot deficient in generating their own random binary solos. FireFox only for the time being (don’t have much time to devote to silly stuff like this lately, but I’ll clean it up for version 2 at some point, promise) and yes I’m fully aware of the message that is sending… only people using FireFox are worthy of the binary solo generator 3000!

Binary Solo Generator 3000

Been a long time without a post, so it’s time to kick start this bad boy again. I’ve revived an old hobby/obsession… chasing freight trains. I’ve always been fascinated by freight trains, walking the tracks, standing next to the cars, watching them speed by at an intersection. More so, I love the graffiti hitching a ride on the sides of trains as they traffic through the industrial arteries of America. So that’s what I’ve been up to, photographing trains and documenting freight graffiti when ever I get a spare moment from work… which has been abnormally hectic and busy since the new year.

check it all out over in my Flickr sets:
Trains
Old Freight Graffiti
New Freight Graffiti.

It seems like a very long time ago that I added myself to the waiting list to be notified of the TIOTI site launch. This promising web service had all but slipped my mind. Then today I found an invite to join their beta test sitting in my inbox. I immediately created my account to check it out.

Yes, that IS the tv show Matt Houston they are recommending to me there in the screenshot Now Matt Houston is no Colt Seavers by any means. But it’s cool that TIOTI is spreading the word about these gems of early 80s television, just the same.

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Alicia at the General Motors blogs contacted me yesterday to ask if they could feature my Ice Age Cadillac as their photo of the day. Everyday the GM FYI blog features a photo of the day selected from GM related photos posted to Flickr.

I thought I had better try to get a few more photos added to my set to give anyone coming from the GM blogs something related to look at. So I added a couple older photos taken with the *istDL when I first got it this summer.

So, a big thanks to the GM folks for selecting the photo and for producing the many fine Cadillacs I’ve had the fortune to cruse around in.

I needed a cable release switch so I could start taking some longer exposure shots with my camera’s bulb mode. While searching the web to find a cheap one to buy I came across schematics for building a switch that would work for my camera. So I rounded up the needed parts from “The Shack” and set about building my own cable release.

The project was remarkably easy. Here’s what it took…

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I finally decided on and bought a new camera. I’ve been looking at both the Nikon D50 and the Pentax *istD L trying to decide what to get. I had a Pentax K1000 back in Uni with a macro/wide lens that I loved, but somebody walked away with it. I haven’t done any serious photography since I lost that camera. I few years ago I received a Nikon EM with a couple nice lenses as a gift, but unlike when I was in school, I no longer have easy access to a dark room. So I’ve never even used the Nikon, but of course there is the possibility that the lenses I have would work with the digital Nikon body.

The decision was made when I went out to Circuit City this weekend to check both cameras out in person. Handling both cameras I liked the feel of the Pentax much better. The hand grip on the Pentax has a kind of hollowed out area where your fingers grip the camera which I thought made for a more comfortable and solid feeling grip of the camera. The Pentax is a bit smaller and a lot lighter than the D50 even tho it features a bigger 2.5″ screen.

Now I already think I’m pretty biased towards the Pentax anyway, but the feel of the camera reinforced it. Then I looked at the price. The Pentax *istD L is on sale this week and offers a $100 rebate, bringing the price of the camera to around $450!! I went home to check prices on the web to see if by chance they had dropped elsewhere. I didn’t find any other retailers offering the rebate, so I went back to Circuit City yesterday and bought it and a high speed 1GB SD memory card that was also on sale.

I’ve only had time to mess around with it a little bit, but I have to say I’m pretty impressed. I headed out to the back yard to take a few shots and they turned out very nice.

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Every year the company that I work for does the website of the local airshow as comp work in exchange for a little advertising. I’ve personally built the site the last 5 or 6 years. The airshow was this weekend.

Springfield Air Rendezvous

Anyway, the different acts give a limited number of rides to the big airshow sponsors depending on availability and scheduling. This year the airshow folks offered up a pair of rides for my boss and me. So Thursday afternoon (6.22.06) the boss went up with the Lima Lima Flight Team and I took a flight with the Red Stars.

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Ahh the first post. This is where you’re supposed to make promises and layout the grand scheme of things to come. Well, at this point the scheme isn’t all that grand and certianly not planned out. My intention is for this to be a journal of my design, development and art work, to which I’m sure other topics will bleed in.

Now I have to find the free time to design a template for this mess of a “blog”.

But first, in programming tradition, I give you the…

Hello World