Silent Saturday: iPod Photos
I actually have blog ideas today. But I’m not in the mood to write. Weird how it works like that, eh?
I loaded some recent photos from my iPod and decided to throw them online.
Like a boss.
On Thursday this week the boss decided to rip coworker a new one for how he packaged a box. He said, “I don’t know who trained you, but I prefer it like this. Here’s a list of 25 things I would have done differently. I’m going to explain in vivid detail on each one of those how your way sucks.”
Lo and behold, I happen to have captured a pic of how the boss really does it when there is no one around to insult. Not exactly the quality job that he said he demands from others is it?
Click the jump for even more photographic explorations like these! I promise they are not all about the boss.
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Look into my eye and smile
In honor of SOPA protests today, I thought about protesting myself, but bloody hell. Why should I be the one doing you guys all of the favors? So I decided to go ahead and post so you can also suffer right along with me. (This post was written on SOPA protest day. -Ed.)
When that freak little magical being showed up and offered to grant me one wish, I did what anyone would do. I became suspicious and kicked him in the nards. No one can really grant wishes, right? So he/she/it must have been a liar.
In the past, I always stated with supreme confidence that if I was granted one wish it would be the ability to read the thoughts of other people. I always followed that up with a bold prediction: With that particular power, and within 30 days, I would become Supreme Ruler and Potentate of the Taker Planet. (Earth would be renamed by my decree.)
Yes, that power would make me just that invincible.
Sure, invisibility is always a strong contender for the one wish thingy, but in the end, I’m a heavy breather and I think it would be a waste of a power. Besides, what can you really hope to gain from watching strangers have lots of sex?
Recently, though, a new idea has been brewing. Just in case I ever get offered a wish, I need to be prepared, so I give this a lot of thought. If and when the time comes you need to be ready.
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The Photographer and his iPod
What’s an iPod good for? Among other things it can grab impromptu pictures of when I would have otherwise not have my real camera available. Like when walking down the sidewalk on my lunch break.
Since I just can’t psyche myself into the mood to write lately (and maybe never again), here are a couple of recent iPod photographic masterpieces for your enjoyment.
As always, signed prints are available for the low cost of only “shipping and handling.” I’ll tell you what that is after you provide your credit card number.
This is the jewel of my collection. I had a lengthy make-out session with my iPod after taking this serendipitous shot. I call this photograph: "Ha ha ha!"
After a nice innocent lunch with the wife, she asked if I wanted a mint. Out of the freakin' blue these damn things showed up. Even a guru has his limits! WTF!!!
The horrors of Shutter Island
What happens when you press the shutter release...
I’ve had an interest in photography for a long time now. Critical readers who just read that sentence will note that I didn’t say I’m any good at it.
My dad liked Pentax cameras and I was familiar with them as far back as I can remember. In high school I took photography classes including portraiture and developing film and photographs in a black and white darkroom.
For most of my life I’ve owned a Pentax 35mm camera. Then I few years ago I picked up my first digital camera ever, a Nikon Coolpix. I used it a bit but not too much, mainly for family and vacation photos. About six months ago I finally decided to read the manual and learn how it worked and began using it more.
About six weeks ago my wife and I received a newer, much more powerful camera for a wedding anniversary gift. Since then we’ve really been getting into it. We’ve been researching on the web, reading photography books, and participating on Flickr. It has been a lot of fun.
Along the way I’ve made a few observations and learned a few things.
First, I’ve noticed that if you set up a tripod and put a camera on top of it, two things immediately happen. Everyone suddenly becomes very interested in what you are doing and strangers feel like it is acceptable to talk to you. “Taking some pictures?” they’ll ask. “Yep. Here’s your sign.”
Since we started going places and trying to take more pictures and broaden our horizons, there have been a few incidents:
- At the local park: We walked around all areas of the park and took a lot of pictures. At one point we were near the playground. My wife was trying to take some pictures of the equipment, not specifically trying to take pictures of anyone’s children. A mother on a nearby benched freaked out, frantically called her children to her, then aggressively demanded to know what my wife was doing and if the camera had any pictures of her kids. (It didn’t.) Her behavior went way beyond rude and was our first inkling of how people react to cameras.
- Saturday night in front of the local post office: With the camera on the tripod and pointing up at the top of the building, we were exploring night shots and how light was hitting the old building. We were approached by several of the local staggering drunks who demanded to know what we were doing. “What are you taking a picture of?” was a very popular question. After the groups got larger and rowdier we fled for our lives.
- On a public sidewalk: My wife was taking some pictures of various signs in front of a restaurant. A drunken idiot staggered out of a nearby bar for her smoke break and demanded to know, “Are you taking pictures of my car?” Well golly gee whiz. Which one is yours? And what an odd thing to be concerned about. Perhaps she was concerned we were working the repo man?
- At a local restaurant: We enjoyed our dinner where we are well known as regulars. While eating I noticed a neon sign in the window. When we finished our meal it was dark, so I grabbed the tripod and went out to shoot the sign. I must have been almost 50′ from the building. I’m snapping pictures when I realized someone was talking to my wife. Later I found out it was the restaurant owner who wanted to know what we were doing after people in the restaurant complained and freaked about the camera. Again I was on a public sidewalk. My only interest was the neon sign and the camera didn’t contain an image of a single human being. (Ugh!) I was tempted to go inside and use the LCD to prove it.
- At the local park: I set up the tripod by the entrance and had the camera pointed at some trees showing their beautiful autumn colors. Three cars in a row drove by and the drivers all looked freaked out that they might be in the shot. Yeah, right. I set up my tripod hours ago and just waited and waited hoping you would drive by. You’re on to me.
What have I learned? People are fucking paranoid of cameras. Next time I want to take a picture of a neon sign in a restaurant I’m going to go inside and yell, “Yo! Check this out! I’m going to be photographing that sign over yonder. I won’t be taking pictures of any of you humans! Or whatever the hell you are.”
I’ve also learned it pays to prepare your retorts ahead of time. Concerned about me taking pictures of your piece of shit car? “Oh, I’m sorry. Which one is it?” right before I deliberately make your POS the focus of my life’s work.
Maybe I just have a bad attitude, but people seriously need to relax. Chill out. The kid thing I can understand, even if the mom was wrong; we weren’t trying to take pictures of her kids. But a car??? Wow.
An FYI to the people of the world: I have little interest in you and won’t be trying to take your picture, so get over your damn selves already. I don’t want your visage tainting my shiny new toy!
Happy Anniversary to us
I’m back home. And you didn’t know I was gone because I followed internet safety tips by not revealing I was leaving and the WordPress post scheduling feature worked perfectly. 🙂
My wife and I took a three-day weekend for our five-year wedding anniversary. Woot. Apparently we were married when Katrina hit because we saw stories on the TV about it being the five-year anniversary of that event as well. I didn’t know that.
Prior to leaving we received a new camera from our aunt as a gift. It’s a major upgrade over our old and tired Cool Pix. The new camera is a Canon Powershot SX20 IS. We took something like 480 pictures over three days. A couple might even have turned out. Unfortunately the user manual only came as a PDF file on CD and we didn’t have a computer with us.
Here’s a few shots I took before we left the house including The Great Walk-In Closet Disaster. The bar on her side was literally gave way. Funny how the guy who made this house lives in a $16 million dollar home but the stuff he makes for other people to live in is a bunch of crap. As you can see I really pushed the limits of what this camera can do.
Yes, it's plugged in. What can possibly go wrong?
His side of the walk-in closet
Her side of the walk-in closet
Maybe some more pictures soon. We’re still tired from the trip. 🙂
Beg, steal and borrow: A gerbil’s tale
What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine
Gerbils sure are industrious little critters.
My little point and shoot camera isn’t much but it’s all I have. My wife and I used to have two of the exact same cameras, but one was lost, along with a vacation’s worth of pictures, in a Greek restaurant in the big city. I don’t recall what I was drinking that night but it must have made me forgetful. As far as we can tell, I must have left the camera in the booth and it was never seen again. Someone out there got some crazy pictures of me at the Chinese gardens, that’s for sure!
I guess it would probably be a good idea to make a sign that says, “Hello. My name is Tom B. Taker and this is my camera. My email address is shoutabyss@live.com and my phone number is 555-555-5555.” I could have my picture taken holding that sign and keep it as Photo #1 on the camera for all time. Yeah, something like that would probably be a good idea. I guess that’s probably why I’ve never gotten off my ass and done it yet! Maybe we should also use a Sharpie to write my name in my underwear. Meh.
It turns out that our son, the gerbil, has a camera like ours, too. Same make but a newer model and, amazingly, it uses the exact same USB cable to download pictures into the computer.
I have these hooks in my home office where I hang my car keys. I’ve always kept the camera cable hanging on one of those hooks because I do not want to lose that puppy. We don’t have fancy things like card readers.
Even though we were careful somehow the cable still went missing. We were never sure what happened and just shrugged it off as one of those things.
We take a lot more pictures than the gerbil, so we ended up “borrowing” his camera cable. That was a few months ago.
I don’t want to go into all of the specific gerbil news of late, but suffice it to say he has been quasi-moved out of our house for about two months now. In a nutshell that means that all of his stuff is still in our home, his dead car is still in our driveway, and we see him about twice a week but only when he needs favors.
Somehow this weekend my wife ended up going through some of the gerbil’s possessions that still remained in our home. They are likely to be there until the day we die.
Suddenly I heard my wife cry out in alarm. “You are not going to believe this,” she yelled across the house.
Fearing the worst, I stayed relaxed and kept my ass glued to my chair in front of my computer as she came to me rather than the other way around. “Guess what I just found?” she asked.
She held up a camera USB cable. “This is the gerbil’s camera cable!”
I dumbly looked at her holding up the cable and then over at our camera case. Laying there, next to our camera, was the twin to that camera USB cable. A light bulb went off over my head. “That means we’ve been borrowing our own damn cable from the kid this whole damn time!!!”
She just nodded. “Yup!”
Shouts from the Abyss 
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