Almost forgot me blog’s password

it’s been so long… Anyroad, we’re 1 week into having Mum and Dad around. We’ve been to waterfalls, forests, wine country, downtown & trader joe’s and seen sun, sleet, fog and snow. Things are going grand, it’s lovely having them around. It’s been nice to get away from Facebook for a while too. I bundled them off to see Slumdog an hour ago at the cinema down the road, so I’m taking advantage of the time to nose around the interwebs and update me status here and there.

Photos will eventually find their way onto Flickr, where one of the photos from the waterfalls trip got on Explore.

IMGP7668
'You didn't mention the volcanic formations, Gwyn'

I’ve a couple more full days at L&C then on Thursday, if it stops snowing long enough, we’re going to either hit the coast or the gorge. We’ve been saving the Science museum (OMSI) for when the weather gets truly dire, so tomorrow as it reaches its nadir, I think they’ll be checking out all that. Either way, if all’s quiet at this here blog, just assume things are going grand. Thanks for not giving up on reading… hasta pronto y’all 🙂

Bridge of the Gods

Connecting the states of Oregon and Washington. It’ll cost you a buck each way. This is a shot looking at Oregon from the driving seat. I don’t think it’s illegal to drive and wave a camera about, but it wouldn’t take long to get across the state line in the event of a high speed police chase…

Vote for Joop

Vote for Joop

Mornin’ folks, I got an email from a mate of mine I’ve mentioned here before, Mr. Joop. He needs 3 minutes of your time…

I need your help!! I am pursuing a grant to photograph wedding celebrations around the world.

My goal is to highlight the many cultural and colorful differences of this world while emphasizing the huge similarities of people across borders. Please vote for my project & Please, forward this link to anyone you know who would be interested in this… This is crucial! If you forward this, and ask people to forward further, my chances increase tremendously. Deadline is April 3, 2009.

Thank you!!
Joop

http://www.nameyourdreamassignment.com/the-ideas/jooprubens/for-richer-or-poorer/

Go on, send a Belgian around the world… Thanks 🙂

Best seat in the house

Best seat in the house

Waiting for DrSita, Sudarat and Michelle to take their respective turns in Jenga! I took advantage of the rarefied atmosphere to snap the view from my strategic placement on the floor…

Post Pancake Day Pancakes

I’ve given up not making pancakes for Lent.

Pancakes
Made with colours not found in nature...

I had to tidy the kitchen anyways… Pictures over at Flickr, as per usual. Also on Flickr a variety of citrus that only occurs in certain lighting in the Pacific Northwest. The Orange Lemon. Lemange?

For Rent

For Rent

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you

Desirable one-bedroom residence would suit small family of birds. Nestles in Portland’s green belt and complies with all seismic codes…

Kodak Duaflex II

Here’s the little camera that prompted me to register the domain vintageviewfinders.com. It was a bargain all round. I’ve not taken many TTV shots lately, but will soon…

If you’re reading this on the site and not via email, I spent a couple of hours trying to make it so you can click on the main photo to view the next image. It was surprisingly tricky but I managed it in the end. Now you don’t have to fiddle around trying to find the link each time. There’s never been a better time to have a look through the archives (this is photo #251 😀 )

Also on the cards is a button to switch the background to white or grey depending on your mood. Don’t hold your breath for that one mind, but I’m on it.

Streamlining

Beetlings
If you can´t beet´em

Nothing like nature taking hold to illustrate that I’ve left it far too long between postings again. I’ve added my Facebook status to my Lifestream page, so that’s a little extra tidbit of information about my online life should you fancy reading it. Facebook seems to be where it’s at at the moment, though once again everyone’s up in arms about the privacy and copyright implications of their latest automatic update to their Terms of Use. Stu reckons he’s been proved right about it being a dark force, I replied:

Weeeeeell, it’s a free service, innit. Anything I upload can get shared around and that’s fine by me. And if they use my info to put adverts about the latest Morrissey album rather than crap about SUVs or pharmaceuticals or summat, I’m happier for it. I’ve even used the thumbs up/down thing on adverts I get served. Now I just get ads for cameras and music and coffee and stuff.

When they release a best-selling book called “Gwyn’s status updates and wordscraper scores 2006-2009” then I might start complaining, but frankly I reckon it’s a bit self important to think anything I’ve ever uploaded to friendface is worth more than bugger all. If they can make some money off it, good luck to em.

There’s a very good article about how to configure your fb privacy settings so your boss doesn’t see all the pictures of you from the weekend. But, to be honest, you shouldn’t have added them as a friend in the first place…

Anyhoo, busy week as ever between L&C, site updates, a pending translation and the demands of a certain schipperke… I’ll be back soon. And if not, click on over to me Lifestream, photoblog or Flickr

Catkins

Lovely word that, catkin. While doing some (brief) research on wikipedia I found out they’re called amentos in español. I was wondering whether catkin was a UK English thing or not, I’ve not heard it crop up in conversation in the States, but then again, I s’pose it wouldn’t really…

This was taken within 10 minutes of the teasels one from yesterday.

More teasels

I’m not sure where my obsession with photographing teasels springs from. Maybe because they were omnipresent on walks in the country when I was little. Maybe because my Grandma used to make little figures out of them. Maybe because I got read Mrs. Tiggywinkle & other Beatrix Potter books from an early age. Or maybe it’s because you don’t have to bend down and contort your body to get a decent angle, they don’t reflect the sun too much, and the way they grow lends themselves to basic composition rules…

Anyroad, please find attached some teasels. Hope you like’em.

Nailed it

I think I’ve got enough photos to get through this week… but let’s start with the minimalism to your left and get more maximal as the week plods by, what do you reckon?

Also, from now on, if you’re viewing this on the actual website rather than via email/RSS there’ll be a link to Flickr at the bottom of each picture just in case you’re into that kind of thing.

Cwoffee

A collage of photos with this new lense thing that started last night and finished this morning.

Happy Friday 13th/ Valentine’s depending on your blog browsing habits.

Bokandle

I’m loving this new lense. It means I can finally shoot decent shots indoors among other things… You’ll have to take me word for that though, here’s a candle and I think it’s a window reflected on the countertop? Abstraction…

Slug Crossing

Slug Crossing

We used to live in Santa Cruz. UCSC has the banana slug as its school mascot (“No known predators”). This sign is from yesterday’s wanderings about Lewis & Clark campus in the snow. It’s all melted today. Weird weather… weird signage…

Anyroad, a few business items… First off, one of my mates who is a proper, professional photographer, Mr. Joop Rubens has started a photoblog to go with his flashy pro site, and I urge you to check it out. He’s been into photography for donkey’s years and got into digital about 5 years ago and has enviable portrait skillz.

Next off, I’m considering consolidating my RSS feeds so that if you’ve signed up for photoblog emails, you’ll get my blog updates too. If that sounds like a bad idea, contact me in the next day or two and I may well reconsider. I try to put photos in all my blog posts too… If you’re signed up for both already, you can still unsubscribe from one or t’other.

Thirdly, I’ve still not printed the photos I promised you and for that, I suck. I’m on it, it’s always on my mind and maybe this is the week I’ll make good on my promise.

Fourthly, I got ebaying over the weekend and should have  a 50mm 2.0 prime lens to play with in the very near future which is a whole new area to me and I’m looking forward to experimenting. I’ve another vintage viewfinder on its way too, a Kodak Duaflex II, hopefully full of dust, scratches and blemishes all ready to have a Pringles tin strapped to it.

I won’t write any more here cos it puts the whole balance of the design out when there’s tons of text. I’m offski 🙂

Just when you thought it was safe to plant your ‘zuchini’

And L&C stayed open...
Snow in L&C Law School

Luckily this time I read the backs of the packets of seeds and a lot of them could be started indoors then transplanted, so I felt slightly smug this morning when it was whiter than usual outside. Not enough snow to cancel work though, but enough to make the place look suitably festive. Hopefully something’ll sprout soon… and ideally produce vegetables before we move to another timezone

You're going to reap, just what you sow
You're going to reap, just what you sow

Since it was already snowing when I headed to work today I took me camera in on the offchance there was something photographicable, to coin a word. I submitted one of them to this here Portland blog and they published it. I get the impression they’re not inundated with entries… On Flickr one of the comments was “Best watch where you put the rock salt down.” which I liked.

Desperate times, desperate measures – Comcast error SRM 8001

Desperate times, desperate measures – Comcast error SRM 8001

No, not the economy.

I got fed up with not being able to watch On Demand offerings on cable last night so I finally gave up thinking ‘it’s probably just snow on the lines, or flooding, or high winds, or volcanic/seismic activity’ and phoned Comcast to sort it out. 40 minutes of classical music later, I hung up before my mobile phone died. Then I tried email. Today I got a reply suggesting using their ‘live chat’ .  Click on the ‘more’ link or whatever it’s called if you’d like to read the conversation between John.Michael.37920 and Ms. Fisher in its entirety. Basically I’m waiting the proposed 15-30 minutes now and thought posting about Comcast would help pass the time.

Last night we ordered some Mexican food from the local El Salvadorian restaurant (I know…), and since the line was bad and there was a lot of background noise, rather than spending the usual 5 minutes spelling gwyn, I gave my name as Paco. Unfortunately this led to even more confusion and thus we ended up with Tacos de carne asada rather than burritos.

I’d like to say more has been happening of note but not really. Lots of work. Lots of walking the dog. A fair bit of reading. Countless hours on the internets… Half my family appeared in Taunton’s Gazette last week. That was probably the highlight… Doesn’t he look happy? I think I inherited the “Yay-It’s-snow!” gene…

dad-in-gazette
All the news that’s fit to print

Ah well, I’m off to check if I can watch The Soup on demand yet. If not I’ll be live chatting again for a substantial chunk of this morning.

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