I Turn My Camera On

I used to take pictures of pretty much anything. Even before digital came along and made things so easy, I had a Nikon 35mm film camera with a telephoto lens from the 1970s. It was originally owned by my Uncle Donny (see below post) and I used it all throughout high school and a little in college. I would pay just about anything to find those pictures, but I am afraid they are lost. Tragic. Lost pictures break my heart. There are a trove of pictures that my parents took when I was very little in the 1970s (not just of me) that nobody can seem to find. That really hits me in the gut.

I even did some of my own development work in Mr. Bouvier’s darkroom in high school. Most of those were shots taken at Bruins games with the Nikon, some of which were, may I say, fantastic. I would walk right up to the press area and stick my camera right in the hole in the glass and snap away. Nobody ever said boo. So I’ve always dabbled. There was a dark period where very little pictures were taken – right after college graduation up until digital really emerged in 2000-2001, and then my Flickr page started up. Now I have a Nikon D40x, which has rekindled my interest in photography.

As many of you might have noticed, my Flickr page has been almost exclusively devoted to the twins for the past year. Tonight (Friday night, now about 10:17), Steph went off to bed early so I thought I’d just walk around the house and take some shots. It’s a very mundane collection of everyday items around our house, but it’s nice to snap stuff again. Maybe I’ll take the camera outside soon and try to do more.

The collection is here, and here’s a couple of highlights, in my eyes:

This one might be my favorite. I’m not sure what it is, but I think it’s how the pen is so tightly in focus and the rest is a little blurry.

The Workday

Now, the highlight of this one is the avacado. There’s something about those little bumps on the avocado that jump out of the picture to me.

This one is ALL about the lighting

Finally, my skates. Not sure why I like this one, it might be that everything is either black, white or grey, but the picture is still in color.

I hope you enjoyed my brief indulgence.

Oh Baby, Hoggify

This might be the funniest video I’ve seen this year. It’s “normal” for about the first :30 seconds and then it’s off to the races. I was laughing so damn hard…..hat tip to Fort Miley.

Darts

  • Check out a pretty dazzling email sent by Bill Gates to a few people at Microsoft back in 2003. Maybe the better word is “rambling.”
  • I am going to have a GREAT time with this site. If you’ve ever seen the Conan O’Brien bit called “If They Mated” (see great examples here) where he shows what celebrity babies would look like, than this website is for you.

The Woodchipper Spits It Out…..

Tidbits, collected over the last couple of days and scattered about like bread for the birds:

  • Sad to hear George Carlin passed away this weekend. He’d had his battles with drugs and alcohol, but that didn’t dampen his unique humor at all. I always thought of first as a solid “everyman” comic and second as the dude with the filthy mouth in the 1970s.
  • One of my boys bit me this weekend. Right on the shoulder as I was putting him on the changing table.  I jumped a little bit, mostly due to surprise, then I looked at him and gave him a stern “no biting!” His reaction: laughed in my face. Welcome to the next phase, dad.
  • Interesting article here about how there are less children being born worldwide. At first glance, you may think this would benefit our quickly expanding globe, but the article makes you realize it will probably work the other way. BTW, population is growing because people are living longer, not because there’s more babies being born.
  • I had a dream last night that my Uncle Donny, who died at 31 in 1985, came back to us at a family gathering and I was the one who set it all up. Not sure how I found him, but he said the government had hired him for covert operations and spy work and in order for him to do the job, they had to fake his death and give him a new identity.  I remember being both psyched and really pissed at him at the same time and in the back of my mind, was wondering if I had an imposter on my hands. I got him to attend a family gathering, where nobody could even believe what they were seeing, so much so that everyone got mad at me because they thought he was a fake. As it turned out, he was. He had done his homework on the family, but didn’t recognize any of his friends, who were also there. Trying to figure out what all this means.
  • Finally, I normally try to stay away from work and/or our competitors, but yesterday’s Globe ran a pretty interesting article about Google and what they know about you. Makes you stop and think, not just about Google, but about any search engines.

All My Habits Antiquated

Wednesday night I played hooky from hockey (ugh) and hit the city for some delicious dinner and delicious rock (via Sloan) with my good friend Leo, his 19 year-old daughter Megan and her friend Mallory. His blog post today provides some of the comedy that occured pre-show. I guess I should restate that – from Leo’s perspective, the comedy part was only funny after everything turned out ok. A few years ago, it would have been funny for me all along, but with kids now, I admit to having some sympathy.

The highlights of the night can be summarized here:

  • First and foremost, conversation. Pre-show dinner used to be a way for me to fill up on solids before moving to excess liquids at the club. Oh, how things have changed. As it turned out, I enjoyed the dinner, the company and the conversation more than show. I can attribute this to my wife. Someday I’ll explain more, but in short, it’s all about the value of family, friends and relationships.
  • Having dinner with two 19-year old girls was, um, interesting. I don’t think this has happened to me since I was……19. But here’s the kicker: my faith in humanity was elevated a little bit when the topic of homophobes came up and both 19 year-olds couldn’t fathom why it was any big deal whether one was gay or straight. Now, I am not so naive to think that all 19 year-olds subscribe to this notion, but it was still enlightening and I do believe our emerging generations are getting further and further away from hatred and racism (example here from a post I wrote in 2004).
  • That said, Leo (who is in his forties) and myself, at 37, certainly felt odd dining with two youngsters like that (he probably felt a little less odd than I, given one of them was his daughter). I had to remark that people were probably thinking we were a couple of dirty old men. Or they thought we had hired escorts, to which Megan, Leo’s daughter, replied “great, you just called us high-class hookers.”
  • Greek beer. I forget the name. But the highlight here is that it wasn’t a highlight.
  • Oh, the show was good! I found myself wishing that the setlist was a little more spread out across more of their excellent catalog, but they’re still fun and they’re still so obnoxiously talented that it makes me sad they can’t seem to crack the nut in America.  Still, nothing from “Action Pact?”
  • Show highlight: Sloan pulling two people from the audience to sing lead during the encore. One of them was horrible, and the band knew it and stopped the song halfway through, but the other guy nailed “I Can Feel It.” Very enjoyable.