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Mon Jul 21, 2008
Twitter is up and running
I was a bit skeptical when I first read about Twitter but I've heard enough people say good things about it that I figured I should try it out. You can get hold of me as "dawilson" if you are interested.
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XML feed is down.
This is a test to see if the XML feed is back online yet....
...well, it wasn't but it is now. That may well explain why no-one had subscribed :-)
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Sun Jul 20, 2008
Texas State History Museum
The boys and I visited the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum again yesterday. While there, they got caught up in the "Dark Knight" opening frenzy (they're showing the whole thing in IMAX and the queues were huge) but also saw one of the most amazing IMAX films I've seen to date. "Extreme" showcases several extreme sports (large wave surfing, ice climbing, heliskiing, etc) and is beautifully photographed. I can strongly recommend it to anyone who is lucky enough to be within striking distance of an IMAX screen.
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Thu Jul 17, 2008
Barn Swallows
We have swallows nesting under our car port this year. It's been fascinating to watch them from the start of nest building until now - the parents are 100% occupied feeding the chicks and return to the next about once every 5 minutes or so with more insects for the three hungry mouths.
This photo was taken from a ladder about 6 feet from the nest. Any closer and the parents seemed to stay away. It's one of my first attempts at dual-flash use. My main light was sitting on the roof of Nikki's car (down and to the right) and I had my on-camera flash enabled too. I'm fairly happy with the result. Click the image and look near it on Flickr for various other pictures of the birds.
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Wed Jul 09, 2008
Soaring
With the soggy weather last week, I didn't get a chance to take too many photographs. Here's the only arty one I've processed so far. This was taken on a rather fun dolphin watching boat trip we took fairly early in the week.
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Mon Jul 07, 2008
Proud Sandcastle Builders
We're just back from a week in South Padre Island where our beach holiday was rather washed out (it rained every day apart from our first and we ended up coming home a couple of days early). Despite the weather, we all had a good time. We went on a dolphin-watching cruise, got sunburnt on the one day the sun shone, boogie-boarded in the rain, saw Wall-E (possibly the most impressive piece of computer animation I have ever seen) twice and ate far too much fried seafood.
One of the highlights of the week was a sandcastle building lesson from Andy Hancock. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Andy is an extremely accomplished sculptor with works worldwide. He works in wood and, since moving to Texas, sand and his creations are very impressive indeed. Our short lesson was a great deal of fun for both kids and parents alike and I can highly recommend this to anyone visiting South Padre. Check out sandcastlelessons.com for details and Andy's contact information.
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Sun Jun 29, 2008
Great (Televised) Wedding
Erin and Sam from church got married yesterday in a lovely ceremony (despite 102 degrees and dodgy air conditioning) followed by a truly fabulous reception at "Old Glory Ranch" in Wimberley. The venue was outstanding - outdoor seating for dinner (thank goodness for large, misting fans) followed by dancing indoors and the wedding was made even more interesting due to the fact that it was being filmed for one of these reality shows. Look for an episode of "Whose Wedding Is It Anyway" on Style Network some time in the coming months.
You can find more snaps of the event here.
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Roy's Shades
Roy was wearing some really cool shades at the wedding we went to yesterday so I really had to do something with them. Here's the fun result. I wonder if he'll like it?
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Sat Jun 28, 2008
Bikes
It seems to have been a while since I posted a new photo so here's another of the results from my photo day a couple of weeks ago. The "Republic of Texas" biker rally was taking place in Austin and the area was teaming with fabulous motorcycles. This was taken in Wimberley and, as for pretty much all the photos I took that day, is an HDR comprising 3 different exposures. I rather like the way the HDR processing really accentuates the reflections.
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Fri Jun 27, 2008
Image viewer with true Wow! appeal
I've just been introduced to a truly outstanding new web site viewer called PicLens which is available as an add-on for Firefox, IE and Safari on Mac and Windows. It makes use of the 3D capabilities of your graphics card to display all the images on the current web page using a fast-scrolling, zoomable 3D wall and it's absolutely gorgeous.
On sites such as Flickr which offer a MediaRSS feed for their pages, you get a far better experience. Take a look at the feed for someone with a huge library on Flickr and you end up standing in front of an apparently infinite wall of thumbnails (with reflections of course) that you can drag left and right. Find an image you like and you can click on it for a higher resolution view then zoom in or out using the mouse thumbwheel.
This description really doesn't get across the true Wow! factor - download it and play with it to see what you think.
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