Veteran Insomniac

It’s been awhile since I updated here, and I guess it’s really because I don’t have much new to say. Everything seems a little status quo around here lately. My 50/50 sick/sad spring has manifested this year as an ear infection & general sicky-ness. After a week it seems to be getting a little better, having a plugged ear is just annoying now more than it is painful. Blech.

Emerald city comicon was a blast, except for my camera batteries running out during Shatner’s panel. I picked up some awesome new stuff in the dealer area that I’m going to say I’ll talk about later, but probably won’t, given my track record.  My collection of Civil War is almost complete, I’m only missing two TPBs that I can see. I picked up the first two collections of “Preacher” and it’s amazing, I have up through 8 in just a couple months. I think I’m going to pick up Secret Invasion before I finish up House of M and World War Hulk.

The thing I want to talk about the most I guess is a slew of new gadgets. I finally abandoned the Blackberry platform & switched to Android. My new telecommunications device is a Motorola Droid X, running Android 2.2 & rooted. I initially didn’t see a need to root, but after some research I realized I didn’t really have a good reason to install a new ROM, but I had quite a few to root the thing, which was remarkably easy. It seems that as devices become more and more complex and powerful, the easier they are for those technically inclined to bend them beyond their initial operating capacity. I love the versatility and variety of the apps available for the Android platform, and I could easily see it beating Apple’s for smartphone dominance. Which is good, because all the time I’ve spent with the iPhone has been poo.  Like I do with my other phones, the first thing I picked up for it was an extended battery, giving me around 500 additional mAh with negligible thickness increase. The size difference is so small that even cases designed for the stock version will still fit with the extended battery backplane. Anyhow, the thing is incredibly cool, and I feel now like I did the first time I started using a smartphone; it is that much of a generational gap above my Blackberry Storm. The Storm did prepare me for an all-touch device, and I shed the clicky screen uneasily, like training wheels falling away. Now such a thing seems a novelty.

I’ve also happened upon a Playstation 3, so the realm of high-definition movies on my TV is now open to me, and after a short time of elation, I am now despondent over my pitiful built-in speakers and yearn for a home theater audio system that does these other two media behemoths justice. Indeed, even my book reading has entered the “digital age”, as it were, since I picked up an Amazon Kindle. I love this device and the company that makes it. For me, it is amazingly easy to read a book on, and to organize my collection of eBooks and PDFs. I opted for the WiFi only version instead of the 3g enabled one, which I realized is kind of unnecessary when I can just tether the thing through my Droid & gain access to all three of the “g”s available there. Considering I do most of my reading (and everything else) at home, I saved that fifty dollars there.  There’s nothing I can really say about this e-reader that hasn’t been toted by Amazon itself on their site & through their testimonials, except maybe how easy it is to put your own spiffy screen-saver images onto it.

Let me now back up and talk about the company that provided me this amazing slice of the future. There’s only a handful of places in the ENTIRE WORLD that I’d consider living over Seatte, and Amazon is the one thing none of those places could match.  First, Amazon Fresh. Groceries online seems like a pretty logical thing, given the era, but Amazon fulfilling orders next-day for free, with re-usable packaging that they will come and get from you if you don’t have a place to store it is just stellar. Oh, and you can just toss a bunch of Amazon.com items in there as well? I think this might edge out Netflix as my favorite delivered service. Plus, I don’t end up with a bunch of random snack food from going to the store hungry. Amazon Fresh, you sustain me.

If Fresh weren’t enough to just get you by, Amazon has stepped up their game for a few major metro areas (currently Seattle, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, New York City/New Jersey, Philadelphia, Phoenix, & Washington, D.C.) by offering “Local Express Delivery” where orders early enough in the day can be delivered SAME DAY for just 8.99 (or 3.99 if you have prime). My Kindle was delivered so fast, the automated job that provisions it for registration hadn’t had time to run yet. Amazon’s shipping won a race vs it’s electronic backend. Seems like a John Henry moment to me.

Amazon (among other things) is truly making my favorite city a veritable paradise for those savvy enough to use all the features offered.

That’s all for now, perhaps there won’t be another four month gap in posts. Probably not.

So in order to make up for being unable to sleep  at night, I’ve gotten in the habit of taking naps during the day. This kinda backfires on the weekends if I stay up late, I end up sleeping till midday and then nap after only being awake for a few hours. It’s relaxing and refreshing for sure, but I feel super unproductive afterward, kind of like I’ve wasted the day.  I guess that’s  my prerogative on the weekend.  If I want to fall asleep on the couch watching Star Trek on my day off, then who’s going to stop me? I have taken a bunch of pictures in my spare time, some of my favorites are below.

This couple was nice enough to let me take pictures of them looking over the water.

I saw this sitting on a bench by itself, and the picture turned out much better than I thought it would

This is one of the shots I use on my calling cards

I really enjoy these clouds

So I made my first expedition yesterday explicitly to take photos. It was such a nice day after work I went to the Bellevue Downtown Park. Earlier in the year I’d seen Monsters vs. Aliens there at a summer movie festival and really liked the architecture of the stairs down to the lawn, but hadn’t seen much beyond that since it was nearly dark when we arrived.

It’s a very nice park, I arrived there a little after 5pm, started with my Sigma 24.0-60.0 mm lens with a lot of goals for the day. My primary focus was to practice shooting in Av mode, giving the aperture priority and working on getting the depth of field I want.  My second primary goal was to work on shot composition, because all the camera settings in the world don’t matter if you don’t have a good subject. Over the course of shooting I found it necessary to take shots multiple times because with longer exposures I get shaky. I’d like a tripod so I can shoot more in Tv mode (shutter priority). I was cognizant of getting the shot right when it was taken, rather that post-processing them on advice from an enforcer buddy.  I’ll go over some of the shots I really like or learned things from below, the whole album is available here on my flickr.

This was my first shot of the day and I really like it. I got the depth of field I wanted (blurry background and focused foreground). I’m gonna touch it up and remove the poo in photoshop, but I like the way it came out.

This shot I was trying to do a wide depth, where everything is in focus. I think this shot captures the landscaping and structure of the park really well.

I like the way the buildings stick out behind the trees, it almost looks like it’s growing out of them.

Another depth of field practice, I was trying to highlight the way the architecture and cityscape balanced with the park instead of being a stark contrast.

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Obligatory Flag shot.

This was me experimenting with shutter speed priority. There’s more falling water later in the park that I try this again on

This cool sculpture was off to the side

These branches look almost like fingers to me.

A wide view of the entrance to the park. I love those lampposts.

The Bellevue skyline to the northeast of the park.

Another try at timing to capture the water falling.

This canal goes around the whole park and ends in a pond. The pond was empty while I was there, I’m not sure why.

I had a lot of fun walking around, most of the time I had headphones in & was listening to Deadmau5, but for a few minutes I turned it off and listened to the people in the park. I already took my second outing today, with another 200 shots. Post should be up this weekend.

As the name may indicate, I started this blog to deal with the free time on nights that I had difficulty sleeping. At the time, they were common, almost half the week. Since then, I’ve changed almost everything in my life except my job, and as a whole, I’ve been sleeping better. Because of my job, I’ve sort of grown tired of sitting at my PC and typing, or even sitting at my PC in general. The end product of all these factors is that I’ve gone two months without updating my blog.

Perhaps when Becky is overseas I’ll post more to keep a lifeline to home open, and to stave off my loneliness. I guess Robert can help with that too, probably. Until now I’ve believed that my ability to write was the creative outlet that I had the most talent in, but I’ve been the most interested in attempting to convey the visual aspect. To that end, I have acquired a DSLR camera & a couple lenses to compose with. Expect to see photos posted here & on my flickr as I learn to use this powerful new tool.

I’m growing tired, and I could say that I’m going to update more frequently, but I can’t really promise that. It may be another two months, but hopefully not.

Was working on a Civil War: War Crimes post, but have been super-sick the first few days of the week. It’s coming, just want it to be decent.