domesticat

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...It must be true.

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Consider this portion of yesterday's twitter traffic... [chat log follows at domesticat.net]

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If I had to guess, I was six. Maybe. Too young for such things at the time, too young for such things even now, in an age of technologized children. I was young, and my memories took longer than most to root, so I do not remember a time when I did not know the inner workings of a camera...

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I took a snapshot of my Wordle, which is a neat, artistic representation of my tags on del.icio.us:



See full-size version on flickr

That would make an awesome shirt...

Spotted thanks to offensive_mango

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The good news is that my retinas are okay. The bad news? None really; my vision is stable for the second year in a row and my eyes are fine. I'll call that a win in just about any playbook.

I had a scary incident a few weeks ago. The vision in the central portion of my right eye blurred and began to do what I can only describe as 'sparkle.' There was no pain and no other change, just an area the shape of a crescent moon in my central field of vision that was strangely prismatic.

It went away that same afternoon. Geof was right to question my blood pressure -- low as usual -- and there were no side effects.

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At long last, it's happened -- the final two drupal modules I've been hoping would be upgraded to version 6.x have received those upgrades. I am now making preparations to make the major leap from drupal version 5.x to 6.x.

In the tradition of all upgrades, this is surely going to cause cat.net to explode. However, better cat.net than my workplace's site. Fewer of you are likely to call my house in outrage.

At least, I'd like to think that's the kind of relationship we have, right?

More updates when we're^H^H^H^H^I'm done. [send tea plz?]

Update, 9:30pm local time: We're not fully back up, but the site is upgraded and most of the modules are functional again. %*@&)! gravatars.

Update, 10:00pm local time: Gravatars still dead. Alphabetical archives live. Monthly archives grring at me. %*@&)! gravatars.

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I hauled myself out of the house on a gorgeous, clear Father's Day and drove to the eastern side of Huntsville for an afternoon of photography.

Photos after the cut, so as not to make my entire front page explode. Full set is available on flickr as usual.

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One a.m.

"This is a good life," I whisper to myself. I'm not certain I always believe it, but tonight I think I do.

Stephen's DCTV shoot was today; I got up this morning and headed cross-town with Jeff for a taping of scenes for a live-action version of 'Code Monkey.' I tired rapidly in the latter half of the shoot, and was grateful when Stephen rearranged the shoot order to get the backing band (read: Jeff, among others) finished up.

Dinner was at 5:30 at Stephen and Misty's. We didn't get home until a little after four, and I suspected I was making an imprudent choice when I lay down for a nap, but I did it anyway.

I woke up nearly five hours later, and was grateful to learn that jeff had brought back some of Misty's soup for me. I ate it on the couch while re-watching a favorite TV episode with Jeff. We talked, absently, of our upcoming trip to Seattle. Of food. Of life in general.

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I finally remembered to add gravatars to cat.net. Logged-in users only, though.

If you don't have one, you can make one very easily at gravatar.com.

If you do have one, then look to the right and find the "my account" link in the right sidebar. Edit your info, scroll down to the bottom part of the page, and check the option that says 'Use my gravatar in comments.'

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I got my new toy last night -- the Nikon 20mm f/2.8 wide-angle lens. We're still sniffing each other and making friends, but Wendy was nice enough to let me shoot three photos of her over lunch today that give a pretty good idea of how different the world appears through each of these lenses.

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A bit of a laugh just now. Someone in the sysadmin chatroom pointed me to this thread on aethereverywhere, detailing how to discover your band name, album title, and album artwork. I rather liked mine.

Parviz Parastui's "Trifling Investment of Fact"
[photo 'Wednesday, not Wednesday!' by {manda}]

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A question arose from last night's conversation. I've been surprised to learn that a few of my friends have been fascinated by my Travails of the Fountain Pen™ and would be interested in giving a fountain pen a try.

Are you one of those people? Let me know in the comments. I might -- just might -- have a plan. So far I've given pens to two people, and instance #3 is in progress. Last night's conversation makes me wonder if there are more of you out there than I realized.

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As I just said to someone via IM: I'm not sure if concert shooting is fun in spite of, or because of, the crappy conditions. The showier performers are constantly in motion. The lighting is either spectacular or terrible, depending on the half-second; low ambient light combined with frequent bright flashes mean you're waiting for those magic moments when light, motion, and melody sync together.

The burn rate of digital photos at concerts is horrendously high. I started shooting concerts because they forced me to think outside my careful-composition box: shoot, shoot, keep trying, trust that you're going to delete 90-95% of what you take but you won't get that magic photo without trying.

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I'd been threatening to do something like this for months, and finally got around to it.

Admittedly, this photo is slightly inaccurate, since I had a trim shortly thereafter:

I was ready for a change, and when a co-worker with very curly hair showed up with a great cut, I asked her for her stylist's name: Bobbie. I scheduled an appointment before I could change my mind, and even as I walked in the door of the salon, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.

She was skater-punk and tattooed, and had a simple, tousled, comfortable-looking haircut. We talked about what had gone right -- but mostly wrong -- in prior haircuts. I showed her my driver's license photo to give her an idea of how much my hair curled when handled well. I mentioned that I was looking for a change, but had a family wedding in a month and a half, and needed to make sure that I was salvageable by then.

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Way #6 you know you're a public servant: you vote in primary races, and recognize the names on the smaller races, because they're the people that fund the organization you work for.

As a child, there was a mystique about voting, since I didn't go inside when my parents voted. Voting was a secret rite of passage into adulthood, like buying car tags or knowing what engine part needed replacing even without checking under the hood. For years I wondered what happened behind those doors, and when finally inducted into that secret, opinionated society, I was a little disappointed at how simple and mundane it really was.

[photo: sign outside voting area]

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My thoughts on last night's final primaries, and the speeches given in their aftermath? A single meta-quotation suffices. Oliver Cromwell, to the Long Parliament, and more famously requoted by Leo Amery to Neville Chamberlain:

You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

[source]

Or, in lolspeak:

Git, kthxbai? Srsly.

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They've been piled haphazardly on a shelf next to my desk for nearly a decade, and I knew I'd have to tackle them eventually. Two weeks ago, I decided it was time; scooping up all the ones I'd found, I hurried to work and then dropped them off during my lunch hour.

Nineteen rolls of film. I knew what most of them were; I'd had 18 of them developed years before. Once scanned to photo CD, I could then upload the hi-res versions to flickr, swapping them out for my low-res versions on domesticat one directory at a time.

Ask people what they would save in a fire, and you will hear the same refrain of answer over and over again. Pictures. Photos. Snapshots. Wedding photos, baby photos, ancestor photos; they're as irreplaceable as they are priceless. (In reality? It's wishful thinking. When your world is aflame, you save yourself and hope for the best -- says she who came out of a burning house holding her glasses and one shoe.)

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I think we should declare May 1 to be Jonathan Coulton Day.

This will make perfect sense to any of you who have heard this song.

Words, general sentiment, etc. not suitable for children.

Great. Now I have to get some OTHER song in my head. I'll let you know when that happens.

Oh, and for those of you who missed her this weekend in Atlanta, this is what my mother looks like:

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For my friends in Atlanta, you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity coming up this weekend.

I'll be in Atlanta this weekend. With my mother.

Want to join us for a memorable dinner in which you get to sit at the table and threaten me by offering to tell her all the juicy, dirty stories we both know you know about me?

Saturday night, yo.

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I've got two people willing to play along with the book swap, and haven't asked at work yet. Anyone else? I need to either tag up or bow out in the next couple of days. See http://domesticat.net/node/1494 for info.