Blog

i said i needed to start blogging links, so…

over there on the sidebar, first we have my contact info, then site/blog-related stuff, then the local interest (albuquerque area) stuff, then the chatterbox (which not nearly enough people use), then my most-recommended links on a variety of topics, then the “Looking At” list…
“Looking At” is a candidates links list… things that i am meaning to return to, may add to the main links section, or maybe just intend to have there temporarily… this list is ALWAYS changing… i have a button in my browser that can just quickly add a link to that list… and i use that button A LOT… so much so that the list is usually pretty darned long and there is no real order to the links…
so, i am thinking of cleaning some of them out, but, i am going to post them so i don’t lose them forever… most of them, i still haven’t decided if they are worthy of adding to the main links section… but, if i haven’t added them by now, it won’t hurt to take them off that list… and if i post them, they will permanently be in the blog post archive and i can find them again using the search box…

i am thinking of cleaning it up by category and, as the title of this post suggests, i am starting with all the coffee/espresso links… others will hopefully follow eventually, as i get to them…

i am not going to give full descriptions, just copying them straight from the list, so, whatever it said there is what it will say here…

It’s All About Coffee: Anatomy of American Espresso

crema troubleshooting overview with pics!

Google Search: espresso temperature surfing

CoffeeKid

Espresso! My Espresso! – An Ongoing Internet Novelette

INeedCoffee – Recipes

Virtual Coffee: Judging Expresso Extraction by Crema

Schomer’s Table: The Denver Effect

List of Galleries of Drops and Splashes [via fark]

AudioBooksForFree.com

Duke City Fix » The City Bus Diaries

in many ways, i miss the bus… we used to take it all the time in cali… sometimes i would just get my walkman, catch a bus, take it to the end of the route and then take it back home… “two dollar therapy” we called it (a buck each way)…
anyway, i think this article nails it and there are some poignant comments, as well…

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[i should start blogging links more often… i always just add any interesting link to the “looking at” section over there on the right, qute a ways down, but, no one ever sees those… and a link can go over there for a wide variety of reasons… anyway, i just grabbed the “Press It” bookmarklet and this is my first use of it…]

eh, i’m getting there…

at about 5am on saturday morn, billy, tara, chelsey, and angela came to my place, and we all hung out and waited on luke and asbel to arrive…

the rest of the story will be told later, once i have pics sorted and uploaded… i have mine and billy’s and they are sorted for the most part but I’M STILL WAITING ON LUKE’S (hint hint!!)… once i get luke’s i will sort them, make albums from all three sets, upload, and then i will post…

i love this one so much, i just had to make a post…
it was just posted yesterday by phrog8v8r to the AIBF flickr pool…

*right click, save as, set as wallpaper* 🙂

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and, btw, not to take away from that pic, but while i am pointing out pics, this is one of the coolest special shapes i have ever seen… and be sure to read the comments under it…

and this one is like Skies of Arcadia come to life…

just to save any more confusion:
THIS IS THE MAIN LINK TO ALL MY AIBF PICS

there, you will see a folder with the pics andy and i took on saturday the 1st and the folder with a few quick pics i got on sunday the 2nd and monday the 3rd… there is one vid, this album creator calls it a directory, right click and save as to view it, it is a pan of the mass ascension from the back door of my church, nothing special…
i also added a few from this new collection to my flickr photostream and from there added a couple each to the three groups i am in…

because of my schedule, i will probably not have any new pics until this saturday… and i hope we don’t get rained out…

anyway, speaking of flickr, i was thoroughly surprised to get an invite to a new flickr group called “New Mexico Photos by New Mexico Photographers“, which has an emphasis on scenery and we all know i take a lot of those 😛
anyway, of the currently four other members, i am very humbled, beginning to wonder why i even bother to pick up a camera, those folks have some breath-taking photography… click on the members list at the group and browse some of their collections…
(maybe i should have taken that photography class the DOL offered to pay for…)

The pics are finally up!

not as good as the pics i made last year, but, meh…

i used the Experience skin again and it is annoying no end that it labels videos as directories… i even added comments to the vids, so the comments would appear under the icon, but, it didn’t do that… so, you will have to keep that in mind… i do recommend the vids, there are some good ones this time… also, remember, my host is weird about streaming, wants me to put them under a subdomain and such, so, you will have to right click, save as and view them on your computer…

also, this time i have sort of a guest photog… as mentioned in the last post, Andy Shreck went with me and took a bunch of pics himself, so, there is a folder of my selections from the pics he took… he has the entire collection in his possession, but alas, no site of his own, no flickr account, nothin’…
for the record, as i was sorting through all the pics (from a collection of over 500, i whittled down to 177 pics and vids) i was more and more certain that he took better pics than i did 🙁
anyway, i also added a few that i took to my flickr photostream and added a couple each to the three flickr groups i am in…

while i was playing around in flickr, i went ahead and grabbed the flash “flickr badge”, which is fairly cool… see it over on the sidebar right above the albuquerque section… i may or may not keep it…

anyway, i am hoping for no wind on saturday so i can get much better pics…

oh, and not only are all the photos in albums, i added comments to many of them, rather than write up a whole blog post, pointing out certain pics… you will see a truncated version below the thumbnails and the whole comment when you view the screen size version…
i took a few today hanging out behind the church and will have a whole new batch saturday, so, i will force myself to learn how to add albums to the one already there and will post when they are up…

went with andy this morning – his first time to ever see the aibf, he has lived here less than a year…

it was spectacular, breathtaking, and awesome except for one very major thing…

the wind was very bad and blew the balloons away pretty much as soon as they were off the ground… those who remember my posts from last year recall me talking about how we were totally surrounded by hundreds of balloons and that just wasn’t the case this time… it was still great, but, i am looking forward to hopefully a less windy day next time…

andy and i took about 500 pics (and i took a few vids) and i have them all on my comp, but, they need to be sorted and uploaded, and i seriously doubt i will get to that tonight, unfortunately… if i do, i will post, of course…

next saturday, i load up the lockmans in the van (and anyone else who wants to come) and it will be a group trip… the lockmans have seen aibf once (now twice) from their house (they have a fantastic view from their backyard in rio rancho around northern and 528), but, never from the field… really looking forward to that trip…

Edit:

while waiting for my pics to go up (i am sorting them now, have them down to less than 200), go check out this great, well-written short bit posted today about this morning’s mass ascension on Eucatastrophe (a blog i have been watching as a candidate for my abq links; as you may have noticed it has been on my “looking at” list over there on the right for a little while now) that takes an angle i absolutely love and wish i had thought of first 😛
it’s called People Fiesta at the Balloon Fiesta…

well, since i am about to have quite possibly hundreds of balloon pics, i figured i’d better knock out the september pics early (on time)…
i used jalbum again, but, this time i used the Experience skin… it lacks a few things, but, i keep having java errors with ExhibitPlus, the one i really love (i used it last month and for all the 2002 collections)…
leave me some feedback on this album skin, there are so many to choose from, but, i only like a few and would like to keep trying different ones…
this one is ok… has a nice overall layout… exhibitplus has many cool features (like a slideshow), but, i keep having errors when i try to use it, and it runs very slow…
keep in mind that you will see the albums and the thumbnails, click on the thumbnails for a screensize of the pic, then, click on the screensize for the original… i even added comments to a few of them this time…
i notice this skin labels vids as folders for some reason, btw…

this month includes some balloon pics (some things never change), a few from the chaos at the gas station across from the santa ana casino, helping jeff and justin move into their new place, the geeky fun had with justin’s new computer, a couple of the weather balloon, a few of my new van, and a few of a night hanging out in paulette’s kitchen…
and of special note to some are Nathan Sampson’s 4th Birthday Party and The Church Barbeque – you know who you are…

annnyway, with no further ado, you may now proceed to the September 2005 photos…

and coming soon will be all the AIBF 2005 pics and i expect to spend a lot of time there, not just viewing from my apt this time…
last year, i was one of several bloggers who covered it, you can re-live the posts back on the old website by browsing through my posts from september 2004, where i also posted plenty of links to great stuff about the AIBF in general and october 2004 where my actual coverage is posted, of course, none of my pics are there anymore… still, some decent writing, if i do say so myself 😛

also soon btw, i have pics from andy shrek, one of the brave souls from my church who went to help out in lousiana… he snapped a few while there and i will have those up eventually and hopefully a guest post by him…