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Tag: pics/photos

  • november pics posted (and site fixed!)

    ok, i finally posted the rest of the photographic miscellany from november…
    this month, i have finally begun something i have thought about doing for awhile… pretty much every month i post pics of hot air balloons i see from my balcony, but, this month i now have the pic with the name of that balloon, the home city, and pilot… there is no website i can find that is a visual guide to balloons and that’s a shame because they are all unique vessels with their own story, etc., so, i intend to start posting the name and other info about every balloon i get a pic of… i would love for enthusiasts who know something i don’t to post what they know… thanks to this album maker, every pic has a comments form, so, anyone who wants can post info… there are many balloons that are not in the book i am using for reference, so, every month there will be unknown balloons, if you know who it is, just leave a comment on the pic and let me know… i also know some balloons have a website, so, i also want to start adding links with the pics…
    this could be fun and, if this collection grows large enough, i will make a dedicated section for it…

    i know, scott… i’m a sick man 😛

    ok, that aside, there are less than 40 of the “various” pics this month, mostly from a night at paulette’s…
    click here to view the november pics

    (and, if you didn’t see them previously, november also had a hundred or so pics, most of them amazing, from my flight to L.A. and 62 pics from the church thanksgiving hootenanny…)
    .

    in other news, come to find out my site has been seriously screwed up in internet explorer this whole time and no one told me about it until a couple days ago… my sidebar was loading on the right where it’s supposed to, but all the way at the bottom of the rest of the content… this has now been fixed, thanks to Doug… if i had asked him first, i would not have had to spend half the day pulling my hair out, beating my head on the table, etc…. thanks a bunch, dude!

  • thanksgiving pics up

    so, this is the second year the church has had the “Broken Home Thanksgiving”… this year it was at the Lockmans’ and it was quite an event, the drive-in totals are 59 pics, 3 vids, somewhere between 80 and 100 people, 1 football game, deep fryer fu, electric carving knife fu, and i think the final count was 9 dead turkeys…
    people are already asking for these, so, they’re up, and the rest of my november pics will be up in the next few days…

    i once again used the BluPlusPlus album skin, i have found a winner and am sticking with it… comments can be left on any pic, videos will play right there in your browser, the slideshow mode is pretty darned good, and i used an autumn theme on this album, just to see what it would look like to try something different…

    so, enjoy the pics from The Second Annual Calvary Chapel Rio Rancho Broken Home Thanksgiving…

    all right, roll it…

    (…and we do it all again for christmas!)

  • best pics evar?

    ok, so, i really do honestly believe that the pics i just posted are the best it has ever been my privilege to take… words like ‘breathtaking’ , ‘stunning’, and ‘moving’ come to mind… so many of them will surely be desktop wallpapers for a long time to come (good thing i run dual screens, i can double up on them) and they are already my screensaver photos… and, it was probably the hardest whittling operation i have ever had to do… i took about 100 and could only shave them down to 70… i probably should have just posted them all…

    the content is sunrise on the flight from abq to los angeles… i bounced back and forth between a couple of white balance settings, so, the colors are not always exactly true, but, perhaps that’s where the art of photography comes into play 🙂 to borrow chris dunn’s comment, i was practically directing the scenery to pose, saying “come on! work it!”… it was the most beautiful flight i’ve taken yet and photos can only convey the slightest fraction of the majestic artwork god created that morning… he created it, i can only humbly try to capture some parts of it to share with those who couldn’t be there to see it themselves…

    annnnyway, i might also add that there are pics from the event for which we went to L.A., those do not fall under any of the descriptions above 😛 but, i didn’t put the two sets in separate folders, so, if you watch them all in slideshow mode, your “ooooohs” and “aaaaaahs” will come to a screeching halt when suddenly pictures of bleary-eyed merchandising reps appear… but, ah well…

    i used the “BluPlusPlus” album again and YAY! i figured out how to set up the “viewer remarks” feature!! (bow before my leet php and mysql skillz!) so, you can now add a comment to every single pic you view… sweet…
    anyway, using this album again also mean that means there is a nice layout, a nice slideshow mode, and the vids will actually play for your viewing pleasure… i set the pic slideshow times to 10 seconds and the vids for 45 seconds, it seems to work ok, feel free to leave a comment on how well it worked for your connection speed…

    now, i need to re-do all the collections from the past so they all have these features… but, rest assured, all future pic postings will have all this cool stuff and, sooner or later, i will even set up the slideshow audio commentary…

    anyway, so, on with the show, click here to view the latest photos!

  • ok, the rest of the balloon fiesta pics are up

    i finally got a free night, haven’t had one in a couple of weeks, and i spent it sorting pics, making albums, and uploading them…

    sigh… just look at all i do for you…

    anyway, so, the morning of october 8th, chelsey, billy and tara, and angela, their friend from minnesota came over before the sun came up, luke and asbel were supposed to meet us here, but ran late, so, we had to leave without them… billy and tara have seen a fiesta or two from afar, but never from the field, and angela has never seen it at all…
    we were already running very late, ended up making two stops before we even got really and truly underway, and then there was the disastrous “shortcut” fernando recommended… it is still unproven if it was his fault 😛

    little bits of the story are told in the albums themselves…
    i have given up on getting luke’s pics, so, you will see mine and the pics billy took with andy’s camera… as far as that cam goes (it’s a canon, mine’s a nikon), man, does it get some vibrant colors! however, sometimes they look very oversaturated and downright artificial… oh, and the digital zoom is absolutely hideous and billy used it ALOT… it isn’t his fault, he didn’t know…
    oh, and angela brought a video cam, the non-digital kind that takes, uh, tapes, i believe they are called (how 20th century!) and she really needs to send me a copy! (i know you’re reading this!)

    i didn’t post a whole ton of pics this time, probably less than a hundred, but, there are some cool ones… and, once again the reminder, streaming on this host is not a simple matter, so, when you see a video (i think there is only one in this set, but it’s worth it), right-click, save it, view it on your computer… and remember that you will see thumbnails and, when you click on them, you still only see sized-down versions of each pic, so, if you want the full effect, click on the pics when you see them…

    .
    sooo, anyway, now that the aibf pics are up, that leaves 50 or so pics from the conference in belen, a good 500 or so from the TMEW conference (yes, i said five hundred), and a couple dozen or more various pics i have taken this month still to be sorted, “albumized”, and uploaded and i haven’t any free time until MAYBE the weekend, but, i doubt it…
    we’ll see…

    .
    anyway, another great balloon fiesta with some great people, can’t wait until next year!

    without any further ado, click here to view the final set of pics from the 2005 International Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta (</keyword seeding>)

  • a few more ‘loon pics

    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…)

  • AIBF2k5, day one

    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…

  • august pics now online, with a twist

    i doubt anyone had noticed, but, the first few directories in the photos collection are photo albums… from time to time in the last month or two, i have been toying with JAlbum, this groovy photo album maker… it is very simple, but, a little slow, at least on my leaves-much-to-be-desired machine…

    anyway, so, this month’s pics have gotten the JAlbum treatment as well… i think i need to do more tinkering to get it to come out exactly the way i want it, but, it will do for now and is easier to browse than a directory of numbered pics…
    btw, fernando and renee’s wedding pics are not included in the album, i forgot about that when i made the album and uploaded it… maybe i will re-do it or at least make an album for those by themselves…

    we’ll see…

    anyway, here are the photos i took this month, not as many as usual, but, some interesting ones…
    there are many settings and templates for these albums, i will experiment each month as i hopefully continue to “albumize” every monthly upload of pics, so, leave me feedback about what works, what doesn’t, and/or if you liked it better being just directories of numbered pics…

  • WOO HOO! we finally got a real digital camera!!

    yup, we spent all day yesterday driving all over town, looking for a real cam for the balloon fest tomorrow… long day of comparison shopping at pawn shops, camera shops, even thrift stores…

    the last place we went was a cam shop at the mall across the street from us (after spending some seven hours running all over town) and the guy was great and got us exactly what we wanted… we just told him our requirements, he thought a long moment, reached in the case and pulled out one cam and it turned out to be perfect…

    so, firstly, we want to loudly say BIG THANKS to Wess, the store manager at the Cottonwood Mall Ritz Camera!
    if we had started there, we could have saved ourselves several hours of driving all over town… he was a huge help, very knowledgable, no pushy sales, a real pleasure to do business with!
    he even let us test compatibility with our psion… he took a pic of us on his card, i popped the card in, and it loaded right up…

    ok, so, the camera we got is the Nikon Coolpix 2000…

    everything we wanted (like cf, jpg format, auto-timer, optical zoom, video out) and even does video clips in quicktime format and can make thumbnails of the pics…

    all for NINETY DOLLARS!!

    the next best we were considering was at target, not nearly as good, for $150…

    it is a discontinued model, and we bought their damage protection plan, he claims we can hit it with a hammer and bring it back…

    and we already have two 128mb cf cards for it… (we currently use them in our mp3 players, so, now they will have to do double duty until we get some even bigger cards…)

    but, enough talk, how about some pics, eh?

    i got up at 7:30am (after staying up until 4 playing with the thing) and went downstairs and started getting pics and vids of some of the mountains and balloons and stuff…

    so, to start with, how about that balloon i took pics of yesterday… it went by again today, so, it makes for an excellent comparison example…

    firstly, here is probably the best pic i got of it with the dreameye…

    that was the old and busted, now behold the new hotness…

    and, a close-up using the tightest optical zoom (3x)…

    and those are on the lowest quality setting (1:16 compression) and smallest size (vga, 640×480)…

    and here is a video of it as it vanished from site [QuickTime]…

    now, since this page is pretty heavy already, i am not going to post a bunch of pics here, and i have not yet started using the thumbnails feature it offers…
    sooo, here is where the rest of our first pics and vids are from last night and this morning…
    http://insidiousplots.com/photos/2004-sept-NEWCAMERA/
    i am still uploading stuff and probably will be all day…

    mornings around here are gorgeous with the balloons all over the place and the mist over the mountains and across the city, so, the pics are very much worth taking a look at… there are also a couple vids from last night, like coming down the hill from rio rancho, looking out over abq, which we thought turned out very cool…

    currently, there are pics in all three quality settings, and i took one huge one at the max size and max quality to show what the best this thing can do is (at least, in my unskilled hands)… it is nearly 600k… dpp will not even attempt to load it…

    i see space becoming an issue very soon… however, we will probably be using the lowest quality and smallest size for 99% of the pics…

    btw, speaking of space issues…
       VERY IMPORTANT:
    these vids are like 4-6mb each, they will NOT stay for long (only a few hours), see them while you can, save them if you ever want to see them again, they will be deleted before tomorrow… we are keeping a copy of everything on videotape, but, not the files themselves, we just don’t have the room…
    and remember that they will be trickling in probably all day… i am uploading something like 30mb of vids at this very moment… on dial up 🙁 (so far, it has been taking about 40 minutes each…)

    as you may have noticed, i have created a special directory for all these test pics and vids (/2004-sept-NEWCAMERA)… starting tomorrow, pics and vids will be going in a /2004-oct directory and all balloon fest pic will go in /2004-oct-AIBF, and there should be tons of them as i expect the next ten days we will be taking hundreds of pics of the balloons… who knows how many will be kept, but, the uploading will be probably almost constant…

    we got our first DreamEye on may 25th, 2002, and have used it to take literally hundreds of pics, it has served us well and we loved it so much we even bought a second one a few months ago… but, owning and using them has taught us a lot about digital cams and taking pics, and we simply outgrew it…

    this day is way overdue…

  • new pics uploaded

    took quite a few in this last visit to my parents’ house, and uploaded some that have been sitting on our camera for awhile…
    so, the new ones are in photos/2004-aug, the older are in photos/2004-mayjune, and photos/2004-july is going to stay the way it is, with just four pics in it (from the dead body in the suv incident), i have already linked to those pics, so, it is a bit late to change it…

    anyway, i will comment on some, but not all of the new pics, so, to see them all, follow the links above…
    more importantly, this will be a two-part post… i am posting one part and miss mary is posting the other, so, be sure to read her post as well… (i will remind you of this again at the end of this post, btw…)

    firstly, from the mayjune subdir, the laserdisc turtle…

    i cannot find this image on the net, oddly enough, so, i took a pic of it on our tv… for those not in the know, laserdiscs that only used one side of a disc had this turtle on the other side, as the message in the pic suggests…

    and now on to the more recent pics…


    this is the view from my parents’ back yard… these are the sorts of pics that make me crazy that i still don’t have a real digital camera…

    the reason i went down was to help out while my mom was in hospital, all the pics from the hospital are in the photos/2004-aug subdir and are labelled “GCRMC” (gerald champion regional medical center), but, here are a few i wanted to comment on…


    she did not have a private room like dad did, and there was usually someone in the other bed… that can really ruin your day… one was a woman in moaning pain, the next was a woman with gasping-for-air attacks… mom does really well in the hospital and surgery, so, at times we were more concerned about the person in the next bed…


    the smoking patio… i have spent much time here during my now two hospital visits… smoking is not really allowed on the grounds of the hospital anywhere, but, this is where staff sneaks away to and a nurse pointed it out to me during my first trip…
    you get to meet staff and other family members who are visiting, so, needless to say, you hear some very sad stories…


    this is mom on the last day, waiting to be released… she had her gall bladder removed (same as dad did back in march) and, as usual, bounced back remarkably… she’s a real trooper…


    waiting to be released is boring… they say you are leaving today, then you have to wait for paperwork to be done…

    i think that was all the ones i wanted to comment on, you can see the rest of the pics at the links at the top of this post… or just go to our photos, which are all grouped by date…

    i was there about two weeks and miss mary was there with me for the last week or so, and, on our last day, we went to white sands national monument and took a couple pics…
    as i said above, this is a two-part post, miss mary will tell the white sands story and show the pics, it was her first time there and it was a magnificent experience…