The Blue Angels

This year we were able to travel down to Annapolis, MD to watch the Blue Angels perform their practice run at the United States Naval Academy. We joined up with some friends from the area for the event. It was quite a fun event, with plenty of room for the kids to run around as well as an outstanding day weather-wise. To view some pictures from the event, check out the link: Blue Angels

Photography Ethics?

I was just reading an article out of a special edition of National Geographic that I found kind of interesting. The author was talking about digital photography and emphasizing with great effort, the issue of trust. His point was that with digital photography is it very easy to "manipulate" color, contrast, lighting, and other parts of a photo which can "deceive" the viewer. The idea, he says, is to develop a trust with the viewer of your photo. If you attempt to digitally manipulate a photo with an intent to deceive the viewer, then you are entering "treacherous waters". The author then went on to assure that the photographs in National Geographic are in no way enhanced for this reason.

Personally, as a hobbyist in the field, I'd have to say that anything I want to do with my photos to improve them for my own enjoyment is valid. I also think that if I want to enhance a photo in a way that will make my intentions of the shot more clearer to the viewer, there is nothing wrong with that either. Some people are purists in this field. Anybody else have opinions on that? Feel free to leave some comments.

My First Trip to the Big Apple

This past weekend I was able to go on a two-day trip to New York City with the high school choir. It was a really fun trip. Our itinerary included a concert in St. Paul's Chapel, shopping in Chinatown, dinner in Little Italy, a Broadway show (Phantom of the Opera), a 4 hour tour of the city which included excursions through Central Park and Rockefeller Square, a trip on the Staten Island Ferry (with a view of the Statue of Liberty), lunch and shopping in Times Square, and a visit to the Metropolitan Museum. This was the first time I've ever been to New York City, so I was able to snap some photos. I've only put about 1/6 of those on our photo page. Feel free to check them out.

The scary thing about computers.

Have you ever seen those "end of the world" movies where the computers crash and pandemonium breaks out and people start raiding stores, etc.? Yesterday I was going through the self-checkout of the local grocery store when the kiosk I was using crashed on me. Suddenly, I noticed that other people had concerned looks on their faces. As I scanned the faces of the cashiers, I realized that their machines had crashed. It was then that the manager called all of the store staff to the front of the building and was giving them frantic instructions. This was going on, of course while the lines were beginning to build with confused customers with huge piles of groceries.

There was an announcement made that they were experiencing a computer issue and it would be fixed momentarily. Well, 10 minutes later it was still not fixed. I overhead one employee tell another that not only had the store's computers gone offline, but the entire chain of grocery stores in the area were experiencing the exact same problem at the exact same time. Needless to say, I had to get back to work, so I left my stuff and walked out.

This experience kind of woke me up to the reality of how much of what we do everyday is relied upon the use of computers. If ever a Y2K situation ever occurred, I think we'd be seeing a major catastrophe. Humans have been too conditioned and dependent on machines for operating in every day life. Kind of scary.

Embarassment

If anyone feels like an idiot for blogging, its me. My new job has made blogging very difficult to do regularly. This is the reason for the lack of posts. Oh, and my evaluation of Vista? Nevermind. It lasted about two weeks, and then I realized that Windows Vista had nothing to offer me that I couldn't already get elsewhere.

So lets move on. I've been attempting to try and find a lazy man's way of posting photos on the internet without really dealing with managing a website and such. I found that Google has a nice offering with Picasa's web pages. I get to easily select the photos and upload them in a matter of a few clicks. I love this. Its so easy. So what's the url for our pictures? Here you go:

http://picasaweb.google.com/abjurina/

You can go there to see our pictures from time to time. Now that the weather is nice, we'll be taking shots pretty often, and I'll try to keep it updates much more often than my blog. In any case, if you read this blog, you've now got a way to check out pictures now and again. I'll try and get the blogging going more often once the school year calms down a bit. Its going to be a busy summer, but I want to continue the writing as much as possible. Also, if you are into technology at all, you can keep up with my other blog at http://hersheychristiantech.wordpress.com. I mainly write on topics of technology that are relevant to the parents and school community, but there might be some good jewels there for somebody.