The Umbrella Man

Umbrella Man
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Nick Gaitan has a new musical project (in addition to The Octanes) called The Umbrella Man.

I caught them at a lively live performance this past Saturday night at Dean’s Credit Clothing.

The sound is a mix of swing jazz, blues, ska, and country and features Patrick Wheeler on drums, Hillary Sloan on the fiddle along with guitarists Johnny Rojas and Jeremy Peña, saxophone player Nathan Smith and accordion player Robert Rodriguez.

The sound is rich and complex and they are well worth listening to if you get a chance to see them live.

More pics in the gallery.

Joy

We went to Galveston on Sunday to get out in the wonderful mid-70’s temps and bountiful sunshine.

It was also a great opportunity to get out and shoot some pictures. I’m still processing from the weekend but should have some updates coming soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to share this picture Cynthia got. I just love it, and not just because it’s of me (although it’s a contributing factor).

Sure, it shows I am a lot grayer in the beardal area these days, but the expression of pure joy on my face would tend to indicate I don’t much care about such things.

Plus I don’t have many shots with the new glasses so you might just consider this a facial recognition update.

The Slanket

I was browsing Jeff Balke’s blog and caught his post about a thing called a “Slanket”

From the Slanket web site:

The Slanket is a Gigantic fleece blanket with loose, oversized sleeves so you never feel constricted and you have total control of how to use them, while staying toasty. The Slanket is made of a thick and warm 310 gsm fleece that feels very soft on the skin. The slanket is great on a couch, a chair, in a hammock, on your bed or anywhere else you care to take it.

What a revolutionary idea!

This has to be the most exciting development in blanket technology since the invention of the electric blanket.

I contacted the folks who make The Slanket about getting my hands on one to review for Technology Bytes and they quickly and kindly obliged me with a forest green Slanket.

There’s nothing Cynthia likes more than being warm and comfortable. She gets a modest amount of use out of her electric blanket which I got her for Christmas in 2001 and I figured she would be the best arbitor of the pros and cons of this new technology.

Here you can see Cynthia with The Slanket browsing her favorite web site, Amazon.com.

As you can see, The Slanket allows her to spend our life savings on more books while she remains toasty warm and snug as a bug in a rug.

Cynthia is a Slanket convert and, as of this writing, refuses to return The Slanket to me.

Ah well, we’ll just consider it an early anniversary present.

Signs of Spring

Signs of Spring
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Up until a few months ago I did not know the word “bokeh.”
Then Shari came by and commented on one of my photographs and said “All really nice, but especially lovely bokeh on the first one” which sent me to Google for some research.

Turns out that attractive blurriness has a name! Well what do you know?

I’ve always liked it but never really thought about it as a concept, rather I saw it as a byproduct or artifact.

Now it’s something I like to strive for in certain shots. This one I accomplished with the new 75-300mm lens at the full 300mm focal length and close range. The thumbnail is designed to make the picture fit easily within the blog. You should really click for the full sized version to see the picture as intended.

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