Bolivar Ferry

As mentioned previously, Cynthia and I went to Bolivar on whim a few Saturdays ago when the sun was bright and the sky was blue.

I managed to talk her into riding the ferry which was an accomplishment in and of itself since she HATES boats.

She actually ended up enjoying the experience and it was a great opportunity to take pictures.

—–

I am the mighty Sea Grackle!

See me dance my Sea Grackle dance!

Aren’t you Seagulls impressed?

Well? Aren’t you?

St. Pats gone for another year

As mentioned previously, the band had a busy schedule for St. Paddy’s day this year. The Wholefoods gig was surprisingly fun and there were some old fans in attendance which was very nice.

Saturday we knew we taken on a lot. Downbeat was 8:00 am at Brian O’Neill’s so we all met up there around 7:00 am. Spirits were high as we prepared for our 4 hour show.

If you ever want to see another side of St. Paddy’s day, go to an Irish breakfast. There were quite a few people present and many were getting off to an early start with a hardy breakfast Guinness or two.

Goose’s Acre after that for another 4 hour show and we wrapped up at The Big Top and did a few hours then packed it in and headed to the house to get some much needed sleep.

Sunday Morning Cynthia and I slept in a little bit, but not much. We had to take care of a few things before heading over to Jones Hall to attend a performance by the Houston Symphony. We had been invited to be the guests of someone we had met previously at the Chieftains concert.

The program included Bernstein’s Overture to Candide and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 featuring pianist Yuja Wang in the first half and Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story to wrap it up. The seats were up close and personal and it was a very enjoyable experience.

It’s been a long time since I can remember being this tired.

I blog alone

I’ve installed the Podpress plugin for WordPress.
This means you can automatically pick up any audio content I post on this site as a podcast. Just add the RSS feed of this site to your iTunes and your iPod will do the rest.

The Podpress plugin also allows readers of this blog to play audio content I post to the site right inside the post, streaming in REAL TIME! No more waiting on a download.

If you are viewing this from the main URL (www.baldheretic.com) you should see a Podpress player at the top of this entry. Just click the play button and the song I have posted will start playing.

To test my new feature I have uploaded a song called I Blog Alone by M. Spaff Sumsion over at spaff.com

I’ve also included the lyrics below:

I BLOG ALONE
Parody of Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”

PERFORMED BY ROBERT LUND
Download MP3 (3.4 MB)

I spill my guts online
At live dot home dot blog my name dot com
No one hits my site
But it’s home to me and I blog alone

I dish out brilliant quotes
On the blogger board of broken links
Guess who leaves me notes?
Yes, I’m the only one and I blog alone

I blog alone
I blog alone

I blog alone
I blog a-

I work all
Day to make the Web admire me
It’s not my
Job; if my boss knew, she’d fire me
That’s fine; the
New York Times would beg to hire me
Till then I
BLOG ALONE

Bla-ah, bla-ah, bla-ah, blah-og
Bla-ah, bla-ah, blah-og

I mock celebrities,
Politics and sports and TV shows
Then I Google me
And hope it links to where I blog alone

I can’t sleep at night
Even on vacation far from home
I pull up my site
To know I’m still online and I blog alone

I blog alone
I blog alone

I blog alone
I blog a-

My only
Friends are avatars and smileys
I humbly
Post my views then praise them highly
Some day I’ll
Sell my soul like Bill O’Reilly
Till then I
BLOG ALONE

Bla-ah, bla-ah, bla-ah, blah-og
Bla-ah, bla-ah

I blog alone
I blog alone

I unmask media lies
On the blogger board of broken links
Guess who leaves replies?
Yes, I’m the only one and I blog alone

Hey, look, they
Praised me in the News on Sunday
My site got
Thirteen million hits in one day
Okay, I
Lied, but that could happen some day
Till then I
BLOG ALONE

Good Morning Houston

So the interview on ABC 13 went well, I think. 2 minutes and 27 seconds was the total time. You can view it on Jeff Ehling’s blog by clicking here.

I enjoyed the experience. The staff that makes up the Sunday morning crew made me feel welcome and at ease. Elissa Rivas conducted the actual interview and she made it very pleasant.

When the interview was over Mark Garay (who, by the way, was wearing tennis shoes behind the anchor desk) asked me to stop by and speak with Carmin the producer on my way out. I figured they must want me to sign something or I don’t know what, but I stopped by. No paperwork, oh no. Carmin was having a computer problem and they wanted my assistance.

Turns out that Carmin’s workstation was having a problem with the time change. This was the computer she was using to manage the current on air program with all the various time blocks, story segments, commercial breaks and so forth and every couple of minutes it was reverting back to pre-DST time after she would manually set it to the correct time.

My guess expert opionon was that it must be synching to an NTP server and also not have the current software update to allow it to sort out the time change.

How ironic. Here we are making light of the Y2K7 problem and how it’s no big deal and the very show hosting the interview is in danger of collapsing in a Microsoft-induced DST wormhole.

There’s no way to patch the machine what with it being used to mange a live program. It would have to wait till after the show and wait for one of the ABC IT staff as I was on my way out the door.

It was a great fun and I hope to do more work with ABC in the future.

I’m learnding

One of the the things I am really enjoying about photography is the learning. It’s a sense of wonder and awe at the myriad ways you can capture an image in any given circumstance.

I tend to get very single-minded sometimes. I find a facet and I explore it and develop it with an almost tunnel vision like approach. That’s pretty well evidenced in my concert photography which is really just an extension of my love of nighttime and low-light photography.

What’s cool to me is that I can be browsing the web and reading a friend’s blog or maybe just stumble across some photography site and see something that catches my interest.

Case in point

I saw a post from from fellow shutterbug Satyr on his blog that was showing off some pictures he had just taken with his new 70mm 2.8 macro lens. The shot that caught my eye was a macro of a fly.

Now I had a rudimentary knowledge of what macro photography was, but I had not really explored it. Also known as life-size magnification, macro photography requires a lens that will allow you to get very close to your subject and still be able to attain focus. The more zoom the lens has, the more the subject is magnified.

What struck me is that he was shooting with a 2.8 70mm lens and I happen to have a 28-75mm 2.8 lens. It’s a Tamron AF 28-75mm f2.8 XR Di and right there on the lens it says “Macro” so I figured I should have the ability to shoot macro without much problem and with similar results.

I had originally bought the lens for low-light photography but I was now having a moment of enlightenment. Exactly the kind of thing that makes this hobby so much fun for me.

I dug out the lens and attached it to my camera and went into the backyard looking for a bug. I didn’t find any interesting enough so I settled on the trumpet flowers that are now blooming quite enthusiastically in the garden.

Trumpet Flower
Click for full size (it’s well worth it)

So thanks to Satyr for the inspiration and the information. He’s also the one who offered the most useful tips regarding concert photography so that’s two I owe him.

Reminded once again that I have a face for radio

I got an e-mail from my friend over at ABC13.COM. He wanted to know if I was available to be interviewed by Jeff Ehling who’s the consumer reporter for the local ABC affiliate here in Houston. They were doing a piece on the proper way to delete data and dispose of old computers.

Unlike certain “experts”, I don’t make a lot of television appearances. I love doing radio, but when it comes to putting my face in the spotlight I get a very nervous. Still, I am always looking to promote what I do in my capacity as producer and host of Technology Bytes so I agreed.

Jeff did a great job of putting me at ease and asked some very good questions which I was able to answer without much hesitation.

Judging by the smiles I must have been cracking some jokes to ease my tension. I’m like a deer in the headlights when there’s a video camera aimed at me.

Watching a TV reporter has always been fascinating to me. Live interactive radio is what I am good at. Producing canned pieces for later airplay is not one of my strengths. Here you see Jeff doing a teaser piece to promote the story. It’s that thing they play before the commercial break to keep you from changing the channel.

Jay Lee in HD. Looks like I made a good choice wearing the blue shirt and my new glasses look great.

The beard could sure use a trim, though.

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