yes, i’ve been slacking on the posts

there’s just a lot of crap going on, what can i say?

1. weighing pros and cons to refitting our existing oil-fired boiler with a natural gas conversion burner vs. leaving it alone vs. totally new energy efficient boiler
2. trying to find a way to get additional BTUs into our kitchen which is a lot colder than the rest of the house
3. considering the costs and benefits of a fireplace insert
4. determining if the new water heater shall be a traditional tank design or a tankless “on demand” type
5. returning the microwave i bought for crissy because it has died within a month
6. finishing off the no-interest-loan application for lead-painted-window removal and replacement costs
7. determining where crissy’s car is slowly leaking power steering fluid from
8. finding money for, finding best price for, ordering, and installing a new wideband oxygen sensor in my subie
9. finishing off practice/rehearsal space in the basement of the garage for the band
10. working out a final parts/materials list for backyard deck project

fucking life is a pain in the ass, isn’t it? especially when you’re “handy” and try to do as many things yourself as you can.

anyway, here are a couple of pictures:

^^^ that’s charlotte’s friend alena on a swing. i was aiming for a low-fi black and white look.

^^^ kristen and i when we were chubby with pregnancy weight. i gained about 12 lbs during the gestation. my weight outside of that time has been +/- 5lbs for the last 18 years.

^^^ crazy 3 year old on collision course!!

^^^ my good friend (and the only other guy i’d trust to work on my car), ted foose on a chairlift with me during a squall.

rooftop

rooftop, originally uploaded by ride5000kag.

this was taken at sunset from the rooftop of the long wharf inn, in newport, ri.

image was stitched from nine 8mp jpegs with PTGui Pro, a commercial panoramic software package. basically you take your individual photos, and load them into the software. the software attempts to locate “key points” which are visible in more than one shot, and uses those points to transform and merge the individual photos together into one large one.

slight levels adjustment in PS post processing.

click here to see the original, fullsize version.

me, on the stairs

Motivational Posters

for about 342 more of them, click here.

DSC07141-crop-bw-bord

DSC07141-crop-bw-bord, originally uploaded by ride5000kag.

well i’ve got 60 or so photos up at flickr now. to get to my “photostream,” use the tab on the top of my site.

there is quite a bit of handy interaction between flickr and wordpress.

for example, i am actually typing this post into flickr.com after clicking on this gorgeous picture of my wife and selecting “blog this.” you have to input some authentication information to flickr to be able to do this, but i see it as being pretty handy. if i come across ANY photo by ANYONE that i think is bloggable, i just hit the menu and start typing in my post. no need to navigate back to my blog and then start a new post and then cut and paste a thumbnail PLUS link back to flickr. pretty fucking slick imho.

there is also a wordpress plugin that allows you to insert pictures from your flickr photostream via the “add media” function. this time you tell WP your flickr info and generate a “key” of sorts that it uses to scrape the picture info and paste it into your post as an html link. the name of the software i’m using is Wordpress Media Flickr.

so this picture here was shot in my basement some time ago. i left the blackpoint a bit low because i wanted to decrease the contrast a bit. there is some heavy white balance going on and a crop, but beyond that it is unedited. it was shot on a 5mp p&s.