Film Noir Macros

This past Monday the theme in the Macro Mondays group in Flickr was "film noir." I've been watching a lot of film noir in the past year, so I was excited for the theme. Just earlier this week I watched a film noir classic In a Lonely Place with Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. I thought it was a very good, but tense film. I'm biased though as I'm a big Bogart fan due to many of his film noir efforts like Dark Passage, High Sierra, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, etc. and I've always liked Gloria Grahame. She played Violet in It's a Wonderful Life, but I liked her best in the film noir classic The Big Heat. I'm not a huge Glenn Ford fan, but The Big Heat is a great film and Gloria gives a solid performance.

Although I was familiar with the style, I wasn't sure how to do that in a macro. The film noir look is also a very different style of photography than I'm used to shooting so it was a challenge to get the right gritty, dark mood. I was happy with the outcome and the first shot made Flickr's Explore.

For my first shot I wanted to capture a murder scene and decided to use a bloody knife at the main subject. I used a piece of tapestry left over from this project as my background. I used concentrated cherry juice as my blood and used a stick to spatter some "blood" on the cloth. It took quite a bit to get a gruesome murder scene look. I also put some on the knife blade and on the handle where the bloody glove would have been holding it. To make the blood stand out in black & white, I used a green filter to enhance the red color (or darken it in b&w). I used a snoot on the flash to localize the light and did some post-processing to even enhance the vignette effect. Here is the result.



For my second shot, I tried to create a photo of items on Sam Spade's desk under light shining through the window from a streetlight or the moon. I wanted to create a shadow effect from the window pane or writing on the window. I was stymied until I discussed it with Dianne and she quickly suggested printing what I wanted on a transparency and then hold that above and shine a light through to create a shadow. She's full of great ideas! So what would Sam have on his desk? Probably a revolver, some cigarettes (which I had to buy), and matches. I used a flashlight with a tight beam to light the scene through the transparency of a skylight window pane. This is borderline macro -- maybe an up close still life. Again I did a little post-processing to enhance the vignette. Here is the result.

Sciatica on the Ropes?

I've been dealing with some bad sciatic pain these last few weeks that has really limited what I can do. I had an MRI a couple weeks ago that showed some degenerative changes in my lower spine that are causing some narrowing of the canals where the spinal cord travels and where the nerve roots branch off going to my left and right leg. The pain/tingling/numbness/muscle weakness is on my left side. It's been especially bad in the morning, consistent with the stenosis diagnosis and the third paragraph of the clinical description on this page. The physician's assistant for the orthopedist was most concerned about my lack of knee reflex on the left side. She even had me do the Jendrassik maneuver with counting backwards to no avail.

This morning I had my first epidural steroid injection. Except for a couple "bee stings" of anesthetic (see this post for my love of that -- this wasn't as bad as the dermatologist), it was just an odd feeling of pressure when the steroid solution was injected. They said it would take 1-3 days to kick in, but I felt considerably better later today (placebo effect?). I'm hoping the sciatic pain is on the ropes. I'm still far from 100%, but if the effect continues I'll be much better off this weekend. I'm hoping it'll be relatively painless to get out of bed tomorrow morning.

Tumblr

Many months ago I signed up for a service called Tumblr. It's a service that creates a content stream that is made up of items pulled from lots of locations that you pick. I have a stream of consciousness site set up that shows everything I post in Blogger, Flickr photos, Twitter tweets, and my del.icio.us links in one spot. It puts out an RSS feed that you can subscribe to if you would like.

Aside from setting up a stream, I haven't done much else with the service. I've poked around at some other people's streams and some are nice. The ones I like are more polished and selective, maybe taking content from one spot or constructing info specifically for Tumblr use so it appears more polished.

Anyone else using it? If so, how?

Photojojo

I remember growing up my Dad kept a diary. It was always interesting to look back at the entries to help recall what he was doing and what his impressions were.

Are any readers using Photojojo? The service looks in your Flickr pool of photos twice a month and emails you a time capsule using photos you took a year ago in that period. I like getting the emails. I know...you could just go in to your Flickr pool of photos and scroll back a year, but how often do you do that? Having the service sure makes it easy. And I don't seem to be getting spammed from it. Check it out if you have shots in Flickr.

Cincinnati Rollergirls -- In The Garden of Beatin'

On Saturday evening, Dianne and I went to the Cincinnati Rollergirls’ event called "In The Garden of Beatin’" at the Cincinnati Gardens. It was a double header event with the CRG team Silent Lambs taking on the Moonshiner team of the Black-n-Bluegrass Rollergirls and the CRG team Black Sheep taking on the Liberty Belles of the Philly Rollergirls. The Silent Lambs won by a score of 77 to 36 and in the WFTDA event the Black Sheep lost to the highly ranked Liberty Belles with a score of 35 to 102.

In the Lamb & Moonshiner bout, I thought the CRG team showed a lot of improvement compared to their first match about a month ago. They seemed to be working together a lot more. Once again, candyKICKass (at right) was zipping around and doing a lot of scoring. Jammers Dr. McDerby and Jungle Lacy did a lot of work and Skates with Fists got to jam as well. The pack was doing a good job too. I have to say I miss seeing Sk8 Crime wearing the jammer star, but she’s becoming quite the pivot! I think GeezLouise won the hardest hit award when she gave a solid shoulder block to a Moonshiner and sent her into the suicide seats. Apparently Louise has been to the Juwana Hurt school of blocking. My favorite photo of the night is the shot below showing Ima Payne pulling Dr. McDerby with a great whip (thanks for doing that right in front of us). You can clearly see her braced and pulling through her shoulder.



The other bout between the Black Sheep and the Liberty Belles was both hard to watch and amazing to see. The Belles had control from the start and it was tough to watch the Belle jammers getting through the pack and scoring while the CRG jammers were getting tied up. I wasn’t keeping notes, but there were at least of few of the early jams where the Black Sheep were scoreless. It took me a while to appreciate what the Liberty Belles were doing to hold the Black Sheep. I thought the Belles’ main strengths were coordination and teamwork in the pack. If their jammer was being held up, a couple skaters shifted position (sped up or slowed down) to throw some blocks, make a hole, and help them get the jammer through. The amazing thing was not all the Belle pack shifted, so there were still blockers to hold back CRG’s jammer. I couldn’t tell how they were communicating and maybe there wasn’t much – just the experience coming through. That ability to dynamically and quickly assess the situation, shift position, and work together was amazing and really fun to watch. The photo below illustrates the Liberty Belles positioned and looking to slow CRG jammer Hannah Barbaric (in black with the jammer star) while one blocker is available to help their jammer around the wall of pivot Sk8r-Kinney (at the right).



The Liberty Belle skaters were all solid and good at blocking, but I was particularly impressed with Nina Knockout and the smaller skater Annie Christ. Technique can prevail over size as many small skaters show. Cincinnati did adjust during the break and came out in the second half looking much stronger. They had some good jams in the second half that excited the crowd. There were a couple times when the pack consciously slowed to create a 20 foot gap between them and a couple blockers holding back the CRG jammer. That forced the Belles to let them by. That sort of adjustment and smart skating just wasn’t consistent enough to bring them back into the match. While it’s sad to see Cincinnati go down, I know they’ll use this experience to improve themselves in future bouts. They have talent and just need to develop that extra telepathic communication to adjust like the Belles.

The halftime entertainment was a group from the Powel Crosley YMCA doing a Double Dutch jump rope demo. They were really good! That was a great choice for entertainment. In the shot below, one girl helped the other flip inside the ropes.



There were a couple noticeable changes in the event logistics that I really liked. First, I noticed they centered the track underneath the overhead scoreboard. I think that helped a bit with the light and also opened up a lot more seats to even views of the track. I know that was at the price of the large warm-up area, but I liked it. Also we all heard Professor Murder explain some of the calls via a wireless microphone. Of course I’m biased, but I loved it. There were a couple times where he explained what was going on – once was explaining there is a limit of two skaters in the penalty box, but the refs will send a third skater there when a penalty is within 10 seconds of finishing. Good job Professor!

After the match I was able to meet Silent Lamb skater Dr. McDerby (above) and Black Sheep skater Sista Sacrelicious (at right). Dianne very kindly took photos of me with each of them. I have quite a few additional photos in my Flickr set that you can see here. Of course they don't compare to Jason's shots that I'm sure you'll find here shortly and Jeff's photos.

The next CRG home event is on June 7th when the Silent Lambs take on the North Star Roller Girls from Minneapolis and the Black Sheep take on the lower ranked Derby Demons of the Steel City Rollergirls in Pittsburgh. Be there to cheer on all the CRG skaters!

Aircraft Collisions

This news story about two aircraft colliding in Dallas was prominent in the news. Here is a video showing how the Piper ended up perfectly balanced on the Cessna tail dragger. Fortunately no one was hurt in that accident.

That story reminded me of the mid-air collision just North of the Blue Ash airport that happened about a year ago. Read my blog entry about that accident here. There is a more detailed description of the accident here. Unfortunately all the pilots in that collision were killed. I just realized that the NTSB released their official report on the accident at the end of April. You can read the synopsis here. With both airplanes rolling and clipping wings, it would seem like they saw each other at the last moment when it was too late to avoid the collision. It's sad that the Beech pilot asked for flight following since he was maneuvering north of the field but was denied due to controller workload. That's not the controller's fault -- it is an optional thing for them to do. It's just unfortunate the controller was too busy at that particular time.

The Bureau of Communication

The site called the Bureau of Communication has been around for awhile, but it's worth mentioning again. They have various stationary templates that you can fill out and send to someone via email. Kind of cute -- although I could see it leading to spam.

CRG at Home This Weekend

The Cincinnati Rollergirls have a home bout, a double header, this Saturday at the Cincinnati Gardens. The CRG Silent Lambs will be skating against the Black-n-Bluegrass Rollergirls. In the second bout, the CRG Black Sheep will be taking on the Philly Roller Girls' Liberty Belles. Philly is ranked pretty high (#12 on the Flat Track Stats site), so it's going to be a tough match. Be there to cheer them on!

Also, tomorrow there is a pep rally at Quatman Cafe in Norwood from 7-9. Get psyched for derby action this weekend.

By the way, you can read about CRG's away match last weekend against Boston (ranked #17) on the Roller Derby Diva's blog.

Honda's FCX

You may have seen the TV ads for Honda's new hydrogen fuel cell car, the FCX. I saw the ad several times before I saw the url of the website for the car. It's a neat concept that uses a hydrogen fuel cell to power an electric motor. Unfortunately, because you need a hydrogen refueling station, the distribution in 2008 is only in a few cities in Southern California. Seems like an expensive, nationwide ad campaign to create the buzz for a small region of the country. It'll be interesting to see how the safety stats turn out for the car -- both when in operation and when refueling. The website also mentions work on home refueling stations. That would be cool. Use solar energy panels on your house to run an electrolysis apparatus to generate hydrogen from water. Fill up your car and you're ready to go. With gas prices on the rise, the economics might not be that bad.

Ault Park

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day here. We decided to make a visit to Ault Park -- one of the larger parks in the Cincinnati area that we had never explored. It was good for my back to get out and walk around a bit. Here is a satellite view of the park.

There is a large pavilion that was closed due to a private event -- a wedding reception. Walking around we saw four wedding parties there taking pictures at various spots in the park and in the late afternoon there were quite a few prom couples there for photos.

I had Dianne sit on a park bench with her back to the sun to experiment with some fill flash techniques that I've been reading about on the Strobist blog. She was playing with her Nintendo DS lite so she was a patient subject. If you look at the photo below, you see her back is in direct sunlight and there is a distinct shadow on the concrete. Her face was in a distinct shadow and so she wouldn't show up well in a regular photo. I used a flash on the ground, pointed toward her, to get rid of the shadow. The flash is just outside the right of the frame. I had to experiment a bit to get the right exposure. This shot was with the flash set at 1/4 power. By the way, thanks to her for helping carry stuff too!



My next project I thought I'd try is to get a 360 degree panorama shot from the center of the Observatory Circle area in the park. That's something easy to do while standing up straight. The photo below is a planet view of the panorama with the tripod at the center of the photo along the iron fence. If you want to see a traditional view, click here to see a large version on white. If you look closely at the bottom of the globe or on the right side of the panorama, at the base of the fountain in front of the pavilion you'll see one of the wedding parties getting their picture taken. You can't miss the satin, bright blue dresses the bridesmaids were wearing -- ones that will never be worn again. It was a beautiful day at the park.

Afterwards we stopped on Hyde Park Square to have dinner at Indigos and walk around the square a bit. Indigos is one of our favorite stops in Hyde Park. The square was hopping with everyone sitting outside enjoying the Spring evening.

Strawberry Memories

Growing up, one sign of late Spring or early Summer for me was the first ripe, native strawberries appearing. My aunt had a large strawberry patch and she would make the absolute best strawberry jam on the face of the planet -- Brenda knows what I mean. Nothing like fresh strawberry jam on one of her homemade buns. Yum!

The fever for the opening of strawberry season carried over into graduate school. For at least a couple years a group of us went to a local strawberry farm and picked a boat load of strawberries. We cleaned them up and prepared them for a strawberry get together. We made everything strawberry for the Chemistry folks -- strawberry shortcake, strawberry ice cream, strawberry daiquiris, etc.

I like strawberry flavors year 'round, but the sight of the first fresh strawberries still makes my mouth water. I picked up some at the market (shown in the photo) and made some strawberry shortcake last week. They weren't local, but they looked great and I couldn't wait. I love The Fresh Market in Kenwood.

How Long Would You Survive?

Thanks to Erika, I ran across this site.


Created by OnePlusYou

You'd Never Guess...

...by looking at my picture that I had a minor procedure done at the dermatologist today. That bandage is huge! By the way, those are my new reading glasses.

I never had any major skin problems growing up -- except for the occasional sunburn. I didn't have to deal with acne issues. Quite a while ago I had a small black spot on my cheek that I thought was maybe an ingrown whisker. I was at the dermatologist for something else and had him look at it. Nope, it was a blackhead. Go figure. He cleaned it up and warned me this was a large pore and that it could possibly happen again. Sure enough, as predicted, it did. I went back a few months ago and he cleaned it up again and suggested just taking out the pore to eliminate the problem. He takes a punch biopsy and puts a couple stitches in to close it up. Today was the big day.

The worst part was the injection of the local anesthetic. "OK, you'll feel a little stick" said the nurse. Yeah, when you hear that you know they're trying to downplay the stick. The problem I discovered is the nerve that feeds that area fans out so she had to move the needle around to make several "little stick" injections. That gets old pretty fast. After a couple minutes she checked the skin with a needle to make sure everything was numb. I still felt the needle in a couple spots so she made a second round of injections. Even after working that in, one spot just wasn't getting the drug. So yes, you guessed it, another "little stick" series of anesthetic injections. The nerves in your face are pretty sensitive!

After that, the rest was just a little pushing for the biopsy and some pulling for the stitches. No discomfort though. I have to wear this pressure bandage for a day and then keep changing things until next Wednesday when the stitches come out.

Spring Memories

We had a huge maple tree in our backyard where I grew up. I had a tree house and sandbox at the base of the tree. Every Spring the seeds would appear, dry up, fall off and spin to the ground around the maple. There were seeds everywhere! I was always intrigued by their shape and how they resembled a helicopter blade spinning when they fell.

Dianne and I were out for a walk on Sunday, trying to get my back loosened up a bit, when I saw those seeds on a small maple tree in the neighborhood. I grabbed a couple to take some pictures. I like the way this turned out. I used a grazing flash to accentuate the texture of the seed. I don't remember them being so fuzzy -- maybe this isn't so apparent when they are dry or perhaps it's a different type of maple.

Click here to see a larger version on a black background.

Paint Macro Project

This week the Macro Mondays group theme was paint. A pretty wide open topic that was interpreted many different ways. Carla very kindly provided several bottles of nail polish to use as one subject. I like the sparkles in the first photo below of the nail polish brush. In the second shot, my expert finger model Dianne helped me get a shot of her brushing on some nail polish. I used a slow shutter speed and a rear sync for the flash to capture the idea of movement. The flash fires just before the shutter closes so the brush is most clear at the end of the stroke. From the background light you can see a more faint image of the brush initially and as it moves. The final photo is some acrylic paint on a white piece of paper. Surprisingly, this made Flickr's Explore.

Spring Trees

Spring is in full swing here. I haven't captured many of the Spring flowers this year. After work today, I took a few minutes to take some photos of the flowering trees around our place. Some of them are below, but there are more in my Flickr set that you can see here.

Numbers

This week the theme of the Macro Mondays group on Flickr was "numbers." I was kind of stumped about what to take a picture of. When I started taken photos, all kinds of ideas popped up including Dianne's thought of the lotto pen, shown at the right, that she gave me many years ago. Point the writing end up and the beads move to an open area on the end of the pen. Shake it, point the writing end down, and the beads fill the slots along the number scale and indicate your lottery picks. As Erika guessed, it hasn't worked yet but it is fun trying. It was a hard photo to take to avoid a reflection on the plastic number scale. Pointing the flash through a white cloth diffuser did the trick.

See my other photos below. The first couple are luggage locks -- and I use the term "lock" loosely. It wouldn't take much to pick one of these.

The next is the radio dial on a hand crank emergency weather radio. The light from a homemade softbox gave a nice reflection on the black grill of the radio speaker.

The last photo is a trigonometry table from one of my high school math books.

Great Urban Race -- Cincinnati

Today Dianne and I participated in the Great Urban Race in Cincinnati. It's a race/scavenger hunt with teams of two getting around the city to various checkpoints found with clues. Along the way there are tasks to do, puzzles to solve, and trivia questions to answer. You can only use public transportation which, in Cincinnati, means the bus. Otherwise, everything is on foot. It was a lot of fun!

At the start of the race we (along with everyone else) received our clue packet. There were about a dozen things to do. A few were mandatory. Of the others on the list, you were allowed to skip one. You could do the items in any order you liked, so people are scattered a bit but you do see other teams along the way. For many of the tasks you had to take a photo, or get someone to take a photo of the team, at a certain place. At the finish line, the staff checked your photos to verify you were there and at the correct spot. We took a few minutes to plan our route and get some help from Michelle who was our main home base Google helper. Having a person to search the Internet for answers to clues is really key to finding your way around. She did a great job.

One of our tasks required us to find a saying on a brick and get our picture there. The sayings were baseball related and Dianne remembered all the sponsored bricks in front of the Great American Ballpark that are engraved with various things. The photo here is us in front of a break that reads, "roses are red, the Dodgers are blue, the Reds are a winner, and so are you." We were fortunate to have spotted another team at the brick when we were approaching, so we had a rough idea where to look instead of searching through hundreds and hundreds of bricks.

The funny thing is that we were there just before the start of a Reds game. There were thousands of people (~32,000) going in and a photographer was taking fan photos. He saw us doing something unusual and so he came over to get our picture for his Reds fan photo exercise. I like the Reds, and while I'm not a rabid fan I follow what they are doing. He asked if we were fans and I said yeah. Here is the result. Too funny!

We hit several spots in the downtown area and also ended up going across the Ohio river into Northern Kentucky to visit a couple spots there. We then came back across the river, caught the bus, and went to a couple spots in Eden park. Below is a photo of us in front of the floral clock across from the Krohn Conservatory. I have a few more photos from the day in my Flickr set here. It was a lot of fun and we went participated just for the fun of it. However, I think we ended up 26th and the top 25 teams got medals and are eligible to compete in the national event in Las Vegas in November. Sooooooo close! Maybe next year.

Big Fish, Little Ponds

In the early 80s I was an intern for Procter & Gamble one summer. While here, I heard about a juggling contest being held at the Union Terminal building. I had only been juggling a couple years then, but I thought I'd go and maybe learn something from the other jugglers. The building was a mess back then -- not the beautiful art deco building it is today. The organizers divided the jugglers into groups by decade. I ended up winning first prize in my age group. That sounds pretty good until you know there were only three people competing in that group.

In the late 80s I was in graduate school, on a pretty tight budget, always looking for something free to help out. At that time, the intramural athletics folks must have had a pretty good budget because they ran competitions and gave nice prizes for the top three places in many, many sports. After talking about it one day, we decided to look at the previous year's results to see which sports had the lowest participation. If we could find something that was do-able, we might be able to pull off a win. It didn't take long to stumble on co-ed horseshoes as our sport. I partnered with a gal in our research group, got registered, and practiced once before the competition. Another pair from our department registered too. When the big day came, there were only three teams registered and the one team we didn't know never showed up. We played one match against our friends and won. I think we each received a nice gift certificate at a local restaurant.

Fast forward to a couple months ago when the Cincinnati Fine Arts Fund started their fund drive. Many employers, including mine, help with the drive and ask employees to contribute. This year, to create some buzz, there was a photo contest associated with the fund drive. I thought it would be fun to participate and maybe win something. See this post about our arts adventure.

There was a pitiful amount of participation in the photo contest. At my site that probably has a couple thousand people, there were only two of us that submitted photos. There were more folks participating that worked downtown. The contest ended several weeks ago and I hadn't heard a peep. Today I found out I won a $50 prize and a limited edition print. I'm not sure for which photo or category, but Dianne and I think it is the one below of the lobby at the Contemporary Arts Center. However, because it was more challenging technically to balance the light in the photo at the upper right, I'm kinda hoping it was that one. We'll see in a few days when they post the winners. Nevertheless, score another victory for at least participating.

CRG Rain of Pain

On Saturday night Dianne and I went to the Cincinnati Rollergirls Rain of Pain event at the Cincinnati Gardens. It was their home opener, a double header, against the Fort Wayne Derby Girls. We were part of the 1800+ crowd -- no doubt due in part to the local newspaper, radio, and TV blitz this past week to drum up excitement for the match. Not only are they practicing and organizing events, the skaters also do a lot of promo work. There seemed to be quite a few derby virgins in the crowd, so hopefully they got hooked. We talked with one first time spectator who thought it was a blast to watch. Also part of the crowd was Mama Sac (at the right), the proud mom of CRG skater Sista Sacralicious and probably the most easily identified fan with her cow bell. I went over to say hi and see how she was doing since we missed her in Louisville.

In the first bout of the evening, the CRG Silent Lambs skated against the Fort Wayne Flying Squirrels. It was the first bout of the season for several rookie skaters and some of the returning CRG crew. The Lambs took the lead and held it over the first part of the match, but the Fort Wayne skaters came back, took over the lead, and held the Lambs off at the end. I missed the final score. It was quite the nail biting battle -- especially in the middle of the match. There were times where the Silent Lambs' defense was well organized and slowed Fort Wayne, but it wasn't consistent enough to minimize Fort Wayne scoring. On top of that, the Fort Wayne blockers were pretty tough and gave some hard hits to the CRG jammers. Oreo SlamHER was particularly tough, but many of the Flying Squirrels were dealing out hard blocks. Check out the size difference here. Miss Print seemed faster than last year in the open, but was bottled up a couple times and took some hard falls. Of note for the Lambs was jammer CandyKICKass, shown above about to get a whip from Ima Payne. Candy must have put in a lot of work during the off season because her skating ability is much improved from last year! She was a good contributor on the jamming front.

In the second bout, the Cincinnati Rollergirls' Black Sheep took on the Fort Wayne Bomb Squad and defeated them 100 to 35. This bout was another fantastic effort by the Black Sheep. What more can I say about the CRG blockers? They were great at controlling the pack and shutting down the Fort Wayne jammers. For much of the first 30 minute period, the Fort Wayne score stayed at 3 -- they had multiple jams with zero points. Their jammers were just stuck behind the CRG folks as in the photo here where Ruby Killer (red jammer) tries to deal with Blu Bayou (in front) and Panterrorize on the inside. It's not just one or two folks, but the whole blocking team that deserves kukos for their effort.

As in the first two away matches, Sadistic Sadie, Hannah Barbaric, and Roseanne Scarr did the bulk of the work as jammers. The photo to the right shows Sadie scoring as she passes the Fort Wayne pack in red. But it was no picnic for the CRG jammers. The Fort Wayne blockers were tough and there were quite a few hard hits like this one and this one. Fort Wayne blockers Mayhem and Bang Bang LaDesh (who went down hard at one point and was limping after the match) seemed especially tough.

After the match I was able to talk with a few skaters and Dianne took some photos. Thanks to all for taking time to say hi and chat. The first shot is of me with Ruff'n the Passer. She was doing a lot of blocking, but did wear the jammer star on a couple of the jams. First saw her skating with Gem City about a year and a half ago -- sat next to her mom. A very good skater all around.

The second photo is of me with Arche Enemy. She is another one of the amazing blocking crew on the Black Sheep team.

The third photo is of me with CandyKICKass.

Dianne and I were honored with seats on the VIP couch for the match. Thanks much to the CRG group for that. Also, you may notice in these photos with the skaters I'm wearing a new CRG T-shirt. A special thank you to Juwana Hurt for giving me a special Juwana shirt. A very pleasant surprise!

I have a bunch of photos you can see in my Rain of Pain Flickr set here. I posted a few favorites below. I have to say the lighting in the Gardens kinda stinks, so I can't wait to see the always wonderful photos from Jason and Jeff who were both at the match. I'm sure they'll post photos soon. Also, ESPN was there filming last night for a SportsCenter segment on flat track roller derby. Keep an eye out for that!

The next CRG home match is May 17th in the Gardens. In that bout the Black Sheep will be going up against the Philly Roller Girls, a higher ranked team. It should be an exciting match to see. Perhaps by then it will be a little warmer to make tailgating a little more do-able. Don't miss it!


Below, Sk8 Crime (with the jammer star) and Ima Payne look to take on Oreo SlamHER.



Below, The Librarian and Cherry Choke (in black) have a good position to slow down the Fort Wayne jammer Sugar Guns.



Below, Hannah Barbaric leaves a Fort Wayne skater falling behind her.



This is another shot illustrating the CRG team work. CRG skaters Blu Bayou, Panterrorize, and Ruff'n the Passer have the Fort Wayne jammer Ruby Killer (red star) boxed in while Hannah Barbaric has a clear path around the outside as Mayhem falls behind her. Perfect positioning for the CRG group. That is fun to watch!

Stripes

I was playing with some more physiograms the other night. I have an assortment pack of lighting filters and cut some pieces to go in front of the lens. By moving them on and off the lens while taking the picture you get stripes of color in the photo. I like the green one best.

I was also experimenting a bit with multiple exposures in the camera. That's going to take some more work. Maybe in a future post.

Bad Veins

Last summer, on what had to be one of the hottest days of the year, Dianne and I went to Fountain Square for one of the Friday concert series where the CRG skaters were promoting an upcoming bout. The post about it is here. One of the bands that we heard playing was Bad Veins. A couple guys playing with some recorded tracks and doing things like singing through a megaphone to give a unique sound. I thought they were pretty good -- but I didn't realize how good.

I read on the Spill It blog that Bad Veins just received the first Target Music Maker Award associated with the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC. Pretty cool for them.

Recent Macro Projects

I haven't been posting photos from my macro projects the last couple of weeks. Here are a few.

A couple weeks ago the Macro Mondays theme was "labels." I like the colors on the label of one of Dianne's favorite beers.



I'm a big ZZ Top fan, so I thought a shot of one of their CD labels would be good. Dianne suggested having a few in the shot. That was a good idea -- as usual. I didn't intend to get the Mescalero reflection in the Antenna disc, but I think it looks nice.



Finally, I thought the label of a chemical reagent bottle would be interesting. I took photos of several, but I saw this cannister on the corrosive items shelf and had to take a shot. The container is as interesting as the label. I took the photo using one flash, from the left, that is bounced out of an umbrella to soften the light a bit. To illuminate the right side so the shadow wasn't strong, I used a silver reflector that was just outside of the frame on the right.



Then last week the macro theme was birthday bling. It was the one year anniversary of the group -- hence the theme. I don't know about bling, but candles come to mind for a birthday.



This photo actually made it into Explore on Flickr. The cake turned out pretty sharp.

Blogshares Top Pick? Go Figure!

I noticed today I was getting a lot of hits coming from the Top 100 Hot Stock Section of the Blog Shares site. That site is a fantasy blog stock market where you buy and sell shares in blogs to make imaginary money.

God knows why, but the fantasy value of Earl World has shot up since January. At the start of the year my value was B$2,818 (note the BS in front of the value). Today I'm at B$109,000! Go figure. Apparently that rise put me on the Hot Pick list temporarily -- I'm not there anymore. Must be there are a lot of roller derby fans interesting in fantasy blog stock picks.

It's funny that the only Blog Share investor I have is the Kman. He got in on the ground floor with 200 shares in May of 2006. Glad I could help the value of your fantasy portfolio, Kyle!

Random Items

I've been posting a lot of photos in the past few months, but not much text content. I'm collecting some tidbits into this entry.

I thought I'd get a pizza for dinner tonight. One of my usual spots when Dianne is out of town is Spooner's Pizza in Deer Park. I drove past there after the CRG pre-season party about 2 weeks ago and they were open. I stopped there tonight on my way home and they were closed. The guy inside said they shut down and there is a little 8 1/2 x 11 inch sign on the window that says business for sale. That's a shame. I really liked their pizza and it was fairly close by. *sigh*

And where was I coming from? The Cord camera store. I was in there last week and overheard a guy wanting to sell some used equipment. Interesting... I never saw used stuff in our local store so I never thought to ask. Dianne's been after me to sell my old camera since I got the new one in Hawaii. I've been watching eBay to see what the D50s have been selling for. They weren't going for much so I had kinda decided to hang on to it. But after hearing that Cord Camera conversation and thinking about it, I thought what do I have to lose asking for an offer. I stopped in tonight with my stuff and they offered $125 more than what I was expecting! That made my day! But shsssssh...don't tell Dianne that the old camera actually turned into a new Manfrotto tripod with a head. Very cool. I plan to use the old tripod as a light support, so I'm actually saving money not having to buy another light support. :^)

That's what happens when Dianne is out of town. She's been gone for almost 2 weeks. It's weird because unlike our pre- and early marriage long distance relationship days, I haven't been able to talk to her. I have received a couple emails which was nice. So it's just me around the place...well, and the birds. But every time I use the bathroom, I still close the door. Why is that? Nobody is going to walk in on me. I keep asking myself why bother, but I still do it without thinking.

I got new reading glasses yesterday. It's only my second time to the eye doctor. The first time, about 4 1/2 years ago, was when I got my first pair of glasses -- reading only. I went for that first appointment because, especially for my right eye, I noticed I had to hold things farther away to be in focus. My left eye wasn't too bad. The doctor felt glasses were optional -- get 'em if I thought I needed them. I do a lot of reading at work, so I got them. It made a difference, but I could get by without them if the light was good. My first flight physical after getting the glasses, I passed my near vision test without them. My second flight physical I needed them to pass. Recently I've noticed a further decline and thought my left eye was catching up to my right. Last week, after getting chastised for not following the 2 year check-up plan, the eye doctor confirmed my suspicion. I got about a half step worse and my left eye is now pretty close to my right. These new glasses really make a big difference. Text suddenly got sharp again. Guess the 2 year eye plan is a good idea after all!