I signed up for an account over at JPG Magazine.
Seems like a pretty decent place so far. It is a bit like flickr but with the opportunity to make some money and get published in their magazine. Because of the opportunity to be published and make money the quality of the photos/images/art is very high.
I figure I can't do my self any harm by attempting to get a photo or two published. If I can make some money on the side from time to time from submissions to sites like this that would be awesome considering how much time and money have been invested into this little hobby.
I also signed up over at imagekind, where you can buy prints of some of my photos...
I've been busy. This is the 1st chance I've had to actually sit down at home today. I haven't taken the time to write a post in far too long, I know. I could make a big long excuse of a post but I won't. So here be the dirt.
Bad news
Saturday I found out my step dad was in the ICU in Salem. As of today he is still there. I went up Saturday and Tuesday to be with my Mom and see my step dad. Long story short, be sure your broken bones and what not heal and you give them enough time so you don't get infected with a flesh eating bacteria and lose part of your leg and the blood poisoning harming the kidneys and heart.
I don't know what the score is bit I'm hopefully. So is everyone one else. Things have looked pretty bleak at a couple points but my step dad is as stubborn as they come and has pulled through a lot already just this week.
Car news
I've got a new car on order. It was ordered April 4th. I'm working on selling mine private party. I showed it to a girl I presume will be graduating High School in June (do they do it in June still) and her Grandpa came along to scrutinize the hell out of my car and take it for a test drive. Gonna have to wait and see if they are legitimately interested and come back with an offer. They left with them needing to talk some about it and to the banks about loans and rates and junk. So that sounded positive but I'm not holding my breath.
Note to car buyes: Don't ask what the bottom line is, make an offer. Cause it will likely be higher than the actual bottom line...
Partays
Chris is having his birthday bash this weekend. Hopefully I won't lose my keys nor my voice this year. Hell I may not even take my keys.
There should also be a get together at my dads place for his birthday sometime this week.
Then in early May I've got another party to attend.
Photo Stuff
I took a few photos of friends feet while they got a Tango lesson. So far they have gone over pretty well. My remote flash trigger is an awesome addition to my kit. But it does just make me want more flashes and equipment.
I've even got a special request for some other non tango photos to be taken later. I may even eventually figure out how to make some money on the side from this little hobby.
Geek Stuff
Got a new server to replace my vmware server that went down on me a couple weeks back. So I've got a new (to me) box to get going, but haven't had a chance to do anything with it other than bring it inside from Chris' car. I'm kinda hoping to get a chance to do that tomorrow but I'm not counting on it, as tomorrows to do list is already fairly long and isn't getting any shorter.
Sleep
I haven't gotten enough since last week. I'm going to bed.
Got back from Vegas around 11:30pm on Tuesday night. We spent more time in the car driving home from the airport in Pasco than we did in the airport and flight home. Future trips will have a diffrent travel arrangement, one that doesn't involve six hours of driving to or from an airport in the middle of no place.
I'm still recovering from the trip. I'm looking froward to the weekend. I should have taken time off this coming week to extend my weekend for extra recovery/relaxation time.
It's good to be back home with my bed, car, cat, and friends.
Tonight I pack. Tomorrow we leave in the AM for a long long drive to the airport we are flying out of in Pasco Washington. Then we fly out around 5 something. Then Vegas...
We will be back Tuesday night. Then back to work Wednesday...
I can now use my flash far from the camera. I can put it behind things, next to things, above things, below things or just to the side of the camera. While it does use IR rather than RF for controlling my 580ex II it should still do great indoors, outdoors will most likely prove to be a different challenge all together depending on the conditions and distances.
Oh and DHL shipping not so good. The shipping box was pretty much destroyed in transit. The contents however in fine shape. DHL's tracking leaves something to be desired as well...
flickr has added or will be soon adding video. This worries me...
I really enjoy the focus of flickr, photos. All photos all the time. I worry it will become diluted. Perhaps full of junk videos of people's kids laughing at paper tearing, rickrolls and music videos.
It will take some time to find out what happens. If people post wonderful moving images of dance, flow, water, sky, trees, life.
I'm not sure if it is going to be positioned as an youtube competitor, which is what scares me most. While I enjoy youtube its full of garbage and duplicated content. Flickr has lots of new and original content. While you tube has original content as well I'm willing to guess there is much less original content than it does duplicate content and borrowed content. Not that flickr doesn't have its share of copy right violators but they are not typicaly a focus at flickr...
So in about a weeks time I am going to be on my way to Las Vegas for a couple nights with some friends. I wasn't the smartest about how I set my self up financially for this trip. The tickets and hotel are paid for but I also paid for some other stuff with this check that really could and maybe should have waited. No matter I've got a bit of money on the side I can use and I will be paid before we return home. But I've got some other stuff fun cooking that all the money would have been better spent on but thats neither hear nor there right now.
One of the members of the party is pretty good in Vegas. I think he grew up there. If not he has spent plenty of time there and knows how to win. So I'm gonna see if I can hang with him for some hours and maybe make my self some money and improve the situation...
Today I'm downloading Solaris 9 for sparc from sun. It's download topped out around 1300KB per second, and averaged around 750-850KB per second on a file pretty compareable in size to the file from IBM yesterday... I do have to get four diffrent files from sun all around 500MB so this will still take some time but I'm guessing it won't take as much time as it took to get two files from IBM yesterday considering the download speed is ten times the speed IBM was providing.