Great Political Humor!!!!

I really like this skit! Enjoy!

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Camping and Baseball

Hi All,

As you can see, blogging is not top priority in my world. As you can well imagine there are a myriad of things that have occurred since. I have a variety of media to share, and the stories that go along with them. Please enjoy these snippets of the last month and a half!






CAMPING


Now with Sharper Video.....


On the weekend of Aug 28-30 Christina, her parents, and I took Brian on his very first camping trip! It had been a rainy week at Warren Dunes leading up to our trip. So the ground was quite muddy (note giant blue tarps). Brian had a lot of fun!! He was especially thrilled to climb the sand dune seen in the videos. He wanted to climb it himself and he did so until about 30 feet from the top (I carried him the rest of the way). When we got to the top Brian got applause from strangers! They had never seen such a little one climb such a long way! Brian did slide all the way down by himself! After climbing the sand dune and playing all day he slept very, very well!

He also liked eating outside, roasting marshmallows, sleeping in the tent, finding acorns, playing at the playground (his self named 'blue park'), and taking walks with anyone who would go with him. He was not a fan of getting his first bee sting! Especially because he was asleep when it happened! Not a good wake up call.....






At the end of our trip Brian did not want to leave. He insisted to all of us that he wanted "More camping please!" on a repeated basis! All this and we never even went to the beach! The poor weather has caused the beach to be closed due to unsafe swimming conditions.






Panoramic View From the top of Mt. Randall (sand dune) looking west.

Panoramic View to the left of the first panorama looking north.


BASEBALL

Over Labor Day weekend, Patrick and Shawn came to visit Chicagoland, Indiana, Michigan and in Patrick's case (Wisconsin). This was a lot of fun. The main purpose of this aside from seeing friends was to attend a White Sox/Red Sox baseball game at US Cellular Field. The video below was my experiment for the day. I used the sports setting on my camera to take lots of images. I then put them all in a slide show with a very fast transition speed. The result is stop motion animation! Every image you see is saved as an individual still on my computer, so if you see one you want, email me! Also, these images were taken from our fantastic seats (Thanks Shawn!) about halfway up the upper deck behind home plate.





Also, I played around with making panoramas. Ever since I discovered that I had a panorama utility, I have been looking for fun pictures to take. The below images are from our seats at the cell...


Full ColorSame Image

Black and White

Squished to make wallpaper






DOWNTOWN/THE LEDGE


The below pictures are of the Sears Tower's newest additions, the ledges. They are glassed in rooms at the Skydeck observation floor of the tower. They supposedly can hold 5 tons each. It's also the hot new place to get married here in Chicago (its been done multiple times already).


Street View, Full Frame

Zoomed in a little....

Zoomed in as much as the camera can! Note People in the ledges!!




That's all for now!


-Paul




New Reading Project: The Great Inflation and its Aftermath, by R. J. Samuelson.


On the box: Background noise of Thomas the train engine on TV. No music.

Warren Dunes State Park

Hi All,

Please enjoy this video from Brian's first trip to Warren Dunes State Park in Southwestern Michigan. This was a day trip and we drew a wonderful day for it!!

Brian had a wonderful time playing in the water, digging in the sand, running, splashing, finding rocks, swimming, and building sand castles!! He has asked to return almost constantly since we left! In fact the only way we got him to leave was to promise him pizza (which we gave him and he ate).

The slow motion portion of the video is Brian's favorite part (Mom and Dad's too) slowed down with the colors inverted. He had SO much fun splashing his feet in the wet sand! We will be going back this summer for more fun and excitement.

Enjoy!

-Paul

Time Lapse Photography #1

Hi All,

Today I tried something new with my Nikon P80, time lapse photography! Ever since I found out that the camera had this capability I wanted to try it out. So this morning I hopped over the the grocery, bought some tulips and irises that were closed. Christina helped me cut the flowers, arrange them, and place them so they would stay in the frame.

After that I sent the camera to take a picture every 30 seconds and automatically autofocus each image due to changing lighting conditions. The film starts at about 10:40 AM and runs till about 5:00 PM-ish (I'm not sure when the battery died, thus ending the film).

After the original time lapse, I played around with Adobe Elements, making the colored pencil outline scenes. They run 200% faster than the original, one forward, and the second in reverse. The last version of the film is simply the original running in reverse.

Hopefully I will get to take more time lapse at some point, but I'm not sure when.

Enjoy!

-Paul