Category Archives: Technology

Mar17

Two artsy-fartsy photos

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Early on in the pub, iDJ and I were playing around with our phones and the Hipstamatic app. I took this one of him using his phone:

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He complained about it at first, because of the blur. According to him, my pics are always blurry. But I pointed out its only his pint that is blurry, his face is clear. It implies movement, even if he was being quite still.

This one is of one of the drummers from the Oldham Pipe Band that is in town for the parade (in just a few hours, yay!). I took a lot of shots but only this one caught his hands.

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A shame, really, that this is the only one that turned out. The app is bleedin’ slow! I was snapping away and only got about 5 pics. Lucky I guess to get one good one at all.

Oh, and he’ll give out to me for publishing this with the stupid ‘MAR 82’ date stamp on it! I can’t be arsed to remove it.

Currently I’m out back, freezing, listening to what he calls skiddleyidle music. Irish traditional, or just Trad. He’s got the Weber grill out and we’ll be having burgers and sausages from our amazing local butcher. I’m cold, but I didn’t have the shakes and shivers until he poured me a pint of O’Hara’s Stout, 6%, to follow up my ‘morning’ coffee. Yes, it’s just gone 1 and I’m on the beer…

Mar10

WTF is this?

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I took these shots through my driver’s side window while rocketing down the road to home at 100kph. I’m pretty impressed with the camera on this iPhone, as I had no chance to hold the phone steady or even really look at what I was taking pics of – too dangerous on this narrow, twisty, bumpy road.

I thought that this was just a very odd cloud formation, but then thought that perhaps there was a fire?
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My dad thought it might be a ‘footcloud’ – a precursor to a tornado! We just don’t get them around here, though. And it is so close…
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A friend who is a pilot said if it wasn’t smoke, it was a ‘massive CB buildup – twister territory!’
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The sun was setting on the other side of the car, my left. Cloudy over there, with no sunbeams coming over to light this up. You can see that it’s pretty dark. The part coming up from the ground looks a bit yellowish, too – but it’s done nothing but rain for months so it wasn’t a bog fire. It did rain pretty hard about an hour or so later, but the winds were normal for this time of year.

Any ideas?

Mar4

Rubbish photos

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I had a day full of reading and sunshine – in between clouds and one hail-shower. Eventually we decided we’d go out to the pub for the second half of the rugby – it was a draw, yawn – but I had a good time taking pics out in the schmokin’ area. When no one else was looking, of course. Inebriated sports fans would never understand why I’d want to take pictures of this:

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I’ve a few in colour but…somehow these are the best.

Feb12

An appropriate Hip Pic

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A spiderweb, in the smoking area of my favourite pub. Obviously there’s no shelter from the rain for man nor beast…

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: Susie
Flash: Cherry Shine
Film: AO DLX

Feb11

Small fame with big rewards

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I forgot I had this photo. I was updating my iPhone because there is a new, free, Hipstamatic lens. While doing so, I looked at some of my Hip pics. While this isn’t a good example of what the app can do, it’s the only pic I have of this:

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This picture was taken inside my favourite local pub. What a great advertisement for Guinness! Look how happy the model is! Look at that perfect pint! And, of course, the Guinness logo on the glass is turned perfectly to face the camera.

What’s so special about this poster? Well, it’s been up in the pub since early August. It’s a not-very-good colour printer job, on big paper, and stuck to the wall with Blu-Tack. You could say that alone is pretty impressive – that it has lasted this long in a pub when it is so fragile in nature.

What tickles me to no end is that I’m the one in the picture! It was just a night with a pint, lost in history – until iDJ chose it as one of many pictures he printed out and stuck around the pub for my fortieth birthday party. We took them all down at the end of the night – except for this one. The landlord asked if we would leave it up. Of course I wasn’t going to say no. He says he still gets compliments on my smiling face and the perfect pint in hand. Yay, me! I especially like that I just happened to also be wearing a necklace made by my stepmom which is very appropriate: it’s an Irish penny.

My short-lived modelling career when I was young didn’t pan out, but hey, I still got it. Particularly when someone gives me a fresh pint…

Feb8

Google street view discovery

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I have to be Guarda vetted in my new job, as I have ‘access’ to vulnerable people. Part of that process was having to list everywhere I’ve ever lived. Ever. Perhaps that’s an easy task for the average person.

Perhaps that’s an especially easy task for the average Irish person. For iDJ that list is just two places, unless you could his digs when he was in college. So, four, I think – at the most.

Me, I’ve moved a lot. A crazy amount. I racked up seventeen addresses, and I know (in retrospect, now that I’ve turned the form in) that I forgot three in Florida and one in Ohio.

Three times I moved over a thousand miles, and once I moved over 3,000 miles. I think I’ll stay here a while, yes?

I had to ask my dad for help, too. I remembered the names of both of the streets I lived on before the age of six, but that was it. He kindly took some time to dig the addresses up for me, thanks pop!

So, today I thought I would see if I could find the houses on Google Earth. It’s odd, but neither road has Street View yet. Even my house here is on SV… but the satellite image is a big green blur. Anyhoo, the sat pics of both places are superb, and my sis helped me find one of the houses.

The first place did have Street View for about a block, but not where we lived. I ‘walked’ down there anyhow, and I found this odd capture:

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I’m fascinated. She? He? is in a bathrobe and slippers hauling nasty old wood along the side of the road. There’s a whole story here.

Sure, it could be trash day, the day they pick up odds and ends perhaps. And he was caught by surprise upon hearing the truck in the distance, having to run out in his PJ’s to put out the rubbish.

But maybe not.

Maybe she’s smuggling civil war rifles, or baby crocodiles, or even unpasturized cheese in that pile of wood, and the shabby clothes are just a cover.

Maybe he’s part of a bizarre fund raising stunt: dragging scrap wood around the state for charity while dressed in his mom’s bathrobe.

Maybe she’s part of a cult, and due to some infraction (reading Harry Potter, perhaps) this is the punishment the elders have chosen for her.

We will never know. The mystery person does, but I bet they aren’t willing to talk.

Feb1

I’ve moved! Sort of…

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Guess what I got for Christmas from my lovely Canadian friend? heretherebespiders.com ! No more .wordpress in there to make typing it out such a hassle. I’m not really sure what all of the other benefits are yet, though. Anyone? I am pretty slow at these things, surprisingly. Well, it surprises me, anyway.

Anyhoo, CanuckHound (will that do? I’ve been trying for months to nickname this gal with no success) came by the house last night and we set up my nooooo website, yay! In return I gave her a bag of weed. No, not that kinda weed – it was lemon catnip that I grew, dried, and pulverised. I’m hoping her kitty Penny likes it, as mine have no interest. The lemon part disgusts them. However, I simmered the leftover stems and flowers on my stovetop for a few days and I swear the good smells made Spotty a little high.

iDJ gifted her with some ambient music. I’d tell you more about what it was, but I’d have to ask him. He’s currently on his headphones gearing up for tomorrow’s radio23 show. Little plug, there, hehe. What I’m saying is that I’d be forced to make him talk, and I get enough of that in a day. Sorry, dear. I do know one of the artists was Aphex Twin, his all-ambient album.

CanuckHound also brought him this:

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I know doodly-squat about Scotch, sorry.

Before she went home, we were talking art and I wanted to show off my sister’s work. Well, I was bummed to see she took her website down and put up a pic of her daughter – in other words, she’s way too busy to bother with the website right now! I was a bit bummed, but CanuckHound said I should type ‘wayback machine’ into Google. Well! The wayback machine brings up old cached websites, how cool! It didn’t work for my sister’s pictures (I’m sure she’ll be happy to know that) but it did work on my old website, which dates back to and hasn’t been touched since 2004! I thought I’d lost every picture and word I typed as I never saved it anywhere. I’m thrilled! Anyone want to see/read what I was rambling about eight years ago? It was mostly my trip to England to hang out with my sis: my first time overseas. I’m going to save it all, any way – before it really is too late!

Jan28

Goofing around with the iPad…

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It’s a strange old night, I feel a bit at loose ends. I’m not able to settle and do anything productive. It seems I’m seeking the new…

So I opened one of the camera apps iDJ put on my iPad. Now, I’ve said a bunch of times that the camera on here is crap. My intentions were to take some random, abstract, crap pictures and mess around with their settings. Sort of like this one I took of my own face, which is my Facebook avatar:

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I didn’t get very far before losing interest, though. I opened ‘camera boost’ to see what it does, and went straight to the night photography setting. Ooo, shiny smeary lights. These are of the fire I’m warming myself by:

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Meh, right? I might screw with the colours and see what happens.

I also thought trying to get the dog in motion might be interesting.

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The only reason I kept these two is that her curly tail turned into a full circle as she spun around.

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I think this one is funny. She has four front legs… this is her game she plays with my feet. She slaps her legs on the floor and flops them around trying to catch me. That’s my green socked foot.

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The first fire pic, mucked around with. It’s still ‘meh.’

Maybe I should read a book…

Dec21

Playing Holiday catch up

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I bounced out of bed this morning with every intention of writing a blog post first thing. Ya see how well I did at that! I did send my Irish holiday cards out, having sent the US ones last week. They will probably all be late, or get lost. Oh well, I did my least. Not best – not even close – which is a shame.

I used to seek out family members to send cards to. Aunties, cousins, friends I’d not seen in years… I had great fun. I always wanted to draw on the envelopes and have good handwriting (HA!), include a personal message, and get them sent out in plenty of time. I even wanted to start the week after the *holidays and save them up for the next year. I wanted to draw my own card in Brushes this year, and have ‘real’ cards! I didn’t do any of that, obviously. I scrawled a short everyone-gets-the-same-thing message and gave one shit not about my horrible penmanship.

*As an atheist I know about as much about Judaism as I do about Catholicism or paganism – not very much about any, but more than some. Members of my family are in all three groups and there are also ‘meh’ people like me; so when I say ‘holidays’ I’m covering all the bases. Wish me whatever suits you, I won’t be offended by any or all of the above. Christmahanukwanzica works, too! It’s the happy feelings and keeping in touch that matters most to me. That, and Deth Nog.

Oh oh oh! The Twelve Days of Kwanzaa is on SomaFM! I love this one. I seem to like the twelve days parodies best: Kwanzaa, Gay, Redneck…

Anyhow, I’m getting way off topic as usual. I had a story to tell (I did tell a funny story about Hanukkah in the comments on another blog), but instead I’m rattling on about the holidays. Funny how that works. Hubby is still working on his Internet radio23.org Christmas special – he looooves doing it. He even posted on FB tonight how the songs make him ‘well up.’ Awww. Nice to hear, when we have nothing but hugs to give each other this year.

Except for that little package that fell out of the tree yesterday. It has my name on it, and I recognize the wrapping paper. Dammit.

Oh! He gave me his old iPhone, and it came with the Hipstamatic application. I’ve not played with it much, but tonight we had a gorgeous sunset and I thought I might catch the Christmas tree with the sunset behind it on some groovy retro film. It didn’t work, but I got a couple good close up pics:

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Then I went upstairs so I could see the sunset properly without a huge tree in the way.

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See how different they are? Same phone, taken about 1 minute apart…but the funky film and different ‘flash’ options make a big difference. I can see why people go a bit nuts with the Hipstamatic app. It’s great fun if you have an eye at all for mentally seeing how it might look old, scratchy, the wrong color, etc.

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This was taken with our proper camera, only a few minutes later. Super zoomed in, but not filtered or played with in any way. A big difference!

Hahah, ‘I Came Upon a Roadkill Deer’! I love SomaFM. ‘Be careful of those gravel bits, they really get stuck in your teeth.’ OH! ‘Walkin’ Round in Women’s Underwear’!!!

I think I’m back in the holiday spirit 🙂