June 30
[Taken 24 June 2006 | Daylily in my front yard | Dayton, OH]
On the way home from work I picked up the rolls of 120 film that I shot in Amsterdam.... and was massivly dissapointed. I calculated the exposures incorrectly for the Lubitel II, so all of the shots were underexposed, and there was something wrong with the holga... either I loaded the film incorrectly or something else went wrong somewhere in the process, because every single shot looked... smeared. This is particularily dissapointing since the holga is such a simple camera, basically a point-and-shoot. I am glad that I took over 5G worth of digital photos while I was there...
Argh.
Now I must take the holga and a roll of film out this weekend, shoot the roll and have it processed. I need to know if the problem here is the camera... or me. Maybe I will go to Clifton Gorge...
The people who live directly behind us have one or more teenagers... and those teenagers have a band. And the band is having some kind of a performance or rehersal or something right now. They aren't bad, and are playing mostly classic rock stuff... "Wild Thing" and similar stuff. The family went around the neighborhood a couple of days and seeded everyone's mailboxes with invitations to come over to listen, have some grilled hotdogs and iced soda. Smart of the parents. Good PR for their kids' band.
Not that I have much desire to go over and check out the action. I can hear them just fine from my back deck.
June 25
[Taken 2-9 June 2006 | Amsterdam | Amsterdam]
Well, I am back from Amsterdam now... actually, to confess, I have been back for quite a while. About two weeks actually. When you are trying to edit many, many gigs of digital photos, not to mention catching up on large amounts of work projects that piled up while you were away, it is amazing how little you can feel like updating your personal site for a while. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
The photos can all be seen here on my flickr site.
Amsterdam was great. It has been years since I went for so long on so little sleep.
Amsterdam is a beautiful city. The wood and brick and stone details in all of the buildings were amazing. Every time I turned around I saw another cool building or gorgeous canal scene that I had to take a photo of. It was also kind of nice to be in a city that is amazingly pedestrian friendly, and where the bicycle has the absolute right of way. (The unofficial hierarchy is bicycles, trams, pedestrians, and last of all, cars.) You have to keep an eye out at all times, though, and be quick on your feet or the odds of getting run over by something - usually a bike or tram - are pretty high.
Fun fact: there are more bicycles in Amsterdam then people.
The food there... oh man. So much fried cheese. And the fried meat. And the lovely, lovely things that the Dutch can do with pancakes... oh man.
One day, before my meetings started, I went on a 33km bicycle tour of the countryside outside Amsterdam... the Water District and some of the reclaimed land. Saw a lot of (rammed-earth) dikes, fields that were lakes at one time, farms... very lovely, bucolic stuff. At one point in the tour, the guide had us get off of our bikes, walk into a field, and jump up and down. It was like jumping on a waterbed, because the water table was so high. There was just 2 meters of peat, and under that was the water....
In between all of the meetings, there was plenty of time to get to know, and party with, my co-workers. Since Amsterdam has a great nightlife pubs and clubs featured heavily in the evening activities. One of the clubs, the Paradiso, was a converted church... we went there twice, the first time because we thought that Paul Oakenfold was going to be performing, and then stayed even though it turned out that we were mistaken about the date of the performance. The second time was specifically to see Paul Oakenfold. Very very cool. Good times were had by all. I really like my co-workers... I work with a very awesome bunch of people.
Too much to appropriately summarize here... just take it as read that I had a great time on my trip and I will try and move on (and update with a bit more regularity) from here...
June 2
[Taken 28 May 2006 | Yellow Iris in the Cox Arboretum | Dayton. OH]
I will be off soon... I am hitting the road in just a couple of hours.
More business travel, albiet to an interesting place - the company headquarters in Amsterdam.
Meetings, and presentations, and tutorials, oh my. I will actually be teaching one of those tutorials. I have over 90 slides on CSS, several examples, a couple of exercises, and all of the associated files. And... I am nervous, I still don't feel quite ready. This will be the first class I have ever taught, I will be teaching my co-workers and my boss, I am afraid of going way over the heads of those who are completely new to CSS, and I am afraid of boring those who already know CSS. Well, I guess I will just have to do my best and keep my fingers crossed.
Sarah and I are traveling together. Maybe I will try practice my presentation on her.
I hope I can sleep on the plane. I hope that the hotel is nice. I hope that the weather is good. (Please, no rain!) I hope that my tutorial goes well. I hope that I have fun.