Running in for dinner, he stopped for one last squirt skyward.

I love these hardy, succulent perennials a neighbor have us years ago. I just keep dividing, and they just keep blooming. If you know what they are, lemme know in the comments.

We found something amazing in our yard the other day, and it turned out to be an automeris io, or Io moth. This green spiked caterpillar eventually turns into a beautiful moth with giant circles on its wings that look like eyes. It’s common throughout the continent, but I’ve never seen one in all my years of nature gawking. Which is weird, because this thing was florescent green and the size of my thumb.

Enjoy the pics.

I just got back from the fireworks store where I found this “Twitter Glitter” fountain by TNT fireworks. I couldn’t pass up this explosive which shares a name with the popular microblogging service. What are the odds it goes Fail Whale on me tonight and ends up a dud?

It’s been four months since Coop and I arranged his Dr. Seuss books by spectrum. We’re not sure why we do these things. Probably just to hang out together for a few extra minutes. Or maybe we’re just Seussian savants?

The other day I noticed that the books had undergone a reordering over the last few weeks. Some books have jumped across the shelf, while whole groups remain intact. What does this all mean? *** gender bias? - the pink books are  untouched ***

Here are the pics - what do you see? More analysis after the jump.

February 2008:

June 2008:

(more…)

This weekend I made another quick video with animoto.com - this time, with photos from my friend Dave’s wedding in Callicoon Center, NY (see Flickr photos here). I certainly dig the results, and can’t wait to see where they take this product (it’s still in beta). Wherever it goes, it sure is fun to play with (and certainly beats tools like Slide). Enjoy!

Congrats to Dave and Bree on the arrival of Ellis!

Waiting on the B train at 81st, personal transportation, Graham on the block, and the Hudson.

We just got back from spending a few days in NYC, one of our favorite places in the world. We took along our two boys to introduce them to the city, and they certainly loved it as much as we did.

I’ll be posting a few photos this week, but I wanted to use this chance to play around with the free video software at animoto.com. Still in beta, this web service allows you to upload or retrieve (Flickr, Facebook, etc) a group of photos, set them to any song, and render a shareable video - pretty slick. You can even remix the video if you are unhappy with the results…everything is just a couple clicks.

Anyway, enjoy…

While I knew there was no tornado, tonight’s hail storm still impressed me. The white wall coming in off the marsh was cinematic, but the real star came seconds later when the hail arrived.

I could tell right away that the chunks were big, and they looked like broken snowballs bouncing into the windows. It made me think about density, and how if this hail was made from rock, every window in my house would be broken.

It lasted a good 10 minutes, so we waited, listened, and suddenly it stopped. Out I went with a bucket for the kids, which is now in our freezer. Cooper ate some, and said it tasted like water.

This was big hail…maybe the biggest I’d seen since I was a kid. It was easy to spot actual golfball-sized hail, but it was melting fast.

Most of the big pieces had a distinct cloudy ball in the middle, about the size of a raisin, which was surrounded by thick, clear ice. This pattern was enhanced as they melted, and they began to look like sliced kiwi.

Here are some pics of the aftermath…

Have you walked around lately? Flowers are everywhere this time of year, and my yard is blooming like it’s going out of style. On Sunday morning, I took a short walk around the homestead. Below are 16 of the flowers I saw, all shot within 16 minutes of each other. I saw dianthus, coreopsis, guara, hydrangea, oleander, verbena, lantana, society garlic, and a few veggies. Enjoy!

The parking meters around here are such a drag - all gray and utilitarian…like a grumpy uncle. But the meters in Montréal have flair, and flaunt it even on cloudy days. They are cheery, and literally smile for loonies and toonies.

Stars, moon, sun, and jets. Palm tree, cypress, pine, and oak.

I spent most of last week working on Montréal (which was possibly the most fun I’ve ever had working on the road), and I’m thankful to have survived the city’s bleak weather and souring mood (The Canadians were eliminated at home that night). With the hockey Habs on life-support, my Canon followed suit and went through customs for my return flight with very few photos of the city. My only day off was a downpour, so I had no chance to really hoof it around Old Montréal. I still got a few snaps off while we worked elsewhere in the city, and here are the first three.

Ahh, another vintage odd-shaped children’s book - and only 29 cents! I found this morsel in the same stack as my Golden Shape Books, and it’s got a whole different vibe and style. This is probably because it was published in 1970, and was printed in the Netherlands (so how did I end up with it in Indiana?). It seems rather rare, as Google is only returning 10 results.*

*UPDATE: Now I’m the #1 result. Nice.

I love seeing something new when flipping through old stock. This shot is from the NE corner of the Custom House in downtown Charleston, SC. A low hanging January sun was throwing off some interesting colors.

Each March for the last few years, I’ve been throwing down with some of the best designers in amazing PhotoShop battle modeled after the NCAA basketball tournament. I looooooves me some PhotoShop tennis, and adding a format like this makes it extra fine.

This happens over in The Arena at Flashkit.com, where the rest of the year you’ll find typical PhotoShop tennis-style battles happening. The regulars are incredible designers, and this tournament brings out their best.

A pool of 32 entries is seeded into a bracket by reputation, and designers share stock and go head-to-head in a battle of PhotoShop skills. The community members vote on each pairing, and after 4 elimination rounds, the final pairing competes to become the champ. Bragging rights and mad respect are the bounty, but the experience is always where it’s at.

These are my images from round one and two…not even close to my normal output and I pretty much got routed. So as usual, I was in way over my head (I’m 6-4 overall), but that’s what makes it…um, educational!

You can see some of my past March Madness entries here and here, and a couple of other battle images here and here.

I had a moment of food chain serendipity while playing with my boys in the front yard, which was followed by a sight both creepy and presumably moderately rare (vague enough?)

My youngest son was fussing after the cats, who were attentively stalking the mockingbirds, who were feasting on the hundreds of insects wafting up from the street garden. We naturally moved closer, and saw a light fuzzy area near the mailbox. It was moving…moving a lot.

It turns out that it was a swarm of reproductive termites flowing out of the mulch, then fluttering into the stiff breeze. Once we stepped back, we could see the termites in the air like snow. Hundreds of them, haphazardly being swept down the street in the wind (thank god!).

In the end, I think these guys were getting out because the garden became inhospitable. Let’s hope so…at least for the termites.

I recently found an old stash of Golden Shape Books with my childhood stuff. These books were everywhere back in the day, but there is a suprising lack of info online. I really dig these covers though…the art has that distinct ’70s vibe (muted palette, no CG, simple). Very cool. I need to get some shots of the interior next…

While searching for a particular Dr. Seuss book the other day, I noticed there was a wide range of colors on the bindings. Inspired by chotda’s rainbow bookshelves, I quickly threw the Seussian volumes into their proper ROYGBV order (I left all the white ones on the right). Not a mind-blowing display, but Coop liked it!

I have terrible equipment for capturing celestial phenomenon (a 17-40mm), but my not-so-inner geek always pulls me out into the yard. I’ve caught meteors, rainbows, and even the northern lights (rare for SC), and tonight I got two more — a lunar eclipse and a moonbow — only 90 minutes apart.

It was pretty cloudy in Mt. P, so I quickly snapped the moonbow shot at about 7:45 thinking that was that. I caught brief glimpses of the eclipse, and then at 9:15 there was a relatively clear patch. I took a few shots with my wide angle gear, but focusing was nearly impossible. Still, the moment was captured, and along with the moonbow record a wild 90 minutes up there.

I wanted to give a shout out to my friend Christopher Donahue, and his brand new shiny blog. Chris works with me, so we are constant talking about webby things, including SEO. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is used by webby types to improve a site’s page ranking and position in search engine results, and it’s a good skill to have.

Ever Googled your own name? When Chris does this, an American Most Wanted page comes up featuring a serial killer by the same name…and from the same home state. What’s a guy to do? Start a blog, and optimize it so it appears near the top of the search results. After just 1 week, Chris’s blog is the #20 results…the very last entry on page 2. With some incoming links and additional activity, it should move up in no time. Good luck Chris!

Chris’s Blog

As a skater, I never stop analyzing every curb, planter, ditch, gap, and set of stairs for potential skatability - even if most of these tempting street obstacles would send me back to the hospital for sure (I’ll stick to the parks, thank you).

Anyway, because I can’t stop gawking at these urban artifacts, they really stand out over time. Waxed curbs, scuffed walls, chipped paint on hand rails - it’s like Luminol on carnage to me.

So when Coop and I walked up the East side of the Ravenel a few weeks ago, I noticed that almost every skateable feature had been hit. The benches have been ground, and the cable anchors have been carved. Definitely an interesting setting for a session, and I imagine the photos were even better.

And seriously, I swear I’m not obsessed with this bridge or anything…really. I’ll post about other stuff soon, I promise!

I hope all you late risers didn’t miss the show this morning! Commuting over the bridges providing amazing views of the thick layer of fog that had settled over the rivers and marshes. I crossed the Wando bridge around 8 a.m. this morning, and snapped two quick shots.

The first one is looking Southwest down the Wando, towards the Ravenel Bridge. From left to right you can see the Channel 2 broadcast tower, both towers of the bridge, the cranes from the downtown port, and finally a couple of the MUSC buildings on the far right.

This second shot is looking Northeast up the Wando, and seeing nothing but white. The fog seemed to be way thicker up that way, and it reminded my of flying over cloud cover - nothing was penetrating it.

Well, we made it through another one.  Here are a couple shots from today’s excursion downtown.

The East Tower:

The Customs House:

You gotta wonder if this is progressive design or incompetent urban planning…or maybe you don’t. Either way, I bet this speedbump has a chronic case of braking envy. I mean, a speedbump next to a stop sign is like a Taser being followed by a bullet, right? Mount Pleasant location.