Garfield Minus Garfield consistently makes me do a literal LOL (as opposed to the false LOL where we are actually laughing inside or LI). Underneath the humor, however, is a mixture of sadder emotions. View at least several strips and you may notice it becomes an intensely surreal experience, like the act of removing Garfield peels back a bright and happy layer exposing the intensely lonely life of a desparate, bi-polar middle-aged bachelor.

Dan Walsh has revealed the deeper side of Jim Davis' art, a side that not even Davis himself realized knew was coming through his work. Walsh has shown us it's not always about a silly hedonistic cat making a straight man of his owner. It's about the human condition.

I am reminded of a powerfully insightful quote by the great Robert Anson Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land; one that makes me tear up almost every time I recall it:

I’ve found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much... because it’s the only thing that’ll make it stop hurting.

Garfield Minus Garfield makes us laugh because the loneliness and strangeness of Jon Arbuckle's life hurts us, and may even strike something personal in our own lives.

It's funny and it's brilliant, and you should go read some the next time you have a spare moment.

This work is impressive, imaginative, beautiful, and hauntingly organic. I could look at this gallery all day and continue to gush about it for as long. What makes me even happier is that they use medium format (120) E-6 film like my Seagull uses!

Really, though. Go view that gallery. now.

We also had a little malfunction with Doody's camera due to an overzealous shutter release cable, so I'll be posting instructions on how we fixed it.

I've also uploaded a ton of new photos to my flickr account. Please do check them out and let me know what you think! You can also view them by clicking the photography link at the top of this page.

Finally! Thursday night at ~7:30pm I received my Seagull TLR from UPS. Its as cool as I knew it would be. After reading all about medium format and TLR cameras for weeks I'm so glad to finally have it in my hands. The only problem has been that was too dark on Thursday to take any photos and I worked all day Friday! I have managed to sneak out when it wasn't raining on my break and take a few photos, but I really want to finish this first roll of 120 film to see how it comes out.

In lieu of taking photos with it, I've been examining it, drooling over it, and taking photos of it. Today I'm working all day again, but I will get out a 5pm and still have time to go shoot photos for a couple hours. Doody will probably be up here by then as well (he was in Portland) so we can go TLR shooting together!

If you really hunt around online you can get some decent info on Seagulls. Most people either love 'em or hate 'em. They aren't exactly bulletproof, so you have to baby them if you want to get 90+ rolls of film through them without repair. The reason for this is they are a cheap camera. As such, while the glass in them is wonderful, the internal mechanisms can jam if you don't 1. Keep it lubed and 2. Adjust the f/stop and shutter speed BEFORE cocking the shutter. This is a must, but once you're in the habit in no way inhibits shooting. They take wonderful photos and are dirt cheap, so if you love your Seagull, it will love you back.

Despite the info I gleaned from forums and reviews of the Seagull 105, I couldn't fine any nice big photos of it. I've decided to alleviate this.

I really wanted to find a freeware 360 degree QTVR creator, but after much fruitless searching I had nothing. Then, finally, I came across a 360 degree presenter that uses only javascript! Its called 3DNP and I sincerely thank Thorsten Schlueter. I've since posted some views of it on my flickr page, but for a real treat check out the 360 degree view of it here.

Expect another update as soon as I get this first roll processed! Yay!

The new photos are all contained in the new first 7 sets which are: Windmills, Trains!, 1st Red Sox Game, Loring AFB, Projector, Amme's Graduation, and Baby Parker, but there are also new photos in some of the other sets, so you can just scroll through my main flickr page (called the photo stream) to see all the new photos without going to each set individually.

Lastly, one of my favorite ways to see all the new photos is to just use this interactive slideshow!

Enjoy, and I do love feeback via the comment system within flickr or on euicho.com.

This is a little old, but I found it quite interesting:
An amusing exercise

It is a discussion thread over at Typophile about what chat shorthand (lol, wtf, rofl) might look like as symbols, much as 'at' has '@', or 'and' has '&'. Though most chat shorthands are acronyms instead of single words, it is still a very neat topic with some great ideas. I prefer the one pictured to the right of this post for LOL, submitted by gmckenzi.

I also have been pondering a discussion I had with someone at work about how we do not *usually* laugh literally "out loud" when we type lol, or actually fall out of our chairs when we type rofl (how would we type it if we were?), although there have been times when it has happened. Instead, maybe we should use an alternative, and leave LOL for more hilarious outbursts. You could just take the acronym of out, producing LIL (Laughing In Loud) but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, plus it looks like an abbreviation of little.

Perhaps LI or LIW, for Laughing InWardly, would work. Or we could spark a whole new term like TVF (Thats Very Funny) as in "That's very funny, a fly marrying a bumble bee... I TOLD YOU I'D SHOOT! BUT YOU DIDN'T BELIEVE ME! WHYYYYYYYY DIDN'T YOU BELIEVE ME?!?!". God I love that show.

In lieu of LOL, I tend to use "heh" when I find something funny, and "heheheheh" when it is funnier still. Note that I mean this as "heh heh heh", as in a chuckle, as opposed to "he he he", a feminine giggle...

So what do you all think? Do you like LIL, LIW, TVF? Create your own and post them here. I would love to hear your input on this!

PS: *bonus points for a symbolic for "OMG WTF BBQ" that is not just letters run together.

General

Adam's website is mostly cool things he's either made or collected over the years, and the general section basically introduces this, and gives you some background on the inventive and funny Mr. Savage. There isn't a lot to see here, so let's move on...

Commercial

Adam has worked in the Special Effects industry for years, and this section displays some of the work he's done for various companies. Among them are a laser cut acrylic crane for First Union Bank, a torture device for Pizza Hut's Mr. Bill, and a half-scale model of the Mars Viking Lander, which I particularly like, since I'm fascinated with Mars. He also talks about his work on the Coca-Cola commercial "Contraption" which was nominated for a Clio, but I can't for the life of me find a version of it anywhere online *sigh*.

Design

This Section showcases Adam's skill in sculpture and design. He has some great work here, especially if you have eclectic taste. I like the Frankenstein Biker Heart, Dolphin Spine, bionic eye, M1900 9-barrel, and of course the map of Middle earth.

TV Show

The TV Show pretty much just has some shots from the show. Nothing new to see here so we'll move on.

Film

Adam has worked on some of my favorite films, like Star Wars, Space Cowboys,
A.I., and Bicentennial Man.

The eye-checker and robot pieces are two of my favorites from Bicentennial man. The eye-checker is extremely well done.

He's also made some tiny sets for films like Space Cowboys and Titanic. Adam also showed off his fake radiator in one of the Mythbusters special.

Well, thats all there is to Adam Savage's site. There isn't a whole lot to write about, because its all visual! Go check it out, its worth the time, and if you did follow along, I hope you enjoyed perusing his collected works as much as I did. Stay strange people!

The best part is that it is not a flashy mindless thrown-together sort of TV show. The hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are Visual Effects professionals who attack every myth using the scientific method, use physics and science researched by a crack team of behind-the-scenes specialists, and test each myth tirelessly and thoroughly to make sure their findings are correct.

I love the show so much that I've made DVDs of every episode, and I encourage you to watch every episode you can, however you can get your hands of them. The subject matter is fascinating. The hosts, including the "build team", are hilarious, with Adam and Jamie having a classic Double Act relationship. You'll probably even learn something while watching. And lets face it, these guys are doing things we can only do in our wildest dreams.

So, now that I've professed my affliction for this marvelous show, we can get down to what sparked all this. For some reason I came across links to both the M5 website (M5 is Jamie Hyneman's visual effects company), and Adam Savage's website. These weren't hard to find mind you, I just hadn't ever looked for them before. Both websites have a lot of really neat stuff for both Mythbusters fans, and those just interested in the cool, weird, unusual, and funny.

First, lets highlight some neat pages at M5...

Portfolio

The Portfolio, as you might imagine, makes up the bulk of the site. Here you will find a comprehensive list of Visual Effects projects M5 has undertaken over the years. There are Commercials, Films, and Prototypes. This area is still in progress, so some of the project pages are lacking description or images, but most are there. M5 has created puppets, models, robots, and all manner of gadgets over the years.

Of particular interest are This ingenious Chef Boyardee rolling can, The massive Monkeybone set, The famous 7-Up vending tank, and of course this great vintage shot of young Hyneman!

I'd like to see video links here, maybe from youtube/google video, alas not today.

Inside M5

This section is really neat because it gives us a sneak peek into M5I's inner workings. As you've seen on Mythbusters, there are artifacts stuffed and dangling all over the place from past builds and projects. We also see some build tools like band and table saws, caulk, paint supplies, and CAD equipment. Also hanging out in M5I is a chatty rat, I believe from the Junkyard Wars commercial, and one of the guys from Naked Lunch looking like an alien autopsy photo. I'm not linking these, to encourage you to hunt them down yourself.

Staff

The staff section has a little bit about a couple of the people that make M5 function. As a side note, I stumbled upon this page by Cris Rocha who is apparently renting his family's Villa, lol.

Departments

The Departments section gives us a look at the different areas of M5 that go into creating these crazy concoctions. Among them are the Modelshop, Moldmaking, Machine shop, Painting, Woodshop, Robotics, Electronics, Welding, and Fabrication.

The Machine shop is where their two-time champion BattleBot Blendo was constructed.

Press

The press area is that last area of the M5I site (besides Contact, which is just for companies wanting to hire M5). In this section you can view Article excerpts from magazines M5's creations have been featured in.

Well, thats about all the fun stuff on the M5 Industries page. I really enjoy looking at the projects they've done in the past. I hope you do too!

I've decided to split this into a two-parter, and Adam Savage's website has some really zaney stuff, so check out part two here.

Knowing my penchant for procrastination and my inability to post regularly, I've decided to work on it and have fun at the same time with a little project. Anyone who knows me knows I love photography; I'm always looking for ways to be a better photographer. So I was pretty excited when I happened upon photojojo's Project 365: How to Take a Photo a Day and See Your Life in a Whole New Way.

The idea is pretty self-explanitory: Take a unique photo every day for a year. This is a really fun idea because, as Photojojo says:

PHO-TO-JO-JO!

• Imagine being able to look back at any day of your year and recall what you did, who you met, what you learned… (Often we find it hard to remember what we did just yesterday or even last night, let alone a whole year ago!)
• Your year-long photo album will be an amazing way to document your travels and accomplishments, your haircuts and relationships. Time moves surprisingly fast.
• Taking a photo a day will make you a better photographer. Using your camera every day will help you learn its limits. You will get better at composing your shots, you’ll start to care about lighting, and you’ll become more creative with your photography when you’re forced to come up with something new every single day.

Sounds pretty convincing to me!

As I said, I'm doing this to both improve my photography and teach myself a little discipline (which will hopefully also translate into more frequent posts here at euicho.com), but I also am going to use it as sort of a quick daily journal. I'm displaying this little project on Flickr (of course), and in each photo's description I'm going to put a little mini journal entry about what I did that day and anything interesting that happened. Since I try to keep euicho.com more professional and less like a journal (with the exception of my photos, and posts like this), this new pseudo-photo-blog will be the perfect place for friends and family to go read up on what I've been up to lately. I've just started a week ago, so check back often to see how its going. You can see my A Pic A Day project as a slideshow or not. And please read the full Project 365 article at PhotoJojo.com. They are a great photography newsletter.

I've added about 40% more photos to my Flickr page. A few are transfers from my old album page, but most are brand new. If you have a mo' then please stop by and check them out, and comment on any you think are cool. I'd greatly appreciate it!

Some new and updated sets are: Portland Headlight Trip, Portfolio, Fall 2006, 35 mm, and Pets (including new Bruski photos!)

Tip: hit the "View as slideshow" link on a set's page to see a pretty flash slideshow of the set.

I've always been a truly firm believer that everyone has an evil (or nice) twin, or maybe just a doppleganger. Whatever their disposition, this photography project by francois brunelle definately confirms my suspicions. The cool thing is that these are only some US/UK look-alikes. Imagine how many there are in the whole world!

Go to his website (www.francoisbrunelle.com) to see these freaky black and white photos. You can also read up on some of the details behind these coincidences... if you can call them that *cough*boysfrombrazil*cough*.

I don't recall how I came across Moo -- It must have been either Nyrath or del.icio.us/popular -- but in any case, come across it I did.

Do you like business cards? Meh, boring right? Do you love Flickr and your photos? Sure, we all do. Why doesn't someone combine the two? Moo did. They're a wonderful little printing company that currently offers a product called MiniCards.

MiniCards aren't strictly business cards, they're much smaller and more creative. They're more like little calling cards or "hey want a cool little fun snippet of one of my favorite photos?" cards. I plan on using them to promote my photo sales or just to give away to friends that ask for my email/hompage address.

Moo uses Flickr to get your photos. You click a link and it brings you to the Flickr security page that asks whether you trust Moo. Its ok, you can trust Moo. Once thats done you'll jump back to the MiniCards page where it asks you which photos you want to turn into cards. I got in on the 10 free cards to Flickr Pro members promotion (sorry, they ended the promotion after 10,000 packs) but you normally buy a 100 pack for $20. Once you've selected your photos you just crop them a little and tell them what to put on the backs (colors, fonts, name, contact details, whatever you want).

These little cards are as beautiful as they are functional. I can't wait to show them off! Check out my 10 pack and the little holder they came in on my flickr (also check the Moo pool), and go check out Moo's MiniCards too. If you don't have a flickr account, you really should get one anyway, but thats for another post.

PS: keep in mind that more Mpx will get you closer to an analog quality, but it is nowhere near close at present.

I have to give Madrid major "Props" (as Doody would say), because they've stepped up and said "No, we won't allow these unreallistically, morbidly underweight girls to be flaunted and idolized by impressionable girls and women."

Yes, Hollywood is another great offender, but this active step by Madrid's regional government is a huge step in the right direction for the fashion world, and sets a great example that I hope others will follow.

I leave you with a hilarious quote by Leonor Perez-Pita:
"Clothes look much better on a lovely girl than on a clothes hanger"

If any of you are semi-long-term readers, you will likely remember my post from almost exactly a year ago about the V for Vendetta movie project. Whether you caught it or not, go ahead and refresh your memory as it's a short post and has links to introduce new readers to V for Vendetta

The advertising has been pretty extensive, but if you are one to cut yourself off from normal modes of media assailment (I myself don't listen to the radio and watch little non-downloaded TV, instead getting all of my info from the internet), you may have missed the fact that the theatrical adaptation of the graphic novel V for Vendetta is now playing! I'm going to see it this weekend so I haven't a review for you right now, but the novel is truely stellar (how could it not be... it's Alan Moore) , the film was adapted by the Wachowski brothers, and it was directed by James McTeigue who's assistant directed on Dark City, The Matrix, and Attack of the Clones. As if that wasn't enough, Natalie Portman is in it. I can see Doody drooling now.

Alan Moore adaptations can be great companions or red-headed stepchildren of their graphic novel counterparts, depending on the screenwriters/directors. For example, From Hell was really good, however League of Extrodinary Gentlemen was not... at all. Let's hope this one knocks it out of the park.

While on the subject of movies: Serenity was amazing (except they F#@&ing killed Wash!!! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot guys? Jeez... was that really necesary? Anyway...), H2G2 was fun (though I'd like to see more of them made), and will Watchmen EVER be made, and more importantly, made *well*?

Oh for h4x1ng in the rain!
My sweet and gentle Jesus!
Great googily moogily!

It's... It's... It's HERE.

Yea fair readership, Wype thee fog frome thy eyes and beholdith the glory of: The Mammoth Photo Update.

I've finally finished sorting and uploading over at photos.euicho.com, and have added 6 new albums containing roughly 600 photos total. Its a biggie, and it took many an hour, so please stop on by and enjoy my hobby with me.

And remember, if you would like a print of any of my work (I'm currently working on an online store at the moment) please feel free to email me at euicho [at] euicho [dot] com. I'm modest, so my prices are very reasonable!

Expect a portfolio update with photos of Caribou's recent amazing frost soon.

Whilst looking through some old un-labeled cds, I came across a little gem I filmed with my friends winter of 2003 and edited into a trailer winter of 2004. Now here, winter of 2005, it seems apropriate I share it with the world.

You can view it in an embedded windows media player viewer here: Embedded WMV Player, but I warn you, It has given some people some trouble (as it may not be a standards compliant activeX control.

Instead, you can direct download the trailer in these formats:

• Divx (9.69MB @ 512x384)
• RM *double shiver* (2.86MB @ 640x480). I suggest Real Alternative player for Windows (Linux and Mac users likely already have a good player).
• WMV (6.72MB @ 400x300). I suggest Media Player Classic for Windows systems (again, Linux and Mac users probably have a player yet).

Loiter is a mockumentary about an underground movement of loiterers that tries to understand what it is all about and why they do it. There are a couple minor tweaks I would like to make to the end of this, as the music just fades out at the end, but I no longer have the source footage so there's that. I hope you enjoy.

Today is Vincent Van Gogh's birthday.

I am no student of art history, by any means, but he is one of my favorite Post-Impressionist painters, and I have always held a certain place in my heart for him, seemingly for no reason, but actually due to Don Mclean's soothing voice.

Take a second to read the wikipedia article, or anything about him, to honor this tragic, remarkable man.

If you only have a basic account, do NOT upload full-sized pics. You have a 10MB of bandwidth limit per month and will use it up FAST! I did my first month.
Instead, resize your pictures to 510 by 383 (510x383), which is the size they will be displayed at anyway, since users cannot zoom your pics if you have a basic account. This will allow you dozens upon dozens of more pics per month.

If you hate resizing pictures by hand, or writing a psp photoshop script to do it for you, go to the Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP page and download Image resizer. It puts an option in your right-click menu to resize any selected pictures (batch or individual depending on what you selected before right-clicking). You can do any custom size, or choose from presets. One important note though: It creates separate images by default. If you want to resize the originals you must select that option in the advanced button. It is extremely easy to use and resizes very nicely.

At the PowerToys page you can get a bunch of other indespensable add-ons, including TweakUI, which NO XP machine should be without. It lets you customize nearly everything about how XP looks and operates.

While I'm at it--if you have an LCD or fuzzy screen, get ClearType Tuner. It makes it easier to read text on your screen by adjusting the way fonts look, it really works wonders, and installs in the Control Panel for easy access.

Also check out Open Command Window Here, Alt-Tab Replacement, and Virtual Desktop Manager (all at the PowerToys page).

Also, if anyone wants a gmail account, whether it be for coolness' sake or just 'cause you need a new email addy, I have 50 Invites. Just request one in the comments or e-mail me at euicho [at] euicho.com and I'll send you one.

I added some new bouldering, rapelling, and Evan pics in the Random Antics album.

My Portfolio has new photos from my trip to Portland this weekend with Amme and Becky, along with a couple old photos I'd forgotten to post.

I'm working on a Friends album as well...

and the Amme and I album has freshies too.

I'll tell you about the trip later on this week, but it was loads of fun!

I'd also like to welcome 'Madman' Doody to the euicho.com domain! His photography gallery can be seen at madman.euicho.com

BEWARE of ART's Jen Gagne creates insect sculptures that are more dangerous, and far more intimidating, than the real ones. Funny thing is, they're cute in a deadly I'll-mess-you-up-man! sorta way.
via: Nyrath

     
The two ferrets are Baby and Kitty. They were both adopted from Central Aroostook Ferret Rescue, and yes, they are huge.

       
Riley is the dark cat and Connor is the orange one that loves to sleep in the ferrets litterboxes, wedge his large girth into all-too-small spaces, and will jump into any plastic bag he can fit his head into. Unfortunately this means he gets his head stuck in the handles quite often.

To do this, I found a picture of gir online. Then I used this stencil tutorial from Stencil Revolution (which is a great site BTW), and cut out the black areas, then taped the stencil to my pumpkin, and cut away!

Once you've made your own stencil, or if you want so pre-made ones, go to this really good carving tutorial: pumpkincarving101.com tutorial

Some of the most unique ideas are at extremepumpkins.com. They were the inspiration for Zach and I's pumpkin cannibal:
.

I also did a Frank the Rabbit pumpkin from Donnie Darko. Pumpkin carving is a ton of fun, from picking your pumpkins to the finished product, so go have yourself some fun!

I love this wastebasket-hoops flash game hint: you can bounce them off the floor with the right technique and get very consistant.

Either these wheelbarrow freestlye guys have made one hell fo an elaborate joke, or they are idiots... or both. Yet I still love it.

This is the best ipod holder ever, cause hes a cute lil (BIG actually) lego-man.

Doody was asking last weekend if there were any websites dedicated to airfields, since he knows about how great airliners.net is for aircraft. Well Matty, http://creports.capnhq.gov/airfield/default.asp is the Civil Air Patrol website of airfields, and it has every place I've typed in, including, of course, CAR. Hey, I can see my house from here. No really, I can! Its in the North picture. I'm not telling you which one, though.

Wow. Amazing ballpoint pen drawing. Thats all I have to say... wow.

Photomatt.com is another great photoblog, but not just another. Note this is not the same as Photomatt.net.

If you are like me, with no graffiti skills whatsoever, check out stencilrevolution.com. They have great artwork and tutorials for making beautiful multi-layer stencils. Join the revolution, brother.

Ah... want some eye-candy? cssbeauty.com is a CSS design showcase site.

I don't know whats more wrong: Defacing a national graphic novel treasure, or how hard I laughed at it.

This site is along the same lines as engrish.com. Its a hall of techinal docmentation weirdness.

Brando has come up with some neato cameraphone lenses, however, the macro Lens is the only one thats not blurry as hell.

If you enjoy playing Boggle as much as I do, you'll LOVE WEBoggle. You play in realtime against other players around the world.

Jalb put up a deviant art site: jalbey.deviantart.com. Go peep his great photography.

FUYAMA Taruto made this wonderful animation:

This work gathers the animation works created by the distinctly different styles/methods of several writers who are avid readers of Jim Woodring's original. My version focuses on how to depict the movements of the characters accurately in the CG without doing injustice to the beauty of the pictures and global vision found in the original. At any rate, this work could not have been possible without the greatness of the original. I wish to share the pleasure of receiving this award with Jim who resides in Seattle.

This is exactly like something Jesse would put together: Onstar transcripts that didn't make it on the commercials.

This is how I see Bush.

I'm not going to "Wal*Mart" for a LONG time. Know what the "*" stands for on the sign? Its where they edited out "F***ING". I'm so sick of Wal *BEEP* Mart right now. Hell, we went there almost every day last semester, because Amme is just funny like that, but this weekend we went about 3 times a day, and thats just depressing.

We painted every day, some days more than others, and managed to finish the living room and almost finished the bathroom and Amme and I's bedroom. We got more paint and rollers and tape. I can't thank Jalb and Doody and Amme enough for all their help. In between painting we did a lot of stuff though. We played a lot of Texas Hold-Em and Crazy Eights. Jalb forgot his nice clay chips at home and we couldn't find any poker chips at WalMart so we bought ziti noodles and they ended up working pretty well, except we had to keep them in bowls so they wouldn't roll off the table.

We shampooed the carpets and when we rented the unit the lady didn't know how to fill out the form so that took about 20 minutes. When we returned it they said we needed our receipt to refund the deposit, which the lady had neglected to mention to us when we rented it. We had to drive all the way back to our place to get the stupid slip of paper. Jalb asked where the hand-held radio scanners were and they told us they didn't carry them. We knew they did in Presque Isle so we checked automotive anyway and lo and behold, there the little bastards were right with the car stereos. He bought one, only to have it not take manual frequencies when the package said it did, so he returned it and got a cheaper, MUCH better one from Radio Shack.

I have to say, I hate going to Radio Shack because they are always so pretentious and assholes about everything, but this one salesman at the one in Brewer was amazing. He was all smiles and very helpful and talked about all the features with Jalb and even offered to take it out and put batteries in the one he was buying to test it out. He bought it along with a $5 adapter the guy gave him for free, and to top that all off, he went out back and got a list of all the popular frequencies for the area. I was thoroughly impressed, and from now on, that's the only Radio Shack I'm going to. After cooking up some of my special spaghetti sauce with much help from Amme, and mauing down, we went out to take night photos (our favorite) at Bangor International Airport (BGR).

On our way into the airport, we saw a blue and white tail-design sticking out from behind the terminal, and it turned out to be an Antonov Design Bureau plane! Don't crucify me, I'm still new at aircraft identification, but I believe it was an Antonov An-124 Ruslan. We found out that the planes were landing on the end of the runway that ended at a public road (bottom of this picture), so we parked there and waited. We ended up having two or three planes come in, and they were BIG. I don't remember what Jalb decided they were, but I'll find out when he once again joins the living (he didn't come in to work today, that bad boy). It was so loud and exhilarating, and we got some great wake turbulence! We also caught a jet taking off but it was too dark to see, too fast to use a high shutter priority, and too far away to use a flash.

We went out again the next day to take some daytime photos, and found some great shortcuts around Bangor. We stumbled across a playground and decided to play for a while. Amme and I swung on a tire swing and got very dizzy.

I don't remember which day, but we took more night shots around Bangor and got a few really good ones. On our way into town, we saw a tall church casting a shadow in the sky. This is one of my favorite shots:

Theres an overall sense of impending doom, and them standing there with their paintlegs unknowingly stuck on their shoes, mirrored, is priceless to say the least.

My memory is blury, but at some point we fed seagulls fries from Wendy's, saw a 3 foot long nurse shark, made stirfry, saw a C-5B Galaxy?, and watched an Omni air International DC 10 take off.

We also wandered around Borders trying to get free WiFi on Jalb's powerbook, but it said we needed a T-mobil account and the software was only for Windows. They said there were booklets about how to connect, but they had run out so we ended up leaving with some periodicals. Today Kevin told me all you have to do is put in the username and password and its free, but those are in the booklets. He thinks they are "Borders" and "Bangor" respectively. You don't need to d/l the connection manager on the Mac because, as always, it 'just works'.

We had an amazing time and I can't wait to get us or more of us together again. I leave you with Doody's centerfold picture for 2004.
You can see all the pictures at http://euicho.com/pics/doodjalb/

On a tangent thats parallel with the latitude line where that thing happened with that guy that one time in the place with the thing doing that stuff:

Defective Yeti decided there should be a March Madness Cinematic SuperVillian. My personal favorite is Verbal Kint vs. HAL 9000. Verbal would totally fu$k up his logic, but HAL might possibly one-up him.

Scratchmedia has a wonderful web design tutorial page, I suggest all budding designers check it out.

If you are looking for a new digicam, if you are thinking about getting a new digicam, if you don't know if you can afford a new digicam, if you family member, friend, or pet is looking for a new digicam, hell if your spidey-sense tells you a total stranger that passes you on the street is looking for a digicam, GO TO Steves-digicams.com. You will never see a more in-depth digital camera review site ANYWHERE on the net. C'mon I dare you. I double dog dare you! Can't do it can you? Nope. Didn't think so. This place has about 6 pages of review per camera, and hundreds of cameras, plus printers and accessories. They have close-up photos, sample photos, even 360 degree VR tours of the cameras. They show better specs than the maufaturer's sites, and have links to the best deals on them.

If you feel the need for this bed, I think your money would be better spent on a psychiatrist for paranoid schizophrenia. Unless, of course, you are vacationing in Iraq.

Homeland Insecurity Advisory System is a website that lets you rate the U.S. Government's threat level:

The Homeland Insecurity Advisory System (HIAS) is a public rating system that allows people from across the globe to determine the US Government's Threat Level by collectively rating RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) feeds from major US news sources. Turning the "Homeland Security" threat level on its head, the HIAS system will allow the people to collaboratively challenge this internally determined (and seemingly arbitrary) threat condition by rating each major US news source according to its support level for or against the US Government's actions.

If you're wardriving, or just need to find some free internet, check wifimaps.com before you venture out.

Our application displays stunningly detailed interactive street-level maps of the US and of the World, with triangulated access-points from wardriving data. We provide searching for MAC, station name, US state, or by geographic region.

If you consider yourself a photographer, you know about lomography, or 'lomo' (which roughly sounds like the last half of "f#$k your mother" in Cantonese). I've been a fan of lomography for a long time, I like shooting from the hip with my T616 (no not like that kid at safeway ). Its a really interesting artform, so if you're interested go check it out at lomography.com

I've spent hours reading all the how much is inside articles at cockeyed.com. This guy definately leads an interesting life. His Incredable Creations are also really entertaining. His writing is hillarious. Take, for example, these two excerpts from How Much is Inside a Pack of Rolling Tobacco:

There are two reasons people smoke cigarettes. The first reason is to support their federal, state and local governments with vast amounts of tax revenue.
...
Having traveled all over the globe as a child, Steven became an expert at "origami", the ancient Japanese art of cigarette rolling.

I'm on a quest to find a list of all the different Tech/ Geek/ Anime/ Comic conventions that go on throughout the year. So far all I have is

• defcon
• HOPEcon
• boggercon
• dragoncon
• comic-con
• sakura-con
• FanimeCon
• Oni-Con

Anyone know of the kind of site I'm looking for?