I've deactivated my FB account. It's a time-waster, although I've found many people I haven't thought of in years. I have a storage tote full of greeting cards and in the process of digging out Xmas ones, I found an old Hello Kitty phone book. Wow, what a journey through the past. Now that that's out of the way, I freaked out and started cleaning up my profiles. At this point I want to disappear into the woodwork. Alas, I think the web might be rife with all manner of inaccurate (and correct) info linked to my name. Scary. I just want to shake it off. Maybe I'll change my name to something like Tuesday Friday...
Recently I've been diving into High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. Initially I used Bracketeer to combine three photos that had been taken with different exposure (-2, 0, +2 stops). But very quickly I became unsatisfied with the output from Bracketeer. After a little research, it turns out Bracketeer only fuse photos with different exposures. Whereas other HDR software also perform tone mapping. After listening to a TWiP podcast about HDR and read through the HDR tutorial by Trey Ratcliff, I decided to try Photomatix Pro last week to see what different result I would get.
This morning I awoke recalling a wonderful dream of an old friend Sara Burks, my brother's ex-girlfriend from Cal days. In the dream, we met at a scooter rally, and she beamed as she passed around her newly published monograph, which placed her among the - unbeknownst to me - many others in their crowd who were authors. (I've lost contact with her)
Since my first iPhone, I've never had any issue with its battery life. As long as I get access to the charger by the end of the work day the battery life on the iPhone 2G or 3G have been perfectly adequate. That is until I started working on a project down in Atlanta and my weekly commute now extends to around 6-8 hours, depending on flight delays.
I'm sitting in Barnes & Noble, trying not to be overwhelmed by another materialistic holiday. I used to love Christmas, but these days it seems to have become one giant shopping/marketing frenzy. Makes me want to give everyone mathoms.
I want to withdraw from the madness and try to remember what the season's supposed to be about. I don't have kids, but if I did I'd want to take them to someplace beautiful, emphasize togetherness, and teach them charity for the poor by going to work at a food bank or something. I think I'd emphasize making crafts for presents, defining them as tokens of meaning, remembrance, and craftsmanship. That's what you do when you don't have money. Often a much more appreciated gift, especially now, when the economy is on the skids. Or (and I have many treasured gifts of this nature) hit the thrift shops and recycle.
All the spending makes me want to throw up.
This Thanksgiving, look around the table at your friends and loved ones, look into your heart, and give thanks for just how lucky we all really are.
This is my 4th Thanksgiving since being diagnosed with terminal cancer. I'm grateful beyond belief to be here, and thankful for all of you.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Sent from my iPhone