Archive for the ‘photography’ Category

Metafilter Meetup Wrapup

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Took the train down to Portland Saturday, for the Metafilter.com 11tth anniversary meetup.  Saw some well done graffiti, memories of when I lived in PDX, saw some street art I am pretty sure is new since I left.    Saw one person I’ve known for a long time, met several other new folk.  Took the train back up Sunday.  Saw quite a few of the Seattle to Portland bikers.

While in Portland, saw a guy making and giving away balloon animals/flowers/swords on the MAX.  Said old-friend suggested it was just portland “keeping it weird”, but when I got back to Seattle, had a woman on the bus (who I’m pretty sure I’ve run into on the streets of downtown before) who asked me:

1.  If you win at penny slots, do they pay you out in pennies?

I replied that these days, they give you a ticket to redeem for cash, but yes, in the old days, they did pay out in pennies.

2.  She asked, how much is 10,000 pennies.  She was quite disapointed when I said $100.

3.  She then asked, how many pennies in $10,000. (1,000,000 said I)

Then it was my stop to get off.  I think there are just a lot of crazy people in the world.

Busy Weekend

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Started out my Saturday at the Wooden Boat Festival on Lake Union.  On the way there, the Beetle got unhappy, so he ended up parked the whole weekend, which left me limited to activities within scooter range, so no vintage car races.  That’s OK, the zombies were out in force in FremontChildren zombies, bride zombies, lady zombies, dude zombies,  and of course,  zombie-fighters.

Sunday was 4th of July fireworks at Gasworks Park.  The day started out nice enough, I went kayaking without incident, but shortly thereafter, it started to rain.  But by the time it was time for fireworks, things had cleared up nicely, and I got lots of pics of the action.  Afterwords, got some cool stretchy light photos of boats and cars trying to leave the area.

Monday, helped out with the Starbucks Clean Up project.  Found the remains of a mugging,  and some strange bunch of poles and chains, and a fake rock, that smelt fuel-y.

Pride Parade 2010

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Your own blood always seems so bright red when you first see it.  It’s only later, as it dries, that it goes dull and brown.  Not the best start to a day, but at least the tires were properly inflated when all was said and done, and the mess was only on my hands and the garage floor, not on my mostly-white bert-n-ernie-are-gay shirt.

When I got to the staging area, a couple of the Dykes on Bikes were there, but it wasn’t till much later before any other scooters showed up, and very much later before anyone who was actually a regular in the SQREAM group made it.  The guy with the signs never made it.

The electric scooter managed the whole run, and didn’t have any problems keeping up in the short runs we would have before circling around.  I still had enough charge, I didn’t even bother looking for somewhere to plug in, once we got the Seattle Center.

I was really tired from getting up way too early (took an hour weaving orange thread thru the spokes of my wheels.  Looked really cool…if you were 6 inches from it, just looked like an orange blob at speed.  Would have been better served with less time and more wide crepe paper.  Lessons learned.

Didn’t go back down to shoot the rest of the parade, didn’t even stay at the center too long before I went to take a quick nap.  Did run up to visit Brad on the hill, got to meet a couple of people who’d been in drag during the parade (one of whom was still in drag and deep into the bottle), who both ended up being featured in the very tiny segment the news did on pride.  The bar was enjoying it.

A typical pride day, really.

Flickrsanity

Monday, June 21st, 2010

You gotta love when a small company gets taken over by a big faceless giant, and you start getting left-hand/right-hand problems where, for example, one group in a company will add a nifty feature to the product that reduces the pain of working with said company tremendously, only to have someone else in the same company make a change that sabotages all the work of the first group.

Someone at Yahoo added a feature to the Flickr Uploader that lets it automatically determine image rotation.

Someone else at Yahoo added a feature to the website that lets it automatically determine image rotation.

No one at Yahoo bothered to see if the two systems work together, so you have situation where the auto-rotation-magic of the Flickr Uploader is wiped out by the auto-rotation-magic of the website’s back end processes.

Morons.

Cool Iris Wall – Michelle Shocked

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

Lets see if I know how to link stuff still =p

Seattle Tattoo Convention

Saturday, April 17th, 2010


Skulls on her knees

Originally uploaded by Xymon

Slave to the Needle hosted a tattoo convention in Seattle this weekend, so I thought I’d check it out. Saw lots of nifty pics of tats, lots of people getting tats, and even an iPad out in the wild.

Photo Safari – St Patty’s Run

Monday, March 15th, 2010

I was headed downtown sunday to breakfast at the hurricane, when I spotted the st patty’s day run, and made a side trip to take some pictures.

There were guys in green full-body spandex suits that I saw a couple of times, the last group of walkers, some people in ‘costumes’ like a bathrobebarrels of Guinnessmohawk’d guys with cases of beer strapped to their backs, and some guy who just wanted to walk his dog in peace, and at least 1 runner who didn’t seem to be wearing any green at all. 99 was full of pedestrians in both directions well past the sky-bridge to work.

Pre-Tulips Trip

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Headed up to the Skagit Valley to check out what flowers had budded already.  None of the major tulip fields were ready yet, but there were some daffodils.  I made a stop at a nursery across the road from them and got good pics of a bee, a nice shot of a dew covered flower, some noisy sheep, some lama and chickens.  There was also a field full of white birds.

Photo Safari Gas Works Park 20100228

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Started the day out with  breakfast at the Hurricane, served by My Little Pony, if we believe receipts.

Learned that just because we could make synthetic natural gas in the 1800′s doesn’t mean you shouldn’t serve in the military now.  Umm, OK?

I wondered again, just how safe the park can be for kids to play in, when a mere locked door protects us from “unremediated areas” that require class C protective gear.

Someone is camping in the park.  If the luggage is any indicator, they once had a decent job. Or were given a nice set of luggage and camping gear.  I suspect there are two of them, and they also own these bikes.

The clouds were breaking up, by the time I kayaked (no pics), it was actually sunny.

Saw some paranoid conspiracy graffiti.  Noticed a helipad I had no idea existed, despite kayaking past it for years.   Amazing what a change in perspective reveals.

Saw yet another pair of Sunday morning, aka the day after, shoes.

Feb 21 Photo Safari

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

There was the strange ribbon tree, lots of multi-color ribbons tied to some of the branches on a tree near the path.

There was a stand of dried up plants, some blond, some a bright red, that looked really cool.

I got one good shot of a bird in flight, several shots of a bird eating a couple of worms,  and even some shots of a bald eagle.

A little bit of industrial decay.

And the nice view of the space needle,  on the way to work, that will soon be gone =(