Chicago and the 5D

Last week we took a quick weekend trip to Chicago to meet up with Leslie's family. I had been to Chicago once before, for the NAMM show back in 1988. It had been a while. In addition to being a lot of fun to see Leslie's family and getting to know our new nieces, this was a great chance to try out my new Canon 5D camera. Fun!

I got the 5D the weekend before for Leslie's graduation. OK, that's a lame excuse for buying a camera ("Congratulations honey! Look what I got me!") but with the trip to France coming up this summer, I really wanted a camera where a wide lens is a wide lens and the screen on the back of the camera is absolutely fantastic! I can tell you this... 12.8 megapixels is right on the edge of too much. In some of these shots from Chicago, I could zoom in to 100% to see lots of great detail but when I see the whole picture, that detail is lost. When I view them on my screen or in a digital picture frame that detail does me no good. Great to know that I can crop and still get really good results and that I can make great big prints, though.


Looking north along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago from the top of the Hancock building. The weather was wonderful with big puffy white clouds and a gorgeous blue sky.


Chicago's waterfront from the top of the Hancock tower


The Chicago Water Tower and the Hancock building. Old meets New meets the sky.


Ah the martini... and the grandeur of the 50mm 1.4 lens on the 5D. The depth of field is small but it does a great job of low light photography like in restaurants and on the 5D it is a real 50mm lens, not an 80mm which is way too long for food shots.

Shredding some hills

OK, we weren't shredding the hills, but Leslie, Zach and I all took a snowboarding lesson today at Whistler and it was awesome. I've been trying to master skiing up there for the past year or so - not enough to ever get any good but enough to get a bit better - but I wanted to give boarding a try. We had a great time.

The word is that skiing is easy to start but takes a lot of practice to really master. Boarding, on the other hand, has a steep learning curve but once you master the basics, you've pretty much know it all. After one lesson, I'm in no position to really say if that is true but I did get a sense that there are fewer things to keep track of on a board than on skis. Next time we go up, I'm going to give boarding another try and see if I can comfortably get to the blue runs more quickly on a board than on skis.

Seeing as it is April - it might be a while before I figure that out for sure.

One thing is sure though - boarding gear is both cooler to look at and immensely more comfortable than skiing gear. That alone is a good reason to stick with it.

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

On Thursday, our team went up to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival to take some pictures of flowers (good place for that... eh?). It's a pretty long ride up but it was well worth it. I was expecting thousands of acres of tulips spread out across the valley though I was suprised by how few rainbow fields we saw but we definitely did see a great variety of tulips as well as a number of other types of flowers.

On Friday, we stopped by again on the way up to Whistler and caught one more location which did have a much better selection of flower fields though a poorer display garden. The sky wasn't as clear as I would have liked but the flowers are definitely striking.








Rogue Daffodil

As we were driving past a field, our guide mentioned that the few flowers that were scattered around it were rogue daffodils. When they cleaned up the field after the previous years batch of daffodils, they missed a few bulbs and sometimes those grew into daffodils. This one was another rogue. I keep picturing World of Warcraft rogue daffodils sneaking up behind some tulip and backstabbing it....



Tulips as abstract art - Thanks LensBaby!


Firebloom. OK, this isn't really firebloom but it is what I imagine it looking like. I bet this is the only discussion of tulips on the internet with so many links to thottbot...

Anyway, more pictures of flowers, rogue and otherwise, at PhotoMobility.com.

Street Signs: No Pee Zone

I've been meaning to do a series like this for a long time...

I think the iconography in signs is fascinating. As I travel, I run into signs that try to communicate something in iconic form -- something that will make sense to everyone regardless of the language you speak. Sometimes they are quite successful, other times they can be interpreted in a number of interesting ways. As a new feature on Duffergeek, I will be posting some of the pictures I run across and, when appropriate, trying to decipher their intention.

This time, it is pretty obvious.


Street Signs: No Pee Zone

I was in Amsterdam a couple of years ago and saw this sign. I only saw one in the entire city but it seemed to work because I had to walk a whole block away to find a guy actually peeing on the wall.

So I'm pretty sure this sign means you're not supposed to pee here but it could have some other meanings...
1) Don't drop stones
2) Stand up straight when peeing (no swayback urination)
3) No peeing on ants

Other thoughts on what this could mean?

On the plane back from Tokyo

I'm returning from Tokyo this morning. It's a long flight on what ends up being a 41 hour day. As we near North America the sun starts to come up for the second time today and I'm thinking "Here comes Friday again..."

Golf at the Plateau

It's been a long time since I last actually posted about a round of golf. Nutty given that the duffer part is about golf but here I go again. Paul and I played a round at the Plateau Club today and just to mix it up we played from the white tees. At nearly 900 yards shorter than the golds where we usually play it was a pretty big change and, for me, it actaully made the Plat fun again.

It wasn't about trying to hit heroic shot after heroic shot at this insanely unforgiving course. It was about playing with all of the clubs in the bag and just focusing on excuting makeable shots. Oh sure, I had some crappy ones. Like on 11 - a long par 5 - where hitting my driver went through the main part of the fairway and into the junk that I've never contemplated hitting before. Oops - next time I wouldn't start with that. Or just thinning the approach shot into the crap on 9. But each shot was within my capabilities even with only playing once in the past 5 months and I was able to come away with an 86. Not my greatest score there, and less impressive that it was from the whites, but it was actually a lot of fun to play. The high point was hitting the greens on all four of the par 3 holes and walking away with four pars.

I'm doubt I'll play from the white tees each time I play there but we should for a while, and it will certainly make the game much more fun. Heh - golf... fun... how likely is that??

It Must be Springtime

Cuz I'm eating a Thin Mint.

Ben Folds - Still Rockin' the Suburbs

Hillel and I saw Ben Folds tonight at the Paramount in Seattle. I've probably seen Ben Folds (including Ben Folds Five) about 8 or 9 times and tonight's show was one of the best. He was with a band again and while the solo piano thing is cool, his songs are just better with bass and drums.

Tonight was opening night of his new tour and his new band was really good. The vocals in particular were amazingly tight. While the bass didn't have the "blur my vision on Narcolepsy" effect like in the final BFF show we saw, it was still really good and the bass player looks something like Cal from the movie the 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Ben Folds Five songs, solo songs, newer songs, audience sing-along, oh and a rousing rendition of Dr Dre's B*****s Ain't S**t - or at least that's what iTunes Music Store calls the song.

Great show!

C'est la même meme

Well, I got tagged by Skippy to provide a meme post -- an 8x4 list of all about me :)

Four Jobs I’ve Had in My Life:
1. Software Engineer
2. Recording Engineer
3. Guitar Player
4. Roofer
then there was that time I painted air conditioners for the summer...

Four Movies I Could (and I do) Watch Over and Over:
1. Star Wars
2. Twister - Really? Yep...
3. The Philadephia Story
4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Zey belong here, more zan we

Four Places I’ve Lived:
1. Dayton, OH
2. Ann Arbor, MI
3. Concord, MA
4. Sammamish, WA
I left out that whole California thing...

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch:
1. 24 - just started watching this season
2. The West Wing - Yeah, it has gone downhill but I still love the dialog when it is sharp
3. The Daily Show / The Colbert Report - OK, it's two shows, but I watch them as one
4. My Name Is Earl

Four Places I Have Been on Vacation:
1. Cape Cod, MA - for my honeymoon <3
2. Rome, Italy
3. Cairo, Egypt
4. Disney Theme Parks - more times than I can remember

Four Websites I Visit Daily:
1. Excite - still my home page. How 90s!
2. Thottbot - when I'm WoW'ing
3. MyFamily.com - keeping up with the family
4. MSN - my homepage for machines that I haven't changed to excite.
Geez. I need to read more blogs.

Four of My Favorite Foods:
1. Cheese - Oh I just love cheese. Really I do.
2. Curry - A good Massaman, or something with Major Grey's Chutney
3. Sushi - The Lauren roll at Nishino in particular but others are great as well
4. Leslie's Thai peanut noodles. - YUM!

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:
1. Sitting on the beach in Cape Cod
2. Golfing at Pebble Beach
3. Taking pictures in Europe
4. Skiing at Whistler (sans the falling at Whistler)

Four Tags to Continue this Meme:
Time to pass it on!
1. Leslie - Go Go Meme Master!
2. Katie - Time to update your blog
3. David - Where are you going to put something that isn't with photos?
4. Rick It is ON

A few more pictures from Egypt

Sunrise at Sharm El Sheikh


Kom-Ombo Temple


Lone tree hill - St. Catherine's Monastery on the Sinai peninsula


The Moonhouse


Fresh Indigo - I don't recommend mixing this with your saffron