April 2008 Archives
Yea, I know, long time no update.... seems that not much interesting is going on lately. However, on Saturday Dana was kind enough to invite me out to a poker night. The weather was half decent, so I left home a bit early and went out with the goal of taking some pictures of Mt. Cheam (a bit east of Chilliwack) as Dana had mentioned a few times he wanted to take pictures of the mountain. In theory the timing to get the good light would be about right, however the weather was hazy and "meh" so my shots of it didn't turn out all that well at all. However, on the way out there I saw a sign to Bridal Falls and having never been there, took the side road.
It was about a 10 minute walk from the parking lot up to the falls (well, "fall" to be precise) and it was very cool. A short and fat fall as opposed to the last waterfall I was at at Shannon Falls in Squamish. I got a bunch of shots and a few even turned out. The one above is a combination of four images to create a vertidcal panorama (not needed until I want to print out something wall sized of course). That one I converted to LAB color and did some tweaking there to test the "use lab to make the green pop more" theory. May or may not have done anything as compared to normal processing of course.
The one above is a shot taken from a way up past the "don't go beyond this fence" sign to get closer to the bottom of the fall. I took a set of three images bracketed -1.5,0,+1.5 and then combined these to create an HDR in Photoshop (to align them properly) and then Photomatix (to do the tone mapping). On my screen it looks a bit more "HDR-like" in terms of a bit more cartoony color, but not overdone. I will probably do a bit of playing with a non-HDR version to see how that looks as well. I'm not a fan of overdone HDR but I can see the attraction to the odd poppy-ness of the colors and detail.
Anyway, as the sun came down and the mosquitos came out I headed over to poker night. There were 5 guys there, plus snacks and beer. What better of a night could you have!? I made it to the end as one of the last two in the game, but in the end lost out as my chips were slowly taken away from me :( Oh well, I didn't need the $50 pot anyway!! :P
Had a great time post-poker as well, chatting with everyone, and watching random funny youtube videos. I bailed a bit early due to the drive home. Oh, one thing I did find out was I don't think I could make it in the army. Dana was telling us some stories about how the training went. I've always had this random thought that if I really wanted it bad enough I could bulk up and be an army guy (no, don't try to understand how my brain works), but after hearing about how they'd have to run everywhere and do 25 chin-ups before entering any building, my body hurt just thinking about it! I think for now my goal of dropping a few pounds will be good enough for now :)
Well, maybe not friends, but tonight Rex was sleeping in "the circle thing" (the round red cat bed) and the kitten snuck up and made her way in.... slowly on the edge, then inside, then touching and then sleeping. Granted this was on the other side, but it was very nice to see the two of them being more than "I don't see you!" to each other.
Two of them in The Circle Thing
Her (still no name) being all cool and hanging off the side.
Cool like a cucumber.
Hope that satisfies for the cuteness quota!
She's been a little hellian lately though, doing the hundred yard dash across the house, attacking hands and feet, or any white thing you might take off the floor (socks, paper towels, Kleenex, clothes.... etc). Cute and scary at the same time :) She's also not understanding that climbing up people is not a good thing to do, however, if you're standing beside something she wants to go up on... guess who turns into a ladder. Clothes or bare skin she doesn't care... and has gone flying across the room a couple of times after turning my naked back into a stepladder to get up on the kitchen counter! Good thing shes cute!
