Book and Movie Review

I set a goal, not a resolution, to finish a book a month during 2010. So far I have met that goal, though I don't remember what I finished in January. I am such a picky reader that I have to be in a certain mood to read either it has to be completely quiet or I have to be listening to music. If there is a bit of talking I can't focus on what I'm reading, unlike my wife who can read a book while watching TV and be able to tell you what is happening in both. I also will start multiple books during a month, hence the reason the goal is to finish a book a month. The idea is to just keep reading really.

So for the month of February the book I finished was Heat Wave by Richard Castle. If you watch the show Castle on channel 4, this book is ghost written for a character, Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) on that show. This book is written just like the show and follows Nikki Heat, a character based on Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) and Jameson Rook, a detective and a reporter, respectively. The book follows Heat and Rook as they solve the murder of a wealthy man. The book reads almost exactly as an episode of Castle would go and ends with the bad guy getting caught as you'd expect. For me it started out kind of slow but picked up and ended good. Rating: Buy it on sale.

As for the movie review, Chels and I watched (500) Days of Summer the other night starting Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It was a great movie about a boy, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who falls in love with a girl, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), and goes through their time together and apart. This movie had a lot of humor in it and I found one part really funny. Loads of laughs and a fun little story, including a dance scene by Tom. Rating: Buy it

I'm trying to come up with a unique rating system:
Buy it - means it's good and you should have it in your collection
Buy it on sale - means it's good but only buy it if you can find a good deal, don't pay full price
Gifted - means that it's good but not good enough to buy, but if someone gave it to you as a gift you'd keep it
Re-gift - means if you get it for a gift, don't take the plastic off and re-gift it
Trash it - means don't buy it ever, if you get it for a gift, take that person off the invite list for future parties and throw it away.

Well that's it for today, hope you have a great day.

Freudian Flip

On Saturday I took some pictures of family friends, they could be considered family really. Anyway, I was going through the pictures today and found this one that made me laugh a little. Use the title of the blog as a hint...

 

 It just gave me the giggles as I was looking through all the pictures. On a separate note here is one of De'Ja, the reason we took the pictures.

I tried something different with this picture. Hopefully it looks good.

New Picture...

 

ISO 100 50 mm f/1.8 1/4000 sec.

I am loving my new lens. Pretty cool shots. More pictures to come.

Couple More of Tiaree

So I set up both lights and took some more pictures. This one of Tiaree is one I really like. The first one is the original, 2nd is touched up in Lightroom and the 3rd is played with in Photoshop.

ISO 400 33mm f/5.6 1/13 sec.

Lightroom Edit

Photoshop Edit

Fun stuff. I'm hoping to get some more practice in before this weekend.

Tiaree - Working with the lights

So I decided that I wanted to work with my lights tonight and take some pictures. I put one up and took some shots of Tiaree and Jarik. Here is a couple pictures of Tiaree. The first one is the original and the second one is brightened up a little.

Original Picture - ISO 800 49mm f/5.6 1/13sec

I have some work to do on editing images but this isn't bad for a first attempt on a person.

Temple Pictures

Last night for YM's we went downtown to take some pictures. We are doing a photo contest with the priests in the ward and our activity that we had planned fell through. So down to the SL Temple we went. Here are some of my pictures that I took. I haven't found any that I'm going to enter into the contest yet, but I'll have them soon.

It was a blast taking pictures downtown and I'm excited that we will do it again next week before we go to the Joseph Smith movie at the JSMB.

Mouse Trap Fun!!

Tonight Jarik, Tiaree, Keighlee, and I played Mouse Trap. It was a lot of fun. Bree was playing Wii and Chels was chillin' watching some Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman on her computer. When we got done with Mouse Trap and Tiaree had celebrated another win, so far she is 2-0 at the game, I thought it would be cool to get some pictures of the game while the marbles were rolling and the little diver guy doing his back flip into the the little bucket. The pictures turned out pretty cool. Here are a few of them:

The first 7 are the marble rolling down the back and forth thing at the beginning of the trap.

The stop sign is moving to hit the green boot to start the marble.

There it goes...

 

...and goes...

...and goes...

...zigging and zagging it's way...

...down the hill...

...to the bottom to hit the next part of the trap.

Then the part that took a few shots to get was the diver man in the air...

He looks nervous for his dive into a pool with no water.

He's off, he's the green blur thing over the blue zigzag hill.

And he lands and down comes the basket, trapping the little mouse.

It was fun playing this game with the kids. Then having them help reset the trap and run the thing over and over again was a job that they had fun doing. Cool stuff!

Another Great Christmas

Another Christmas has come and gone. It was a lot of fun to watch the kids open their gifts and to open some stuff for me as well. Chels bought me some lights for a photo studio. Now I have to figure out how to use them correctly. I set them up and took a few pictures. Here is one of Tiaree.

I am excited to get this going. I have to get a brown background so I can take some head shots of my sister. Other than that I will just figure things out.

Christmas was good all around for the family and our trip to St. George was a blast. Kind of a whirlwind trip, but it was a lot of fun. Here are some pictures.

Did Santa eat everything.

Barbie Rapunzel, exactly what she wanted.

Anyone see a pattern?

Optimus Prime...the Transformer that can't be transformed.

 

She is opening Barbie in the Three Musketeers, the ring she is wearing was out of her stocking.

This is only a few of the pictures that were taken. Christmas was a lot of fun at our house and everywhere we went. I'm glad we got to spend time and have fun everywhere with our family.

Cool Picture from the Other Night

I love taking my camera and doing quick shots, sort of like shots from the hip. Anyway, I opened the door at Sam and Cait's for Erik and Ali on our progressive dinner and this is what I got. I think it turned out pretty cool.

I just thought this turned out pretty cool.

New Idea...Possible Tradition

A little while ago Chels' mom had an idea to do what she dubbed as the progressive dinner. Basically we start at someone's house eat part of a meal and then head to the next person's house until you get to the last house and have the 'main course'. So we scheduled it and did it on Saturday, December 19th. This was a lot more fun than I had anticipated. We started at Erik and Ali's apartment for soup. Jared and Emily brought a veggie tray since we didn't go to there house because the downstairs neighbor smokes and it is seeping into their apartment something fierce. I thought it would be fun to take a family picture at all the different houses.

Erik and Ali's

After a great soup and some veggies we headed to Sam and Cait's. This was probably the longest drive of the whole trip...sarcasm doesn't come across right in text. This stop on our trek was a cheese ball. As we got there Cait had put it out on the table and we were all chatting when we noticed that about half of it was gone because the kids started chowing. After meeting Officer Watts we all got our portion of cheese ball and took this...

Sam and Cait's

Following this we headed back to my house for the main course. With dinner at Grammy's on Sundays, she was ok with us skipping her house and doing the dinner at our house. We had a yummy taco bar that was a unanimous decision between the family for the main course.

Taco Bar Dinner

And for the final family picture of the night.

My House

It was a lot of fun and I hope that we can get this going again next year.

Merry Christmas.

RIP...for the time being

So I've had a loss in my IT family. My HP laptop has decided to give up the laptop ghost, for the time being. I think that there are some hardware issues and I was dumb and didn't get the extended warranty. So for now I am without a laptop. I'm hoping that one of these days I can get it fixed or get me a new one, but it is Chels' turn for a new laptop, so I'll have to work on this old desktop machine that I have for the time being and go back to using my work laptop more often. Well I just wanted to share that sad bit of news with you. Thanks.

Pictures While Driving

So I carpool to work, which is awesome because it saves on gas. Well the other night my friend and I were driving home from work and I grabbed my camera because the sunset looked really cool and I was going to try and snap a few shots while we were driving of it. Well I didn't get any of the sunset but decided to try taking pictures while we were driving on the freeway. Here is one of the shots that I really like. I'll post others on the Whadda Photos...

 

Another Fun Sunday Dinner

Today was Sunday dinner at the in-laws. It was a lot of fun. We had an awesome time and I got the camera out and took some pictures. Usually the Sunday dinner at the in-laws is eat and hang outside and chat, but when it's snowy outside then it makes it a little cold to hang out outside. So we tend to find things inside todo. Tonight the kids worked on a gingerbread train, that I never got pictures of, and then we just hung out.

I was washing dishes...

...and saw a cool reflection in a spoon and had a great idea for some pictures. Lucky for me I have a great sis-in-law that was willing and patient with me as I tried to be creative...

Once I was done playing with that, I finished the dishes and we all sat around the TV and watched some old home videos. As we were watching them I was laying on the floor taking pictures and go this one...

All in all it was a great evening, thanks Grammy for a great dinner. I also want to give a big shout out thanks to Ems, the fluffy white sheep, for making a nightgown for Tiaree. She is awesome with a sewing machine and I'm glad becuase my wife and I would have taken all week to do what she did in a single night. And the nightgown looks awesome, pictures to come later. But here is one of her cutting out the fabric.

Thanks Ems and Ali for all you help tonight. Thanks Jared and Erik for marrying such awesome women.

Picture and a laugh

Today's picture comes from one of the longest drives in to work ever. Total 2.5 hours to go what usually takes between 30 and 45 minutes. I wasn't driving so I thought it would be cool to pull the camera out and take some shots. I thought that the water drops on the windows looked cool. Then I thought, I should take a picture out the windshield when the wipers are moving and here's how it turned out.

ISO 200 45mm f/8.0 1/125 sec

 I thought it looked pretty cool.

Now for the laugh. I have a Volkswagen Jetta and really like my car. I've had it now for two plus years. I've read in the manual that I'm supposed to have a 6-disc CD changer in the trunk. They have pictures in the book of where in the trunk it could be located, so I'd look. Where the manual says there is a box that may be like and amplifier or something, but no cd changer. I just figured I didn't have the cool version of the car.  Last night I was looking for a way to change the break lights and such on the car and found a little compartment, that I've never noticed before. I thought, 'hmmm, what's in here?'. So I opened it, alas, the CD changer. I was laughing at myself and went and got Chels so she could laugh at me, I mean with me. So now I have a cool radio system in my car, sweet. Well it was there all along, I just wasn't cool, or smart, enough to find it. Well now that I've embarrassed myself I will go.

Enjoy the picture and the laugh.

Pictures With Snow

On Saturday it started snowing at our house. It was coming down prety nicely so I told Bree to put her shoes and coat on so I could get some pictures of her with the snow coming down. I took two with my small lense and took two with the long lens. The first two didn't turn out as I wanted them too. The first one with the long lens, the auto focus wasn't on so it turned out blurry. The final picture turned out pretty good. I liked it. Judge for yourselves...

Maybe Now...

Things are getting less hectic for me and so I'm hoping that I can get back to doing the Photo of the Day. It was kind of crazy there for a bit, but now life has settled a little.

So for today, I'm going to post a new Photo of the Day. And hopefully it won't be like the last few. Today's picture was taken yesterday and then I messed around with it in Lightroom.

ISO 800 28mm f/6.3 1/80 sec.

You can see the original picture on my photos blog. It is the first picture on that entry.

Photo of the Day - Cutie Pie

So I have four kids, 3 girls and 1 boy. It makes for some fun times around my house, especially when my son wears his shirt that says "Are sisters really necessary?" It is pretty funny. Yesteraday I grabbed my camera and was taking some pictures of my cute kids and got this shot when KK and I were just chillin' in the front room. She's eating a cookie in this picture and then we wonder why she doesn't eat her dinner. Silly child...

She is such a cutie pie. She has such a personality and can hold a great conversation for only being 3.

Picture of the Day - November 05, 2009

I got to a point today at work where my mind was tied up in a bunch of differnt things. It's what happens when I am working on multiple projects at once. So I decided to get out of the office and take some pictures. I went up to the Fort Douglas cemetary near Red Butte Gardens in Research Park. I'm playing with some of the things that I learned in my class the other day at pictureline.

Here is the original picture, then I turned it sepia for fun...

ISO 100 75mm f/5.6 1/160 sec

It was nice to get out for 30 minutes to take some pictures today. I will be posting more of what I took today on Whadda Photos... later today.

What a Slacker I've Been...

Sorry for being such a slacker. I don't know how many people read this blog, but I know how I am with some of the blogs that I am a regular reader of and how it's just a little disappointing when there isn't something new to read. Not that you are all disappointed that I've been gone for 2 weeks. Well, I'm back, for this one entry and we'll just have to see what happens. I did take a class on my camera today and they gave me some ideas of things that I need to start doing. So maybe I'll get out and get some pictures taken.

Well today I have a Picture of the Day. Tonight we, meaning the scouts and leaders, went on a tour through the Cathedral of the Madeline for our activity. It is a beautiful building inside and out. I have lived in Utah all my life and have never gone into this awesome building. (Awesome in the true sense of the word) This building has some awesome artwork in it and it looks really cool on the outside as well. I will have to get back in the daylight hours for pictures of the outside, but here is one I took of the inside:

It was really neat to go on a tour of this building. If you want to take a group, you can go to the website for the Cathedral and there is a visitor link where you can find information regarding tours of the building. We were guided on our tour by Deacon Lynn Johnson who was very good and the boys had a great time hearing from him.

Been a Few Days

Well here it is...Wednesday andI have been a slacker at this blog stuff. I haven't gotten out a whole lot to get pictures taken, I need to soon though. I find taking pictures a good release and something else to do. Over the next couple of weeks I will be working on a side project and probably won't get out much, so I'll either ignore the blog stuff or give you pictures from the archive.

Today's picture was taken on our trip to Logan a couple weeks ago. It was one of those times that was a right place, right time to catch this picture. I have tried to get pictures kind of like this where you have just a second to react and my timer is usually on or something that doesn't get me a good picture. This one turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.

ISO 200 300mm f/5.6 1/320 sec.