Starting a 52 week photo challenge

I've come to the conclusion I need to take more pictures to get better.  So I'm starting a 52-week photo challenge developed by Dogwood Photography.  The website seems to be defunct now but the PDF of the challenge is still around.   I'm pretty sure I won't do the pictures every week and will be playing a lot of catch-up.  I also won't be posting them every week, even if I take the pictures, because posting them isn't the goal here.

The goal is to force myself to take more pictures so I'm better able to make what I capture on the camera match what I'm seeing with my eye.  I can get the shot I want about 50% of the time, but that's only with a lot of trial and error and fidgeting with the settings.  It's neither effortless nor fast.  My hope is that by taking more pictures I'll get better.  Right now I spend too much time with my face buried in the LDC screen of my camera.

So here we go - Week 1: Self Portrait - Take a picture that tells us who you are, without actually showing your face.

So I'm not super happy about how this went, but it wasn't all bad.  I'll probably try it again later.  I wanted to do some gentle fill in flash but I can get the RF transmitter for my cheap Neewer flash to work anymore.  I was using my 50mm lens but I think I need something wider.  I only have the basic kit lens that goes wider so I'm not sure I'll have the aperture range I need but I'll give it a try.

Synthetic Biology and future mass destruction

 

An interesting TED talk I saw the other day (it's from 2019 - I'm behind the curve)

 

it's a scary thought

Similar to the numerous talks about not being ready for the next pandemic that were given prior to COVID-19, I think this one is also presient of things to come.  I'm often in awe of future looking people like Rob Reid.  I'm not confident that we'll have the forethought and follow through to get ahead of this.

Team-Ception

I think Zoom-ception is a better pun on inception but we use MS teams.  It's interesting when people share their screens and the video conference is shared and you can see yourself on their screens.

It's weird to see myself from both angles. It was even weirder watching both move as I spoke and seeing the very slight lag between the two.

Rosemary strikes again - another email subscription

So my last name isn't terribly common.  There's a pretty substantiated belief by the genealogy nerds in the family that we're all directly related.  We've been able to establish connections to several of the branches of the family tree going back to the early 1700's.  So Rosemary Whiffen is a distant relative of mine, and she thinks her gmail address is rwhiffen at gmail, unfortunately, it's mine.  

So I get subscribed to a lot of email lists.  Old Navy in Canada is the latest.   I also know when she orders shoes from Aldo.  The best one was when they subscribed to Netflix with my email. We got that one cleaned up pretty fast. She doesn't have much of an online foot print so I haven't been able to converse with her directly about the mistakes so I just unsubscribe where I can.

They left coffee grounds in the coffee maker pre-covid

So the universe doesn't want me to have coffee today. I had to go into the office to fix one of the security cameras that was offline.  I decided I wanted to brew myself a pot of coffee (we have those k-cups but I prefer the brewed stuff).  I opened the basket to put in my coffee grounds and was treated to this:

That's mold from March (it's July when I post this).  The coffee machine is pretty much fowled at this point, have to run a cleaning cycle and a few empty brews now.  So I made myself some K-Cup coffee (I typically brew two of the 4-oz cups because it makes it stronger in my opinion) and went to put some hazelnut creamer in.  Box says it use by July 2020:

And they weren't kidding:

Guess I'm drinking soda today.  Hopefully that's still good...

Praying mantises

This year I've had a lot more praying mantis sitings around my house.

I've seen the brown one (or ones) a few times since this photo, usually they skitter away before I can get the photo.  This little guy (assuming it's the same one or same brood) is about as long as my thumb now.

I see these green ones more often over the years. This guy isn't full grown yet.  Anyway, need to do some research on Mantises in northern VA to see what there is to know about them.

Amazon delivery guy wants me to loose weight

I've been putting on my COVID-19 pounds during the pandemic.  I used to ride my bike to work multiple days a week and do other cardio on top of that before this hit.  I wasn't thin by any means, but I was burning a lot of calories to keep my bad eating habits at bay. That needs to change and the Amazon delivery today gave me a reminder.

The box of cereal there is a bit heavy and the welcome mat won't let it slide.  Add to that my extra girth and I can't get out my front door.  I was able to nudge it enough and get out, but oh boy was it a ding to my pride.

Star Wars Yarn Bomb in Alexandra, VA

So I started riding my bike to run errands to get some exercise.  The MoMs on Mt Vernon Ave in Alexandria has been yarn bombed, Star Wars style. 

The whole gang:

Lake Anna State park

Rented a cabin for a week at Lake Anna State park.  It was a great week, lots of nice hiking trails and warm water to swim in.  We stayed in Cabin 9 and it was well appointed and comfortable. Here's a few of the photos from some hikes.

Chimney of the old Taylor homestead from the late1800s

I think I'll always use filters on my camera

I set my camera bag down on the picnic table in the same manor I set it down anywhere.  It made an unusual knock sound when I did it, like the wooden table was hollow.  I picked it up and set it down again and there was no repeat of the sound.  Huh.  It was time to start the fire so we could make s'mores in a bit. It wasn't until later that I took my camera out of the bag and found the source of the sound.

At first I thought I had broken my Tamron 18mm-400mm lens.  turns out I only broke the filter.  After carefully unscrewing it and cleaning the lens all was well. This is precisely why I keep a UV filter on at all times. The lens cap had come off and hit the table 'just right'.  I do realize I'm being a little illogical - if the filter wasn't there, there might have been enough room for the lip of the lens cap to go up without damage, but my bias has been confirmed, I'm in the 'always have a filter on' camp.

Take our Daughters and Sons to Work Day 2019

As I started planning out the 2020 event I realized I never wrote up the 2019 event.

For the 2019 event we went pretty simple.  We created apps in Prototyping on Paper

https://marvelapp.com/pop/

It went pretty well and the kids creativity took over quickly.   The concept is pretty simple - it's the early web design concept of an image map.  You can draw or print your app UI concept and then create hot spots on the image that link to another image.  You can sketch up buttons and then make them clickable, and when you click that button it goes to another image.

I went to Micheals and purchased a bunch of colorful shirts and visors.  The concept was to have them make an image that had colors on it.  You would choose a color and that would link you to an image that had the child wearing a shirt in that color.   

Over all it was a pretty successful event, the kids grasped the concept pretty quickly and then started making their own apps.