Homesick

Seems like more often than not, I'm getting more and more homesick. I miss my city of Vancouver. I miss the people.

Philadelphians can be so very exhausting to deal with. Everyone here is so angry most of the time... and it spreads like a disease. I even seem to have caught this nastiness, and it's not good. Doesn't make for a happy person. I can understand if you've lived here all your life, and you just accept that's how people are. Well, it's not normal... at least for me. After all these years, Philadelphia is still a very un-natural place for me. I've never seen such a conglomeration of rude, callous people. Trust me when I say Vancouver is the complete opposite. In Vancouver, I wouldn't even think to litter. Here... well the whole city is a trash bin isn't it?

Yeah, city of brotherly love. If this is the city of brotherly love... then, yeah... yikes.

:(

Asshole drivers

I wish I didn't have to drive. I wish we had massive bike trails to and from work and residential centers, so I could bike. I wish we had a more refined public transit system that wasn't full of hoodlums and crack heads in Philadelphia. But we don't. So I drive.

I wish I didn't have to drive. In one transit, I can experience multiple incidents. Like this morning. Why is it that people insist to stop their cars right behind you, almost touching you? Is it some kind of game to them? Hmm, how close can I get to the car in front of me, because that way, in my retarded brain I'm making up inches on my commute. In defensive driving courses, they instruct you to actually leave enough room in front of you to maneuver out of your stopped position if you need to. I guess this guy drives like an asshole because he was never instructed to drive any other way.

When you're on a highway, and there are two lanes, and you see merging traffic coming ahead and you are clear on your left... MOVE TO THE LEFT LANE you selfish idiotic moron! People drive like they're f*cking entitled to be in that position. Driving isn't about how you f*cking feel you moron, it's a serious exercise in control and situational awareness. Why do most people drive emotionally? Stop f*cking around and drive. If your brain is thinking about anything else than driving behind the wheel, then you're dangerous to everyone else. Chances are you aren't too smart to begin with, so don't you think texting and driving is a bit of a stretch for you, you pathetic ameoba with arms?

My favorite are these moronic punks behind the wheel that think they're driving superstars. They think they own the road when in reality, they probably don't even make enough money above the poverty line to pay taxes. Yet they'll drive a souped up car with big shiny rims and a ridiculous spoiler on the back. You know these dorks... we've all seen them. They're driving habits are just a clear reflection of them. No responsibility, no respect for others, no clear head for anything important. Please, get off my road. I actually make enough to maintenance the tarmac you're using.

There's no need for any of us to drive like an idiot. By weaving in and out of traffic, you may gain two car lengths... and cause an accident. It's not worth it. People need to just drive rationally, and honest to God, we'll all get to where we're going faster. It's better than being stuck in traffic because of another accident between morons. As much as I enjoy watching stupid people scratch their heads on the side of the road with one car upside down, I'd rather get to where I'm going to without incident.

Good doggy

So in Argentina, a 14 year old girl puts her newborn out to die. A stray dog hears the cries, somehow manages to get the baby to where she is nursing her own litter, and saves the baby. Now, I can't really blame the 14 year old girl. No one can imagine the stress of that decision on a child in such a religious country. And how the hell does a 14 year old girl get pregnant in the first place?! In her mind, she must have been thinking about self preservation, while I'm sure douchbag father walks. Anyways, just watch the vid... amazing story.



I'm going to choose to believe that the dogs, childs and puppies futures will be a good one. That this miracle will bestow blessings on everyone involved. Probably not, because most people are cruel in their actions and indifference, but would nice to have a good ending.

Saturday drive

Today is a beautiful day. Temperature is sitting around 80 degrees with a breeze, and no humidity at all. I started out to Home Depot this morning to pick-up some light bulbs and a replacement filter for the AC. Brought my camera along to take some pictures.

Delicious zesty sausage from the food cart in front of Home Depot. I've heard reports of people getting sick on these... but if you ask me, they're well worth the hospital trip.


So after my meal, I drove around and ended up in an industrial complex behind Pottstown. Decided to park and take some shots there.




Afterwards, I ended up making a big loop home and stopped by a corn field to take a few more shots. Again, I've uploaded the pictures to Shutterfly.

Some new pictures

Uploaded a few pictures from lunch to Shutterfly.

Eeeep! Needles

I was at a doctors appointment this morning. It was my three month re-visit I guess. Doc says I have elevated blood pressure. Not necessarily high or problematic blood pressure, but elevated and still not good. So I've been taking medication for it... which doc says I'll have to take for the rest of my life.

Anyways, as usual he planned on drawing some blood... with a needle. I'm usually ok with this but I still don't like the idea of getting stuck. So he put a needle in my right arm, and for about 30 seconds... nothing. Pushed the needle in some more, which resulted in more nothing and elevated pain. Got a bit of blood but not enough to fill the vial. Then we tried the left arm with more success. So I got double needled today.

So while this is happening, I'm actually feeling a bit light headed. In the past, you could stick a needle in me and drain away. Go ahead, make a blood smoothy if you want... got plenty of blood. Not this time. I'm not sure if the medication is making me produce less blood or thinning it out... but I've never been that queasy before drawing blood. Actually had to lie down for about 5 minutes afterwards, which made me feel oh so manly. So having my blood drawn is way down on my activities list now, next to getting sat on by a fat person.

Oh, doc says my blood pressure is more normal now and everything in my last blood work came out fine.

Opened Shutterfly site

I plan on posting my images onto Shutterfly for now. I may try to consolidate everything into a Myspace page in the future... but honestly, was confused as all beans when I looked at their interface.

For now, you can find my photos at: http://greentealunch.shutterfly.com/

Kids playing

Seems like all the kids were out front playing today. Was a good opportunity to take some more shots with the D40. One thing that did alarm me was a bright green pixel on some of the photos. I didn't even notice them until I brought the images into Photoshop. I Was scared that I had a bad pixel on the CCD sensor. Looked around Google, and apparently it's common. I had a "hot" pixel. It can happen on higher ISO settings on the cameras, and they come and go. Nothing to be alarmed about. Also, in the end it's very easy to fix in Photoshop.

I like the fast picture cycling of the DLSR cameras. You can snap picture after picture pretty quickly, so it's less likely you'll miss those perfect shots. I always hated having to wait for the slow picture cycles of the point and shoot Canon I had. So many missed smiles with that camera.

I do wish I had a better zoom on the lens. The 18-55mm that comes with the D40 is an awesome lens. Just doesn't have the reach that I want with some shots... especially for those nice depth of field shots. So looks like I'll be shopping around for an 18-135mm or 55-200mm lens soon.

Nikon night pictures

I was out around 2am on Sunday to take some pictures with my new Nikon D40. I brought my tripod along as I planned to do some shooting with longer exposure times. I also wanted to play with the aperture to get a better understanding between shutter speed and aperture.

What I got was really interesting to me. First, the night had a full moon and it was actually pretty bright. But having the exposure extended really captured so much light that it almost seemed like day. I mean, it was really much darker than what these shots make the evening to be. Unfortunately I couldn't get a good shot of the moon. It looked like a little star in the sky to the camera. I'm going to have to figure out what I was doing wrong in another night.

Anyways, if I take more images I may open a Flikr account to share. Here's some of the night shots. I took a lot more, but most were blurry. It's pretty hard to focus at night when everything looks black to the naked eye :)



Some interesting light streaks from the picture below. Again, totally couldn't see that with the naked eye.


Got this one when a car passed by.


Mandatory picture of a confused Brian.

Lack of posts

Haven't been posting for about a week. Mostly because I'm still very into 3ds Max. There's so much to the program, and I just only realized yesterday that there is a second component to the application called Character Studio. So lots of stuff to go over. Also, as the summer is ending, we're gearing up for the girls to go back to school. Well, for one, this will be her first year in Kindergarten. She's excited but scared at the same time. It's very nostalgic at times to see them go through these phases, as they would remind me of my younger years as well. My entry into the school system up to about the second grade was like a roller coaster. There are some pretty sad "little Dave" stories... but I won't bore you with them :)

Ahh, the start of a new school year. Things are going to get even more crazy. Oh well, that's what it is to be a parent.

On another note, as if I didn't have enough distractions, I purchased a Nikon D40 camera yesterday. Again, even that purchase made me feel a bit nostalgic. I remember when I was very young, my father had an SLR. Don't remember what brand it was. Odd thing is, I don't remember him ever really using it. But the camera was always around. Anyways, it's a good investment for recording these awesome years :)

I'm so very confused

So, today we went from an amazing piece of human discovery about engineering an artificial eye to this...

Clay Aiken has a baby?!? Wait, I thought he was... I mean, wasn't he like... so confused right now. I understand the principles behind the cybernetic eye... but this is just too confusing.

Artificial eye

Came across an article that struck my interest. I think it's amazing when we can replicate a human part or function. It implies that we've learned enough about said part or function to mimic it in mechanical form. In this instance... the human eye. There was something new that I learned about this article that I thought was ingenious of the human body.

The human eye apparently constantly shifts the viewing area by tiny increments to build a higher resolution image that the brain processes as a whole image. Amazing. I mean, I think I'm looking straight forward to type this blog right now, but in reality my eye is making all these micro shifts to build a better picture of what I'm looking at.

So by trying to replicate a human part, we had to decipher this very smart function first. Very cool. From a technology standpoint, you could build a much higher resolution camera with a much smaller CMOS sensor for image resolution. Something that we may have never thought of it we didn't explore this human function. Hats off to you smarties! Keep it up so you can build me a cyberbody that can last me a 1000 years.

Kids are cute

Was raining a bit by the time I got home yesterday from work. It was a nice relief from the heat that day. Anyways, everyone was outside on the front porch, and the girls with their friend from next door were all oil painting on a canvas. Was very cute. Messy, but cute. Was a really nice greeting coming home from work.

Being single and living in the city in my younger days was nice... real nice. But this was definitely better by miles. To the two of you that are about to have little ones. You're in for a great change in life... and the kids couldn't have been brought into this world by better mommies :)

Link time

There are a lot of consumer products out there... some good, some not worth your money. I don't like wasting my money on poor electronics. It's a sin. How do you know what is decent or not? Well, for me, I like real world reviews from people who have used and purchased the devices. What better way to find out if a product is crappy than from the misfortune of others.

One great place for reviews is www.testfreaks.com. It's a really useful resource.

Another place to get user feedback is www.newegg.com. Even if you don't buy from them (which they are a totally safe online retailer), they house a huge amount of user feedback from buyers.

So why are these places better than your Amazon review? These are electronic specific sites that people in the electronic know go to. I wouldn't go here for medical advice... cause they're not that kind of shopper... but for the most part, these reviewers are savvy tech purchasers. Thought I'd share for anyone planning on a tech purchase :)

Paranoid baby

For some reason... Brian always looks paranoid. Probably didn't capture it that well in this picture, but he seems to have this "look", like he's watching out for something. He'll kinda look at you at times out of the corners of his eye, like he doesn't trust you. Sometimes he'll just stare squarely at you... without blinking much. But he always seems to have, what I can only describe as a "paranoid baby stare."

Paranoid baby monologue- "What, what do you want? Why are you holding me? What was that? Was that something? OK, was nothing... but what, you still holding me? Watching you. Watching you good. You'll trip up, and I'll be right here... cause I can't move."

By the way, the camera on the iPhone is horrific. Had to adjust this image to high heaven to not make Brian look green.