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Fall

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:36:57 -0500

Fall colors are starting to come in nicely up here. Here’s a few shots I took as I was leaving work.

Hydrant (via flickr)

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:54:05 -0500

Hydrant (via flickr)

What do you think of the new ads?

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:44:00 -0500

What do you think of the new ads?

Microsoft's New Ads: An Explanation

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 09:27:00 -0500

A lot of people don’t “get” the whole ad thing. The best explanation I’ve seen was a comment on Mary Jo Foley’s blog:

“It was filled with irony, which is why most commentators on here missed it. You have these two super rich dudes buying shoes at a discount shoe place. Seinfeld turning out to be an expert about the inconsequential, how to fit shoes - remember, he was the guy with the show about nothing.

Gates using his mug shot was a bit of self-deprication. The humour is high brow and subtle. The Spanish people not commenting on Gates and Seinfeld, but knowing the model of the shoe.

The “pitch” comes at the end. Seinfeld takes a Trek-Geek shot at Gates about mind-melding and asks when Microsoft is going to come out with something that has all those “comfort” features. And Gates says they already have and they go to the Windows logo - which is one of the top five most recogniseable logos in the world.

The message is that Windows is “comfort food”. Cakey, delicious, goodness. The subtlety again is that they don’t have to take shots at the competition - chocolate cake doesn’t taste any better because its not vanilla.

Is it a bit to high brow and weird, a little. But it is good fun when you watch it for what it is and not expecting it to be a Jerry Seinfeld monologue, a Windows ad or a shot at the Mac/PC Guy ads. “

Now, there’s no way I could have ever explained that, but I definitely liked the ad.

Does anyone know how to get this effect? blows me away every...

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:03:03 -0500

Does anyone know how to get this effect? blows me away every time… [Page 2]: Retouching Forum: Digital Photography Review

Steps:

1) If you’re converting from RAW, choose a warm toned WB before heading into Photoshop.

2) Use your favorite selection method to select your subjects, and save your selection to be used later. With the figures selected, make a new levels adjustment layer. don’t adjust it-just click OK, then switch the blend mode to soft light, and lower the opacity to 50%

3) Make a new solid color fill layer. Choose Color: None, and click OK. In the color-chooser, fill in the values R84, G66, B4. Click OK, then switch the blend mode to Hue.

4) Make a selective color adjustment layer. Choose Colors: Neutrals, and set yellow at 39% and cyan to -8%.

5) Make a new color balance adjustment layer. Set midtones to 0 -7 and -13. Then select the highlights and set them to 0, 0, and -3.

6) Make another levels adjustment layer. choose the blue channel, and change the output level to 200 from 255.

7) Make a new blank layer and load the selections of your figures. Fill the selections with black, change the blend mode to Coor, and dial your opacity down to 50%. This will let your figures pop out from the golden background.

8) If the intensity of the gold tone is overpowering, just lower the opacity of your adjustment layers until your picture seems natural enough.

Smugbook

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:56:00 -0500

Have Facebook? Have SmugMug? Do you want to escape the walled garden of Facebook with your photos? Try Smugbook.

This is a “preview” release of an app developed by Nate Henderson and me. It quickly walks you through the process of connecting to Facebook and SmugMug to copy all of your photos over, while keeping your albums intact.

Want to give it a try? Download it here. There’s no installer right now, just extract the folder and run the application. Keep in mind that this is an early version and most likely has bugs and may even be visually unsatisfying.

Please let us know what you think in the comments!

Virtual Earth ASP.NET Control - CTP Release | Mark Brown |...

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:21:13 -0500

Virtual Earth ASP.NET Control - CTP Release | Mark Brown | Channel 9

Where was this a year ago? Looks great and I’m glad it’s finally out.

Empire. I’m really happy to try over and over to take my...

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:52:44 -0500

Empire. I’m really happy to try over and over to take my own picture.

Wow, thanks USPS and Amazon! My package was only delivered 8...

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:34:19 -0500

Wow, thanks USPS and Amazon! My package was only delivered 8 days late! Don’t worry, it didn’t look mangled at all! Reinforced plastic strips to hold it together are great!

Bennigan’s shuts doors without notice - FriendFeed Whoa,...

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:51:33 -0500

Bennigan’s shuts doors without notice - FriendFeed

Whoa, no wonder they suddenly packed up and shut down their Fargo location.

Microspotting | Microspotting tshirts (want one?) Microspotting...

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:49:00 -0500

Microspotting | Microspotting tshirts (want one?)

Microspotting has been in my (sadly neglected thanks to FriendFeed) feed reader for awhile, so it took Nate to point out this post in particular. Why do I have Microspotting in my reader? It’s a site of interesting profiles of Microsoft employees; something that was especially helpful to read while I was interviewing. And through those profiles, it gives some good insight into the company as a whole.

If you read one article, what should it be? Depends. Are you familiar with Mini-Microsoft? Read this.

Actually, just read about Mini and see where you go from there.

Here's a link to a lot (353) of our wedding photos.

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:33:03 -0500

Here's a link to a lot (353) of our wedding photos.

Zach’s Apple Juice Pyramid (via flickr)

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:54:10 -0500

Zach’s Apple Juice Pyramid (via flickr)

It's okay to show a little confidence

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:09:31 -0500

It's okay to show a *little* confidence: Kyle hits the nail on the head in this post. Optimism and everyone being polite would go a long way in the current argument.

Here’s the same photo, Cartoonized.

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:48:52 -0500

Here’s the same photo, Cartoonized.

I really like all the photos from our wedding, but especially...

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:46:08 -0500

I really like all the photos from our wedding, but especially this one.

Knock Knock's Thank You Cards

Wed, 28 May 2008 17:05:00 -0500

Knock Knock's Thank You Cards:

Would anyone be offended if they got one of these after the wedding?

Please note, no one got these and I was just kidding!

PR Secrets or common sense?

Sun, 25 May 2008 21:12:49 -0500

PR Secrets for Startups is an interesting article over on TechCrunch. It proposes 12 “secrets” of PR for startups. There are some good points even if you don’t believe all of it, but you should make sure you also read Robert Scoble’s thoughts on it.

Vista Sidebar

Sun, 25 May 2008 16:03:34 -0500

Anyone know why it routinely takes over 150MB of memory while running? I’m running Vista 64-bit, but that doesn’t seem like it should be a reason.

The only gadgets I’m running are a resource monitor and two weather gadgets.

Walk! (via jhofker) She’s loving all...

Thu, 22 May 2008 19:09:18 -0500

Walk! (via jhofker)

She’s loving all the space she has.