FYI, when it finally gets cold enough to well and truly frost, make sure the windshield wiper fluid in your car contains anti-freezy stuff. Otherwise, if you are lazy like me, and opt for washing away the frost layer instead of scraping it, you’ll end up with blue sno cone guts smeared all across your windshield. Which was totally not the effect I was going for.
Day: November 3, 2006
Rain, rain, go away
Indiana has a rainy season. If you don’t live here, I bet you didn’t know that. Every fall, we seem to go through weeks-long spates of seemingly endless rain. It makes the baby Shelly cry, it does, all that unrelieved grey and cold and wet. Miss Brown does not like it, either. Nope, not one little bit.
Last week, it rained pretty much every day. Because Harriet will melt and freeze in the cold rain, she decided she’d rather not go outside to play. She spent one entire afternoon sitting on the couch, looking wistfully out the patio window at the constant drizzle. I was reminded of a bored and grumpy child, wishing the rain would end so she could go outside and play. After several loud, dramatic sighs from Harriet, I decided she needed to have her picture taken.
The subject of photography came up in another forum. I’m not any sort of photographer, but Harriet is an excellent subject, so it’s fairly easy to get decent pictures of her. Still, the majority of photos I take of her are not fit for public consumption. Sometimes, they’re just plain awful, and other times, the difference between a keeper and a junker is more subtle.
For example, I prefer the top photo over the second one. In the first photo, Harriet’s eyes are softer and more relaxed. Also, the photo was taken from a higher angle, so more of Harriet’s face is visible, giving her head more “weight” on the pillow.
This is an illustration of why flash sucks. Sure, Harriet’s butt is nice and shiny, but if you look carefully, you’ll see that the shadows between the different layers are stark and far too crisp. The result looks like a bunch of elements cut out of paper and stacked on top of each other. It’s a flat and ugly photo.
This one, too, was taken with flash, but the results are a little more pleasing than the above photo. Harriet still has Shiny Butt, but the shadows are less harsh.
So, in my world, only one of these images is a real keeper. Ain’t she the cutest thing EVAR?
Firefox 2 and Maxthon Web Browsers
If you are a fan of Firefox, version 2 is here. I downloaded it the day it came out and have been extremely happy with the updates. First and foremost, it has a new, elegant spell-checker for forms. This is important for blogging, because it allows you to spell-check as you go, instead of C&Ping text into a word processor or using a clunky interface like the one Blogger provides (ptoui!). Or, not spell-checking at all, which is what I normally do. My laziness knows no bounds, apparently.
Or, if you’re an Internet Explorer fan, the Maxthon add-on allows for all sorts of tweaks (including tabbed browsing!), in addition to making it more secure and private. I’ve been using it at work, and it’s pretty nice.
red paper boat 