Monday, January 31, 2011

365 Day 31: 1993 3


365 Day 31: 1993 3, originally uploaded by ★ 0091436 ★.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

365 Day 30: 1993 2


365 Day 30: 1993 2, originally uploaded by ★ 0091436 ★.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

365 Day 29: 1993 1


365 Day 29: The 1993 1, originally uploaded by ★ 0091436 ★.
I was planning on another portrait series this week, but that didnt work out. Hopefully I can do it next week. So this week is going to be a bit of a cheat. I've been reminiscing about my days in college, and the use of actual film and the countless hours I spent in the dark room. I started going through my old negatives and prints and found pictures that I haven't seen in nearly twenty years. Some were just plain stupid, but there were a good few that I really liked and missed.

This week I present, for your viewing pleasure, 1993. I hope you enjoy them.

*Most of these pictures were taken with a Nikon F2 with a 50mm f/1.4 AIS Lens.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

365 Day 22: Mudpots 1


365 Day 22: Mudpots 1, originally uploaded by ★ 0091436 ★.

This week is dedicated to mudpots. What are mudpots you ask? Well according to Wikipedia, Mudpots are: 


A mudpot, mud pool or paint pot is a sort of hot spring or fumarole consisting of a pool of usually bubbling mud. The mud is generally of white to greyish color, but is sometimes stained with reddish or pink spots from iron compounds. When the slurry is particularly colorful, the feature is then called a paint pot.


Mudpots form in high-temperature geothermal areas where water is in short supply. The little water that is available rises to the surface at a spot where the soil is rich in volcanic ash, clay and other fine particulates. The thickness of the mud usually changes along with seasonal changes in the water table.


The mud takes the form of a viscous, often bubbling, slurry. As the boiling mud is often squirted over the brims of the mudpot, a sort of mini-volcano of mud starts to build up, sometimes reaching heights of 3–5 feet. Although mudpots are often called mud volcanoes, true mud volcanoes are very different in nature.


The geothermal areas of Yellowstone National Park contain several notable examples of both mudpots and paint pots, as do some areas of Iceland and New Zealand.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

365 Day 20: iPhone 6


365 Day 20: iPhone 6, originally uploaded by ★ 0091436 ★.

Wanna-be cable cutter: Part 3

I think this is the week we get rid of cable! Its scary. But it has to be done. The bills are getting out of hand!  I have to get myself to make the call and get this done. Its tough. I've been thinking about it everyday for weeks now, but I just cant get myself to do it. Theres no reason for this fear since we've been doing pretty good not watching cable for a few weeks now. This is what I have done so far:

 - Got an over-the-air HD antenna. I picked it up for a song from Monoprice.com. It was only about $23 bucks and we are able to pull in about 35+ channels. A lot of them are weird ones, but almost all of the regular channels we watch come in perfectly. Best part is, because we are in the city, we dont have to have this thing outside. We have it hidden under a bunch of deer antlers on the floor, out of the way! I wonder how many more channels we could pull in if it were outside. My guess is not much more. And really, do we need more? The only one I was disappointed about not getting was WLIW. But it's not like we would watch it all that much anyway, so whatever.

- Upgraded our internetz with Boost. Its not much faster then the regular cable internet, but at least it's more consistant. I do feel a bit ripped off for having it, but if it gives us a slight advantage over regular cable, I'm happy. And so far it's been pretty decent. We also had a new cable modem installed and that seemed to help a lot. Our old modem was at least 6 years old. It was time for an upgrade on that, if nothing else. I havent had too much issues with latency since, so thats a nice bonus for all the time I spend on the Xbox :D

- And finally, I got some Xmas money and we bought us a Mac Mini! For me this was the Holy Grail of getting rid of cable.  We previously had an Asus eeeBox, which was fine and all, but just couldnt handle Flash content. It was a nightmare to even try. And since a lot of the stuff we would watch is Flash video, it was holding us back. The Mac Mini made all our troubles go away. I opted for the newest model because the old ones on eBay were going for as much if not more then the new ones. (the last batch of Minis before these new ones are still much faster then the new ones.) Also, the HDMI is a dream. Not that muddy picture you get with DVI or VGA. This was the best choice. Also the Wifi is better. I think it was a good choice. Not to mention the Disc Drive. The eeeBox didnt have one of those. And since we dont have a DVD player it was a pain in the ass to plug in another computer, every time we wanted to watch something on disk. It got to the point where, i just gave up, and ripped whatever we had on disc coz I didnt want to deal with plugging in another machine to the TV.

So we are more then ready for this. I just need a good swift kick in the pants! Wish me luck!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

365 Day 15: iPhone 1


365 Day 15: iPhone 1, originally uploaded by ★ 0091436 ★.
You know this day would come. But nobody expected it to come so soon! Yes kids, this week is dedicated to iPhone pics. To some it will be considered filler. To others, Crap. To me: Crappy Filler. Enjoy!

Saturday, January 8, 2011

365 Day 8: Laurel 1


365 Day 8: Laurel 1, originally uploaded by ★ 0091436 ★.
This weeks subject will be the loverly Laruel. And because of this, this week's picture a day will not be on my facebook. To view the daily pictures you will have to check my blogger. symonchow.blogspot.com/

Saturday, January 1, 2011

365 Day 1: Salton Sea 1



Ive decided to try a 365 thingie. The operative word is TRY. We'll see how this goes. Wish me luck.

As I'm not big on snap shots, I thought I'd start with a series a week. It might be easier (and more interesting) that way.

This first week will be shots that I took at the Salton Sea, a couple of months back. Thought this was a good excuse as any to finally work on them.