Sometimes the president emails you...

...to tell you that they are wrong. It is just odd, seeing that in your inbox. An email, allegedly, from the president of the United States. I obviously don't imagine he takes the time to email people, especially not these fundraising emails. But it still looks weird...

I would help, but not only do I think he has been very weak, but I am done with democrats. After that "faith/prayer" event they organized to kick off their fundraising campaign, I am done. It wasn't necessary, it excludes those of us that actually believe that religion, faith, gods, magic, superstition, fairy tales, and dogma have no place in our government. Incidentally, the constitution they claim to uphold says the same thing. And if they kick off the campaign with an "interfaith prayer" event, they can't be trusted to leave it at home once they are elected. So I am done with their party. I will vote on an individual, per candidate basis. Which would lead me to vote third party most of the time. Which is fine. I am done rewarding mediocrity with a vote just because the republicans are scarier. I didn't mean for this to turn political, so I will stop here.

Sometimes you take pattern pictures...

...and you have a lot of fun taking them! A while back we saw some photography videos that taught you about exposure and what not, and one of them was on pattern shots. So I was at the beach, there was lots of pebbles, and it reminded me of that video. So I thought I would give it a try!

I collected and separated some pebbles. This is the shot of the dark ones.

Same rocks, just close to them.

The other color of rocks. I really like the color...

Same rocks, closer shot. I wet all of them to get some interesting reflections...

Sophie helped us collect and arrange the seashells!

This is not exactly a pattern shot, since one of the rules is to take up the entire frame. but I think the wood looks cool there, and I think Geli took this one.

These aren't pattern shots, but it is a funny rock we found, and I added some eyes. It is the same rock, just 2 different sides.

These "teeth" look like corn! lol

"oooooooooooh!"

Sometimes you wish there was more time...

Too often really...I seldom go to bed with everything I would like "done". I have been trying to process the pics the last 2 days. And I am like halfway done at best.

On another note, I just finished reading "An Unnatural Order: The roots of our destruction of Nature" by Jim Mason. My friend Renee(my old roommate sent it to me!).

It was rather interesting. It was a documentary of humanity and its relationship with nature over time. It was quite an interesting read. I learned for example, that before agriculture and the domestication of animals, most humans were foragers and had matriarchal societal structures. Women were seen as powerful and mysterious because they were able to create life. What I found most interesting was that the male role in reproduction was not understood. They just had sex because it was something to do I guess, but they didn't connect having sex with reproduction because the connection is not so obvious if you regularly have sex, and it is not until many months later that pregnancy is noticeable. It wasn't until animals were domesticated, and we learned to restrain them, observing them, and noticing that when there are no males around, for example, females could not reproduce. And since some animal gestation periods are much shorter than human ones, they were able to better connect sex with pregnancy...

So now I have to go back and finish reading "Fast Food Nation"...although probably not until I finish with the pictures! lol

Sometimes you just have to process...

the insane amount of pictures you took during a two day trip. Over 550...2 days!! We were trigger happy apparently.

Day 1 - done! Just converting to JPG now...which takes a while

Granted, many are similar, and we pick 1 or 2 out of 6 or 7 similar ones we took. So that number will be greatly reduced once we are done. But at least we are done with day 1. Why we took 380 on day 2, is beyond me lol but it's okay. It takes a while, but I enjoy this!

Also, fog ruined my night shots...I made a special trip after 10:30pm(when it gets dark) to the pier to take some night s hots, long exposures. And it was ruined by the huge amounts of fog...this was the best I was able to get, and it was a street shot, not a city-scape like I wanted.

This is just a screen shot, not the actual pic, but it looks ok.

Sometimes you watch an amazing game at a hotel...

at 2am. I always love and hate the games against the US. They are nerve wrecking matches. And it feels like too often, they are frustrating and disappointing. But this would not be the case at the Umi hotel at 2am in Brighton, Sussex, UK this Sunday morning...

Mexico played one of the best games I have ever seen them play. The US plays what I would call a terrible, ugly, yet effective "style" of football. And more often than not, it frustrates Mexico. It started off looking like this game would not be the exception. Mexico was playing "better", yet after 25 minutes, they were down 2-0. It looked very grim...But like never before, they recovered! They had evened things out by halftime, and ended up winning 4-2 despite 2 injuries early on. It was epic!!!

IN YOUR FACE!!!! lol

Sometimes the internet worries you...

So we're at the hotel, and the internet is sub par, to say the least. And we have a very important game to watch tonight...If I can't watch the game today because of this connection I will be very frustrated!! The most important game of the cup! The final! And against the US!!! Ahhh!!! Just thinking about it freaks me out lol I know, it's just a game, but I really want to watch it...If I would have realized that the  game was this weekend, I would have done this trip another time! So alarm at 1:55am for the game!

So please! Gods of the internets! Allow the mexican stream to flow to Brighton tonight!!!

Sometimes it doesn't feel like a Friday...

10:30 in the morning on a Friday should never look like this:

To give you an idea, there was like 15 of us on the phones today more or less...there are more calls holding(apart from the ones we are already on) than there are analysts...how are we supposed to do this? I feel bad for our clients. 30 minutes for what could be a simple session or password resets is ludicrous...

But, on the bright side, we finished planning the trip for this weekend to Brighton! The most vegan city in the UK! Veg*n restaurants! Yes! And a beach town too, so that should be fun! So bus -> train -> train -> Brighton tomorrow!! w00t!!

This is what the tickets look like for the train, and that is a tube map below them.

Sometimes it rains on your clothes 3 times...

I did laundry today. We don't have(or want) a dryer, so after they clothes come out of the washer, we hang them up. They dry fine, it saves a lot of energy, and another appliance to have to buy, maintain, and with all the moving we do, move around with you. So we do without, and we don't really miss the dryer. Anyway, today the weather was strange. We usually wait for a sunny day, then do laundry, and hang most of the clothes outside to dry. Today, it was sunny, so I did laundry, hung them outside, and like 20 minutes later, it was raining! So I ran outside took them down, brought them inside, layed them out throughout the house(half the "hanger" in the bathroom broke, so we kind of have to do that outside now.

Then, 30 minutes later, sunny again. So I thought I would put them out again. Did that, and no joke, 30 minutes later....raining again. So I brought them in, again. Then it was sunny again, so I thought, it can't rain again, right? Wrong...so I brought them inside, and left them inside...

On a much brighter note, as I have said before, I like buying new fruit when I see it. I saw this "honeydew" melon at the market, and I had to get it. It didn't look like the almost white(on the outside) round honeydews from the US I had tried before, so I got one.

It surpassed all expectations!! Best melon ever!! You can even see in the picture, it is a mostly green, but has some orange too. It was very juicy, very sweet, and very tasty! Geli hates melons, but I made her try this one, and she liked it!! w00t! So tomorrow, I will go get another one! haha it was a fantastic melon!! 

Sometimes you play video games...

with a 4 year old. Sophie likes it. I benefited from Sony getting hacked! We had zero games for the PS3. We just got it as a bluray player, since initially when we got it, it was the cheapest upgradeable bluray player. But free games, why not?!

So from the list, we picked Little Big Planet and Dead Nation. Little Big Planet was a no-brainer. We kinda already wanted it. And we thought Sophie would like it.

So Dead Nation. It is a shoot-em-up. Kinda fun. Simple. Shoot the zombies in a classic shoot-em-up style, so not a first person shooter. I liked it! Already passed it lol so it was short! So I am passing it with the other character now(the girl), but it looks to be exactly the same. Sophie calls it "monsters", and she doesn't like it when I play it. 

She prefers Little Big Planet. She calls it "monito". "Daddy, I want to play monito a lot!". I made her a stage where she can walk around in, but it is still a work in progress, it takes a while to make these things! There are 2 playing modes. I play and she tells me how to dress the sack person, or she plays and I try to help her not die(or just let her walk around the safe stage I made her). The game is pretty hard! I could not get 100% on ANY stage(except the training 1st stage lol)!!! So yeah...

I kind of hate that I am playing video games again lol I like it, which is why I can't stop, but then I hate how much time I just "wasted" when there is so much to do around the house, or when I could have read instead! 

Sometimes you play in the garden...

with Sophie and see flowers you didn't plant.

Animals you didn't know were there...

A cool slimy slug! Yesterday when it rained, there was sooo many! Apparently, they come out when it is wet.

and weeds that took over the yard lol...there are tons of them. I am not sure if I am supposed to keep the yard in "shape". That was not discussed, I guess we will find out.

Sophie eating her lollipop out here, it was nice out :) 

Then she got scared when a helicopter passed by! Really scared!

And the sky was once again, very photogenic!  The clouds were peculiar looking, very cool!

Sometimes you talk to Tuesday...

Tuesday Cousin that is...lol I couldn't make this up. That was this person's name. Kind of cool I would say. Different for sure! 

Other than that, just a normal brutal monday of work. I have been trying to show Sophie how to play Little Big Planet, not that I am that good at it, but it is fun. She tells me what the sack person should wear when I play, and I made her a little stage that she can just walk around and jump on without falling or dying. It's fun :) 

Sometimes you just have to have some biscuits and gravy!

When I was making the list of dishes we eat for dinner a few days ago, I saw a picture of biscuits and gravy we had made before, and so we had to have them again! Geli makes some awesome biscuits :)

Ready to go in the oven! 

This was the final product! Fantastic breakfast!  Hash browns, veggie sausages, and biscuits and gravy! bam! 

 

And for dinner we had some awesome stuffed bell peppers(stuffed with tvp, rice, and cheeze!), baked chips(fries), and a salad with a tahini vinaigrette dressing! Awesome as well! Forgot to take a picture though!

Sometimes you take 20+ minutes to take a picture...

I have always seemed fascinated with fire. Not to a dangerous level, I am also not a very dangerous guy. But it does amaze me. We had to get a lighter because the pilot light went out on the stove, and now we need it to turn on the "mechas" haha. So I got the idea to take a picture of the lighter in a dark room. And the "set-up" and getting it how I pictured it took me about 20 minutes...I will try not to bore you with it, but I could not hold the camera and the lighter at the same time. So I set the camera on top of a couple of books, set the timer to take the picture, used manual focus to find the closes I could get to the lighter and still be in focus(cameras, like our eyes, have a minimum focusing distance, any closer and the image will be out of focus). I used a cereal box to get the distance, the replaced it with my hand and the lighter to take the shot. After some trials and different exposure settings, this was the result:

Manual exposure, 1/25sec, ISO 800, f/5.6, the kit lens at 55mm, manual focus

I really enjoyed it. I kept wishing I could get closer to the lighter, so I can't wait to get our macro lens! Macro lenses are for getting really close to your subject(not the same as being able to zoom a lot), most macro lenses are primes, so you can't even zoom on them, but you can get really close and they "magnify" the image.

I promised Sophie some hash browns last night, for breakfast this morning, but we were out of potatoes, so I had to run for some potatoes in the morning(literally). This is a shot of one of the streets on the way to the produce market:

And Colchester has had some really gorgeous skies lately...very photogenic clouds:

Deep blue sky, although partly due to the polarizing filter :) more on that in another post!

Sometimes spammers take years...

So I got this spam email today...it's been like 3 years almost since we sold the car, and I am getting spam replies to the car ad we placed in so many places that apparently some are still floating around the internet...

Advert, that is still a funny word to me....

When we first posted the car, we got tons of these spam replies!! We even got some bad checks for thousands of dollars. Like they send you part of what you are asking for the car, then you tell them it is not the right amount and they say "Oh, sorry about that. Deposit it in your account send $500 to so so, and I will send you the rest of the money today. But I need to send $500 to so and so so they can arrange the shipping of the car". It is clearly a bad check, that will bounce later, and they just scammed us for $500. The lengths to which people go to cheat others amazes me...it is sad. We didn't cash the check obviously when they tried this year ago, it is just odd that their tactics don't change over the years. 

Sometimes you buy a Jesus shirt for £1

A Big Lebowski Jesus shirt that is! Haha

"You said it, man. Nobody fucks with the Jesus."

It is a bit louder than what I am used to wearing, but it's ok. It's kind of funny, because I was looking through the second hand stores for shirts, since I have like 5 or so that I just keep wearing over and over lol. So I was just looking for nondescript used t-shirts that fit. I no longer care what they say, I am more interested in where they came from. And second hand charity shops is okay on my list. So it is rather odd that when I decide to get second hand shirts that I don't care what they say, I find a new one, that has something from a movie I really like! Go figure :)

Oh and Sophie says that is me! lol and wants to know why I am licking a red ball!

Sometimes you have to document what you eat...

We always have a hard time picking what we eat. So I thought we needed to document it. I told Geli we should write a program that just takes a list of dishes we eat, and spits out one at random. So we can get rid of having to pick the week of food. So far, we have 80 or so, and it has ommited many that we can't make here in the UK...

Apparently, we eat a very diverse list of dishes...

Sometimes people shove stuff into your house...

Apparently, that is the way it works here in England. There are no mailboxes. Just holes in your door.

This is what it looks like on the outside. And the problem with this method, is that the mail people are not the only ones to use this. Restaurants and other spammers will shove their restaurant menus and various useless pieces of paper into your house haha

So sometimes you see your door and it looks like this....not a big deal, just something I am not used to. 

Sometimes you get small beer shaped candy in the mail...

Today I received this:

And inside was this:

And here is the beer candy I was referring to(subliminal message anyone?):

And there was also a father's day card inside for me, from my parents and Baudy :) I still feel weird that technically that holiday is mine to celebrate...I mean, you would think after 4 years of being a "father" I would get the hang of it. But I still don't see myself as a dad. Like my dad is a dad lol I am sure that isn't making sense, so I will stop there...

Sometimes you do nothing, and it is great...

Today was a total "lazy" day...we did nothing, and we enjoyed it. It was rainy out, so that didn't motivate us to get out at all. We made strawberry pancakes for breakfast, and watched movies, documentaries, and some seinfeld.

This morning though, Sophie woke up before us. That is almost routine on the weekends since we go to sleep really late fridays and saturdays since Geli and I stay up for our "dates". So she wakes us up early, and I get up, give her some fruit, and put on a movie for her lol Not the best parenting, I know. But she likes it, and we get an hour or so more of sleep. But today, she apparently peed herself at some point in all this and tried to conceal the evidence by changing her own underwear and, get this, flushing the underwear down the toilet!! Or at least that is what she says she did, but we can't find the missing underwear anywhere...The strange things that kids do. If this is any indication of what is to come when she is older, we are gonna have it rough.

On another quick note, I thoroughly enjoy watching soccer tournaments. Copa de Oro, copa america, mundial, la liga, etc...I enjoy keeping up with it. And of my favorite things to see happen, is this:

The only things better than seeing this is seeing mexico win, and seeing mexico beat the US...

Sometimes you go to church on saturdays...

For some vegan cupcakes of course(the now a cafe, used to be a church one). This week there was a new flavor, apricot almond! And it was fantastic!

We're not huge fans of tons of frosting, so we really liked this one! Not sure if she will make them again though, since she said she had lots leftover at the end of the day...

On another quick note...this is a picture we took at the Border Patrol museum in El Paso many years ago, on Transmountain. Why this place even exists, is beyond me. Who needs it? And why? But after seeing this, I mean, how is it justified? How is this display not racist?

Really? Immigrants leave tortilla trails behind them? WTF?!

I mean, are they serious? Is this supposed to be funny? I suppose it could be true, but even then it shouldn't be something you make a display about at a museum!!! From the documentaries I have seen about illegal immigration, it is no walk in the park. They are short on water and food pretty much always. So I really doubt that they would just be dropping it throughout like this display suggests...

Sometimes they give you bags when you don't need them...

I don't. I always have my backpack with me, I feel weird without it. I frequently go to this little outdoor market that has some good fruits and vegetables in the town centre(that is how they spell it here). And this time, I was reaching for coins in my pocket, and before I could look up again  and tell him "no bags please" he was already handing me this:

 

I mean, it was just a few avocados, plums, and 2 tiny boxes of blueberries. Which were already in paper bags, not sure if you can tell...I mean who needs this much packaging? Are people walking 20 miles with them? wtf? And we pretty much never get our stuff in plastic bags. We use my backpack and geli's and some reusable bags we carry in the backpacks. It isn't difficult...Anyway, I hate packaging...especially when they go overboard like this...

Sometimes protesters and babysitters make you miss your train...

Today was a one of a kind day that unless I get dementia or some other brain disease, I will remember until the day I die. yesterday we missed our train to London because the sitter was supposed to be at our house at 4pm and got there at 4:25, our train left at 4:30, so we missed it and we found out that is an expensive thing to miss. Today, we missed the train back from London because protesters were sabotaging the event and not letting it start!! I don't have time to elaborate at the moment, and I think Geli is already doing that in her blog. But suffice it to say that I have pics and videos to share of this, and you will get all the juicy details.

I will leave you with these time lapse videos taken by a farmer in South Dakota. They are assembled from hundreds of images taken in a time lapse...with the camera in motion on a dolley. The effect is mezmerizing...

You get the feeling of walking about the rural landscape as the whole night passes before you in a matter of seconds. I should reserve words like awesome and amazing for things such as this, because these truly are awesome! (oh, and the music is pretty cool too! But he didn't make that)







Once again, the natural world and human creativity astound me....

Sometimes you go to London to see an American Biologist

PZ Myers is an American Evolutionary Biologist whose blog I read, and he was giving a Talk in London, so we went to go see him. Pics later, it is late and no time to process and upload them . But it was great, with a few incidents. Hopefully tomorrow goes a bit smoother for the Dawkins-PZ Myers talk. 

On an unrelated note, Is this blogger's Captcha trying to curse at me?!

And um...really? Who wants to follow a credit card company on twitter? Why?!?!?!?!

Sometimes success comes in the form a ping reply...

After working on connectivity issue with people that think a computer is a modem, seeing this is glorious! Success in communicating using terminology to people that don't know it can be challenging. Not only do I need them to follow directions, I need to teach them what a computer is. And that despite them seeing everything on the monitor, the monitor is not the computer. That rebooting the computer involves more than just turning the monitor off and back on. Add tracing of network cables, power-cycling of switches, and talking about link-lights, and you might be able to understand why seeing this feels like I just scored the winning gol in a mundial match!

And these nasty little guys, I have had to deal with rather often recently. Thankfully, the more practice I get with them, the easier it is to remove them for me. But seriously, wth?

And um...facebook has a facebook page? Why? You're on it! Isn't that reassuring enough that you "like it"? And 13 of my friends do lol Facebook has insecurity issues apparently...