Just one image from tonight's Flickr Strobist Meetup, but it's a good one. I was playing "art director" for this one in conjunction with Bruce Norman. I love the feel of this shot.

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Wow, I just found out there is an add-on battery for my laptop that kicks the battery life up by 10 hours. That'd easily get me through most of the flights I take, especially the parts where I care to stay awake...     #>

World Surname Statistics. My sister sent this to me (she's been doing a bit of genealogy on our family). Put your last name (surname) into the search box on the right-side and it'll tell you where the name is most common in the world.     #>

In about a month is the Adventure Film Festival in Boulder, CO. A friend of mine is actively involved with the festival (he's a huge Festival movie buff). I'll be heading up for sure, these are my kind of movies.     #>

Lightroom 2 as a Glamour Editing Tool. That new adjustment brush is going to be very useful.     #>

The Hazel Tree. The name doesn't tell you but it's a collection of Python tutorials and tips.     #>

Thursday night I got the camera equipment out for something I'd been thinking about for a few week, glowing gum drops. Part of the setup was using a black-light (as seen in the first shot below) and part was just using a single flash without the black light. I'm torn on which one I like better, the without seems to have a cleaner look to it overall but the with gives a nice twist to a common subject.

I did do a candy setup shot just in case you want to try and replicate with your favorite semi-transparent food.     #>

I was watching one of the past PhotoVision DVDs recently when the photographer was all about the Canon Tilt-Shift Lenses. Personally I think tilt-shift is a bit like vignette, so over-used that it's become a cliche. I was curious however with how much one of the lenses cost. Turns out it's a lot, over $1,000 for each of the 3 lenses that come up first on an Amazon search. No wonder the Lens Baby is so popular, those retail for anywhere from under $100 to just a couple hundred for the newest versions.

At those prices no wonder I have no interest in such a limited-use lens.     #>

LCD Monitor Configuration In X.Org. Handy, though I noticed the Linux Mint default look is stunning, I'm planning on changing over to their distribution soon, they seem to have quite a lot of the UI quirks all worked out.     #>

8 Unix Tricks You Didn't Know. Great stuff in there I need to try and remember (and see how it works on Solaris 10...)     #>

Pop Rocks No Bake Strawberry Lime Cheesecake. I have not yet decided if this is brilliant or terrifying...     #>

Success with OpenSolaris + ZFS + MySQL in production! My work has finally started moving to ZFS (and some of our production equipment we ship is on the X2200 platform just like SmugMug is using).     #>

Nightclubs are hell. What's cool or fun about a thumping, sweaty dungeon full of posing idiots? Always do enjoy a good Charlie Brooker rant.     #>