Just East Of The Arch

I was driving around at lunch yesterday, and took this image... It's just 6-7 miles East of the St. Louis arch, along Bunkum Rd:

About a mile west of the previous image, The image below is the corner of Bunkum and Rt. 111, on the south edge of Washington Park. Which is NOT a particularly nice neighborhood. This business seems to have been closed for a while....

A minus

I may be a slow typist, and a bad one, but I'm not tentative. I've worn the A off of the keyboard for my work computer... In less than 2.5 years. What can it mean?

Ya Snooze, Ya Lose

I've always been drawn to old houses, old barns, fading leftovers of human activities... SO... There's this old farmhouse not far from my office, abandoned, beat-up, towards falling down. And I've been thinking for months and months that I should take some photos. So I decided to run by today, with my new point'n'shoot, and see what I could come up with.'

Only it is now torn down. That'll teach me.

11111

As in: Eleven Thousand, One Hundred and Eleven. That’s the number of songs on my iPod as of today. I just added Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” last night, recorded to mp3 from the original vinyl. That's #67 on Rolling Stone's list of the Top 500 Albums of All Time. I like to think my tastes are pretty eclectic, but a quick review of “Genres” tells a slightly different story. Of the 11111 songs, here’s the percentage breakdown (number of songs, not time):
· Rock / Pop / etc. 73%
· Bluegrass/Country /Folk 12%
· Classical: 5%
· Jazz 5%
· Blues 3%
· Everything Else 5%

Now that’s just based on number of songs, but it’s an easy to retrieve measure. I could argue all day about the various sub-genres represented in “rock”, or the average length of Classical pieces, etc… But I think the message is still pretty clear. Maybe my next vinyl dubbing project needs to be my Thelonius Monk!

More of the puppies

Still playing with the new Point'n'Shoot... But another yucky day, dark, damp, cool and breezy. So we'll settle for a coulpe of snals of the puupies.... Converted to B&W in PSE. You may notice that the yard is simply silly with Maple Seed Helicopters....

Old Records

Another photo playing with my new camera.... These are a few of the records in my "to be dubbed" list.

I've been wanting to get a new point-n-shoot camera for a while, ever since one of my daughters needed my old one.... Finally collected enough from microstock photography to make a purchase. I wanted the best image quality in a camera that fits in my shirt pocket. And within my budget. Ended up with the Nikon Coolpix S640, from the local camera store. I'll play with it for the next week to decide if it meets my needs. But so far, so good.

Where's That Confounded Bridge?

OK, I picked up a new point-n-shoot camera today, following the theory that the "best" camera is the one you have with you. Anyway, I've been playing around, getting a feel for it. Below are a couple of close-ups of the bridge for my old (late '70s) off-brand Jazz-bass copy. The title, of course refer's to a Led Zeppelin song.

On The iPod This Morning

Playlist = "200 most recently added songs". This is primarily things I’ve been transferring from vinyl, typically eclectic. In reverse order, the last dozen:

• 53rd & 3rd – Ramones (Ramones)
• Tonight – Rick Derringer (If I Weren’t So Romantic, I’d Shoot You)
• Redondo Beach – Patti Smith (Horses)
• One Way World – Secret Affair (Glory Boys)
• Fool For You – Impressions (some K-Tel type collection)
• High Wind – Leslie Smith (Made In Pittsburgh)
• Good Hearted Woman – Willie Nelson (Volunteer Jam III & IV)
• Cowboys To Girls – Intruders (some K-Tel type collection)
• Run Run Run – The Velvet Underground (with Nico)
• In Tall Buildings –John Hartford (Nobody Knows What You Do)
• Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes – Edison Lighthouse (Greatest Hits)
• All About You - Bangles (All Over The Place)

Full Moon Night

This is another scan from an old slide... From one of my backpacking trips in high school; pretty sure it was early spring '78. This particular night, my buddy Mike and I sat up well into the night, talking about the future, our lives after high school.... The different directions we'd be going, where we thought life would be leading us. All while sitting on a tree trunk fallen into the stream near our tent....

As far as the photo, this was the view from the entrance to the tent. I didn't have a tripod, and this was well before the "smart" cameras we have these days. I recall that I set the camera on the ground for stability, aimed by guesswork, set the exposure for "b", and held the shutter button for a count of 20 (ish). Turned out OK.... Certainly looks like a full moon to me....

- - -

With the joys of digital darkroom, I cropped it tonight for a more "rule of thirds" presentation. Better??

River Rat

I recently sent another bath of slides in for scanning. They're up for review now, which means I can save web sized versions.... This is one from Senior year of high school. A close up of my friend Greg Highlands' shoes..... complete with doodles.

Five A Side

Getting high ratings on the obscure-o-meter today. Was listening to the album “Five A Side” from the band Ace this morning. Well. Technically, I was listening to their Greatest Hits CD, but that includes all 10 songs from Five A Side, plus 6 songs from their other 3 albums.

This evening I dubbed New Riders Of the Purple Sage - Who Are These Guys? from vinyl to mp3.

Neither of these bands is likely to be inducted to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. And I'm OK with that.

Dogwood In Black & White

We have a little dogwood tree in the back yard. Planted maybe 3-4 years ago, I don't remember. I shot this image today, converted to B&W... Experimenting with nature macros. The more I look at it, the more mediocre it gets... Oh well, the joy of digital, it didn't cost anything but time!

Green Grass Growing

Trying to get some grass growing in the backyard. Servalr years of neglect, some regradings, and 2 big dogs had left it a mudhole. But it's coming back well, at least so far. We're trying to be better about watering, as you can see.... Hope is keeps coming in.

Number 1 On My Birthday!

At least the fist 20 years... Courtesy of Pop Culture Madness

1960 - Cathy's Clown - Everly Brothers
1961 - Moody River - Pat Boone
1962 - I Can't Stop Loving You - Ray Charles
1963 - Sukiyaki - Kyu Sakamoto
1964 - Chapel Of Love - The Dixie Cups
1965 - I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) Four Tops
1966 - Paint It, Black The Rolling Stones
1967 - Respect - Aretha Franklin
1968 - This Guy's In Love With You - Herb Alpert
1969 - Get Back The Beatles with Billy Preston
1970 - The Long And Winding Road - The Beatles
1971 - It's Too Late -Carole King
1972 - The Candy Man - Sammy Davis, Jr.
1973 - My Love - Paul McCartney & Wings
1974 - Billy, Don't Be A Hero - Paper Lace
1975 - Love Will Keep Us Together - The Captain & Tennille
1976 - Love Hangover - Diana Ross
1977 - Dreams - Fleetwood Mac
1978 - Shadow Dancing - Andy Gibb
1979 - Hot Stuff - Donna Summer

Some great, some not so great....

Reminiscing...

A post from this weekend, 1 year ago. This photo is the desktop image on my home computer:

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Another image from Kentucky Lake, from my visit to Land-Between-the-Lakes a week ago...

I rather like this one, it turned out pretty much like I had hoped it would. This is using the B&W conversion built into PSE7.0. I've been thinking about investing in a "real" B&W conversion, but not sure I can bring myself to drop the dough...

Desktop

This photo is the desktop on my work computer. Taken last June, in extreme Northern Idaho. In fact, I believe that last mountain is in Canada. Really great area, I'd like to go up that way again.

Engineering 101

I gave a talk at my son's Cub Scout meeting tonight on "Careers In Engineering". Point #1? It has nothing to do with driving trains...

It seemed reasonably well received, even had a few questions!

Speaking of Wild Turkey...

We took a couple days' vacation last week and went to Louisville. One of our stops was the Wild Turkey distillery in nearby Lawrenceburg. Lots of barrels!

Chicken Train Taking Chickens Away

OK, I guess I should post something here every 3-4 months at least. Sigh. Maybe my Easter resolution should be to try harder? Chicken Train, by Ozark Mountain Daredevils was playing on the iPod, thus the title. Just a bit of randomness.

Last Friday, one of the guys in my office came down and asked to borrow my camera. Sure! When he bought it back, he told me he was taking pictures of a wild turkey that had come out of the thicket outside our office. Pretty cool, but it might've been nice if he told me, since it was right out of my window, too...... Oh well.

Not a great photo, but still kind of cool. Mediocre company issued camera, ya know.