I ended up having to work late handling a hot issue, so Jess is meeting me here for dinner. It looks like Mike is at work late too, so he’s going to have dinner with us. Then we’ll see where the night leads us.
February, 2007:
I’m bringing sexy back
Anyone got any plans for this evening? Jess and I are in the odd position of not having any and we’re up for just about anything.
I rather not sit at a bar and drink only because bars are annoying. They are crowded, dark, loud, and expensive. On top of all of that, someone has to drive home which means that the only fun part about going to a bar — the drinking — is limited for the not so lucky designated driver.
Any other ideas?
TWITTER ME
Twitter is like a blog post, but smaller and faster. Twitter is like an IM status message, even when you’re away from IM. Twitter is like sending a text message to all of your friends without even trying.
I’m actually kind of shocked that none of my 115 LiveJournal friends, 52 Facebook friends, 250+ regular website visitors, or any of the other random passersby to any of my online social hangouts decided to sign up for Twitter when I mentioned it a while ago.
I understand if none of them end up using it long-term. I mean, after all, it’s not very fun or useful if you don’t have any other friends that use the service too. However, I figured at least a handful of people would try it out and see how it worked and what it did.
Twitter is cool and “worth considering”:http://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/02/14/consider_twitte.
First, of all, you can keep up with your friends with little to no effort at all. And, of course, they can keep up with you too. It makes party coordination, hangout planning, and flash mobbing dead simple.
But, it can do even more than that.
Get a behind the scenes look at the Oscars as “Defamer.com”:http://defamer.com/ uses Twitter to give real-time updates from inside. (twitter: “defamer”:http://twitter.com/defamer/)
Get “CNN Breaking news on Twitter”:http://www.martinstabe.com/blog/2007/01/02/cnn-breaking-news-on-twitter/ (twitter: “cnnbrk”:http://twitter.com/cnnbrk)
Syncronize your Twitter messages (known as Tweets) with your “Windows Live Messenger”:http://messenger.msn.com/ Status using “Twessenger”:http://kunal.kundaje.net/twessenger/.
Get “BBC News headlines from twitter”:http://menti.net/?p=89 (twitter: “bbcnews”:http://twitter.com/bbcnews)
Put a “Twitter Widget”:http://www.velvet.id.au/twitter-wordpress-sidebar-widget/ on the sidebar of your WordPress blog and share those quick one off messages throughout the day with your current readers.
Let your Twitter followers know every time you update your blog with “Twitter Updated”:http://blog.victoriac.net/?p=87, a plugin for WordPress.
Let Twitter know when you’ve completed certain chores or tasks using “MyChores”:http://www.mychores.co.uk/.
Integrate it with your “30 boxes”:http://30boxes.com/ account so you’ll always remember what you were doing and when.
Even “LifeHacker likes Twitter”:http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/twitter-use-it-productively.html.
Give it a shot. The worst case is you’ll end up with yet another “Useless Account”:http://uselessaccount.com/. However, maybe you’ll actually find it useful or at least interesting and fun.
“TWITTER ME”:http://twitter.com/revjim
did somebody say FREE PANCAKES?!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard right. IHOP is giving away “FREE PANCAKES”:http://www.ihop.com/tellafriend.php today (and only today) in support of the Children’s Miracle Network. And the only thing better than FREE PANCAKES, is FREE PANCAKES with all of your closest friends.
So, who’s up for a pancake dinner tonight? I’m thinking 7pm-ish.
If you’re interested, let me know before 4pm and I’ll include your location in my “closest IHOP to everyone” calculations.
probably your last chance
Attention Dallas/Fort Worth locals.
I’ve been asking my friends and the friends of my friends “since the dawn of time”:http://revjim.net/2006/08/17/lighting-on-location/ (well, maybe not quite that long) to volunteer to sit for me for an artistic environmental portrait session. Now, with a “highly possible pending move”:http://revjim.net/2007/02/20/up-up-and-away/ pressing heavily upon Jess and I, the likelihood of having you, me, my gear, and the time to plan something worth doing all in the same place at the same time is getting slimmer with each new day. My pleas are now much more urgent. I sound a bit like a whining, whimpering, urine covered puppy, don’t I?
Are you interested? Do you know someone who might be? Here’s what I need from you.
First, you need to be open minded and ready to create something together.
Secondly, you need a seedling of an idea: either a location, a prop, a costume, or an attitude that means something to you, or to a character you’d like to portray. I’ll need you to describe this seedling and what it means to you.
Finally, I need you to “look over my calendar”:http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=revjim%40gmail.com and pick out a 3 hour block of time — any free time on weekends, weeknights after 6pm only, and in bed by midnight on school nights.
If I’ve never worked with you before, please include your physical statistics as well as a photograph of yourself. If at all possible, have the photograph of you be as close to the clothing and makeup as you imagine our photo session will have you in.
Email me (daniel AT djamesphoto DOT com) with this information and I’ll get back to you.
Thanks in advance. It’ll be fun. I promise.
up, up, and away
At this point, there is only so much I can say and, as with anything, nothing is a sure thing until it happens. However, I wanted to let you know a few things so that you’ll understand a bit more about where Jess and I are right now, mentally, as well as have some advanced notice in all of this. When I finally am able to share more information, it’ll happen so quickly you may feel blindsided or left out.
A little over a week ago I was, unofficially, offered a new job. I can’t say too much about it publically, but I can say this: It’s a job that doesn’t exist, yet so I’ve been asked to, first, examine the situation and determine what the requirements for the job should be and then I’ll be offered the job officially. This means that, starting as soon as next week (though more likely not for a few more weeks) I will begin traveling every week, Monday through Thursday, until enough information and practice has been acquired to develop an official job description. Within no more than a month of that time, assuming everything goes as planned and the offer is acceptable, Jess and I will move.
As far as where we would be moving to, I can only give you the rough idea that it will be somewhere on the map below:
Again, if I could say more, here, I would. But I can’t. In fact, in reading this, you know more than any of my current coworkers and any of my potential future coworkers.
It’s very exciting and a great opportunity for us and our future family. However, if I seem a bit scattered lately or seemingly desperate to spend quality time with the people that I care about, now you know why.
post THESE!
I’m working on a new idea for posting photographs on the web.
As it is now, I post only the “really good” or “really experimental” images on my photoblog and also add them to various online galleries and critique forums as well as present them for sale through a lab I’ve chosen to work with. These images, arguably, of course, stand alone as photographs without the need to belong to a larger collection. However, there are always hundreds of interesting images left over that just don’t stand on their own as worthy of being highlighted in various ways and don’t warrant the trouble of cross posting into various photography forums or putting up for sale.
However, as a collection, they are still valid, interesting images that would easily deserve to be included in a book devoted to the topic, or even displayed in a gallery with a specific enough theme.
The idea is to post all of those that stand on their own as “interesting”, “meaningful” and “artistic” and then present the entire set, including those that stand alone, as a collection on a theme. The trouble is, I don’t know when to stop picking off the good ones and post the rest.
So, I’m calling on you for help. If you’ve got a few minutes and would like to look at a collection of “West Texas” images and let me know if you think any more of them are worth singling out, I’d appreciate it. Send me an email and I’ll send you back a link.
Thanks in advance.
VFXY Photos v2
I absolutely LOVE the new VFXY Photos interface. It’s as good, if not better, than Flickr’s interface, yet allows photographers to host their photographs from their own sites using their own software. It’s easy to browse new and interesting images, and bookmark your favorites so you can find them again later. It also makes it very easy for you to provide photographers with quick and simple feedback in the form of “favorites” and “ratings”.
If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out.
My photoblog, Arranging Light, is listed there (VFXY Profile) as are thousands of other outstanding photographers.
Maha Shivaratri
I really am lucky to have such wonderful in-laws.
My mother-in-law sends me ecards on a regular basis. Funny cards, serious cards, sweet cards, and everything in between. In fact, I didn’t even know that she knew I used to be a smoker until she sent me a congratulatory ecard on my 1 year quitting anniversary.
Apparently she was out of ideas for cards this morning. So, she offered me Lord Shiva’s warm wishes for today, the Hindu festival of Maha Shivaratri. In the note on the card she wrote, “I have no clue what this is but have one anyway!”.
I love my Mother In Law.