Darwin’s Radio
A Dirty Job: A Novel
My Life and Hard Times (Perennial Classics)
We’re heading back to Ohio today. The weather makes it nicer to leave at 5.30am when it is chucking it down with rain and being really windy - makes you feel you are not missing much beach weather. On the down side, it means you have to drive through wind and rain - ugh.
Sometimes you just wish you could click your heels together three times - it would certainly make the journey quicker.
Today’s lolcat had a funny picture - all the more funny as the litter box in this photo is the same kind that we got - thankfully none of our cats have tried this yet.
This morning I got up early (especially for a Saturday) at 6am and headed out to Marysville Airport where there was hopefully going to be an unofficial balloon launch. I had no idea what time they were going to launch, but as I was driving down the road I was overtaken by a van with a basket on the back so I knew I wouldn’t be that late! I arrived just as they were ready to leave for another launch site so I joined the trail of vans and headed out to shoot some photos.
I’ve uploaded them to Flickr to my Marysville early morning balloon launch. I hope to get to their night launch/glow this evening so more photos will be uploaded later too. In the meantime I’ve created a collection of Balloon photos on flickr.
I’ve uploaded the photos from the British Invasion concert held in Dublin, Ohio from 27th July. The band plays a mixture of English hits such as the Beatles, Rolling stones etc. They are very good and also played at the Balloon glow last night too which was an added bonus. For more information see the British Invasion Band website.
Yesterday I went to Balloons off Broadway 2008 and took loads of photos. Some of them are uploaded to my Balloons off Broadway Flickr set This was the first time I had been out shooting and filled up my (2gb) memory card. There were several factors to blame. The first was that I still had some old data on the card (oops!), I was shooting in RAW and jpg mode and finally I was taking advantage of the continuous shooting mode for the flames to get just the right effect. All of which meant a lot of space was used on the card and I eventually ran out. Thankfully not before the night glow had almost finished - some of the balloons were actually being deflated as I was finishing up.
The event was good but not as good as last year. It had grown drastically which meant a lot more people and as a result the traffic to get to the site was not fun. I was anxious as the balloons were meant to launch at 6.30 - I eventually got into the carpark at 6.25 and hurried to get to the launch only to find no balloons even remotely setup. Eventually 4 balloons were inflated, but only for tethered rides AND we were all moved back out of the way of the balloons so were unable to get any good setup photos. (Some people got away with ignoring the police and staying in the setup arena - next year I joked I’d setup some “official photographer” tshirts and flog them to all the photographers anxious to get in the field to get closeup photos. I know this restriction is due to health and safety, but last year was so much more personal, informal and fun with some great opportunities to get real close to the balloonists as they setup and we were even able to help them pack up!
Due to the high wind, none of the balloons were launched which was a big disappointment to a lot of people, especially as no tannoy announcement was made, however it did mean that I didn’t have to worry about balloon chasing - trying to get OUT of the car park in a rush to follow the balloons would not have been possible.
Eventually about 8.30 the rest of the balloons were inflated - 2.5 hours after the event had started - ready for the night glow. This was fun and at this point I was able to get onto the field and take some close shots. The balloonists loved to light up the flames for photographers. I narrowed down my 246 photos to 26 for Flickr.
I forgot to post in the blog (Kristen beat me to it) that we have a new car - bHelsbyBug. This name came about after a guy at Siemens used to call me beHelsbyBub - something I thought rather amusing, and therefore the car is now known as this too. Pictures of bHelsbyBug are uploaded at Flickr. This link will have more pictures as we take them. I was going to take the car out this afternoon to various places around Dublin to get some shots - but no sooner had I finished working in the house, it starts to get very very windy and a storm is about to blow in. has started - it’s now thundering - no rain just yet.
The rest of the day it has been roasting - I’ve been working in the cats room putting in the (almost) finishing touches to the baseboard (skirting board for the uk readers) and trim on the floor. I only have the caulking to go now to cover up the few gaps from the incredibly uneven walls. For those of you ever considering replacing the skirting board, get a proper nail gun - it works great. I borrowed mine from one of the guys at work and it really made a difference in getting the trim in tight to the walls and very quickly too - highly recommended.
Saturday was sad as we had to say goodbye to the Velez’s who were going back to Oregon. We caught up with them for breakfast in Panera. Kristen gave Josiah a toy cellphone - almost identical to Tracey’s, which was a big hit. Hopefully the noises it makes doesn’t drive them batty on the long drive. We took several photos (start on flickr) which came out well. I was hoping my gorillapod would work, but the camera is too heavy for the lightweight gorillapod (it was the cheap $10 one - free at buy.com with the google checkout discount) so I had to use the pod’s legs to prop the lens up and hope that it was pointed in roughly the right direction.
Interesting news that a politician is actually doing something useful for once and is trying to get a bill that basically provides more protection from police harassment to photographers taking pictures on the street. There have been several cases where people have been stopped for taking pictures in public - the silliest one being a photographer in Blackpool of all places. I wholeheartedly agree, especially after being stopped by the cops in Columbus and the excuse of "suspicious activity after 9/11" is a great coverup. One of the points that I hadn’t previously thought about is that it is perfectly acceptable to have CCTV filming you EVERYWHERE you go, but it is not ok to take your own pictures????? Now we just need something similar in the US but well done Austin Mitchell.
Today is Shrove Tuesday or commonly known as pancake day in the UK. A special day in the Helsby household due to the connections with the Olney pancake race that mum ran in a long time ago. Last year Dad apparently ran in his local pancake race too. This year I just tossed the pancakes as Dublin doesn’t do a pancake race but it would be a fun thing if they did. This would be the second US pancake race as Kansas competes with Olney (and Olney won this year.) I cheated and used bisquick for the pancake - the first came out like traditional american pancakes (very thick) - the second was too thin and stuck to the pan and the third one was just right (but also stuck to the pan!) Apologies to the guys at work who are reading this but I wasn’t going to dress up in a pinny and headscarf for the picture!
I had a really good time at the Southern Theater yesterday with the Flickr Group - I think there was about 50-60 people there so you had to be careful about who you were stepping in front of but it was fun. I’ve not captioned the 60 photo’s I am in the process of uploading onto Flickr yet - that will be a project for this week. Everyone’s photos are available at cmhflickrmeet011908 - I recommend you subscribe to the rss feed to see the photos come in on your reader. The obligatory group photo shot was taken by Fensterbme as usual - Thanks!
I do have a picture of the day for yesterday and today but I won’t be able to upload them until after this batch gets uploaded so stay tuned.
The non technical posts of Andy Helsby, a techie blogger in Dublin, Ohio, USA