http://www.baldheretic.com A total waste of bandwidth perpetrated by Jay Lee Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:10:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Readers of this blog may remember the story of my Tamron AF 28-75mm f2.8 XR Di lens that I often refer to as my "miracle lens" after the horrible accident. I had noticed that the lens was not performing well, at least not as well as I thought it should based ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/07/06/glass My band, The Flying Fish Sailors, has been nominated in the category “Best Traditional Folk Band” so please take time to go vote for us. You can find the ballot online at houstonpress.com/polls/musicawards08 We’ll be playing at the Awards showcase on July 27th from 4:00-4:45 pm at Dean’s Credit Clothing located ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/07/05/2008-houston-press-music-awards Hard to believe that Technology Bytes has been on the air for 13 years, but here we are. I remember when we started up there was not much Internet going on for the general public. Windows 95 had just come out and everyone seemed to be scrambling to get multimedia ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/07/04/celebrate-good-times-come-on Randomly encountered some "fire manipulators" in the back patio area of the Continental Club while I was out and about last night. I saw this as an EXCELLENT opportunity to play with some extended exposure shots using my tripod and the remote control for the camera Not bad, but whirly-twirly shots ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/07/03/zions-flame Microsoft will pay you to use their search engine. I'm not kidding. I know it sounds like that "Bill Gates Is Sharing His Fortune!" e-mail hoax many years ago that said that AOL and Microsoft were going to pay you money to forward this message, but it's not like that ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/07/01/show-me-the-money Today is the 100th anniversary of the explosion that flattened some 500,000 acres of Siberian forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River on June 30, 1908 Commonly referred to as the "Tunguska Event" it is widely accepted that the explosion was the result of an air burst of a large meteoroid or ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/30/100-years-ago-today Trish and Darin Murphy's current musical project "Skyrocket" performed at the Houston Continental Club on Friday night to a packed house. The group is made up of a fantastic batch of Texas musicians and the performance is nothing less than spectacular. Of course you must like 70's and 80's cover tunes ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/28/skyrocket Cynthia is well underway on her latest quilt. I am not allowed to publish pics yet, but I captured this one from the hall which has been screened and approved for release. This is one of her coolest quilts yet. I can't wait till it's done so I can photograph it ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/28/new-quilt-underway I am not now, nor have I ever been a Starbucks loyalist. That being said, I consume (on average) one Venti coffee purchased at a Starbucks each day. Not so much because their coffee is good, which it usually is, but because it's consistent. From day to day I am ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/26/give-me-coffee-2 A timeline of Internet Memes starting with the Trojan Room Coffee Pot and going all the way up to Rickrolling. Relive the glory days of All Your Base, The Hamster Dance and even The Dancing Baby as you stroll down Meme-ory lane http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/24/internet-meme-timeline The Tom Waits show was literally fantastic. Not only the performance, but the cast of characters in attendance. I got to see many current friends as well as people I don't tend to run into except every so often when an event like this rolls around. I struggled with the idea ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/23/tom-waits-glitter-and-doom-houston Another poignant reminder of my own mortality as an icon of my youth shuffles off this mortal coil. Comedian George Carlin dies at 71 http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/23/rip-george-carlin Uncle Charlie was having a showing of his poster art at Sig's Lagoon on Saturday so I stopped in on my way to check out The Light Rock Express at The Big Top. The evening was a trip down musical memory lane as I found myself in an interesting conversation ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/22/musical-memories Click image to view larger size. Or even better, see a larger version on a black background. This is my second pass at this image. I was able to clean up the chromatic aberration that was distracting in the original image as well as the HDR version. I have also (I ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/22/wrath-of-god The Allen Oldies Band celebrated the release of their new album "Ride The Wild Surf" last night at the Continental Club. Needless to say, a good time was had by all. Especially entertaining was Tomas Escalante (Suspects/Clouseaux/El Orbits) and his son singing backup on "Sweets for My Sweet", a song written ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/21/ride-the-wild-surf Cynthia had the idea to put together a clone shot that would portray how she sees the distribution of the workload around here. I was able to hammer this out in about an hour. Click to see full size: http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/21/man-may-work-from-sun-to-sun-but-womans-work-is-never-done From Wikipedia: In optics, chromatic aberration is caused by a lens having a different refractive index for different wavelengths of light (the dispersion of the lens). In real ife what it means is that in some lighting situations my ultra-wide angle lens shows some abnormalities in the form of colored fringing on ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/21/chromatic-aberration Just before the skies opened up over 610 near Uptown Park today View on a black background http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/19/storm-warning-2 Gawker.com asked for and received over 350 suggestions after requesting a new racial slur to describe white people. They've narrowed the selection down to 10 choices. Rambins Ivories Osmonds Cyclons Altoids Brunchers ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/19/vote-for-the-new-white-racial-slur Flickr uses a software algorithm/program that ranks the thousands and thousand of images uploaded each day based on something they call "interestingness" and then places the top 500 on their Explore page each day. Nobody can say with any certainty what makes a picture "interesting" or how the algorithm works, ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/18/flickr-explore-2 A 20 sided glass gaming die from 2nd century Rome sold at Christie's for $17,925. Apparently the person who sold it obtained it from his father who brought it back from Egypt in the 1920's Unusual and intriguing in a nerd/geek sort of way. I must confess a sort of "my ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/16/saving-throw Click image to see full size http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/15/beside-myself The one time Dooley tends to get territorial is when it's time to clean his cage. He just can't seem to stand it when I put down fresh newspaper or wipe the cage skirt. He doesn't mind coming close for tickles, treatums or scritchums but hates when he feels his ... http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/15/dont-peep-in-my-ear Sea Plane Best if viewed large Toy Boats Best if viewed large Cars Best if viewed large http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/14/new-miniatures http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/06/14/self-portrait-4