A few months ago I decided I was going to take everything off my desk that did not need to be there and try to keep it that way.  I was surprised how well I did and how easy it was to keep it that way.  I just got into the habit of putting things away when I was finished with them.  And, I will say it sure is easier to use the space on my desk when it is always clear.  I can use the full top for whatever project I am working on at the moment and try to put as much away as I can before I move on.  Sure, there have been times when I slipped and left a pile for a couple of days.  But, in general it has stayed much cleaner than it ever has been before!

The other day I stumbled upon a blog that talks about how to make changes in your life.  One of the main points is to make things a habit and to start small.  I find it interesting that just after I figured this out with my desk, I come across this blog!  Funny how things work out like that.

If you thought popup ads were annoying before, they are even worse when you are using Chrome full screen on a mac.  Every time I go to tvguide.com to look at the listings an ad pops up full screen.  Grrr…  To make it worse, if I just go to the menu and close the tab, it closes the wrong window!  I have to click on the ad window first.  Then, it goes back to my desktop and not the full screen browser window.  Hopefully this gets fixed.

I had the opportunity this past weekend to attend a session by Lewis Kemper.  I wasn’t quite sure what to expect before I went to the event.  But, I thought it could be interesting and decided to attend.

He began the event by going over some basics about digital photography — what things mean, what settings to use, etc.  But, the best part to me was when he talked about different techniques in Lightroom and Photoshop.  I am pretty familiar with Photoshop and know how to do just about everything I need to.  But, Lightroom is fairly new to me.  There sure are a lot of nice features built in that you can only discover by messing around a lot or by learning from someone like Lewis.  I have to say, after attending this event I am going to get more out of Lightroom than I have been.  Also, I think this will motivate me to finally setup a workflow in Lightroom to auto import my photos and automatically send them off to a backup drive.  I have been doing this manually for a long time, which always makes me put off importing photos.  Hopefully, Lightroom can make this whole processes faster and easier!

So, several weeks ago, while in a local grocery store it occurred to me that all of the oranges that I saw there were navel oranges.  There was not a single orange with seeds in it.  There were small navel, medium navel, large navel, but that was it. So, I was on the hunt for an orange with seeds.  At another grocery store it was the same thing.  Several different kinds of navel oranges, but none with seeds.  Even at the local Co-op, there were all kinds of navel oranges, but it was hard to find a regular old orange.  There were blood oranges and one variety of orange that was not navel, but a small amount compared to large amounts of navel oranges.

This got me thinking.  Since a navel orange has no seeds, the trees do not reproduce naturally.  The only way to make more of them is to graft part of an existing tree onto a normal orange tree.  Essentially, all of the oranges we eat are genetically the same (until genetic engineering came around).  So, in the most natural way of growing navel oranges if a disease arose that targeted the navel orange there would be nothing to stop it.  Every tree is the same, there are almost no variations that would make some trees resistant to the disease.  Although, now that genetic engineering is around, I am sure there have been trees produced that are resistant to most diseases.  But, still, I want my seeds.

This week I just decided to work on a redesign of my website.  I’m not sure why, but it is in the works.  My goal for the new site is to create a clean and concise way to get the message across.  Also, I am emphasizing the visual parts of the site more.  I  will also be applying the new theme to my blog and photo gallery, which I never got around to with my previous designs.  I hope to unify my site and make it a fun and easy way to view my work and learn about me.  I hope you enjoy the new site when I release it.

Edit: It’s live!  Let me know what you think.

About a year ago I started a project exploring light in photography.  Well, I continued that by experimenting with a lighter.  It took quite a few shots trying to see what interesting effects I could get.  This is one of them.  It is one of the simpler shots that I took, but shows the dancing sparks as you light the lighter.  I will post a couple more shots that give a different effect soon.

Being on a job hunt myself, the topic of careers and jobs has been on my mind.  But, I have been fascinated with what goes on behind the scenes at places of work in the past.  I did a photo project, inspired in part by this idea, on a couple of local organizations and what takes place in their buildings.  Sitting here thinking about what I want out of a job, I noticed the book America at Home sitting on my shelf.  This gave me an idea.  Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a book like that but for America at Work.  So, I did a quick Google search and came across an InFocus collection of images on this topic (published yesterday!).  I enjoyed looking at these images, but they are just a small part of America at Work.  So, I thought, what the heck maybe I should make a book like that.  So, I am putting the idea out there.  If anyone reading this wants to send me a photo of themselves at work (with permission to publish/use the photo), with a short story and basic information about the photo (who is in it, where it is, what you are doing, etc.) send them to me at zach@tudahl.net and send this on to anyone else you think would want to participate.  It will be interesting to see if anything becomes of this idea!

Oh no, I missed a week.  Well, I guess I just have to try hard not to do it again!

Well, I tried my hand at some wood working this past week.  I made a couple of picture frames for some of my photos.  I decided since you cannot buy a frame the size I want, I guess I just have to make them!  It was a fun experience, and it makes the end result even more special.  I took the picture, printed it, built the frame, and framed the picture all myself.  And, now that I know how to do it, I can make some whenever I want to hang a new picture up.  Who knows, I might even give some away as gifts, or maybe even sell a few.

I also built a shamrock for our flag pole.  We have a sign that we have hung up for Christmas for several years.  Last year my dad made a heart for Valentine’s Day and was thinking about a shamrock for St. Patrick’s Day.  Well, I made it!  What should we make next???

I have also been looking at a lot of photos on Google+, and I must say there are some amazing works on there.  Everything from splash photography, to black and white photography, to urban decay.  If you love photography and have not used Google+ to follow photographers, I highly suggest you start.  I also came across this guy somewhere else, but he makes daguerreotypes.  This is a almost forgotten process and it is interesting to see people still doing it.  It is kind of strange seeing modern technology photographed using this process.

I heard about the pogoplug a few years ago and thought it was an interesting device.  Recently, I thought it would be handy to have some easily shared drives to use on my computers at home (and away for that matter).  So, I invested in a Pogoplug.  I found it on sale for $20, so if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted it wasn’t too much of an investment.  When I first took it out of the box and connected it, I thought the performance was rather pathetic.  I later realized it was connected through a surge protected which limited the connection speed down from gigabit ethernet.  I connected it directly and it seemed to improve a bit, but was still disappointing.  I hooked it up again today and it seemed to be much better.  It is not as fast as a directly connected USB drive, or computer to computer transfers over gigabit ethernet, but it was acceptable.  I think this will work the way I wanted it to, so I am satisfied.