I bought a new cuckoo clock the weekend before last. I used to have one years ago, that I brought home from Germany. My old property managers stole it best we can figure (we think that we forgot it on the wall in the final clean out of the house, but the next day it was gone and of course they didn’t have any idea what I was talking about…)
Anyways, they were half off when I was in Leavenworth, so I got a new one. It’s better than my old one (in design only… it could never be cooler than one I brought home from Germany). It plays music on the half hour and the hour (Edelweiss I believe) and the little people dance. I like it.
My Grandma passed away on Thursday afternoon. She was diagnosed with cancer about 4 1/2 months ago – they told us it would be terminal and she probably had about 3 months or so. Apparently 3 months wasn’t long enough for Grandma to finish everything, which was fine by us. The family’s handling it pretty well.
Brother, Grandma, and me.
It was certainly sad to see her go, but it got me to thinking about all of the wonderful memories I have of her and my Grandpa (who passed away in 2005). Things like…
How they used to take me camping to Eastern Washington when I was a kid (Sun Lakes, specifically). Even after I rolled off the bunk and landed on my Grandpa scaring him half to death in the middle of the night.
When they’d come up to our house (again when I was little) they always picked up a box of those sugar cake donuts.
Grandma always had candy hidden all over their house, because Grandpa wasn’t allowed to eat it because of his diabetes.
Christmas Day we always drove down to their house to see that side of the family. They always had the only tree I knew of with tinsel on it.
The time when we were camping, and Grandma found a tick on her leg, so she poured alcohol on it to get it out. I was like two, so naturally I was fascinated with the practice of getting insects drunk.
Seeing them at their 50th wedding anniversary, and wondering if I had what it takes to pull something like that off.
Getting to spend a lot of weekends in the last 4 months visiting with Grandma (just us) and getting to know her as an adult firsthand, instead of whatever my parents passed on.
I thought this might be useful for anyone who’s planning on going camping in Glacier National Park (or curious about it). I went for a full week, and the drive was roughly 10-11 hours so you can adjust dates and times accordingly. Some places do reservations, some do not. I took and used the Moon Handbooks guide to Glacier National Park, which is pretty good (only a couple years old, but nothing seemed to be wrong except the weather predictions).
I’m going to try out a new format for posting pictures, a dedicated photoblog. Now a photoblog has one picture per post, and little else – so I’m planning on posting one photo every weekday. This format lets me put much larger versions of pictures, which I’m thinking will be nice. Plus it’ll keep me busy with the camera or I’ll run out of stuff to post.
I thought it might be helpful to document how exactly I made the timelapse of the Going to the Sun Road, so here goes. I made it on my laptop, which runs Ubuntu Hardy Heron but any Linux distro will do. I needed the gprename, imagemagick, and ffmpeg packages installed. I’m going to assume you know how to take a series of images with your camera, and not cover that at all.
Made this timelapse while driving home from camping in Glacier National Park for a week. It’s of the Going to the Sun road, the big scenic highway that goes right through the park. Pictures are 5 seconds apart, if I could make it over again I’d try maybe 2 or 1 second intervals. It turned out pretty decent though.
The video doesn’t even begin to do justice to how gorgeous of a drive this is though. Reminds me of highway 20 up through the Ross Dam area, but even more scenic and awesome.
With the release of the iPhone 2.0 software and the iTunes Application Store, there are now lots of (arguably cool) applications available to enjoy – some are free, some aren’t. I’ve tried out a number of them so far, and here’s what I like and dislike so far. Continue reading ‘iPhone apps I’m liking so far’
Two in one day… must be some sort of miracle. These are from the Woodland Park Zoo, which I hadn’t been to in so many years that I can’t actually remember. The trip was mostly to put the 5D through it’s paces, although visits to the Ballard Locks and Mars Hill were also fun. I used both the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 lens and the Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 lens and was very happy with the results.
Fireworks over Bellingham Bay. I’d never shot fireworks before, and I knew I’d be kicking myself for yet another year if I passed up yet another 4th. I used the Bigma, a tripod, and a TC80N3 timer & remote control, and was pretty happy with how they turned out.
All taken with my new camera (a Canon EOS 5D). I couldn’t decide where to try it out, so I ended up heading out to the county and eventually found myself at Silver Lake. Subsequent stops were at my Brother’s house (where the dog lives) and later, Boulevard to finish off a book.
