More pics posted to Flickr

I posted two new sets to Flickr today. The first is a set of pictures I took at the park a couple weeks ago. The second set is of Mom's birthday flowers Dad, Ryan, and I gave her. I also updated the set of Ryan's pics to include pics he took last weekend on our trip to my office.

Finally, I added a night scene I took last weekend.

Enjoy!

Registered Paint Shop Pro X today

I've been playing with a trial of Paint Shop Pro X for about a month now. My trial ran out last week, and I registered it today. I needed to process the pics I've taken recently; I'll be publishing them to Flickr soon. I really like PSPX, and look forward to learning more about it.

I have five more days on my Photoshop Elements 4 trial. I still haven't decided whether I'll be using it or Picasa as my photo catalog. I am leaning toward Elements right now, since it's faster and more powerful.

I have finished taking the portraits for my company photo directory. I ended up shooting the whole project with the company Casio rather than my new Canon S80, as I wanted the consistency of using one camera. I did use my new tripod for the pictures taken this month; it helped a bunch.

My colleague has done almost all of the photo processing for the directory project; I've only done the few required red-eye removals (I used PSPX). Now I need to find time to finish the HTML coding.

Completely off topic, but possibly interesting: now playing: Carmen, the opera; music by Georges Bizet; with Leontyne Price, the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Chorus, Herbert von Karajan conducting. It was recorded in 1963. This is one of my most favorite operas.

pic series: cat in a tree

My brother Ryan and I are hanging out at home this morning, and Ryan calls me into his room. There's a cat in a tree outside his window; we live on the second floor. A short series of four pictures begins here.

Newsvine

I've been looking for a truly good news site for some time. Google News is good if you know what you're looking for. I've never really liked CNN's or Fox News' sites, but I can't quite figure out why I don't like them.

I heard about Newsvine a while back; I can't remember where. It sounded interesting, so I signed up for their beta. I got an invitation from them overnight Thursday night. I spent a little while yesterday evening and today on the site, and I'm quite impressed so far.

It's kinda like slashdot, and a bit more like Digg. There's a built-in AP news feed with good-size, often gorgeous and poignant pictures. There's also the ability for readers to "seed" -- post links to and summarize -- stories. Users can also post original articles. But what's coolest about it? Readers can "vote" for and comment on stories.

The breadth and depth of coverage is more than any other collaborative news site I've seen. Slashdot is technology oriented, and Digg is focused purely on user-submitted stories, so it can be rather schizophrenic. But Newsvine builds on a quality AP feed with user rankings and user-submitted content. It seems to have content on all the major news areas.

It's in a closed beta right now. Let me know if you'd like in; I have something like 20 invites to distribute.

Newsvine certainly looks promising. It'll be interesting to watch it continue to develop.