Interesting

So... Nate thinks camera is tossing is lame... so is reading somewhat lengthy articles about trash, I suppose. Here's one, if you're feeling lame, as I almost always am:

Grist mulls landfills vs. incinerators.

Meanwhile, working from home is good fun. It's a constant ordeal to keep focused and on task, but then again I find that offices offer many distractions as well... so perhaps this is only a different shade of a familiar problem. The new job has ample work to make me suitably non-bored, so that helps with the focusing issue. I've got much more to post soon... but for now I have to, well, get back to work.

Another Interesting Toss

toss 1
Originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Okay, so I admitted from the start that camera tossing is a bad idea, but I thought I would throw up another of my favorites from my day of camera tossing last week. I like the streak along the bottom of this picture that was created by the blue light projecting out of my computer monitor. I think the stripey streak it creates is pretty great, and it difinitely didn't appear in my other tossing experiments.

Enjoy! This might be the first of a series of photo posts this evening. I'm feeling picture happy, and I just got my computer working again after three days of being kaput (I have concluded that my video card was just being annoying... but I may also just need to start thinking more seriously about the fact that my personal computer is old enough to go to kindergarden!).

Had to post it

Just got a nice smile added to my afternoon by a happy little post on Salon.com

Check it out.

Hope your Wednesday is going well. This evening sometime I'm going to post a picture or two.

+ John

TerraPass & The Oscars

So, I know I've mentioned TerraPass before and even made a post last year that was all but an ad for them, but I am on their mailing list and skim it when it hits my inbox. One neat thing I caught in it this week was that they gave out TerraPasses to all the presenters & performers. at the Oscars. This past year lots of hoopla and IRS involvement lead Oscar to dump their formerly crazy gift bags... and in its place came a cool little green gift from the academy. Read more here. Thought you would find this interesting. I sure did.

Bad Ideas

favorite from first tossing session
Originally uploaded by Chambo25.

So... I've joined this photo emailing list that's pretty fun. They send out something about once a week, and the content of the email varies greatly. Sometimes they've come across a nifty new photo doohickey that everybody should know about because it's so cool. A lot fo the time they email about DIY projects like how to adhere photos to wooden blocks to make fun personalized toys for kids... or how to apply the techniques used in the movie "A Scanner Darkly" to your own photos.

Recently they covered something called, "Camera Tossing" where you take your camera, set it up to take a long exposure, then toss it in the air to see what comes out. I delved a little into this, and found that basically everybody who writes about it starts their post by saying, "hey, listen, I think this is fun, but I take no responsibility for any injuries or damage you do to your camera if you should choose to imitate what I'm doing here." That's always a good sign, right?

Anyway, as it is a quiet Sunday, I thought I would give my camera a few trial tosses in the safe confines of my bedroom... over the bed... where even if it falls from my grip, it will likely be a-okay.

Above is by far my favorite image to come out of this experiment. Consider this the manifestation of my recent promise to start posting more photos... this is only the beginning... but I'm not sure how much of it will involve camera tossing. The whole thing is kinda fun, but also somewhat nervous-making.

Getting Reacquainted

I think I've discovered my favorite part of having a functional mp3 player.

All the music I own that I had buried. Earlier in the week it was the Four Tops and Van Morrison.

Yesterday night before bed I uploaded some Badly Drawn Boy, Beck's "Loser," along with "Soul Sucking Jerk" and a couple others from his album Mellow Gold, and a bunch of songs from Abbey Road and Sgt. Peppers.

Sure, I've given away the fact that I have missed huge chunks of the B section of my collection... and today I've moved on to Bjork. As I write, I'm listening to and uploading the album Homogenic... a CD I listened to dozens upon dozens of times about 5 years ago... and one that has not left my book in maybe a year.

It's nice to pull out some old friends and feel like the handly little shuffle option will keep them cycling through my life. Meanwhile, all this adventurous archeology has also inspired a similar journey of discovery into sounds not gaterhing dust on my shelf. Going through old CDs has reminded me to check out some acts I always meant to. This month has been a great foray into Guided by Voices, the New Pornographers, The Mountain Goats and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists.

I'm really having a good time. I'm sure that this whole theme will re-emerge periodically over the next few weeks and months, and as I continue to use my ipod as the primary sound system for my car I'd like to keep occasionally posting playlist snippets from WJLC.

I guess there's nothing super novel to the joys of exploring the new and the old and the newly new, etc. but the lack of novelty doesn't make it any less fun. I'm sure it is a project that will also take a good amount of time.

Meanwhile I still need to get my photo project up and running again soon too.

All is well here in frosty Connecticut. Happy Friday... Happy Weekend...

+Happy Blogger John

New Job Old Job New Job

Today is the first of two "close out" days at my old job, and yesterday was my first official day at the new one!

The new job is turning out to be very exciting and positive so far. I think it will certainly be a job that requires a good amount of work and a large amount of diligence on my part, but I'm excited for the challenge. I'm also excited to be working in an environment where, at least for now, I feel that my colleagues are like-minded people. Anyway... there will be more on that soon, I'm sure!

Until then, I'm back at the old one... closing out... sharing info on how people can cover my responsibilities in my absence... generally trying to help with ye olde transition period. There's lots to clean up! Whew!

So... that's my deal today.

Happy Birthday Dad

Barry Top of Head
Originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Today would have been my dad's 62nd birthday!

I knew I had some old pictures posted on Flickr, but wasn't sure quite what. I'm glad I found this one because it makes me smile.

Insanity!

Dear Friend,

If you read my blog with any regularity you will see recently that I've been a bit derelict. Read down a bit and you'll encounter reason number one, that I'm in the midst of transitioning out of a (difficult) job and into a new one. This week I'm helping to pull together the organization I'm leaving's biggest fundraiser of the year, and it looks like a lot of the work will just fall on me. I'm excited to see how it turns out, but in the spirit of honesty and full disclosure, I'm pretty much just tired!

Saturday night is the big event, and I'm looking forward to it all being over soon. Between now and then, however, think good things about me because it will be stress city. Once that is all over, I'll be wrapping up here and starting up the new thing that comes with a much more substantial commute... and hopefully much more substantial and fun and interesting responsibilities at work!

I hope that this funny little note finds you well, and I'm looking forward to getting back into posting more very soon (especially posting new photos).

In an unrelated note, today was my dad's birthday. Happy birthday dad.

+ John

Will Ferrell is George Dubya Bush in Whitehouse West

If you've never seen this video (and have the bandwidth to do so) you should.

It makes me laugh and cry a little, and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night saying, "God they're so fast, they look like they could strike at any moment. You're sure it's not a bear or a puma? Somebody call Dick Cheney!"

Big Day

So... yesterday I accepted a new job offer, and quit my old job!

It is done!

More details to follow, but I am very excited about the offer & my new employer. You can read more about them here: www.CriterionConsulting.net


Happy Thursday!

Webb Slinging the Goodness

Wow... so did Jim Webb deliver or what? I was really impressed, not only by his speech last night... and I was impressed quite a bit with that, but also with how much he said in 8 minutes when compared to the President's 50 minutes of blah blah blah.

Great stuff, if you ask me, and exactly the sort of inspired and inspiring fare that people need to see more of, and incredibly heady stuff. If you missed it, you can watch it above!!