I took those?

I had the chance to check out the Temecula Rod Run this past Friday. It was the first day of the event, and it was cruise night. Luckily, I took my camera.

I snapped over 150 photos. From that, I pulled out the best 50. From that, I narrowed it down to the best 33. Cleaned them up, cropped them, boosted the color. You know, did my best to make them cool.

From those 33, I have a few favorites that I would like to share with you this morning.

The arch going into Old Town Temecula. I caught the wind just right, so you see Old Glory waving there as well.

Woody’s. The color and chrome really pop in this one I thought.

Ford Ranchero. Red. Chrome. Fancy magazine shooting angle. I’m very pleased with how this turned out.

The blown Nova cruising on Front Street. I actually managed to get 2 more shots of moving cars that turned out well.

There is a lot of movement here, but the passengers in the car are clear. I don’t know what it is about this photo that I like, but I do.

And, my favorite.

The color. The movement. The stationary cars. Pretty much everything about this one. Everytime I look at it I still have a hard time believing that it came from my camera, unto my computer where I edited it and uploaded. But it was.

Horn tooting is done for now. Thanks for stopping by!

In escrow right now, so don’t bother to ask if it’s available.

About 13k sq/ft on Lake Arrowhead, this is the nicest house I’m sure I will ever see. Completely custom built, this house is the very definition of huge. Besides the overall square footage, it took 750 cubic yards of cement to built the foundation. The master bedroom, complete with cedar lined closet and dual-shower/jacuzzi inclosure, is a tad over 1600 sq/ft.

On the main floors (yes, floors), the bar tops were hand built from oak, soaked in the lake for about a week and bent in a custom jig. All of the walls are covered in oak, as are the stairs. The carpet on the floor was custom made for this house. And the rock fireplaces where hand built, using materials found in the area.

The kitchens (yes, kitchens) both have full size Sub-Zero refrigerators with custom built doors. The front kitchen features a huge island with conductive stove (trust me, it’s cool). The back kitchen features Wolf restaurant-grade stove, griddle, grill and convection oven.

All of the rooms are equally impressive, with oak walls, custom built furniture and partial cedar lined closets. Really, it’s very nice.

And built entirely by my Grandfather. He designed it, drew the original plans, supervised every bit of the construction and did quite a lot of the work himself. It’s truly an amazing house.

I have more photos in my flickr stream and will be posting a little bit of video soon as well.

Me, doing what I do on Christmas, Thanksgiving and any other large family gathering.

The Lad and Dad making party.

The Lad and Big L playing a serious game of Blackjack.

Mom’s tomato salad, drizzled with sunlight.

All of these photos and more can be found in my photo gallery. Photo gallery here is code for “mirror of my flickr stream”, so no need to go to both.

I hope eveyone had a great holiday and that your weekend is chock full of fun, frivolity and porn friends. Or not if that’s how you roll.

I’m off to get warmed up to pour concrete today. WEEEE!

I did hear from the ‘rents and read on Twitter that Las Vegas was practically an island yesterday. The airport was closed. Interstate 15 between Stateline and Baker was closed. Interstate 95 was closed at Railroad Pass. If you were in Vegas, you were staying in Vegas.

Anyone else having wackier than normal weather?

Here are some recent photos I took with the Storm. Did I mention it does black and white?

Not too shabby, not too shabby at all.

*Unless VZ pushes the .76 update out Friday and it’s made of pure awesome.

Don’t forget, you can now view all of my photos either on my Flickr stream or in the photos section of my site.

You can see even more over at the Flickr. I’m very pleased with how more than a few of these turned out this time around.

For those of you that might have missed them in my Flickr, here are a few of my favorites.

This one I especially like. Even more so because it actually turned out pretty good considering I shot it from a moving MINI.

The sky was incredible.

Taken from Nipton road looking down onto State Line.

Of course I also took the The Flip.

Click back to my flickr for a few more photos and over to my Viddler to view part 1.

So, instead of sitting here being mad about not being at the New Media Expo in Vegas this weekend, I will share my current favorites.

• Skitch. This one has actually been bumped to living in the dock for me I’m using it so much lately. I would, for sure, pay for this.
• Fluidapp. I’ve heard that SSBs will be a part of the next version of OSX. Until then, there is this and it’s awesome.
• Quicksilver. I’m lost without this. Let’s me work without thinking or looking at the keyboard. Stuff. Just. Happens.
• Viddler. Have you seen the new features? Check out my new player! If there was a “Pro” account (like flickr), I would totally pony up.

Sure there are other free apps out there for the Mac, but none of them wow me like these. If you don’t use them, I believe it would be well worth your time.

That was taken at Jillians. Yes, I was holding 2 very large tankards of beer. Yes, they were both mine.

Yes, I emptied them both. Stella if you are curious. I’m pretty sure they were out by the time we left.

More later.

New Toys

I’ve had a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate burning a hole in my account for the last month, so I thought I would use that to get a new toy or two, plus a book for the lad.

First up, a replacement clip for my Gorilla Pod. I lost the original one somewhere and Amazon sells them for $5, so that’s done.

The other thing I’ve been wanting to get is a mono pod to use with the The Flip. You might have seen the test I posted the other day. So far, I think it’s pretty awesome. I can’t wait to try it with the other cameras in the house either.

It’s an Opteka. Collapsed it’s only about 18″ long. Fully extended it’s 6′. Lightweight, nice handle with a wrist strap and it even has a spike on the bottom if I’m in grass or dirt. Pretty snazzy. Oh yea, and cheap! This only cost $12.95. Not too shabby.

You will see this device in use at MTTS LA for sure. Just look for the dork carrying the black walking stick, that will be me.

Wordpress stuff

As much as I’m totally diggin’ the new pressd section, I’m still not 100% happy with the way it works. I managed to make the single post pages look right and the navigation is pretty ok, but it’s screwing up the front page. I’m not sure if I want to hunt down that particular fix or not, so I might be moving it into it’s own Wordpress installation on w(t)f. Watch for that, possibly later this week.

Next up for w(t)f as far as Wordpress goes is a modernization of the theme. I would like it to work with widgets and to get the avatars working in comments. Plus some minor refreshing of the layout is in order. Again, watch for that to happen later in the week.

I’m hoping to get those changes done and start possibly on a redo of WRR. I’ve not been pleased with it’s appearance for quite a while, and have a some huge ideas for it. So keep an eye out for that in the near future. Besides, we are 3 years old. Time for something really really cool I think!