Archive for December, 2008

Zion Followed by a New Toy

Posted By Adam Edgerton on December 29th, 2008

Today we spent the day hiking, sightseeing, and exploring in Zion National Park. I continue to learn more about my camera with each use, and today I had fun with a bit of messing with depth of field, intentional underexposure to capture a maximum number of color tones, and manual focusing.

I’m not sure what was interesting, but the photo sure is.

An understatement.

Good hang time.

Look for the really sloppy 30 second photo editing. You can even see it at 25% resolution.

After arriving back home, my main Christmas present that shipped 2nd day air finally decided to show up after 7 days. Thanks Mom and Dad (and Aunt Mary)!

70mm from 8 feet away

Some zoom between 70 and 300, didn’t think to look.

300mm

Much more fun with this new lens is sure to follow. I’m looking forward to being able to mess with depth of field to a much greater degree. This captivating photo of a chair is looking very artsy, for example.

Posted in Travel

Comments (0)

Snow Canyon Mayhem

Posted By Adam Edgerton on December 27th, 2008

Today we spent a good chunk of the afternoon hiking in Snow Canyon. We explored three different trails, and spent time messing around in sand, sliding on and breaking ice, and climbing.

Posted in Travel

Comments (2)

1 week

Posted By Adam Edgerton on December 24th, 2008

It’s official. I’ve been in the same location for more than a week for the first time since June. No stir craziness yet. I’ve been keeping busy though.

In the last few days I -

absolutely dominated at hearts:

Learned that people can be conned into believing anything, including that Diet Coke is actually hydrating. Then again, if you’re already a Diet Coke drinker you’ve probably had the wool pulled over your eyes for a while now. Aspartame. Nasty stuff. Still, this is a lousy excuse for marketing.

Helped get the puzzle closer to completion. We finished the fairly hard section, the frustratingly hard section, and now all that’s left is the part that makes you want to pull your hair out. We’re working with a deadline now as well, since I think we’re using the big table for Christmas dinner.

Learned that a new genre now exists for books: the sniper novel. Right up there with romance, mystery, and self-help, you have a major category that until now has been overlooked. There have to be at least a dozen novels out there that would qualify.

Created a sweet new instrument out of a wrapping paper cardboard roll. It sounded worse than a dijireedoo and made my lips hurt. And all those finger holes that were supposed to create different notes? Mostly for show, it turns out.

Promptly destroyed it.

Had our traditional oyster stew and croissant Christmas eve dinner

Learned that brothers make good footrests

Until they attack you with their super-bright camera phone flashes.

We opened gifts on Christmas Eve this year. The haul includes fig newton bars, chewy granola bars, oyster crackers, and generic brand corn flakes. Missing this year are the Christmas gift staple Nature Valley bars, Cheerios, and Cheez-its.

Quote of the evening:

Mom: “I’m probably the only person in the world who gets a lava flow for Christmas.”

Posted in Travel

Comments (0)

Hurling snow. Bovine staring contest.

Posted By Adam Edgerton on December 21st, 2008

Posted in Photography

Comments (2)

Dusting off the Camera

Posted By Adam Edgerton on December 20th, 2008

It’s been less than a week since I brought out the camera, but it feels like a month. I figured it was time I took a few more pictures. The first few are for the people who would like a better picture (literally) of what the xeriscaping project is looking like so far. Still to go is finishing off the watering system and adding rocks and a lava flow. The rest are from a hike we took this afternoon.

Posted in Photography

Comments (4)

Uh, rocks?

Posted By Adam Edgerton on December 19th, 2008

After some Swedish pancakes for breakfast, we went and made off with a massive rock that my parents had been after for months. With permission, we slid it off the property of the nearby aquatic center under a fence and loaded it in the back of the truck. Then we booked it back home like bandits after a stop at the library. I was anxiously awaiting a certain package, which thankfully showed up in the early afternoon…

So now I have my new toy and my transition from PC gamer geek to Apple fanboy is nearly complete. I already appreciate the simplicity of the file structure of the Unix based operating system. Everything is rather straight-forward, and it makes transferring everything between laptops fairly pain-free. it’s nice to transfer everything off the old laptop and still have 200GB free. Now I can really go crazy with the camera.

My time with the Macbook was brief in the afternoon, as we had other work to be doing. We’re pitching in with the whole xeriscaping project going on in front of the house (and eventually the back). Today, we took rock mixed with dirt, leaves, twigs, and more dirt…

and turned it into just rocks!

This involved a screen and water, several hours, and lots of mud. Yesterday was playing in the snow, today was very much getting dirty in the mud.

I know, it’s really captivating stuff, huh? Going from writing about exotic locales to writing about dirt and rocks… I’ll post some pictures of the partially-landscaped area to at least give some perspective for the seemingly mundane work.

Posted in Travel

Comments (0)

Why is Life so Delicious?

Posted By Adam Edgerton on December 18th, 2008

Sticking snow in Saint George? I didn’t think so either. But we had a couple inches last night, and it was fun to watch the neighborhood kids playing in it, potentially for the first time. It sounds like it hasn’t snowed like this in a decade.

We already had plans to go skiing today, but the forecast for snow and a huge storm passing through made the prospect all the more exciting. We left Saint George early in the morning and headed Northeast to Brian Head Resort. Saint George’s elevation is a little under 3000 feet, and the base of the mountain is over 9000 feet, so we went up the entire way there. It was still snowing vigorously this morning and the interstate and back highways were blanketed in snow and ice. Days like today are what our Subaru was made for. I’m glad my parents kept it.

We got there this morning to find that there was still a massive blizzard going on and winds were too strong to go all the way to the top of the hill, so we messed around in bitter wind chill and blinding snow on the lower slopes for a while. It’s rather difficult to ski/snowboard well when the lighting and visibility is such that you can’t see the terrain you’re going down.

I skied, Ian snowboarded. He’s holding poles because I needed hands to take the picture.

Then they opened one lift to the top when the sky suddenly turned blue, and up we went. I realize that this picture doesn’t look particularly blue-skyish, but just go with it.

The view from nearly 11000 feet is stunning, especially with all the surrounding terrain being several thousand feet lower.

The afternoon was all about finding powder. Growing up skiing in Alaska, the best we usually got was hard-pack, icy slopes. This was the complete opposite end of the spectrum, with over a foot of fresh powder in the last 24 hours. Some runs that hadn’t been groomed yet this year were covered with 2-3 feet of nothing but powder. We had to learn a slightly different style of getting down the hill with all the fresh snow. Steep slopes became our friends, flatter slopes our enemies that liked to pull us under and bring us to a stop.

And of course with that learning curve comes a crash or two. It’s the softest landing ever, but the downside is you have to dig yourself out of the hole you create just to get going again. I cracked up for a good 5 minutes as I watched Ian get unstuck from this one, only to start out goofy and miss the narrow packed trail before falling into powder again at slow speed.

I had two good crashes on the day. The first was when I somehow sunk in a ski tip going across several other people’s tracks in deep powder. I face planted pretty nicely and was confused to find myself on my back. At least one somersault must have taken place. This was still during the stormy part of the morning, and I initially couldn’t tell which way was up the hill and which way was down. Nor could I figure out where one of my skis went. I spent several minutes digging for it before finding it. Next time I’m selecting skier level III instead of II so they don’t pop off so easily.

The other fabulous crash also involved losing a ski, but this one in a slightly more original manner. I was skiing in deep powder near the edge of a run and was noticing little 3-4 foot tall Pine trees sticking out of the snow. I was dodging them easily until one snuck up on me when it was too late to avoid. I figured I could glide right over it since only 3-4 inches were sticking above snow, but I wasn’t thinking about the fact that my skis were actually below the surface a bit. The tree ripped my right ski off and I spent a few moments ragdolling down the slope in a most comfortable fashion.

All that skiing and crashing and getting unstuck was a nice way to burn off some energy.

Now off to some sort of exciting evening adventure, such as playing cards or watching a movie or working on a ridiculously hard puzzle where all of the pieces look the same (and there are 2000 of them). Seriously, someone must have felt particularly evil the day they decided the entire bottom third of the puzzle should be a bunch of fall-colored leaves.

Oh, and the post title? That was my brother talking about cereal this morning.

Posted in Travel

Comments (0)

Snow Day!

Posted By Adam Edgerton on December 14th, 2008

We’ve got a good 3-4 inches of snow in Portland, with more potentially on the way and a week of freezing weather to go with it. Not that I haven’t seen snow recently… and I suppose I am from Alaska, but it is still exciting since this much snow in Oregon is a rarity. We used the day to sit around drinking tea, eating homemade rolls, playing Hearts and Rummy, and I even prepped for my interview in the morning a bit.

It should be a lovely time tomorrow morning scurrying around trying to get to my interview. As it snowed today, the weather got colder and it transitioned from melting to freezing, which means there will be a nice layer of ice on everything tomorrow. I’m taking public transportation, which is probably more reliable than driving would be. Wish me luck. If nothing else, it’ll be some good interview experience. Then it’s off to Saint George, where the forecast is snow! I think there are already plans to go skiing when I get there.