This was taken as I was testing the effects of different f-stops on diffraction.

It’s been a very snow-filled winter this 2009-2010 winter season compared to the last five or so years I’ve lived here.  I think I’m over it.  Spring couldn’t come quickly enough.

This fox likes to sleep on a pile of grass in the back yard.  This grass came from the first time I cut the grass after buying the house.  The grass was so tall that it filled the compost unit and there was still too much grass.  I didn’t know at the time we had yard pickup in the neighborhood, so I put it on the edge of my property for nature to do its thing and decompose it.  At first I thought it was working because some mushrooms grew there.  But they were eaten or somehow destroyed after a few days.  Since then I haven’t seen any more mushrooms on there.  It MUST be decaying, but it seems to always be the same size.  A few months ago we first spotted the fox sleeping there.  On the day I took this photo, my wife was home sick and she saw and it called me at work saying it was just lying there.  Hours later it was still resting and I was able to get this photo.  I’m not sure what attracts the fox to the grass.  Is it warm because of decomposition?  Is it just softer than the ground?  Both?  Either way, it’s always a special treat for the fox to show up.

This time last year I was in Hawaii on a business trip while most people here were at the Inauguration.  See this photo capsule online at the photojojo site.

Today I worked on a python program to create a graph of the views of all my photos in my 365 Project set. Here’s the result:  (click for full size)

I was curious how they stacked up and I wanted to see if I could detect any patterns.  Except for a few outliers, they’re mostly below 50 views per photo.  I also expected to see more views after I started adding my photos to more 365 photo groups, but this is not the case.  There do appear to be clusters of views.  In other words, one highly viewed photo seemed to lift the ones by it.  That one huge outlier is my photo making fun of causes of the swine flu. The other big one is my Heroin Chic photo, no surprises there.  It was fun to create this and I learned a new python module.  Also, even though it probably took me a bit more time to program than to do it manually, it will now automatically generate whenever I want, and that’s worth the time it took.

Kids at Christmas are awesome! Nearly every present that Anthony, Alex, and Lizzie got received a loud, “This is the best present ever! This is all I ever wanted!”

My mom usually sets this up under the tree (although never this elaborately). By moving it to a table in the living room she was able to do a really amazing job. Also kudos to Denny who helped her with the landscaping.

What is it that intrigues us about rusty cars?  On flickr there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such photos.  I also see them in books.  I think it’s partly because of the colours, partly because it reminds us of our own mortality, and perhaps partly leftover cultural hatred of machines.

Another hard bird to photograph.  The blue jays are in my yard even less often than the cardinals.  And they run away at the slightest move by me.  But, once again, patience paid off.

Dealing with the snow by being inactive as possible.