That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.

– Elizabeth Wurtzel

Wait, Week 05? What ever happened to Week 04? Well, my proper camera met with a bit of an accident back on Christmas day and it’s been finally sent in for repairs. It took me a bit to locate my old P&S ¹. Plus, I’ve just been feeling a bit down of late. When I first realized I’d missed week 04, I planned on posting 2 photos for week 05 to make up for it. Unfortunately, I’ve not been shooting as many images and this was the only halfway decent one of the few I did have. Maybe I’ll post an extra image later in the year to make up to week 04; we’ll just have to wait and see.

Side note: I’ve been working on a new theme for this site and unlike most themes I’ve done this time I plan to do it all from scratch (sort of). I’m using a combination of HTML5 Boilerplate an 960 Grid System to build it, rather than working with an existing WordPress theme. Why? In part because I’ve not worked with HTML5/CSS3 yet and want to and in part because I feel Ian Stewart’s right when he says You should be building your own WordPress Theme Framework. .… Make it your own. When you’re done you’ll have the best WordPress Theme — for you.

Week 05: Cage Without a Key © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Update: Forgot to mention I was also participating in DrawMo, which is like NaNoWrMo but for artists. Well, I was sort of participating. In that I tried to draw something new every day but didn’t quite make it every day (but I did catch up on later days) and I’ve yet to scan/post my sketches for it. *shrug* Oh well.

¹ Highly recommend both the soundtrack and the DVD, 5 stars, 2 thumbs up, etc, etc…

I’ve Been Up To… © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

I haven’t felt much like writing anything here of late, but I started to get into the habit of carrying my camera with me everywhere. Since the camera is handy, I’m taking more photos¹. When I walked out of the house the other day, the light on this bush in our appealed to me

¹ Just snapshots really.

Red Flowers © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Then today, I’m catching on my the news in my RSS reader when I come across this article from Engadget. Apparently, Pentax is coming out with a new line of DSLR cameras this summer. And the extra kicker is Each camera remains compatible with Pentax K-mount lenses. How sweet is that? I mean I don’t have greatest of lenses for my old Pentax but I love my 17mm lens and to be able to slap that baby on a DSLR? Schweet. :D

New Cameras © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

It occured to me that I’d totally forgotten to post pictures from that (now) long ago trip to the Niabi zoo. I have finally posted a few of the images in the gallery. Unfortunately, when I was going through the pictures there were quite a few where my camera’s autofocus had grabbed onto the wrong subject. *sigh*

Heh, I forgot © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

• Seattle P.D. brushes off Jack Thompson
• Honest Game Titles

Not from Pukka:

• How to speed up Open Office
• Ergonomics and Computers
• Wireless Network Security
• Camera Hacker

Sorry this is late, with the site problems I was having I forgot to publish it!

Pukka’s Links of the Week © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Ariesna was off picking up more phat loot from relatives & friends at a bridal shower, while I balanced my checkbook. I walked over to the store to mail the bills (and grab a bit of lunch). I decided that I’d take my camera along with me today and I’ve posted two best pictures I took on that short walk in the Gallery. They’re not really all that special but still kind of nice and I really should be taking more pictures with the camera. *shrug* Not sure why I don’t, besides just being lazy. Ah well, there’s probably a lot of things I should be doing more of than I am and that’s not all that likely to be changing anytime soon.

Fresh Flowers © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Drawn! is a new group blog about illustration, art, and cartooning:
http://www.drawn.ca/

Stephen Colbert, from The Daily Show, interview:
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/002407.php

80’s TV Commercials:
http://www.x-entertainment.com/downloads/

Build your own magnetic spice rack:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43894-2004May20.html

Interesting Science Friday:
http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2005/Mar/hour2_031105.html

A “downloadable TV show” mentioned on Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/articles/05/03/17/1322246.shtml?tid=129&tid=155

Some sort of online, short film recommended to me by Pukka:
http://www.delivery.framebox.de/

Ain’t It Cool News visits Pixar:
http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=19658#1

Wicked Cool Latte Art, links via Boing Boing
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonx/sets/48921/
http://www.latteart.org/latteart.htm

Camera Hacks is a community website to share tips/tricks/tutorials/links to info on cameras (digital or film):
http://camerahacks.com/

Links © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Speaking of TV shows © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Recently, I was going through some of my old photos and ran back across this one. I rather liked it, so I decided to toss it up here on my site. That I actually like this photo is a bit of an oddity as I do not usually care all that much for reds or other bright, vivid colors like this. Still, the extreme closeup¹, the lines (veins?) on the petals and the pink bits so bright they’re almost silver running across the top of the folds in the petals just really work for me. *shrug* Go figure.

Oh and as long as I’m talking about photos today; I should mention my experience with a Kodak Picture Machine. These are those stations you see in grocery stores and Wal-Marts to make enlargements or whatever from either prints you already have or directly from the digital media that your camera uses. There are a couple of things to keep in mind about these things.

1. It’s basically an underpowered PC with a fancy interface stuck ontop. So expect it to be slow.²
2. Enlargments, to 8x10, made from standard prints will look grainy and the colors will be a bit off.
3. When planning to use the machine, make sure you leave yourself plenty of extra time in case somebody else is using it already. I stood behind another customer for probably 20 minutes or so before I could get up to the machine to use it myself. Oh, how I wish I’d had my iPod on me during that wait!

¹ It’s a pretty extreme closeup for my digital camera, though others do have a better macro mode and could get in closer.
² To be fair, it’s probably not that slow but having to stand there while it does its thing makes it seem extremely slow.

Vivid Flower © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.