Breaking Radio Silence

Awesome Tree

Sorry for the delay in posting — I usually post while I’m at Zoka, but their internet has been down for a few days (something of a comedy of errors which doesn’t need getting into, in theory it’ll be fixed later today). I finally decided it was time to actually pull the laptop out at home and do catchup on it. I’ve been experimenting with a new RSS reader found via the inestimable R Stevens called Vienna. It’s free, it’s fast, it’s clean, and the interface will do. So far, I’m really liking it.

One of the main reasons I’ve pulled out the lappy is that I have pictures from my recent trip to the Washington State Arboretum on it (“trip” might be more epic than I really intend… it’s like 10 minutes away). I’ve redacted and uploaded a dozen or so images from that trip, so if you like pictures of blossoming dogwoods and cherry trees and such, swing on through. I’ve been reluctant to go in and fill in extra details and titles with the pictures in the gallery, because I’m not sure if it would be a wasted effort if I end up transferring to a different gallery solution (ZenPhoto is currently in the lead for an alternative). We’ll see. In the meantime: the image to your right is this awesome tree in the Arboretum. The branches have wrapped around the trunk in this great pattern, with just a few branches swooping out and down (as you can see). I loved it, so I took a shot and tweaked it a little in photoshop (adjusting contrast, color, etc). In fact, almost every shot in the gallery has at least a little Photoshopping… but generally VERY little: auto color, auto contrast, auto levels, adjust image size, save as jpeg at level 6 compression. I’ve been fiddling with a few a bit more, but generally for the sake of play.

In other news, still no job, but my resume is updated and available as a PDF here. Critiques welcome. The lack of a references section is intentional… I have people who’ve agreed to be a reference, and I’ll happily provide that information upon request, but I agree with the trend towards not listing it on a professional resume. It’s a privacy thing.