The Mercato Holiday Car Cruise that was canceled back in mid-December on account of poor weather was finally rescheduled, I guess, because I showed up at the Mercato tonight to pick up a sandwich and it was in full swing. Unfortunately we were already starting to lose the daylight, but I grabbed a few pics with my iPhone. There was a staggering amount of exotics in attendance; the pictures barely do them justice.
See them all in this gallery on Flickr. (Or you could just go to my photos page.)
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At 10:00 this morning, Google launched its Street View of Metro Detroit. For those who aren’t familiar, Street View is a special feature of Google Maps that lets you essentially “walk the streets” of a city. It features 360 degrees of still photographs taken every few yards along thousands of city streets, and each city takes Google weeks to compile as they drive their special photography trucks back and forth. One of the original cities featured under Street View was San Francisco, the footage of which became famous when it accidentally captured some anonymous young woman with her thong showing.
Now, I don’t think I want to see any residents of Detroit with their thongs showing, but since I grew up there, perusing Google’s Street View of the region is like being a kid in a candy store. Look! There’s my house! There’s my grandmother’s house! There’s my friend’s house! There’s my high school, yuck. There’s Donutown! There’s…Dou…uh, where Doug’s used to be! Ironically, Google captured more footage of Detroit’s suburbs than of Detroit itself. Then again, the un-photographed areas of Detroit are probably areas where, if they’d ventured, their camera truck and its fancy equipment would have been stolen and parted out.
To my friends and family from the region, have fun finding familiar places. And maybe even some familiar faces!
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I’ve recently been jonesing for a more elaborate digital camera, after using point-and-shoots since I switched from 35mm film in 2000. Back when I graduated from high school, I got a Canon EOS Elan IIe 35mm SLR, and it was a fantastic camera. I still have it; it’s in pristine condition. Unfortunately, I somehow doubt I could ever go back to film after enjoying the luxuries of digital. I mean…return to 36 exposures per roll and lose that awesome review as-you-go capability? I don’t think so.
So after a lot of painstaking research, I ordered myself a new camera a couple weeks ago. I couldn’t afford a digital SLR — even though prices on them have come way down in recent years — so I went with a superzoom, or what’s also called a “bridge” camera (because it acts as a bridge between a point-and-shoot and a digital SLR!). It’s a Canon Powershot S3 IS. Pictured below is my complete haul, which I ordered piecemeal from three different online retailers.
I actually received my new toy a week ago, but hadn’t even had a chance to use it until today. Even today’s use was abbreviated, but I took a few photos around the yard, all of which utilized full manual mode. I particularly like experimenting with shallow depth of field, as you might notice from the gallery I put up on Flickr. See the rest of the photos here.
The Powershot S3 IS features a 12x zoom, optical image stabilization, a 6 megapixel sensor, a swing-and-tilt camcorder-like LCD screen, and a 640×480, 30fps movie mode with CD quality stereo sound. It runs on four AA batteries, so I bought eight 2700mAh rechargables to handle the load, as well as a 2 GB SD card. The Powershot S3 was recently superseded by the Powershot S5 (which is ridiculously overpriced), and that resulted in prices on the S3 going through the floor. It seemed like a great time to pick one up.
Now I just need to get my butt out of the house and find some interesting stuff to take pictures of!
Apple and I went out this evening with the intention of dropping by a somewhat scenic location and grabbing some pics of the GTO, but it started to rain, so that put the kibosh on that. (We looked at Verizon phones at Circuit City instead.) We’re thinking of going to the beach pretty soon and taking some pictures down there; since we live in this scenic area and all, we might as well make use of it. Although personally, I would rather photograph interesting examples of urban decay than the same old cliched beach and sunset pictures, but that’s the problem with Naples…if anyone ever spots any decay, they sweep it under the rug within five minutes.
I know I haven’t posted much lately; I’ve got some things to say, but have been too busy working on a story lately. Yes, that one. It’s really getting good now.
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The time has come (once again) to move my myriad of websites to a new web host! I’ve had numerous issues with my current host(s) — most notably, emails that show up late or not at all — and ever since Oddball Update was moved to a new server, I’ve had more random issues than I can count. They’re not constant, but they crop up at the most annoying times. So I’m going to try something new.
I’ll also be retiring the current photo gallery in lieu of a Flickr Pro account. Maintaining the gallery here on the server was becoming too much work, what with so many files in it — plus it still randomly crashes for no apparent reason. And of course, with all of my photos on Flickr, I won’t have to move hundreds of megabytes of photos every time I switch web hosts. Yay for easy portability.
When I first got a Flickr account, Flickr was new and I was afraid if I put all of my photos on it, it might not be there tomorrow. Well, yeah…I’d say by now we can be pretty sure Flickr isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, as it seems to be more popular than ever — the YouTube of photo sharing, really. And by paying for a Pro account (at a mere $15 annually), I’ll be contributing to their continued existence anyway.
This might strike you as strange timing for this undertaking, what with my being so busy at work and all. Trust me…this is my outlet. If my job throws up a barricade to progress at every turn, at least with my own website, I can feel like I’m accomplishing something.
Things might be weird with my site and/or my email for the next couple of days. If so, deal with it.
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As some of you may know, I have a deep fascination with abandoned hospitals, particularly mental institutions. Recently, the cause of that fascination has started becoming clearer to me. I believe we all feel some strange compulsion to experience the things that frighten us most, but beyond that, there’s something strangely artistic — and poetic — about a place that has fallen to ruin, occupied only by ghostly memories of those who once dwelled there. What draws me to these places is the allure of feeling like the last person left alive, as if you went forward in time and then looked back upon the place where you were standing just moments ago, only to see it withered by centuries of neglect and decay.
In particular, the spectre of a place like a hospital, that once served as a place where the ill and infirm were cared for, is even more gripping when viewed after many years of disuse. What fascinates me the most about these places is how little was taken from them when they stopped serving their function. Be it not for the various graffiti artists and scavengers who take their toll on these once great structures, you could walk into an abandoned hospital and see almost everything exactly as it was on the day it stopped operating. Menus in the cafeteria, patient records in the filing cabinets, memos on the bulletin boards…it’s as if one day no one showed up for work, and they never returned.
There are numerous websites out there that showcase photography of “urban ruins,” but I recently discovered what has become my favorite: www.opacity.us. These are the most artistic shots of urban decay that I have ever seen, but beyond that, what’s really cool about the site are the comments on every photo. Why? Because every once in a while, the unthinkable happens — someone who once worked, lived, or visited the location in the photo will leave a comment saying, “I know this room. I’ve been in here before.” And to me, that’s just all kinds of freaky.
One of the most haunting parts about photos like this are the strange rooms, objects and situations that make you say, “What the hell was this, and what was it used for?” as fingers of dread crawl up your spine. Through the comments section on Opacity.us, sometimes you’re lucky enough to receive answers to those disturbing questions. Unfortunately, no one was able to offer an explanation for the hospital room whose walls, doors and tiles were all painted black. That just disturbs the ever-loving Christ out of me.
Go check out Opacity — if you’re like me, you may be compelled to stare at the screen for hours on end, and lose all track of time…
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Apple and I conducted a fun picture-taking session this evening after dinner, and the result is a new gallery of GTO photos highlighting the new window tint I just had installed. It was a beautiful evening for capturing some images, and most of them came out really nicely. We shot some in-car video too, but it’ll need heavy editing and so I haven’t posted it yet, although I plan to once I put together a nice mixdown.
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It was a terrific weekend. Saturday I spent most of the day working, but on Sunday I got to spend some quality time both with my car and with Apple. For the first part of the day, while Apple was at work, I got the car out and applied the vinyl decals I’d ordered. I now have a “6.0 LITRE” emblem on each hood scoop, and the embossed “GTO” in the rear fascia has been filled with a matching silver inlay. The complete package looks awesome and I’m extremely happy with the results. Even better, since the site I bought them from did not have any photos of the rear bumper decal, I sent them some — so they’re refunding my money in thanks and putting the pics of my car on their site’s product page.
After applying the decals (which went smoothly, even after I thought I had ruined the “G” in “GTO”), I took the car out for a drive, ostensibly to get some gas. Then I kept going, around and around the block. Radio blasting, windows down. At one point I turned out of a plaza mall and found the road both coming and going was completely empty, so I romped on it… whoooaaaa. Loads of fun. I also find that I am mostly cruising around in fourth gear where in my WS6 I would have been using fifth a lot more often. The car’s powerband and gearing no doubt contribute, but maybe it’s also because at cruising velocity you can barely hear the motor!
After dinner, Apple and I went over to the office building where I used to work and took some night pictures on the roof of the parking deck. They turned out awesome. Following that we caught the final showing of Memoirs of a Geisha over at the cinema. Good movie, I thought. The soundtrack was, of course, quite ethnic and very well done…I was surprised to learn it was John Williams’ work. He just won a Golden Globe for it, and rightly so in my opinion.
Today I drove up to the post office to drop off a letter. Normally I would ride my bike, but the GTO calls to me…constantly. It begs to be driven, even though I have nowhere of purpose to go. I never thought I would actually miss the daily commute to work. 
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I’m coming to you from the Boardwalk Resort at Disney World this evening, where we’ll be staying the night after an eventful and exciting day. The GTO is officially in my possession now, the Sport Appearance Package is installed and damn does it look amazing. The dealership did a great job installing all of the parts, proving to me once again that I made a good choice in selecting their store for my purchase. The GTO’s appearance is near-totally altered by the package, and it looks a lot more aggressive and intimidating. In a word, beautiful.
Of course, I have lots of new pictures for you. Many of them are low-light photos taken this evening with the help of my tripod, and they came out wonderfully. Check them all out right here. Friends and family members here at Oddball can also see some photos from the Disney resort that we took tonight, just for fun.
Much to my surprise, the dealership did not want to keep any of the factory original parts they took off my car to install the sport kit. I figure this is because the dealership is relocating soon and doesn’t want any extra spare parts hanging around. Whatever the reason, I managed to stuff the spoiler, mufflers and grille inserts into the car. The rest I am probably going to have shipped; my salesman is going to call me back with information about that. I can get some good money by selling these parts online.
Tomorrow we’ll pick up breakfast at the bakery on the boardwalk, and head for home around 11:00 or noon. I’m still thinking that I’ll take the back roads (US 27) through Sebring, FL, but the traffic there on our trip up today was horrendous, mostly big trucks and a lot of construction zones. Still, the driving conditions are perfect for my goat’s break-in period, so I’m on the fence about it. I’ll decide in the morning.
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While I already announced the opening of the Oddball Update Photo Gallery, I wanted to take a moment to announce today that I’ve already re-done it. Yeah…I decided that the Flickr service wasn’t for me. I always had an aversion to off-site storage of photography (I like to keep everything in-house on my own server and not rely on anyone else’s hardware), and on top of that, I quickly ran into the limits of my Flickr free account. While $25 a year isn’t much, there’s no point in paying it if I can roll my own solution that works just as well — for free.
So, I am now using Gallery2, combined with the WPG2 plugin for Wordpress that lets you integrate your gallery seamlessly with your weblog. It looks great, and provides near-limitless potential for hosting all kinds of pictures (my web hosting account now gives me access to 11 GB of storage).
The only caveat is that the WPG2 plugin isn’t 100% compatible with Wordpress 2.0 yet, so as such, while you are browsing the gallery, you might run across certain links or functions that, when clicked on, give you only a blank screen. If that happens, just hit your back button. This problem ought to be corrected in the next version of WPG2, which I’ll be installing as soon as it’s available. For now, simply browsing around and looking at pictures works fine. So enjoy! I’m already adding past photos from our collection, so keep checking back.
Comments (0)I’ve added a few more of Friday’s GTO pictures to the photo gallery; they’re not the best shots but they do show some additional things!
Chief Oddball: Ironically I was just reading that story a couple of days ago. ^__^ Then after he steals the cake, he can put it back in the fridge...
Pooch: Captain Harvie…! I bet he sneaks into Ensign Sansanee’s quarters each night and steals her chocolate cake. And glad you liked... Chief Oddball: Lexus? Nah, that’s for hosers. Grand Marquis all the way. Or perhaps a nice Town Car. I could be like that guy here in our... Pooch: Now that you are “old,” I have a few suggestions for you: 1. Plaid hats. Rock the fogeystyle. 2. Trade in the GTO for a... Chief Oddball: Thank you both for the wonderful comments. Here’s to changing attitudes, turning things around and knowing when to say...
Apple: Looking forward to celebrate with you for the next decades to come! You know I am always here and will be here to grow old with you. Happy...
MichiganMom: I’m glad to hear your birthday got you started on a good path, and I like your new “resolutions.” It’s sad to... MichiganMom: But yes, looking very forward to Shutter Island. I just hope I don’t get terminally frightened.
Oddball Update embodies the random thoughts of a web designer, video gamer, muscle car fanatic and all-around odd chap.
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