You Just Thought That I Was Finished

I'm still stuck on the whole tilt-shift photography thing. Here are more fascinating examples at Smashingmagazine.com.

Something Amazing Has Happened

Maybe you should sit down for this big news...

Are you ready?

Yesterday, we finished the magazines at ...

Are you really really ready?

... drumroll ...

7:45 p.m.!!!

And you have to know something in order to understand why this is important: In the year and a half I've worked for the magazine, there has only been ONE other month that we have finished anywhere close to that time on a Friday evening. For Print, we always always always (always) end up working from 9 a.m. Friday morning until sometime into the wee hours of Saturday morning, so maybe now you can understand why I consider this to have been a miracle.

A Big Post on Small Things

I was browsing How About Orange today to catch up on the many posts I've missed this month, and I came across something incredibly awesome and very fun that Jessica actually posted on my birthday: a link to the website Tiltshiftmaker.com.

If you upload a photo to the site, it will manipulate the image into a "tilt shift miniature-style" photograph for you. Here, I'll show you what I mean. Since Europe is so excellent for providing shutterbugs with photographs containing lots and lots of details, let's have some fun with Sway's travel photography, shall we?

Here is a photo I took of St. Peter's Cemetery while I was in Salzburg last fall:

And here is that same photo, run through the tilt shift program:

Totally wicked cool, right? Here is a photo I took in 2005 of the village of Wernigerode, Germany:And now the miniature version:

And here's Vatican City in Rome, which I also photographed in 2005:

And now a teeny tiny Vatican City:

I could do this all day! Go to the site and give it a try. Remember that photos with lots of detail tend to produce better results.

And also, for some extra fun, here is a "little" tilt-shift video, which I also originally saw on How About Orange. I love it so much that now I really, really want to make my own! I shall put that on my list of things to do...

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Live Long and Prosper

My top-three list of the geekiest things ever:

1. Star Trek
2. Clay Aiken
3. World of Warcraft

And yet... I saw the new Star Trek movie this weekend and immediately loved it.

No, you do not have to know anything about the series to enjoy the film. No, you don't have to be a science nerd, either. And no, you don't have to have a complete understanding of how time travel "works," although it may be somewhat helpful.

But yeah, you will fall in love with Zachary Quinto's Spock. Yes, Spock. There, I said it, all right?

The movie has a great balance of action, plot, humor and character-to-character relationships. My only criticism is that the villain was not very well fleshed-out, but then again, I hear it's not really characteristic of the series to provide the bad guys with fully developed motives and backstory, etc...

Anyway, my point is that you should give this one a try, even if your usual response to sci-fi flicks is "not so much." I think it will surprise you. And hey, this film even got rave reviews from The New York Times, which is saying something, since their film reviewers seem to never really like anything.

[Speaking of geeks... Take the test to find out just where you rank on a scale of 1 to Geek.]

Lens

On Monday, The New York Times launched "Lens," a large-format photo blog meant to showcase photojournalism projects that might otherwise never be seen in print by the public.

Read more about the launch of Lens at Photo District News, and visit the site itself here.

The Tortilla Conundrum

Cooking wouldn't be nearly as much fun to me if it weren't for all the delicious recipes Emily of Joyful Abode graciously posts online.

A phenomenon occurs in my household in which we will frequently find ourselves with a surplus of tortillas and yet no tortilla chips. Thanks to Joyful Abode, however, I now know how to remedy this situation.

If you have extra tortillas lying around, and would like to magically (well, almost magically) turn them into chips, try her very simple tortilla chips recipe for baking some in your oven! All you need are tortillas, some olive oil, maybe some lime juice and a few seasonings.

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, It's Back to Work I Go

I started freelancing at the beginning of this year. Fortunately, I'm not (currently) depending on it to account for all, or even a majority, of my income; I just decided it would be fun and education to try, so this year is the year I tested the water and finally got my feet wet in the freelancing pool.

As you can see from my totals at the left, this is not a huge moneymaker for me. Yet. But I'm trying. And I've been putting just enough pressure on myself to be productive, but not so much that it's become a pain in the neck. I'm having a good time with it and enjoying the fact that I can occasionally say, "Hey! I wrote that!"

My goal for each month has been to earn at least as much as the previous month, if not more. Through March I did pretty well at that, but last month my full-time job took up more time than usual. And that's OK. I have to remind myself that anything I make freelancing is pocket money.

All right, so I had one bad month. This month I'm going to try to get back to the grind and get closer to my goal.

It's That Time of Year Again

Today is my 25th birthday!

The Perfect Hat Will Cover Her Face

My job just kicked my fanny.

I just worked from 9 a.m. Friday morning straight through to 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning. Think about that for a minute.

Anyway, once again, the magazines will be on racks come Monday, and people had better like them.

My mind is still abnormally fuzzy after so many sleep-deprived hours. For a long stretch of time yesterday I didn't even have the strength to do anything but sleep or click buttons on the TV remote.

This explains why I watched one hockey game, the NASCAR Richmond Sweep, and all of the Kentucky Derby, including pre- and post-show. While it was fun to see all the horses and horse enthusiasts who were excited to be at Churchhill Downs, it was terribly sad to see Access Hollywood's Nancy O'Dell interviewing all the "celebrities" -- who don't even have names outside the industry -- walk down the Kentucky Derby "red carpet." Who are these people? And how is society better for having been made to watch a video of Paris Hilton searching for the "perfect Kentucky Derby hat"?