Wine Glass with Red & Green Swirl 1

Originally uploaded by msroest.

This picture (which I think is my favorite of the set) and the rest posted here are the results of The Smashening V01. Jeff,Wes, Mika, Ryan, Kyle and I spent Friday evening documenting our quest to break things in the coolest ways possible. I’ve posted what I felt were the best of the shots that I captured. I still have to go through the shots from everyone else to see how they came out. Overall I think everyone had a blast.

To prepare for The Smashening V02 I’m going to try to find some pellets that fit my pellet gun (since I bought the wrong size for last night, so we were limited to the sling shot for projectile breakage). Also I think I’m going to need to pickup some more wine glasses and my own set of liquid food coloring, since the colored water breaks are my favorites.

Categories: Friends, Photography
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Yellow Balloon Corn Starch

Originally uploaded by msroest.

This is my entry for this week’s Photo Friday. This was taken using a acustic flash trigger from HiViz. It’s a standard party balloon that had a small bit of cornstarch added to it to create the effect.

Categories: Photo Friday, Photography
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Cool Purple Fish 2

Originally uploaded by msroest.

Today Ryan and I took a road trip down to Galveston, the drive was fine. I think once in everyone’s life they need to come to a big US city and see the freeway layouts cause they’re amazing.

When we got to Galveston we headed over to Moody Gardens where I took the picture in the post and these others actually I took a bunch more then the ones I posted but these were the ones that were decent. The other 120 or so weren’t nearly as good, the joy of my new digital camera I can take 150 shots and not be worried about it. The place was pretty cool, the aquarium was very cool and the rainforest was also very neat. We also saw the Sharks 3D IMAX, it was decent. The 3D was quite lame but IMAX is always cool so since it was included in the entry we paid for the rest of the gardens it was good.

Rest of the night is probably going to just be dinner then some vegging in the hotel. We don’t really have anything planned for tomorrow, hopefully I can find something else cool to take pictures of.

Categories: Photography
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So the last couple days in Houston have been really good.

Tuesday was another scorcher of a day (29 degrees, 70% humidity), but we made it through in the relative comfort of the customer office. The work was ok, figure out a couple problems (and probably created a few more in the process). We went to this great burger place relatively close to the office, and had a really good Bleu Cheeseburger. It’s a good idea that I’m going to have to try making it when I get home. Any time you combine Bleu Cheese, Bacon, Beef, and Onion Rings all packed up in a burger how can it be bad.

Wednesday the weather finally cooled off to the balmy mid teens which is much more my style of weather. The day at work went super well, I gave the customers a demo/training session on a piece of software I built from scratch. It makes it pretty gratifiying when you can hear directly from the people you built something for that they’re happy (at least mostly happy) with something that was yours. For dinner me and Ryan went to Pappa Deaux, it’s a really good seafood place. I had a super good bowl of Crawfish Bisque to start and Crab Cakes for an entree, which I think is another thing that I’m going to have to make one day when I’m back at home. Probably won’t be quite as good as the ones here, given that Houston is only about a hour or so from the coast making fresh seafood a given. At home I’ll probably have to deal with frozen or canned crab, which I’m sure they will still be good .

Today was another nice mild day which I’m hoping keeps up for the weekend, work day again was pretty decent. Gave another demo/training to the users, that went over pretty well I think. This time it wasn’t on something I built from scratch but something that I spent a bunch of making improvements too. So it was almost as good as yesterday’s presentation, also spent sometime helping the users which is also pretty interesting. Cause they always come up with different things that you don’t see every day and it’s always a mental challenge. Dinner tonight was a quick stop at the fast foodish mexican place for some braised beef soft tacos with guac, that were really tasty.

Tomorrow is Friday which will be nice cause it’s almost the weekend and time for my trip down to the rainforest park, to spend a few hours taking way too many pictures I’m sure. Hopefully I don’t bore Ryan completely with the amout of time I’m going to spend using the camera but if I do it’s too bad since I’ve got the car keys .

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The first day of Houston trip November 2005 is now over, it went pretty good so I’m thinking this trip will be ok. The trip down here was a whole lot of suckage, our flight left Calgary an hour and a half late. We got to Houston late enough that the company I had reserved a car with had already closed. We spent the next 25 minutes going from rental company to rental company to find one that had a car available (that wasn’t 100 bucks a day). After those two disasters the rest of the night went pretty smoothly, got to the hotel around 1:30am….by the time I got all checked in and unpacked I went to sleep around 2am. Which made the alarm going off at 6:45 this morning really early.

That’s pretty much all that went on, I’m going to try to get a bunch of sleep tonight. So I’m not completely dead tomorrow.

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Birthday Girl

Originally uploaded by msroest.

I took the camera along to Kensington Pub last night for Erika’s Birthday festivities. It was a good time, mostly just sitting around chatting with friends. And watching the Flames eak out a victory over Colorado. After a 4-0 first period start, they collapsed a little in the second period, but they did manage to win expanding the streak to 6 games. I had a good time, I think most other people did as well. All of the Pictures.

Categories: Friends, Photography
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Italian Lion

Originally uploaded by msroest.

worn

Categories: Photo Friday
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So this weekend which on Wednesday I was planning to go out picture taking with Wes has now been modified in getting prepared for going to Houston. But on the plus side I’m going to try to get to Moody Gardens and take a whole bunch of pictures. The rainforest area seems like it would create an bunch of options for some amazing pictures. If I end up finding something cool I’ll post it during the week while I’m done there. Tomorrow is Erika’s Calgary birthday get together @ Kensington Pub which should be a whole bunch of fun.

BTW If anyone has a guarenteed cold remedy could you let me know what it is? I hate flying when I’m sick.

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Shaky Night

Originally uploaded by msroest.

I just uploaded a bunch more of my car light trails pictures to flickr: Night Shots. I took these on the way to the November CPS meeting (yes that was a week ago and I’m just now getting around to posting the pictures). The meeting was really good, the speaker was Joey Podlubny who talked about his book 83 Cents about the denizens of calgary’s streets. His presentation was the best I’ve seen so far at the CPS meetings, and I’m planning to go pickup his book from the Seed the next time I’m downtown if anyone wants to take a look.

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Since getting my new camera, I’ve had a couple people ask me to do portaits for them for christmas. I’ve gotten a couple books from the library that I’ve started reading and I’ve come to the conclusion that doing potraits is more complicated then landscapes.

In the quick perusal I’ve done so far in the books I’m thinking that to do potraits properly (especially indoors) that I’m going to need to spend some money on new equipment. At the very least a decent supplemental flash, and some kind of diffuser.

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