I had a pretty good night tonight. I was out front of the building with a few of the other people who live here, handing out candy to the trick or treaters. It was very cool, since we rarely all get together to do something, even though there are only about 15 people living in this building. I recently set up an Internet forum for us to communicate, and it’s working out really well. Almost everyone has signed up, and we’re able to organize stuff like our Hallowe’en effort tonight. Besides that, we had a good time just chatting and catching up on stuff. When I first moved in, I imagined that we would be a pretty close community, and now we’re able to build that by communicating with each other. Ahh… Internet… What would we do without you?

I guess there have been a lot of different random things happening lately, and I haven’t written anything about them. Quite honestly I haven’t been feeling all that well. I used to never get sick. I think I went 12 years without getting anything more than a sneeze. But recently I seem to be getting whatever cold or flu happens to be floating around. I need to figure out what I’m doing differently. For the last week or so I’ve had this cold that’s sapped my energy, yet there’s a lot of work to be done. It’s not a good combination. Anyway, I seem to be getting back onto my feet again. I am optimistic I’ll feel more normal this week.

Briefly:

• I participated in the Improv Jam at the Staircase last weekend. I was cast at the last minute, and the show turned out to be a lot of fun. It was great to be on stage again, especially since our weekly Munchausen shows in Toronto were cancelled.
• I had some pieces accepted into the art rental and sales area of the Art Gallery of Hamilton. They do jurying once a month I think, and they picked four of my photos in this latest round.
• I have started going to weekly rehearsals of Jackrabbit Slim. The first one was last Saturday. It’s fun to play with these guys again. It’s been a while.
• I used Google Earth to locate all of the places where I took all of my published travel photos. It brought back a lot of great memories just looking at the satellite imagery of those locations. I have an urge to travel again. Ok. I admit that I never lost that urge in the first place. Anyway, install Google Earth and then load up this link to have a little tour of the places I took pictures.
• I’m going to California again at some point in December. My uncle is flying me there as a treat to repay me for work I’ve done on his website. We’re going to go skiing in Mammoth. Dad is going to come too. It should be a fun family getaway.
• Although I really like the Raw Shooter Essentials works, the image quality is a bit disappointing. My photos use high saturation and high contrast, and RSE seems to introduce a lot of noise into this type of image. If you don’t process your images the same way I do, you will probably be fine, but I found it wasn’t worth the extra garbage noise, particularly in the blue areas. Hopefully the new Pro version works better, but I haven’t had a chance to try it yet.
• You might notice you have to type in the letters in the “security graphic” thing to make a comment on this blog now. Sorry about that. It’s case sensitive (Diny). I was getting a ridiculous number of spam comments on this blog about online gambling and stuff. The new security graphic thing has stopped it cold. Security Graphic: 1, Spam: 0.