Drive-By Blogging

I have no business blogging this week. But I'm really good at avoidance and denial, and I promised Melissa (who is suddenly blogless? what???), so here goes:

I got a new toy today!


After longing for one since Nin posted about it, then getting to play with my uncle's, I finally gave in and dropped a chunk of my savings from summers at camp on a D-Lux 4. Love. The very first picture:


I could be lamer cooler, but it would be hard. I got up early, booked it to UPS, and drove straight to the office, where I charged the battery then took a pic as soon as I could!

More fun shots from today:

Waiting for seminar to start. (Hi Zach!)


My prof, making faces at my friend who was taking the pictures.


Shan and I went for a little walk around campus (sometimes you just need to get out of the building!) and I made her model for me.


This picture sums up one of the biggest reasons I bought the camera: in a dimly-lit restaurant (yeah Knit Night!), after the sun had set, I got a great picture without using the flash. Love.

Now, back to work! =)

Randomness

You've probably seen it already on other blogs, but if not, go check out Wordle.net. You input some text, a blog/RSS feed, or your del.icio.us address, and it spits out a cool word map, for which you can change the font, color, orienation of the words, etc. The more frequently the word appears in the text, the larger it is on the map. Some examples!

This blog:



My del.icio.us tags:


And that, my friends, sums up a large reason why I haven't been blogging much lately. Astronomy. Research. Software. Technology. It's an exciting life I live!

In other news, my Granddad turned 91 (!!!) last weekend. Besides getting to see him and the rest of my Mom's side of the family, the most exciting part was playing with my Uncle T's new camera:



Oh that's right, it's a Leica D-Lux 4. And yes, it's even cooler than it sounds. Shout-out to Nin who posted about it when it was announced, so I knew exactly how amazing (and expensive, ouch) it was and could take advantage of a lot of the fun features. =)