Still love my camera

I played around with it some more. I love trying to compose a good shot. But what I want to be able to do one day is have a shot that needs very little photo-editing. Here’s today’s shots, mostly of the flowers on my porch and back :)

My friendly owl

This guy I fell in love with at the garden shop, and just had to have him. I hope to pick up his friends, soon. his guy again, in its flower pot. I kept he owl blurry and saturated the colors so you get this cool, chilly image. It kinda reminds me almost, but not quite, of an old photo you might find in a grandparents photo album. I like this one, but it’s not quite my favorite.

Now this guy I took my owl to the cool side. I love the blue tones and how it says summer and cold all at the same time. It’s like visual ice cream on a hot day. The flower should be frozen and covered in ice, the green leaves cold.

Visual Ice Cream

And finally, the last one, the opposite of ‘cool’ and it reminds me of an unbearably hot day. It reminds me of August, the longest, hottest month of the year. Just looking at it makes me want a long sip of some cold iced tea.

August Owl

I took this photo on a wet, cold day in June, but in August, if I took the picture, it would look pretty much like this even without the touch-ups.

I wish I knew where my happy copy of photoshop was, I could spend hours… I wouldn’t call these my best, but not so bad for having been away from it for a while. The biggest problem I think is how to use the blurry owl effectively in the shot.

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admin, June 12th 2010 | Posted in Digital Photos

Cords and E-Paper

We have wireless internet. Wireless keyboards. Wireless mice. Wireless everything. But yet, still, we are connected by cords. The cord from my Mac to the surge protector. The ones from Husbear’s laptops (yes, plural) to his mice to the surge protectors. The ones from the television to the electric outlet. The game consoles to the surge protectors and to the monitors. The speaker wires. .

Our monitors aren’t wireless.

Our televisions aren’t.

Game consoles.

Lights.

If you’ve ever seen the show Caprica, specifically, in the pilot episode, part two, the scene where she’s on the bus e-mailing her mother about how she’s going to run away to another planet and just wanted to say hey, mom, love you but I’m bailing, that scene. You’ll have seen her little piece of e-paper. You’ll, if you’re like me, have instantly recognized it as the ultimate piece of tech for the organizationally challenged and tech-lazy. That one piece of electronic paper did everything. Everything.

It allowed her, with the flick of a finger across a blank page, to access e-mail.

It also allowed her to access the secret password to the virtual rave that existed in some virtual land — she even got to take the e-paper with her.

And if it can allow her access to a virtual rave, just think what it could do practically: codes to pre-heat the oven on the way home from work. Send a grocery list to the local modern grocery store where your weekly groceries will be bagged and ready for pick-up through a drive through. It could feed your cat.

The real point is, I want that tech. I want e-paper. (yes, there is a site dedicated to e-paper. I am already a fan.)

I want to carry around a piece of paper (that, presumably, I could crumple up and toss into my pocket or purse and, presumably, never lose) that will allow me to access everything I could possibly need. It’d be like, like… like an i-pad, only thinner and crumppable.

I understand the tech is fairly far away, but how cool would a crumpable, foldable i-Pad be?

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admin, June 8th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Tech and Family

Lets talk about….

Work-Family balance.

For those of us returning to work and trying to find that balance, here’s what I learned:

You still think you’re a stay at home mom — I’ve been working for a year and a half and it still feels like I just started working again. Now I know I’m a bit of a slow-adjuster, but I think this hits everyone. I just started now splitting up the things I did while home.  I still spend too much time trying to prepare for the kids day, even though they are in summer camp and only need shorts, swimsuits and sun screen. I still think when I wake up, that I have to do the morning chores and prepare snacks. I live with the fear that one day I’ll forget to show up to work.

You absolutely must split the mommy work up: Why have I been doing everyone’s laundry for six months into my new work life? Why did I try to handle all the kids homework? Why am I vaccuuming? Where’s the rest of the family? It’s a life-saver to sit down and split up the chores. I found I continued handling things because it never occurred to me to not — until one chore-laden Saturday when I realized another adult-member of the household, often referred to as “Daddy,” had been drinking coffee and watching bad Sci-fi all day.

You won’t always be this tired: It took me a year (remember, slow-adjuster) before I suddenly found a balance that left me with some ‘me’ time.  This only applies if you’re children are a bit older. If you have children under 3 or two children under 5, there is no such thing. You’re going to be exhausted and perpetually tired until Full-Day Kindergarten. It’s just how it is.  I have yet to encounter a working mom who managed this balance so well she actually had ‘extra’ time.

All your money goes to supporting your having a job: It’s sad, but true. If you have more than one child, you’ll spend so much in childcare, rotating between fast-food drive-thrus and pizza and chinese deliveries, a new wardrobe not consisting of Yoga Pants and ‘distressed’ jeans, and real lunches out, that until the children only need after-school care and you learn to love eating leftovers for lunch, you’ll not really see a net-gain. One hint: Unless you’re really good and cook dinner every night, accept that you’re not that good and stock your house with easy-quick meals.

There’s tons more, but that’s the gist of it. I still don’t feel I fully have it down, but there’s a lot to having a career and family while trying to find where your sanity went.

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admin, June 1st 2010 | Posted in Musings of the Mom

Saturday Morning Announcements

One of my favorite things to do is make announcements to my family. Grand announcements of my plans, intentions, and future, as well as their futures. Words that will be carried down to their children, and their children’s children. My announcements are that heavy.

Today’s announcement was met with disbelief. Blank stares. Blinking eyes. Faces waiting for me to smile and carry on as normal. Then, I said, “No. I mean it.”

“What will we do? What will we eat? I’m so hungry!”

“There is food in this house. You can find something to make.”

Chick Filet. Done.

Chipolte. Not on Saturdays.

Five Guys and Fries. Not today.

Subway. Deli Zone. Carls. Noodles. Target PBJs. Ix Nay.

My announcement was final.

I am no longer responsible for providing out-of-home lunches on Saturdays. Or Sundays, for that matter.

Children, meet the Peanut Butter and Jelly in your own house.

Husband, meet leftovers.

That will be all.

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admin, May 29th 2010 | Posted in Musings of the Mom

I’ll take my television streaming, please

We made a decision in our household, a decision long coming, hard made, but worth every blissed commercial free moment.

Our nights had become an endless pattern of coming home, throwing something edible at the children and gathering around television shows that weren’t very interesting. We’d sit on the couch with our laptops, surfing, chatting and facebooking throughout a parade of commercials until the children’s bedtime — at which point we’d come back downstairs to watch all the shows we didn’t care about.

So we cut the cable. When America went to digital we handed in our cable boxes, said we’d like to live cable and commercial free. What have we gained?

My children don’t have access to Disney, Nickolodean and Cartoon Network, or any other channel that spends millions in advertising dollars to make kids want their products. We all spend less time on the couch and more time actually doing things. Like writing blogs. Gardening. Reading books. Eating actual meals at an actual table. things like that.

Of course, we are a modern family, and can’t actually live without television. But now it’s controlled television. We pick and choose our shows through a mix of Hulu, Netflix, I-tune,s and a home-based media server. Yep, that’s right. The Tech Daddy created us a media server where all our movies live. Since many DVDs now come with a digital copy for download, it’s becoming even easier to create a home-based library. Also, with the X-Box, PS3 and Wii consoles all compatible with Netflix, our television needs are covered, minus commercials. Best of all? We’re free from the trap of television, the getting sucked into whatever show is next because we’re inherently lazy.

I love technology. Especially when it frees me from commercials and the need to program my viewing schedule. Especially when it frees the children from being held captive to the television (it’s bad enough they have laptops at six).


4 Comments

admin, May 29th 2010 | Posted in Tech and Family

Just some Hairdress/Gal gab

A trip to the hairdressers for women is a mini-retreat. No husbands, children, job or other concerns can interfere. It’s just you and the hairdresser and some gal gab. You know, girl-talk. Gal gab isn’t often associated with tech-talk, game talk, sci-fi-flick talk or well, demon dogs. Except sometimes, that’s where it goes. 

 So it wasn’t surprising to me that while I was getting my hair shampooed and hands treated with nice smelling oils, our talk eventually went past children and significant others  to games.  I was thrilled after mentioning my weekend plans involved playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, that my hairdresser had just spent the past four days playing the game. I wanted some first-hand opinions on the game. We discussed  our thoughts on how younger children shouldn’t be allowed to watch some of the game and we covered how some players seem to be immature to play and should be banned (because it’s not fun playing with them). Quickly, though we reverted back to game play, our personal playing styles, and which console we preferred. She’s not big on PC games and addicted to Call of Duty. I can’t wait to play Arkham, but tend toward PC games.

Naturally, of course, this led to zombies in Call of Duty and the demon dogs which led to zombies in other games, our favorite zombie movies and how zombies can’t really be said to be demonic. We’re of the ‘zombies are more a viral affliction vs. a demonic affliction’ school. But hey, everyone has an opinion on zombies.

It’s nice to live in a world where now, a gal can get her hair cut, cut, colored and styled while discussing zombies, Batman and demon dogs as well as you know, other girl talk.


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admin, October 4th 2009 | Posted in Games

EA – doing their best to prove the game industry is still 15, or run by Madmen ad execs.

Today, 40 percent of gamers are women. Today, the game industry is all about reaching out to a growing population of players – mainly, women. So you’d think that the corporate hoo-ha’s and the big wigs and the people that work in marketing and PR especially, would know better than to pull a stunt that screams “YES, the game industry is a 15 year old pimply adolescent horny school boy who doesn’t want to grow up.” More specifically, I’ll link you to one of my favorite game commentators and insider: http://brokentoys.org/. Where I found this link about EA’s brilliant contest.

Yep. Let’s make a contest that suggests you harass women that don’t even work for your company, and then, when it’s all said and done, pretend everyone just misunderstood you. See what I mean about being a 15 year old boy?

It probably would have worked ten years ago, when the industry wasn’t drawing women in. It would have worked ten years ago, maybe, before the industry became slightly more mainstream. But, today?  

What moron would think that taking a tongue in cheek approach to sexual harassment would be good business, and not think about the bad PR? How can EA stand up and say they tolerate diversity and tolerance, gender equality in the work place, and that they are reaching and thinking about the future of the game industry, when their marketing and public relations tactics scream just the opposite? And while I’m sure it was totally innocent in intent, it’s the perception that matters. By the way, this is EA’s second foo-bah with marketing and advertising, remember the fake religious protest? 

And EA’s public apology? Nothing more than ‘oh, dear, you all misunderstood us, we didn’t actually mean to give off the perceptions that we did, no, we apologize for your misunderstanding our tactless, tasteless and pimply-faced contest’ or officially: We understand there’s a lot of debate right now around our “Sin to Win” promotion at Comic-Con and wanted to clarify a few things. (mainly, that we forgot all the Public Relations lessons we ever learned). We created this promotion as part of our marketing efforts around the circle of Lust (one of the nine sins/circles of Hell). (And our marketers are 15 year old pimply boys who can’t fathom why anyone would be upset at a call to harass women). Each month we will be focusing on a new Circle of Hell. This month is Lust. Costumed reps are a tradition at Comic-Con. In the spirit of both the Circle of Lust and Comic-Con, we are encouraging attendees to Tweet photos of themselves with any of the costumed reps at Comic-Con here,(we’re going to pretend we don’t know the connotations of a phrase such as ‘commit an act of lust’ or ‘a SINful night’ with a booth babe.), or  find us on Facebook or via e-mail. “Commit acts of lust” is simply a tongue-in-cheek way to say take pictures with costumed reps.  Commit acts of lust is also a tongue-in-cheek way of saying ‘maybe spank an ass’ or ‘grab a boobie’ Also, a “Night of Lust” means only that the winner will receive a chaperoned VIP night on the town with the Dante’s Inferno reps, all expenses paid, as well as other prizes.(How could you misinterpret that with ‘night of sin’ We apologize for any confusion and offense that resulted from our choice of wording (honestly, we were hoping no one would actually care or fuss or point out how, from a PR and marketing standpoint, we should have known better) , and want to assure you that we take your concerns and sentiments seriously.(well, not really, but we have to say that to cover our ass, mainly we’re mad we have to explain ourselves.)  We’ll continue to follow your comments and please let us know if you have any other thoughts or concerns. Keep watching as the event unfolds and we hope you’ll agree that it was all done in the spirit of the good natured fun of Comic-Con. (We promised our marketing and PR staff we wouldn’t fire them, please please, they  do such wonders for us).

Well, at some point, one would hope that EA’s marketers and PR folks are being blasted for allowing this to come up. Hopefully they are embarrassed as hell, and hopefully, some people with a semblance of understanding between cheap publicity at any cost and true marketing campaigns, will either be listened to or hired. But then again, maybe this is what we should expect from EA, the Peter Pan of the Game Industry.

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admin, July 28th 2009 | Posted in Games, Tech and Family

People to computer ratio

It makes sense to start off a site that writes about tech integrated in the family by discussing person to computer ratio.

In a tech family, the ratio of computers to people is rarely 1:1. I believe that 1:1 is a fair computer-to-person ratio, however, I’ve heard that in some families, the ratio can be 1:2, or, unbelievably, 1:3. 

In our house, it is 9:5. All 8 are used on a regular basis — and no, we’re not talking 8 top of the line computers — we’re talking computers varying in age from a few months to more than 3 years. One I favor for writing, work and general usage. One I use for games and projects. My spouse uses two for gaming, one for work and projects, and a netbook for the hell of it. Even I think this may be a bit high, but my rule for the computer-building geek in my life, is that if we don’t use it, we sell it.

Our kids are on a 1:1 ratio so far, and are as tech savvy as they should be for their age. Our five-year-olds know the log-ins and passwords to their computers (security first) and have their ‘favorites’ saved. One of them is the ‘tech help’ kid at the local pre-school when the other kids can’t figure out how to get a program to work. Our tween is all about the club penguin. She has a laptop, and is often grounded from it. When she’s not grounded from it, she knows her computer is not ‘private’ and what she views must be approved.

We have a few core beliefs when it comes to computers:  Your computer is your computer, but your password is ours, and your viewing content monitored. We can turn off the television. We can take your computer away. We know what our kids are doing online because we’re online. Our tween doesn’t have any social sites set up yet. She’s too young for that. But you can bet when she does, we’ll be the one helping her set it up.

It’s life in a tech family.

1 Comment

admin, July 18th 2009 | Posted in Tech and Family

A word about games and me — MMOs in particular

I made games once. I I don’t make games now, so lets get that right out. I love studying and watching the game industry. Yes, the business of games interests me.

 

Before games, I worked in public relations, specifically media and community. Then I worked on DAoC for four years as a developer. It was fun, it was great, it got old.

 

And no, the majority of you have never heard of me. Just as you’ve never heard of many of the other developers working on games. Oh maybe I talked to you on a board somewhere under a different name, maybe. I was too busy making games, you see, to really pay attention to the forums. If you played the game, you knew me in my work… the story, the quests, the content… I was a large part of that the first four years. But most players didn’t know me.

 

It was up to the community managers and personalities to handle the population. I liked it better when it was the community managers. Personalities tended to say things that caused trouble. Community managers could often cause us trouble, but they had good intentions. I’d often see mine running up and down the halls chasing after elusive  proudcers/execs. She tried to talk to everyone, to figure out what was going on and what was going in, but at the end of the day, buried in story and quests and context and trying to figure out how to fix things and make things fun and meet deadlines, I mostly was buried in ‘stuff’ and she was mostly being chased by the players while chasing down the producers and execs. Mostly I hadn’t a clue what fire she was stamping out unless it was mine, and that was rare. Sometimes I’d ask. My PR training would kick in, I’d get fired up, and then I’d learn my epic quest was broke and back to work it was. The same was true of the programmers and artists and everyone else in development.

 

That is games. Well, was four years ago. And for the most part, today, but the difference today is that more games are paying attention to community management. Mind you, I’m sure it still involves the developers buried in development with various community managers running around, but I like to think that community management is becoming more of a profession in games rather than a side note, and that simple, basic public relations practices are slowly being integrated into the fold.

 

Community can be fun. It can be dangerous. I think my friend is brave. I think community is interesting. This particular section of Digifuss is dedicated to random thoughts on public relations in community mangement and the MMORPG industry.

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admin, July 18th 2009 | Posted in Games

Welcome to Digifuss

Such a fussy world.

Social media is isolating our children.

Games are making our children violent.

Adults can’t create healthy relationships because they’re falling in love on MMORPGs.

We’re too connected as a society.

Hogwash, I say. Foul, I cry. Bullshit, I insist.

We’re a fussy nation, we’ve always been fussy. And now we’re just making a big fuss about the change, the new things that are in our lives and finding fault with them, as we always have.

Cars were silly, horses better.

Trains the way to go, freeways unheard of. (Don’t we all wish we stuck to trains?)

We can live happily with technology, we can raise happy, healthy children who play games and are on the social media sites, we can develop healthy relationships in and out of games. 

It just requires some good ole fashioned commonsense, being a bit fussy about how we let tech into our lives, and maybe playing some games with the kids ourselves.

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admin, July 4th 2009 | Posted in Welcome
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