Camera Critter 2/28

A camera critter of a new sort...meet Brian...my virtual puppy.







I know, I'm a dork, but, I also know you are jealous and are now going to check it out for yourself!

Winner - Scrabble Pendant

The winner is:

(Drum roll please....)

Abby said...

Following

Congrats Abby, I will contact you shortly. If I do not get a reply from the winner within 48 hours, I will draw again.


Thanks everyone!


~M

Create your own Polaroids!

Do you remember the old Polaroid pictures? The ones where you would gather around and wait for the picture to show up...or maybe you would wave it in the air a little bit, just knowing that would make the picture show up faster? Since the dawn of digital cameras, do you ever miss the wait for the picture? Maybe you have kids who have never experienced the buildup of excitement as you start to see the beginnings of someones face on that film...

Well, now you can experience it all over again...on your computer! With a quick installation of a program called Poladroid, you can watch your Polaroid pictures developing on your computer monitor in no time! After you have downloaded it, just open up the program, drag & drop your picture onto the camera, wait for the picture to "snap" and then watch it develop before your eyes!

Right click on the picture at anytime and select "I want a sample now!" and it will save the picture in it's current state to your "My Pictures" folder.

Here's the fun I had with the picture above waiting for it to "develop".

(By the way Happy 80th Grandpa!!)

I wanna learn...

There are so many things I have decided I want to learn how to do, most of which involve the computer somehow, and none of which involve any of the classes I will be taking in the near future. I want to learn how to restore old pictures. My uncle is a PhotoShop whiz when it comes to this and he said he would show me sometime, but that time has not come yet. My husband would like me to learn this too so I can start restoring all of the family pictures he has gathered since starting his family tree stuff. I even have the pen tool so that I can do more precise edits.

Next, since we are on the subject of PhotoShop, I would love to learn how to create my own scrapbook pages, and all of the embellishments, etc. I have not the slightest idea on how to do that, and I'm not so sure even if I knew HOW to do it, if I would be able to...I lack the artistic gene, which I would assume you would have to have to do this. Apparently my uncle (same one I just mentioned) received all of those genes for my family! Actually, if I could even put the digital kits that someone else has created to good use, I think I would be happy with that at this point.

And digital scrap booking brings me to my next thing I want to learn. I would love to be able to create my own blog design like so many other talented people do. Which leads me to my final "I wanna learn" -- HTML.

Will I ever learn how do to any of this? Who knows? I was successful in adding numbers to my comments, thanks to a tutorial I found here. (Keep in mind, you won't be able to see them unless you actually view the entire post URL, not just the comments for that post.)

I guess that's a good start...right? What do you want to learn?

Reminder - Last Day to Enter Scrabble Pendant Giveaway

Just a quick reminder that today is the last day for the Scrabble Pendant Giveaway. It ends today at 10:00 p.m. Central Time.

Good luck!!

~M

Below this sign....

I see this sign every time I drive on the interstate going north in my town. Every time I see this sign, it sends chills down my spine. You see, I live in one of the cities in Iowa that was devastated by the floods last June. It was historical flooding, like nothing this city has ever seen before. The flooding went past the 500-year flood plain. I could not take my eyes off of the TV for more than 5 minutes...watching in disbelief as the local news channel showed more and more of my city under water. A building I had just been in the day before...now had feet of water in the main floor.

Fortunately for me, neither my home or my work were directly affected by the flood. We lost power in our home for one day for a total of about 6-8 hours. I learned how to run our generator that day since my husband was out of town working! But thanks to that generator, I was not running back and forth from my basement to my front door bailing water out of the sump pit, 5 gallons at a time like my much more unfortunate neighbor.

Since the only way to get across town was now to drive on the interstate that now hosts the sign in the picture above, traffic was a nightmare. I called my uncle who had recently moved back to Iowa from San Francisco and told him I know have a small idea of what it was like to live in SF!

The wonderful company I work for was awesome in so many ways, by donating money to a flood recovery fund, helping out their employees who were directly affected by the flood, and by allowing anyone to take 1 day off a month, paid, to go help flood victims in our area. A group of people I work with took a day off of work to help a family owned plumbing company clean out their storage sheds. It was hard, hot, sometimes disgusting work, but we stuck it out all day long and made a lot of progress.

Yes indeed, a great city is rebuilding below that sign and many other places in Iowa.

If you would like to help, please visit http://saveiowa.org/.

Camera Critters 2/21

So, yet again my subject of this week's camera critters is my dog, Sully. One night I decided to have a photo shoot with my dog. When going back through them, I saw this classic look from my dog. Unfortunately, I looked like a dope, so I spent just a few minutes photoshopping myself out LOL.

I give you...



There are so many captions you could put under this picture!