For now I just have the lens that comes with the camera, the EFS 18-55. I had a lot of fun trying out some of the settings on the camera on this outing. Given that it was night time and I didn’t have a tripod, most of these shots would have been hard-to-impossible to achieve with my point-and-shoot.

Overall, I think this is my favorite:

The blur was not intentional, in fact, I managed several other shots later that were not blurry, but I like this one that group the most.

Regarding the various lights, this was one of my favorite pieces:

Finally, the most fun unintended result:

Fun times ahead with my new camera!

But yesterday, I got some resolutions handed to me nonetheless. I was at a New Year’s Eve party and everyone was asked to write down their resolutions and put them in a hat. Then we went around and drew resolutions.

Here is what I got:

Eat More Green things (and by green, I don’t mean moldy)
Make more stuff

I get the first one and I’m happy to give it a go. I’ve already had some edamame today to comply.

But what does the second one mean? Does writing a book count as making stuff? Or should I be setting up shop at Etsy?

I’m curious, those of you who make New Year’s resolutions, what’s the longest you’ve managed to stay on track? Anyone go a whole year? Any interesting attempts this time around?

We talked about lots of things, among them how most Haggadahs lack enough information for a newcomer to really get the Passover story while making the central role of He Who Has No Name unmistakable (even while the rest of the story might remain a bit blurry and I don’t just mean because of the amount of wine consumed).

But we also talked about other things, for example: how one comes to name machines in one’s lab. Perhaps not surprising given my previous post, the machines in my lab have Star Wars references. This idea dates back to the machines in the offices of one of my college mentors: Joe had a big black Next machine that was called Darth and the little white Mac I used was called Yoda. So when I started populating my lab with machines I named the white one Yoda and the two black ones Darth and Vader.

Thanks to recent expansions, I’ve been buying additional hardware so I’ve had to come up with new names. I finalized these yesterday: the iMac is R2-D2, the new Dell desktop is Chewbacca and the two ThinkPads are Han Solo and Falcon. (Jacob will be happy to note that these are all real Star Wars characters.)

I’m curious: what names do other people give machines in their labs? This is not about being silly, by the way. It becomes incredibly tedious to talk about “the computer that’s next to the back wall near the printer” so having names serves an important function.

Regarding the Passover meal, the food was wonderful all around. Thanks to Matt’s friend Love for bringing some great matzo munchies, a treat I’d never tried before. Matt’s (and CC’s) cooking was awesome, too, as was the flourless chocolate cake by another guest Lisa.

Taken: November 23, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

Pumpkin pie in progress. This was one of those days when it was hard to pick just one photo for the day. Contenders were the boiling cranberry sauce, the finished dishes, the red theme at the dinner table, and the holiday table itself.

I was curious to see how – if at all – the top search engines decided to celebrate Halloween. The above collage collects the holiday logos. Don’t look too hard in the bottom right corner, there’s nothing there to see. To be sure, MSN did have Halloween content on its homepage, but no special logo design that I could notice. The others all had something fun to greet users.

Tonight I look forward to greeting trick-or-treaters. I don’t usually get to do that, but my impression is that there are plenty of little kids in my current neighborhood so hopefully they will be stopping by.