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I'm sick-ish. I've felt terrible since I woke up yesterday morning. I went to bed early last night and slept late this morning. Ugh! Sucks. I don't want to do anything but vegitate around the house. Channel surf. Eat junk. Yeah. So anyway, EL went shopping to get out of my pity party and so I decided to process a couple of shots from the Butterfly Center last weekend. These are all from a recent trip to the Lila Cockrell Butterfly Center in Houston, TX. The Center is inside the Houston Museum of Natural Sciense and there are quite a few different species of live specimens flying about (and, on occation, landing long enough to model their wings). All these are taken handheld with an EF 100mm f/2.8 macro USM combined with a Canon 500D using a single 550-EX Speedlight and Stoffen Omnibounce diffuser... hence, some of the plane of focus is skewed. However, they flap alot, so you kinda take what you can get. Nature's carpets... and if you can't see the scales well enough, here is an archived shot I took this spring with the MPE-65mm and 550-EX off-shoe triggered with the ST-E2 IR transmitter: This one is a moth though...

A few conversions...

EL

EL

Park. Oh my... today is official clayton-has-zero-motivation day.

In the studio tonight...

EL

Rib poking fun. Put on the headphones and chuckle.

Cat bowling via Jason.

14 centimeters for Urs...

juvenile American Alligator

Pie-billed Grebe

Yellowlegs Sandpiper

Black-necked Stilt

85.4 megapixel "pano-macro"

It is amazing how badly downtown air smells after spending a weekend in the woods.

behind the scenes of the shot...

Black day. So close... and nothing.

There goes the neighborhood. The highways are going straight to hell.

Oh... the tears... and the Kleenex.

A native American walks into a cafe with a shotgun in one hand pulling a male buffalo with the other and says to the waiter, "Want coffee." The waiter says, "Sure chief, coming right up." He gets the native American a tall mug of coffee. After drinking the coffee down in one gulp, the native American turns and blasts the buffalo with the shotgun, then just walks out. The next morning the man returns. He has his shotgun in one hand pulling another male buffalo with the other. He walks up to the counter and says the waiter, "Want coffee." The waiter says, "Whoa, Tonto! We're still cleaning up your mess from yesterday. What the heck was all that about, anyway?" The native American smiles and proudly says, "Training for upper management position. Come in, drink coffee, shoot the bull, leave mess for others to clean up, disappear for rest of day."

Hot off the press! Seven Japanese men arrested for stealing Harley Davidson. In other news, seven Japanese men can fit on a Harley Davidson. Never piss off your woman. My tummy hurts. Enough already... buzzzzzzzzzzzz..... Buzzwords from 1904 to 2004 according to someone (other than me): 1904 hip 1905 whizzo 1906 teddy bear 1907 egghead 1908 realpolitik 1909 tiddly-om-pom-pom 1910 sacred cow 1911 gene 1912 blues 1913 celeb 1914 cheerio 1915 civvy street 1916 U-boat 1917 tailspin 1918 ceasefire 1919 ad-lib 1920 demob 1921 pop 1922 wizard 1923 hem-line 1924 lumpenproletariat 1925 avant garde 1926 kitsch 1927 sudden death 1928 Big Apple 1929 sex 1930 drive-in 1931 Mickey Mouse 1932 bagel 1933 dumb down 1934 pesticide 1935 racism 1936 spliff 1937 dunk 1938 cheeseburger 1939 Blitzkrieg 1940 Molotov cocktail 1941 snafu 1942 buzz 1943 pissed off 1944 DNA 1945 mobile phone 1946 megabucks 1947 Wonderbra 1948 cool 1949 Big Brother 1950 brainwashing 1951 fast food 1952 Generation X 1953 hippy 1954 non-U 1955 boogie 1956 sexy 1957 psychedelic 1958 beatnik 1959 cruise missile 1960 cyborg 1961 awesome 1962 bossa nova 1963 peacenik 1964 byte 1965 miniskirt 1966 acid 1967 love-in 1968 It-girl 1969 microchip 1970 hypermarket 1971 green 1972 Watergate 1973 F-word 1974 punk 1975 detox 1976 Trekkie 1977 naff all 1978 trainers 1979 karaoke 1980 power dressing 1981 toyboy 1982 hip-hop 1983 beatbox 1984 double-click 1985 OK yah 1986 mobile 1987 virtual reality 1988 gangsta 1989 latte 1990 applet 1991 hot-desking 1992 URL 1993 having it large 1994 Botox 1995 kitten heels 1996 ghetto fabulous 1997 dot-commer 1998 text message 1999 Google 2000 bling bling 2001 9/11 2002 axis of evil 2003 sex up 2004 chav Where and how does one decide? Brain aneurysm! So I come in early this morning to install and configure an application on a new server I requested to be put in production… yippie. The box isn’t ready. I hate it when that happens.

"Lady... people aren't chocolates. You know what they are? Bastards. Bastard coated bastards with bastard filling."

Let us be Men For God's sake, let us be men not monkeys minding machines or sitting with our tails curled while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone. Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces. -- D.H. Lawrence






I need a trip to the mountains... and beer. In the mean time, here is some light reading.