Sky Singer

Which Beatles Song Are You?

2009-09-12T11:53:00.000-04:00

You are "Let It Be"

You are philosophical, balanced, and wise. You try not to worry about things you can't change.

You can let go and find peace in troubling times. You believe in controlling what's on the inside.

You know that you can't create or predict the future. You just have to let it unfold.

The answer will eventually come to you. All you have to do is wait.

What Beatles Song Are You?

Blogthings: Take a Quiz. Annoy Your Friends.

New Print Site

2009-03-28T10:11:00.002-04:00

I don't really have a lot of time for doing web stuff but I ran across a few articles talking about SmugMug and decided to check it out. After checking it out a little bit I decided to give it a try. A few hours work last night and this morning and now I have this. This is a huge improvement over Shutterfly (I didn't know what I was missing!) so I'll be moving all my galleries over to there.

Pictures from ConVocation

2006-03-07T21:46:00.000-05:00

Pictures from ConVocation are now up at flickr. I have also set up a print ordering site.

Back to the mundane world

2006-02-27T09:56:00.000-05:00

ConVocation is over and all the people I love so much have left our little magickal oasis to return to their day jobs and mundane responsibilities - as must I. But there is still work to do for ConVocation - as a start I will need to process all photos I took over the last four days and set up galleries. Here we go ...

Getting Started

2006-02-18T17:51:00.000-05:00

I have created my "Hire Me" site to hawk my services as a photographer. I am using Coppermine to provide Photo Galleries. Hopefully in the next few months things will start getting interesting.

Brownies!

2006-02-05T21:48:00.000-05:00

I made a batch of The Barefoot Contessa's Outrageous Brownies tonight. I made a couple changes though:
I increased the dark chocolate to 8 oz and reduced the chocolate chips to compensate.
I added 1 Tbsp Cinnamon (yes a full tablespoon - there's a ton of chocolate in these!) and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper.
To accomodate some friends tastes I only used half the walnuts -- I poured half the batter into the pan, added the walnuts to the remaining batter and added that. This worked better than I expected as once the batter had cooled to room tempurature it was pretty thick and easy to control.
Finally, the first time I made them I cut the batch into 20 pieces - most people found these too large so I reduced them to 2x2 inch squares.
Final verdict? Yum!

Northville Fire And Ice Festival

2006-01-28T16:49:00.000-05:00

Northville had their Fire and Ice Festival today. Festivities included a chili cook-off. I liked the chili from Independence Village best. The offerings from the Lazy Lizard, Charley's Deli, and O'Charleys Restaurant were excellent as well.

Pinhole goes digital ... sort of

2006-01-19T21:30:00.000-05:00

OK - this isn't pinhole at all, but it is way cool! This guy takes apart flatbed scanners and builds homemade cameras around the sensors. End result: 100 MegaPixel camera (take that Hasselblad!). Another neat thing is due to the nature of the sensor he is getting really interesting distortions. I still want to try pinhole, but now I want to try this too.

Check your chauffeur's lifestyle?

2006-01-07T09:23:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I wonder what basis people use to make decisions. According to this article:

A Vancouver man, Peter Hayes, has accused the Vancouver police of illegal discrimination because of his involvement in BDSM. Hayes says that he lost a potential job as a limousine driver when police refused him a chauffeur's permit and has taken his case to the Human Rights Tribunal.

The article also says Mr. Hayes is trying to claim BDSM is a "Sexual Orientation" under Canada's human rights laws. The police are disputing this. In another article Mr. Hayes said the police "wouldn't give him many details, except to say the concern had to do with paganism, Wiccan magic as well as role-playing, master-slave sexual practices".

Now, I'm not sure that BDSM constitutes a sexual orientiaton - it seems to me that orientation is less about what you do than who you do it with - but I don't think he should be discriminated against because of it either. What I really don't get is how any of this is at all relevant to this guy's ability to safely pilot a limo filled with passengers around the greater Vancouver area. It seems to me the VPD should be more concerned about potential chauffeur's driving record and whether they have any criminal convictions than unrelated legal activities the candidates engage in during their personal time.

Hat tip to Wren's Nest.

Government Abuse of Power or Paranoid Conspiracy Theory?

2005-10-13T21:09:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure which this is but the next laptop I buy I'm definitely going to crack open and check!
Hat tip to morons.org.

Digital Camera Sensor Problems

2005-10-12T11:54:00.000-04:00

Found this on slashdot: Apparently several digital camera models are failing due to faulty sensors which allow moisture in. The following manufacturers have published service advisories:
Canon, Fujifilm, Konica, and Sony. The service advisories all list affected models and seem (to me at least) to indicate that any required repairs will be free.

Unreal Witches Ball 2005

2005-10-11T21:41:00.000-04:00

This year's Witches Ball was a blast. I took a ridiculous number of pictures. Can't wait for next year!

Walled Lake Art Faire

2005-10-04T21:44:00.000-04:00

I was surprised this weekend to discover that Walled Lake has an annual art festival. It was typical of such events - about the same size as Northville's but the neat part was the street sections marked off for artists to draw in with chalk or pastels. These were mostly taken up by (what appeared to be) students from the local high school. I found every one of them to be excellent.

ShaeLaurel at the Michigan Renaisance Festival

2005-08-16T21:57:00.000-04:00

ShaeLaurel
Originally uploaded by skysinger.

ShaeLaurel was performing at the MRF last weekend. These guys put on a great show. They do a great rendition of "Devil went down to Georgia". Definately made it worth the drive. Now, if they can only get Don Juan and Miguel to come back ...

My Two Bits - A response to Bill O'Reilly

2005-08-09T20:43:00.000-04:00

In Bill O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" he complains that "the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science both reject intelligent design and don't want it mentioned in science classes." And compares this attitude to fascism. I respectfully disagree.

Evolution (more properly "The theory of common descent with modification" ) is a coherent scientific theory which explains a great deal of natural phenomena, is internally consistant, and makes numerous and varied predictions which are borne out on a daily basis through research findings in many scientific disciplines.

Intelligent Design is nothing more than a collection of erroneous criticisms of evolution and "God did it" cop outs. It has no coherent theory, explains nothing, makes no predictions and therefore provides no direction for research. In fact no research is being done in this area (aside from mining scientific papers for quotes to manipulate and take out of context) because there are no predictions that can be tested. It is not science.

Including Intelligent Design in a science class is no more appropriate than doing sections on lysenkoism or EVP. Just as the purpose of math class is to teach math and not to explore the students feelings about the Pythagorean Theorem the purpose of science class is to teach science - not to give students the warm fuzzies about their parents religious convictions whatever they may be.

Just for the record - no I am not a scientist. I am not a farmer either.

But I know what bullshit smells like.

Starwood Moon

2005-07-31T22:38:00.000-04:00

Starwood Moon
Originally uploaded by skysinger.

Well I'm back in the muggle world. Finally got all my gear cleaned up and stowed. Starwood was a blast. But now I have to get back to dealing with reality again. Bummer.

I am outa here!*

2005-07-17T11:50:00.000-04:00

All packed up and ready to take off. I am heading out to Starwood for a week of drumming, dancing and good times!
*With apologies to Dennis Miller.

Caelin St. Chad

2005-07-17T09:08:00.000-04:00

Caelin St. Chad
Originally uploaded by skysinger.

My mom has a new pet yorkie.

Camping

2005-06-07T08:38:00.000-04:00

The DataRat organized a great campout at Holly Rec last weekend. Astaria66 and Grimlock cooked up some great vittles. I got some much needed relaxation.

Hey - I'm here!

2005-05-05T11:38:00.000-04:00

My photo page showed up in a Google search!! Someone must be linking to it. To bad this blog isn't showing up there yet. Guess I'll have to say something interesting. Time to get out the soapbox.

I can't make it now but ...

2005-05-02T09:04:00.000-04:00

hopefully I'll get my time machine working in a couple years and go then.

Celestial Predicament

2005-05-01T14:36:00.000-04:00

celestial_predicament
Originally uploaded by Tattoed.

I just keep finding great original art on flickr. This is just an example

Jane's Birthday Bash

2005-05-01T14:33:00.000-04:00

crw_6411
Originally uploaded by skysinger.

Jane threw a party for Ian, Pierce, Catrina, and Kayla. Lots of presents, lot's of fun, lot's of pics.

Astaria's Photo Set

2005-04-25T22:49:00.000-04:00

I was talking to Astaria66 at Penguicon and she mentioned she was trying to gather old photos of herself. So I started a set and am on a quest to search through my archives for her pics.

Penguicon

2005-04-25T19:14:00.000-04:00

Cool mascot. Will Wheaton didn't make it again. I think their gonna start putting that on the flyers.
It would be a lot easier to quit smoking if the best conversations at these things didn't happen in the smoking suite. Oh, well - had a great time anyways.