jorge's jome

Went for a walk after dinner in the Times Square area. The temperature was a brisk 30 degrees. Being a Monday night, it was actually pretty quiet.

Here is a shot I took earlier in the day at Central Park.

I saw the oddest thing today, perhaps someone can explain it to me. Along 3rd street, between 49th and 48th, there were three city vehicles parked on the side of the road with their engines running. One was a crane, the 2nd was a mini-van, and the third vehicle was some sort of utility truck. And all the occupants of those three vehicles were asleep. Now, I don't mean nodding-off sleep, or leaning-off-to-the-side sleep...these guys were all knocked-out, mouth-gaping-open, slumped-over-to-the-side asleep. It was hilarious. I couldn't quite figure out why they were all sitting in their vehicles with the engines running when it looked like they had been asleep for hours. I was going to take pictures of it but I was worried I'd wake them up.

Well, 2 a.m. here and I'm tired. Tomorrow is museum day.

Posted by at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Landed in JFK at 6:00 a.m. I can never sleep on planes, so I was tired as hell but, since my friend Gus had meetings this afternoon, we headed out on foot after checking in to the hotel. I saw quite a few things today...Rockefeller Center, St. Peter's Cathedral, Bryant Park, Times Square, Central Park, 5th Avenue. Got back to the hotel around noon and I slept for a couple hours. After that, I walked a block or so to the Starbucks on 48th and 3rd, which is where I am writing this.

Enjoying myself so far. Tonight I think I'll just wander around a bit and check out the night activity. Tomorrow my plan is to hit the American Museum of Natural History as well as the Guggenheim Museum and possibly the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ground Zero later.

It's pretty cold but the weather is sunny and clear. Temperatures are in the mid 20's to mid 30's. And whoever said New Yorkers are rude? In my brief experiences with them I have found them to be very friendly. In fact, some guy just left the Starbucks and on his way out he says to me, "Have a good one."

I'll post again tomorrow, hopefully with some pictures.

Posted by at 2:11 PM | Permalink

I'm off to New York City for a few days. This will be my first time in NY and I also have the added pleasure of hanging out for part of the trip with one of my oldest friends, Gus. I'll be blogging my trip.

Posted by at 4:50 PM | Permalink

Here are a couple of recent events related to spam. One spammer is suing the man who reported them, claiming that they have lost business as a result. I don't think anyone is shedding a tear for them. The man is asking for Paypal donations to help with his legal expenses.

Also, yesterday Google announced a new tag attribute for links on web sites. The way it works is, any content publishing system can search for links and insert a rel="nofollow" attribute and Google will ignore that link when indexing pages. Hopefully, this will discourage comment spam, which is a big problem for many bloggers.

Posted by at 5:41 PM | Permalink

There are a couple interesting links that I have run across related to photography so now is a good time to post them.

Here is a how-to on converting color images to black & white using Photoshop. The author of this article is John Shaw, my favorite nature photographer. I worship the guy, his work is really amazing. He also sells a guide that he has written to help you get the most out of your images in Photoshop. This guide, available on CD, can be purchased through his site for $30. It is a great resource, I have used it to get some really great prints which I am putting up in my house. He discusses everything from getting your slide scanner working optimally to using levels and curves to get the most impact out of your images.

Incidentally, the first link is from the Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris site. These guys put together some pretty amazing photo tours to some of the most beautiful locations on the planet. I hope to join them when they come to Joshua Tree National Park and the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park this spring.

I also hope to make a couple of trips within the next few months that should provide some great photo opportunities: Utah in the next month or two, to get some shots of snow, red sandstone and blue skies together, and also to Oregon to visit family, do some sightseeing along the Oregon coast and make a stop at Crater Lake.

Posted by at 2:31 PM | Permalink

Posted by at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)