Ever since I came back from New Mexico, I’ve had a running battle with the squirrels that live around here, but it’s their fault.  They started it by deciding to set up housekeeping inside the walls between me and my neighbor.  They just tunneled in and started reproducing.

Mike has come a long way since I gave him his first digital camera soon after Connor was born on May 1, 2005.

Here is an example of some of his experiments with HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. I find them both artistic and pleasing, worthy to me of being made into a coffee table book with absolutely no fatherly bias having entered into this judgment whatsoever!

I believe that for best effect you should watch the video in full screen mode by clicking the icon of the arrows pointing to the four corners of the screen that appears in the lower right corner of the player once you click the PLAY arrow to start the slideshow. (Escape leaves that mode.)

Mike has his own website called Shape Shifter Images and is available for portrait and other photographic work.

Mike posted this milestone moment on his Flickr photostream, and as a proud grandpa, I almost felt entitled to snap it up and post it here too without asking, but I did the right thing and called Mike and got his permission to post it. I’m sure you’ll find it one of those “Awwww, moments.”

Note: Please leave a comment if for any reason this video does not play for you. It is designated as “Friends and Family only” on Flickr, so I’m unsure whether everyone will be able to play it here on my site. So let me know, please. Thanks.

Watch this seven plus minute video and prepare to be amazed at what an application called Photosynth can do. It’s architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, demonstrates and describes the technology and what lies ahead. (Link courtesy of Michael K. Bergman of AI3.) It’s so amazing, I almost want to begin exercising just to ensure I stay around long enough to see where all this is leading. Wow.

Flock's news reader, originally uploaded by CaptQuirk.

This screenshot illustrates Flock's new implementation of its RSS news reader, called "My Newspaper." The icon to call up the sidebar is designated by the red arrow pointing to the iconbar. In the list of RSS feeds, the bold font indicates unread items on that particular feed.

The photo is being posted, this time, using Flickr's Blog This option, so I am doing further testing to see whether it will post successfully with the Flickr tool.

Sometimes I’ll go for days on end with no entries on this blog, but on Sunday when Wordpress.com was down most of the day, its unavailability because of some server glitches created an almost uncontrollable urge in me to post something.  Strange, isn’t it?

However, now that it is back up, it appears the powers that be at Wordpress.com have given me some new capabilities. 

For instance, now it is possible to change the header graphic on the blog.  (That’s the picture across the top.)  The picture (titled Wellington City) was taken by a gentleman named Steve Sigley (Sigs66) and he shared his image under a Creative Commons license, which permits me to use it without having to bother him for prior approval.  So even though I don’t know Mr. Sigley, I would like to thank him publicly for permitting me to use that image.

Another Flickrite, Brian Parton (whom I DO know), also granted me permission to use a panorama he took of the Smoky Mountains, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to use that one, since in the upper half of that picture is light colored and the lettering containing the name of my blog is white.  There wasn’t enough contrast between Brian’s photo and the blog title to be able to read the name clearly.  Nonetheless, I appreciate Brian’s willingness to permit me to use his photo even though it didn’t work out.

Gradually Wordpress.com is adding more features and more templates from which to choose for blogs, and that pleases me.  Perhaps in time, they will permit me to change the color of the lettering for the title of the blog which would, of course, give me even more flexibility.