My brother Bret tried to run through Seal Pond at the Voorhies Memorial, but he immediately slipped and fell in. This is the aftermath. At least it was nice out. (Denver, CO - September 18th, 2010)
The morning after the blizzard that rocked the Midwest. In Chicago's Logan Square hundreds of cars remain buried under tons of snow.
Wednesday morning we woke up at 5 AM to drive up into the mountains surrounding Denver to go on a six hour hike to scale Mount Bierstadt. It's been a long time since I've been up that early and I was expecting to be exhausted, but it wasn't that difficult. The climb took 4 hours and it was an incredible experience. I've never climbed a mountain before and so it was very exciting.
I brought my Canon 5D and my 50mm as well as cheap wide angle kit lens. I'll be posting those pictures in the future as a gallery, but in the mean time I wanted to share this panorama I made on the summit using Pano on my iPhone 4. It's quite cool and actually extends beyond a full 360 degree panorama.
A panoramic photograph from the top of Mount Bierstadt, taken with Pano for the iPhone 4.
In the Galleries section of DaneDeasy.com you will now find an iPhone 4 Photography Gallery. Here you will find some favorite images taken over the first week of iPhone 4 ownership. I'll be expanding this gallery in the future so check back on it often!
The new camera on the iPhone 4 is pretty awesome.
Doing some more testing of the capabilities of iMovie on the iPhone 4. This is the Modern Theme with the built in Theme Music. It's pretty nifty, but one major complaint is that it seems impossible to insert a title card in the introduction. You can only put text on top of video clips and that text stays there for the entire length of the clip. Despite this limitation, it's still pretty darn impressive how much you can do on this little app and I can only imagine where Apple will be taking it in the future.
Oh and if you're reading this and have an iPhone 4, don't hesitate to purchase iMovie ($4.99) immediately. You can have a lot of fun with it.
You all know I'm a big geek and so it should be no surprise to learn that I waited overnight at the Michigan Ave. Apple Store in downtown Chicago with lots of other geeks in order to acquire the iPhone 4 before anyone else.
I arrived at about 12:30 AM on the 24th and by the time I arrived, the line was already to Huron St. and St. Clair St. So that's where I set up my position. Everyone around me was very friendly and some kids next to me watched Avatar on their MacBook Pro.
Watching Avatar on a 13" MacBook Pro
Waiting patiently for the iPhone 4.After getting settled in and discovering my newfound pigeon friend sleeping behind my chair in the corner next to his empty case of Corona, I decided to check out the rest of the line. I also shot a video of the whole line from the first position to where I was and I will post that in a separate blog post later, once the video has finished processing (darn my iMac from '06).
Mr. Pigeon sleeping in the corner behind me. Perhaps he's waiting for his iPhone 4 as well.Here's a couple pictures of the line on Huron St. and St. Clair. The first image is the line ahead of me. The second image is the line after me taken at about 3 AM I think.
Looking west at the iPhone 4 line on Huron St.
Looking south at the iPhone 4 line on St. Clair St.They split up the line into two lines at about 6 AM, one for the folks lucky enough to reserve an iPhone 4 and one for the unlucky. I finally managed to get in the store at 9:30 AM and was out by 9:45 AM. It was definitely a smooth process with no hang ups that I noticed. After an hour the iPhone 4 connected to AT&T's servers and I was all connected and ready to go.
Within a few days I'll be posting more interesting goodies and thoughts from and about my brand new iPhone 4. For now I'll just say that it's the most impressive piece of technology I've ever had the pleasure of holding in my hands.
Just made this with Pano and Photogene for the iPhone. It's a beautiful day down here by the Chicago River. I'm sitting between State Street and Wabash Avenue looking north across the river at the beautiful Marina Towers.
iPhone Panorama of the Chicago River made with Pano and Photogene.
A couple cool snapshots I made with Hipstamatic on my iPhone 3G. The first is Rupert in the bathroom and the second is from the CTA Blue Line heading towards O'Hare International Airport. What do you think?
Meeting Bill Murray was the coolest celebrity encounter I've ever had. While in Austin, TX for South By Southwest, some friends and I drove our van to the Lady Bird Lake Trail bridge because we heard there were some live bands playing. We saw My Pet Saddle play there and they were so good live. The cops came and tried to break things up and told My Pet Saddle that if they played again, they'd give them all tickets. Presently they walked away and that's when another band started playing. I unfortunately don't remember their name but they were good too. Around this time, we started hearing murmurings that Bill Murray was in attendance and hanging out nearby. Hearing that he had walked away down the south end of the bridge my friend bolted after him. He ended up hunting Mr. Murray down in a bathroom stall in a Mexican restaurant. According to my friend Josh, who asked, "How are the acoustics in there?" Mr. Murray immediately began singing as a reply. Some old show-tune type of song. Josh came running back up the bridge to tell us his story. After a while we thought he had left for good, but soon enough I spotted him again. That's when I took this picture.
Bill F'ing Murray
Saturday was our final day in Austin for SXSW and we were very busy. The day included seeing Vivian Girls, Karen Elson and Best Coast. It was a pretty incredible experience, especially getting to meet the Vivian Girls and we even helped them carry their equipment a mile or two back to their van. Then we all went to see Best Coast together. Apparently, they are friends with each other (when I recently saw Best Coast at Schuba's in Chicago the Vivian Girls' drummer Ali Koehler was filling in). It turned out to be a great day and a fitting end to our South By Southwest adventure.
Karen Elson
Friday night party time at 4100 W Grand Avenue. OMG WTF Dance Part was a great time. Featuring the sweet sounds of many DJs including Disco Death Threat (BritishKnights), Jimmy One Punch (STÆTION), DJ David Beltran, RoyalBannon and sweet live set by Big Splashes.
Not too many people lined up for my photo booth set up, but I still got some sweet pictures at the party. Check out my favorites below and be sure to check the link at the bottom of the post to see the rest of them on my Facebook Page.
The highlight of these images (and perhaps the whole day) was seeing The Woods at the French Ligation Museum, though I also had a great time getting up early and getting in line at the pop-up Third Man Records (Jack White's record label) and buying some exclusive vinyl including a limited edition tri-color pressing of Karen Elson's first single.
I saw some other bands play that night at a big festival thing, but unfortunately my camera wasn't able to get any good shots because I wasn't close enough to the stage. I have plenty of more fun pictures that were taken with my point and shoot camera, but those will be posted on my Facebook Page at a later date. So please add yourself as a friend there so you can be updated when they come online.
Leave a comment below and let me know what you think!
Part II of my images from Austin, TX are finally here. It was a beautiful day so we got to enjoy the spring weather as we explored Austin. We had brunch at the Eastside Cafe, which was really wonderful. You can see a couple shots of our food below. Afterwards, we just wandered around downtown and explored. We wound up at the French Ligation Museum (quite possibly my favorite venue in Austin to relax and listen to music) where we heard The XX. Unfortunately, we were pretty far back in the crowd, just at the back of the tent. But they sounded great and we all enjoyed hearing them immensely. Enjoy the pictures and there will be more to come tomorrow. I will be posting a lot of the outtake images that aren't quite so wonderful on my Facebook Page, so keep your eyes peeled there for more.
Five friends and I took a road trip down south to Austin, Texas to experience SXSW firsthand. This is the first in a series of blog posts that will highlight my favorite photographs and events from our journey to the lone star state.
Our trip began on Tuesday, March 16th 2010. We left blustery Chicago at approximately 10:30 P.M. After starting off in the wrong direction we finally found our way onto I-55 S. I took the first position in the driver seat. I kept driving until 4 A.M. We had some crazy conversations in the car in the middle of the night. Have you ever played "How Much Does Someone Have to Pay You to Do...?" Crazy weirdness ensued. I highly recommend it.
Despite my terrifying nightmares of the car sliding off the road and us crashing to our deaths, I managed to get a few hours of fitful sleep. Then the sun was up and we were in Arkansas. We stopped at an IHOP and had a well deserved breakfast. Our waiter had the most peculiar southern hospitality vibe and seemed like all he wanted out of life was to make our lives easier. He even offered to split the bill six ways for us! In Chicago, you'd really have to pull some strings to make something like that fly. (Take note restaurants of Chicago, Arkansas has you beat!)
You can check out some iPhone pictures from that IHOP in my SXSW iPhone Gallery on Facebook. It should be public for all to view.
What follows are the images I snapped on our daylight ride through Arkansas and Texas on our way to Austin. If you become a Fan of my Facebook Page, you will see more unedited pictures from the trip down. These are my favorites.
I must admit right from the start that I am now a Drobo (@drobo, http://drobo.com) fanboy. Their unparalleled support during a trying weekend has left me a cheerleader for the company.
It all began a few Wednesdays ago when I got home work and my Drobo had disconnected from my iMac. I was surprised because this had never happened before, so I reconnected it an after doing so the Drobo started doing it's "Data Protection" thing (also known as data relayout). The Drobo Dashboard software said it would take approximately 12 hours to complete, so I decided to let it do it's thing over night and I had hoped all would be well in the morning. Alas, it was not so and I headed off to work Thursday afternoon, leaving the Drobo still working on protecting my data.
When I returned home that night the Drobo had vanished from Mac OS X's Finder. It was in power standby mode. This is where I strted to get worried, but as it was night and Data Robotics offices were closed there was nothing to be done. I reconnected it again and went to bed.
On Friday I called Drobo's tech support and was helped out by Nicholas. He was very friendly and understanding of my anxiety. I informed him of the Drobo's funky behavior and he thought it'd be best to just let the Drobo work itself out over the weekend and he would call me Monday morning to see how it was doing. Unfortunately, things didn't go so smoothly.
Late Friday evening my Drobo vanished again! I have to step backwards just a little to explain a detail I forgot to mention. When the Drobo disappeared before I had rebooted it to occassionally see the third drive bay display a solid red light. This means the drive needs to be replaced immediately. I thought it a glitch though because after a moment, the Drobo would shift back into data protection mode. So, back to Friday evening. After I got it back online once more, the Drobo didn't attempt to relayout the data any longer. It lit up solid red lights across all four drives! This was definitely not reassuring for me. It was at this point I started barraging Drobo's Twitter account freaking out. I resigned myself to complete data loss and awaited dreadful news on Monday morning when Nicholas was going to call me.
To my surprise however, Frederick Van Johnson - blogger, photographer and podcaster - (@frederickvan), a person who seems to be high-up at Drobo, called me on Saturday afternoon while I was at a Jiffy Lube and after hearing my explanation he was very confident they would be able to restore all my data.
Later that day, on a Saturday evening, a 3rd level technical support agent from Drobo contacted me. He called me from his home to help me with my problem on a Saturday night! I can't stress enough how outstanding this personal support made me feel. I knew Drobo was right there beside me through my ordeal. I forget the name of the man who called me (maybe Steve?), but it was a very pleasant experience. Easily, the best tech support call I've ever had. He smoothed out the rough edges of my problem, which ended up being the fault of a terribly corrupted Seagate drive (never buying one of those again). After replacing the drive and running some diagnostics, we were able to completely restore access to all my data. He was worried there may have been a problem with the Drobo itself, though I wasn't too worried about that at this point and he overnighted me a brand new Drobo at no cost. After receiving it and setting up my drives in the new Drobo it did its data protection stuff and all was well again in the world of Dane Deasy. Data secure and data safe.
As you can tell by this little story, Data Robotics have a great thing going. Their professionalism and genuine concern for the customer shone through brightly. Though I nearly had a panic attack when the problems started, they quickly calmed and sedated me and guided me through the recovery of my data with a gentle and friendly hand. I can't sing their praises loud enough. I hope this post will convince many of you out there who need to have a secure device to store your ever-increasing digital libraries in a way that will leave you feeling at ease and at peace to go the Drobo way. I will never regret this purchase and will continue to support Drobo in the future by buying more of their magical technology.
Don't worry, the orange light just means it's getting full!