Houston.BloggersPub

2007 was, without a doubt, an AWESOME year for Cynthia and myself!
The photography keeps evolving we’ve had a blast with it this year.
We planned and executed our most ambitious vacation ever!
Our jobs remain steady (knock wood)
We have our health (knock wood again)

All in all, no complaints. Good health, good friends and good times.
We […]

What better way to see 2007 off than with our friends the fainting goats?

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Can someone smarter than me explain what Houston-based natuba.com is doing with itself?

Sorry for the slow posting around here, but I caught whatever has been going around. It knocked me out for a few days. You probably just thought I was taking it easy for the holidays. In reality I was high on Benadryl and Mucinex singing this song over and over to myself.

Looks like I’m not the only one with body invaders. Maybe I should try NyQuil next time too. My friend John would probably tell me to add Jack Daniels to that.

RollingStone.com has an interesting article on compression in music. Hey it’s great for TV and radio voice talent, but some say compression is killing music’s fidelity:

Producers and engineers call this “the loudness war,” and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume isn’t the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text, make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today’s listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. “With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse,” says Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. “God is in the details. But there are no details anymore.”

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While we’re at it, here is the magazine’s picks for top music videos of 2007. Didn’t know bands still made videos? Neither did I! We can go watch all of them for the first time in 2008.

I like Mute Math’s video for Typical. It takes us back to the days of quirky and cheap videos like MTV fed us in the 80s. What the above article didn’t talk about is fidelity loss on YouTube. You think mp3’s are bad…

Just last week Greenway Theatre, JMH Market in West U and Macy’s at Sharpstown Mall all announced they are closing down.

That made me think back to other places that made me sad when they shut down in Houston.

Rummaging through old digital photos, looking at them with a fresh eye…
These are from when Cynthia and I took an early morning balloon ride in celebration of our 11th anniversary. Shot with my very first digital camera, the Sony DSC F717.
We were lucky to have another balloon flying along.

Winged serpent made of gold, ruby eye and pearl grasped in it’s claw.
Originally a hat pin, my grandmother had the stem removed and a clasp
put in its place so she could wear it on her lapel.
The above picture is not terribly remarkable until you combine it with this one…

Yes, that’s an American dime.
I had a […]

These rings belonged to my grandmother and are from the turn of the century.
I had great fun shooting these pictures.
I put the camera on a tripod, finagled a flashlight and a LED lamp and then set a magnifying glass on edge and shot through it to get these.
I paid particular attention to this one…

Picture of Greg Henkel and myself at Scarborough Fair in Waxahachie, TX circa 1989. Our second year there performing with The Flying Fish Sailors.