fun with photos

For Blue 2.0 this week I worked on fun editing applications for photos. The “artwork” here was produced using LunaPic, a free online photo editor. In an earlier entry on my other blog, technology180, I talked about Gimp, a photo editor that you download and use to crop, artistically alter and otherwise edit photos. An online editor allows you to upload a photograph to the editor (which is found at a website, in this case the LunaPic site). It was a fairly easy operation: I went to the website, uploaded the photos as directed, and chose the appropriate effect. It was fun to try the different effects (and easy to remove the ones I didn’t like), and I finally found that, for this photo of my little gal, the “Warhol effect” was the right one. There are many effects to choose from, and even other categories, such as animation, drawing and other effects. I really liked how this turned out, and after I was done, it was a simple click to download the finished product to my desktop computer’s hard drive. I highly recommend it. You can try it for yourself at http://www.lunapic.com/editor/.

‘let’s all go to the roadshow …’

In an earlier entry I mentioned that my husband and I volunteered for Antiques Roadshow in Louisville last July. At the time someone from the Roadshow mentioned that the new season opened in January, so we thought, oh, it’ll be on in January! Wrong! Actually, they won’t get to Louisville until April. Oh, well. Perhaps my feet will be completely recovered by then.

Here’s to Dad

January 17 is always a day of mixed feelings for me now. It’s my birthday, which is nice. I get well-wishes and offers of dessert and of course the obligatory cake made by my children, and I know they’ve repeatedly stuck their fingers in it to taste. But on this date 13 years ago, my dad died. It was my 31st birthday, and my husband and I, late bloomers, were still practically newlyweds (about three weeks away from our first anniversary). We were just sitting down to a steak dinner at home when the call came. That’s a steak I never finished. It’s not as unusual as it sounds. I know other people who have lost parents, grandparents or another family member on their birthday. But it is rather awful. Besides the obvious reasons it’s awful, people also look at you surrepticiously and you can tell they are wondering how you feel about it. But they won’t ask. After a couple of years of being less than enthusiastic about re-embracing my birthday, I found a reason to to celebrate again: my husband suggested that instead of being sad, I should choose to recognize my birthday as a day that I can always remember my dad and all the things I liked about him (which are numerous). So here’s to my dad and his life, our fishing expeditions, our family camping trips, his storytelling skills, his ability to fix or build anything (when I was born he built an addition onto our farmhouse – I mean he BUILT it himself), and his pride in his children and their children. I wish wish wish that my kids had gotten to meet him, but it will have to do to pass on a few of his favorite things to them. Among my favorite things is this photograph (above, left), taken for a newspaper article several years before I was born, in which he poses with the results of a raid on a bootlegger (Dad was a Ky state policeman for 31 years).  He looks so serious, but he was a bit of a ham, so I’m sure he enjoyed the posed picture. It makes me smile every time.

chatting

As part of Blue 2.0, I’ve set up a chat account with AIM, screen name patsycat01. It was a fairly simple process. I’ve also used Yahoo! chat before, so it wasn’t too difficult. I currently also use Office Communicator chat here on the University of Kentucky campus. It is in test phase right now with a limited number of users. I hope it is adopted campuswide – it’s very easy and incorporates video and meetings easily. If you are on campus and happen to be one of the testers, you can connect to me by just typing in my name in the line at the top where it says, strangely enough, “Type a name.” Type: Patsy Carruthers. If you get two choices, do NOT choose the one that says “presence unknown” beside it – that would be the wrong choice. I love IM. It’s a great way to keep up with friends, family and co-workers.

Fun with Blue 2.0

Oooh, an update to this blog! It’s been forever!! I’m having fun starting off with Blue 2.0 (see the blogroll to the right for a link). Although I’ve been blogging for a while, there are plenty of topics coming up that will be things I haven’t tried. I’m looking forward to it!

blog overload

Alas, I have spent far more time on my work blog these last weeks, and it appears that is where most of my attention will be until such time that spouse joins me here in Lexington this winter and I don’t spend all my non-work hours chasing kiddoes. I can justify working on the work blog in my office but … .

In the meantime, visit me there: http://technology180.wordpress.com/