fundamentals of law for health inf….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

…we lost him

the holidays gave us a lot of different challenges with getting shots in the right light, focus, composition, and just general picture taking. most of the pics we took ended up being very mundane and can easily be done with a point & shoot, but it was definitely a learning experience. i found myself hitting up digital-photography-school.com before each occasion to get last minute tips to make the best out of our time…i had to resize for the blog and wordpress blands out the pics so check out the flickr for original format and full-size. it would prob be better to let you click the pic for the full size. note to self!

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christmas eve in staten island was truly a night i will never forget. so much food, so much family, and so much fun.

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the new addition with mom…

with gramps

and with great gramps!

santa even stopped by!

christmas day we spent at my house, there was snow on the ground and i wanted to go out, but never had a chance…

for the first time in my life, i found myself not opening gifts christmas morning and taking pics of my parents opening. hahahaha…

my dad’s such an easy present…

time to start cooking!

and another new addition! this was one of my favorite pics…

sisters

all the kids got my grandma a necklace with each one of their birthstones…

christopher, always goin for the soda!

definitely can’t wait for a wide angle, which will be our second purchase after a flash.

cleanup time!

off to michele’s fam!

so much wasted space to the right

more good food

cupcakes from crumbs in nyc

i like this picture

we have to work on focusing on more than one subject. up the aperture or manual focus? hmmm….

most comfortable position. ever.

went to see the tree in nyc, this proved to be the greatest challenge and sadly turned out the worst pics of the holidays. after reading about using the tungsten setting, i saw how much it really brought out the lights, but with our stock flash and inexperience, we just couldn’t get faces to look natural. we ended up switching to auto so the pics are usable and some post-processing would help, but next year…we will be ready!

almost got it =(

we then went to my sis’ a couple days after christmas…finally get my gifts!

the king in his thrown…

yummy dessert time!

i setup the camera to take pics in one minute intervals, it worked out for some nice candid shots and definitely made gift opening less stressful letting me focus on family time…

we all got moms the beatles collection. very cool i must say…

some post-processing will really make these look much better…

white balance was off.

cheerio!

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new years pics coming up!!

found on ZT, click the random page link for some fun…

Some funny stuff here. Hit the link below the picture. It’s pretty NSFW so i didn’t want to post anything from it

http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/

Should Apple Make TVs?

By Harry McCracken  |  Posted at 9:12 am on Friday, August 21, 2009

See all: T-Poll

Does Apple want to get into the TV business? There’s no concrete evidence that it does, but analyst Gene Munster sure thinks it makes sense. Back in February he said he expected the company to make TVs with built-in DVRs. And now he’s raised the idea up the flagpole again. Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt has written about Munster’s scenario involving Apple making HDTVs and next-generation Apple TV-type functionality–including an subscription-based iTunes service designed to compete with Hulu, Netflix Watch Instantly, and even Comcast. In Munster’s speculative rollout, this happens by 2011.

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me included, i could name about 10 people right now that would get one just for the lit apple =)

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i’ve been finding that thanks to blogs, the web is getting sophisticated lately. there are some that are just awesomely posting pictures that i’ll stare at for hours and then i’ll see what links are on those and that’ll lead to another website that’s as equally inspiring. one thing i’m curious about is if it’s ok to just post pictures you didn’t take (unwatermarked). either way i don’t care, the time of forums being the the only avenue to share your thoughts, experiences, and art is quickly shifting to something more personal than a social network. never have the words web address meant more.
justin blyth’s blog is one such example…
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in related news, the masturbating bear is back…
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pulled from yahoo

Guitar legend-inventor Les Paul dies at age 94

AP, Aug 13, 2009 11:56 am PDT

As an inventor, Paul also helped bring about the rise of rock ‘n’ roll with multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the tracks in the finished recording.

The use of electric guitar gained popularity in the mid-to-late 1940s, and then exploded with the advent of rock in the mid-’50s.

“Suddenly, it was recognized that power was a very important part of music,” Paul once said. “To have the dynamics, to have the way of expressing yourself beyond the normal limits of an unamplified instrument, was incredible. Today a guy wouldn’t think of singing a song on a stage without a microphone and a sound system.”

A tinkerer and musician since childhood, he experimented with guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what he called “The Log,” a four-by-four piece of wood strung with steel strings.

“I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody had me labeled as a nut.” He later put the wooden wings onto the body to give it a tradition guitar shape.

In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar.

Pete Townsend of the Who, Steve Howe of Yes, jazz great Al DiMeola and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page all made the Gibson Les Paul their trademark six-string.

Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie’s auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600.

In the late 1960s, Paul retired from music to concentrate on his inventions. His interest in country music was rekindled in the mid-’70s and he teamed up with Chet Atkins for two albums. The duo were awarded a Grammy for best country instrumental performance of 1976 for their “Chester and Lester” album.

With Mary Ford, his wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold records for hits including “Vaya Con Dios” and “How High the Moon,” which both hit No. 1. Many of their songs used overdubbing techniques that Paul had helped develop.

“I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as many voices as I wished,” he recalled. “This is quite an asset.” The overdubbing technique was highly influential on later recording artists such as the Carpenters.

Released in 2005, “Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played” was his first album of new material since those 1970s recordings. Among those playing with him: Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Richie Sambora.

“They’re not only my friends, but they’re great players,” Paul told The Associated Press. “I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.”

Two cuts from the album won Grammys, “Caravan” for best pop instrumental performance and “69 Freedom Special” for best rock instrumental performance. (He had also been awarded a technical Grammy in 2001.)

Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005.

Paul was born Lester William Polfus, in Waukseha, Wis., on June 9, 1915. He began his career as a musician, billing himself as Red Hot Red or Rhubarb Red. He toured with the popular Chicago band Rube Tronson and His Texas Cowboys and led the house band on WJJD radio in Chicago.

In the mid-1930s he joined Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians and soon moved to New York to form the Les Paul Trio, with Jim Atkins and bassist Ernie Newton.

Meanwhile, he had made his first attempt at audio amplification at age 13. Unhappy with the amount of volume produced by his acoustic guitar, Paul tried placing a telephone receiver under the strings. Although this worked to some extent, only two strings were amplified and the volume level was still too low.

By placing a phonograph needle in the guitar, all six strings were amplified, which proved to be much louder. Paul was playing a working prototype of the electric guitar in 1929.

His work on taping techniques began in the years after World War II, when Bing Crosby gave him a tape recorder. Drawing on his earlier experimentation with his homemade record-cutting machines, Paul added an additional playback head to the recorder. The result was a delayed effect that became known as tape echo.

Tape echo gave the recording a more “live” feel and enabled the user to simulate different playing environments.

Paul’s next “crazy idea” was to stack together eight mono tape machines and send their outputs to one piece of tape, stacking the recording heads on top of each other. The resulting machine served as the forerunner to today’s multitrack recorders.

In 1954, Paul commissioned Ampex to build the first eight-track tape recorder, later known as “Sel-Sync,” in which a recording head could simultaneously record a new track and play back previous ones.

He had met Ford, then known as Colleen Summers, in the 1940s while working as a studio musician in Los Angeles. For seven years in the 1950s, Paul and Ford broadcast a TV show from their home in Mahwah, N.J. Ford died in 1977, 15 years after they divorced.

In recent years, even after his illness in early 2006, Paul played Monday nights at New York night spots. Such stars as Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, Dire Straits‘ Mark Knopfler, Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Van Halen came to pay tribute and sit in with him.

“It’s where we were the happiest, in a `joint,’” he said in a 2000 interview with the AP. “It was not being on top. The fun was getting there, not staying there — that’s hard work.”

http://lifehacker.com/5311755/score-a-free-slurpee-tomorrow

Score a Free Slurpee Tomorrow [Dealhacker]

Coming down off your holiday high and can’t believe you have to wait all the way to Labor day for some more holiday fun? Take heart, tomorrow is Slurpee Day!

Some random Slurpee facts, courtesy of 7-Eleven:

Slurpee drinks are all served at 28 degrees.
Slurpee was “invented” when some sodas were put in a freezer to cool them down – and they became all slushy.
Winnipeg, Canada is generally thought to be the Slurpee capital of the world, due to their amazing Slurpee fanaticism.
When Slurpee first hit the market, it wasn’t self-serve. The machine was behind the counter and the clerk served the product to you.
At Slurpee, we call it a BrainFreeze. The scientific name for it is Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia. Really.
Sugar is the anti-freezing agent in most Slurpee drinks.
American Slurpee is injected with air. Canadian Slurpee is not.
Every day more than 11.6 million Slurpee drinks are consumed around the world.
In 2004, 7-Eleven created an edible Slurpee straw.
Only one private individual owns a bona fide Slurpee machine. The rest are in 7-Eleven.
We don’t know about you, but not only are we now craving a Slurpee but we’re dying to know who the sole private owner of an authentic Slurpee machine is. Check out the link below to find a 7-Eleven near you and score your free Slurpee.