For various reasons – some obvious, some that we’re keeping to ourselves – we’re having a hard time getting in the Christmas spirit this year. This might help a little bit:
Or possibly not. After the jump, this week’s TMO…
Archive for the ‘Christmas’ Category
TMQ Watch: December 18, 2012.
Tuesday, December 18th, 2012Merry freaking Christmas.
Friday, November 30th, 2012Austin, like many other cities, has a program that gets the police department involved in collecting toys and getting them to poor kids. Here, we call this “Blue Santa“.
The “Blue Santa” program started in 1972. Before that, we had an organization called the Christmas Bureau of Austin and Travis County. For as long as I’ve lived in Austin, these two organizations have collaborated closely.
Not this year. The Christmas Bureau, as you may have guessed if you clicked on the link above, seems to have packed up their manager and slunk off into the night, leaving the Blue Santa people holding Santa’s bag.
What happened? That’s still not clear, but the police are investigating. Part of the issue may have to do with new leadership at the Christmas Bureau: the previous leader passed away last year, and the new guy has what we like to describe as a “colorful” history. This includes an arrest for meth possession after an encounter with police in the parking lot of one of our finer local strip clubs this past August (which, of course, does not imply his guilt in this affair, but does make one think).
In the meantime, the Blue Santa folks are trying to fill the gap, if you feel like helping.
Edited to add: It looks like the Christmas Bureau website is working again (it was giving a “500 Internal Server Error”) but hasn’t been updated since last December.
Gee, Officer Kroenke.
Monday, January 2nd, 2012We have our first sports firings of 2012: Steve Spagnuolo and Billy Devaney of the St. Louis Rams.
2-14 this season, and they didn’t even get the first pick in the draft. Spagnuolo was 10-38 over three years.
The Old Bag.
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011Back many thousands of years ago, when I was just a wee lad shooting photos with a Pentax K1000 and reading Popular Photography (rest in peace, Herbert Keppler), I kept hoping that PP would do an article or a series of articles or a column or something on “what’s in your camera bag”; basically, I wanted to know what real pros like Walter Iooss Jr. (warning: some photos, especially one in particular, may not be safe for work) and Eddie Adams took with them when they went on the road. I had ideas about being a professional journalist, one who not only did his own writing but also took his own photos.
Getting to the point, this piece at PetaPixel, showing what Umit Bektas packed in his camera bag for his stint embedded with a US military unit in Afghanistan, made my day today. That, in turn, links to a first hand account by Bektas for the Reuters Photography Blog, which goes into a little more detail and has some amazing photos. (Not of battle. You’ll know the ones I’m talking about when you see them. My God, look at that sky.)
My one gripe about these articles is that I’d appreciate some annotation. It looks like his backup laptop is an eeePC (a fine choice indeed), but I’m curious about what his primary one is. I can’t tell what his cameras are, either; the logo kind of looks like Canon, but again, I find it hard to be sure. I’m glad to see that he packed a GoPro (also the official choice of the Park City Snowmamas). And I had to look up “Bgan” and “Thuraya“.
But I still think this is pretty interesting, as is “A Glimpse Inside the Camera Bag of a Newspaper Feature Photographer“. More like these, please.
(Hattip: his Jim-ness on the Twitter for the initial link, and PetaPixel for the ones after that.)
(And of course, the most important thing about photography, war or otherwise, is: have a camera with you. I was so wrapped up in getting Christmas presents together on Saturday that I completely forgot to bring my camera gear, which ticked me off. I ended up having to resort to the Evo camera for photo purposes. Granted, between my sister and mother it wasn’t like we didn’t have multi-camera capability, including the ability to deploy a digital SLR if we needed it, but I was still ticked at myself.)
Administrative note.
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011I’m taking this entire week off of work, and using the time either to do stuff I’ve been wanting to do, hang out with family, or both. (If the weather holds up, we may try for a range trip this week.)
In the meantime, blogging is sort of on the back burner. There will be a TMQ Watch this week, but it may not go up until later this evening.
Side note: Apparently, I have been designated the “coolest uncle ever” on Facebook (I am unable to verify this for myself, since I don’t do Facebook) because I got this one:
one of these:
for Christmas. (At least, I think it was one of those: it was an H&K folder that McBride’s had on sale, cheap, but I didn’t make a note of the exact model. I know it was one that had the tanto point. If he still has the box, I’ll get the exact model later.)
Things that say “Christmas” (part 1 of an ongoing series).
Monday, December 26th, 2011
Lord of the Rings PEZ dispensers
More Christmas related stuff later, maybe.