Robot Dreams

Well, BoostCon07 is over. And I have even less time available than before. Between starting new jobs, continuing some old ones, trying to start up new C++ library ideas, and trying to make arrangements to attend a C++ comity meeting, it's been a very busy week. But one of my ways of relaxing is with pictures so here are two equally busy occupants of Earth. First, from the rest stop on the way to Aspen, two insects getting busy with procreation. And following it, one of the abundant birds in Evanston. The birds are a challenge my mother proposed to try and capture some of the multitude of birds that inhabit Evanston's numerous trees.

And if you are starving for more pictures of BoostCon07, I also uploaded a bunch more. But this time to the BoostCon gallery.

OK, this post is a bit late since it's now day N+2, but I had some catching up to do before having enough free time to post pictures. Overall the conference was a success, or at least the attendees where happy. Putting Erin on the spot again... Many thanks go to her for putting up with a bunch of unruly programmers while managing to keep the C8H10N4O2 flowing.

Here we are a day before the end of BoostCon07, and I finally have time to post new pictures. It's been a busy and exciting few days. This has got to be the most talking I've done ever. What better way to start, than with the entrance to the Flug Forum building:

Tomorrow will be a long day with some morning sessions, lunch, the drive to Denver, and on to the flight to Chicago. Enjoy the small sampling of the pictures, and see you all on the Boost lists.

I made it to Aspen, in one piece, but very tired after a car, plane, train, bus, and car trip. Along the way I took some pictures (on the flip side). Got to meet some people I've annoyed for years now on the Boost list, but only know virtually... Joel, Beman, Victor, Harmut, and Doug. And what better way to introduce the conference than with a picture. This one is during the evening drinks get together:

That would Joel de Guzman. The rest...

Needless to say, there are many doors in Evanston. Here are two more from todays walking about.

Those two are from the same street I lived on now for about a decade. Most of the houses in this street fall into one of the historical districts of Evanston. Which means that you see houses that have been around since the founding of the city. And in some cases, have only been sold once! I'm still getting accustomed to the camera, which you can see as a flash artifact above. As I was using it for fill illumination as it's been a somewhat overcast day, and foggy morning, around here close to Lake Michigan.

Once upon a time, I took a trip to Costa Rica... And I intend to go back, solely for the purpose of taking pictures of home doors. As it turns out, because of their abundance of wood, it is a tradition to build intricately carved doors for your home there. And I saw, what so far is, the most beautiful door art. But while I wait for that return trip, I can content myself with the door art in Evanston.

Another aspect of Evanston, is the high church to person ratio in the city. Grant you, it's not as high as that of Spain. But I'm guessing that one could fit Evanston's population inside the churches, at once. Here's a view into the courtyard of the church on my block.

And if you didn't already notice, Evanston has some amazing architecture. So I have plenty of samples to show, and hence expect to see many more of Evanston's door, entries, buildings, churches, parks, etc. in the future.

Carrying my new camera around all the time, it's clipped to my belt now, you start noticing all kinds of stuff you want to take a picture of. It's been a while since I had that view of the world, last being during college while taking the photo classes. So I'm in the strange situation of having to restrain myself from taking too many pictures, as otherwise I would spend all my time posting them. Time I can't spare since I have a bunch of work to do. So for today I have two different perspectives. My usual lunch schedule is to do a working meeting, and I eat lunch and talk about work. The usual lunch location is Bagel Art. They have a running child art wall for the kids that frequent the place. It's always fun trying to understand that lost perspective of being that young:

The Chicagoland area is currently in it's Spring peak. Which for Evanston, which prides itself in an abundance of trees, means there are many flowers, birds, and small mammals. There is a large variety of trees here, but I found one that I found rather strange:

So, what's strange? Take a close look at the scale of that plant. At the bottom right is one of the many birds, which makes that tree, about 2.5 feet tall. All I can think of is "open ground Bonsai tree."

Another year goes by, and my nephew is one year older. Today I went to Dante's birthday party. It wasn't a big party like the early years, but there was a pinata (sorry no pictures of that one). The really important parts of any birthday party where there, friends, presents, and food. Speaking of which here are two of those important items:

As to the order of importance of those two, that is a constant battle!

Being the photo-traditionalist I am, I've resisted buying a digital camera for a long time. But, there are situations when my film SLR just isn't convenient enough. So a few days ago I got new compact digital camera. Yea I know, going from a totally old-style manual SLR, to a totally automatic compact digital is a drastic move. But I wanted something very convenient seeing as I needed something I can carry everywhere. I did have to make some compromises, the biggest being that the "manual" mode the new camera has is not really manual. Which means I'll be spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to convince the camera to focus correctly. Yesterday in my usual walking about in Evanston I took a few pictures...

The camera that took those is a FujiFilm FinePix F31fd. It's one of the best compact cameras around, in that it's SuperCCD sensor does a very good job of capturing detail at a wide range of ISOs. That wide range of ISOs is the one aspect I didn't want to give up from my SLR accustomed picture taking.