Testing Photos

It's been awhile since I've checked in for real here. We had black belt testing last month, which produced some photos you can see by following the link.

I didn't take all of the photos (I'm in several of them), but I did the post-processing work. The second one in the album I took, and I think it's probably the best of the lot that I had; the overall effect was achieved by applying an unsharp mask and desaturating the image. J took the rest of the pictures of the breaking, and W the ones of the next day; J's sense of composition is better than mine—I really didn't have to crop his photos so much. All of them were taken with the 50mm prime, which is why some of them are out of focus.

It was a generally good test—no real slackers, which made me happy, and the technical aptitude was definitely better in some respects than other tests. We have some problem areas, but that is not uncommon, and many of the students were excellent. I had a most enjoyable time waking them up at 3 AM, though I was subjected to the same PT they were for the half-hour or so that we worked out. It was a long night, but I was able to spend it in the car, which I much appreciated (with pillows and a blanket!).

I was able to use the OLPC for some reading. The external keyboard I bought warped because of how hot it got in my car. That's a little awkward, but it still works, so I won't replace it. Despite its relative instability.

Other than that, not much has been happening. I've recently turned in a 150-hour project that kept me late at work for awhile. I'm sure that I'll have more work to do on it when they get around to providing feedback.

I had some work done on the car, and more is forthcoming. The housing search is relatively slow, mainly due to work and, at least for the moment, blogging. This is one of the few evenings I've had some spare time lately.

We are going to B'more for the brother's birthday, which should be fun. I got him a lump of coal and some dog turds.