In an inspired move by our friends at the Federal Government, in particular the Library of Congress, has created The Commons on Flickr, billing it as "Your opportunity to contribute to describing the world's public photo collections."

The Library of Congress section of the commons has about 3,100 images in it now and is being used as a pilot program to decide the fate of this initiative. This isn't the first time they have had digital images available online, in fact they have had they're own library posted for sometime and it contains hundreds of thousands of images if not millions. From here you can order prints as well.

They have a pretty limited scope of photos available on Flickr right now, but I would expect it to grow. The categories posted now are The 1930s - 1940s in color and News in the 1910s. Some of the photos from around the war era are quite amusing in their very "poster-like" poses and coloring. I can very plainly see where a lot of the images from the various war posters originated from, very Rosie the Riveter.

In general this seems pretty remarkable to me simply because of how slowly the government seems to fully adopt many of the digital trends, or technological advancements. It wasn't to long ago that the vast majority of the .gov websites were simply lame. I remember back a few years when I was in constant contact with the VA for some "issues", and man did their website blow massive military-esque chunks. It's a lot better now, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's state-of-the-art. This move by the Library of Congress is, and I support it; it's a great idea.

Tonight in honor of Zippo being in business for 75 years, there was a parade and fireworks show right through downtown Bradford. Both shows were very well down (and I'm biased), but just ask Donovan, he had a great time and I think Brent made a new friend tonight - I know Peggy did with the blinky pen thing she gave him. I guess that will learn Dylan for being a butt, he didn't get to go.

Even with the impending doom of storm clouds and lightening looming and raining on Donovan's parade, it was still a good time.

Interestingly enough too, Congressman Peterson made a statement on the floor of Congress today about Zippo's 75th year in business, and its dedication to being made in the USA.

As far as my m4d sk1llz as a fireworks photographer tonight, I blew out my arse. I only captured two or three shots that are even usable, all the other are totally out of focus. Oh well, good thing i was doing it for the heck of it. It could have been due to the jag-offs up the hill thinkin' it was 4:20. A' holes - keep your shite to yourselves, or at least away from my kid. I was distracted by Donovan and the fact that there was some lightening over the hill,and it was all I could do to convince him we were fine, and that we could stay.

It was a good show though, and a nice end to a very hectic week.

First I have to send out some love to me Ma - thanks for the weekend getaway! You're awesome!

If you have never heard of this place, use The Google. And if you have, and have never been? Go! Now. Drop your Ho Hos, put down the remote and go. This has to be one of the best little excursion destinations in the Eastern States. Granted my ability to identify great spots for hiking and photography are slightly limited by my lack of extensive travel in this region; but so far this place is on the top of my very short list.

We dashed out of Bradford late on Thursday afternoon and made it all the way to Kent Ohio before calling it for the night at a Holiday Inn Express. This was nice new place, that seemed basically empty - so we got the King bed and enjoyed a relaxing evening after about 4 hours of driving and eating at a really strange bar/tavern that turned out to be an Italian eatery. It looked like it used to be an old grain warehouse or something equally as industrial, and I was not expecting to get Italian food, nor was I expecting to get enough to feed a small Bovine.

Too Many places to stop

We drifted through Lancaster Ohio, and stayed there for lunch on Friday. What a great little town, and the Sandwich shop where we ate was excellent. It's a little chain called WG Grinders. Lancaster has a great feel to the main street, and surrounding areas - it would be a cool little town to live in. Ohio University has a sizeable campus there as well. Hell, even the Sheriff building was of classic architecture and had character

We also wandered a bit through Logan and Nelsonville. Logan is pretty much the stopping point for folks visiting Hocking Hills, and Nelsonville is just a wee bit further South on 33 and is the home of Rocky Boots. The Rocky Boot outlet and museum is pretty nice, has a cafe built into it and a dump truck full of boots. The only thing I would steer clear of in Nelsonville is the camera store. Not much to see here folks - move-a-long.

I am really becoming fond of the right coast in that it is easy to find character (and in some cases characters) within the towns and villages dotting the states. This side of the country is so much older than the left coast - I find the little towns far more engaging and a whole lot less... post-modern po-dunk.

The main attraction

Hocking Hills is absolutely gorgeous. It is the first place that I have found since we moved here that reminded me of home. Home; I mean the Columbia River Gorge and Oregon. Like the title says - "Rocks & Water - What's not to like?"

That's what you get here. A river. lots of streams and more rocks than you can shale a tripod at. Naturally, we show up in the middle of the longest dry spell that has hit the area in half a decade, so there is basically no running water through any of the cuts, canyons and draws - but it was breath taking just the same. Had it not been quite so hot - I probably would have filled up all 8 gb of storage media I brought along for the Nikon. As it was I shot in the neighborhood of 120 images, and shot a roll with my medium format camera too. Although Litsa became sherpa-wife with that since it was acting strange, and I didn't want to run the risk of shooting 5 rolls of blank film at 1 minute exposures.

We didn't get to all of the places, and we didn't even scratch the surface of the sites we made it to. We went to Rock House, Cantwell Cliffs, Ash Cave, and Old Mans Cave. My favorite part of Cantwell Cliffs was the Fat Woman's Squeeze. It is aptly named, the way is narrow and tight. One of the things these all have in common; stairs. lots of stairs. Well, that and big-arse CLIFF AREA WARNING signs. In my opinion, not really a place for small children, especially if you would like to them to be around to become large children. Out of the places we visited, Rock House was my favorite, with Old Man's Cave a close second. had there been vast amounts of water flowing, the cave would have trashed Rock House two times over.

We stayed in a cabin while we were there, and it was a nice little place too. Heart of the Country Cabins, if you are so inclined. It had a hot tub too - which went quite nicely with the little sheep dog that greeted us by running amok in his fence when we came and went.

It was a great little weekend getaway, and I will be going back.

Ha! I almost forget. On the way back we stopped off at the mecca of Automobile stores - Summit Racing, just outside Kent in Tallmadge Ohio. This place is huuuggee! There were a couple of hot rods inside, as well as a cruise in going on outside. The only thing I bought was a t-shirt, since I couldn't think of anything I needed for the Bronco. It's a cool place, and pretty sweet that it's not that far away either - so the next time I go to Hocking Hills, I will be making my list so I have stuff to buy while I'm there.

I was stopped by a co-worker today, Donny asking me about a Photoshop tool - the lasso. What he was wondering if there was a way to undo a stop in the selection path when holding the <alt> key to make a straight line selection. I hadn't ever heard of one and I have been working in Photoshop a while now. The discussion then moved to the polygonal selection tool. You know, the one that isn't quite the pen tool but a close variation.

As it turns out there is a way to undo the previous selection points in the polygonal path, just hit the <delete> key once for every point you wish to regress. Good find Donny! This is a useful tip - although I prefer the pen tool and creating selections with paths over the lasso, magic wand, etc... I can immediately think of a couple of times where I could have used this to make my life a bit easier.

Photoshop CS3

I have my copy of CS3 studio on order, and hopefully will receive it soon - as I am very impatient. I am very excited about the new features within the Adobe Web Suite, especially the new interactions between Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash. It has been a long time coming for Flash to be able to import PSD files, and have native support for copying and pasting between these applications.

It has been a long time coming for these features, I can't count the number of times I would liked to been able to copy directly from Photoshop and not lose something in the translation - Illustrator was far worse.

Being able to import PSDs (into Flash) while preserving the layers is huge! Which is precisely why I am totally amped about getting it.....

I guess it was just a matter of time until I found a good use for some of the goony toys that the kids get from Grandma.... This is a result of the whole fam-damnily playing with these two LED spinning, noise makers the kids got from "Santa" this year. It's 4  exposures layered up to make this image.

These things are actually pretty cool, and I came up with the idea for this as soon as I saw it in action. The boys had so much fun the first time with the glow sticks and the flashlights, that this seemed an easy win.

I think for the next one, I will set them loose in the back yard with the Flashlights and have them running around like crazies, since they do it so well.

More fodder for flickr too.....

I finally sold enough stuff on eBay to allow me to get a Digital SLR, and at the prompting (and quite excellent advice, I must say) of a friend at Pro Photo Supply in Portland, this is what I shelled out all my duckettes for.

Nikon D80

It's bold and big - just like the text. It acts just like the Nikon 35mm SLR we have had for almost a decade now, and the resolution is quite insane. With a 10 million pixel image size, this thing is capable of picking up a thumb print on a Propel bottle - and I have the picture top prove it. Well, had... I promptly deleted it, because.... well, who cares? It's not going to win any awards - just me goofin' around.

I can't wait to really get my teeth wet with this hot babe. I ditched the Coolpix 8700, and someone got a really good deal too. Man I hate digital things, but I love them so. Those love/hate relations rarely work out to be in my favor - but that ain't stoppin' me: now way, no how!

Keep an eye out on Flickr for some shots from my new camera, and be sure to make not that I will come back from Puerto Rico with many images with from the thing above.

Well, as long as I can get by the gaggle of Stikfas Ninjas that are guarding it.