Captain Of His Craft

The evening of July 3, I went on my first kayak outing, up and down the Willamette in a loop spanning the Ross Island and Steel Bridges. We paddled past the Waterfront Blues Festival -- this is a shot of some of the boats that had anchored near the lawn to hear the show. I specifically wanted to catch that guy leaning on the railing. The wide angle makes him look farther away than he seemed to me at the time.

Third shot in a series. I loved this wide and low-to-the-water perspective I got.

Taken with my fabulous
plastic wide-angle camera,
the Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim
on yer basic Fuji 200.

Sax @ the Red + Black

Thursday night we went to see an old friend from college play at the Red and Black Cafe on SE Division. He was in town from the Chicago area. He plays progressive improvisational and composed music, with a mix of electronic effects and accompaniment. It was great. Too bad not many people got to hear him. Not everyone is going to appreciate his work, but I know there's plenty of audience out there for him, especially in a place like Portland.

I brought two cameras with me that evening, and two rolls of film. This one taken with my rangefinder, the Minolta Hi-Matic 7SII, on basic Fuji 200 with a bounced flash.

Walk to Fabric World (...what's left of it)

on North Lombard St., Portland, OR
with my wide-angle (22mm) plastic camera
the Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim ~

I was walking around this 'landmark corner,' looking for interesting perspectives on the scene. The thing I liked about this shot was the way the wide-angle incorporated the crosswalk signal and filled that sky-space over the building at a complementary angle. I found the image, then I waited another minute for the lights to cycle, so it would say 'walk' when I tripped the shutter.

I still get nostalgic over that old-style crosswalk signal, the ones before they were all converted to the open-hand/walking-man signals.

Portland Waterfront Blues

Portland Waterfront Blues, originally uploaded by Whateverthing.

Similar to this shot, but different.
(This one favors the sky, as the other one favors the water.)

The evening of July 3, I went on my first kayak outing, up and down the Willamette in a loop spanning the Ross Island and Steel Bridges. We paddled past the Waterfront Blues Festival, which had attracted a good sized water-based audience besides the folks on the lawn. The sun was starting to dip below the skyline. I stopped paddling when the brightest part of the sky was behind the KOIN Tower to catch a couple shots.

Bigger is Better...

Taken with my fabulous
plastic wide-angle camera,
the Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim
on yer basic Fuji 200.

Garden Helix [Zucchini Flower Bud]

Garden Helix [Zucchini Flower Bud], originally uploaded by Whateverthing.

As seen in the vegetable garden earlier this summer (June 21). Nowadays, the plants are putting out the zucchini faster than we can eat it.

Not your typical flower glamor-shot. That's why I like it.

Blues on the Water

Blues on the Water

The evening of July 3, I went on my first kayak outing, up and down the Willamette in a loop spanning the Ross Island and Steel Bridges. We paddled past the Waterfront Blues Festival, which had attracted a good sized water-based audience besides the folks on the lawn. The sun was starting to dip below the skyline.

Bigger is Better...

Taken with my fabulous
plastic wide-angle camera,
the Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim
on yer basic Fuji 200.

Remembering Things Forgotten

Post Office Lobby, originally uploaded by Whateverthing.

I was just listening to the beginning of This American Life. The man speaking talked about a girl being pregnant and giving birth, when I suddenly remembered a dream I was having last night....

I dreamt I was pregnant, and knew I was full term and would give birth very soon. I remember now that I felt the baby moving inside me.

An important note: I am a man. In real life, and in my dream.

I remember being very concerned about how this baby would be born, the actual mechanics of leaving my body. I remember now thinking that a C-section was plan B, and that for some reason we, the doctor and I, planned to see first how a natural delivery might go.

The strangest part of the dream to me now is that I had totally forgotten about it until I heard someone talk about pregnancy on the program. -=-

Electric Octopus, Ultra Wide

Electric Octopus, Ultra Wide, originally uploaded by Whateverthing.

with my wide-angle toy camera (22mm)
the Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim

Taken in the same session with this digital camera version

I also took a few on B+W film with my Minolta rangefinder that I may post later.

An E-Card from "VIRUS"

I think I've been attacked by a greeting card. Well, it claimed to be a greeting card.

I received an email with the subject: "You've received an ecard from a Partner!" That sounded nice -- who wouldn't want an e-card from a Partner? So I clicked into that message.

Inside it says, "Hi. Partner has sent you an ecard." Then there's a bunch of explanation about how to visit the card, and about how awesome it will be. There is a link to click, a URL that will take me to my awesome e-card from a Partner. I'm getting excited already!

At the bottom it is signed:
"Postmaster,
dgreetings.com"

The URL however does not say dgreetings.com. It gives a hexadecimal address. That's a little fishy, no? Maybe. Well, I clicked the link. And then I had second thoughts. Another browser window had already launched, so I clicked the Stop-Loading button. I decided to visit dgreetings.com directly, rather than the URL they provided.

It turns out dgreetings.com looks like a real e-card site, and it appears to operate in India. I didn't spend a lot of time there. I decided to go ahead and click the link in the email. I couldn't wait to see how much a Partner appreciates me.

It loaded a page that looked like a redirect message. It said something like (and I'm trying to remember without clicking the link again), "We are testing a new browser function. If you do not see your card, click THIS LINK." That's where I stopped cold. Because the link directed to that hexadecimal domain, slash, an executable. I think it was "ecard.exe".

I'm not going to click that.

Has anyone else seen this yet? Just before writing this I Googled "dgreetings partner" and didn't find anything relevant to a known email virus/trojan/worm. So I thought I would put some information up and see if it means anything to anyone else.
-=-