On August 3rd at 9:30pm, after a long and arduous journey, our twins Connor (left) and Maya (right) were delivered at the Baptist hospital of Miami.
The three weeks since then (and it only seems like this all happened a couple of days ago) have redefined how much sleep you really need to survive, although recently it’s pretty obvious I am ‘broken’ and find myself walking around in circles due to constantly switching between all the tasks I need to get done. Although we’re extremely exhausted, we’re also overjoyed and are so unbelievably happy. The fact that Maya and Connor are our children is slowly starting to sink in – for a while it felt like we were renting them. They are both very, very distinct in their movements, the sounds they make, the way they feed, and right now it’s hard to see how they could be brother and sister. However, Maya definitely has some of Adriana’s traits and Connor… well, his head size reflects mine that is for sure.
A flickr set of the initial photos from the hospital is up on Flickr here.
A flickr set from the in-house hospital photographer has also been uploaded here.
After spending a month in China here is the loot that Adriana and I acquired. It includes things made of silk, many types of tea and ways to drink it, obligatory panda stuff, and ingredients for cooking Sichuan food. All good.
While over in Italy for our Honeymoon back in 2010, I used my trusty G1 for all our navigation. Â Two years later, I finally got around to uploading the GPS tracks into Google Maps. Â I had to use a trick to get the map into one page (typically, Google Maps tends to split the tracks over several pages, so you don’t see the whole view), but phew, I finally did it.
There is a straight line going from Venice to Bologna. Â At this point, I switched off guidance and ‘did it live’.
There are a few times I was literally going around in circles. Â You’d have to zoom in to see it, but for example the Cinqueterre area has a few loops where we couldn’t figure out where the exit was (on the map, this is just a little to the South-East of Genoa). Â I swear it was just crazy confusing. Â I also did a lap or two around the hill our accommodation was on in Florence.
The top speed I reached in our rental, a Fiat Punto, was 119 km/h.  That’s pretty tame by my morning commute standards, and I’m actually a bit disappointed that’s the fastest I drove in Italy… given it’s Italy (drivers seemed to be in some sort of race I didn’t know about).  The coolest thing about the driving over there  – only people going fast were in the fast lanes.  Florida – you suck at driving.
I recently participated on a photo scavenger hunt on Google+ arranged by the awesome Chrysta Rae. Â The idea behind the hunt is that you have about a month to take photos of ten different subjects. Â The use of Photoshop/Lightroom is encouraged, although I didn’t explore heavy editing that much. Â Â You cannot use photos you’ve previously taken – they have to be taken during that month. Â At the end of the month, Chrysta compiles the photos from everyone (500 people are in the group, with about two-thirds of that participating), Â and the photos are judged (Chrysta is not one of the judges, of course).
I ended up taking six photos, and of those, the two below are the only ones of mine that I really liked.
The above photo, “balloon”, is of a water-filled balloon popping. Â Here is a dump of the text I wrote alongside this photo in the hunt: shot with my Nikon D90 on a tripod, wired remote control, remote flash on another tripod, and my favourite lens – a 50mm prime. Â I situated the flash to the right of the shot. Â I was standing behind the flash, holding a long stick with a pin in one hand and the remote in the other. I tied the balloons to a plant hanger and situated the flash and camera to focus on the bottom of the balloon. Â Then it was just timing… and a whole pack of balloons and wet feet. Â I was really aiming to retain the shape of the balloon – it’s amazing how many completely-not-a-balloon shapes came out. Â The remains of the balloon had flown outside of the shot, as I gave the water a little time to settle and drop down before the shot was taken. Â You don’t see the stick-and-pin (or my hand) I used to pop the balloon as they’re behind and above, and also outside the flash focus. Â I processed the shot in Lightroom – Â mainly just sharpness and contrast adjustments, with a bit of oomph to the black levels.
This second photo, “smoke”, was of Adriana blowing smoke with flash situated behind and to the left of her. Â I made minor adjustments to black levels and a graduated exposure filter was used to even out the brightness levels (which originally decreased from bottom left to top right).
