Carlos's Photo Blog

One of the thing I love about where I live right now is that we can just drive a few mins and we can walk down some beautiful trails. You could walk all the way to Philly if you wanted to. I love the outdoors and I wish I could be out more often. A couple of weekends ago, the PA winter was quite mild so we decided to go for a walk. I had passed this section of trails a million times. My wife works in Oaks and we go out that way a lot. We had been to Valley Forge and walked around there and we have been to some state parks and I have seen some really nice trails. This trail is not spectacular, but it is nice enough.

I like this picture because you can see how busy the expressway is, but it does not matter to the folks riding their bikes or walking along the trail. We were walking just a few feet from cars that were zooming by at about 70mph. That is how fast I sometimes go along that stretch of road.

I would not call this a bush, but there were 2 birds in it. The other one was trying to hide behind a branch so I ignored him. I do not like shy birds!

It was a nice walk. Towards the end it began to cool down. Pauline tried out her new scooter. The rest of us just walked.

Carlos

Just a raw shot of the fireworks in King of Prussia. This was the 4th of July fireworks show in 2011. I attempted to d… I am not sure what I was attempting to say just now. I started on this post and then I am sure I had to do something else and forgot what I was going to say. For you young people out there, this will happen to you some day. You will be writing something, get distracted, then come back a day or 2 later and not remember what you wanted to say.

Carlos

At least I am posting my second post in 2012 in the same month as the first. In solidarity with other freedom of the internet nerds I will also black out this post. I think we really need to keep an eye on our politicians and legislators. We might think things are small and meaningless, but remember that is how you move a mountain, one shovel at a time!

Carlos

Ok here is my attempt at a New Year’s resolution. Of course I am going to try to exercise more, and be nicer, and work harder. I do not even consider those resolutions. I am going to make a resolution to post more picture to my blog. I will take more new photos and try to rejuvenate my creative bone. Or is it a gland? Whatever it is, I am going to try to tap it more this year. I will pull out some stuff from the archives, but either way I am going to post more to this blog. I will start with this shot that I took from the 21st floor of the Hyatt at Penn’s Landing. I photographed a wedding there on New Year’s Eve. It was fun and the bride and groom were very nice and easy going. So Happy New Year’s to everyone and may 2012 bring you everything you need and want.

Carlos

I took the family back to Texas for Thanksgiving. It had been a while since we had been down. Here are some pics from that trip.

I took this at the Ace Hardware in Somerset. I went to play some tennis with my wife’s uncle, but he had no balls. I mean he had no tennis balls. It was fun. Where else but in a small town will you find tennis balls in a hardware store? I do not think they have them at Lowes! I guess the thing I miss most about Texas are the small towns. There is just so much space.

Maybe I should rearrange these, but I wont. This is actually from the shuttle ride to the Philly airport. I normally use Wally park when I travel either for business or for pleasure. It is nice to just relax a little before you have to drive home. The drivers are always nice and they are pretty quick. It is more expensive than the economy lot, but I have tried that and I do not mind paying more!

No this is not Thanksgiving dinner, this is just some BBQ from Bill Miller’s BBQ. Basically a fast food BBQ place. My sister in law works there and my sister worked there for like a day! She could not cut the mustard and she quit. The food is good. They have these cheapo brownies that are not really very good, but we all love them. The best thing I guess is that when you eat there they have all you can eat pickles, onions, bread, sour cream, and butter. You know the stuff you need to accessorize your BBQ.

Here is a shot of my backyard. I do miss my backyard. I did not do much this time I was down. We burned some of the fallen branches and I had to do some minor repairs, but it was nice to be out there. I wanted to cut some trees up, but I was just being lazy. I did not get a chance to hunt, but I left all my firearms at home anyway. I did get to hang out with some friends, but not everyone. Remember if anyone is ever in Philly, give me a call.

This was the best picture I took while I was down there. Not because it is a good pic, but the story behind this picture. I have no idea who this guy is that I took a picture with. We had gone out to celebrate my wife and her friends birthday. We were staying down town that night so I let loose and drank way more than I should have. I do remember almost everything. I do remember that at some point in the night this guy and his friends bought me a beer. They said it was because I looked so much like one of their relatives, a brother, cousin or something. So I went over to talk to them. They bought me a beer right. The least I could do was chat with them for a bit. That night was fun. Thanks to our compadres who made it special.

So tonight is my first night in NYC. I walked around for a bit looking for something to eat. I just stopped and got a hot dog. I know it is terrible, but oh well. I had been wanting to post some of the shots I took with the Droid Bionic. The best thing I like about it, is using it as a 4g hotspot. I am using it right now while blogging this. The hotel wifi sucks, I was getting under 1 mbps. I guess they are throttling. On the droid, I am getting +2-4mbps. The hardware is not bad. It does feel slightly plastic, but it takes a while before it gets too slow. The interface has some cool features and the voice control is nifty. Voice control still has some maturing to do on any platform or device. I like Siri on my 4S, but it is still not what you think when you think about doing everything with your voice.

So here are some photos that I took with the Droid Bionic. I am not gonna pull any punches and just say that the camera sucks. The only saving grace is the panorama feature. The field of view is too narrow, the colors are just way off. The flash makes the pictures too glarey. So I will return this to verizon and say thanks for letting me test it. I would recommended it for some one that wants an android device. It is one of the nicer devices I have tested.

The flickr embed is not working right now I will fix it later…

The video quality is ok, but the colors just change for no reason in particular. Here is a video I took of my son at his baseball game. See for yourself.

Carlos

I am really starting to love this swype feature!

Saw this on the way back from lunch! Glad I did not have to take the train anywhere today…

Yes, I did upgrade my iPhone to the new one. I think the camera alone made it worth it. I will let you all be the judge of that. Here are a few shots I took. I posted some on instagram. Check those out as well. I have also uploaded some pics from the new Droid Bionic. It is a nice phone.

I will upload some more to Flickr so you can compare.

Carlos

Last week I was just exploring Google maps like I sometimes do. I love street view! I get to take a mini vacation without having to leave me seat. So I found this boat in the middle of Bitter Lake, it is near the Suez Canal. I was interested to see how long the Suez Canal was. Just though it was interesting.

Also, when I checked my email this morning I noticed these 4 emails were grouped together. I keep my emails grouped by subject. The only problem is when some people (Kevin) send emails without subjects. That is why I have one section of 100s of emails with no subject and it always throws off my nice tidy inbox! I did not read the email since it was obviously a canned email that multiple marketers have used. Again, just though this was chuckle worthy.

So I hope everyone’s week starts off on the right side of the street. My drive in was not really bad in the grand scheme of things. It did take me over 30 mins to drive 4 miles, but better than 1.5 hours to drive 20 miles! Stay positive and do something nice for someone. I did not get a picture of this, but I held the door open for a lady as I was walking into my building. She said thank you and then said, “I like your shirt.” That was unexpected, but nice. I am not sure if she liked it because of the Master’s Logo on the front, or maybe she was just being nice in return. In any case, that was a nice thing and it put me in a good mood. I was already feeling pretty good and that just helped this Monday be that much less Monday-ish!