It’s after six o’clock in the morning and I only now — !! — have had a moment to upload a single photo out of the hundreds I shot yesterday in Hamilton, from both the sky and ground. It was blazing hot yesterday (30+ degrees C) and I baked myself pink because I was outside for most of it. But the (short-notice) flight in the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum’s Beech 18 Expeditor was NOTHING SHORT OF THRILLING! I even shot some video, but that’s going to have to wait to be edited.

I’m hosting a brunch at my place in a few hours, so I’d better get some kip so I can prepare the food and hold a conversation for more than five seconds (and make sense!).

I’ve spoken about the dialect of northeast Pennsylvania before, but now I’ve got examples! I heard about this YouTube video when I was driving to Philadelphia last weekend and listening to the radio station David and I always tuned into, besides NPR. The DJ mentioned that his friend made this video poking fun of the local dialect, and I just now remembered it and went digging for it on YouTube.

You probably won’t find it amusing unless you’ve heard it from the natives, but I can tell you it is SO SO SO true. (Helma, back me up here! You say “dooper”!) David slipped into this dialect now and again, but never for very long since he actually liked words… and not mashed up word combos. He was pretty good with accents: Yiddish (his grandmother spoke Yiddish), Boston, New York City, even Long Island (his cousins lived there), but he never failed to crack me up with the Heynabonics.

This old post has been attracting unsolicited attention for several years, but even moreso this year, for some reason.

If you Google “Azalea Trail Maids”, guess what shows up?

March 22, 2005: Azalea Trail Maids (gailatlarge.com)
March 22, 2005: Azalea Trail Maids (gailontheweb.blogspot.com)

(I imported all the blogspot posts to my current domain at the end of 2005, but I imported the comments directly into Wordpress and closed down my Haloscan account, which is why the blogspot site has no comments.)

The post was not written in a mean-spirited way, but it sure got a bunch of Southerners in a huff.

I’ve never been to Mobile, Alabama, the photo is Gene’s. I should make a trip south, if only to document these dresses up close. Seems part of the look of uniformity is that all the detail work is completely lost in the monochrome pastel. The complete lack of contrast washes out any uniqueness in textures. None of this is the girls’ choice, however, which is why they shouldn’t take my critique of the dress to heart. It is, after all, a costume.

Aviation and cancer-related topics are still my highest Google rankings, but crazily enough, the Azalea Trail Maid post is making serious gains. If the Trail Maid website (what’s with the TECHNO music?) had more information and were maintained properly, I don’t think I’d be getting as many views and comments. The internet sure is a funny place…

Sticker on the cable bag of my Maxtor external firewire drive, purchased over the weekend.

I’m currently on my third external firewire drive. The first two are 250GBs, this one is 500GBs. Someone suggested that I get a 1TB (terabyte) drive, but I’m willing to wait — prices will always decrease for storage while capacity increases.

I have several archiving methods which include making a backup of a memory card download direct to DVD even before I cull any dud photos or do any editing. That DVD of full unedited originals gets filed chronologically.

I shoot on average 1,000 photos or more per month, so I burn a backup of about a month’s worth of shooting and editing and file that, too. Additionally, I archive each quarter of a year’s worth of photo libraries (2008 Q1, Q2, etc.) over to an external drive, separate from any other archiving.

I only keep three months (one quarter) of photos on my G4 PowerBook at any one time because it travels quite a bit and it only has an 80GB hard drive. All my email is stored on other servers (.Mac, gmail, the office, etc.), and my documents, calendars, address book, and bookmarks are synched with iDisk to Apple’s servers. I can retrieve them using any browser and can access most things from my iPod Touch.

Basically, if my PowerBook G4 ever fails, the only things I lose are the applications, which are no big deal. The only area I haven’t covered is if my house collapses or explodes because I need to move either the DVDs or an external drive with full backup off-site.

Are you a big archivist? Or are you willing to take a technological gamble? It’s time for a poll!

Note the cat nail trimmer off to the right. It’s the only thing saving the armchair from total destruction.

Beano’s giving me his very best “MUST you trim my nails?” look.

As you can see, airline blankets are what’s keeping the fur off the bed. The colourful one on the left is Air Transat. Time to throw those hairy things in the wash, something I have to do it every few days.

I doubt there is another city of comparable size in the U.S. as portrait-friendly as Philadelphia. People actually LIKE having their photo taken there.

These guys spotted me in the alley near the Magic Gardens and asked me to take their picture. I ran out of Moo mini-cards, so I had to just tell them the name of my website. We’ll see if they remember.

Continue reading ‘Philadelphia, The Photo-Friendly City’

Last night I made a brief visit to the weekly Drummers In Exile gathering to take some fire poi shots. As it does on alternate Tuesdays, this week it took place at Trinity-Bellwoods Park. I didn’t really go for the drumming or dancing, which is difficult to shoot, anyway, but only because I love how fire-juggling looks in darkness.

[thumbnails] [slideshow] or click to view each in the Pictobrowser below: