|
|
|
|
||||
| Previous Blog Entries: |
Main Index
|
|||||
|
11-27-2009 Blog #299 David |
Last night we went outside and made a few more attempts at drawing with light. It was cold, which seemed to curb our finesse and endurance; we got a few decent shots, however.
Light Art Flowers - 13 Second Exposure
Light Art People - 15 Second Exposure
Light Art Christmas Trees - 15 Second Exposure
We woke up to snow this morning; this girls made good use of the half inch that had accumulated and made the first snowman of the season.
first snowman
Hall-Wilsterman Thanksgiving - casual, but still great.
Hall-Wilsterman Silly Thanksgiving
Odd Things I've Learned on the Internet: Apparently there is an urban legend in South Korea that if you sleep in a closed room with an electric fan running, it can kill you. What's really amazing is that most people in Korea believe this and all fans have timers. The myth is perpetuated by the government and media. The government has issued warnings and has actually attributed many deaths to fan asphyxiation. If someone is found dead in a closed room, the police or paramedics note if there was a running fan. There are no "unexplained deaths" if a fan can be blamed. The media also hypes the idea much and perpetuates this urban legend. I've found online discussions about fan deaths and Koreans and second generation Koreans in the US confirm that this belief is widespread. While not all second generation Korean Americans fear fan death, they do report that their parents and older relatives firmly believe that a fan can either asphyxiate you or cause hypothermia. Wikipedia Fan Death Article
|
|||||
|
11-26-2009 Blog #298 David |
Last night I put translucent colored plastic over flashlight lenses and had the family "paint" with colored light. We had fun, learned much and hope to do more tonight.
Light Art Christmas Trees - 14 Second Exposure
Light Art Flowers - 10 Second Exposure
Tuesday was Grandparents' Day at IHM. Papa and Nana came to visit Svea and Brigitta in their classrooms and saw a little show. After the show they met their teachers and classmates in their classrooms and attended a prayer service.
Nana and Svea
Papa and Brigitta
Last weekend Joan took Svea and Brigitta to see Wicked along with Svea's Girl Scout troop. They reported that the play was fantastic; I wish I could have gone. Svea and Brigitta have been singing the songs from the musical ever since.
A few days ago the Goodyear Blimp flew over the house. This is not a rarity, but it was a rare chance for me to use the telephoto lens.
Goodyear Blimp
Last weekend I took pictures of the family to draw attention to the new ads in our website and photoblog. There are four pictures of each of us so we have a variety of pictures next to the Google AdSense ads on the photoblog pages and other high traffic pages. From what I've read, everyone can make money from blog/website ads. Will we make $2 or $200 a month (or more or less)? I have no clue. Many bloggers do earn more blogging via ads than I earn from my regular salary, however. A friend who is in the business explained that it is free money; take it or leave it. Last week was a huge week traffic wise for hallbuzz. We had 16,000 page views including a quarter million files totaling 30GB of bandwidth. Some bloggers make hundreds off of that kind of traffic. We likely won't see that kind of traffic again but I wish we would have had ads in place before last week. Google seems to love hallbuzz.com and we have dozens (or hundreds) of top 10 keyword image results. "Hall Family" or "The Hall Family" search terms now ranks us at number two out of about 80 to 90 million web results. I never thought we'd rank that high for such a common last name. I have no idea why the Googlebot and rankbot favor our little site so well. I've never bothered placing ads before because I didn't think they would look good and didn't think we'd make much off of them. Joan came up with the idea of posing us next to the ads, which I think makes them look much better and probably will make them more effective. I think the pictures also fit the fun spirit of our site/photoblog. So far my expectations of time spent on ads being hardly worth my effort have proved true; we are not making much. On the other hand, messing around with photography and webpages is what I do with much of my spare time anyway and the ad project is the only web/photo thing I've done that may earn us something over time. I am impressed at how Googlebot "reads" our pages and matches up keywords with the ads they choose to place on our pages. It's kind of fun actually.
Not a Parachuting Cat - College Humor Last week College Humor provided a hotlink to my "Not a Parachuting Cat" webpage giving it just over 10,000 hits in two days. I had no idea that the page was linked and getting hits until the surge was over. Quote from College Humor, "I don't care what he says, I'm starting to suspect that this website IS about a parachuting cat." College Humor Hotlink Page
IRS Tax Guide Illustrated with Ancient Pictures Papa is an accountant and still does a bit of tax work. On his desk today, I noticed an illustration on the cover of the 2008 guide that included an ancient computer with a two color monitor displaying only six lines of giant text. I think this baby is even sporting a 5 1/4 drive. I'm not sure what this says about the IRS, but I thought it was funny.
|
|||||
|
||||||
|
11-16-2009 Blog #297 David |
Mom and Dad's dog is famous!
When I was a kid, age eleven I think, I used to play a great trick on our Basset Hound. I'd tie string onto his collar, loop it around an interior wall section of our house and tie a hunk of meat on the other end about three feet in front of his nose. When he went forward, so did the meat because he was towing it. He would chase it for hours. At first he would just fly through the house, barking and lunging with much excitement. I'd laugh until my stomach hurt. After an hour he'd be pretty pooped but would diligently continue to trot after the snack. I tried it on our Golden Retriever once; he chased it about ten feet and then turned around and went the other way. He was a smart dog. I'm not sure how many times I did this with the Basset, but it was quite often. Being a latchkey kid, this was one of the safer ways I entertained myself. Often I was at risk of drowning, falling from great height, setting something big on fire, etc. The girls loved this story and were dying to try it on a dog. This summer in Alaska, Svea begged to "do the trick with Saydee". I gave her some instruction and we got her going. The kids loved it and so did Saydee. I filmed it, but couldn't keep up with sorting, editing and posting the 14,000 photos and video clips I shot on our visit. Yesterday Svea asked to see the clips and that sparked me to edit the footage. I uploaded the clip to this site and YouTube and also posted a link from reddit.com in the funny sub directory. By this morning it had climbed to the number one position on the main reddit page. In just under 24 hours it had moved to the second position on YouTube under Videos - All Categories - Popular. I think once it went past its 24 hour mark it dropped off the main page. At the time, it had 46,841 views. The view counter only updates every two or three hours. At this moment, just over a day old, it is at 56,081 views.
Original Higher Resolution Version (On hallbuzz.com)
YouTube Statistics for this Video (first 24 hours): Views 46,841 Comments: 142 Favourites: 299 Ratings: 317 Average Rating: 4.70
Honors for this video (33)
|
|||||
|
11-15-2009 Blog #296 Joan |
Svea and Brigitta's Girl Scout Troops camped at Camp Ledgewood this past weekend. The weather was absolutely beautiful and unseasonably warm with no rain. Svea's fourth grade troop stayed one night and Brigitta's second grade troop stayed two nights. Svea moved in with Brigitta's group for the second night. Since I had two girls present, I was asked if I wanted to be a helper. I slept with Brigitta's troop and served as volume moderator for eleven screaming Brownies. All girls wanted to sleep in the top bunk, but NOBODY wanted to use the outdoor "facilities". Given that there were no indoor options, the each girl learned to plug her nose, hold her breath and just go.
Happy campers around the fire. We cooked dinners tin foil, pizza in pie irons and ate s'mores at this campfire. Here both troops are dancing to a song they all learned in Kindergarten.
Svea's group eating breakfast.
Svea and Brigitta were the only ones to wear leaves in their hair for the group hike.
Fairy Houses made by the Brownies.
Everybody is tired around the last night campfire (except Brigitta)
|
|||||
|
||||||
|
11-15-2009 Blog #295 David |
Svea and Brigitta's Girl Scout Troops both went camping this weekend; Joan accompanied them as a chaperone. I realized that since Annika was born, this would be only the second time Joan, Svea and I have slept in different buildings and it was the first I've slept more than a few rooms away from Brigitta. I missed my girls. Annika and I, however, had quite a bit of daddy daughter time. We had been planning this weekend for the past month. On Friday we went for a 16 mile bike ride (Annika fell asleep) and then out to dinner at Hibachi Japan. We finished the evening by watching "Horton Hears a Who!". Yesterday we played several games and then went for a row around Mogadore Reservoir (Annika fell asleep). Papa joined us, making it extra memorable.
Last weekend I took the girls hiking while Joan volunteered for a GFS event. A few weeks ago I went to pick up Svea at this park after a Girl Scout hike. Afterward Svea and I rehiked some of the trails and I was blown away by the ledges. Virginia Kendall has quickly become one of my favorite places in Ohio.
|
|||||
|
||||||
|
11-1-2009 Blog #294 David & Joan |
Papa turned 90 on Wednesday. Not many of us live 90 years and even fewer have a healthy, happy life at that age. We are so blessed to have Papa, with his kindness, generosity, zest for life and hard work ethic. He is not only our inspiration, but our recipe for longevity. Our family celebration for such a monumental event was less than spectacular. His birthday was sandwiched in between a party at the German Club, trick-or-treat and parties at school. His gifts were few, but the real present was a family costume party two days after his birthday.
Papa's 90th Birthday Costume Party The link above will take you to Papa's 90th Birthday Costume Party page with 96 pictures and 3 movie/slideshow links.
Nana Busted Her Head Wide Open! In an unsuccessful attempt to "gain the spotlight" from Papa, Nana tripped over a misplaced stool on Thursday, and cut her forehead on a metal filing cabinet. EMS transported her to the hospital and after a CAT scan and at least twenty stitches, Nana returned home. In all fairness, Nana did capture our full attention on Thursday afternoon. She recovered quickly and even wore a costume at the party, although not the "Massive Headwound Harry Costume" from SNL, we thought she might choose.
Svea made a Harry Potteresk witches' broom with the intention of playing Quidditch. The girls are very much into Harry Potter; they have discovered that hitting a quaffle (ball) with a bat while sitting on a "flying" broom is much harder than it looks.
Also check out a movie of a giant dry ice bubble that we made: Big Dry Ice Bubble ~ 10-31-09 ~ WMV ~ 22 Seconds, 8 MB
Examples of bubbles filled with dry ice. Gloves have to be worn, not for the dry ice factor, but because oil on you skin will cause the bubbles to pop.
Annika is sitting on the valve of the David made "Fog Bubbler Machine.
Also check out a time lapse movie of trick-or-treaters who visited our home: Trick-Or-Treat Time Lapse ~ 10-30-09 ~ WMV ~ 4 minutes, 32 MB
10-28-2009
10-24-2009
10-21-2009
Annika's four year old class at Treehouse Preschool took a field trip to a horse farm where the children learned to feed, groom, and ride a horse. A few kids were a little afraid, but not Annika. She loved every minute of it.
"And how do you feel after riding the horse, Annika".
If you haven't checked out our movie page this October, here are some that are worth watching:
We are family (I got all my sisters) ~ 10-27-09 ~ WMV ~ 3 minutes, 25 MB
Hatchers Pass Hike Slideshow ~ 10-11-09 (from 8-1-09) ~ WMV ~ 8 minute, 68 MB
Bite the Butte Dust ~ 10-16-09 (from 7-14-09) ~ WMV ~ 1 minute, 24 MB
|
Main Index | ||||
