This weekend we made the annual trip to the apple orchard. This year it was to Christ Orchard in Elmwood. Megan was on the ball and we already have homemade applsauce! Anyway, here are a few pictures.

I thought it was about time for some new self-portraits. So once again I cleared out a corner in our apartment, set up the lights and spent an afternoon being completely vain and taking pictures of myself. I had and idea in my head for a grittier, more sharpened look than last time. I got pretty close to what I wanted (though you can’t really see the detail in these low-res images) and it didn’t requite much editing which was good. I also made a new header image for my blog with one of these shots. So here’s Dave Crow 2008- now with 100% more beard!

Last year Megan and I got to shoot Evan’s 6 month pictures. Last month we spent another afternoon with Evan and his mom for 18 month pictures. He’s grown into quite the little man. Here’s a preview.

And I’m loving the new gallery feature on WordPress. I’m not sure how it will display in RSS feeds, so click through if it looks weird.

This afternoon Megan had to go on a field trip to High Cliff State Park which is 15 minutes outside of Appleton. It’s one of my favorite places in the Appleton area so I took the opportunity to bring my camera and go hiking. It turned out to be a beautifully warm day so the park was pretty busy. It took a while but I was able to find a spot to set up and shoot a panoramic on top of the cliffs. Photoshop CS3 has some improved panoramic tools that I’ve been wanting to try out. I’m really happy with the result. I’ve never had a panoramic turn out so seamless. This is four shots stitched together. If you’re not from the area this will give you a sense of why I like it here. I can drive 15 minutes and get a view like this.

Here are a few pictures from Eric and Sarah’s wedding over Labor Day weekend. We had a great time hanging out with friends and family.

I’ve been trying to figure out a better workflow for getting images into my blog. I hadn’t ever used iPhoto much before but I decided to give it a try. It works great for taking a bunch of pictures and doing some quick editing to get them online. I was impressed with the editing capabilities. They’re powerful enough to do some cool things but user friendly enough that non-photoshop geeks can figure it out. The process quickly started breaking down when it came time to export photos for the web. I found a Picasa iPhoto plug-in that allows you to upload photos right out of iPhoto. I was excited about this because I figured I could upload the photos into an album, create a gallery and then embed it into my blog. Not so. WordPress doesn’t allow embedding of flash except for from a few approved sites. Picasa (nor Flickr) is one of those surprisingly enough.

So I’m stuck with using slide.com since they’re approved by WordPress. The Picasa option would be much nicer thought since I wouldn’t be forced to create duplicates of the images on my hard drive. I would be able to do the whole thing in 3 steps.

WordPress gods…please add Picasa integration! Thank you.

[Here's the Picasa gallery since I went to the trouble of making it.]

Last weekend Megan and I took a trip to Chicago. We drove to Milwaukee and then caught a bus into Chicago. Using public transportation made the trip much more interesting.

Here’s a quick rundown of the hilights of the trip:

• Friday night we went to a fundraiser event for NOOMA. We got to see the next video that will be coming out as well as hear from the director and Rob Bell about the vision for where NOOMA is going. It was cool to meet some of the NOOMA staff and we got to talk to Rob Bell for a few minutes. He’s had a huge influence on how I think about my faith, so it was awesome to get to meet him in person. There were only 100 or so people there…probably the smallest room I’ll ever be in with Rob Bell.
• Saturday we went to Navy Pier and then downtown Chicago. In the evening we were meeting up with Megan’s parents to go to a White Sox game. The subway we were supposed to get on to take us to the stadium was under construction so we had some challenges getting to the field. There were a bunch of us tourists all trying to get to the game and figure out Chicago public transportation. We even got on a bus that was supposed to shuttle us to the spot where we could catch the train, but the guy drove us in a big circle and dropped us off where we started! We ended up talking to this couple our age from Toronto, Canada and we decided to split a cab fair since the buses weren’t getting us anywhere. We got there later than we hoped to, but we made it. And then the Sox lost 3-0.
• We stayed in a hotel about a mile from O’Hare. It was a little far from downtown (about 45 minutes), but the rate was much cheaper. It was easy to take the free shuttle from the hotel to the airport and then catch the train at O’Hare. I think we probably saved money because we weren’t paying $10 or more for parking all the time. A 2-day bus pass was $9 per person.
• We used Megabus to get from Milwaukee to Chicago. They are based out of Chicago and go all over the mid-west for really cheap. I think our tickets cost $20. If we would have chosen a departure time besides noon the tickets would have only been $10. I kind of liked just being able to read or sleep and not having to drive. We plan on taking the bus for other weekend trips in the future.

And finally some pictures from our weekend:

http://www.myspace.com/thebco 

This weekend we made the big move to our new apartment. It went much smoother than I expected it to thanks to a lot of good friends helping us out. When your friends drive 7 hours in a snowstorm to help you move, you know you’ve got quality friends. It was a fun weekend hanging out despite the stress of moving and the 13 inches of snow. The new place is really great and we’re really happy with it so far. The view from our back door is beautiful. I looked out and saw this scene before we left for work:

A view like that makes me love the snow.

We just got back to Appleton today after spending 10 days in Illinois for the holidays. It was a great trip, but we were definitely ready to come home and sleep in our own bed.

I received a number of books for Christmas and decided that I should start a reading list. I do enjoy reading, but I’m not the fastest reader in the world. Mostly because I don’t make time for it. Maybe making a list will help me get through more material this year. Some of these I’ve had for a while but haven’t gotten around to reading. I’m starting with 10 books and if I really make it through that many in a year I will have set a record for myself. Here they are in no particular order:

I just got this for Christmas and almost finished it on the drive home (thanks to Megan for driving the entire way). I should have it checked off the list in a few days.

I’ve wanted to read this for quite a while, but couldn’t ever afford it. (I actually recieved two of them so I exchanged one at Barnes & Noble for store credit.) This isn’t for novice Photoshop users, but if you’re serious about professional image editing it’s a must read.

Same story with this book. Not for novices, but if you have to make complex selections a lot this is the best book on the subject.

Since I had store credit at B&N I went shopping and came accross this book. I’ve wanted an InDesign book for a while, but all of the ones I’ve looked at were pretty basic- just telling you what each pallete does and explaining features. I really wanted a typography book and this one looked really good. It teaches professional typography techniques while using InDesign to execute them. Leading, kerning, tracking, drop caps, hyphens, text flow and alignment, style sheets, nested styles and everything else a typography nerd could want!

Also a typography book, but a little more of an acedemic read. This is more of the theory behind typography. Even higher on the nerd scale.

I should have read this a long time ago. I’ve seen so many quotes from it that I kind of feel like I’ve read it. Better late than never, right?

This is one I’ve had for a long time but haven’t gotten around to reading. Some communications people that I really respect recomend it so I’m taking the plunge.

Again, I’ve had this one for a while and I think I’ve read about half of it. It’s a really easy and entertaining read (especially for a web book) so I want to read the whole thing this year. You should really check it out if you’re doing any web design.

This one I don’t actually own, but I think I’ve seen it around the office so I plan on borrowing it. I’ve heard a lot of good things and read bits and pieces while sitting at B&N. I’m excited to find out what this “hedgehog principle” is.

Yah, I’m a bad twenty-something post-modern/emerging/hipster Christian for having never read this. Charlie taught out of it as one of the first teachings at Nexus and I’ve been hearing about it and reading quotes ever since. I’ve read “Searching For God Knows What” and it was great. I think I know most of the content but figured I should finally read it for myself.

10 books in a year is a pretty hefty goal for me, so we’ll see how I do. Happy 2007.