furiousBlog

So, Cyndi, 5 friends, and I went to see They Might Be Giants at the 9:30 club here in DC last night. It was the opening night of their Beardo 2006 tour.

There was apparently supposed to be two opening acts, but only one ended up playing. Obviously, this is a good thing. I've seen a lot of shows, and a lot of opening acts. While there have been several that I've loved and have added to my music collection, in general, they're miserable. Last night's opening act was one guy and a ukelele. His first song was great. His second song was good. By the third song, he had lost most of the crowd, and he wasn't near finished. He did regroup a little bit with a song written for kids and the two last songs where he was accompanied by a woman playing glockenspiel and singing a little backup. The problem was that his act was a gimic, and a gimic act needs to present their gimic, get the laugh, and leave. If he had done the first two songs that were pretty clever with their sea-based innuendo, the kids song, and the glockenspiel songs, he would've been thoroughly entertaining.

TMBG came on a bit later. Cyndi and I have seen them a ton of times and they always do a great show. Last night's show was no exception. It wasn't the best TMBG show that we've seen, but it was plenty entertaining. They were a little heavy on brand-new, never-before-heard stuff that always tends to mellow the crowd since they can't sing along (although, the crowd did seem to be a little more mellow than usual), and in so doing they didn't play a lot of their great live songs. In particular, I missed both 'The Guitar' and, my favorite, 'Ana Ng'. They did, however, play several songs that I know but that I've never heard live; the two of these that really stood out to me were 'Number 3' from their first album and 'Dead' from Flood.

All in all, it was a good show and a good time.

Over the past couple days, I've been devouring a new photography blog: Strobist.

From the first entry, 'Welcome to Strobist':

Welcome to Strobist, where our goal is to promote more effective use of small, shoe-mount flashes.

That goal has been acheived. The site is split up into two sections: Lighting 101 and On Location. Lighting 101 is a straightforward guide to the basics. He covers both technique and equipment, with the focus being on creating excellent photographys quickly (not rushed, just not wasting any unnecessary time) and inexpensively. One of his core tenets is that by using small inexpensive flashes, you can create great, studio-quality light anywhere.

He also argues that by replacing big bulky studio lights (or not getting them to start with) with small flashes you'll be more likely to take them with you (he even shows how to make an ultra-portable setup with a stand, a flash, and an umbrella), and therefore more likely to actually use them. I have a few studio lights, and it is certainly a commitment to get them setup and ready to use. He shows how you can get the same, or better, light with a lot less setup time.

In addition to all of that, there is also a lot of just good lighting technique. In the On Location entries, he shows a photo or two and explains how he created the light in each shot.

So, if you're interested in photography, check out this site for some easy and cheap ways to create better lighting for your photos.

Another weekend has come and gone without a single person looking at our house. That makes it about 3 weeks since we last had a looker. Weak!

In related news, since we withdrew our offer on the one house we were looking at, we've tentatively started looking at other houses. We've found one that is basically the same model as the first one, but it has an extra room where the garage is in the other house and a carport. It doesn't look in as good a shape as the first one, but the extra room is a pretty big selling point, and a coat of paint will solve most of our complaints. This is, of course, all based on the pictures in the online listing; we haven't been inside yet.

I realized that I'd forgotten about the 'House-sale Tracker'. My most sincere apologies.

Since I was speaking of recurring features, I remembered that I posted about one of my favorite photosites in a while (about six months). In case you've forgotten, this is a little recurring series where I introduce one of the photosites/photoblogs that I visit regularly. If you'd like to see the other two I've done, click here.

So, today, I present Round Here.

For me, RH is a very easy photosite to like. He seems to like to shoot a lot the same kind of stuff that I do. My favorites are his more minimalist still life compositions, where he's played with the lighting and depth of field to achieve an interesting effect. I also really like a lot of his more abstract or texture/pattern shots.

Below are a few of my favorites. I've limited myself to only four, which was pretty hard to do. I highly recommend that you browse through his thumbnail archives.

I posted four photos over on 18percent from my recent visit to D.C. My favorite is the one that's currently showing to the right, cleverly titled 'Walking in front of the Lincoln Memorial (2 of 2)'. I'm not sure why it's my favorite, though. It, and the other one like it, were shot from inside of the WWII memorial with the focus on the sidewalk between the WWII memorial and the reflecting pool. The Lincoln was (obviously) on the other side of the reflecting pool.

I've got a couple more that may get posted at some point, but they need a little more work first.