I was experimenting with different shutter speeds and aperature settings this evening. The black & white image of the old man is not from tonight, but it’s a cool sample of slower shutter speed in bright sunny light. (Some slight PSP mods for smoother texture.)   The flower is a large purple magnolia – Campbelli or Saucer Magnolia – and there are thousands of them all around our apartment!

A classic piece of Japanese art!

I have been learning Japanese for a couple months now, and I’m really enjoying it. I’m using Pimsleur Japanese audio lessons and I’ve got a great Japanese book for learning characters and their derivations. So far, I’ve got a written vocabulary of about 250 characters. Once in a while I forget or misidentify a character, but that’s ok. I’ll get it eventually. This is one of my favorite characters – and it’s one of the most important personality traits a person can have. Can you guess what it is?

I don’t usually link to other sites, but I found this stress tester to be pretty accurate. Read the directions first. Dolphin Stress Test