A Day in the Life (11-7-08)

So Pound has been after me for the longest time to do one of those "A Day in the Life of ___" blog postings where I document everything I do one day. I finally got around to doing it over a month ago, but never got any further than taking the pictures. The day I chose was November 7, an auspicious day because it was my wife Debbie's birthday, and I was supposed to have a phone interview for a possible job that day. So without further ado, here's 11/7/08 in the life of Paul:



Mmm...cereal for breakfast, yummy.



It was a bit more difficult to get around during those couple of weeks as we'd already started packing up for the big move to boston.





Since neither of us had appointments during the month of November (mine ended in August, Debbie's in October) we were (and I still am) using public transportation to get to work. Kind of a pain as it adds an extra hour and a half onto our day, but not much choice in the matter.







It was another beautiful late fall day on MSU's campus.



Ah yes, my bench where all that sciency-looking stuff is used to make the world a better place (or something like that).



And yes, my desk is messy, but I know where everything is and have everything I need close at hand.



For lunch I joined Debbie's lab in going out to celebrate her birthday and that of a labmate who had the same birthday at Sultan's a local middle eastern restuarant.



I had the salad



and baked kibbee and baba ghanoush.



Debbie's labmate, Shoko, drove.







Then back to work labeling and oligonucleotide probes with 32P and purifying them. And yes, that means I was using radioactivity, but no, it wasn't strong enough to do me any damage even had I not been as careful as I was and always am (that one visit from the police and fire department aside--hey I wasn't even using radioactivity that time).



I also spent a significant portion trying to get in contact with the person with whom I was supposed to have the phone interview, but unfortunately, we weren't able to connect that day (and my chances of getting that job don't really look so hot either).



It wasn't a total waste though as I got to listen to some good tunes.







Then off to our regular Friday night of volleyball.



Kind of a pain because, as usual, every time we took a break to get some water between games, all the basketball hordes would try taking over the court and we'd have to kick them off again.



After the volleyball, I took Debbie out to her fabulous birthday dinner at Georgio's Pizza. Actually, I forgot to take a picture of my food, so this is from a more recent visit (hence no plates of her food on the table), but I still got the same food, a slice each of eggplant parmesan and mediterranean pizza. Also, I did take her out to a theoretically nice dinner for her birthday the next night at Ai Fusion. Unfortunately, her dinner of veggie tempura wasn't all that good that night either. My sushi there was awesome, though. Our dumpling appetizer was quite good, so, even though she doesn't eat seafood and wouldn't take some of my sushi, at least she got some good food for her birthday dinner.







Then it was back on the bus and home to our apartment where there were a few presents waiting for her.

Yup, that's it, a day in my life, and not at all exciting, but overall it was a pretty good day (at least I didn't have to use my AK). Aren't you glad you wanted me to post it, Pound?

Playing around with old photos and photoshop

So over at the Pioneer Woman Photography blog that I read, they've posted a new set of photoshop actions and I wanted to try them out on an old picture I have of my grandfather. He died when my dad was 4 so I've never met him and, as far as I know, this is the only photo of him that I have. When my mom sent it to me, it was all faded and he was just as small part of the overall composition of this photo that was quite small in and of itself. You didn't really get a good feel of him from the picture, so I played around with PW's actions and tried to get a different feel of a picture that was all about him. First, the original picture:


The first thing I did was use the Dim The Lights action from her second set to try and get rid of some of the washed out feeling and bring in some more contrast:
Then I used the 4x6 crop in photoshop to get a picture that was mainly him (because I want to print it out on a normal 4x6 print at a photodeveloper).

Then I used the Define and Sharpen action from PW's first action set to bring out a few more details:

Finally, I used the Quick Edge Burn action (also from PW's first set of actions), to get sort of a haloed effect around him. Overall, I kind of like how it turned out:

I also tried it without the Define and Sharpen action to see if there would be much difference and you can see with that action some of the shadows are a bit crisper than without (but I'm still debating which way I like better):


I sent all of the steps I've tried here (and a few others) to be printed and I'm excited to see how they turn out when actually printed when I pick them up tonight or tomorrow night. I'm a bit worried about pixelation from trying to blow up a small part of a small photo (less than 3x5, maybe 2x3.5?) into a 4x6, but after Debbie finally did find the photo (all of our pictures were in various boxes after the move to Boston), she very kindly scanned it at 2400 dpi before sending it to me, so I'm hopefull it won't be too grainy.


Next up, I'm finally going to post my Day in the Life pictures I took over a month ago.

I love sparklers

Yes, this post is 4 weeks old, but I really like the effects of taking pictures of moving sparklers at night:

The commute on my bicycle

I'm such a fan of the interurban pathway even though there's nothing urban about either side.
It makes my commute so much nicer than riding through a subdivision or dealing with the traffic on grand river. Plus, the little extra distance is good for me.
Sometimes I even get to see nice animals, like the two fawns with spots on the other day or the great blue heron, I tried to capture here.
Overall, it makes for a pleasant ride.
And this is my ride.
Isn't she a beauty?
Works very well to get me where I'm going, but when loaded up, it's a bear to get up and down stairs at the apartment.
My control panel:
And this is how I had to make things fit in order for my brake light (yes that's right, it lights up when I press my rear break and has turn signals and everything) work.

Another try at the photoshopped pictures

So, I'm trying again to post the pictures I used to play around with in photoshop. After having been told that I can't move them after posting them if I want them to be openable, I'm going to try that instead. This first picture is the one from which I stole Dezire's head. She's the little girl in the pink shirt behind the girl in the green dress.
This next picture (below) is the one that I used as the base that I then added people into.

The above picture is the one from which I took Britta's head (blonde back row peaking in near the left side).

And this is my final product.

This was just a fun picture I took of the fauz stained glass in the church when all the lights were off. I just thought it looked neat to have the window so bright against the black surroundings.

Playing around with my new camera

Some pictures of flowers I took last weekend while visiting the parents. Just trying out the macro feature of my new camera that lets me take pictures of things from supposedly 1 cm away. Never tried quite that close, but did try an inch or two distance. At some point I might play with photoshop to improve them.

I'm not too happy with the way the first picture came out, but I kind of like some of the others.

While I was there, we had a party for my grandma's 80th birthday. Most of her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids were there (just missing 3 grandkids and one grandkid's spouse I think), so we all got together to take a family group picture. Unfortunately, some people were hidden in all of my group shots. I've been trying to patch a couple of people back in via photoshop. Here's the rough effort so far:

This isn't the final picture I want to put the two people back into, but it's just something I was practicing with. If you look closely it's fairly obvious where I added back in Britta (blonde in back row peaking out behind her mom in the yellow top--you can see that I didn't actually delete her from this picture where her hair is sticking out on the other side of her mom because I didn't know how to do that with the drapes hanging down. The other person I inserted was Dezire (pink shirt second rown behind the girl in the green dress with glasses). Originally, she was sitting on her foster mom Janelle's lap, but most of her was cut out by the pew end, so I moved the pew end out a little further to cover the rest of her (seem is really obvious) and pasted her in from another picture when she's actually sitting in that location from when just the great grandkids were sitting around my grandma. To be honest, I'm most proud of my completion of the pattern on Janelle's shirt that was hidden behind th original pew post and that wasn't even that great of a job.

Here's the original group photo I was working with:

And here's the great grandkids with grandma shot I stole Dezire's head from:

Britta's head came from this one:

I'm still going through my group shots to find the best one I want to use to try this for real, but I don't think it'll be any of these that ends up serving as the base.

I don't know why clicking on the first three pictures leads to larger version of the picture, but the last two doesn't. Any suggestions?

A few more pictures I thought I'd add.


From my lab's new homepage (http://www.bmb.msu.edu/faculty/kroos/KroosLabPage.htmedu/faculty/kroos/KroosLabPage.htm):













A couple of pictures from my wedding:



































Wow, 2 and a half years have gone fast...

And now for my favorite wedding photo of us:

Where I wish I was right now:













instead of:



Although sledding would be more fun than sitting here in the lab.











Playing Tarzan on my first picnic with Debbie:















And finally, taking a nap with my neice: