Photographs of the wild outdoors for a website background.

I needed some old photographs for a blog I am making for some friends. The photos are to be a monochromatic 'old' looking photos of the wild outdoors.

I went through some of the photographs my mother sent me in the last year or so and selected a dozen that fit the bill.

Well, almost. I had to adjust the first 10 using Picasa.
The steps where very easy.

1. Sharpen


2. B&W


3. Warmify


4. Tint - using the default color, and sliding the slider to the center

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Kitty take bath

No photos tonight, just a funny story.
The kittens loved sleeping up in the passthru, right? Well, they haven't been up there in a couple of weeks that I have seen. I moved the boxes that they used to get up there. I figured it was safe to put the tank up there.

WRONG

Katie was making dinner tonight, and I was in the kitchen, slowing her down. The Kitchen door was closed with the cats in the living room. We heard a SPLOOSH! Turn around, and Brother (my male kitten) is in the kitchen, along with about half an inch of water from the microtank. Well, this seemed an opportune time to give Brother a bath. In he went. It took about 3 seconds of doing the backfloat before he realized it was wet. He laced me pretty good! Down my wrist and across my palm.

He is so nice and soft and silky now.

My Microtank

 Well, Here it is. I think it fits quite nicely in the passthrough.

 The view from my living room into the Kitchen.

 The view from my Kitchen into the living room. I am planning on making a tall bar to go against the wall. The tank will be quite dramatic there.

 I am going to plant microsword and Glosso from this tank into the new microtank once I can get the goofy thing lit up well enough. I am thinking of getting a 2 bulb 4 foot fixture and making an oak hood. I will need to run the filtering through the hood too I think, so I only have 1 place for power and water lines.

Leaking Tank

 What is the first thing you do after coming home the night after making a new fish tank? Fill it full of water of course! It leaks. Not bad though. I filled it with 3 gallons of water to see if it was water tight, and I had a slow leak. about 1 drip a second. Not to bad considering how messed up the silicone turned out after my trying to smooth it too late into the curing process.
 So, I cut the sealent out. I left it assembled, just cut out the inside silicone and trimed up the outside as well. I re-sealed it tonight. I am thinking tonight I put down a good bead and it should be 100% water tight now. It all LOOKS much better at least.

My First Microtank

I am going to make a new aquarium that is what is called a 'microtank' or 'nanotank'. This is a VERY small planted freshwater fish tank. The two I am going to make are going to be 3.5 gallons each. I am going to set them up as "stream" type tanks, with a pretty stiff current to them. The water will be pumped out one end, and put back in on the other end. This should create a nice "stream" type environment. I will put fish that are suitable for the swift water in the tank. It will also have a lot of rocks and short live plants like Glossostigma and Microsword if I can get them to grow in the water current.


 My dad had cut me glass and mirror pieces to use for shelving. They are 4 feet long and 4 3/8 inches wide. It went into a window and worked really nice. I have moved the glass shelves 3 times for a total of around 2500 miles. I finially have a new use for them. I am curious to see how a green tinted glass tank will turn out.


 I saved some panes out of the windows of my old work when they installed new hurricane windows. I had a bit of trouble cutting the glass down to the right size. A few practice tries and I got it down.


 I tried to put the silicone down first so the pieces would get a good bond together. This didn't work so well, I ended up needing a hand from Katie so I could get it all together and taped up so it would all stay put. I am going to need to cut out the silicone on the inside so I can get a good sealing bead down.


 This is the assembled tank. I will re-seal it tomorrow night, and Wednesday night it will get some water put in it. Cross your toes it doesn't leak.


The first tank I made is glass on both sides and mirror on the bottom. The other tank I will build will only have 1 piece of glass, with a mirror back.

My bed frame grew legs!

 Sorry for the delay in posting this. I had put the bedframe up on legs a while ago, gosh the photo claims on the 8th!. Here you can see the legs. Nothing fancy, and I really don't like them. They didn't sit down as square as I would have hoped. No bother, they can be re-made I guess. They are rock-solid though. The bed doesn't move at all!



 I have been sleeping in the living room for 2-3 weeks now! When I trim the bed out, the posts will be notched for the bed frame and will occupy some of the empty space in the legs. The legs will get trimmed out square and have the posts step out a little bit. It should look pretty neat when I am done.

Driving into trouble

 This just LOOKS nasty! This is basically what I have been driving home towards/through almost every evening this month.

 

Strange cloud in Tampa Bay

 I really am not sure what this white cloud looking thing is. My first guess would have been that it was rain, but it didn't really move, and rain is usually darker. Maybe it was rain with a lot of light on it. At one point, it had a rainbow on the white cloud thingy.

 

 

 

Bad Weather

  A bit of bad weather at the office on July 16th. It took me a while to get the photo and the video off my phone. Ohhps...

The sky is that nasty sickly green that I remember seeing when there where tornadoes in the area. I don't remember hearing about one after this storm, so that is good.

Bedframe basically complete.

You would think that 07 07 07 would be a lucky day, right? Katy has a terrible headache today, so I can't do ANYTHING right. I tried to make her supper, but I was out of eggs, I went to Taco Bell as my backup plan, but their card reader was down. I cut out, over the curb to get out of the drive through as I was parked in and bottomed out my truck on the curb. I don't see any damage to the underside though. So I guess it is all good. I learned that I can drive over a taller then normal curb with my truck, but I really shouldn't.


 Anyway, back to the topic on hand... Here I am cutting the notches into the 2x4s for the 1x12 planks can sit flush with the top of the 2x4 stringers. THese are my new saw-horses. The jury is still out on them, but so far, they are looking good. How do you like my high-tech push-stick sitting on the saw?


 Fancy, eh? I didn't even cut my fingers!


 The finished product. The planks all set flush, they don't slide around. There is no sqeaking as I walk across the bed. It supports my weight pretty well. All in all, I am happy! I am going to cut the legs tomorrow and put the bed into the bedroom.

Floor Joist Bracket Jig

 The floor joist brackets want to stay too far open for my taste.


 So I made a jig to hold it closed using a peice of scrap 2x4.


 The jig is just two screws set so that the stringers are held closed against the 2x4.


 I also added a centerline mark on the 2x4 so I can accuratly center my brackets where they need to be set on my bed frame.

Putting the bedframe together.

 Last night, Matt and Jessica came over for dinner (we all went out) and to play cards & Cranium. While they where deciding what they wanted to do, I started to screw the bed frame together.


 Matt had to help me as the one short end board had started to twist already. I put 3 screws in each end, and also used these metal brackets. To my great surprise the frame ended up perfectly square.


 Matt and I did a lot of figuring to try to get these floor joist brackets positioned right. We ended up getting it right on paper. I am quite proud that I got it figured out being that it was midnight and all. The outside ends are what made things work out weird. As you can see, my cat Sister was supervising, making sure her latest scratching post/ toy/ whatever she wants it to be is properly assembled.


 As you can see, All that is left for this part of the bed is to notch the 2x4 stringers so the 1X12s drop in and lay flush.

The Rain

 I thought these clouds where pretty cool. How nice and dark they where. This is going home from work.

 Notice how bright and sunny it is where I am at. See the palm tree shadow on the road?

 2 minutes and 13 seconds later (from the timestamp on the photograph file) I can't see out my front windshield.

 I can see the rainbow at the end of the road!

Stymied by the rain.

 Sunday I went to Lowes and picked up some 2x4s, 2x6s, 1x12s, and a box of floorjoist hangers and other overpriced metal connectors. I spent a lot more then I needed to if I was just to screw this thing together, but I want it so it can be disassembled fairly easily (trying to back out dozens of screws with rounded off heads doesn't count in my book).


 I cut all the pieces to length.


 My rough assembly showes that I measured about right, the cross peices will need to be cut down as they will be too long once I include the thickness of the metal brackets they slip into. I need to cut grooves into the 2x4 stringers to accept the 1x12s. This will allow the 1x12s to sit flush with the top of the 2x4s and lock into place I am hoping. I really hate beds that groan louder then you do when you get up in the morning.


 Here it sits. I got everything out today, and it started to rain. Just my luck!

The best laid plans of Mice and Men

Ok, I am sleeping in the living room right now. I figure after a year and a half of living in a bedroom, I can sleep in the living room for a month, right?
 My queen sized bed is in storage in Wisconsin. I bought a really nice Coleman queen sized air mattress for the time being. I want to build a bed frame that will allow me to have ample storage underneath it. Ok, my idea of ample storage is to put my table saw and other tools, plastic storage bins, and so forth underneath it. In my typical fashion, I want the whole thing to be easy to move - either by folding up, or easily disassembled (my idea of easily disassembled might be a bit more involved then other peoples as I can take the dash out of my 83 Mercury Cougar XR7 in 7 minutes and 38 seconds - ALL of it).

This basically means that I will need to strap the pieces to the roof of my Ford Escape as I don't have a trailer to haul a sheet of plywood.

I am going to make the frame out of 2x4s and 2x6s and use that pre-cut shelving material to surface the 'deck' of the bed frame. The whole thing is going to be about 30 inches tall, so I have 24 inches of clearance underneath. That will put the bed at nearly 40 inches tall.

My ultimate plans are to wrap the frame in oak 1 inch material to make it look nice. It is either going to be a big 4 post bed, or have nice tall bed posts. I have a ceiling fan to work around - it will actually be INSIDE the bed frame if I end up doing the 4 poster idea - how is THAT for fancy?

Anyway, off to Lowes to see how long I will be eating PB&J sandwiches...

Kitten Photos

 Here is what I come home to every day. The kittens up in the passthru between the kitchen and the living room. They LOVE it up there, and insist on knocking everything I put up there down. Won't they be surprised when I build a fish tank to fit up there!


 Here the two of them are sitting in a chair.


 I was trying to cook some seasoned fries. They look good don't they?


 But the Kittens had to be underfoot. Litereally! They curled up between my feet and passed out.