November 2006 Archives

Yesterday I gave my Google lesson to the kids. We played with a bunch of the features of the website like the advanced search, news search, translate, and so on. At the end of class, we played with Google Maps, which I found out that they LOVED. I'll admit, I enjoy looking at the "satellite" photos of familiar places as well as famous landmarks and such. Well today's plan was to show them the Google SightSeeing Blog which is a cool site that has a bunch of links to neat things that people have come across on Google Maps. Yesterday afternoon, they had a cool picture of a hill that looked like an Indian listening to an iPod. Very benign, pretty cool, and a perfect site for my class. Fast Forward to 2nd Period this morning. I have the kids fire up the internet and head to the site and THIS is what they are confronted with! Needless to say, I hurried the kids off of the site and straight over to the next task as fast as I could. Later I was relating the story to my principal and he laughed and told me about how he'd done the same thing years ago at Bos. I was pretty embarassed, but the kids didn't even seem to notice. Go figure.

It's true! You can see us from space. Kind of...If you know where to look...And you squint real hard. Here it is:

I'll let you in on a little secret. You, too, can be visible from space. Just go here. Cool, huh?

This weekend, Ricky and I shot the most amazing wedding. It was absolutely crazy! It was a very nice couple who were both Doctors. The bride's family moved here from Nigeria when she was young and both of her parents were PhD's. They brought a lot of their customs with them and it really showed in the wedding. There was probably around 200 people dressed in traditional West African dress at the ceremony and/or the reception. Their robes were very colorful and ornate and the women had massive hat-thingies that were like super-starched kerchiefs. There was even one white guy who was wearing robes, but to be honest, on him, they looked like pajamas.

It started a little late...OK, a LOT late but I can see why. Here is a picture comparing the church at start time and when the ceremony was almost over. As you can see, it is VERY fashionable to show up late.

They had a well respected professor of Philosophy (I think) give a nice speech about married life. Then they had a pretty normal ceremony until right after the unity candle. It turned into Disco Church! A little Gospel choir had set up on the alter behind them accompanied by nothing more than a mechanical drumbeat and a lady playing like 3 chords on a keyboard.

At first I thought it was funny. It had a kind of lounge-singer feel to it, but then they started singing and the church got on their feet and the place started R-O-C-K-I-N-G! It was so cool. Everyone was dancing in the aisles and singing.

It was hard not to sing along (the verses that were in English, that is). The place was starting to look like a rock video or something. I just finished editing the ceremony and it was like Ricky and I were in sync for the whole singy-dancy thing. We were in the zone. The thing just fell together. All in all, that wedding was the coolest one I've seen. The sound guy asked for a copy of the ceremony afterward. I think he knew that his church was never as cool it was that day--and probably will never be again. Fun Stuff!

This has to be quick because I'm supposed to be working. Don't tell Christina that I posted this. A couple of weekends ago Ricky and I were shooting a wedding at Thistle Hill, a mansion near downtown Fort Worth. It's a museum now and as I was wandering around shooting interesting B-roll for the wedding, I came across this guy's stein collection. Some of them were as old as 1904! One caught my eye because it looked a lot like MY stein. Brenda and Leon picked it up for me while they were in Germany a couple of years ago. Mine depicts a King of Beers sitting on his throne with beer ingredients around him. This stein has a castle on it, obviously the King of Beers's Castle! Anyway, I thought it was super cool so I took a pic of it.

Noah has really been getting into the stripping down thing. Here is his latest attempt to get out of a sweat shirt that was itching him.

This morning, Noah and Hannah had discovered some color pencils that I had stored in the a corner of the playroom. Noah (with Hannah close behind) brought the box to me saying "Cudders peas? Peas Mommies, cudders?" How could I say no? I got some paper and sat them down at the dining table (on opposite sides, of course). I couldn't believe it! They actually stayed there ... happy even ... for almost ten minutes. Art time was so ... peaceful that I think we might try it again on Monday.

I just finished teaching my classes about GIMP last week. It's a free image manipulation software package for Linux and it's also available on Windows. Kinda like Photoshop, just not quite as powerful or nowhere near as expensive. I was real impressed at how many of the kids actually went out and got the program. About 10-15 kids went and downloaded the program all by themselves and I've burned about 5 install CD's and given to others who don't have a high speed connection. They learned real basic stuff like cutting themselves out of a picture and adding text to things. Their big assignment was to recreate a magazine cover. In their free time, I showed them some tricks like making black and white photos with a splash of color and stuff like that. Anyway, yesterday a girl brought me an old picture of her grandmother and wanted to learn how to restore it. I got started showing her how to do it and the next thing you know I got really into it and finished it off for her. I've never had one look so good. Now I think I'm going to have to try this out with some of our old photos.

We're really on a roll here at the Davis Blog. We're finally getting around to posting some Halloween pics. Myra was the prom queen and Noah was a mechanic. It was a chilly night, unlike recent years, so we had to bundle up, but you could still see those sweet faces as they asked for candy. Noah thinks that Trick or Treat and Thank you are all one word so it comes out like this, "TrickorTreatThankYou!" Halloween gets more fun every year! Check out the latest pictures in the Photo Gallery.

I found this pic while surfing. I nearly shot Mountain Dew out of my nose laughing. Chris, on the other hand, didn't seem to think it was that funny. I guess I'll never understand women.

--UPDATE--
I've uploaded a picture of Chris checking this post out on Franken-Laptop. The look is priceless.

So, it looks like we haven't posted much in the gallery lately. Well it's time to change that. The Yearbook bought a new camera, a Nikon D50, and I've been playing with it a lot lately to get used to it. Chris has tried it out as well and she is really digging it, too. We took a bunch of pictures playing around and decided to show off the better ones. Check them out here.