Western Arab

So I am trying to learn how to use my new canon rebel xs. I have been reading up on aperture or f-stops, shutter speed and iso and have been taking various shots messing around with these settings. It is a lot to take in at the same time that I keep discovering additional settings. The best shots of course are the ones I keep the mode in auto but that will change. I’d like to get some motion shots which would require me using the manual settings such as night shots of cars driving by. I’d like to also get a zoom lens to get some distance shots of birds, planes, insects, landscape, and anything else.

So here is one good shot I got so far. It is a pink flower among others in my yard. It is a pretty small flower but looks bigger in the photo. I cropped the image to 1920×1080 so it can be used as a wallpaper on my screen. Right click save image as to download the full size picture at 1920×1080. Edit: Added another shot of a lizard I took, also cropped to 1920×1080. Love this camera!

pink flower by western arab

Lizard by western arab

Well today was my birthday. Yes I am now 30, if that means anything. People always make a big deal out of turn 30. I don’t feel any different and I am still young and handsome!

Canon Rebel XS

I went ahead and ordered myself the Canon Rebel XS instead of the XSi. I suppose my own birthday present, it is on it’s way to me and should be here Monday. It would be nice if UPS delivered it this weekend but that is not likely. Looking forward to the camera and hopefully can learn more about how to use the advanced settings. I may have to take a class or maybe pick up a book.

My sister and my nieces had a birthday party for me in a different state, but they made a cake and put the word “kalo” on it. Kalo or Khalo is Arabic for Uncle. Was cute and nice.

And I know, this economy and spending money isn’t the right time but that’s me and gadgets and I also was able to get a tenant for the other property so hopefully that goes smooth and cuts down on some of the bills.

Busy weekend of hanging out, dinner out and a little helping out here and there. And tonight is another dinner invitation, which I will have to leave earlier to head to the airport to pick up dad.

I spent a few hours at the Oakland Park Flea Market on Sunday. I had a good time remembering how it was to work like that, constantly interacting with people and being known by so many of the locals and visitors. I didn’t work in a flea market selling before but I did work selling music tapes back in the days outside two stores. It is nice to get to interact with people, make friends and enemies . But now with this work I do, I sit on the computer all day long, I don’t interact with anyone. So it was nice to be in that environment again. Working at home has some advantages but the little interaction with people, traffic jams, idiots and everything else is the price. It is nice to get away from all that, but not completely removing it. I think a split with 3 days working home and 2 days out of home is the how to get the best of both worlds!

Canon Rebel XSi

Other than that, I want to buy the Canon Rebel XSi digital SLR camera. I missed out on an instant rebate by a day or two for getting a 55-250mm telephoto lens with the purchase of the camera and since then I have been hesitant to purchase the camera since I missed that deal, but I will still grab the camera I think. The price of it has gone up and down the past week since I have started monitoring it and right now it is $13 more than the lowest it was, and I am waiting for it to go back to the lowest price I saw or less! 

Something strange in the neighborhood, who ya gonna call?

Okay so in Florida, I have seen frogs, lizards, ants and countless bugs, giant grasshoppers, snakes, birds, squirrels and wasps all on my property. Now the newest guest to explore my driveway I discovered today.

Speedy turtle

A turtle! He was just relaxing on my driveway trying to find a way out since he reach the garage door and couldn’t go any further. He headed right until he reached a wall and turned back left until he was able to go down and walk to the back of my house and cross right again through my backyard and into my neighbor’s backyard. Turtle moved faster than I thought he would and for that reason I will call him speedy. Who knows what else I will discover on my property here in Florida. I haven’t seen any alligators yet but if it happened now, I wouldn’t be so surprised.

My HD Wallpaper folder

I have been going a little crazy with high definition desktop wallpaper. I started by downloading a few and decided to use Mac OS X’s change wallpaper every one hour feature. I later dropped this to every 30 minutes. But having this feature meant I must have more and so it went, I downloaded more and more. I now have 363 hd wallpapers in this folder all set to rotate randomly every 30 minutes.

These are mainly gorgeous nature scenes and city scenes. But I also have some from movies, cartoons and of course a few of Megan Fox and one of Keeley Hazell. I like to get them in 1080 size which is 1920×1080, but when that size isn’t available I get the 1920×1200 size. My desktop monitor resolution is 1920×1080 running with macbook docked.

And so it continues, I will probably find more and download them.

Florida Sheriff

It is hunting season in South Florida. I was out this afternoon in a car and there were police cars everywhere. They were hiding waiting for their prey to go by. Saw one pulled over getting a ticket in the summer heat of Florida. The state needs money and this is one easy way to get it, but what state doesn’t need money now? What state isn’t doing this?

Tickets all over the place. Would be nice if they ticket the people who actually don’t know how to drive, the ones that stop to move to the turn lanes and the like. And of course Florida drivers who don’t signal when turning. Those should be double ticketed!

Ice Age 3 Poster

I saw the movie Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs today. Compared to the list of bad movies I saw this year, this one was the most enjoyable after Megan Fox 2. This was a good movie, an entertaining movie. Not the greatest movie and not expected to be. I finally got to see a decent movie. After paying for so many dumb movies this year, I got to see a movie that was good and it was FREE. That is right, a simple complaint to the manager made the movie free. And yes the complaint was valid and legit.

After the movie I dropped in a Brookstone store to get my massage. That’s right I go into Brookstone and Sharper Image when they were still in business and get a massage. One day I will buy one of those massage chairs but until then since I haven’t decided which one I like and they keep making them better, I can’t buy it yet. It’s not the price that is holding me back! Don’t you hate when someone is sitting on the massage chair and won’t leave?

Volleyball Diger

Luckily this time there were 2 chairs with just one in use by a young cute girl. I soon find out she had the better massage chair, but that is fine, can’t always have it all. I had a nice conversation with her while we both sat our asses down and refused to leave. Even her mother came by and asked if we were ever going to leave the chairs. Poor girl had some metal bracket or brace around her leg from the knee down that had a cover on it. The cover it seems was not just to hide the metal structure but also her scars. I was able to see one scar above this brace. I thought she was in some car accident. NOPE it was from volleyball. YES VOLLEYBALL. I never knew you can get so hurt in volleyball. She explained to me she joined a volleyball team and was playing a “digger” and explained what that is. She dove for a hit and I have no idea how twisted up her leg.

So as you can see, conversations with strangers can not only pass time but also be informative. So I got a free movie, a little massage and a nice chat with this cute girl. I thanked her for the chat and wished her well at which she was all blushing and smiling.

Foxxy Megan

I saw Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen on Sunday. From here on I will call it Megan Fox 2. Now I expected dumb plot events as the first one had, and I expected to enjoy this movie like I did with the first. The first was entertaining, the second was as well, except it really dragged at the end. The action got boring, I stared at the screen wondering when it will end. And I stared at Megan Fox running for 5 miles with Sam. Therefor I am stilling demanding my good movie this year!

So as usual Megan Fox was THE movie. Sure there was some nice Hollywood effects, some good transformers action but too many dumb scenes that dragged the movie. We had ghetto twin auto-bots saying “we can’t read”. I really didn’t enjoy any scene with the ghetto bots. A new human skinned Decepticon, I figured she was not human before they revealed her when I thought oh no, she is a terminator. We had her sit in the car with Sam, the car is bumble bee, who was not able to detect she was a bot rather than a human, yet at the start of the movie an auto-bot announces he can smell the Decepticon bot. We had a horrible weak trap involving kidnapping Sam’s parents from Paris to Egypt. We had Sam have bumble bee take Sam’s parents to safety while he ran on foot to the soldiers, only to find out that bumble bee drove the parents to the soldiers were Sam had to run for miles instead. We had the sector 7 guy decide to assault museum guards to enter the museum instead of just going for a regular visit and of course he just happened to have maybe 8 tasers in his purse on him. All this and so much more!

So this just left me with Megan Fox. And that is why this movie is now called Megan Fox 2. And with that I leave you with some Megan. Oh and Megan, you can only wish I would get ANY tattoo for you, especially not one with your name. But if you like you can get one for me since you have, 8 was it? Alright back to Megan…

Megan Fox 2

Megan Fox Bike

Megan Fox Action Pair

Famous Megan Fox Shot