bonnie & jason

Forgotten pictures/videos

Bonnie has had her cell phone for about two years now and I finally got around to pulling the miscellaneous pictures and video off it today. Here are a few of my favorite ones (quality isn’t great) with the whole group here. It’s kinda fun to look back at the random things that were captured. Makes it feel like the last couple years has just flown by.

Jason’s baby pictures

Some of you may remember the slide show from our wedding reception a few years ago. In that slide show, we had just a few baby pictures. Recently, however, I collected a number of old photo albums from my parents before they moved to Vegas with the intention of scanning in all the images for a digital backup. Well, here’s the first installment of that digital backup with a few teaser images below. Of note… I really look like a girl (ie Alissa) in some of the pictures and my mom used to wear verrrry short skirts. Even around the cold weather of Christmas time.

Back from Laguna Beach: The real Orange County

We just got back from a week in Laguna Beach. Yes, that Laguna Beach. It’s not so much that we wanted to see where Kristin Cavawhoever hangs out, more that we wanted a place that was close to the beach, in between LA and San Diego, and affordable for my side of the family. So we rented this place.

I have to say, I didn’t have high expectations as most web sites make the place seem better than it actually is. However, in this case, the web site was underselling the property. First of all, the place was huge! No “wide angle lens” tricks here. The bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms, even the hallways were humongous. Second, the house was very new and all the furniture, decorations, etc. were still fresh without any of that “rental house” feel that sometimes happens over time. Third, everything was very high end. From the bathroom fixtures to the light switches, it was clear that this house was built to luxury standards. Finally, everything was very clean and well stocked. We didn’t have to go scrounging for bathroom tissue or bring our own towels. All in all, we were very happy with the accommodations, especially given that the price wasn’t bad as we were at the tail end of the off-season.

I’ll put up a more detailed trip summary later this weekend as it’s kinda late now. For the time being, here are a few pictures that I liked: (Edit: Added new pictures and commentary below. Also, here’s the link to the full album.)

Alissa loved the stairs. I guess they were a novelty as we don’t have any at home that she can use. So she spent the better part of most days going up and down, up and down. She did enough so that she can actually go down the stairs forwards while hugging the wall. She’s not super reliable at this technique though so someone had to be there to catch her in case she fell. But between the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, Alissa got pretty much her fill of things.

We spent one of the days at the San Diego Zoo. It was a super hot day but worth the trip. Here’s a picture of the baby panda. He was just hanging out in this tree. Didn’t look all that comfy to me, but he seemed to enjoy it. If you look at the pictures in the whole album, you’ll also notice that he enjoyed showing the crowd his dirty, fuzzy butt.

Here’s Aidan at the petting zoo. I love the hat. I think he had just as much fun playing in the dirt as with the animals.

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Christian and Chloe on the deck at the house. The sun was nice and low so I got warm, even light. And Chloe obliged with a big smile!

Bonnie and Alissa on the Carousel at the zoo. Alissa didn’t really know what to make of it until the second time we rode it.

Papa, Mama, and baby monkey. Literally hanging around looking at the people looking at them.

Lions and tigers and bears (two kinds) oh my!

At the San Diego Wildlife Park, the animals had much more room to run about. It was cool to see the different species occupying the same large space.

Alissa’s first dippin’ dots. Only $4.50.

Can’t have a good day as a kid without swings!

Happy Mother’s Day

Happy mother’s day to all the mom’s out there. We went to Golden Gate Park this afternoon to take some mother’s day pictures… if there is such a thing. Alissa was very interested in pretty much every little thing from twigs, rocks, pigeons, water, to leaves, you name it. It took her about 10 minutes to walk 10 feet in the botanical garden because she was so curious about everything. Also, she wasn’t really interested in being held to take pictures but we managed to get a few ok ones I think. I’ve included a few below. Here’s the link to the whole album.

My other blog…

Bonnie is always trying to figure out how I can bring home more money to support Alissa’s milk addiction. Since I like blogging and giving people advice about stuff (regardless of my qualifications), she thought I should find a way to monetize my interests. So I am excited to announce that I am now the author to the Digital Camera blog at Content Quake. I have no idea if I have enough interesting things to say about digital cameras and photography that would make people want to read my blog vs. the horde of other photography related sites out there, but we’ll see what happens. Who knows, maybe if I get some traction from the readers of this blog, I can make an extra couple bucks a month!

Connor and his peeps

I took some pictures for Jen, Ken, and Connor yesterday in Golden Gate Park. It was a little chilly outside, but not too bad.

Are they a good looking family or what?! Notice the matching Uggs on Connor and Jen.

Here’s one of the moms and babies too:

How to replace a Canon 550EX hotshoe

As Alissa gets taller, she is able to reach more and more stuff she isn’t supposed to reach. A couple weeks ago, she reached up and grabbed my camera strap and pulled it off the shelf. Camera is fine, lens is fine, but the flash was a casualty. The flimsy plastic hotshoe connection snapped in a few places. So, I ended up buying a new Canon 580EXII which is very nice but soon thereafter, realized that maybe the broken one was repairable. A few minutes in front of google and then ebay revealed a $12 replacement part. Yay!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find instructions on how to actually execute the replacement so I thought I’d put up a few pictures and explain the process briefly.

Here’s my broken flash. Notice the four holes in the corners. This is what you should see after removing the screws that live in those holes. The long ones go on the bottom and the shorter ones go on top.

After you remove the screws, you should be able to lift the back end up and then pull out to clear the tab on the front side. Then you should see this:

On the right side, there are two screws that secure the external power plug. Remove those two screws. On the top, there are two smaller screws that secure the switch that determines the “off/master/slave” setting. Remove these two screws as well.

Now you should be able to access the four screws that hold the hotshoe assembly in place.


You can really only see the bottom right one in these pictures, but they’re arranged in a square pattern. They’re kinda tight with the wires that lead to the hotshoe connectors so be careful you don’t accidentally break the solder connections. Also, it’s worth noting that these four screws have a larger head on them so you’ll want to use a larger screw driver vs. the little jeweler screw driver you’ll need for all the other screws.

Anyway, after you unscrew the four screws (don’t back them out of the housing… just let them hang out there so it will be easier to reassemble later on) you’ll be able to pull the hot shoe assembly out. Be careful as there is a spring and locking pin that will be loose once you remove the assembly. The rest is easy. Just unscrew the broken piece out of the assembly and replace it with the new one being careful to replace the spring and locking pin in the correct orientation. (Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of this part.) Then just put everything back together and voila! The only thing to be careful of is to make sure you gradually screw in the last four screws on the outside of the housing. If you tighten one side too much, you won’t be able to get the other screws started at all.

If I was to do it again, I might apply a tiny about of grease to the locking pin and the threaded part since mine doesn’t seem to work as smoothly as it used to. Hope that helps!

Mike’s wedding pictures

I did some quick editing of the pictures from Vegas. I still have to get some pictures from Leslie, but the bulk of them are done. Here is the full album, and some highlights below.

Our wedding album… two years, two months, nine days later

Bonnie and I finally got around to designing our own wedding album. It’ll be a simple 12×12 leather bound album with 20 spreads. Here’s the entire album with a teaser below.

Parents’ wedding album

Today’s world of digital photography, HD videography, online wedding registries, and bridezilla/platinum wedding reality shows is literally a generation removed from when my parents got married. On October 10, next Wednesday, they will have been married for 37 years. Ten days later, my brother Mike, one of the next generation, will get married and coincidentally, Alissa, yet another generation removed, will be exactly ten months old. (Alissa getting married isn’t even on my radar yet… let’s get through teething, walking, talking, potty training, etc. first.)

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to use some of this generation’s technology to protect the last generations memories by digitizing their wedding album so it can live forever in virtual reality in case it gets lost/damaged in true reality. So here it is.

A few things to note:
1. My dad’s handwriting was (and still is) pretty cool… I did not inherit his precision.
2. My parents still use a lot of their wedding presents to this day… that Corningware is indestructible.
3. I love the “Plans” section of the picture below… “that pretty librarian at the University of Scranton (as if there was only one)” from where my mom just retired a couple months ago: