onfocus

There are some amazing photographs (and QTVR panoramas) over at Kite Aerial Photography. [via del.icio.us]

This morning everything was encased in ice. Now the sun is out, the ice is melting, and it sounds like it's raining from all the dripping water.

The snow has given me another season to add to this compressed-time picture of a tree on the side of my house: tree animation (286 kB).

I took some more snow pictures today. I love moss and snow together because it seems like an odd combination.









Like yesterday, there are a couple more here and here.

We arrived home safely in Oregon and found a winter wonderland. It snowed most of the day today—giant, sticky flakes—perfect for snowballs. Here are a couple snapshots from a walk near our place:





Happy new year!

Update: Matt wrote the year in my driveway. And I posted a couple more pictures from today here and here.

I can't believe it snowed in Corvallis while I'm away. I've been in Nebraska for a week and haven't seen a bit of snow. (But that made traveling to Kansas much safer.)

I spent some time in Hoxie, Kansas over the holidays with family. Here are a few photos from the trip:


more »

The stars are insanely bright there. (Didn't get any pictures of those, though.)

I'm still alive—and I'm still in Nebraska. Have you ever had your flight cancelled in the middle of the Christmas traveling season? Every flight at every airport is booked solid. Thanks for extending my trip several days, United! (that's sarcasm.)

shew, it's finally winter solstice—halfway to spring.

At least three big-box hardware stores—including Home Depot—have been courting Corvallis. Home Depot had a site in mind, but they needed some zoning changes to make it happen. Last night the city council decided not to change the potential research/technology site for Home Depot: Home Depot plan shot down. On one hand it would be convenient to have a giant megastore here (especially now that I own a home), but I have to weigh choice and availability with lifestyle. I chose to live in a small town, and at some point you hope the character of the town you want to live in takes priority over financial gain.

Update: Upon futher review it was the planning commission that said no, not the city council. So anything could happen.

I made some changes over at ORblogs tonight. (If you're an Oregonian, you might want to get the full scoop on the changes in the discussion forum.) The change that I think will make the site much more useful is a small one—subtly highlighting post excerpts that are related to Oregon. Any post excerpt that talks about Oregon or has an Oregon place name will slightly stand out from the rest. I also added pages for cities in Oregon. The city pages are like the front page but limit weblogs, post excerpts, and photos to those associated with that city. Portland has the most associated weblogs with 46. My fair city only has three weblogs. There are 181 Oregon weblogs listed in all.

1976design.com has a very cool title banner that displays the current time of day and weather conditions where the author is. Scroll down to "The panorama" on his colophon page to see how it's done. It was inspired by the (also) cool Lawrence, KS weather page that went around a while back. (And I'm guessing the Moon Phase pictures from the Naval Observatory—or something like them.) [via BlogPopuli]