Why I Oughta...

Over the weekend, I posted a vintage photo of my family 1 at Walt Disney World back in the early 1980's and talked about how I wasn't sure EXACTLY where the photo was taken nor was I sure why my sister and I were wearing these white tags on our clothes.  Here, again, is the photo in question below showing three of us wearing Mickey Ears and my mom looking very chic in the Florida heat. See those tags on me and my Sister next to me that seem to be pinned or tied to our shirts?  Earlier this week, I posted about the details and solved *that* part of the mystery:  those are "Lost Parent" Tags with Mickey and Minnie Mouse on them .    But, I still didn't know the location.  Of course, we're in a hat shop.  And, the cast member is wearing some sort of lederhosen-like outfit.  But, was it in Epcot @ the Germany pavillion?  Was it at The Chapeau in Magic Kingdom?  I wasn't sure.   But, I knew that someone WOULD know the location.  And, the first place I turned

I've posted about my participation in the Google Local Guides program where you provide reviews, ratings and photos of local businesses and places.  I've been doing it for a couple of years and have hit a few milestones along the way.  This week, Google emailed me this note you see above:  my photos have been viewed 4M times.  Yeah...four million.  That's crazy, but with Google's scale, I guess it shouldn't be surprising. In February of 2017, I shared the previous milestone:  2.5M photo views .  So, it took me 14 months or so to get the next 1.5M views.  In March of 2016, I hit "Level 4" on the platform .  Today, I'm a "Level 7".  And guess what?  This email made me go back into the system and add a few more photos and engage even more.  Nurturing at it's best, right? 

I keep my phone on the nightstand and use it as my alarm clock.  Because of that, it was handy one morning that we were up in Wisconsin, so Nat grabbed it and snapped this photo of the sunrise view (#nofilter) from the Lakeview Bedroom (Name Pending).  I say 'pending' because there's just one room that seems to have a name up there:  the Pine Needle Room.  That was named, I think, by Vic.  But, it has stuck!  That's the room that the Babe normally sleeps in, but this - the Lakeview Bedroom (Name Pending) is the room where Nat and I sleep when we're up there.  The windows face straight east, so we get great morning views full of colors that you can kind of see in the photos of the early morning fox visitor I posted a few weeks back .   And that really is a #NoFilter photo.  For realz.

Back in May, I posted about hitting level 4 on the Google Local Guides program which gives you a nice storage bonus for photos and docs and gmail.  I've been contributing to the Local Guide program - which is where you submit your reviews/ratings as well as photos of local places to Google Maps - ever since and every few weeks, Google sends you a little update on how well your stuff is faring.  Sometimes, it is how many people are being helped by your photos and other times it is how often your reviews are being shared, etc. Recently, I received the email above that shows that my photos have now hit 2.5M combined views.  I have no idea what that means, other than it seems like a big number.  As a Local Guide, you can go in and see all of your contributions and even see which photos have the most views (t his photo of Silver Beach Pizza in St. Joe's is my most-viewed photo ever). Kind of interesting to see which photos people are using and how they're helping.  The

Earlier this month, we spent some time up in Coloma for our annual July visit and as we normally do, we went out to St. Joe's for some Silver Beach Pizza and what-have-yous.  On this trip, we went a few times and spent time both down below the bluff and up on top in town.   I covered one of the stops earlier this week with our visit to Silver Harbor Brewing Company . St. Joe's always has public art and this year is no different.  The theme is 'beach bugs' and there are lots of little statues/art that kids can climb on and have fun, but one of these bugs is a bit different. It is a caterpiller that was built by a team at Whirlpool named H-E-L-L-O.   You can read more about the bug here.   It was built by a cross-functional team at Whirlpool.   The team that built this thing can be found here . So...while it it *is* public art, this is interactive public art that takes your photo and then allows you to save it on your device.  There are instructions on the statue

As if you didn't get enough of my drivel on a daily basis, right?  But...for *some* of you, there's a new place to keep up with things that I read and places I go and photos I take online.  It is my newish link/photo home on the web.   You can find it here . It is called "Over by dere".  Which, if you speak Chicagoese , you know roughly translates to : Over by dere. i.e. "over by there," a prolix way of emphasizing a site presumed familiar to the listener. As in, "I got the sassage at da Jewels down on Kedzie, over by dere.' For now, it is a home to things that I come across on the web that are somewhere in between re-Tweets and blog posts here on the blog. I haven't totally figured out what will be up there and how often, but there's enough that I've put up there that I figured it was time to share.  Besides...part of the reason for it is me thinking about vanity SEO and having this post up with inbound links to Over By Dere by

A week or so ago, I came across this story on Wired entitled: "How to get your photos off Flickr (and where to put them)" that made me try to figure out how to get into my long-ago-abandoned Flickr account.   Once I gained access, I found that I had a few thousand photos there that I'd long forgotten about.  Ranging in dates from January of 2002 all the way up until October of 2008.   Flickr has made it *somewhat* easier to pull them down.  You can batch download them, but if you get too greedy and select too many photos to download at a time, it gets flaky and the whole thing grinds to a state of constant stalling.  But, after a few trials/errors, I found a good groove of pulling down a few months at a time, unzipping those folders, then using the Google Photos Uploader to put each batch up to Google Photos.  There's a bunch of stories that go with the photos that I've unearthed and because what the kids are doing these days are #Throwback Thursdays, I figur

This morning, I found myself sitting at my sister's desk up in her office and noticed this black and white photo of my Momma on her wedding day.  Looks like she's carrying a bouquet of long-stemmed flowers.  Don't see that happening today, right? Not sure where Vic and Equation Boy got some of the photos around their house, but they have some sweet ones of our family from back in the day - including a few of me as a little guy.  Maybe I'll share some of those here on the blog at some point...

At this year's annual Google I/O Conference, the team at +Google   announced a bunch of things, but the first one that I *experienced* first-hand was the "extra Awesome Somethings"  in Google+ photos. Using some programatic intelligence, the team at Google has started to 'drop' little surprises into your photo collection on Google+ when you take bunches of photos at once. As an example, Google+ 'gifted' me these two neat things.  First, an animated GIF (JIF?!?!)  of the Babe and then this composite of the Bird. Pretty neat stuff.  Thanks  +Google+  !

Head over to Conde Nast Traveler and take a peek at the hotdog slideshow they have up today and peek at who took the first photo of the "Depression Dog" from Gene & Jude's. The team from CN Traveler reached out to me to ask if they could use my photo in their slideshow.    Of course...they could!  They even put in a nice link back to my site - which was awfully nice. This isn't the first time that someone has reached out.   Here's one of my tomato photos on a plant sale site  and my post about that process .

Nothing more to say this year about our annual visit to Renegade except for:  parking sucks.  The place is way too packed, and what the Tribune said yesterday. We, did, however take our annual family photo.  The Bird made it in there! Here's our Renegade photo from Holiday 2011 . Here's our Renegade  photo from summer 2011 . Here's our Renegade photo from Holiday 2010 . Here's our Renegade photo from Holiday 2009 .

We sat for our annual photobooth family photo last weekend at the Renegade Craft Fair.   Here's a post that shows some of the other family photos .  It is pretty amazing that we coordinated all four panels jsut about perfectly with last year's version.  The bottom 2 photos are almost identical - but for the one year difference.  I didn't look at the previous year's version before we went, so this was just PURELY coincidental.  Crazy.  Guess we'll have to plan that for next year.

We took this photo at the summer Renegade Craft Fair in the city.   Here's the photo from 2009 (note where the Babe is in the first one!) and one from last December .    Beard in all 3. December 2009  December 2010

A few months back, I received an email from someone at the McHenry County Visitors Bureau asking me if they could use a photo I took of some corn we bought at the Elmhurst Farmers' Market.  They wanted to highlight Twin Garden Farms in their annual travel magazine but didn't have a photo they could use.  So, they wanted to use the photo I posted on this post about Mirai Corn .  Sure, I said.  Go ahead.  But...can you send me a copy of the magazine when it is done? Fast forward to this week.  In our mailbox was a copy of the McHenry County Visitors Guide. And, if you turn to page 12, you'll see the photo of the corn taken with my phone.  No photo credit, but because of this post, I can take credit, eh?  I'll have to update my CV to include "published photojournalist", right?