plonq | 20120201, etc. Another catch-up picture dump.

I know I have already posted a few pictures from Parlour Coffee, but it has become my favourite coffee spot, and I expect you may see a few more as the year progresses. What amuses me most about this picture is the description of the flavour properties on the leftmost coffe: Candied Orange, Plum, Vanilla. I have drunk that one in the past, and I assure you that it tastes like coffee.

It is a testament to how warm the weather has been here that the police are out on their horses. The horses apparently do not start well in really cold weather. It is a bit unusual to see them riding through town when there is not a special event on, but word has it this is part of their effort to establish a larger police presence down town. If they were striving to raise their visibility, this is a good way to go about it.

One of the neat side-effects of fog here in the winter is that if the conditions are just right, all of our trees and shrubs end up with a sugar coating like this. I wish I could have found a better angle to do this effect more justice, but I think this picture shows it off well enough. The shot is marred a bit by all of the cigarette butts, but the smokers in my building are pigs. I don't mind smokers, but I do mind smokers who carelessly flick their butts everywhere. I mapped a couple of butts out of the shot, and cropped it to remove an empty cigarette package, but there is only so much you can do in software to overcome human failings.

It has become a tradition for us to dine out on Saturday morning. When the farmers' market is on, we usually do something quick like McDonalds, but on chilly days like today we prefer something a bit more leisurely. Since it was in the part of town where we were ultimately destined anyway, we decided to hit Denny's. I have not eaten at this place in some time (and never at this particular location, since it is fairly new). I don't know if they have changed the menu since my last visit, but it was a lot better than I remember.

Other than adding a bit of vignette in software, this is straight from the camera. I took this one using the HDR setting on the camera. I know I said earlier that I probably would not be using it a lot, but I am finding that I like the results that it produces. Sometimes it can be a bit overdone, but other times it is fairly subtle. In future I may start taking pictures in and out of that setting so that I can compare the results.

I ordered a thoroughly-unhealthy looking skillet of beef, potatoes and veggies with a cheese-based sauce. It is hard to get a sense of scale from this picture, but it was not quite as large a portion as it looks like in this shot. It was actually just a nice amount of food. It normally comes with a big dollop of sour cream on top, but I asked for that on the side. It was a nice addition, and complemented the flavours nicely, but I only used about 1/3 of what they brought. It would have killed this dish if it had included as much as it showed in the picture on the menu. For the record, this was quite good.

atara ordered a healthy breakfast choice that came with n egg-white omelet with spinach, an English muffin, and this. The only thing that makes this not a fruit smoothie is a blender and a bit of yoghurt. I may order this one for myself the next time we come here.

We bought a cheap scanner today that is designed specifically for pictures and negatives. We hooked it up in the living room where I wired it to my notebook computer and set it to automatically dump anything we scan onto the server in the basement. It's a pretty slick set-up. It does a fairly mediocre job on scanning the negatives, but it's about as good as I expected for the amount we paid.

I grabbed a package of photographs from the box next to our couch and flipped through it until I spotted this very familiar-looking pair of trouble makers. I am pretty sure I shot this at AC99.

I don't know if I will do this daily, but I've decided to play a new game called "Negative Roulette". Every once in awhile when I get bored, I will grab a handful of negatives out of the box in the other room, then either pester

atara like I did today, or post something on Twitter asking for a couple of numbers. I will use those numbers to determine which negative to scan, and which picture on that negative to use. I don't remember what numbers

atara gave me today, but this was the result.