Odalisque

I used this photo of a drunk chick for my post on Baltimore Sun's blog Midnight Sun today.  Laura Lee called her an odalisque, which I had to look up.  It does come out looking like something from a Velvet Underground song.

Baby octopus photo

Here's a photo of baby octopuses and the Picnik.Com manipulation.

 

Another example of Picnik.Com photo manipulation

Below are the source photo and the result of it being manipulated in Picnik.com.  Picnik is really easy to use.

I think that I cropped it, used Autofix, and then the Invert effect but chose the hue instead of using the default actual color inversion.  I just slide the button around until I found something that worked best for me. My intention was to change it to something less realistic to emphasize the symbolic nature of the image.  I think that before I inverted the colors I used tghe Vibrance effect to give greater contrast to the whitish foam against he white background.  It worked really well.

The second photo was used for my guest column on the Baltimore Sun's bar and nightlife blog Midnight Sun.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/midnight_sun/blog/2009/08/tipsy_tuesdays_breaking_the_se.html

Cuban sandwich

I don't think that I ever posted this before. It's kind of simple for me, but most people still don't get it.  It's not really about marriage OR a Cuban sandwich, but a Cuban sandwich is a very good thing. I'm hungry.

 

marriage/lunch in Miami 
   
someday I'll marry

a Cuban sandwich

scrunch in togetherness

full of meat and juices

bundle up ourselves

in a smashed crusty-fresh roll

all full of enthusiasm

hot-pressed between iron plates

flavor sealed in, naturally

 

from the Baltimore City Paper, 2002

Overheard today – ponies

Guys in bar talking about ponies ...

"A pony costs $3000 a year to lease or $10,000 to buy."

Cabbage and cheddar

I put Google ads on this blog out of curiosity.  I was curious what kinds of ads would be placed.  I never expected to make any money.  The way it works is that when you get to a hundred dollars they give you the money.  I am happy to say that since December 2008 I have accumulated $0.86.

Keyword analysis

I was just looking at some data about visitors to this blog.  One function is called keyword analysis.  That logs the words used to find this site via Google or some other search engine.  Here is the most recent data:

  Num Perc. Search Term
 9 25.00% owl meat
 2 5.56% www.owl meat
 2 5.56% owl meat apocalyse
 2 5.56% meet and f**k my favorite
 2 5.56% owl meat apocrypha
 2 5.56% why so glum chum
 2 5.56% i left my heart in sam clam's disco
 2 5.56% poeme mr owl
 1 2.78% feelin good in the neighborhood
 1 2.78% feeling good in the neighborhood
 1 2.78% sub bourbon
 1 2.78% sam clam's disco
 1 2.78% owl meat gravy
 1 2.78% girl kill chicken
 1 2.78% where does the term dumb pollock come from?
 1 2.78% owl meat blog
 1 2.78% sideways pinot noir monologue
 1 2.78% is owl meat tasty or healthy
 1 2.78% apocrypha meaning tattoos
 1 2.78% www.owl meat apocrypha
 1 2.78% apollo dancing with the muses by francesco bartolozzi
  36 100.00%  

Interesting.  I wish I had more data.  How did "girl kill chicken" get here?  Or "meet and f**k my favorite"?  

Fun with black and white photos

For tomorrow's post on Dining@Large in the Baltimore Sun I started with a black and white photo.  Then I used the heat map function in Picnik to create a color image and manipulated in various ways to create four different versions.  Then I made a collage and tilted it out of frame a little.  

I use different software for image manipulation, including PhotoPlus (a Photoshop knockoff), TiltShift, and Picnik.  Picnik is a free program available at Picnik.Com and is very easy to use.  I even bought the upgraded version.