All you Flickr people, meet Zooomr.

A guy I know is always developing something new. His name is Wendell, and his story is really pretty amazing if you sat down and listened to all of it. He was programming video games professionally in Russia when he was 14 or something crazy like that. A genius, I'm pretty sure of it.

Anyway, for the last few years he's been developing things - consumer programming for all types of "lifestyle" applications. Things like a location based chat program called Meetro, that has the ability to let you "see" how far away people you know (and those you don't) are from you. This is accomplished by coupling your standard instant messaging program together with a gps-like ability to decipher your computer's IP address (even if on wireless) and to be able to pinpoint your location. So, say you're sitting in your apartment and your buddy signs on. You can click their name and see that they are 21 miles away from you. Or, you may click on their name and see that they are 300 feet away from you, and in that case you should probably lock your doors, because they may be coming after you.

Just kidding.

Anyway, it's cool stuff. And now he's developing a "flickr-esque" program called Zooomr. This program, though, lets you add stuff such as GPS tagging (so people can look up on a map exactly where you took the photo) and the ability to add sound bites to a photo, so you can REALLY convey the feeling you had when you took the photo. Another great twist to something that's out there, but Wendell takes it a step further, and really makes it useful and cool.

So, if you use flickr, why not check out Zooomr. Wendell's currently trying to build up his beta testers to 500 folks...so if you're interested, follow the links above, or go to: http://beta.zooomr.com and sign up.

Sorry for the shameless promotion, but I logged in this morning, and I can already tell you it's going to be cool, and you're eventually going to want to sign up anyway, so why not get in now!

Sigur Ros Concert = Amazing.

Last night a very sleepy Tom and even sleepier Lauren loaded up in the car to head downtown for a concert. Sigur Ros was in town, and I am a big fan of them. They're from Iceland, which is cool, and they play a strange but soothing blend of rock and ambient music. You should check it out if you're into listening to soothing music sang in Icelandic words.

Anyway, we went to this concert, and the opening act (and also half of the traveling band) was Amina, another Icelandic quartet. These ladies, however, were a bit of a contrast to Sigur Ros' scratchy guitars and pounding drums. Amina played various instruments, mostly strings like violins, cellos, and small guitars and dulcimers and xylophones. The exception being wine glasses which made up the harmony of one song, and a steel saw, which was used as a drum as well as played with a violin bow. The sound, though, was amazing.

Sigur Ros' set was completely amazing as well. They played the first song from behind a white vail with backlighting, so the whole thing looked like a surreal movie scene. They also had images and movies being projected onto the vail, and later behind the band on a huge screen. As one person I overhead said, "It was one beautiful melody after beautiful image, after melody."

I left completely awstricken with the two bands. I've listened to Sigur Ros' cd's over and over and over again. At work, in the car, while running, at work again; they never seem to get old. But, after seeing them live and in concert, I have a newfound respect for them. Even though it was late and we were both tired, I think today we can both look back and say it was definitely worth it. At least I can!

On the horizon:

Lots of travel coming up. Here is our schedule for those who care:

March 8-12: Traveling to The Grand Bahama Island for work. I'll be working on a site to host videos and news/photos coming out of the 2006 Weather Conference. My tasks will be taking video from the editors and compressing them into 4 formats for the web, and posting them on a website. I'll also be taking stories and photos from the conference and putting them on the website. The editors are going to be down there, so it made sense for us to go there instead of them trying to get tapes up to Indiana - to speed up the process of getting the video to the web. Lauren will be going along for the ride, since we'll be staying the Westin...we figured why not!

April 22: Wedding of Lauren's friend in Ft. Wayne, IN.

April 27 - May 1: Headed to Asheville, North Carolina for 20+ more miles on the Appalachian Trail with Joe and his brother-in-law, and possibly another person.

July 8 - 17: Heading to Hawaii for the wedding of Lauren's brother (my brother-in-law) and his fiancee. We'll be staying in the J.W. Marriott on Oahu (I think). This should be a great time, and hopefully Hawaii is as beautiful as everyone says it is.

Sorry for not writing.

But I don't have much to say. I'm burnt out right now with work, and it's super busy. So that's not good. It feels like I haven't spent a lot of good quality time at home lately, either. Not sure why that is. I think it's because I've been working a lot, and when I get home I pretty much just go straight to bed because I'm tired. Lauren feels the same way. It's probably just because it's the middle of winter, and all the sudden the weather's decided to turn cold. It's sapping the energy right out of me!

Tomorrow I am going to be in a short film for work. I play the part of 1 of 3 dorky engineers in sort of a motivational short for one of our clients. We will be doing a series of short (5 - 7 min) movies that show these 3 engineers goofing off and working on this machine that will be released in June. The point is to keep the sales force interested in the machine until they can actually go out and sell it. It's really fun. It's kind of like "The Office" where it's kind of done like a documentary, but it's completely ridiculous. So, Monday will be a LONG day for me. I have to be at the "set" at 7:15! That's early for me. Especially in the winter.

So, I think I need to just lay on the couch now. I've been working on stuff all morning for work because I'll be out tomorrow, so it's time for me to get a little of my Sunday back.

Professional Photography?

I was asked yesterday to do some portrait shots of a co-worker for their website. I've always been the go-to-guy for photos, and I love doing it, so naturally I said yes.

This time was going to be even more fun, though, because in our kitchen someone had already set up a few lights for a TV shoot they were doing earlier. I lucked out. With a little re-arranging of the lights, an improvised backdrop, and a willing model, I was soon snapping away with great amazement of the shots I was getting. It was like all of the sudden, all of the stuff I've read and practiced was working together.

I have to admit, the lights played a huge part, but my new Canon 20D coupled with my 70-200 lens (at about 135mm for good portrait shots) was a winning combo. Here, have a look for yourself and please let me know if you'd pay money for shots like this.

We Passed!

The results are in, and both dad and I passed the Technician License amateur Radio exam! So, we could be on the air as soon as the end of this week! How cool is that?!

Also, some more good news. I have been "hired" to shoot two motorcycle racing "track days" at the Putnum County Raceway. I say "hired", because I'm not actually being paid. However, I get exclusive photography rights for the days and they have you post the images on a website (I'm making my own at the moment) and from there the racers can log on a purchase the photos. So, even though the track isn't specifically paying me, I will make money. And the best part is that I get front row seats to all the action!

They aren't until May and August, so I have some time to figure some things out, but I am definitely excited about it!