Hound Rescue Garage Sale

If you can't make it to Austin, you can always support Hound Rescue with donations or by fostering needy hounds.

"Just a reminder that our 4th annual, Hound Rescue charity sale - Saturday August 7th!!! It's not too late to clean out the garage or get rid of those items that are taking up space and donate them to the hounds. Last year's sale yielded over $1400, so the goal is $1700 this year and we need all the support we can get to achieve it! Wanna help donate goods or volunteer your time at the sale? Contact Christine Alt at ealt@austin.rr.com or 512-658-8487. (Christine will begin accepting donations starting on Monday, August 2nd thru Friday August 6th - contact her to set up a time to drop off your donations.) Tax deductible receipts are available upon request.

Saturday August 7th
8 am to noon
Christine's Home (NW Austin, off 183N, between Anderson Mill Rd and Parmer Ln)
8807 Black Oak Street
Austin, TX 78729"

San Jose Website Design

I've been hard at work the last month spending every free minute working on a website. Ive been so busy in fact that I haven't even updated my face book profile that often. In addition to to the website, I also work full time and I am taking a summer flex course at NE Lakeview. The first week of class we recieved 10 chapters of assigned reading . The only reason I have time to write this blog post is because I'm sitting in class waiting for others to finish a test so we can begin this weeks series of topics.

Work on the website began when I took vacation the first week of June. Shannon and I drove to Waco to visit my family. While there we spent nearly 2 days at my uncles new shop; Shannon working on the page layout while I was photographing the products. When we weren't at the shop I was working on the code or drinking margaritas with my brother and cousins. It was supposed to be a vacation afterall.



After shooting all the products I had to clean up all 60 something images in Photoshop (I.e. sharpen, adjust levels, crop, and remove dust, smudges, and fibers). That was another weeks worh of work. Once Shannon was finished with the design, I had to dissect it into smaller images and make the actual website look like her design. The home page took very tedious work to align everything seemlessly.

It took about 2 weeks to code all 12 pages. I finally finished all the major work last night at midnight (instead of studying for my test). Now minor editing and tweaking remains before we launch the new site. I hope to have it done by this weekend so I can enjoy my birthday weekend (and a few margaritas ). 

HDR Photography

This is my first ever attempt at High Dynamic Range, or HDR, photography. HDR photography involves a process of bracketing shots and then composting the individual shots with software. I also followed some of the techniques in this Photoshop tutorial, minus the sky portion. Its  not as great as I had hoped, however, shooting at 2pm is not the ideal time.

 

Cactus Bugs

While shooting some pictures of the flower on this cactus, I noticed all these bugs hanging out on the back side of it. I have no idea what they are and not sure if I should kill them or let them hang out.  A quick Google search left me thinking they might be Cactus Coreid Nymphs.

Of all the links I found, none have indicated weather or not I should try to get rid of them.

• http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in365
• http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/beneficial/c_v_aequoris.htm
• http://www.whatsthatbug.com/2006/05/29/cactus-joint-bugs/