Yatpay's Blog

Dragged my ass to the gym.. did an hour of walking and jogging. Feels good.

Tony posted this excellent rendition of the events of our rpg night a couple of weeks ago:

Jamie is a friend of ours (and Mel's Fiancee!) who we only knew via the internet for a long time. We never had any pictures of him until Mel and Jamie came to visit me in Buffalo last week. Before showing Tony a picture of him, I asked him to draw what he thought he looked like. Here's Tony's impression, followed by an actual picture:



EDIT: Brett drew Jamie too!

Well this camera certainly has motivated me to explore the city more! I spontaneously drove into Buffalo to find some more cool industrial subjects, and I found them! I also walked along the marina next to Synacor to get some shots of the boats. I've posted a few of my favorites here, but you should really check out the entire batch. The pictures are cool, and with the new lightbox, it's easier than ever to view them!

Just wanted to mention that today I am 9,000 days old!

The updates are flying in these days! I just added the famous lightbox library to my pictures page. While I tend to prefer opening a bunch of images in extra tabs, I realize that normal people prefer a nice interface for viewing images. Try opening a batch of photos and clicking on one. It'll open in a slick lightbox with the caption at the bottom. Click the right side of the image to see the next one, and click the left side to see the previous one. I've got some plans in mind for the lightbox, but for now it's just the vanilla Lightbox2. Go check it out!

As I mentioned yesterday, the lens to my fabulous new camera was destroyed in a tragic confrontation with gravity on Tuesday night. Thankfully, fellow Synacorian and photo nerd Allan Crain lent me his 18-55mm lens so I would have something to take pictures with while my new one made its way through the mail.

As I was driving home, I was looking some of the cool structures I see on my daily commute and really enjoying the neat clouds and fantastic lighting.. so I decided it was finally time to document them! I jumped off a random exit and made my way to a parking lot that appeared to be for public use. I then spent the next hour wandering around and taking a bunch of pictures, mostly of a cool building that I think was a mill. I'm very happy with the batch of photos that resulted from the trip, and I had a lot of fun going on an adventure. While I highly encourage you to check out the entire batch, I realize it's a little cumbersome (at the moment!) to look through an entire set, so here are a few of my favorites:





As usual (at least for now) these photos are in no way touched up. While my attitude is starting to change, I still prefer to share my photos exactly as they were when they came off the camera.

All in all, a productive use of an afternoon!

EDIT: A Redditor really hit the nail on the head when he said that this area reminded him of Half Life 2. So that's how I've been describing this place now.

EDIT2: It turns out it is the Cargill Pool Elevator, an abandoned grain elevator.

There's still a lot of cool features I'd like to implement, but the new pictures page is good enough that I feel comfortable in releasing it. Along with a fresh new look that goes with the rest of the site, the new section also includes a handy dandy "photos by day" and "photos by month" feature. Right now it's limited to the last few months, but arbitrary day/month is on the list of features that's coming down the road.

Please note that for now, at least, the URL is http://pics5.yatpay.net so if you have bookmarked http://pics.yatpay.net, please update your bookmarks. Once I feel more comfortable with the new code, I'll move the legacy section elsewhere.

Anyway, for now, go check out the new section and as always, I love feedback! If you find a bug, would like to request a feature, or just want to say that you like the new page, let me know!

Well, I'm officially all idiots. Last night, while attempting to take my "Working a sync!" Project 365 picture, I was bringing my right hand down and caught it on the strap of the camera, slamming it into the ground. The camera itself appears to be in perfect working order, but the Canon 18-55mm EF-S IS lens that came with it is more or less destroyed. As you can see by the "Up until dawn!" Project 365 pic, it's not a total loss, but the autofocus won't work properly and it makes a horrible grinding sound when I zoom. While incredibly annoying and frustrating, it's not all bad in the end. I'm out around $100, which isn't bad as far as lenses go. Let's hope this makes me more careful in the future!

Yup, it finally happened. I'm working a sync at Synacor. What's a sync? When new code is pushed to clients, it's done at midnight, and a couple of people from each team come in to help if something breaks. It's finally my turn to come in! From what I've heard, I can expect to go home between 4am and 6am. I guess we'll seeeee..