PixelBrat's Blog

When life hands you lemons...

Create a stock photograph out of them! Confused? OK, for those new to my blog I shoot stock photography in my spare time. I shoot a lot of technology related stock photos, partly because they are good sellers and partly because I'm a computer geek and surrounded by the stuff. Over the weekend I was going to shoot some stock photos using my laptop. Since I have 4 cats I have a bit of a problem with cat hair... everywhere! It particularly likes to collect in the crevices of my laptop keyboard. Well, I had the bright idea of trying to vacuum it out of those crevices with my handy-dandy shop-vac. This turned out to be a mistake. Yep, I managed to suck the "G" key right off the keyboard.

Hmm, this certainly appeared to put a stop to my plans... or so I thought! I broke out one of my favorite stock photography props... some miniature model railroad figures painted to look like construction workers. I arranged them around the missing keyboard key as though they were diligently fixing the problem. Viola! Lemonade... so to speak.

These little figures can be really fun to photograph and are great for concept imagery. Click on the link below to see some more examples of my stock photography shots where I've used miniature railroad figures. Sorry for the annoying watermarks folks, I've gotta protect my work from evil internet picture stealers.

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Warning : Shameless plug below
For those of you who just stumbled upon this blog post and would like to know where you can purchase my stock photography please go to the following links!

My iStockPhoto portfolio
My Shutterstock portfolio
My Dreamstime portfolio
My Fotolia portfolio

Whew, we've been busy!

True to our goal of moving, we've been chugging away at fixing up the house. So busy in fact that I've been a bit slack in updating my blog. Nothing new for me, I know. Over the past few weeks we've made a significant dent in our monster list of home repairs. Below is a partial list of stuff we've done so far:

Repaired the roof
Removed wallpaper from the kitchen (yes, this sucked!)
Put new flooring in laundry room and one of the bathrooms
Minor sheetrock repairs
Installed quarter round in several rooms, including filling nail holes and caulking
Replaced old dishwasher with new one
Sold the pool table
Put new flooring in the kitchen

That last item, the kitchen floor, was quite a bear. It took a lot longer than we had anticipated but it was well worth it. You can check out the before and after pics by clicking the link at the end of this post. While moving the kitchen stove we discovered where old cat toys go to die. I'm not exaggerating, there were 29 cat toys under there!! I would've taken a picture but no one wants to see the gunk that accumulates under a stove after 12 years. Trust me on this. Our new kitty Luna thought Christmas had come early and has been working hard at getting them all back under there.

Even though we've knocked out quite a bit on the list we still have loads of big stuff to tackle:

Replace carpet in 4 rooms
Tear down old deck and build new one
Replace stairs on front porch
Sheetrock repairs too complex for our skill level.
Paint the entire interior of the house (Ugh!)
Change the workshop back into a garage
Spruce up landscaping

There are other minor things but that's basically the meat of it. I'm exhausted just looking at it. That's all for now. Oh, don't forget to click below for kitchen floor pics.

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Before

After

Before
(looking from other end of kitchen)

After

Ouch...

Rob and I discovered a damp area of flooring in our downstairs bathroom a couple of months ago. We pulled up the floor tiles and found the concrete foundation was saturated. We called a plumber and they gave us some suggestions of inexpensive things to try that might fix the problem. Unfortunately (and predictably) the cheap solutions didn't work. We feared the pipe under the concrete foundation was leaking so we called him out again. He jack-hammered the concrete floor and cut 4 holes in our walls to find the leak. Several hours and $1,200 later and it's finally fixed. Ouch. The unbelievable thing is what was actually causing the problem... It was the pipe coming down through the wall from our upstairs bathroom. Our damn builder apparently put a screw-cap on the PVC drainage pipe, presumably for the purpose of it being an easy access point in case there was a clog. That cap wasn't screwed on tightly enough, causing it to leak down and soak into the concrete below! To add insult to injury the damn builder put no access door to actually get to that screw-cap, so even if there was a clog you would have to cut a hole in the wall to get to it! The picture below is where he jack-hammered the floor, only to learn the leak wasn't there. Click the link to see more photos:

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The red arrow below indicates where an access door
SHOULD have been.

The offending screw-cap.

You can bet if I could find our builder I'd be taking a $1,200 bite out of his ass right now.

Our new adventure begins...

I know I have been woefully lax in updating my blog. I guess I haven't had much to write about aside from our new addition. That has now changed. Rob and I have begun doing repairs to our house in preparation for selling it and moving to the mountains. To get an idea of what we were in for we wrote down all the things that needed to be done. The list is frighteningly long. We started out with getting some minor roof repairs. Fortunately that wasn't as financially painful as we feared. This weekend we removed some old linoleum out of our laundry room and installed matching checkerboard flooring from the hallway.

I forgot to get a true "before" picture of the old flooring but I assure you, the new stuff is a huge improvement. Admittedly this is but a small drop in the giant bucket of what we still have to do but it's a start. Stay tuned for more DIY home improvement goodies!

We got suckered...

Rob was taking out the trash early Friday morning and this little fur ball jumped out of the bushes and started rubbing on his leg, mewing it's little heart out. He called me outside and one look at it's blue eyes and I immediately fell in love. It was friendly but pretty dirty and skinny so we think it may have been dumped by someone. The poor thing ate an entire can of food and seemed like it drank its weight in water. We thought it was a boy at first but after a quick trip to the vet we learned he was a she. Aside from some ear mites the vet said she was fairly healthy and probably about 3 months old. She got medication for the mites and her first shots. By the time we got home we had decided to name her Luna. She looks to be a mix of tabby and Siamese. She's mostly cream colored with gray ears and faint tabby stripes on her legs and tail. She has gorgeous blue eyes and has the sweetest personality. She seemed so even-tempered and friendly that we introduced her to our other 3 cats after only one night. So far everyone seems to be taking to her quite well, which is truly remarkable. Hopefully things will stay peaceful going forward. Click the link after the photo below for more photos.

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My new website - PixelbratImagery.com

As you might have noticed I haven't posted in quite a while. I actually have a good excuse this time. I've opened a brand new website for my artwork and photography. I wanted to create a site that was a bit more serious and refined compared to Pixelbrat.com. Don't worry, Pixelbrat.com will still remain active. I'm just going to use it strictly for my blog and other miscellaneous things. The new site is called PixelbratImagery.com and is ready for visitors. Please cruise on by and browse around at your leisure. You can click here or click on the logo below to take a look. (It will open a new window) Thanks in advance for visiting!

With a new year comes new beginnings

Rob's new pen turning hobby has caused a bit of a problem... we now have pens EVERYWHERE! In an attempt to find homes for some of these pens, and also to hopefully help to fund his pen turning obsession, Rob has opened a new internet store. It's cleverly called As The Pen Turns. He's still tweaking the new site so you may notice it changing. You can visit by clicking on the logo below. Be sure to tell your friends!

Rob has been playing with his wood

No, not THAT wood! :) Actually, my hubby has finally taken a much needed break from playing World of Warcraft and has a new obsession in our garage workshop. He has been turning pens on a lathe for the last couple of months and has gotten pretty darn good at it. You can check out his work by going to his gallery here. (opens a new window) Here's a shot of a couple of my favorites below.

Taking it up a notch

In February of this year I jumped into the world of shooting stock photography and have been having a blast with it. You can read past posts about that by clicking here, here and here. This little hobby of mine has really made a big impact on my life and has been surprisingly profitable as well. As a bonus I have had the pleasure of seeing my photos in advertisements, brochures and websites all over the place. One of the most recent finds is here on the New York Magazine blog. Yep, those are my feet.

Over this time I have really pushed my little consumer grade Canon 350D DSLR camera to it's limits. I found myself wanting something more professional and with more features. In September, going against my "immediate gratification" persona, I began saving my earnings from stock photography and from my Motogear_4_Her store with the hope of buying a more professional grade camera and lens. After 3 long months of saving I finally purchased a Canon 5D and a 24-105mm f/4 L IS lens. It should arrive on Monday and I'm so excited I can't stand it! This new gear, along with all that I have learned over these last 10 months, will allow me to take my photography to a whole new level. I have set some big goals for myself for the coming year and if all goes as planned I will be one happy, happy girl.

My mom has found her inner-Gadgeteer!

My mother and grandmother are going on a road trip to Charleston this weekend. Unfortunately, mom is deathly afraid of highways and interstates so she avoids them like the plague. When she realized it would take her an extra 2+ hours to get to Charleston by back roads she decided to brave the interstate with the help of my portable GPS unit for turn-by-turn directions. Now you must understand that my mother is not tech savvy at all. She still takes pictures using a film camera and wouldn't know how to turn on a computer if her life depended on it. We aren't sure but we don't think she knows how to get the voicemail messages off her cell phone either. Knowing this, I was a little concerned that the GPS would be too complex for her. I decided to prepare a printed tutorial with photos and detailed instructions for her to use when she's alone on the road. I also took a day off from work to teach her how to use it. Much to my surprise she took to that thing like a duck to water!! I think the new-found freedom to go where ever she wants without the fear of getting lost helped a lot.

She has been practicing with it this week to get used to it before the trip and has even named the woman's voice that recites the directions. She named her Bella - this is derived from the loud bell sound that goes off right before the next turn. She has even begun arguing with Bella when it tells her to turn somewhere she doesn't want to turn. I only wish I had a picture of her wagging her finger at it in protest...

I'm really proud of my mom and see this as just the beginning of her inner-Gadgeteer coming out in full force. If I'm not mistaken a GPS unit is now on her Christmas list. It's just a matter of time before she's using a digital camera and downloading the latest Food Network recipes off the internet. Go Mom, go!! Have fun and be careful!!

Time for some fun stuff

Well, I've had enough depressing stuff for a while. Time for something fun. Out of boredom I made a video of my kitty Wasabi chasing a laser pointer. I just wish I had half the energy that he does. Enjoy. (Click on the image below and it should open the video)

Waiting for this losing streak to end...

My apologies for the lack of updates but this past week has just plain sucked. There's just no other way to put it. Late last Monday night (8/28), around 2AM, we got a call from my mother-in-law telling us that Rob's step-dad had been in a serious car accident. Thankfully, after a few days in the hospital he is now back at home and doing better.

Well, last night we found out that my uncle David had died. Details on what happened are still a bit sketchy. We are all just a bit shocked right now. This will be the 3rd member of our family that we've lost since December. (4th if you count our kitty Hobbes) I think we're all ready for a long stretch of sunshine. That's all for now.

Our first Bike Night

I spend a lot of my online time chatting in a forum called WWR (Women Who Ride). It's a great place for lady riders of all ages and experience levels to share their riding stories and a fun place to waste some time. A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a fellow lady biker from the WWR asking where I lived. Turns out she lives on the same street as me! (How funny!!) After a few email exchanges she told me her and her boyfriend were members of the SCRC 221 (Southern Cruisers Riding Club - Stone Mountain chapter). They invited us to join them for Bike Night at one of the local Sonic drive-in restaurants. Tonight we hopped on the bikes and followed them down there for our first one. We had a lot of fun and met a ton of great people, most of which I can't hope to remember their names. It was great getting to meet many of the people in person that I've only had conversations with over the web. There were a ton of beautiful bikes there. Many thanks to our neighbors for the invite. I'll close this post with a couple of crappy photos I snapped while there:

The Deja View Camwear 100 in action

I know it's been a couple of days but I was finally able to test out my Deja View Camwear 100. I'm happy to report that it works pretty decent for the price I paid for it. It's certainly not Mini DV quality by any stretch but it's fun for quick stuff around the house. I haven't captured any spectacular moments yet so you'll just have to suffer through this quick test video of the kitties below if you'd like to see how it looks. I had it attached to my hat for this one.

So far so good, right? Well, I decided to take it on a motorcycle ride today, which was really my intended purpose for this cam all along. I hooked it to my sunglasses and ran the wire from the camera down the inside of my shirt so it would stay out of my way. Off I go on the bike, zipping around the block hoping I've grabbed some cool video. Much to my disappointment I found that the bike appears to be causing some sort of interference in the video. It shows up as a reddish area on the bottom of the video that fades in and out. This happened in all of the 15 clips I got on the bike. Click on the image below to see what I'm talking about. (To save your ears I went ahead and muted the sound on this one.)

Any video/electronics experts out there know how I can prevent this color distortion? Any info would be much appreciated. I may try a few more experiments to see if I can find a workaround. If you can look beyond the red funk it's a pretty neat perspective. Almost like you're riding it yourself. I'll be sure to post another if I get this little glitch worked out.

A new (to me) gadget and mini-rant

I think it's cruel and unusual punishment to make a gadget-lover wait over 3 hours for batteries to charge before they can use their new gadget. It's simply wrong... WRONG I say! What is this glorious new piece of gadget love I have purchased? Well, it's actually not new at all but very cool nonetheless. It's called the Deja View Camwear 100. This ingenious piece of equipment is a small wearable video camera that records events "after the fact". I can almost hear you now..."What in the hell does that mean?" It's a wearable video camera that's designed to ensure that the user never misses that important moment. The camera mounts to a hat or glasses and monitors everything you see. When something happens that you want to save, you simply press the record button and the last 30 seconds of video with audio are saved to an SD memory card. Neat, huh? These came out in 2002 at a prohibitively high price of $400. I got a used one for a fraction of that from ebay. I think it will be neat to wear this on motorcycle rides. When I ride through a particularly cool section of twisty road or when some cuts me off I can hit the record button and save the last 30 seconds. It should be fun catching the kitties when they do cute stuff too. Of course, I can't do this, or even test it to see if it works, until the damn batteries finish charging!!!

Editors Note: Yes, I realize I will look like an enormous dork wearing something like this in public. I think I can pull it off wearing it under a motorcycle helmet or around my family. Hell, they know I'm not right in the head so it shouldn't phase them.