Saturday I went to to see the Orioles lose to the Angels in Baltimore. On our way out of Oriole Park at Camden Yards we saw the van pictured above and I must say that it is awesome and I must own one. Obviously vans are pretty cool to begin with, but adding an Orioles paint job adds to the grandeur.

About 10 minutes after I took this photo, we walked through the Inner Har and happened upon people fleeing one of the buildings. Apparently, there was a shooting moments before we arrived after a few rival gang members happened upon each other in the most tourist filled area of Baltimore. Fortunately, no one was killed though it was still a pretty nasty scene – we saw police attending to a shot gang member through a doorway and we almost stepped in some blood outside…ugh.

Thankfully I spotted this van and stopped to snap a few photos, otherwise we might have arrived at the Inner Harbor a minute earlier…

A while back someone (my Dad I think) recommended I add Who Killed the Electric Car? to my Netflix queue. I had completely forgoten about it until it showed up in my mailbox last week.

I really knew nothing about General Motors’ foray into the electric car market in the late nineties, but after watching this movie, I really want to get a plug-in hybrid. Basically, GM built the first mass produced 100% electic power car, the EV1. The long and the short of it is GM stopped producing it after California zero emission laws were rescended. The car no longer exists (except a few non-functioning museum cars) because GM actually reposessed every single car (which were all leased and not available for purchase) and literally crushed and shredded them. Check out the trailor below.

Well today I came across this article about a new Nissan electric car that will be unveiled this Sunday (and suppossedly available for purchase in 2010). The article has little to do with the car itself and more to do with an iPhone app Nissan has built. Basically, while you car is charging you can monitor the battery power so you will know when it’s all charged.

Nissan seems to just be scratching the surface with what they can do (the only other announced feature of the software is to remotely control the air conditioning). This is the kind of stuff companies need to start doing with smart phones. There are so many apps that are rehashed and non-innovative…I can’t wait until we start seeing more smart integration like this.

I’ve done a photo shoot and two live shows with Elementary (the band!).  I gotta say, live music photography is fun. The above was my favorite shot from the Velvet Lounge show. I’d like to revamp my blog to cater more to being a photo-blog. Don’t hold your breath though…since all I do all day is build web sites, I’m kind of slow to actually update my own. It will happen at some point, but it could be a couple years.

Since your hero last blogged I had some visitors, traveled to a destination wedding in Bermuda, moved to a different state, and I’m sure some other blog-worthy things…none of which will be discussed today! No, first I have something much more exciting… a short word on color profiles!

Super high level overview: Color profiles basically tell your computer how to output images for a certain device – be it your monitor, you printer, etc. Beyond that, they are also software dependent – most browsers only support the sRGB color profile.

Now you may be wondering why I’m talking about all this. I might even say this is embarassing considering the thousands of hours I’ve probably spent using Photoshop… I realized a couple months ago that I’ve been saving and uploading all of my photos to the web with the Adobe RGB color profile and I’ve been doing it for more than two years (approximately 700 photos). Why did I do this? Well Adobe RGB was set as the default color profile in the Photoshop “Camera Raw” plug-in that I used when processing my photos.

What happens when you view an Adobe RGB image with software that only does sRGB? Basically it sucks the life out of your image. Colors are dulled and people are turned into zombies. On some photos it’s not that noticable…on others it’s definitely noticable.

Here are two screen shots from a browser that only supports sRGB. The left photo is sRGB, the right is Adobe RGB. Can you see a difference? I think it looks like my skin is going to fall off in the right photo (both due to the jowling and the grayish hue).

After a few marathon sessions spanning a couple months, I’ve finally finished replacing all of my flickr photos with sRGB versions! Huzzah! Lesson learned. I imagine in a couple years that this won’t be a big deal – some browsers already support multiple profiles, and hopefully that trend spreads.

I’ve been to a few open mic night events over the years. Last night at Tritone was easily the weirdest combination of performers I’ve seen with acts like a solo guitarists (one playing the Beatles “Let It Be” sung all in Spanish), stand up comedians, a solo death/scream metal performer, and finally the highlight of the night for me was the sword swallower! So much entertainment they ran out of time for the tenor saxophonist which could have been cool.

I was about the closest person to the stage which is tough when you’re staring at a comedian who isn’t funny. When the solo screaming guy performed (he had a CD for his backing music) I had to actually get up and go to the bar to keep myself from chuckling in front of him. He might have come out and bit me or something.

Tritone is definitely a rockin’ dive bar. I didn’t see “the special” on the menu until we were about to leave: $3 for a PBR and a shot of whiskey! Without further ado, the sword swallower:

…and yes, that’s a tattoo of a sword on her throat!

Third place! That’s where my basketball team, The Dream Team, finished in this year’s Philadelphia Sport Network winter Thursday night ref league. At least that’s where I think we finished since our last game was supposed to be last night and I believe the other team forfeited (seems both teams lost interest since we weren’t in the championship game not to mention the NCAA tournament starting).

I averaged 6.83 points per game with a single game high of 14 and a single game low of 2. Sadly, unlike Stanus.butt, I did not video tape any of our games so I cannot accurately report on any other stats (which I know my faitful reader are clamoring for!).

I had fun, and I may look into playing in a similar league when returning to the DC area. Really it’s the only thing I’ve done in recent months that got me excercising.

In other news, it seems my 2 week long flu/cold combo is just about gone. Finally.

I’m sick. I’ve been sick for a week and it only got worse today when I realized I had a fever. The doctor gave me some heavy duty cough syrup to knock me out tonight since the NyQuil didn’t have much effect so that should be fun. Apparently I have some sort of flu-like thing, but not the typical flu that’s going around…whatever that means.

But, before I realized I had a fever, Katie and I attended the Flyers / Capitals game yesterday to watch the Caps win 2-1! We’ve had the tickets since Christmas as a present from my brother and I’d been looking forward to it for a while. I didn’t realize how easy it would be for us to get to the stadium area (Phillies, Eagles, 76ers, and Flyers all play in buildings within walking distance of each other) and it was a short subway ride to get there. Going to definitely attend a Phillies game or two once the season kicks off.

Flyers fans (and I guess Philly fans in general) were pretty brutal. They booed the refs before the game even started and cheered when one got knocked down mid-game. Then after each of the Capitals starters names were announced the entire sold out crowd yelled together, “SUCKS!”. Not to mention the boos every time the league’s best player (and Washington Capital) Alex Ovechkin touched the puck.

Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I only snapped one quick photo of warmups with my phone. Katie and I quietly cheered for our team and respectfully clapped when we scored. A louder Caps fan near us was being heavily berated by those around him and I wasn’t much in the mood for that being sick and all … plus it’s not like it’s a baseball game or something, it’s hockey.

On a related note, I just realized the Phillies play the Orioles in June! Though I’m not sure we’ll still be in Philly then…

We’ve got a mouse. A little furry brown mouse. Katie saw it scurry away two nights ago when she turned the bedroom light on and we both saw it last night when he decided to come make a cameo appearance in the living room for about 5 seconds.

Our landlord shows no reaction to anything – I don’t think he actual feels feelings. Usually our conversations involve a lot of me talking and him blankly staring back making for some awkward silences. In addition to being our landlord, he also owns and runs the pharmacy on the first floor of our building which looks like it hasn’t changed in 50 years (including some of the products for sale!). He’s a pretty weird dude, usually wears a light blue pharmacy guy jacket, and still uses a manual typewriter to put up little notes for the tenants.

Today I walked in to the pharmacy, greeted him, and told him we have a mouse. He said nothing but did immediately walk past me and behind one of the display counters in the store. Out of a cabinet he gave me two boxes, one with mouse traps, and one with mouse poison, still saying nothing. “Thanks, hopefully this does the trick”, I said to which he replied, “I think you have a package here” and pointed towards a box containing a mail-order cake which I had been waiting for. How long it had been there I’m not sure since I received no notice of a package arriving.

Anyways, I set up the poison and traps so now we’ll just wait and see. I learned a new word from the back of the poison box: rodenticide.

About everyone I know has been swearing by Netflix for years (stanus.butt mentions it in 11 posts!)… I’ve finally signed up and have about 150 movies between my DVD and instant queues… about half of which will be feeding my documentary obsession. Well maybe not an obsession, but it is certainly one of my favorite genres.

What made me finally sign up for Netflix was The West Wing. Originally airing in 1999, I was about 10 years late to this series. I’m a little backwards but I really liked Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip created by Aaron Sorkin and thought The West Wing might tickle my fancy. Katie and I started watching/DVRing reruns on TV and realized we were missing episodes and needed to see them all. Netflix to the rescue! Quickly becoming bsessed with the entire series, we finished the whole thing in a couple months time mostly with marathon weekend watches (I believe our record was seven episodes in a single day!)

My other relatively recent TV discovery(within the last year or so) was House This was a little easier to catch up on since the overlying story is less central to each single episode storyline (for the most part). This is probably my favorite currently-airing show at the moment. A 2008 episode titled “It’s a Wonderful Lie” guest-starred Janel Moloney who was also on … The West Wing.

Because a lot of House reruns air on the USA network I randomly have started watching Psych, a comedy about a fake psychic detective duo also on USA. Psych co-stars Dulé Hill who was also on… The West Wing. On tonight’s season finale one of the guest actors looked really familiar and I knew I had seen him on something recently… a mere five days ago this actor (Jimmi Simpson) was a patient on the latest episode of House!

Lastly, another comedy/detective show that I have watched a bit more recently is Monk because it usually airs directly after Psych! Last month an episode aired titled “Mr. Monk on Wheels” which guest-starred Bradley Whitford who was also in Billy Madison, Philadelphia (which I randomly watched recently to check out the Philly scenes), and … (you should see where I’m going with this by now) The West Wing!

Follow all that?

Last night some friend’s had us over to their apartment in West Philadelphia for dinner/drinks along with some of Katie’s classmates. After hanging out for a bit I noticed some light coming in through the blinds of the front window… we could also hear a helicopter. About ten minutes (ish) later someone noticed police cars outside so we decided to see what was a-flutter!

We went outside and saw this car on the sidewalk. As soon as we got outside a police officer approached us – would he tell us to get back inside because a bad guy was on the loose? Would he ask for details of what we saw? Would he reassure us that the situation was under control? NO! He just asked if he could use the bathroom. I guess he didn’t get a chance to take a piss during the chase.

Apparently, the driver was running from the police and turned up South Farragut Street (where we were) but there was a FedEx truck parked on his narrow escape route! Instead, it appears the driver decided to use the sidewalk driving past five or six row houses before avoiding a tree, hitting a few cement steps, flattening a tire, and rendering the car immobile.  A neighbor said she saw two people escape on foot, apparently successfully.

I haven’t found any news articles about the incident, but I’ll post anything I find. Maybe this isn’t really news for Philly?

I found a few articles (which are almost identical):

• ABC Coverage
  
• MSNBC Coverage
  
• Fox Coverage
  
• CBS Coverage
  

Oh, and happy Valentines Day. Katie and I had our traditional date at Five Guys.