If you want to see more, be sure to check out my photoblog or flickr.

Been a while since I posted pics on Friday.  Sorry about that.  I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t even had time to take pictures, must less download and process them.  Which is all a shame, too, since I had just saved up to buy that 10-20 mm Sigma wide angle lens that I love so much.

So a couple of weeks ago, I went on vacation with my bride to a cabin in Beaver’s Bend State Park, in Southeast Oklahoma.  Got enough pictures to last until next year, if I choose.

Here’s a set from the porch of our cabin taken of the night sky with use of a tripod.  The first picture is taken at 1600 iso and was an 8 second exposure.  The next was was at 400 iso for 8 mins and the last was at 400 iso for 30 mins.  All were taken at f/4.0.

Click on a thumbnail to see the full picture.

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Couple of things to note…

You can see the North Star through the trees and all of the other stars seem to rotate around it.

The Milky Way (our galaxy) can be seen in all three pictures.

If you go to Flickr and look at the really big sized versions of the pictures that show motion, when you zoom in really close, there are billions of stars that don’t appear to move at all, though faint and very far away.

Here’s a little small town Friday Night Football in Oklahoma.  Last week, the #1 ranked (in 3A) Clinton Red Tornados (15 State Titles) were defeated by the #2 ranked (in 2A) Chandlers Lions, a team that sported a whopping 20+ Seniors.

Here’s a taste (just click on the thumbnail for a larger version):

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If you like those, you can check out my photoblog for more.

My office is a wreck.  Whenever I have pictures taken in my office, I usually clean my desk and make sure the junk isn’t in the frame.

The truth is, I still don’t have my diplomas hung, my desk is covered with commentaries and projects… and junk.  My shelves aren’t full and I still have books and miscellaneous detritus in boxes in my garage.  I have files that belong in the filing cabinet, but the movers just piled them in boxes, so they are ALL out of order, and I’ve never taken time to reorganize them.

*sigh*

The one bright spot is that I have shelves that I can dedicate to books that I received from my Uncle Ross’ library after he passed away.  I remember him more often – which is a good thing, since he was well worthy of emulating – when I see those shelves as opposed to having those books scattered in with the rest of them.

If you enjoy these, feel free to check out my photoblog.

As we seek to be Missional, our responsibility is to engage people in every arena, whether near or far, to which God gives us access.  God has opened a door for us to be such in Vietnam.  Here are a vew of my favorite pics.

You can see these and more at my photoblog or flickr account.

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I got a new lens for my camera.  I’m shooting with a Canon Rebel xti, digital slr and have been using the original lens that came with it – an 18-55mm “zoom/wide angle” which does not zoom, really and the wide angle, though fair is not very wide – and an old Canon 80-200mm zoom lens that I had from 20 years ago when I was using the original Canon EOS that came out when I was in college.

I’ve been scrounging my pennies and just bought a Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens that is truly wide angle.

Here are my first pics with the lens, taken at St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa:

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If you like these, you can see more of my pictures on my photoblog or on my flickr account.

Here are a few pics, previously unpublished, from my hike in Red Rock Canyon.  If you like these, you can see them and others on my photoblog.

I hope you like these.  This hike is a nice little state park near Hinton, OK, just off I-40, about an hour West of Oklahoma City.  Check it out, if you get the chance.

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Sorry, no patriotic pictures of flags, kids or picnics.  Not even fireworks.

Some of you have noted that I was having trouble with my laptop over the last couple of weeks.  Turns out, the motherboard fried.  I took it in to a local Nerd Herd to confirm the suspicions and found out that, as expected, all was without hope.

I had backed up my information on an external hard drive I had purchased for our home, so there was no loss of data.  Just the grind of having to restore everything from a backup.

With the added pain of a whole new system.  :)

Yep.  I’ve done it.  I went over to the “dark side.”

Yours truly is now sporting a brand new Macbook Black.  No, not the Pro Series laptops, but I’m happy with the one I have.  I know some are getting those high end laptops, but I have no idea how they have the money for it.  Here’s a picture of the glowing white Apple on the back in the darkness of my home office as I take a break from working on my sermon.

I haven’t completely grasped the organizational structure, but they tell me it makes more sense when you do “get it.”  I pray I “get it” soon.

I will say, though, that it is fast.  Much faster than my old XP machine and light years ahead of my wife’s Vista machine.  Yikes.  That looks like a complete waste of money now.  She waits and waits for it to do ANYTHING, but this Macbook just flies through whatever you tell it to do.

Also, shutting down and booting up is AWESOME.  It’s almost NO TIME!

I still have to convert my iPod over to mac sync now.  I have no idea how well that will go, but I hope it goes as easily and quickly as importing all of my music from the external hard drive into iTunes.  Drag, drop and wait 20 mins to convert tons of audio, video and everything else.  Done.

Oh.  And it is light.  It’s not the “Macbook Air,” but it is probably half the weight of my former laptop.

Finally, thanks to the advice of David Phillips, we got the extended warranty, which takes the 1 yr hardware and 90 phone support to 3 years each.  David said that you should always do this with a laptop, because the manufacturers don’t allow you to simply buy and replace broken parts.  If you break something, particularly something important, you have to send it in.  Pretty soon, it is cheaper to simply buy a new computer.

Of course, that is how we got to where we are now, so we learned our lesson.

I’ve set up Firefox already and imported all my bookmarks with the Foxmarks Add-On.  It syncs your bookmarks, personal structure and all, to the net and allows you to log on and bring them to another computer using Firefox.

Final thing:  The whole “it just works” thing that mac users always throw around to pc users when their stuff is grinding and glitching…  they don’t seem to be lying.

There you have it, boys and girls.  Another one goes over…

As for the foto, I know it’s not much, but it is my first effort with the mac and using iPhoto with my Canon DSLR.  I like the program.  It looks promising.  I’ll reserve judgement to see if it is as good as Adobe Lightroom, which is what I have been using.

You can check out my pre-Mac pics at the ol’ photoblog.

I’m at a family reunion at Heber Springs, AR. If you are looking for a good getaway, you should check out Lindsey’s Resort. They are a Christian family with a family run environment on the Little Red River, which is fed out of a dam, making the water temperature about 50 degrees. Native fish can’t really thrive in that cold temperature, so they stock the river with Rainbow Trout, and it’s good.

Anyway, here are some pictures from this morning. If you like these, you can check out my photoblog for more.

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I went to my in-laws to pick up my kids and we’re heading back for VBS which kicks of tomorrow (Saturday). My Deacon Chair and my accountability partner both told me I needed to take a break, so I stopped over night in OKC for a night of solitude. I went to the movies. Today, I stopped at Red Rock Canyon State Park near Hinton, OK and took a hike. I also took my camera. Here are a few of the pictures I took.

I thought I’d pull out a few more pictures from our trip to Vietnam that were in the Photoblog, but didn’t make it to the main site. Just in case you didn’t make it over there when we were overseas.

First a message left on a swing at an orphanage in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Then another picture of the night train from Hanoi to Sapa, Vietnam. This one shows the contrast between the light in the train – the more blue, tungsten light – and the amber light that created an almost surreal atmosphere in the train yard.

Here’s the open market that Sapa is known for with all kinds of interesting things.

Here’s something interesting that you might find at the market: Marinating Chicken Feet. Yummy.

And finally, a stairway out of the market place to one of the main streets in Sapa.