• Camera: Canon Rebel XT
• Flash: none
• Focal length: 18mm
• Exposure: 1/200s
• Aperture: F20
• ISO: 1600

• Camera: Canon Rebel XT
• Flash: none
• Focal length: 28mm
• Exposure: 1/400s
• Aperture: F22
• ISO: 1600

German Graffiti

In the middle of the night, I experimented a bit with some tripod-less, long-exposure shots. This was one of the more interesting outcomes, with the railroad track barriers reflecting the orangish light of the overhead fluorescents of the train station.

• Camera: Canon Rebel XT
• Flash: none
• Focal length: 25mm
• Exposure: 30sec
• Aperture: F22
• ISO: 1600

A sturdy bridge somewhere on Kauai

I forget exactly where I was on Kauai when I took this picture; it was near the very beginning of my Walkabout in 2007. Roughly five months of intentional homelessness and the occasional telecommuting in exchange for emotional and physical freedom and renewal. The walkabout process taught me that “walkabouts” don’t happen by accident or circumstance…they are born from need and intent.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have the opportunity for this sort of experience again, now that I have a son. At least, not for a very long time.

• Camera: Minolta DiMAGE X
• Flash: none
• Focal length: 5.7mm
• Exposure: 1/280s
• Aperture: F6.6
• ISO: 100

Tree from an old front yard one surprising December morning

The first winter we were living in Redmond, WA, we enjoyed a rather unexpected snowstorm one weekend. The entire town froze in place while its lone snow plow vainly tried to restore order; in the meantime, I explored the yard. This is from one of the upper branches of a tree in the front yard.

• Camera: Canon EOS Rebel XT
• Flash: none
• Focal length: 135mm
• Exposure: 1/500s
• Aperture: F13
• ISO: 250

Garden statue with local resident

Another picture from an older Canada cruise, taken before I had taken much interest in photography. This is still with the point-and-shoot Minolta digital camera at a less-then-stellar 1600×1200 resolution.

• Camera: Minolta DiMAGE X
• Flash: none
• Focal length: 17.1mm
• Exposure time: 1/469s
• Aperture: F8.5
• ISO: 100

Gramma Lee T. Moran Tugboat

Taken on a point-and-click digital camera while departing New York City on a Carnival cruise to Canada.

• Camera: Minolta DiMAGE X
• Flash: none
• Aperture: F3.3
• ISO: 100
• Focal length: 12.4mm
• Exposure time: 1/199s

Column at the British Museum

I imagine pictures similar to this have been taken thousands of times, but I found this column inside the British Museum underneath an interesting ceiling pattern and thought it was worth capturing.

Midnight train in Germany

One wrong turn on the way home from a convention in Leipzig left me waiting in the middle of the night at this train station for another train “home.”

799 bricks of joy

In my ancient childhood, there was nothing worth doing that couldn’t be done with Legos. I could make Optimus Prime out of Legos, with authentic “transforming” movement. I could build an oversized He-Man action figure, using rubber bands inside the torso to recreate that awesome swing-around punching action. Cars and spaceships, homemade board games, recreations of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories…with enough bricks and a crazy enough mind (and a little bit of manic energy), and I could build pretty much anything. And between that and the pre-Internet (BBS-land, for those of you that remember the days), that pretty much dominated my creative leisure time.

But I always wanted to build a Lego computer. Now, finally, in my older and gainfully employed adult years, I can afford to buy however many damned Lego bricks I need to build a Lego PC case and so I set out to do exactly that. I’m still rather pragmatic, though, so what you’ll find on the following pages and construction guide are plans for a very small Lego PC…technically speaking, a Mini ATX machine with room for one SATA hard drive and no external drive bays. The intended purpose for my particular Lego PC is as a home media server, so we can finally consolidate all of our music and video in one place and stream it around the house from a central location.

The secondary purpose of the Lego PC was to keep myself out of trouble for a couple of weeks.