I took this photo with my digital camera at the house we rented for Howie's wedding. No tripod; this was stabilized on the upper deck rail. It's an 8-second exposure, at f2.6 and ISO 200. You can see some CCD artifacts. The only light is coming from a room downstairs that faces the pool. You can just barely make out my friends. You can also see the aggregated light of Austin in the background; I think this photo was taken in an ENE direction, although I could be wrong.

Right now I'm in the middle of the mind-crushing process of writing my thesis. Things are starting to pick up - I'm starting to settle into the groove - but this is still taking me far longer than I'd like. Of course, I did budget until the end of August to get this sucker done, so I suppose I'm mostly on track. But really, I'm going to see if I can't hit the zone and get the bulk of this done in the next week.

I did take some time off to get out of town for a weekend recently, as evidenced by the photo. It was a good time, for the most part, although there was a lot of random drama going on all around me, mostly when I just wanted to chill or go to sleep. I don't think I spent more than three hours awake that weekend without an alcoholic beverage in my hand. Speaking of which, I highly encourage anyone who is getting married to have lots of booze available at the reception so that their guests can get wasted. This wedding did not. How are you expected to hit on the bridesmaids if you're not wasted?

Anyway, I brought my laptop, but didn't actually do any work on the thesis. I've been having a hard time getting in gear. The funny thing is that I lived these experiments for over four years. I know this stuff inside out. But at the same time, I'm discovering new things about the work, simply because I have to explain it, find the positive things in it, and tie it all together. What was once several discrete steps in being synthesized into a grand staircase. Potentially one made of cards, or perhaps resembling the emperor's new clothes, but if you squint hard, there's really something there.

In any case, the theme music for writing appears to be settling on jazz. Specifically, Charles Mingus. Orange was the color of her dress...