Foodie Fridays: Rib Sticking Good

Tweet



This is world famous Texas BBQ baby, from none other than world renowned Sonny Bryan's in Big D. YeeHaw!

 Why food Fridays? It must be done. Out any day of the week while at work, Friday is probably the day I think about food the most and that's saying a lot because I think about food all the time. Why? I was raised on eating good food. I can't help it, I live in Texas where we have some of the best. It's in my DNA and I'm crazy about food. If you think about food, I think about it more. Ok, and I'm Italian too and we like to eat lots of bad stuff. Still asking? This is my blog and I'm telling you that we're going to have food Fridays. Every Friday we will feature a different food item that sends the good time weekend vibes to our stomachs. There, is that reason enough? ...I thought so. Happy Friday now that I got your weekend started off right and your stomach growling.

Cloud Man

Tweet

I'm usually not one to try and pick out shapes in the clouds but I just couldn't help myself with this one. It's very obvious to me that we now have to worry about gladiators in the clouds. I said what the heck, it's nice to have a little imagination and took the shot. 

There Really Is An App For That: Tiny Planet

Tweet

Today, while checking out any iPhone photo apps worth downloading, I came across a really interesting one called Tiny Planet. I guess what it does is shrink your images into bit size miniatures of a tiny planet. I tried it out on prairie dog image that I shot awhile back and I got the following result:

Before: Everything is normal in prairie dog world....

After: Until it's flipped upside down

All in all, kind of a fun app to play with it and it's free.

Foodie Fridays: Pizza A La Beautiful

Tweet



It tastes as beautiful as it looks.

 It goes without saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. I'm here to say that a really nice looking food shot is worth ten times that because you can eat it.

This pizza that is staring back you was not an easy creation to make. Yes, I did make it myself and it took time, yes lots of sweaty time in the kitchen to make. It was more than worth it because I ate the whole thing myself. Over two days of course. You didn't think I was that much of a pig did you?

One last thing about this beautiful pizza, it's called a Marghertia Pizza and if you haven't tried to make one, it's worth your time and appetite, trust me. Ok, ok, we'll give you the recipe too. Please check out this post on my food blog (yes I have one those too) entitled: A Unique Creation: Margherita Pizza

There Really Is An App For That: HDR For Free

Tweet

I have to admit that sometimes I don't take the best photos. The easiest thing to do is to blame it on the fact that it was cloudy that particular day. We've all been there but there's really no excuse when you can easily find an app for that.

I'm pretty sure I found that golden egg of an app; for this particular purpose anyway. To show you what I mean, below is a sampling of shots I took while on vacation. I put these ordinary shots through the app called HDR for Free that I downloaded on my iPhone and posted the result below in the before and after. Also, without getting too technical, for those of you that don't know, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range.

Before: A cloudy day in January in Key Largo. Yes, even Key Largo gets cloudy.



After: Looking at the after result, I almost feel like every cloudy day can be a good day

Before: This was one of the few days that it wasn't cloudy on my vacation but I decided to apply the HDR filter to this anyway to see what the result would be.

After: Looks like it could be from a resort/travel mag. No wonder they have such good shots in those.


Needless to say, there's no doubt that I'll be coming back to this app. I hope I've shown you that there is hope for disappointing and dull cloudy day shots. There's really no excuse anymore. The HDR For Free app is a winner. Yes, it really is free.

Note: These were taken with a low res point and shoot camera 2 years ago. I've upgraded since then to a digital camera that takes better and higher resolution shots. Check them out in the post entitled: As The Ducks Swiw In
More about about my newer camera in future posts.

Negative Slides From The Past: So Bad It's Good

Tweet




This is meant to be so bad it's good. I did the best for what I was working with. In other words, this image is ancient and taken with an ancient camera even for the time it was taken. If you haven't guessed by now, this a picture of the much younger Sheba (see post entitled Introducing The Queen) back in 1995 when I lived in Panama Central America.

I took photography in high school back then and played around with the camera at home. Nothing much to look at but this is what rookie photographers do with a manual 35mm Pentax Camera. Also, as an extra hurdle, the film was developed in a dark room by yours truly. No, I take that back. This picture was never developed. It came straight from the spool. I lifted it off the negative not too long ago using an old HP Scanner Jet that included a negative slide scanner.  I don't even know if you can find a scanner that has that feature on it these days.

Now, you know why it looks so bad. Which it does but hey it was never meant to be good. Stay tuned for more negative slides from the past because after all this blog is part photography blog part humor. Maybe the next negative slide will be better.

A Title Change: Same Crap Different Word

Tweet

After much deliberation I've decided to change one letter of my blog to the letter G. That means we're now Smidgen Goop instead of Smidgen Poop. Why the change you might ask? My better senses told me that Poop might be too strong of a word for a blog title. I was basically calling my blog crap and I'm still calling my blog crap but it sounds better now.

For any of you that might have a blog and decided to change the title, it's not very fun. You have to go back and change a lot such as the banner, links, etc. I hope it was worth it. Tell me what you think. Do you like the change or should I of kept it Poop instead of Goop? Comment below and please join my blog if you approve and even if you don't. Oh, in honor of my old blog title, here is a image to remember those few short days when we were Poop...........................

The Story Of A Queen

Tweet



This fancy rug is very appropriate for a queen of her stature as evidenced by how well she blends into it

 This wouldn't be a Smidgen Goop worthy blog if we didn't introduce to you the queen of our household. At least that's what she thinks. You might not know it from looking at her but she's been alive since 1994.
It's a long story but we'll make it short. She's a jungle cat. Yes, she really did come from the jungle. You see, back in the early to mid 90's I lived in Panama Central America. We had a house there and behind our house was a jungle. One day, this stray cat appeared from the jungle. After a couple of days, we decided to capture her and take her in since it was apparent that she didn't have a home.

This was not an easy task because we had to put tuna in a carrier on our porch and wait for her to go inside to eat so we could close the door on her. She'd always hear us coming from a mile away and would scurry out of the cat carrier before we got close. She continued to push her luck though and it eventually ran out. About a week after we first started trying, we quietly snuck around the corner and locked her in before she could escape. Finally, we could give her a name that's how came to be known as Sheba. It's no wonder she thinks she's a queen. Now, she becomes the mascot of Smidgen Goop so stay tuned for more photos and stories about Sheba because we've only really scratched the surface of this wild and not to mention crazy feline.

Dinnertime Ducks

Tweet



Full stream ahead, dinner is served or is it?

On a recent walk, a mother load of ducks were spotted. Then they spotted us. You may of been in one of these situations before. It's called, ducks automatically presume you have food to offer them. This is probably expected because people usually bring bread when they walk around a pond or lake so they can feed the ducks.



The ducks are eyeing us to see if we have a feast to offer



And...off into the sunset we go

 As it turns out, sadly we had nothing to offer the ducks and they swam into the sunset. I'm pretty sure they were disappointed so next time we better think about making it up to them. Sorry ducks, we got you next time.