Where Is Hawkins?Where travel is cheaper than psychotherapy.

Warning: This blog post may only interest me and Tim.

I decided to try out a copy of Autopano Pro tonight and it’s automagic stitching of photos together by taking a photo of Michigan Avenue and the river facing west to catch the Wabash Avenue bridge along with that new Trump monstrosity that he’s building on the site of the former Suntimes building.

This picture sucks mainly because I snapped it from across the bridge sans tripod and IS. My bad.

So I had a plan: ISO 200, 6 second exposures at f/4 at 105mm. Hopefully I’d end up with a 100 megapixel photo – for no real reason except I could. I get the gear up right next to where the Wendella tours entry is on upper Michigan. I take a handful of photos and review them. There’s a problem – motion blur. So I chalk it up to the wind that can whip down the river and knock people on their ass. I resituate and hang my camera bag from the center of the tripod to stabilize that sucker and snap a few more shots. Still motion blur. I’m starting to get pissed. I’m even using the infrared controller to ensure that it’s not my finger that’s causing shake on the camera.

Then the 151 bus came roarin’ over the bridge and while I’m looking over through the viewfinder and it hits me – I’m standing on the upper part of a decked bridge with supports that run north to Illinois and south to Water (?). Constant traffic means that I’m essentially on a shaky platform.

So much for tonight’s endeavor. I’m going to shoot down at Navy Pier out of boredom. Unless it sinks into the ground, I should be in better situation than I was earlier.

I like Firefox. I use it because tabbed browsing is awesome and was a deficiency within MS Internet Explorer. And I was all excited about Firefox 2 coming out yesterday. I’ve installed it on 4 machines (2 at work, 2 at home) and it’s having issues and freezing up on all machines periodically. It’s irritating.

So needless to say I’m anxiously awaiting a 2.01 release. In the meantime, I’m using Camino on my MacBook and MS IE 7 on my desktop.

I took a lot of pics of the event yesterday while Tim, Holly and I chased Simanek around the city. He did qualify for the Boston Marathon, which is awesome.

I don’t feel like writing tonight. I just got up from a nap. I can really tell a difference when I’m not taking sleep meds versus when I am taking sleep meds. Insomnia is pretty lame.

1) I don’t think I’m going to take Flat Stanley here.
2) I hate cats, but I love these cats.

I love talking about my family, because when you have dysfunction, you have mine. Through multiple marriages, you have strained alliances and people who you’re related to but extremely distant from.

For example, I have an older brother and a younger sister, both who have made it a point to exclude me from their life. Both got married, got only one invite (with two weeks notice) and one had a kid (I like having to find this out a few days later via someone else). That’s not cool. But hey, I’m glad that they can take the time to avidly read my blog instead of saying hello or attempting to repair a relationship that’s fractured. But you try to be a nice person and be a nice real uncle and send your new nephew a gift but that goes over like a lead balloon. Eventually trying to be a nice guy leads to burnout and there’s only so many times you can

But I realize it doesn’t matter. They’re not my family – not the way I see my family. My family now includes friends, their spouses, their kids, my mom and stepdad, my half brothers and even the pets. You make what you want to out of life. Some people choose to be idiots, some people choose to make a new path for themselves.

So last Saturday I went to go see my crush Madeleine Peyroux play at The Vic. She was pretty amazing and seemed almost embarassed that the crowd was fawning over her music. I was fawning over her and her music, so that was good. She did something quite nice – donate a portion of the cost of the ticket to a charity in each city she is in. That’s nicer to me than what Bono, et al is doing with the Red-colored clothes and gadgets that have got a lot of press.

The Marathon is on Sunday, so I’ll be out early cheering in my bathrobe (a long outstanding tradition) at Mile 1. I’ll probably shoot a lot of photos while I am out there. I will probably kill my camera if I manage to snap 600 photos in less than 90 minutes. I will be cheering on Mike and Zack and making sure that they are heavily intoxicated in the afternoon.

So I’m going over my blog log and finding interesting trends. Unwelcome visitors from Motorola (not you Mike) and the same ol’ friends (hey – will the avid reader from Sidley and Austin say hello to me via email?). I’m also siphoning off nickhawkins.com traffic from the first Nick Hawkins who is a DJ in Spain. I’m also thinking about opening up email redirects to other Nick Hawkins’ throughout the globe using the nickhawkins.com domain but I mean, it’ll be weird – I was thinking about using initials but that gives me 26 possible combos. Hell, I don’t know.

Dubai is coming up in about 6 weeks so I’m looking forward to that shenanigans. But it’s an adventure and I’m in need of one.

I was going to title this pnw3d or something but got lazy. I bought nickhawkins.com today. I’m surprised it was open because there’s a Nick Hawkins who’s a DJ in the UK who owned this domain and it lapsed. So it’s all mine now. Woo yay.

I’ve had a pretty busy week.

Oh, and I’m fucking stoked about the movie 300 coming out in a few months. It’s based on the Frank Miller graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae. This will be awesome.

I saw the play Altar Boyz last night, which was pretty good. They got the whole mocking of N-Sync down pat, including the alcoholic and the closet homosexual.

Today I took an extended lunch and went to go see David Mamet at the Chicago Public Library downtown. I’ve been reading his stuff since… shit, early junior high. So it was cool and yet intimidating to meet him and shake his hand. I was hoping he’d swear at me or call me a motherfucker or something along those lines, but didn’t. It would have been so damn cool for me.

I get to go see Madeleine Peyroux tomorrow night, so I will be stoked. Word.

I got a few hundred in American Airlines gift cards from ma mère today. It was quite awesome. That works for me with regards to finding something in Q1 2007 to go and corrupt foreigners in foreign lands.

Dana got her first package filled with Flat Stanley gear today. She got a book on the Penguin Parade in Phillip Island, Victoria, Australia and a book called The Diary of a Wombat, which I was going to keep for myself but decided that I had to send it to the kids. It’s a kickass book about one of my favorite animals in the world. The second package has been mailed containing two books regarding animals from the Auckland Zoo.

I’m started to get a bit concerned because my postcards from New Zealand have not arrived despite me leaving Auckland on September 24. I sent out 30 of them so I surely hope that they arrive soon otherwise I will have to go back and mail some more.

I’m starting to hate watching football on TV. It’s awful. I’m watching Monday Night Football and I can’t stand Chris Berman or Michael Irvin (I love how felons get redemption when they play sports). Chris Berman proved how much of a douche he was during the White Sox playoff run last year and Irvin is just an asshole with a drug problem. I used to laugh at people who would go to games and listen to the radio broadcasts with headphones (Steve Bartman) but I think I’m turning into one of those people.