Category Archives: Photography

Third time for Christmas lights this season

Ruthie and I went Christmas light roaming again with our friends Eric and Robin Roach last night. First we went back to the Springpark area off Jupiter Rd. and saw the neighborhood we had seen the week before with Eric and Robin, but we went too late last time and many houses had already turned off the lights.

This time we went much earlier, about 7pm, and saw a ton more lights.

We also went to a fabulous house near Jupiter and Belt Line where the entire backyard was encased in lights, plus there was a train that was all decorated that was actually giving free rides to kids. The guy even had a video camera set-up and a TV so the parents could see the kids as they were on the train.

Then we went back south to the Newell house that we had gone to with Larry and Charlotte Enge and the lights were on there. This time Eric and I had our DSLR Canon’s with us and walked around taking detail shots of the decorations. The owner, a very nice lady named Liz Simmons, let us walk all around the yard and even opened the window so we could get good detail shots of the small house scenes she had created.

My shots are still in the DSLR, but these are a few that I took with my iPhone. I am amazed at the resolution the iPhone 4 takes and the color depth. I did edit them a tiny bit in my new camera app called Camera Plus Pro ($1.99). I had just purchased it that morning and it does a fantastic job.

New opportunities after career stumble

Well, on June 20th, 2008 I was laid off from my e-commerce position with hitchfinder.com.

My family has been wonderful and supportive. I have not been depressed at all due to the upbeat attitude of my lovely wife.

I have no regrets. It was a very good learning experience and I took a lot of knowledge away from the job, plus a really cool 24″ iMac computer and the Adobe Creative Suite CS3!

What have I been doing since June 20th you might ask.


Well, I have finished my freelance web site gushindesigns.com and am almost finished with my new business card. I have designed and opened a brand new web site called appleproductsdepot.com, which combines web design, affilliate marketing and eBay.


There is also a second one of these eBay affiliate marketing web sites that I am currently building that is centered around old and new cameras, both film and digital (Note: this site closed in 2010). I am still into photography and I want this one to be a bit more interactive and it will probably concentrate more on vintage camera gear than newer stuff.

And I have been going to a number of meetup.com meetings on subjects like Joomla (a content management system for web sites), WordPress, eBay and various internet entrepreneur groups.

I have also been more active selling products on eBay than I have in the past, with 30 current auctions running. I am trying to liquidate a comic book collection I bought many year ago for a good price and have already made my original investment back so the rest is gravy as far as the comic books go.

There are a few opportunities I am checking into for web design work full time as well, but more about those if anything happens with them.

More fisheye goofy shots


I have been playing with my homemade fisheye lens again. The dogs were watching me and thought I was crazy in the backyard taking these shots.

I am still amazed by what this small little peephole lens can do.