Willo O'Brien

what happens in nashvegas, stays in nashvegas! uh.. that is if you’re willo & you have a camera and a blog. hahaha!

I had an absolute BLAST!!!!!!!!!!!! < and one more ! for all you exclamation point lovers. :)

I am downloading all 444 photos (don’t worry, I’ll bet 60 of those are from the night before I left and 100 more are duplicates that won’t even get posted anyway), so I’ll be posting them soon. We partied pretty hard all weekend, so I was exhausted and planned to stay in tonite, but instead I took a cat nap & now I’m off for dinner & a movie with a friend.

This week is a show ho frenzy! Ali & I have 4 shows in a row starting tomorrow night, which is actually the toughest of all 4 in the sense that I wish I could be at 2 shows at once. What shall it be: Hold Steady w/ The Constantines @ GAMH or Architecture in Helsinki @ Slims? Right now I’m leaning towards the later because their new one is totally making me smile on a daily basis from ear to ear.. but that GAMH lineup is SO GOOD! *sigh* decisions, decisions.

OK, time to hop out the door and pick up my friend in my new car! woohoo! Photos coming later, stay toooned!

Amber’s cutie little boy, Dylan – checkin out my new ride. :)
There’s a few new photos (from Amber’s camera) in the Seattle trip album.

Today’s a crazy day… I’ve got to hit the DMV at 2, BAMboozled at 5, and then was going to try to hit a show at Bottom of the Hill tonite, but I’m feeling the crunch and am not sure I can swing it! We’ll see…

Tomorrow morning I leave for yet another adventure. I’m flying first to Denver for a quick 12 hour visit. My Mom is picking me up & we get to go meet my friend Michelle’s new baby, Aiden! We’re also hoping to see my cousin & her little girl, too. Then I fly out on Friday to continue on to Nashville for my old friend Justyn Baker’s wedding! I’m really excited to see him, his home and the city of Nashville for the first time.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Hey, I forgot to mention that I updated the sidebar (on my homepage) with some new links in my list of regular blog reads (now Ali, Mai, Lulu and Karrie are on there!) and a nifty little “recent comments” list. If you’re a Haloscan user (Haloscan is what powers my comments), you can get this too. Visit LastHalo to find out how. It’s not quite as sophisticated as typepad/movable type, but it’s kinda neat to have nonetheless.

Also, since Haloscan has a tendency to drop some of the email notifications occasionally, I’ve recently gotten smart & bookmarked the RSS feed of my comments. You can find yours on the Haloscan site, under Manage Comments. Look for the RSS icon at the very bottom of the page and click on it. If you use safari or any other RSS reader, it’s really handy to bookmark that & see your new comments that way. In Settings you can go into Beta tab & activate “Publishing the title of the blog post”, too. It only publishes it on the RSS feed, which is dumb, but hopefully soon I can get a title/link to the original post right in the comments pop up window. It’s a big fat pain that’s not there now, but these little tweaks help.

Some days I *REALLY* want to just move my entire blog to Word Press*! For categories mostly… it drives me nuts that I don’t have categories now. Now to narrow down all the categories I think I’d need: mac, music, web, TDI, travels…. maybe friends, photos, oh & I can’t forget: kazoo! :)

post updated for clarification

*Word Press would be a natural choice for me because my host has a automatic install for it, and from what I’ve seen it has some great features & is easy to use. The one time I saw TypePad, trying to help a friend set it up, it seemed really complicated.

If anything, I might start doing it with tags via del.icio.us… but we’ll see. I should get in on this whole tag revolution! :p

Sorry for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about. For those who do (fellow geeks), please pipe in if you have any thoughts/feedback on the above.

This guy has some great FAQ about biodiesel, and I just found this other site, that I wish I’d seen before my trip: a map of Nationwide Biodiesel Retail Locations! Then again, neither the SF or Berkeley locations are on there… so it’s probably best to note there are more locations than you think!

Oh, lastly if you’re looking to learn more about what this crazy biodiesel stuff is, check out Wikipedia!

I am SO stoked on my little car! I cruised back into the Bay Area this afternoon & straight to the Berkeley BioFuel Oasis to fill her up. It was so cool to do it the first time. Just to be a part of it all… having other like minded people driving their converted diesels up, chatting, etc. I was beaming with pride and full of excitement, even after finishing my 7 hours on the road today. :)

(Here’s my first post about buying this car, with more links & info about biodiesel, too!)

UPDATE: Here’s some photos!

self portrait

Amber & I have known each other since we were little, growing up in the same town. It was great to see her, Scott & meet their cute little boy, Dylan!!

My New car!!

Not the most glamorous pics, (taken w/ Amber’s camera-a SD100-in the parking lot when I was showing them my new ride!) but look how cute & red it is!!!! :) :)

See? TDI

I wish I had more from my trip, but I’m glad I even have these. There’s a few more in this album.

I LOVE MY NEW CAR! YAY!

I picked it up yesterday, the girl I bought it from was great… got to see an old friend from High School & her hubby & son for dinner, and then hit the road!

I stayed over in Roseburg lastnight (a little town between Eugene & Medford, Oregon) and now I’m off to get my soy latte and do my final stretch.

It’s been incredible to see the beautiful fall leaves on the trees! I can’t wait for my drive today, through Northern California and the beautiful redwoods!

Yesterday on the plane I started reading Eat, Shoots & Leaves. A favorite of my BAMboozled kids who down right kick my arse in the grammer department, so I thought I’d do some studying up. haha. I might sound boring, but it’s really fun to read, actually.

Now that I’m in my car, I’m listening to Freakonomics, which is fascinating. (Thanks, Eric!)

Can’t wait to show you all my hot new little ride!! As luck may have it my camera battery was totally dead. I got some pics w/ my friends camera yesterday, but I wish I could be taking more of these beautiful changing trees and lush skyline. Guess it will have to be stored the old fashioned way: in my mind! hahaa

OK byeeeeeeeeeee!

Congratulations Ted!

“Selected as the top Specialty Music Director out of hundreds of CMJ-reporting stations, this is BAGeL Radio’s second major honor of the year after collecting the Best Live Show Award at the 2005 Best Of Live365 Awards.

On the air since February 2003, BAGeL Radio broadcasts the newest indie rock available along with alt-rock classics of the last four decades all day and every day. The award-winning live show, hosted by Music Director Ted Leibowitz, airs Fridays from 9a.m.-5p.m. Pacific Time. For a truly interactive experience, requests are taken in real time via e-mail and instant messenger from the show’s listeners who cover the globe in 192 U.S. municipalities and 89 countries.”

Read the full press release and tune into Bagel Radio’s Friday Live Show today!

check out this face transformer thing… as seen on poopscape (pics of hers are on her 10.5.05 post, she apparently doesn’t have permalinks).

also filed under “20 ways to kill 20 minutes” is Crane Mag. Enjoy.

President Bush’s morning security briefing is wrapping up. Donald Rumsfeld is concluding his part and says, “Finally, three Brazilian soldiers were killed yesterday near Baghdad.”

“OH MY GOD!” shrieks Bush, and he buries his head in his hands for a seemingly interminable 30 seconds.

Stunned at the unexpected display of emotion, the president’s staff sit speechless, not sure how to react.

Finally, Bush looks up and asks Rumsfeld, “How many is a brazillion?

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Thanks JP! :)

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Speaking of wacky government crap… Cali residents, can you please tell Ahhnold what’s up?

Every once & awhile I’ll get someone who asks me how I take such good shots in low light. Granted, I’m well aware I’m not the most prolific photographer out there, but for my little point & shoot, and my subjects often being rockstars going nuts on stage, I think I do all right. So, here’s something for you all that I’ve been meaning to write up for awhile now…

Taking Photos in Low Light 101:

As you probably know, if you don’t use the flash in low light conditions your digital camera tries to compensate for the lack of light & will try to keep the lens open longer. So, you need to up the ISO, so that it takes a faster shot….

Note: Most likely you’ll have to put your camera on “Manual” to make these settings:

• Turn off the flash
• Set the ISO to 400 – this unfortunately will make your shots a little grainy (worse on some cameras than others), but in low light it’s really your only choice if you don’t want to use a flash.
• If you’re shooting a stage (which I often am) it helps to take the exposure down, sometimes all the way to -2, otherwise the stage lights wash out the performers faces too much. Play with this setting as necessary.

THE KEY to it all is to look through the viewfinder to take the shot. People don’t realize w/ digital cameras how you can *try* to be so still holding it out in front of you, but nothing beats holding it up to your face for ultimate stability. Your job is to hold the camera as still as possible so that the camera can figure out what it has to do & take shots as fast as possible under the circumstances. Slight movements make it “re-think” it’s focus & light settings, and by the time you take your shot it’s only added to all the movement that may already be taking place.

I also actually take a TON of shots to get a good one. Which explains my dwindling hard drive space! I put it on rapid fire (sequential shooting) and sometimes will come home from a show with 75 photos & only post ~15 of them. Thank god for digital cameras!

I can’t stay enough about my kick ass little camera, either: Canon Powershot Elph SD500. Did you know it’s viewfinder is digital? So if I’m zoomed in when I am looking through the viewfinder, I see what I’m really going to take! SO AWESOME!

If any of you have suggestions beyond what I’ve posted here, I’d love to hear them! Happy shooting (with your cameras, that is).