Behind The Scenes

Despite the seeming lack of updates here lately, I want to assure all my regular readers that I am in fact still here and still doing some things "behind the scenes." This past week was kind of crazy as I moved out of my apartment in College Park and moved back into my parents' house in Columbia. Yes, it isn't exactly fun being 25 and living at home again, but without a job, that's a necessary evil.

I've updated a few things in the sidebar here, most notably (importantly?) adding a link to a navigation site for all of my resources, including the blog and my photos. This site can be found at http://kristin.seidelmann-owners.com/index.html.

Aside from that, I'm still doing the job hunting stuff. I never anticipated being unemployed for 5, almost 6 months after getting my MS in Aerospace Engineering, so if all of my readers could click on the links in the "Ads by Goooogle" box in the sidebar on the right, I'd be muchly appreciative. I get a few pennies for each click, and every little bit helps.

That's about it for now. Please feel free to send any potential job information my way (kpilotte*AT*gmail*DOT*com*PUTER). More updates later...

Joint Forces Open House Air Show

Yesterday, Wendy and I went to the Joint Services Open House at Andrews Air Force Base. Among the highlights, we got to see some wicked airplane acrobatics, a Harrier do a vertical takeoff and fly backwards, some formation flying, and we also saw one of the planes and helos that our friend Eric has flown and is flying (he is an officer in the Marines, and did his basic flight training in Corpus and is now doing helo training in Pensacola).

I got some really cool pictures before the batteries in my camera died. Feel free to check them out, and if you can, help me figure out what some of the "unidentified" planes or random helos are. I'll eventually be posting these to flickr, as well, so some of them will end up here.

Anyway, as I said, if you can identify any of the planes, please let me know by posting in the comments section!!!

UPDATE 26 May 2005: I believe I've got all the planes identified. If you notice any mis-identifications, though, please let me know. :)

A Couple of Updates

First update, as a follow up to my Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy entry, Grace posted a comment that she had converted the online version of the ebook I found to an iSilo format, for those who have it. I imagine iSilo is MUCH more convenient than reading it as a doc format in Documents To Go, so if you have iSilo and want the book, go grab it! :)

Second, I'm now entering my 5th month of being unemployed. So, first, if you happen to know of anybody who might have a need for an aerospace engineer in the DC-metro area, please drop me a line. Alternatively, if you would like to help me out financially, please click on any or all of the links in the right sidebar in the "Ads by Gooogle" box. I get a few pennies for each click, and it would be extremely helpful. Thanks in advance.

Nalgene Collection

oz with nalgenes 5
Originally uploaded by terpkristin.

I have decided that I have way too many Nalgene bottles. Now, you too can judge if I have too many. This is one of the pictures I took of my collection (it took a few tries to get pictures of them without Oz), and in the photo there are 13. This doesn't include (obviously) the Nalgenes I've broken, and I actually think I have a few more at my parents' house in with my caving gear.

Anyway, feel free to look through the photostream of Nalgene bottles (with and without Oz) or if you just want to see the collection with descriptions of the bottles themselves, go here.

As a random side note, I've been asked more than once about what Nalgenes are and how they came about for outdoor uses. For answers to those, I direct you to the NALGENE and NALGENE Outdoors websites:
Nalge Nunc International
NALGENE Outdoors
The "story" of how NALGENE bottles came to be used by hikers...or, it's the story as NALGENE tells it. I have no idea how true it is.

Still Messing With Photography

oz in window 1
Originally uploaded by terpkristin.

As usual, it seems, I'm still messing with my camera and testing things out with my favorite subject, the Oz-meister.

It seems that to negate the graininess caused by the white flecks in his fur, simple diffusion of the flash doesn't work very well (I tried a few different methods to make the flash on the camera more diffuse). What is more inconvenient is that it seems that the best way to reduce the graininess is to use a lot of light, natural and otherwise. My next attempts at improving my light setup for general photography will be to use some of the external flashes I tend to use with my SLR camera (non-digital), and then to pick up a Firefly Electronics flashgun slave (so I can use a separate flash situated in a different position and aimed in a different direction to get better overall lighting), which is similar to one I played around with for some cave photography I did awhile back (still haven't been able to scan those pictures, though).

Alas. Tips or suggestions for my flash/lighting problems and for my photos in general are always welcome. :) Enjoy.