I went to the Santa Barbara Fair & Expo tonight to do some photography. It was fun, and I got a few good shots.

You can see a few more in the flickr set: http://flickr.com/photos/penner42/sets/72157604773705543/.

A few years ago, I took a photography trip to Europe (you can see pictures from that trip in the flickr set). One of the images from the trip that I really liked was this one, from Venice:

Today, I was in Aaron Brothers looking for a frame for some of my photos from my recent trip, when I saw a picture of Venice that looked awfully familiar. I pulled out my iTouch, to look at the above picture on it and compare. Sure enough, they were the same canal. When I got home, I looked through my other pictures from there, and found one that's a little closer to the same perspective, though still different. I also overexposed it in Lightroom so the building in the background can be seen better. Here's the picture in the frame (taken by my BlackBerry Pearl) side by side with the other shot I got in Venice:

You can click though the image and view bigger sizes at flickr.

Obviously, mine was taken at night, while the picture in the frame wasn't. The part I find really amazing about this is where the picture was taken. It wasn't in a very high traffic, famous part of the city. I found it wandering around different streets and canals, just looking for places to get good pictures. It's probably not in one of the most remote parts of the city, but it's not one of the ridiculously popular ones, either. It really is just a random canal in Venice, that I took some photographs in. And that also ended up being in a stock photo in a framing store. I wish I had my GPS and geotagging setup back then, because I probably couldn't find this place again if I go back.

Here's a link to the same canal from the other side. It was taken on the the bridge in the pictures above, facing back to where those pictures were taken from.

I took a much needed vacation last week. My father drove in from New York, and we spent a week on the road doing photography. We went to Death Valley, Valley of Fire, Antelope Canyons (near Page, AZ), and Monument Valley. Then we spent the weekend in Tucson with family for Passover. The whole trip was nice and relaxing, and I got a few good pictures out of it.

The whole set from the trip can be found here. I'll post a few of the highlights below.

Artist's Palette, Death Valley

Hikers at Zabriskie Point (they're in the bottom left corner)

Valley of Fire

Upper Antelope Canyon

Lower Antelope Canyon

Monument Valley

You can check out all the pictures in the Flickr set.

The Mets got themselves back up to .500 (4-4) last night, though there's some question as to whether or not Reyes actually scored. Either way, the run counts.

Here's an interesting post on why there are more 20-game winners than there are 19-game winners. Surprising, and probably mostly just random luck. Still interesting.

Well, interesting unless you're Joe Armstrong, I suppose. No need to click through that link. Just read the annotated version over at Fire Joe Morgan. Ken Tremendous is a genius.

There's another interesting post up at Baseball Toaster about the Tigers' awful start to the season. They're certainly a better team than the start of the season shows, but they have some work ahead of them to catch up and make the playoffs. Still, if the Mets can blow a 7 game lead in September, the Tigers can come back from a 7 game deficit in April. Anyway, the post is here, about teams that have made the playoffs in seasons they've had 7-game losing streaks. None of them were to start the season, but when it happens really doesn't matter too much.

Sports Authority has a 25% off any single item coupon. It's not good on a lot of name brands, but it does work for authentic MLB jerseys. My Santana jersey is finally on the way.

Another great post at FJM, by Junior. I guess I shouldn't link every single post there. If you're a baseball fan VORPie, you should just subscribe to the feed yourself.

Why aren't there afternoon games every day, dammit? I need at least one game to follow while I'm sitting here at work...