Denver

24 Hours in Denver

Jeff and Elizabeth were in Washington, DC for the week, but got stuck in made a stop in the wonderful city of Denver on their way back. Jeff asked me:

24 hours in Denver, what should we do?

Here’s my quick and dirty short list of things to do in Denver. I’ve tried order it from north to south, west to east, but this is all mostly from memory.

  • Coors Field, 2001 Blake Street Denver, Colorado, 80205
  • Wynkoop Brewing Company, 1634 18th Street, Denver, (303) 297-2700
  • Commons Park, 15th and Little Raven Street, Denver, CO (kitty corner from REI and across the river)
  • REI Denver Flagship, 1416 Platte Street, Denver, CO, 80202-1120, (303) 756-3100
  • Illegal Pete’s, 16th Street, Denver, CO
  • United States Mint, 320 W Colfax Ave, Denver, Colorado, 80204
  • Civic Center Park, West Colfax and Bannock St1
  • Denver Art Museum, 100 W 14th Ave Pkwy, Denver, CO, 80204-2788, (720) 865-5000
  • Denver Museum of Nature and Science, 2001 Colorado Blvd, Denver, CO, 80205, (303) 370-6000
  • Colorado School of Mines, 1500 Illinois Street, Golden, CO, (303) 273-3000

Anything else worth adding to this list?

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  1. From west to east is the Denver City and County building, Civic Center Park, and Colorado State Capital ↩

Surprise! It’s Snow!

We got a surprise snow on Monday that caught most people off guard. I think it only snowed an inch or so in the Denver area, but we got at least eight inches up here in the foothills (which is at least 500 feet higher in elevation).

Plowing the Snow
Nikkor 50mm || 0.4 seconds || f/4.5 || ISO1600 || tripod

All That Snow
Nikkor 50mm || 0.8 seconds || f/4.5 || ISO1600 || tripod

I tried a couple of new editing techniques on these sets of photos. The first involves how I adjust the exposure and black settings to maximize the contrast ratio. Ideally, there is at least one black pixel and and least one white pixel. I also tried using a new workflow process where I export from Lightroom into Photoshop and then use Smart Sharpen in Photoshop to, uh, sharpen the image smartly.

See the rest: Surprise Snow

Also, don’t forget that Andrew Ferguson Photography will go live tomorrow. Check back here around noon (Mountain time) the post.

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WordCamp Denver

I'm Attending WordCamp Denver 2009

I just submitted my registration and I’ll be attending WordCamp Denver, “a conference created for enthusiasts, users, developers, designers, and fans of WordPress1.”

Critical Details:
From denver.wordcamp.org:

When: Saturday, February 28, 2009
Where: Denver Art Museum, 100 W 14th Avenue Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204
How: (much) $20, click to register for WordCamp Denver 2009
Who: Local bloggers, web developers, publishers, designers, internet and marketing enthusiasts, companies interested in blogging and/or building on WordPress.

If you would like to attend, visit: http://denver.wordcamp.org/

Yes, I’m super nerdy. Deal with it.

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  1. WordPress is what I use to power this blog ↩

3rd Space Exploration Conference and Exhibition

The 3rd annual Space Exploration Conference and Exhibition was in Denver this year and we were invited to attend this invitation only event. One might think that invitation only events would be rather dull and highly boring, however I can easily say this was one of the best events I’ve ever been to.

NASA tasked Boeing with getting together the best of the best when it comes to space systems. And that’s what Boeing did.

When was the last time you stood next to America’s first liquid hydrogen fueled rocket engine, a Pratt and Whitney RL-10?

DSC_1868 (by Mr Ferguson)

In fact, Boeing still uses the RL-10 in their Delta IV. And of the three major rocket engines used in America (Boeing’s Delta IV, Lockheed Martin’s Atlas V and NASA’s Space Shuttle Main Engines), all of them are made by Pratt and Whitney.

Lockheed Martin had a robot there, Sprocket D. Rocket. Now originally, I thought it was just a simple AI robot. But then I listened to it talk and interact with other people and I thought it was just a remote controlled robot with a human behind it all. Later, someone told me that people would ask it esoteric questions in foreign languages and it would respond. If this is the case, then it fooled me and successfully passed my Turing test.

DSC_1854 (by Mr Ferguson)

The conference concluded with a panel of persons from all different aspects of the space industry, including a gentleman by the name of Pat Schondel who is the Vice President of Business Development for Boeing NASA Systems, a part of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. After the panel was over, I went over and talked with him for a few minutes and picked his brain a bit about Boeing, what’s going in the space sector and internship opportunities in the in the space sector at Boeing.

Talking to Mr. Schondel turned out to be one of the highlights of my time since I’ve been trying find out about Boeing’s space interests for some time now, but Seattle really isn’t the place to do that. Mr. Schondel was able to fill in some gaps for me and give me the ever so slighest glimpse of what goes on down in Houston.

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Dropped Off on Both Ends

I dropped Jeff off at the airport yesterday for his flight back home to Seattle.

This would normally not be a notable event, except that I also dropped Jeff off at the airport in Seattle on his flight here to Colorado.

You read that right, I dropped Jeff of at the airport in Seattle in my car. Then drove to Colorado and dropped Jeff off at the airport in Colorado in my car.

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