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Taken with iPhone Camera. Edited with CinemaFX and Photogene.

Today’s photo has sort of a double meaning. It’s a comment about music and the vinyl LP in particular. As well as a tribute to the passing of the old year and welcoming the new year.

I love playing records…you know the kind….33 1/3 rpm vinyl analog records. I completely enjoy listening to them. and I can’t even say why…some people claim that vinyl sounds better. I don’t know if that is true. But I listen differently when I’m playing my turntable. Fortunately for me, vinyl records are still available from a generation ago, and much new music is also coming out. It’s wonderful.

May the things remain that are worth holding onto as we move into a new month, a new year and a new decade. Because you are never too old to Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Taken with Hipstamatic using the John S lens and Kodot Verichrome film. Enlarged with Picturefxr.

I love the taste of Dr. Pepper as you may know from a previous photo. But I think I drink too much of it and not enough water. What brings me to this conclusion? Oh…an hour and a half in the doctor’s office. Now, I don’t think I can blame it completely on the tasty doctor. But I’m willing to try anything so that I don’t have to feel like I was this morning. I didn’t sleep well (if at all) last night, My back hurt, my stomach hurt…I hurt all over. after some blood work and 3 x-rays, the doctor decided that I was passing a small kidney stone. Small? I could see the thing on the x-ray as plain as day. It didn’t look small at all.

Anyway, my completely unscientific theory is that I drink too much of Dr. Pepper. I’m going to cut down and drink more water.

Today’s photo was taken with a new iPhone app with which I’m having fun. (see…I didn’t end that sentence with a preposition, even though it was begging for one.) The app is called Hipstamatic. It simulates taking photos with a toy camera that has many swappable lenses, flash gels and film types. It’s really cool.

One drawback of the app is that it produces photos at 525px square. Not very big. I like my photos to be over 1000 px at least, so I have another app that I used to enlarge the photo. It does a pretty good job. It’s called, Picturefxr. It uploads the photo to a server that enlarges the photo and then emails it back to me. I could do enlarging on my own computer, but part of my challenge is to do all editing with the iPhone. This technique is borderline cheating, but….it works and I think it’s still within the guidelines, as long as I can do it all from the touch screen of my iPhone. which I can.

Taken with iPhone Camera. Edited with CinemaFX.

Note: Today I cheated…I used the photo that I had taken for yesterday’s post. Forgive me. I took plenty of photos of the kids with my Nikon D90. I will post some of the best of those somewhere.

As I get older (I’m almost 40…say it isn’t so!) I find myself saying more and more often, “when I was a kid…” And then I end the sentence with some nonsense about how things used to be so much harder. You know, the 27 of us in my family lived in a shoebox, and all we had to eat was rocks…and we liked it.

But seriously, life was different when I was a kid, not better, not worse…just different. And I think that my kids recognize this. They know that their life is pretty good. And that makes me happy.

Christmas is the best. I love the true meaning of Christmas…celebrating the birth of Jesus. But what I like the best is seeing the magic of Christmas through my kids eyes.

Today’s photo is of an antique firetruck I own (no this is not from my childhood. It was already an antique when I was a kid. I’m not that old yet!)

Taken with iPhone Camera. Edited with CinemaFX.

A wonderful Christmas tradition that many people share is the viewing of Christmas lights. Here in Utah we have many places to view lights. Some displays can be seen via a nice car ride. Others are taken on foot. Last night, we went on a foot guided tour of the lights on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. It was cold, snowy and perfect.