Too Many Pictures

I am quickly running out of disk space on my laptop. I was looking for a way to visualize my disk usage to see where I needed to focus on cleaning things up, and ran across JDiskReport. It's written in Java, and thanks to Java Web Start, is simple to get running.

It turns out that a little over 50% of my hard drive is filled with pictures from my digital camera! This tool allows me to take a closer look and see where all that space is going. I found out that the amount of data from pictures I took in 2005 is greater than the years 2000-2004 combined! Also, I accumulated more picture data in 2007 than the previous 7 years combined!

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, in 2005 I upgraded from a 2.1 megapixel point-and-shoot to an 8 megapixel DSLR. Second, I started shooting exclusively in the RAW format in 2007. All of this increase in image quality comes with the obvious cost of having to store all this data. So I guess I'm in the market for a new hard drive.

Looking Back at Rian's Surgery

I put together a little video about Rian and the days leading up to his surgery. I mostly put it together for myself, to help me remember that time, but also for Rian so that maybe when he's an adult he can look back and see what he was like when he was 4 1/2 years old and preparing for eye surgery. By putting it on the web I'm not only giving you a chance to watch it, but also increasing the odds that it will be around in 10 years when Rian might appreciate it.

Anyway, enough of that. This video is pretty long. Believe it or not, it was actually a lot of work to get it under 10 minutes, which is the maximum length that YouTube allows.

Cousins!

We had some family visit recently, which is always fun. We tried getting a group picture of all the cousins together, which can be quite a challenge since they are all so young and have such short attention spans. Joshua didn't make it into this picture, but maybe I can photoshop him in later. There isn't a lot of room though. Maybe I'll just give Ethan a 2nd head.

Joshua was pretty interested in Ethan. I think they're going to be friends. Joshua wanted to touch Ethan's skin and face, but he hasn't quite developed the gentle touch that Michelle so effortlessly employs so we had to keep an eye on him. :)


Ruby was beautiful, as always. I know Amy gets tired of hearing that, but I think that is a good problem to have. If you don't know Ruby's story, it's a fascinating one. Much of it is detailed at my sister's blog, Finding Love in Liberia.


We sat down with the kids and watched one of my favorite movies, Ratatouille. Well, I guess not everyone actually sat down to watch it. Reid preferred to stand about 2 feet away from the TV. Perhaps he has had a look at this chart and was just trying to appreciate the film in all of it's 1080p Blu-Ray glory.


This last photo shows Ruby and Ethan holding hands. I think the contrast in skin color is interesting, but the other thing you'll notice is the contrast in body fat. Of course, this shouldn't come as any surprise if you've seen pictures of Ruby when she lived in Africa.