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I’ve pulled the trigger. I am committing myself to this for 2010. I am going to take 52 self portraits this year, one each week, starting with this one:

I really want to put the T1i to good use, and I think this is a great way to do it. I hope to develop my photography skills throughout the year. I was inspired to do self portraits, rather than just general photographs, by Lauren Randolph and her 365 in 2009.

I have wanted to do Project 365 for the past couple of years, and I have failed miserably at each attempt (like this one). My failures were mostly rooted in forgetfulness and a lack of creativity. We’ll see how this goes. I think I have a much better chance at succeeding, needing to only come up with about 1/7 of the photos needed for Project 365.

Wish me luck!

With grad school done for the year (one year down, one more to go), I decided to take the afternoon off on Friday. After working in the morning, I headed down to Evanston to have lunch with Abby. We had been talking earlier in the week and had decided on Blind Faith Café, a vegetarian restaurant, for lunch. Those of you who know me might be surprised, but I thought I would give it a try. The short of it: I liked the ratatouille, and the macrobiotic plate didn’t look bad, either. I think I’ll head back down there again and try some more things from the menu, but don’t count on my giving up meat any time soon.

Between tasks, I decided to join in on the fun this morning. So, here is my gratuitous picture of myself at work (with TweetDeck on my laptop – follow me @markomni):

Yeah, it’s not a good picture, but it certainly is gratuitous.

Also, no more javascript injection on my blog

Much like Sarah Lane from Revision3 and TechTV fame, I am in the market for a digital SLR camera. I have been eying both Nikon’s and Canon’s line of entry-level DSLRs.

At this point, I’m leaning towards Canon and their EOS Rebel XSi. I have several friends who are acquainted with the Canon models, and they may have lenses I can poach.

The D90 is the camera I would be interested in purchasing from Nikon. It looks to be a more expensive alternative to the XSi, but with the HD video recording capability, it’s really a different class of camera.

So, at this point, I’m not sure which one to purchase. In addition to choosing the camera body, I have to figure out which lens will be best for my current shooting style. That may or may not be an easy task for me, as I have been spoiled by Sony H1, the advanced point-and-shoot camera that I have now, which has 12x optical zoom that allows me to shoot a variety of subjects from a variety of distances.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me? You can see what I’ve shot in the past at Flickr. Maybe that will help any real photographers out there help me decide on my first lens.

Tonight, Grant and I made scallops served atop fettuccine with a garlic and white wine cream sauce. We modified this recipe from Allrecipes.com to make a sauce more appropriate to be served with pasta. We added more cream and white wine, subtracted some butter and added some Parmesan cheese. We’re not really sure how much more cream, wine or cheese we added, but it’s pretty safe to say that we only added a stick and a half two sticks of butter to the sauce.

The scallops were prepared almost as directed in the above recipe, except that we doubled the cooking time for each side because of the size of the scallops.

Overall, the dish was quite tasty. However, I wonder if this will be yet another dish that I would rather just go to a restaurant and order rather than make it myself.

Last night I uploaded all of my photos, good and bad, of the total lunar eclipse, the last for North America until 2010. I literally dug out the telescope and Grant and Al came over after Al’s haircut and getting dinner to view the eclipse with me. The telescope was a little difficult to use at first, as the cold weather made it harder to focus. Grant figured it out and found the moon, and he kept track of its movements in the night sky.

I know it’s only September, but I am now declaring that I will be doing a Project 365 photo journal for 2008. I’ve been wanting to take more pictures, hoping to improve my skills in time for our trip to Alaska next summer. This should help.

I’ve joined the Project 365 Flickr group. Perhaps I will find inspiration as I browse through members’ photos. For the rest of the year, I’m going to try to take and post a photo each week. With luck, I’ll be able to keep up with it and I will be ready for January 1, 2008, when I start the daily adventure.

Keep checking back for photos.

Update: I have created a Project 365 page.