karen corby's photography

Asia Travels

On Thursday, I leave for Malaysia & China for a trip with equal parts business and pleasure.  Very excited! I’m bringing along both my film SLR & my digital point and shoot.  So they’ll be some real time photo and a bunch of back-postings when I return.   Malaysia time: gmt/utc +8 (noon in seattle = 3am next day in kuala lumpur) currency: 1 usd = 3.68 ringgit (rm) weather: 80F, showers (forecast)   China time: gmt/utc +8 (noon in seattle = 3am next day in beijing) currency: 1 usd = 7.97 yuan weather: 80F, rain (forecast) 

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Vista & Glass

I really like glass – it’s just so clean & elegant.  The only thing I don’t like is the default “color” – it comes out way too blue.  I know the hue is subtle, but it just clashes with everything else on the desktop. My recommendation is to use “Frost” with transparency bumped all the way down.  It’s much better.  🙂   default glass   frost glass with low transparency

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Redwood National Forest

This past weekend, I was in Arcata, California with my folks for a wedding.  We wandered up to Redwood National Forest yesterday.  It was incredibly foggy… and a bit too reminiscent of Seattle weather.  🙂  But it was incredibly beautiful, and we had a fun time. the redwoods.   driftwood on the shore   my parents   an old house in trinidad

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Paragliding – Tiger Mountain

This past weekend, I went paragliding for the first time.  It was a “tandem flight” off Poo Poo Point on Tiger Mountain.  The weather was perfect: blue skies, warm sun. I was in the first group to go up.   It was beautiful up in the air – very mellow and serene.  I actually had hoped for a bit more “extreme adventurous”…  but maybe next time. 🙂  I did seem some wicked looking spirals from other paragliders.   Some photos: The dude on the far right was supposed to act as “ballast”…   ….but the wind was so strong I just popped right up…      looking up.. …

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Appreciating “Digital” Retouching

I took these photos on one of my favorite hikes ever: Oyster Dome in the Chuckanut Mountains last April. My friend Archana and I caught one of the first sunny spring days. As you can see, there were some amazing views of the San Juan islands. I remember being somewhat heartbroken when I picked up the prints.  I hadn’t meant to do a silhouette (although I like it more now). And, the sunspot in the middle of the frame *killed* me. But last night, I took out the sunspot, blended away the negative scratches… and lighted the tone a bit.  It …

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More Photos from Travels

Going through my stacks of negatives, it hit me how lucky I’ve been to travel. Here are a few more of my favorites from an early 2004 trip. charles bridge in prague, czech republic   prague, czech republic   park guell in barcelona, spain   kunming, china   tiger leaping gorge, china

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FontPlayer XBAP

I thought it would be fun to update the UI (and some functionality) for the FontPlayer SDK sample. This app lets you to play with the fonts installed on your the machine. It also shows off the OpenType features of specific fonts. Some of the interesting features that I added to this app: Embedded fonts in XBAP ComboBox bound to system fonts, displayed using font New CheckBox template Text “reflection” effect FontPlayer works with RC 1. Run it here. Code found here. Screen Shots – Details custom font font ComboBox new CheckBox template Embedded fonts in XBAP Custom fonts are …

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Loose XAML, XBAPs & Hyperlink Images

As Mark Alaczar points out in his WPF sandbox whitepaper, sandboxed top level navigation requires user initiation. Some definitions to help this make sense: Top level navigation: Navigations that target the hosting web browser. For instance, navigating the entire browser, or a specific HTML <iframe>, to http://netfx3.com. User initiated: Direct result of an explicit user action. In the case of top level navigation, this is most likely the user clicking on a hyperlink. “Programmatic”, on the other hand, is the direct result of a dev action, like NavigationService.Navigate(…). In this version of WPF, top level navigations in sandboxed apps require …

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Fashion Street Blog

My new favorite blog is The Sartorialist. It’s full of photos of fashion on the streets of New York City. I highly recommend. 🙂

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Negative Scanner & Photos

About a month ago, I finally broken down & bought a negative scanner. I’ve slowly been digitalizing about 80 pounds (literally) worth of scrapbook photos. A few of my favorites that I’ve recently scanned… traveling on horseback to monteverde, costa rica my friend vidya’s dance recital my friend archana in the hoh rainforest dali, china

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