Playing with the AI image generator…
October 27, 2023, 10:02 AM
Recently, a friend of mine posted some computer generated images from the Bing Image Creator, which uses the DALL-E system as its base. I enjoyed their posts, so I decided to take it for a spin myself with subjects that were more relevant to me. My first idea was to have it generate me. The way I saw it, ChatGPT kinda sorta knew who I was, so it seemed reasonable to see if Bing Image Creator could perform similarly.
The first prompt that I gave it was “Ben Schumin in Washington, DC” and this is what it produced:
Continue reading…Categories: Afton Mountain, Artificial intelligence, Baltimore, Fire alarms, Honda HR-V (2018), JMU, Kia Soul, Mercury Sable, Stuarts Draft, Today's Special, Toyota Previa, Washington DC, WMATA
A blank slate for the future…
September 20, 2023, 8:46 AM
From September 13-15, Elyse and I made our usual trip down to Staunton, where we photographed a bunch of stuff, did a bunch of other stuff, and also saw my parents. On the middle day of our trip, I did what I consider to be a final update on the demolition of Staunton Mall. The demolition work had been completed some time between our December trip, when I flew the drone around the mostly-demolished facility, and our March trip, but due to scheduling issues, I wasn’t able get out there to actually photograph it again until September. With demolition completed, I intended to physically go in and photograph things with my DSLR and my phone, rather than go in by remote via the drone. The idea was that with the demolition work completed, whatever was left should be pretty stable, so I didn’t need to worry about falling debris or anything else, because it was being left for an indefinite amount of time, until whatever new development that is to replace the mall begins construction. Don’t get me wrong: the drone is a great piece of equipment, but it isn’t able to capture the same amount of detail that one can get by actually going in with a conventional camera and getting right up close to things. That’s not a fault of my drone by any means. You really don’t want to take the drone close enough to anything to get that level of detail in the first place, because that comes with an unacceptable level of risk of an accident. If the drone makes contact with anything, the motors will stop, and it will go down. The drone, by its nature, is also much faster moving photography than one might do when shooting conventionally, and as such, you’re not usually able to stop and appreciate what you’re looking at when you’re flying a drone, i.e. it’s easy to miss a lot of details in the moment. With fairly limited fly time (a drone battery only lasts about 20-25 minutes), it behooves you to get in, get your shots, and get out. By walking in, I was able to slow down and take more time to focus on my surroundings, and I noticed a lot more detail than I would otherwise.
Categories: Augusta County, Staunton, Staunton Mall, Urban exploration
Two stories about Woomy…
September 8, 2023, 11:33 PM
Recently, while we were driving home from shopping, Elyse asked ChatGPT to tell her a story about everyone’s favorite orange curmudgeon: Woomy. I don’t know what the exact parameters that she gave it were, but it came up with decent enough material to come up with something at least somewhat heartwarming. Check these out:
In the heart of Alexandria, Virginia, there lived a curmudgeonly orange octopus named Woomy. Every day, rain or shine, Woomy would climb aboard the DASH bus, his tentacles a tangle of frustration. He’d grumble and grouse about the noise, the crowds, and the whole human world around him.
Passengers would stare, amused by this unexpected commuter. Woomy’s sour expression became a familiar sight, and people began sharing stories of his antics. But despite the attention, Woomy remained steadfast in his curmudgeonly ways.
One winter’s day, as snow painted the city white, a young child with curious eyes got on the bus. Ignoring the stares, the child approached Woomy, offering a small, hand-knit scarf. Woomy’s eyes widened, his expression softening just a bit. He accepted the scarf with a tentative tentacle.
Categories: Alexandria, Artificial intelligence, Public transportation, Woomy
A fun weekend where no photography goals were met…
June 29, 2023, 8:44 AM
From June 21-23, Elyse and I made a weekend trip to Virginia, but instead of centering on Staunton like we usually do, we centered on Roanoke (but don’t worry – we still saw my parents in Stuarts Draft). We had planned this trip largely as a photography outing, and then the weather didn’t cooperate. It was raining continuously almost the entire time, which made for a more difficult drive than I would have liked, but the trip was worth it. I guess that you could say that while we didn’t necessarily do much in the way as far as photography, we laid the groundwork for future trips by identifying potential subjects. I didn’t want to lay groundwork for the future this time around, as I really wanted to bring home the goods, but such is what happens when the weather doesn’t cooperate. I brought my DSLR and my drone on this trip, but neither one of them ever left their respective carrier.
The plan was to drive down from the DC area to Lynchburg via US 29, spend the afternoon and early evening of the first day in Lynchburg, and then head over to Roanoke, where we were staying at the Hampton Inn located downtown (the one built on top of a city parking garage). Then we would spend the entire second day in Roanoke, largely with Commonwealth Coach & Trolley, which is a bus museum that Elyse and I both serve on the board of. Then on the last day, we would head up to Staunton and Waynesboro, where I had some things that I wanted to get over there, before going over to see my parents. What ended up happening was pretty similar to plan, but not quite. Our departure was delayed, because we already knew that much of the day would be a rainout. The drive down to Charlottesville was fine, making one stop for food at the third (Bealeton) Sheetz. We made a brief stop at Barracks Road in Charlottesville, and then we were back on the road. It started raining harder once we cleared Charlottesville, and we saw three different accidents between Charlottesville and Amherst where people had clearly wiped out after driving faster than conditions allowed. One of those accidents was a police car, which was clearly totaled in its accident. We took it slowly, especially since I didn’t have that much experience taking the new HR-V in driving rain like this before, plus I wasn’t as familiar with the stretch of 29 from Charlottesville to Lynchburg (particularly from I-64 to VA 151) as I am with 29 north of Charlottesville.
Categories: Friends, Honda HR-V (2023), Lynchburg, Public transportation, Roanoke, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Travel
Making a weekend trip out of a delivery…
April 7, 2023, 10:00 AM
Recently, I was finally able to complete the last little bits of business related to the car accident from last October, and put it all behind me. On Thursday, March 30, I made the 175-mile journey to Stuarts Draft in the Scion – a trip that would leave it back home with my parents, where it belongs. And while I was at it, I made a weekend trip out of it, coupling it with a day in Richmond, where I did some photography. As such, I would traverse what I like to call Virginia’s “Interstate square”. If you look at a map of Virginia, the various Interstate highways in the state form something like a lopsided square, consisting of I-66 to the north, I-81 to the west, I-64 to the south, and I-95 to the east, and Strasburg, the DC area, Richmond, and Staunton at the corners:
Categories: Driving, Family, Harrisonburg, Howard Johnson's, JMU, Photography, Richmond, Roads, Scion xB, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Travel
Walking through Afton Mountain…
March 20, 2023, 8:38 PM
From March 15-17, Elyse and I did another trip down to Augusta County, and we had a good time overall. This was typical for these sorts of trips, in that we stayed at Hotel 24 South in Staunton, did stuff, and also visited my parents. This was supposed to have been the trip where my parents’ Scion xB, which I’ve been driving since late October, went back to my parents to stay, but due to a delay in my new car’s arrival, it ended up being a pretty conventional trip.
On the middle day of our trip, we got together with our friends Evan and Andrew, and we visited the Blue Ridge Tunnel. For those not familiar, the Blue Ridge Tunnel is a former railroad tunnel that was built in 1858, and was used by various railroads until 1944, when the tunnel was abandoned in favor of a new tunnel constructed nearby, which is still used by railroads today. I had first learned about the Blue Ridge Tunnel when I was in high school, but while I knew that it existed as an abandoned tunnel, I never knew exactly where it was. Otherwise, I probably would have sought it out and explored it. In late 2020, the tunnel reopened as a rail trail, and the public was invited to hike the tunnel. Elyse and I had it on our list of things that we wanted to do, and since our friends wanted to do it, this seemed like a perfect opportunity. We all parked at the east trailhead, which is off of Route 6 on the Nelson County side of the mountain. I got my DSLR and my tripod, and we were off. We all hiked out to the tunnel together, but then when we got to the tunnel, Elyse, Evan, and Andrew hiked it more or less straight through, while I used the tripod with my DSLR to get some photos of the tunnel itself.
Categories: Afton Mountain, Friends, Travel
Remembering that your phone’s camera is still ultimately a phone camera…
February 20, 2023, 12:21 PM
Recently, I was reminded that my phone camera will only get me so far. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a great camera, with all sorts of functionality built in that creates some downright stunning shots. But it is still ultimately just a phone camera. When I really need to go the distance, my real camera, a Nikon D5300 DSLR, will do that. I got this reminder during two visits to the Old Town section of Alexandria, Virginia, when I photographed the Wilkes Street Tunnel on November 23, 2022, and on a return visit on February 15, 2023.
The first visit, which was part of a much larger adventure with Elyse, as well as our friends Aaron and Evan Stone, was one that I was somewhat unprepared for. I had known about the tunnel for a while, and it had a place on my “photo shoot ideas” list (which I jokingly refer to as “the place where photo ideas go to die” considering how many things I add to it, but how little I cross things off of it), but visiting it was not part of the plan. I didn’t necessarily plan for the day to be a big photography day, but I had made allowances for it nonetheless. I brought my DSLR along, but I didn’t really intend to do much with it, and certainly didn’t bring the tripod along. When we ended up at the Wilkes Street Tunnel, more or less by chance, I was kicking myself for not having brought the tripod along. So I just used my phone, and shot it with handheld phone shots. The results were okay, but not great. Specifically, I didn’t like the way that the lighting along the ceiling looked in my shots, with lens flares around the lights. Other than that, the shots were fine. Besides the lights, my biggest annoyance was that it was early evening, and people were frequently moving through the tunnel and getting in the way of my shots. My rule is that you don’t disturb people using a facility as it is intended while you’re photographing. You wait for them to pass and then continue, and if they stop for you, you wave them through. The idea is that you can’t get too upset about them, because they’re using the tunnel for what it was intended for, so you just have to work around them.
Categories: Alexandria, Cameras
A fun and memorable day…
February 8, 2023, 9:00 AM
Today marks twenty years since I made one of my favorite early DC adventures. On that day, February 8, 2003, I drove up from Harrisonburg and headed up to the DC area on a Saturday for a day of fun, photographing the area in the snow and checking out parts of the Metro system that I’d never been to before. It was my senior year of college, and was one of three trips to DC that I made from my dorm that year. I also feel like I shot a number of my “classic” DC area photos on this trip, since a lot of photos from this trip have made their way all over the Internet (i.e. you’ve probably seen some of them in the wild, and never realized that they were my work).
This trip had an interesting set of circumstances that led up to it, though. As I recall, snow had been predicted for Thursday night and Friday morning. That prediction ultimately came to pass, as it snowed enough to cancel classes for Friday. This was not unanticipated, so, the night before, as part of my duties as a resident advisor in Potomac Hall, I had posted signs on my floor advising people to check the JMU website for information on class status. In other words, make sure that you have to go out before you go out, because you might not have to go out if the university cancels classes. The sign was posted with the intent of putting the responsibility for checking the status onto my residents, so that I would not have to get up early to check the status and post signs to that effect, since I didn’t have classes until later in the day, and would not wake up before the first classes of the day would have started. So with the signs posted, I went to bed. Good. Now fast forward to around 6 AM or so. I vaguely remembered hearing the phone ring a few times while I was trying to sleep, but I never answered it, because I was trying to sleep. Then I’m awakened by a very loud banging on my door. Having just been rudely awakened like that, my first response was to shout, “WHAT?!?” It was Mecca Marsh, our hall director, i.e. the boss, so it must be important. I went to get up, and in my haste in getting up, I lost my balance and fell back onto my bed, landing on my left elbow. When I landed, I heard a series of four or five popping sounds, and I remember thinking, “That can’t be good.” Apparently, that popping had come from something in my left shoulder, and it now hurt very much.
So what was the big, important reason that Mecca came up and woke me up out of a dead sleep? Make a sign and put it on the outside door stating that classes were cancelled. Believe me, she was lucky that my arm was sore from the injury that I had just suffered, because I probably would have hit her otherwise. I was absolutely seeing red following all of that. For the amount of effort that she went to, making multiple phone calls and then coming up to my floor and waking me up, just to order me to make a single sign, she could have done it herself. And when I mentioned that I had just injured my shoulder in the process of getting up, and that it now hurt very much, she responded with a dismissive, “You’ll be fine.” Yeah, way to show some compassion after an injury that you played a part in causing. I expected no less from Mecca, though, because she had her favorites on the staff and I was not one of them, and therefore I was treated accordingly. In any case, I made the sign, and tried to go back to sleep, but I was now pretty mad about what had just happened, plus I was in a good bit of pain. You understand why I consider Mecca Marsh to be one of the worst bosses that I’ve ever had. I probably should have seen a doctor on a worker’s comp claim, and I also can’t imagine that the management would have taken too kindly to the whole situation had I reported it like I probably should have, and it wouldn’t have reflected well on Mecca considering that she precipitated the whole thing. She would have hated that, considering how big she was on propping up her own image (she had some major inadequacy issues of her own). But I was only 21 and didn’t know any better, so I just suffered through it.
Categories: Alexandria, Arlington, DC trips, JMU, Northern Virginia, Personal health, Washington DC
I love it when other people are as immature as I am…
December 30, 2022, 9:00 AM
On our most recent trip down to the Staunton area, where I got some update photos for Staunton Mall, among other things, we got an unexpected follow-up to something that we had done on a whim in the New Street garage in downtown Staunton on our September trip, which is where we park when we stay at Hotel 24 South, and then subsequently forgot about. Like many public parking garages, you occasionally find vehicles in there being stored long-term, or sometimes outright abandoned, such as this red Mitsubishi that we spotted in December 2020, which was wearing a thick layer of dirt (it’s since been moved).
More recently, a white Range Rover with an expired North Carolina plate on the second level of the New Street garage was one of those cases, with its having been in its space for a long enough time to be wearing a thick layer of dust and dirt. So in September, as we were leaving the New Street garage on the last day of our trip, I had an idea. I stopped the HR-V in front of it, got a napkin, wet the napkin a little bit, and then had a moment of fun with it, writing a message on the windshield.
(Be advised: some of the photos below this point depict somewhat crude humor that is not necessarily “safe for work”, so be judicious about where you are when you read this.)
You’re taking me for a ride…
December 23, 2022, 12:57 PM
On Friday, November 18, Elyse and I went out to Ashburn for a ride on the new Silver Line extension. This was the conclusion of a long-awaited public works project, bringing the Metro Silver Line out to its intended western terminus in Ashburn, Virginia. You may recall that I did a similar adventure with my friend Matthew on the Silver Line when it opened in 2014. I couldn’t attend the opening day events because I had to work, but Elyse did. She managed to get a ticket to the VIP event by asking nicely, much like I did in 2014, and she had a blast. She got to meet Metro General Manager Randy Clarke, and even got to sound the horn on a 7000-Series railcar.
For this adventure, our day started out with an open house event at the Dulles rail yard, which guided our plans to an extent. Driving over, we listened to “Escapee” by Architecture in Helsinki, which Metro had used for a promotional video for the opening of the first part of the Silver Line. For the first ride on the extension, that seemed fitting. At Dulles yard, we got a tour of the new facility and had a catered lunch. The new facility was quite nice, and we both commented that it looked more like a community college building than a train depot. Lunch was from Panera, we got Silver Line t-shirts, I got my Silver Line pennant to go with the one from 2014, and we also got a special Silver Line cookie:
Categories: Airplanes, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, WMATA
Lots and lots of rubble…
December 21, 2022, 10:54 AM
You may remember that in my last Staunton Mall update, I said, speaking of the mall as it might appear in December, “I would not be surprised if the demolition was complete by then, and we’re looking at an empty slab plus Belk at that time. I suppose that we’ll all find out together whether I’m right or not.” Now that the December trip down that way is over with, I can say that I was not correct. The demolition has certainly progressed, but as of December 16, the work is still by no means complete, though there is now more rubble than there is intact structure.
For this update, I once again did a flyover of the mall with the drone to get both overview and detailed shots of the former Staunton Mall. I started with the overview:
Categories: Augusta County, Scion xB, Staunton, Staunton Mall
A long-awaited resolution to a surprisingly contentious issue…
November 18, 2022, 10:00 AM
Sometimes, when it comes to elections, the ones that we lock onto most are little local issues. For me, it was the courthouse issue in Augusta County, Virginia. For those not familiar, Augusta County is the area where I grew up, and the courthouse is located in Staunton. That means, due to all cities’ being independent from counties in Virginia, the Augusta County courthouse is technically located outside of the county (though that is not unique to Augusta County by any means). As I understand it, for quite some time, Augusta County has been short on space for its courts, and has been looking to replace its courthouse with something bigger and more modern. Then to add another wrinkle to this, the rest of the Augusta County government had moved out to nearby Verona, located just north of Staunton, long ago. When we moved to the area in 1992, the Augusta County Government Center was a relatively new building in Verona, and since then, a regional jail has been built in Verona, the sheriff’s office moved to Verona, and the school system headquarters moved to Verona (though the schools moved from elsewhere in the county, not from Staunton). The only thing left in Staunton was the courts. The kicker there was that the location of the courthouse determined what town was the county seat, and moving the county seat required a referendum to be placed before the voters. And as you know, voters can be an odd bunch. Sometimes they perform the way you want or expect them to, but sometimes they don’t. And generally speaking, some things will never pass by referendum. If you’re raising taxes, for example, it will fail when taken to the voters, because in all fairness, who is going to vote to raise their own taxes?
The problem with the courthouse in Augusta County has been longstanding. The Augusta County courthouse had fallen below state standards for court facilities some time ago, and because of that, the county had been given a “show cause” order to improve the courts. County leaders also stated that they were unable to renovate their existing court facilities to meet current state standards. Thus it was necessary to build a new courthouse.
Categories: Augusta County, State and local politics, Staunton, Virginia local news
Walmart circa 2006…
November 15, 2022, 1:17 PM
Recently, a commenter on my post about the 2005 remodel of the Lexington Walmart remarked about the evolving interior of these stores. They said, “It’s so interesting seeing as this company is a backbone of America, but people barely document the constantly evolving exterior and interior of a place that millions of people visit every day.” It’s true. Walmart looks very different now than it did ten years ago, which is also very different from the way that it looked ten years before that. After all, ten years ago, in 2012, Walmart stores were mostly blue and yellow on the inside, as the Project Impact store design had been rolled out to most stores. Ten years before that, in 2002, Walmart stores mostly used a lot of blue and red, and had white or gray walls. What we think of when we think “Walmart” constantly is evolving. In the early 1990s, they used fairly simple red signage for departments. Then they switched to larger signage with patterns and photos on it. Then there was the black decor, and Walmart’s switch soon after from red, gray, white, and blue to a brown color palette. Then there was the era of the large wall signs, with small signs that looked like pylons scattered throughout the rest of the store. Then there was a short-lived variation on that wall-signs package that incorporated the new logo. Then there was Project Impact\, which was rolled out in a very concerted effort chainwide, and really made use of the new logo on everything. Project Impact was surprisingly long-lived, with some stores’ being remodeled to the design twice. Then there was another design that we called “Black 2.0” which was fairly minimalistic, and now uses a much warmer color palette and lots of signage.
All of this serves as something of a reminder that what was considered cutting edge one day is considered vintage or otherwise outdated later on. Back in 2006, when I still worked at Walmart, the company had announced their newest store prototype, which had a completely different signage package than my store had, and looked quite flashy for the time, and represented the latest attempt by Walmart, a pretty lowbrow company, to try to convince people that it’s highbrow. I later learned that the Walmart in Culpeper was being remodeled, and was getting this new store design. So on Sunday, September 17, a day that I was off of work from my own store, I headed up to Culpeper to see what it looked like and document it, because I’m a bit of a nerd like that.
And the outer walls begin to fall…
November 3, 2022, 8:09 AM
On October 26, Elyse and I took a one-day trip down to Augusta County in order to change to the “permanent temporary solution” for my car problem, i.e. Mom’s Scion xB, following the HR-V’s untimely demise in an accident two and a half weeks prior. I don’t necessarily like doing these sorts of trips in a single day because it’s a lot of driving and I’m not 25 anymore, but that’s all I had time for based on my schedule. I also couldn’t really postpone this trip, because things were going to get a bit more expensive for me if I didn’t do this trip when I did. For those not familiar, when you have Progressive for your insurance and your car is totaled, your rental coverage ends three days after you are notified of your car’s total loss. That notification occurred while Elyse and I were on a weeklong trip to Tennessee, and so Progressive, taking my length of time as a customer (18 years!) into consideration, they extended my coverage until the day after we got back from our trip. Then Enterprise Rent-A-Car would let me pay the insurance rate for my rental for another week beyond that, after which I would have to pay the (much higher) retail rate. My original plan was to switch cars on the way back home, returning the rental car in Staunton, and then doing the last leg of the return trip in Mom’s car. As the trip continued on, though, I soon realized that we would be cutting it far too close with that plan, considering that it was also our Roanoke day, so I opted to postpone the car swap by a week and do the visit with my parents on the way home as we had planned to do it prior to the accident, i.e. it would just be a visit. So the primary focus of this trip was just to swap cars, on the day that the retail rate would have gone into effect, i.e. if you don’t return this car right now, you will be paying a lot more for it going forward. The addition of this new trip down also changed the plans for the last day of the Tennessee trip. Since there would now be an extra trip down to Staunton, I skipped a Staunton Mall update that I had planned for the return trip to save time, since I would be going right there the following week.
For this particular Staunton Mall visit, noting the pace of the progress that I had observed in June, August, and September, I already had a decent idea about what to expect. I figured that by my next visit, the remainder of the mall’s interior would be gone, and they would probably then start working on demolishing the exterior walls, which had remained mostly intact up to this point, which meant that Staunton Mall still largely looked like Staunton Mall from the road during most of the demolition up to that point. I also knew that I didn’t have much time on site this time around, and that the demolition crew would more than likely be on the property. Therefore, this was to be a high-level visit solely by drone, flown from well above the property where I could see my vehicle around the entire mall without having to reposition myself, and staying well clear of the demolition crew, since I didn’t want to get in their way at all, and I also didn’t have any time to discuss any special access with them, as I did in September to photograph what remained of the mall’s interior. All of that said, I made a quick ten-minute flight where I flew from the Orchard Hill Square shopping center across the street, and made a pass across the front of the mall, looped around the entire property, and then dipped down near the Belk entrance where there were no workers present for a momentary peek at that area before returning to the launch site.
Categories: Augusta County, Scion xB, Staunton, Staunton Mall
A little adventure in Virginia, mostly in the woods…
October 6, 2022, 8:06 AM
From September 13-15, Elyse and I had a little weekend adventure in Virginia, where we went down to Augusta County stayed in Staunton like we usually do. This one was a little different than most because it was partly a solo adventure. Prior to this trip, Elyse had been down in Roanoke attending to business related to a nonprofit that she volunteers with, so she traveled up from there on Amtrak, and we met up in Charlottesville. My original plan was to go the easterly route down, taking I-95 to Fredericksburg and then taking Route 3, Route 20, US 15, and a few other routes that would take me through Locust Grove, Orange, and Gordonsville. However, at the last minute, I had a change of heart, deciding that (A) I didn’t feel like wading through traffic on the Beltway or 95, (B) that easterly track would get me to Charlottesville far too early, meaning that I would have to kill time before Elyse would arrive, and (C) I had ideas that necessitated taking other routes. So I took the westernmost route, which primarily utilizes I-81, and took the “alternate” version of that, which goes through Harpers Ferry and Charles Town in West Virginia via US 340, and then taking Route 7 to meet I-81 in Winchester. Yes, I’m going north to head south, but the distance and time for going out to Harpers Ferry is almost the same as it is to go through Northern Virginia on I-66, so it works.
My first point of interest was a relatively obscure sign in the middle of a field in Verona:
Image: Google Street View