A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

That last post reminded me:

For some time I've wanted to make a page on jmac.org about my freelance programming business, more than the front-page blurb and link to my resume that's there now. One element I'm missing from this is a nice photograph of myself, with a big fat alpha channel as a backdrop, letting me work it into any layout.

I am actually looking to lay down a little dough on getting a nice couple of smart-lookin studio-made portraits that I could bend to this sort of use. I have also run into multiple instances in the recent past where entities - conference applications, "professional" blogs, et cetry - have requested high-quality photos, and I've had nothing to offer (I attached a manky iSight photo to the ETech app).

Any of y'all have any recommendations of where I could make this happen locally? (This includes you yourself, possibly; I really have no idea.)

(Also held back from making the page by a basic hesitation to promote myself as a freelance programmer when my "real" job is being the president of Volity Games. But hell, if putting a lot of work into it would have a just-my-luck effect of causing Volity to suddenly get a million bucks, forcing me to abandon my freelance job? I wouldn't cry much.)

jenlight, holed up with a busted leg, got bored enough to take pictures of TV talking heads at bizarre angles. For some reason I had never seen this effect before. I like it.

Yesterday was nice. In the morning I brunched with cthulhia at Sound Bites, which contains both muffins and a show of her V-day postcard artwork, much of which I hadn't seen before, since it's not all on her website. A meatspace exclusive! Go there and have a muffin and look at the art, if you haven't already.

We then quested to shoot two more of the Mysterious Critter Signs that had appeared in Somerville -- one by the powderhouse (which for some reason I had never seen before!) and another way off in the east. After making my capture, I returned home to play with iPhoto for the first time. Even though I have my own photo gallery thingy on my own website, I couldn't resist putting the resulting photos on my mac.com account, since iPhoto makes this quite literally a one-button procedure.

(I really have been becoming an Apple fanboy all over again, or so I feel over the last few weeks as I have been learning how to use Mac OS X "correctly", using the Terminal only for hacky business and not as my primary UI, as I would with xterms in any other Unix-based desktop, and as I was with OS X before this month.)

In the evening I was to meet M&N at the 1369 to discuss house plans, but only M was there -- N was stuck putting out fires in the machine room all night. We yammered in a caffeinatedly productive fashion, and then I showed her Chez Chestnut and some of its resident (and transient) humans and kitties -- CC is one possible candidate for our house plans, since half its population is going to bail soon. I am not sure what kind of impression it made on M. She lists lots-o-space as a prime requisite, and I don't think that's something we enjoy here.

Cthulhia came by again for a surprise visit when she and I decided to skip the late-late BUFF shorts show. (It included "Puking Zombies", which we agreed had a nice title but wasn't enough motivation to get us to Chinatown by 11 p.m.) She and M hit it off really well, and I always love to see that sort of thing happen. She verbally sketched the outline to her screenplay idea for M and I, which was fantastic -- she tried to do this for me during our Leonids misadventure months ago, but had to speak through the haze of emotional and physical discomfort that marked that trip, while this time she was in full form, and we could only gape at her storytelling-foo.