Taste testing some novelty sodas…
4 minute read
June 4, 2017, 2:30 PM
This past Thursday, Elyse and I finished up a round of taste tests on a bunch of novelty sodas that we bought at Rocket Fizz in Richmond back in March. Recall from the second Journal entry about our Richmond trip:
Continue reading…Categories: Food and drink, Richmond
Seeing where Schumin Web lives…
3 minute read
April 27, 2017, 10:24 AM
On Tuesday, Elyse and I took a big loop trip through Virginia and Maryland. We started at my house, went up through Frederick (where we had a late lunch at Sheetz), then took US 15 over the Point of Rocks Bridge into Virginia, where we went through Ashburn, and then down into Manassas, and from there, back home via the Beltway. The plan was to see Manassas Mall, which we both realized that we had never actually been to.
As it turned out, Manassas Mall wasn’t that exciting. It was a fairly generic one-story suburban shopping mall that contained fairly typical mall stores and a Walmart store, plus it contained an indoor go-kart track, as well as a place called Uptown Alley, which contained an arcade, bowling alley, and laser tag, as well as a restaurant. Other than the entertainment venues, it was more or less as expected.
However, more interesting than Manassas Mall was a side trip that we made on the way down. You may recall that, since 2007, Schumin Web has been hosted with DreamHost. In 2012, DreamHost began operating in a data center in Ashburn, Virginia, and my site was one of many to get moved there. It makes enough sense, since Schumin Web is based in the eastern US, and the largest segment of my viewership is also in the eastern US. I remember getting a big boost in speed when the site started serving from Ashburn rather than Los Angeles, which made site maintenance that much easier. With the site hosted in Northern Virginia, it wasn’t a large leap to imagine a trip to go see where the building that it was housed in was.
Categories: Loudoun County, Schumin Web meta
Just when you thought that the mountain couldn’t look any worse than it already did…
7 minute read
April 16, 2017, 5:37 PM
On Tuesday, April 11, I got together with Elyse and Melissa, and we headed down to Virginia for the day. The plan was to get together with my parents, plus visit Afton Mountain and downtown Staunton.
We left the house at 9:30, and took US 29 down to Charlottesville. First stop was Moe’s Original Bar B Que, where we had lunch with my father. Fun time, and my father seems to have a sixth sense when it comes to finding good barbecue. Every barbecue place that Dad has taken me to has been wonderful, and this was no exception.
From here, we took US 250 across to Afton Mountain. There, we went to the second overlook, i.e. the Rockfish Valley Parking Overlook, to get some views. I tend to avoid Afton Overlook, the first overlook, after being propositioned for sex there one night back in 2005. The second overlook, which is a mile and some change further down the road, tends to attract fewer undesirables. I suppose it’s because it’s further away from civilization than the first one, which is a minute’s drive from the freeway. In any case, the view is awesome:
Categories: Afton Mountain, Elyse, Family, Melissa, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Urban exploration, Waynesboro
Soda, toys, and a Kroger like no other…
5 minute read
April 6, 2017, 2:07 PM
So, as promised, here’s the rest of the trip to Richmond that Elyse and I made.
After leaving the Science Museum, we headed over to Carytown. Elyse wanted me to see Rocket Fizz, which is where she got some bottles of “Stalinade”, a strawberry-flavored soda that, as I said on Instagram at the time, was “Communism in a glass. Definitely tastes the way that I would expect communism to taste: red.” They have a very large selection of unique sodas, and some with novelty flavors, and some with novelty names. I ended up buying a six-pack of novelty flavors. Here was the take:
Categories: Companies, Elyse, Food and drink, Richmond
I’m doing science…
5 minute read
March 30, 2017, 8:35 PM
This past Tuesday, March 29, Elyse and I headed down to Richmond for the day. The idea was that we wanted to go somewhere, but it was going to rain, and so we needed a good indoor venue. So we decided to go to the Science Museum of Virginia. I had not been in a very long time (15 years!), it was indoors, and Elyse liked it a lot when she went a few months ago.
I was surprised to find out that all of the exhibits were different compared to previous visits. The exhibits had changed gradually over several visits in the nineties, but this change was a bit more dramatic, with all new exhibits, as well as the removal of a mezzanine level that previously existed in the main hall. The new exhibits seemed more child-focused, which is something that I don’t remember from my last visit in 2002. They had a hurricane simulator, where you could experience gale-force winds, tropical storm-force winds, and hurricane-force winds. They also had a track that challenged you to outrun different kinds of animals (turns out that I can run faster than a rat, or at least keep up).
There was also a demonstration of robotics that used an air hockey table. There, you had to beat the robot at air hockey. All went well at first, but this was more exciting than most.
Yes, the puck got stuck. There was a spot on the robot’s side of the table where the puck was prone to getting stuck, and since it was on the robot’s side (and thus protected by plexiglass), we couldn’t get it loose. The robot was set up to shoot a puff of air when the puck got stuck, but it couldn’t make it move.
“Hello! Welcome!”
3 minute read
March 9, 2017, 12:03 PM
You may recall from the Pittsburgh photo set that Elyse has an interest in elevators. I find them interesting as well, though to a lesser extent than Elyse and others. However, I always enjoy seeing an unusual specimen, like the pop-out buttons on the elevators at the Investment Building in Pittsburgh.
This elevator, at the United Office Building in Oxon Hill, takes the cake for interesting features. Check it out:
Categories: Maryland, Virginia, Washington DC, WMATA
Saying goodbye to Landmark Mall…
5 minute read
February 23, 2017, 9:21 AM
About a month ago, Elyse, Brian, Aaron, and I took a field trip to Landmark Mall in Alexandria, visiting it for the last time. Landmark was slated to close permanently on January 31, and so we came by to get photos before it all shut down. This trip took a similar form to when Elyse and I visited Owings Mills Mall in September 2015, though in the case of Owings Mills, we didn’t know that in less than two weeks from our visit, the mall would close permanently. With Landmark, the mall was closing at the end of January in preparation for a redevelopment that would replace the mall with a mixed-use “town center” style development. The Macy’s and Sears stores would remain through the redevelopment, however, I suspect that may change. The Landmark Macy’s was included in the round of store closings that Macy’s was doing in early 2017, and I’d suggest that the long-term prospects for Sears’ survival are looking pretty grim, so the plan to include those two buildings in the new development might change, as one of those stores is vacating, and the second may not be far behind.
And then here are photos:
Escalators in the mall’s northeast corner, viewed from the lower level.
Categories: Alexandria, Elyse, Friends, Retail
Trying my hand at planespotting…
5 minute read
November 18, 2016, 11:02 AM
On Tuesday, November 16, Elyse and I went down to Gravelly Point in Arlington and photographed airplanes taking off from National Airport. In the past, I had photographed airplanes casually, usually when I’m over in Rosslyn, i.e. near the airport, while doing other things (the raw photo set for Urban Demolition II is peppered with random airplane and transit photos, if that tells you anything). However, this was my first dedicated outing for planespotting.
So I put the big lens on my camera and took it out for a spin, putting the camera in sports mode and going to town with it. My first takeoff, however, left something to be desired:
Categories: Airplanes, Arlington, Elyse, Photography
A look back on an old photo shoot…
5 minute read
July 7, 2016, 11:06 AM
July 7, 2001 was something of a milestone date for me. It was my first full-on photo shoot in DC. The result of that photo shoot was a Photography set called “The Schumin Web Salutes America”. I pulled the set during the WordPress conversion in 2012 because it was somewhat low quality, but you can still find it in the Internet Archive. Looking back on the set, it was clear that I didn’t know what I was doing, both in the photography itself as well as the post-production, but it was a start.
The set really embodied the way the Photography set started out, which was more like the modern Life and Times, but more subject-based. Photography didn’t take on its current form until 2008. In that, it started out showing my coming up to the area, traveling in on the Metro, it showed the things that I observed on that trip, and also showed a few landmarks in between.
Looking back on this day, fifteen years ago today, it’s funny to see how much has changed since this set was made. I was 20 years old. The camera was a Sony Mavica FD-73 – that means that I was toting a box of 3½” floppy disks around DC to save my photos. Buildings are now here that weren’t in 2001. Some buildings are gone now. This was also my first time riding past Smithsonian on the Blue and Orange Line, and my first time transferring to the Yellow Line, at L’Enfant Plaza, and going over the bridge. So here we go…
Categories: Arlington, Fire alarms, Photography, Schumin Web meta, Washington DC, WMATA
The only constant is change…
8 minute read
April 5, 2016, 6:06 PM
On March 30 and 31, I went on a road trip down to Stuarts Draft with Elyse, where I showed her a whole bunch of stuff. I showed her the mountain, we visited my ex-store, we went to Staunton Mall, and we saw JMU. All in all, a fun trip. The lesson to be learned from this trip, however, is that change is inevitable, as many things that I had hoped to show Elyse had changed, and other things were going to change.
Coming down from Maryland via US 29, we visited Afton Mountain. I have photographed this area many, many, many times before. So I more or less know what’s there. I did spot a few new things in the process of going about things, like this vintage television:
Categories: Afton Mountain, Elyse, Family, Fire alarms, Stuarts Draft, Urban exploration, Walmart, Waynesboro
Cranberry sauce. From a can.
3 minute read
November 26, 2015, 10:09 PM
First of all, I hope that everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. I certainly did. Since I have Wednesdays and Thursdays off for the current pick at work, Thanksgiving worked out perfectly, so I went down to Stuarts Draft on Wednesday and came back Thursday. Not bad.
That said, one of the things that we had with our Thanksgiving dinner was cranberry sauce. My opinion on cranberry sauce is that if it doesn’t look like the can it came out of, it’s not cranberry sauce. Last year, I posted this photo to Instagram, and captioned it thusly:
“This is that weird kind of cranberry sauce that doesn’t look like the can it came out of.”
Categories: Family, Food and drink, Stuarts Draft, Thanksgiving
“He offered her the world…”
2 minute read
October 14, 2015, 11:50 PM
I’m always surprised to see how some of my photos are used. I recently got a membership with Pixsy, which skims the Internet for potentially infringing photo usages, and then allows the user to go after infringing users to get them to pay for their usage. One photo that surprised me as a frequent candidate for infringements was this one from 2003:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Roanoke, Schumin Web meta, Television
Finally, a road photo that I didn’t have to research…
2 minute read
July 11, 2015, 10:12 PM
Whenever I find a photo online showing something amusing on the road, I always like to find out the location. I’ve become rather skilled at looking at background details in photos to sleuth out locations after posting and geotagging countless photos on Panoramio, as well as researching filming locations for Project TXL (a planned overhaul of the Today’s Special site). So imagine my delight to see this funny road photo, showing Thomas the Tank Engine being transported on the back of a truck:
Photo: Imgur
Categories: Harrisonburg, Popular culture, Roads, Today's Special
A splash photo that’s open to some interpretation…
4 minute read
November 25, 2014, 1:38 PM
This past Saturday, I got together with my friend Elyse, and we spent the day seeing what we could see, mostly in Rosslyn and Ballston. While we were in Rosslyn, we checked out the open-air patio on the fourth floor at the Le Méridien hotel (formerly Hotel Palomar) at the Waterview complex. The patio had decent enough views, but we ended up spending more time taking photos of the fire alarms, and as a result of that, got December’s splash photo:
Categories: Arlington, Elyse, Fire alarms, Schumin Web meta
Google Camera is my new favorite toy…
5 minute read
September 6, 2014, 12:38 PM
I recently went on a trip down to Stuarts Draft to see my parents and sister, as well as my sister’s friend Vickey, and I came armed with a new app for my Android device: Google Camera. If you’ve never used it before, Google Camera is a camera app that will function as a regular camera plus do a few other things. Besides shooting regular still photos and videos, it will also do a lens blur effect, it helps in shooting panoramic photos, and it also shoots “photo spheres”, also called “spherical panoramas”. That last one is what I took for a spin on this trip. Those are the ones that I can post on Panoramio, and I believe that they go in as Street View (but don’t quote me on that just yet, because they haven’t fully propagated to Google Maps/Earth as of this writing).
Shooting them is surprisingly easy. Here’s a screenshot of the app in action, taking a photo sphere at my place:
Categories: Blue Ridge Parkway, Photography, Roanoke, Staunton, Virginia