As I was looking back over the comments on Densa's Fanpost about username origins, it got me to thinking. I know some folks included a bit of a bio in their comments, but others did not.

Since we spend so much time here talking about football, football, football, I thought it would be interesting to start a thread to share things about what we do when we aren't soaking up rays of Dallas Cowboys on the sunniest blog this side of Mercury.

My story isn't terribly special by any means, but I like getting to know a bit more about our posters if they choose to share, and I think it ties us together just a little bit more as a group. Pack. Gaggle. Herd. Clowder. Whatever suits your fancy.

As for me - I'm Nick. I've been a computer guy since I was a kid, and it's also currently part of what earns me income. No, I don't want to fix yours, even for money.

More recently, I wrote a fantasy novel (reading them has been another long-time hobby) which is the beginning of a series. It's up for cheap on Amazon, and as soon as I can find a reliable way to carve more time out of my life, I'll finish up the second.

I've gotten into gardening as well, and built a pretty sweet little area over at my parent's house, where there is actually some room to put 1200 sq ft of raised beds in. It was a pretty epic undertaking solo and in the time frame I completed it in, but yeah, it's good now. I might even be able to help a little bit with ideas on sun, plants, and soil. Who knows.

But my true love (don't mention this to my GF, please) has become photography. I do a lot of interior work and editing for the granite shop I work for, not a big portrait guy, unless it's flowers, water, or wildlife. Those things don't talk back or get needy later on.

Time lapse has captivated me, and I'm learning a whole lot about how difficult it really can be to do a great job with it. We won't even get into the sheer frigging cost of operation and time. Ugh.

I'm linking this video from the past weekend when I snuck off down to Cape Hatteras, OBX. I have not yet gotten the Milky Way sequences edited (except for a couple stills), but I did do this partial sunset. In case you're wondering, the light level jump in the middle is from me changing aperture since the light was dying. It's possible to smooth out via software, but as this is still my first legit run with my new camera (and I've got a lot of 12 hour work days ahead of me) I'm just not giving it the gold-star treatment until I have enough clips to make a real video.

This is worth going to youtube directly and watching in 1080p. Set that before you even hit play, or start it over, because without the details, this is more or less pointless.

Sunset, Cape Hatteras (via rathosaf)

Somewhere else on this channel are a couple videos of the garden setup, and one of me eating a ghost pepper. No, it's not all at once, I'm not a kamikaze. And I'm shirtless, so cover your eyes, it ain't pretty.

This, however, is:

From 2014-04-10

Milky Way from Cape Hatteras Beach, 2014 (click to go see it full size).

I will put up a link to my blog later on, when I've gotten some things shifted around and some of the bad photos taken down ;)

Let's hear what everyone has to say!