This afternoon, I took down my art from Stage Left, and packed it all up to bring it home.

Yeah, I only sold one piece — although I might have a line on another sale — but the experience was marvelous, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. And, I’m ready for the next show, with lots of stuff framed and ready to hang.

Hopefully, this is just the first of many shows to come!

Tonight, Becky finally did it. She bought a bike.

She’d been struggling between the Giant Suede and the Raleigh Gruv. West County Cycle had called just before her knee surgery and said that the Gruv was in. Tonight she said she wanted to go check it out. She compared both the Gruv and the Suede, and landed on the Suede. I’m thrilled!

Now, I know she won’t be riding in a big way anytime soon — healing her knee is job one. But, once it heals, she’ll be able to join me on some fun rides through the parks and the neighborhood, and that is a wonderful thing!

Her bike is actually very cool, with a flat black finish and all black hardware. She has nicknamed it “The BatBike”. Somehow seems very appropriate!

Tonight, I’ve gotten the first few images up on Yessy for purchase. If you don’t see one that you’re looking for, drop me a note or leave a comment, and I’ll some priority on those images.

Yessy has turned out to be a god-send, and is sooooo much easier to get my images up and ready for sale. I am so very impressed with their system. Yeah, it’s not as personalized to my tastes for design and color, but that’s ok for now — I can personalize my site once I get a few sales under my belt!

A photographer friend of mine, Lenny, has been staging some of his images at Yessy. Yessy is an art sales site run by artists for artists, and Lenny’s had some success handling some of his sales through that site.

I bugged Lenny last week to send me a referral to the site — he gets a referral bonus — so I could start setting up my work there. I figured my commercial site is a good thing to have, but this site would give me much more exposure and access to an already-built large base of customers whom are looking to purchase art. The searches are done by keywords, so my art will be intermingled with others’ art as customers search.

I put my first image up yesterday — the pink Gateway Arch — at my Yessy site and expected to see nothing big happen with it. I made it a “coming soon” image, so folks could see it, but not yet buy it. This would give me some time to get the backend stuff up and ready.

However, this morning, I got a message from Yessy showing my traffic statistics. The thumbnail of my image had been seen almost 75 times — this would be through folks’ searches, so that tactic seems to be working. But there had also been four folks who had enough interest to click through and look at the main image.

Four folks in the world yesterday were interested enough to look at one of my images — now that is cool!

And it has been quiet. Becky’s been home convalescing after her knee surgery. I’ve been cycling, albeit not as much as I would like.

The biggest thing I’ve been working on is planning a big ol’ makeover for Colin Wright Photography. I’ve chosen to use a pre-built template from AllWebCo Design that includes galleries, a PayPal shopping cart (just for you Auntie M!) and massive extensibility. I’ve kinda decided that I need to expend my energies on expanding my presence and name recognition, rather than tinkering with code quite as much on the site.

I’m hoping to have the revamped site up over the weekend — kinda depends on how well the conversion goes. Stay tuned!

Such timing I have!

I’ve just found out that my high school class — 1981 Chattanooga Central High School — is having our 25th reunion tomorrow night in Ooltewah. With the short notice and Beck’s surgery, I’m just not gonna make it down, as much as I’d like to.

I went to the 10th back in ’91, and it was a great time. I oughta get those photos scanned and published up here one of these days…..

Anyway, I’m sure they’ll have a good time, and I expect I’ll have to plan on seeing them at the 30th.

Today, BareFeats released a side-by-side comparison of the new Quad Core Intel Mac Pro and the Quad Core G5 PowerMac (which your humble author is tapping away on right now).

Man those Intel chips are fast, and even Photoshop runs extraordinarily well via Rosetta on those new rigs. However, the mantra for me is in the last part of the article:

Should you buy a new Mac Pro or a closeout or refurbished Quad-Core G5? If cost is a factor and you use non-UB pro apps (like Photoshop CS2), then we think the Quad-Core G5 is still a valid choice. After all, you can sell it on eBay when Photoshop CS3 is released and buy next year’s “Octo-Core” Mac Pro.

That’s what I’ve been saying all along!

Mmmmm…… octo-core…….

17.6mi

Jeff brought his photos to tonight’s ride, and I had just enough time to get them searched through before going to bed tonight.

So… below are some photos of your humble author on the Indy Speedway:

And, here’s a photo of the Big Guy, just before I got to shake his hand.

28.3mi

Given the great weather last night, I couldn’t resist a ride. I really needed it too. August 15 is always a tough day for me, and I needed to exorcise some angst from my soul.

I started at the Weldon Trailhead, my typical jumping off point, and rode north (or east — kinda depends on which way the trail has turned). Once again, the first few miles were trouble, and I entertained turning around at the I-64 bridge, which would’ve been only five miles.

I did get to the bridge, stopped and had some water, and watched some birds of prey as they circled high above me. They’re always circling at the bridge — I guess there’s good hunting there — and today I saw three or four of these guys riding the currents and updrafts, far above my head. Just beautiful. After marvelling at them for a few minutes, I decided to plow ahead up the trail.

And it was like that the whole ride. I’d get to a good turnaround point — Pitman Hill Road, Caulks Hill Road, the Greens Bottom Trailhead — and just continue riding. I ended up at the Page Extension bridge, about 14mi from where I started. Of course, since I was there, I had to ride up the switchbacks, and take on the 75′ vertical climb. It actually wasn’t that bad, which was surprising since I had already ridden so many miles.

Coming home was a quiet trip, and I decided to try it in one long ride — with just one quick stop to take a couple of photos. By the time was done, I’d put 28mi behind me in just about 2hrs 15min. Not too shabby I think.

So, did I purge myself of anything significant? I dunno. I do know that I felt much better after my ride than before it, and that’s probably the best measure of all. I also crossed 600mi for this season, which is a real accomplishment to me. Certainly, that’s a good thing!

…in memory of my father.