The Mysteries and Adventures of the New Year (oh, and I updated and revamped the HDR Tutorial!)

I look forward to many more adventures with you this year and in coming years. We have a lot of things to do, don't we? Mais oui!

Change and tumult and highs and lows will come and go with the winds, but I will always be here, ready to take you on fun new adventures with unexpected discoveries. This year has had a lot of unexpected things happen in all corners of life, and I don't expect the next to be any different. In the end, I'll do my best to keep pushing forward and exploring the world and the world of ideas with you.

If life gets kind of confusing or you get down, come visit to take your mind where it would rather be anyway. At best, it will be a deep experience, and at worst, it will be a pleasant distraction. I'll take the worst if that's the best I can get!

For the last photo of the year, I hope I have selected a great one to set the tone for the next year. I've been in artful concert with this one for what seems like ages. This happenstance scene is from a remote Hindu temple in the Indonesian jungle. It was a horribly stormy day and I could have easily found myself quite miserable... but I had seen this before, seen these patterns, and I knew I'd have the chance to see the sun again. Just for a few moments, the sun appeared there, and it was timeless. I didn't think about the future, I just sat there, unconsciously moving around the temple and capturing the moment forever.

Okay, so... moving into left-brain mode now (getting practical logistical things done...), there have been a number of changes to the blog at www.stuckincustoms.com !

1) I updated my HDR Tutorial! It has been almost completely revamped. I have a few minor things to fix - let me know if you see any typos, because, as you know, I am horrible at catching my own... (anyone want to be my editor out there?)

2) A new Header Photo and CSS Background! Hit Refresh on your browser in case you don't see it

3) A new "Reviews" section. You can see that over on the right.

4) A new "Popular Articles" section to catch some of the cool stuff that is now buried deep in the blog

5) Minor fixes: Comment font sizes, Comment entry box streamlining, Safari problem where the fonts were huge for single posts...

6) Enabled comments on "Pages" - things like the "About Me" and "My Equipment" pages did not allow comments before