I’m spending the week in Connecticut. There was a heavy rain a few nights ago that flooded a few of the marshy areas near the house.

I like the interplay of the water, the leaves, and the reflected trees.

It’s that time of year when the weather abruptly turns cooler, I need to clear the fallen leaves off the patio at least once a week, the rain comes back, and I know I’ll be driving home from work in the dark for the next 4 months.

Kind of depressing, really.

On the bright side, I did get a nice shot of this colorful leaf today before the rain hit.

Tommy on one of his favorite spots – the top of the couch.

I haven’t anything resembling a green thumb. Luckily, the roses on our patio seem to thrive on neglect and are blooming despite my inattention.

On a related note, I’m thinking about getting a monitor or possibly also a Mac Mini for photo editing at home. I love my laptop but a 13″ screen doesn’t do Lightroom justice.

As always, Maker Faire was sensory overload: chock-full of amazing creativity and crafty-ness, packed with people, and a dream for photographers.

The photos are now on Flickr.

Shot on my HTC phone.

The oak tree that provides shade and comfort for our back patio in the summer also deluges us with dead leaves in the fall. Before bagging all the little annoyances up I though I might as well get a few shots of them.

This one turned out nicely.

It’s (finally) that time of year when we start getting a lot of afternoon light on the terrace. I’m fascinated by the shadows the sun casts on the terrace, & now with the prime lens I’ve been having some fun with depth of focus shots against the patterns the shadows cast.

The Bay Area’s Maker Faire gets bigger every year, and despite the hefty crowds, it’s well worth the trip.

I was there today with Scott & some friends and despite being there from open to close, we still didn’t see everything there was to see. You can find everything from robots and tesla coils to musicians and chickens. I saw a DIY butter making station, a human-powered merry-go-round, a bunch of art cars (shades of Burning Man?), the awesome Eepybird.com guys, and WAY more than I could possibly list here.

What’s sticking with me the most was the steampunk stuff. I’ve been aware of steampunk for a while now in a casual way but after checking out several of the substantial steampunk displays at Maker Fair I’m very impressed.

I’ve got some photos from today up here.

Work continues crazy-busy with no light on the horizon. I’m not at SxSWi (again) and feel a bit bummed about that. I did get down to 360|Flex for a day and a half and that was fun. I will be going home for Passover though.

Still dual-wielding the phones — I can’t break free of my dependence on a real keyboard for email. Other than that, though, the Nexus is really nice & I’ve been adding apps to it like a fiend.

I’ve been pondering a blog post taking a longer look at location-based web services to update the one I did on Google Latitude last year, especially since in the ensuing months I’ve started using Forusquare. The bottom line is I am still deeply ambivalent about them. Perhaps there’s not much more to be said on the subject than that.