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Recently, an article on Accessibility appeared on Planet Drupal which caught my eye, so I clicked on it. When I was taken to the article page on d7ux.org, the banner across the top of the page caught my eye (as it was intended to do!):

Our UX Principles:

1. Make the most frequent tasks easy and less frequent tasks achievable.
2. Design for the 80%.
3. Privilege the content creator.
4. Make the default settings smart.

I think those four principles, especially numbers one and two, should be the driving force behind any web or product design.

From a marriage at which I was the photographer late last month:

It was a Wedding Mass done in the Extraordinary Form, and the whole ceremony was very solemn. Definitely not the kind of Mass that giddy multi-thousand-dollar-spending brides would love, but the kind of wedding someone who has a strong Eucharistic devotion would like!*

What a beautiful Cathedral! I could take a thousand pictures and not capture even a small part of the glory and majesty of this wonderful building.

I was running around the Cathedral trying to grab some frames to be used in the Archbishop-elect Carlson's Installation Mass literature, and I think this is my favorite frame. I set the camera on my tripod and used the IR remote to get a steady shot (I love watching people run around the place with their little cell phone cameras and small digicams (with flash turned on, of course) trying to get a picture when half the lights are out!).

Just an update... the Catholic Canonball Awards' voting begins tomorrow (Sunday, the 3rd), while nominations began earlier today for the Catholic New Media Awards (formerly known as the "Catholic Blog Awards").

Local favorites LOLSaints and Rome of the West are both up for voting in the Canonballs.

In addition to the beginning of the regular baseball season, this time of year brings the beginning of the blog award season. Just last week, the Crescat opened it's (now 2nd) annual "Canonball Awards" for the more obscure Catholic blogs... for instance "blogs that aren't written by Fr. Z." Quite worth a look-see.

In addition, the awards formerly known as the "Catholic Blog Awards" have changed to the "Catholic New Media Awards," reflecting a major shift in online evangelization, and now reward any individual or group that has a presence online evangelizing via blogs, podcasts, etc.

When I bought the Nikon D90, I thought I would use the video functionality a bit more than I used it on my older digicams (S2 IS, various pocketable cams). As it turns out, I've used it a total of two or three times. The reason for this is not that the video functionality is bad... no - rather, the picture-taking features on this camera are so great that I don't even think to record moving pictures!

(Me with the base system: D90, 50mm f/1.4, and the Phottix Battery Grip)

After a few years' wandering in the land of Digital SLRs, purchasing a lens here, an accessory there, I've finally amassed a kit that I'm content with: