I went to a Windows Vista “Launch and Learn” today. It was a roast beef luncheon put on by my main supplier. I don’t care too much about Vista, but I care a great deal about prime rib, so I made my way to Markham for the event. It was pretty cool, actually. There were lots of notebook computer vendors there, showing off their new Vista-capable hardware. This one is incredibly sexy. It looks much better in real life than in pictures, especially with the black leather, and only weighs 1kg. It would be a nice travelling companion, although I hardly need another laptop. I will probably just get more memory for mine, and keep running Windows XP for the next few months until Vista is safe territory.

I saw presentations by Microsoft, Lenovo, Asus, LG, and MSI. The interesting thing is that the last four were all promoting laptop computers. All of them had Powerpoint presentations to illustrate their talks. Only LG seemed to get it right, making the slide shows easy to digest and relevant to the audience. The LG speaker was particularly effective too… professional and funny. He kept us laughing and well-informed. The other dudes were probably great and knowledgable geeks, but were terrible presenters. People were mainly sticking around/staying awake because they were waiting for the door prize draws that followed each talk. I didn’t win anything, by the way, but i got some swag:

As you can see, there’s an LG post-it sticky-thing dispenser, a harmonica (huh?), complete with instruction sheet, and a disturbingly phallic Windows Vista pen/PDA stylus. Now I’m ready for a wild night on the town!

I found one more from last night I want to use.

Yesterday I was buying the plush hearts for the Meg shoot. I had filled an entire basket with them. A woman looked at the basket and said, “Wow, you must really love someone!” I said, “Err, yeaaaah.” I was going to say the truth, which was, “I intend to stab them and shred them,” but I didn’t know how well that would go over.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a shoot just for the hell of it. I missed creating photos just for the sake of creating. Anyway, I contacted Meg because she has the kind of glamorous and bodacious look I wanted to shoot. I asked Julia Terry to do the makeup. I asked for a kind of early 1990’s glam look. I told Julia that if she felt she had gotten to a point where the hair and makeup was big enough, to go one step further. Here are a few previews from the shoot:

In a couple of these, I was really pressing myself to shoot out of my own style a bit. It’s the only way I think I can grow and get better. The last one is the one I went into the shoot intending to take… kind of a typical Valentine’s Day photo with something just a bit “off” about it.

I registered superkev.ca. Muahahhaa. It doesn’t do anything yet. When it does kick in (hopefully in a couple of hours) it will just redirect to kevinthom.com. Pointless? Maybe. I might find a use for it later.