I’ve got a three day weekend coming up, and what better way to spend it than going to more ghost towns? I’ve found three towns to visit in the Abilene area, and they look pretty interesting (one I might even get to jump a barbed wire fence!). I’m thinking of going Saturday, then maybe somewhere else on Monday. We’ll see.

The snow quit last night and Christmas Day was perfect enough to go take pictures.

More can be seen on my Flickr Set.

Looks like we’re going to have a White Christmas this year. A cold front blew in to Wichita Falls last night and the snow is still coming down strong. Hopefully it’ll let up soon so I can go get some more photos.

I know a lot of people don’t read this blog, but I thought it’d be cool to add a rating system to each post. All you have do to rate is, click on a title of a post, then go to the bottom of the post, and select your star rating and hit “Vote!” That’s it.

I went out today, back home in Wichita Falls, TX, to take some pictures for PhotoSaturdays. It was around 4:30pm, and I got some good lighting thanks to the setting sun. I still can’t believe it’s setting so soon. Anyway, here are a few highlights from today. Check out the rest of the photos via my Flickr set.

I’ve seen lots of photos that look like this:

After doing a little searching, I figured out that it’s steel wool. A few friends and I went out in the country to test it out. A pack of steel wool is around $3 at Lowe’s. You can’t get entertainment much cheaper than that!

I built a ‘cage’ out of a clothes hanger and attached it to a dog leash so it would be easy to swing around.

We tried a few different things: swinging it like a lasso, swinging in a circle motion, and even swinging it then throwing it in the air:

We also tried hitting a friend in the back:

All in all, it’s really fun to try if you have a place that won’t catch on fire. If you want to mess around with settings on your camera, and enjoy doing long exposures, I recommend trying this out.

I expected a bit of snow this morning when the snow flurries started last night. I woke up this morning, and sure enough, there’s snow.

This was the first day I had to actually get out and start my truck before work. There was no ice on my windshield, just lots of snow (which was good).

Driving to work was a little crazy. When the stoplight turned green, I cautiously pressed the gas but didn’t go anywhere as the roads were a little slick at 6:45am. I almost missed my turn as well, but luckily gained traction before I slid past it.

This evening I headed out to Shafter Lake. I took some photos while walking on the lake. It was strange walking on the dried up lake because it felt like walking in gooey snow. The farther I went out, the deeper I began to sink.

The sun began to set, but the clouds were a little too low to the horizon to get a spectacular sunset, but I think this was still pretty nice.

On the way back, I remembered a windmill I had passed. I drove past the “No Trespassing” sign and grabbed a few pictures.

It was a nice evening trip. I couldn’t find the cemetery, as it had been moved from it’s original spot. Maybe next time.

Full Flickr set here.

As the rest of America celebrates Thanksgiving today, I won’t be. Not because I’m a jerk and refuse to celebrate, but because I have to work tomorrow, my family is postponing Thanksgiving until Saturday so I can be there.

What am I going to do with my day off today? Take pictures of course! (And do laundry, but that’s not as fun.)

I plan to go to Shafter Lake, which is near Andrews, TX. Yes, another ghost town. From what I’ve researched on the internet, there are only 12 graves and one house remaining. A friend of mine told me he used to ride motorcycles out on the salt water lake bed. He also told me that it might be closed or locked up. I might have to jump some fences (how exciting!).

I will head out there around 3:30pm so I can take some photos and figure out how to get the best sunset pictures.

I was using Stumble Upon when I came across MacOSaiX, a free mosaic app for OS X.

It’s extremely easy to use, and pretty straight forward. First, choose an image you’d like to turn into a mosaic:

Next, choose the source of images you’d like to use. You can use DVD/CD/Book covers from Delicious Library, a folder on your computer, Flickr, Glyphs (which creates images out of fonts/colors/letters), Google Image Search, iPhoto, iTunes, or a QuickTime Movie.

Once you’re done with that, click Start Mosaic and MacOSaiX will work its magic. I turned off the animation of images to speed up the process, as it does take a while depending on how many images you’re using.

The mosaic pieces can be hexagonal tiles, puzzle pieces, or rectangular.

There are also tons of other options to choose from:

During or after the process, you can zoom in to see which photos make up the mosaic. Once you’re done, you can save as a JPG, PNG, or TIFF. Plenty of other options exist, such as Resolution (up to 600 DPI), height, width, and choosing a background.

MacOSaiX is extremely impressive with all the controls it provides, especially for a free program. I highly recommend this program, even if you’ve ever thought about doing a mosaic.

Here is a photo I wanted to turn into a mosaic.

Here is the photo as a mosaic using the photos I took from vacation (1,754 photos).

MacOSaiX homepage.