I took today off and spent the morning finishing the backyard swingset

A view of the structure which supports the dome ceiling over the lobby of the hotel which once served as the train station for Chattanooga.

This is an old materials engineering handbook that was given to me by a professor upon his retirement from my undergrad university. I believe he rescued it from as it was being retired from the university library. When he was cleaning out his office, he asked a few students to come in, individually, and select two or three books out of his professional library. He’d gotten all the books he wished to keep and wanted to see the rest be put to some use. Though I think he wasn’t entirely sure of all of my selections were so wise (namely, this particular book, as I recall — due to it being sorely outdated by modern experimentation techniques), he let me part with some books that I did indeed find useful.

More importantly, I think, he sent me with a wealth of wisdom about what it means to be a good engineer. The bits of advice he would pass on felt to me like true pages of secret wisdom that had been lost on my generation of engineers. Whether it was proper handwriting technique or that an engineer should maintain a personal library, he knew that teaching students was even more than the technical fundamentals. Being a professional goes far beyond running a set of numbers.

Lone Bonobo – photo by Jason Coleman. I posted a number of photos from last Saturday’s trip to the San Diego Zoo over at Flickr yesterday. I suggest watching the slideshow to view them.

She’s a keeper.

Rock God by Jason Coleman – Dave playing with his band, The Coal Men, at Ashland Coffee & Tea on July 12th, 2007.

“Escape” by Jason Coleman – I’ve recently gotten excited (re-excited?) about photography and learning how to take better pictures. Kevin has a great post and some interesting discussion on his blog about his film vs. digital experimentation. I think, for me, one of the key reason why I only want to shoot in digital, regardless of quality, is the ability to let myself make many mistakes to learn from. Were my camera a film, it would sit mostly on a shelf for fear of taking bad photos. I never had much appreciation for photography until digital allowed me to experiment with it. I never had that feeling with film which no matter how simple the camera, always gave me too great a disconnect between action and feedback to meaningfully learn anything.