Saturday, April 30, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Spring Means Raptor Cam
The raptor cam is a sure sign that spring here in Portland. This is the fourth year for the KGW Raptor Cam. The eggs started to hatch about a week ago and there are 3 chicks in the nest so far. Things are starting to get pretty exciting...check it out!!
Monday, April 25, 2011
Click, Click, Click, Click Camera
As you might have guessed you have taken our annual early spring (aka too much rain = no energy to blog) hiatus from our little blog. And we apologize to any of our readers that have been disappointed by the lack of blogging and beg for your forgiveness. Ok, now that we've gotten the groveling out of the way let's jump right in.
You might have said to yourself..."Self, is that blog title a Bishop Allen reference?" And your self would be correct. If you did not say that to your self don't feel bad just consider yourself in for a treat and enjoy the little video.
So you are probably wondering what is this all about. Well friends, we are pretty excited to announce that we purchased a new camera. A couple months ago, we decided to finally stop pining for a cool SLR camera to increase the quality of our blog pictures to go with our new look. After some internet research and trying different models at various stores. We decided on the Canon Rebel T2i (this is not a product endorsement...yet). We are still trying to figure out what all the buttons and settings do but we think our early shots still look really great.
Here is a picture with our new camera:
And just for comparison, here is the same picture with our old camera:
We will probably still use our old point and shoot Sony digital camera some since it's easier to tote around for now (we are currently scouting camera bags). If you have any SLR or general photographic tips please feel free to pass them along.
You might have said to yourself..."Self, is that blog title a Bishop Allen reference?" And your self would be correct. If you did not say that to your self don't feel bad just consider yourself in for a treat and enjoy the little video.
So you are probably wondering what is this all about. Well friends, we are pretty excited to announce that we purchased a new camera. A couple months ago, we decided to finally stop pining for a cool SLR camera to increase the quality of our blog pictures to go with our new look. After some internet research and trying different models at various stores. We decided on the Canon Rebel T2i (this is not a product endorsement...yet). We are still trying to figure out what all the buttons and settings do but we think our early shots still look really great.
Here is a picture with our new camera:
And just for comparison, here is the same picture with our old camera:
We will probably still use our old point and shoot Sony digital camera some since it's easier to tote around for now (we are currently scouting camera bags). If you have any SLR or general photographic tips please feel free to pass them along.
Monday, March 21, 2011
We've got Zwickelmania!
Picture this: you enter a brewpub, maybe to eat, maybe to sample what's on tap. What's this? You can get a free tour? AND they hand you a free pint of beer?! You might think this is fantasy, but during Zwickelmania, dreams do come true!
This event was new to us, but the Oregon Brewers Guild has sponsored Zwickelmania for the past few years. We weren't quite sure what zwickel meant, but it turned out meaning a day of free beer. Our tours and samples were confined to downtown Portland, but breweries all over the state were open on this day.
We started the day at Deschutes Brewery. Their main brewery is in Bend, OR, but they can brew a few small batches of beer at their Pearl District brew pub. They were nice enough to give us a full (and free!) pint of their new hefeweizen.
Fermentation tanks at Upright Brewing. Their operation was interesting - they have about 4 10-barrel fermentation tanks in their basement brewery.
We ended the day at Widmer Brothers Brewery. In fact, we shut the place down. Okay, not really, but we did get in the door just before Zwickelmania ended. Widmer is a large scale craft brewery. Where Upright had 1o barrel fermentation tanks, Widmer had 1,500 barrel tanks (1 barrel = 2 kegs = 31 gallons = 248 pints). We're talking a pint for over 300,000 people!
This was our third time touring their operation, but each time we see more and more of the brewery. The newest part for us (see above) was the bottling area. Nothing was being bottled at the time, but you could imagine the clanking of the bottles as they are filled with delicious beer. Speaking of beer, they had sampling stations spread out all around the brewery... very nice touch! We even got to meet the original Widmer Brothers!
We enjoyed the (statewide) event. The weather was nice and we got to try breweries we had yet to visit. We will definitely participate next year and may even head to a different part of the state. Cheers!
This event was new to us, but the Oregon Brewers Guild has sponsored Zwickelmania for the past few years. We weren't quite sure what zwickel meant, but it turned out meaning a day of free beer. Our tours and samples were confined to downtown Portland, but breweries all over the state were open on this day.
We started the day at Deschutes Brewery. Their main brewery is in Bend, OR, but they can brew a few small batches of beer at their Pearl District brew pub. They were nice enough to give us a full (and free!) pint of their new hefeweizen.
Fermentation tanks at Upright Brewing. Their operation was interesting - they have about 4 10-barrel fermentation tanks in their basement brewery.
We ended the day at Widmer Brothers Brewery. In fact, we shut the place down. Okay, not really, but we did get in the door just before Zwickelmania ended. Widmer is a large scale craft brewery. Where Upright had 1o barrel fermentation tanks, Widmer had 1,500 barrel tanks (1 barrel = 2 kegs = 31 gallons = 248 pints). We're talking a pint for over 300,000 people!
This was our third time touring their operation, but each time we see more and more of the brewery. The newest part for us (see above) was the bottling area. Nothing was being bottled at the time, but you could imagine the clanking of the bottles as they are filled with delicious beer. Speaking of beer, they had sampling stations spread out all around the brewery... very nice touch! We even got to meet the original Widmer Brothers!
We enjoyed the (statewide) event. The weather was nice and we got to try breweries we had yet to visit. We will definitely participate next year and may even head to a different part of the state. Cheers!
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Pardon Our Dust
Hopefully you have noticed that we are making some changes to our blog. We thought our blog was starting to look a little tired so we decided to give it a shot in the arm. Please bear with us while we redesign our blog and reformat our older posts.
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