20101219

Is the Thriller genre over?

I read a lot. All three of the walls in my home office have Ikea bookcases filling them. And of course - you would be hard pressed to find any room on any of the shelves for anything new.

A sizable number of those books are action adventure or military thrillers. And when you talk about military thrillers - you have to include Tom Clancy. The first Tom Clancy book I read - was the Naval Institute release of "The Hunt for Red October", and I was hooked. Ever year or so from that point one - there was a new Clancy thriller to look forward to, and a new copy would get added to the bookshelf.

[one of the early books, actually was personally signed by Clancy when one of my friends got it at a book signing]

As the Cold War changed, so did Clancy's novels. Gone were the Soviets, replaced with terrorists (way before 9/11), or by greedy idealistic corporate leaders. But Clancy changed outside of the novels as well. His 10th novel - Rainbow Six - crossed over to become a very successful video game series.

After an absence of several years, Clancy has finally released a new book this holiday season - Dead or Alive.



A follow-up to 2004's Teeth of the Tiger.

The irony of all of this - in the 6 years since the last Clancy book, I have moved on. I saw the new book listed as a Future Release on Amazon a couple of months ago, but there was no excitement in finding it. Because the book was listing a co-author.
One thing I have seen w/ several other thriller author's in the last couple of years, is that unless the co-authors have the same style, the book becomes a mess.

So I am sitting on the sidelines and just wait for this to come out as a paperback next year (or maybe I will just get it as a Kindle download).

20101212

Most Viewed Pictures for November 2010

Even though my picture taking in Nov was pretty busy, I still have most of the pictures backlogged on my PC waiting for review/processing/posting.

I will be glad when 2010 is finally over, and maybe life will settle back down to normal.

20101110

Most Viewed Pictures for October 2010

Another wild mix of pictures made the Most Viewed list for October. The B-36 Peacemaker at Pima is 4 of the 25 pictures.

20101102

How many miles will I drive....

Using up more of my accumulated vacation for the rest of this week. And I am going to be doing some driving between different photography outings.

The challenge is to guess how many miles I rack up between now and Saturday evening. Closest guess wins a 8x10 of print of my best shot of the week.

The only hint - I will only be going to one other (besides Arizona) state.

Any takers?

20101005

Most Viewed Pictures for September 2010

Every single picture for September - was from http://flightaware.com/live/airport/KPHX" TARGET="flightaware">PHX Sky Harbor in the last 60 days.

I have done other things in the last month, but the pictures are still on memory cards waiting to be edited and uploaded.

20100903

Most Viewed Pictures for August 2010

Yes - I was at the airport a couple of times taking pictures - as the majority of August mosaic's shows.

20100824

Unplanned photos are the best

My major project at work is starting to wrap up - so I have some more free time to get out and take pictures. There were rumors of a unique plane coming through Phoenix on the 2nd, so I took the day off to take pictures at the airport.

The rumored plane didn't show - but I stuck around to see what else went on during a weekday (since normally only get out to the airport on weekends or in the evening).

I was rewarded almost immediately when one of the Air National Guard KC-135's took off - right past my vantage point in the Terminal garage. [click any of the pictures below to see the image at full size].

Arizona Air National Guard Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker-9387

Then I caught the daily Hawaiian Airlines flight to Honolulu (this is the 2nd largest passenger airplane that regularly operates in and out of Sky Harbor).

Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767 just lifting off

But the airplane I was the happiest to see flying - was the Honeywell 757 Engine Test bed. It took off and flew racetrack patterns for a couple of hours before returning to Phoenix.

Honeywell Flight Test Boeing 757

I had gotten fleeting pictures of this plane before - but never its right hand side - where the extra test engine is mounted. The slideshow includes some of these older pictures - as well as pictures of the Boeing coming back into its parking place (directly off the runway).



Definitely a great way to spend a day taking pictures.