JasonKimball.org

Another year has quickly come and gone in terms of photography. I am sticking with the theme I used last year due to lack of time. If you haven’t noticed, this website has been neglected in 2011. As far as photography is concerned, I was able to shoot some new and interesting subjects and learn a few new techniques.

I decided that I would used the holiday Scout located at bighugelabs.com to make my best of 2011 series. Although many of the photos are from other years, you can see that I have quite a few from 2011.

You can view the images by clicking on the links below:
1. Another view of Cape Zanpa Lighthouse, 2. Real Fan2, 3. Alex & his bike, 4. Tokyo Stylin, 5. Dolphin hug, 6. Roman statue, 7. York Minster, 8. Stuck in traffic, 9. Sir Tow Mater, 10. Naha Tug of War, 11. 31 Weeks, 12. Do the dip, 13. In the dark, 14. Kilmainham Gaol, 15. Testing out the new bike, 16. Nilu, 17. The lonely shell, 18. Bird Bath, 19. Waiting for the game, 20. Cookies for Santa, 21. The wifey, 22. Royal Procession beauty, 23. Royal Procession, 24. Just Hanging Around, 25. Oki Hut, 26. Tokyo night, 27. Red Red Wine, 28. Araha Hands, 29. Show me your grrrrrr face!, 30. Oxford-31, 31. Mihama Soccer – Feb 2009, 32. Edinburgh, Scotland, 33. Sunabe Marilyn Monroe, 34. Hamaya-Okinawa Soba, 35. It takes two, 36. Sunset beach, 37. We got a floater, 38. My first Strobist shot, 39. Futenma Shrine, 40. Enjoy the little things, 41. Zakimi Castle, 42. Blue Drank, 43. Ikei father and son, 44. You play ball like a girl, 45. , 46. Burnt, 47. Batter Up, 48. In The Woods, 49. Dont play with fire, 50. Cape Maeda at Night, 51. Tyskie, 52. Cambridge – April 2010-7, 53. Reflection, 54. Ruff ruff, 55. Got Ya!, 56. 31 Weeks Sepia, 57. Katsuren Castle, 58. Crete, Greece, 59. Salisbury Cathedral Water, 60. Grand Place Christmas Light Show, 61. Cotswold Wildlife Park -Owl, 62. Kannon temple, 63. Blenheim Palace, 64. Nago Sakura,
65. Outside York Minster, 66. Beautiful Brill Windmill, 67. Salisbury Cathedral Ceiling, 68. Maeda Tourist, 69. Taking a Break, 70. Angry face, 71. Huroster Bay, 72. York Minster

This is P90x

It has been a while since my last post and to be honest I completely forgot that I even had a blog for a split second. It seems like life has been extremely busy lately but here I am now.

When I say “Time to BRING IT” I am talking about the life changing decision my wife and I recently made to get in the best shape of our lives. I have always played sports and stayed active over the years, but I am not that same twenty-one year old that could eat anything without worry.

Eating like crap on a daily basis was really starting to really take a toll on my physical appearance and health overall. I think my wife and I both decided that it was time for a change and decided to try out Tony Hortons revolutionary home fitness program called P90X.

It has been around for a while, so I imagine that most of you have heard from friends or even seen the informercial. Just in case you havent, check it out here.

We have completely change our eating habits and now work out at least six times a week. Before starting this program I got to the heaviest I have ever weighed, 190 lbs. This was a real shock for me so I decided it was time for a change. Since that day I have lost roughly 18 lbs. We are only on day 19 of the program but already feel healthier and look better.

Just the other day Brittany came into the living room bragging about how loose her jeans were and how if things kept up she would need to go shopping. I guess shopping for new clothes isnt such a bad thing when the old ones are too big around the waist.

We both took multiple pictures on day 1 and it was almost embarrassing to be honest. P90x is a 90 day program and part of it requires you to take pictures at days 1, 30, 60, and 90. Brittany doesn’t want to post the day 1 pictures until we start to get some really amazing results. However, be on the look out for those pictures because I dont think it will much longer.

My mom is here visiting for the next three weeks so we have been looking for fun things to do around the area. Brittany and I have always heard people mention the Cotswold Wildlife Park, so we decided to finally give it a try. To be honest, I was expecting to go and be completely disappointed. I figured that we would drive the 1 1/2 hours and they would have some birds and common farm animals for our son to pet. However, I was surprised to find that the Cotswold Wildlife Park was actually a nice place to check out many different types of animals to include giraffes, rhinos, monkeys, and penguins to name just a few.

I can now say that I actually had a really great time and would highly recommend this wildlife park to others that were looking for a fun day out.  Not only did Cotswold Wildlife Park offer some great views, I thought their facilities were top notch and very well maintained. Sometimes you visit wildlife parks and get a sense that the animals are not being taken care of 100%. This is definitely not the case at Cotswold Wildlife Park.

As I mentioned earlier, I would highly recommend this park for anyone looking to have a fun and adventurous day out in the Cotswolds.

As usual, here are some of the pictures I took:

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I just bought an iPhone and wanted to test how well the WordPress app worked. It’s nice being able to post an update no matter where I am. I thought it would be fitting to make my first mobile post a beer one.

The three of us decided to take a little trip to visit the capital city of Netherlands in early March. This was my second time visiting Amsterdam and it is amazing how different it was. The first time I visited Amsterdam I was twenty and traveled with three of my good friends. Imagine the kind of trouble a bunch of twenty somethings can get themselves into in Amsterdam. This time however, I was visiting Amsterdam as a parent with my wife and 15 month old son. Although the experience was drastically different, Amsterdam was still enjoyable and offered plenty to see and do.

It has been a while since I last updated this blog primarily due to concentrating my efforts on completing the last couple of classes for my degree and pure laziness.

Lets get back to Amsterdam. The weather was a little chilly throughout the five days we spent in Amsterdam, but we made the most of it. Before traveling I did some research and found a lot of sites listing Amsterdam as a heavy pickpocket city. However, I think if you travel smartly then you should have no worries. We had a pushchair/stroller and a 15 month old and did not run into any issues.

Throughout our five days we visited many of the popular tourist destinations, like the Van Gogh museum, Anne Frank museum, flower market, took a stroll through de wallen (Red Light District), ate frites galore, and took a canal cruise. We bought a 72 hour travel card and basically ended up walking and riding trams all around the city, stopping to enjoy some shopping and fine dutch cuisine.

All in all we had a wonderful time during our five days in Amsterdam. We both agreed that Amsterdam offers plenty of vices for those willing to partake.

As always, here are some of the pictures from our trip:

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This weekend we decided to travel north to visit the city of York for the Jorvik viking festival. Once we arrived we grab something to eat at a local pub and sparked a conversation with the owner about the viking festival. Apparently, the Jorvik Viking website listed the days we planned for the trip as the start of the festival but they must have been changed because the pub owner made some calls and it was planned to start the day after we were going to leave. We walked around the city and did not see too much to do with vikings so we checked out the other popular sites.

The weather was pretty cold and rainy so I would say that we did not enjoy York as much as we originally planned. The highlight of the trip was seeing the amazingly beautiful York Minster.

Here are the pictures from the trip.

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It has been roughly three months since I started brewing my first beer with the Mr. Beer home brew kit. My last bottle of West Coast Pale Ale was finished last night and to be honest, it couldn’t have been any easier to make.

After finishing my first beer I must say that Mr. Beer offers a very easy way for new beer brewers to get an idea of how to properly brew beer. Overall I thought that the West Coast Pale Ale was a decent beer but lacked something I couldnt quite put my finger on. It didnt stop me from drinking all of it though…haha.

I went with two weeks in the fermenter, two weeks carbonating, and roughly three weeks conditioning before I had my last two or three bottles. I think the first beer I had was only after one week of conditioning and it definitely got better as time went by.

It wasn’t bad for a first batch. I am excited about the Whispering Wheat Weizenbier that I have had carbing for the last two weeks. Hopefully in two or three weeks I will have another review.

I borrowed a Nikkor 105mm AF Micro f/2.8 lens from a coworker and decided to try some macro work for fun this weekend. I ended up going with a matchstick setup so I could capture smoke and a matchstick as it is ignited.

I used a black backdrop, SB-600 Nikon speed-light, and a Lumiquest softbox III for my off camera lighting setup.

Here are some of the pictures from my little experiment.