I love this thread... for the opportunity to be all over the place and ramble just about anything, "just for the hell of it", as Rob put it.
So, while I am sitting in a warm room, waiting for the "epic blizzard" to hit Chicago area tonight, here is my rambling on the following:
Tunisia, Egypt, Social Media & My Father
It is funny how the stream of consciousness works: one moment you listen to the news about social upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt, and the role social media played in facilitating it... and the next you remember your own father, 87-year old, spending his dementia-filled days alone on another continent.
So what, you might ask, does my father have to do with Tunisia, Egypt and social media? Apart from a tourist visit to Tunisia about 20 years ago, not much with the first two, but I could not help wondering what his old days might have been if he would have access to the modern tools of communication, email, Facebook, internet forums, etc. Actually technology is there, but he missed the opportunity long time ago to learn it and stay current. As much as I might hate social media for giving the false sense of communication with people you could actually really communicate with, through phone calls, personal visits, letters, even emails, I must admit it plays a certain role in facilitating communication with people too far to reach in person.
Or take this forum for instance... no matter where in the world you are or how old or young you are (of feel)... you can exchange ideas, debate them, find like-minded people, virtual friends (or enemies), or have a good (rhetorical) fight occasionally... in other words, someone to talk to, when nobody else is around.
Anyway, enough with my ramblings... and since this is a photo thread, here is photo of my father I took last year. And to satisfy your photographic curiosity, it was taken with a Canon G10, window light, ISO 800... I asked my daughter to hold a white t-shirt in front of his face, to reflect some of that window light into the shadows. Post-processing in LR3: