Locked and Loving It

Is this not a cool picture or what?? My Casio Z750 Camera has it's own internal sfx. This is called illustration. My fellow poet/artist friend Laura Walton took the picture. Man I love this camera.

Here's some more pictures with this cool effect. I think I'm going to work on a mini video with this and see what comes of it.

Bantu Knots and length comparison

Bantu05_06
Originally uploaded by Maryee_pc.

I'm experimenting with flickr and blogger, so I pulled this picture up of my bantu knots comparison in eleven months. Big difference, huh? I may just go ahead and knot em' up next weekend on the 29th so I can see a whole year's difference. With flickr you can email a post to your blogger account like you can with blogspot, picasa, photobucket, and others.

Free Photo Sharing Website-Photobucket

I wanted to share with those of you who visit my blog about one of my favorite on line photo sharing websites-Photobucket. I started using Photobucket at the suggestion of friends from my Ebay groups community of sellers to upload pictures of items I wanted to sell on Ebay. I've had an account for about 3 yrs and stopped using it briefly when I didn't pay for my premium renewal of $25 (when I was not working). When you have a premium account you can upload tons of pictures no matter how large or small and that was the biggest plus in investing in a premium account. You can have a non-paying account, which is what my was reduced to but since I had a few thousand pictures already uploaded I had reached my limit. They didn't chop me down, but they did disallow me to continue uploading more pictures. I still had the ability to share but I couldn't upload anymore.

Well, a few months went by and low and behold, Photobucket changed their tune. It may have been because of the other online photo sharing communities like fotki, snapfish, flickr, picasa and others just to name a few who were catching on to the photo community craze and were giving away more bandwith for free accounts. Photobucket got smart and did just that, but with some restrictions. Check out all their features here.

• Free accounts automatically resize large pictures that are uploaded. No problem here.
• Your account can be private with a password or public, your choice. If it is private you can email friends and family through Photobucket and they send an email out with the password attached. Then recipients can view the album at leisure.
  
• Another great perk with Photobucket is they allow you to resize photos that actually need to be reduced in size for various reasons. For example if you have a blogger or fotki account and you want to post your picture in your profile, you can upload the picture into Photobucket reduce it 25%, 50%, or 75% and then use the html link for the blog or save the picture onto your desktop to upload later to whatever site you want to send it to.
• A major big plus with Photobucket is you can send pictures via the internet with Photobucket by copying the picutes you upload and preview. Tons of pictures are sent either in their original form or as thumbnails that can be clicked on and they only take up like 5kb in your recipient's inbox. No more sending folks pictures that take a long time to downloand and then a long time to send and then they have to download the pictures to see them. Nope, with Photobucket, the pictures can be seen instantly. The only bad part about it is if you as the owner move the picture around from one folder to another, you will lose the direct link. Other than that, you have a feature that allows folks to save whatever pictures they want or just view them and that's all without clogging up their email with large files.
• They offer contests that you can win $2,500 for your best shot!
  
• You can post your pictures like Picasa to your blogs and myspace accounts.
• You can post "Bucket Stamps" which allows you to create a stamp with 4 or 9 picture max at a time. Like this one of my sister and me. I call it "Sisters".
  

Another feature is called Photo Strip. Here the photos are displayed horizontally but smaller. This feature allows you to create a strip with 5 or 10 picture max at a time. With the exception of the nappy sister, all the pics here are my creations from photo software.

Lastly, Photobucket has the Bucket Show. This is a slide show of pics. You can put up to 10 pictures at a time in the show.

There's no controling how fast the photos change, but it is continuous like the others. The only way these pictures would cease to display is if the owner moved a picture, closed the account, or Photobucket was experiencing technical difficulties. One cool thing about sharing your photos in this manner is it reduces the probability of sticky fingers taking your original photos. Plus it adds some pizzazz to your blogs. There's lots more photobucket has, but these are a few highlights. Check it out. It offers a lot for free accounts.

Opps! I forgot one more feature: The video upload!!!!!!!! Upload your own video and share it with friends. You can embed video into your blog without having to upload it to youtube, google video, or yahoo video, which folks then have the ability to leave unwanted comments of your video. You can do this even through a free account. Sweet!! This is Red, the steer. That's me screaming. I edited it and I was saying, "Ooooo, that's nasty!!" Ugh!!!

A day getting retightened with Gigi in Euless, Tx

Felicia who was waaaaaaayyy overdue for her retightening went first. Gigi was gracefully fast and got her done in about 3 hours. You'll see the picture with Gigi crying and Felicia whimpering because this was her first official retightening since getting locked May 1st. She had absolutely no parts and a lot of slippage. Oh yeah, and a lot of new growth. Needless to say we all were happy when she got tightened up.

Jen was next and hers only took about an hour and a half since she has about 300 or so locks. She was concerned that Gigi was gonna be fussing but her locks were in pretty good shape also. Long huh??? And yeah, she still regrets not listening to Imani when she encouraged her to keep the locks small in the beginning. The cool thing about Jen's hair to me and others is how it grows in layers. That's nice!!

Mine took right at an hour and a half as well. She even added a lock in the back for me that I accidentally cut off several months ago. She said my hair looked good seeings how the last time she had her hands in my head was a year ago when she taught me how to retighten my own hair. She is such a good teacher as well cause anyone who retightens their own hair knows that seeing a consultant at least a couple of times a year is ideal and recommended. When my money gets better, I'm gonna do better. Lawd know's Ima do better. Gigi is fast, pleasant and very professional. If you are in the DFW area, go see Gigi!!

Sheriff Strain's views on Trash coming into St. Tammany Parish

Dreadlocks and Che-wee hairstyles, right?

hmmm? Looks like most of the folks they are looking for don't fit this description.

http://www.stpso.org/mostwanted.php?start=0

More on the subject by Jersey Goddess.

Art Anyone? Black Pearls Natural Expression 2006

One of the best advantages of blogging about natural hair is finding talented and unique people along the way. This post will be about an artist who's far, far, far away from me in lil' ole' Waco, Tx, but allows me and others to experience the beauty of an island and culture like Bermuda.
My girl Vanessa George of Bermuda is an extremely talented sistah. I met her in the fotki natural hair community. She doesn't have Sisterlocks, but she is definitely a natural sistah. Check out her Website to learn more about Vanessa. She's got skills. Take a look at some of her work on fotki here! That's one of the beautiful blessings of being a part of online communities. I have had the opportunity to meet so many talented and inspirational women and men. I doubt if I'd ever run into these folks ever in life, but with the internet and friendly environments, we all have the opportunity to connect, spread love, be inspired and go on and do what's in our heart to do as well. I'd say that's good news, huh??
Let her know you heard about her from my blog on when you visit her website/fotki album. Oh, and also, buy some of her work!! Blessings!