Welcome to your fifth decade, Dude. Hard to believe. Don’t listen to Hillary – I love the shirt.

Thanks to Debra for throwing a super surprise party. More images here.

The jury is still out about moving images on thedude.com.

But there’s no debating the beauty of these renderings.

The animation was done entirely using 3Ds Max and V-Ray render and took about 10 days to complete. Professionally done 3D visualization is the perfect tool to present concepts or new products in a beautiful, photoreal style, while creating a mood with music and conveying a message, through on-screen text or narration.

thedude’s favorite actor earns an Oscar.

So, like, e-mail me, Dude. We can talk about the domain name. But only if you’ll promise to do a sequel. ;)

It’s Windows wallpaper season in California. And that’s no bull.

For those who don’t know, most of California looks more like this most of the year.

You may be interested in learning more about the the Window “Bliss” wallpaper.

One more thing — if you like whacked-out wallpapers, check out these beauties.

I’ve always been drawn to symmetry in my images, but when you view a few of them in a group, the effect can be ridonculous! Or maybe not. What do you think?

This is the barracks I lived in from September, 1985 until March, 1987. It must be summer, because my pals are firing up the grill. Funny. I think I have more pictures of the exterior of my barracks in Thule than I do of the building I live in now…

Yes, Kelly found a stack of old negatives, and I’m back at it. These days, I basically have the scanner running whenever I’m at the computer. I load up the negative carrier, preview scan a bunch of images, and final scan the best ones. The process is time-consuming, but my new computer is fast enough that I can now run the scanner software in the background pretty much no matter what I’m doing, which is sometimes quite a lot. So, in an evening I can now get 6 or 8 scans done – sometimes without even having to reboot. Yay Windows!

So, I have this shot of Dave that is much taller than it is wide, but man, it looks really nice if you happen to have a your 1600×1200 pixel display in portrait orientation. So there ya go.

For a month or so in the spring and fall the sun’s trajectory became very shallow – barely rising above the horizon and before setting again. The cool thing about this process is that it took a long time, so moments like this lasted for hours.

I didn’t notice all of the antennas when I lived there. Wonder what they were all for. We had no Internet (Times were tough in the mid-eighties!) and just one TV station — the always thrilling AFRTS.

The distinctive Mt. Dundas was a popular destination during the brief summer in Thule. Carved from the landscape by ancient glaciers, the thousand foot high pile of rocks offers a spectacular view of the confluence of three huge glaciers. I’d love to see the place now, although it might be depressing to see how far the ice has receded.

In Thule, everything was built above ground. Buildings rested directly on the ground — held in place by heavy concrete slabs. Utilities which would be buried underground or carried on telephone poles in warmer climates were exposed to the elements. I can’t remember if this is due to the hardness of the permafrost or to prevent it from melting. I suspect the latter.

In the distance, Mount Dundas is clearly visible.

Every few months one of us discovers a cache of negatives in some far corner of our storage space. This always propels me into a scanning frenzy. However, the scanning and retouching process is so time-consuming that I’m pretty picky about what I scan. This image didn’t make the first cut or the second. The negative didn’t look like much, and I had no recollection of even taking the shot. I had some time to waste last night, so I did a quick preview scan of the image and I was blown away.

As soon as I saw the image appear on my 30″ display, I was transported back to the moment I shot it back in 1985. Now I can’t stop looking at it.

I took this picture thinking my friends and family might be interested in seeing Thule, Greenland at high noon on a typical winter’s day. I can still taste the cold calm.

Current weather conditions in Thule, Greenland.

It turns out that Facebook is actually good for something — finding old friends. Normally, I don’t even want to connect with any more old friends, but when I found Pete, it motivated me to fire up the old scanner and send this shot to him.

Pete was my next-door neighbor during my stay in Thule, Greenland. We took a bunch of once-in-a-lifetime shots, including this fisheye view of him lounging with a cool beer on the Greenland ice cap. Right after this shot was taken, Pete returned the favor.

Our foodie friends Jim and Wendy dropped in while celebrating 25 years of wedded bliss. Congratulations to both of you, and thanks for giving us a reason to visit some of the best the Bay Area has to offer. I’m full now.