We caught these beauties while fishing in Diego Garcia. It was not uncommon to catch hundreds of pounds of yellow fin, barracuda and tuna - as well as the occasional shark or sail fish - in just a few hours on the Indian Ocean. The majority of the catch always went to the Philippine workforce on the island - we could never eat all of one day’s catch ourselves.
Fabulous fun neighbors Tres and Olive prepare for their journey to the desert.
If I can possibly get my butt out of bed in the morning, I will go downstairs and witness exactly how they fit a week’s worth of toys and desert survival gear into their vehicle. Should be interesting.
I’d like to take a moment to congratulate our very good friend on his most recent accomplishment - being promoted to vice president of his company! As of now, pretty much everyone in his whole company reports to him. Along with his new responsibilities comes a hefty salary increase, and a new home in Temecula. Way to go, Paul!
Here we are celebrating at Paul’s favorite German restaurant - Speisekammer.
Thedude’s birthday is approaching fast. My wife and family are always asking for gift ideas. Well, here’s a really good one!
Thule, Greenland is visted by some strong winds. Some say the World’s highest measured windspeed occurred here. (See: Burt, Christopher. Extreme Weather. NY: Norton, 2004, p. 249.) During the worst of these storms - known as “Phase Three” storms, sustained hurricane speed winds make Thule a very dangerous place. (See at least the last three paragraphs of this page.)
This shot was taken during a Phase Two storm. Winds were strong enough that we had been ordered confined to quarters, but visibility was greater than zero, so I decided to risk a reprimand by having a friend take this shot from the safety of the barracks.
The storm lasted almost three days, during which we stayed in our barracks, ate “delicious” MRE’s and suffered through the dismal programming on A-FARTS.
By the way, if you are interested, there are some beautiful images of the Thule area on this page. They were taken by Jack Stevens, who was the “official” Thule photographer when I was there in 1985-1987, and evidently, might still be!
This little thing is so cute! A file-sharing device running embedded Linux. It contains a web server and samba server - in a form factor I like. Small, inexpensive, no cooling fan, and easily hacked. Perfect!
I’m guessing that these shots were taken at Christmas, based on Dee Dee’s sweater and on the fact that the Blade is seen playing the accordian on other shots from this roll of film. Does anyone remember the year?
Looking at my blog, you might think I like shooting wedding photos. Well, I don’t, really. It’s a lot of nerve-racking work. It involves lugging camera gear around for hours trying to stay cool while worrying about the zillions of things things could go wrong! For me, most of the challenges are related to lighting and focus. Weddings tend to move along quickly these days, and direct sun or portable flash units can produce really ugly lighting. And, to top it off, I don’t care much for “traditional” wedding photos. I want mine to be “different” - somehow “better”. And then there’s the 12-15 hours of post-processing in PhotoShop. :-)
All things considered, the day went quite well. I tried to make sure that I’d get a few decent pictures by shooting a lot of images. I actually filled my 4 gigabyte Microdrive for the first time. I also shot a couple rolls of 220 film with Steve’s Mamiya 7. There’s saftey in numbers.
If you’d like to see all 285 images on the Ofoto web site, click here.
You are right - this is certainly one of the most interesting and relevant blogs out there. Check it out.
A few nights ago we had a small celebration with Chris and Ben and Herve and Ray. We started at our favorite - the Conga Lounge, and ended up with a little yoga on the foor of Chris’ office. The reason? (Not that we need much of a reason…) Chris’ weather book is out! I have an advance copy, and it’s a beauty. Check back in the near future and learn how to get a copy of your own!
I’m totally hooked on one of the coolest programs I have ever seen. I recommend you immediately get to the Keyhole site and grab a copy of their incredible global 3D mapping software. (Sorry, Windows users only.) Here’s a quote from their web site:
Yes! That’s it! A magic carpet ride spanning the entire globe. And, the maps contain altitude information so terrain appears 3 dimensional! There is even an extensive list of GIS data included. Want to find the nearest Chinese restaurant? View crime rates in your county? School districts? Malls? Zip code boundaries? It’s all there. WOW!
Here are a couple screenshots made at the resolution of my monitor - 1600 x 1200 pixels - so that you can get some idea just how cool this looks! Add the ability to swoop and fly over the whole world, and well - it’s breathtaking! Of course, this program performs best with a fast machine and high-quality 3D video card. The version I downloaded (Keyhole NV) is optimized for my NVidia graphics card, and is silky smooth even at full screen resolution.
And there’s more! After you get the package installed and running, you can save locations and post them to a web site (see below) or even e-mail them to friends so that they can see your favorite location in a way you did not think possible. So cool!
Click the links below to be transported to a new location in the world in seconds. AMAZING!
