thedude.com

We dined on some of the best barbequed oysters I’ve ever tasted at Tom’s cool pad. Spectacular view, fabulous oysters. Thanks for a lovely evening, Tom and Julie!

San Francisco’s Carnaval celebration is an eyeful! Women (and a few men) of all ages, shapes and colors get a chance to cut it loose and strut they stuff - much to the delight of this photographer! Oh my!

I had to deal with direct sunlight when shooting these, so I used the camera’s low contrast setting again. I am so pleased with the results that I think I’ll make this setting my default for any picture with human flesh in it. If you examine a few of these shots closely, I think you’ll agree that the flesh tones are very accurate. :-)

A few more images from Carnaval 2005 may be found here.

This shot was taken in a first-floor office here at work. Noise, dust, concrete splattered on the windows - it’s even worse than the constuction at home!

It’s difficult to get a shot of this image without glare, but you get the idea. This was printed 40 inches wide from one of my tulip images without any fancy footwork at all. Just a tiny levels adjustment and unsharp mask in PhotoShop. Pictopia did the rest.

It looks fantastic - much better than what you see on your computer screen. Total cost for printing and mounting - about 100 bucks. Amazing!

Oh well, another excuse to eat, drink and take people pictures… Evidently, these are three things I really like to do. (See below.)

Congratulations once again to Dorothy and Frank - my favorite In-Laws. Fifty years. That really is quite an accomplishment.

More fabulous photos here.

Personalized postage!

Last night we had the pleasure of meeting Professor Perry Samson - the founder of weatherunderground.com and his wife Deborah over another delicious Thai meal at Chris and Ben’s. Jerry Alexander provided a few bottles of superb wine, which flowed as smoothly as the conversation. We celebrated Don and Jum’s recent marriage and wished that Tum could stay another week.

Perry and Deborah seem like wonderful people. (They’re from the Midwest - what would you expect?) Thanks to all for a memorable evening. We look forward to seeing all of you again! Next time you’re in town, we’ll do dinner at our place. :-)

Barbara and Andrew slogging through the debris on their way to inhabitability.

The house is already a much sunnier, happier place than it was. I can’t wait to see what this talented team will make of it.

CNN.com - E-mails ‘hurt IQ more than pot’

Mark Morford has another look at this story.

My dear friends Andrew, Barbara and Ursula are the proud owners of a new home. I recommend you to check in from time to time and follow the story of this house in Oakland. I was shocked and awed when I saw this 1,000 square foot, $360,000 house, and I know you will be too.

Everyone has one from time to time, I guess… Even Nova.

Hey, digital photograpehrs! Sigma has a cool lens coming out “towards the end of this month.” If the price is right, this culd be very cool. A small, light, fast “standard” focal-length lens for DSLR’s? I’m highly impressed with my first Sigma lens’ capabilities. I wonder if this cool-looking lens will be as sharp as my 80-400. I’d assume it’d be even sharper, wouldn’t you?

This camera is so wonderful. It doesn’t seem to matter what I point it at - the results are spectacular. Even the mundane becomes captivating. I’m so totally blown away by the fact that I can walk a block up 4th street and shoot images that would not be possible with any other camera. The quality of the images from the D2X is so high that you can easily spot deficiencies in my lenses. The images look like they were shot with a medium format camera and scanned - a very lengthy process. In fact, I can shoot images like this and bring them to you in a matter of minutes.

The quality is so high, that even this 3 megabyte version of one of the images above does not look as good as the original. Compression artifacts are visible even though it was saved with a JPEG quality setting of 11 in PhotoShop CS.

I will not live in this neighborhood forever, but I’ll always have some fine images to remind me of it.