thedude.com

It’s very important that you NOT visit the links in the recent “e-card exploit” making the rounds.

The subject line on these messages is something like “You’ve received a greeting postcard from a class mate!” Notice the misspelling of “classmate”. This is clue number one that this may not be a legit e-mail.

Clue number two is that the sender is an anonymous person or thing. A “class mate” or a “family member”. If this were legitimate, wouldn’t the company do a better job of personalize the e-mail for you? Maybe by including the full name name of the sender? And who calls this a “greeting postcard” anyway?

At this point I’m sending this message to the trash, and so should you!

There are more things to make you go hrm. The message is signed by someone or something at a real-sounding dot-com like “123greetings.com”, but the link in the message says nothing about that domain name. In fact, it’s all numbers and letters! Never click on a link that looks like this!

http://76.188.3.200/?d455393e4dd7ae5b23933165b19d3383b4

This is clue number three, just in case clue numbers one and two weren’t enough.

Hey! Let’s be careful out there!

I had hoped by now to have something to say about my new Nikon D40x, but so far it has only made me very happy to also own a D2X. I suppose I should not be surprised that there is such a huge difference between the two cameras when you consider the equally huge price difference.

That said, can you see a meaningful difference in the two pictures - shot with the same lens - a Nikkor 14mm, manually focused, 1/5 second at f4.5 - one with the D2X and the other with the D40x? (Disclaimer: The D2X image was imported in its native NEF (RAW) format, the other began as a JPEG - thanks to the inability to import D40x NEF format into CS2. ARGH!!! Also, both images were squeezed through my usual “blogerize” action and some color and level adjustments were made to at least one of the images to get it to more closely match the other.)

Comments?

I just hope that we’re as happy and healthy as our dear Aunt Mary when we celebrate our seventieth birthdays. Well done! Thanks to Mark and Lori for organizing a great and classy party.

View a zillion more pictures here and here.

Chris and I agreed on our first visit to a columbarium that the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland was worth visiting. Not at all gloomy. My ashes could live happily here.

Unfortunately, there were hundreds of other people at tonight’s open house/music event. And the music? Let’s say it was - experimental. That sounds better than “creepy”, which is what I’d otherwise call some of the sounds echoing through the reverberant spaces.

Nevertheless, the sprawling Julia Morgan designed space is just beautiful - one of Oakland’s architectural gems. See it if you can.

In case you were wondering, I tried this on two keyboards I had lying around and it worked just fine. Yes, you can safely clean your keyboard in the dishwasher and get perfect results. So now you know.

As difficult as it is shooting under these conditions, you can occasionally get some wildly colorful shots. Motion blur is unavoidable as using an on-camera flash is not an option in an environment this dark. Luckily, a little motion blur can work in your favor by helping to convey the mood.

To get further into the mood, I’ve arranged for you to get Shpongled while you view the rest of the images. May I suggest you put your best ‘phones on and turn it up loud!!

You gotta love the Internet. This week it helped bring me back together with my roommate from 27 years ago. We exchanged a few e-mails and I learned that my old friend Rob Espinosa would be performing today at the Novato Art and Wine Festival.

Kelly and I watched Rob play with the David LaFlamme band - formerly It’s a Beautiful Day. Those of you who remember Rob from the days that we lived together on Conkey street would instantly recognize him - especially when he’s on stage clowning around and flashing that trademark grin. Oh - and he still plays his guitar fabulously. Rob is leaving soon for the east coast performing with a Summer of Love 40 Year Reunion Tour where he’ll be playing with the likes of Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company! Awesome!

Rob, it’s really great to hook up with with you again and to meet your wife Nancy! It’s especially cool to discover that you live just an hour away in Santa Cruz! Let’s fire up that hot tub and barbecue grill when you get home. We’ll bring the wine!

Last night’s Mystic Beat Lounge, held at the enormous Grace Pavilion in Santa Rosa was headlined by “Hallucinogenius” Simon Posford, aka Shpongle. His performance was the highlight of the evening, but an earlier act, Australian band Ganga Giri really blew me away.

This was another of those impossible-to-photograph events where lighting can only be characterized as “sporadic”. That didn’t keep me from trying though. More photos soon.