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The biggest quake to hit the Bay Area since the 1989 Loma Prieta. A moderate P-Wave followed by a long slow S-Wave. All is well.

My wife has been volunteering her time for the past few years to a really wonderful organization. Xenophon Therapeutic Riding offers special needs children a chance to ride on the back of one of their gentle horses under the watchful eye of skilled instructors. Many of these children must be lifted gingerly out of their wheelchair onto their horse. Once they’re on the horse however, something happens. The transformation is instant and magical. Their faces describe it far better than my words ever could.

It’s not hard to see the sense of accomplishment and pride these kids feel when they’re in control of a large animal. Everyone benefits from this interaction in more ways than you can imagine. You can not witness the determination these kids display and the unconditional love given by the all-volunteer staff and not be moved. It is truly a beautiful thing.

I didn’t think I was taking enough pictures on my recent short trip to the Midwest - probably because I was so busy consuming everything from a deep-fried “onion brick” at The Hub to Wendy’s amazingly decadent molten truffle dessert. Oh. My. God. Most people probably don’t think of a trip to Wisconsin as a culinary treat. These people don’t know my friends.

I didn’t take a single picture of the fall colors, and for that I have no good excuse. I guess I was feeling lazy. Sorry. But I did get to see some things I had never seen before - like the stunning Milwaukee Art Museum (beautiful!) and the Miller Brewery. (Miller Lite does NOT taste this good.)

A huge thanks to my fabulous hosts, Uncle Steve and Caesar, Jim, Wendy Rowe and the dogs, Mark, Ann and Lexy, Nancy and Cindy. Thanks for all the great food and memories. I had a wonderful time. Check out a few more shots from my week-long binge here.

Here we go again! If this does not remind you of another California wildfire, have a look at this photo from 2003. Can you believe that this fire started almost 16 years to the day after another famous fire in the Bay Area?

At this point, from the satellite imagery, the 2007 fires do not seem as big as the 2003 fires, but I guess the difference is that this fire is in populated areas. Not to diminish the loss, but this disaster has destroyed far fewer homes than the 1991 Oakland Hills Fire - so far.

More fire photos here.

I got a shiny new 10 megabit Internet connection today. Well, it turns out that we’re a bit too far from the DSLAM for a full 10 megabits, so I’m getting closer to 8 megabits down and 800 K up. The surprise is what a difference the extra speed makes - especially when I’m using Gmail. Very nice!

For those who don’t already know, I’ll be heading to the Midwest tomorrow morning. I may not be able to post all of the beautiful fall color shots I hope to get until I return, but I’ll try!

It seems like months since I spent an evening with Andrew. When we finally got together last night, we had a lot to catch up on, so we chugged wine and exchanged ideas as fast as we could. Andrew’s role in Burningman and Google Earth have resulted in some truly amazing technologies. I’m happy to have been introduced to Google Earth 4.2 (Get it!!) and its partnership with Gigapan, and The Gigapixl Project. I learned that Panoramio makes it easy to post and geotag images on Google Earth.

To see a bit of why I’m so excited about the latest developments at Google Earth, first make sure you have the latest version (4.2) installed, and that “Gigapixel” and “Gigapan” are enabled under “Featured Content” on the Layers Palette. Then come back here and click on this link. Be sure to check out the Gigapan images, which are even more exciting, because with luck, I’ll soon be creating my own gigabyte-sized panoramas with one of these babies!

What a night. Great to see you, man. I love what you did with that hangar… and the paintings by your pal Lee Harvey Roswell are fabulous.

We braved enormous crowds to see the Blue Angels perform their magic in the skies over San Francisco. Low-flying F-18’s make for challenging subject matter, but I managed a few shots. My favorite is probably the shot taken through the exhaust from a navy ship parked in the bay. It’s not a PhotoShop effect - that’s exactly what the camera captured.