Recent Comments
-
How Does This Happen? Note too, in the background, what looks to be yellow overspray...
-
Cinema4D UV Mapping Sometimes I even amaze myself! ;)
-
Cinema4D UV Mapping You continue to amaze me!
-
-
Oakland Skyline Panorama I have a client that would like to use this image on their hom...
-
Yearly Archives: 2007
Our Favorite Fresno Fan-atics
The fabulous Fresno Bee ran a story last weekend on a couple of our most favorite people on account of their being rabid Fresno sports fans – at least one of whom can carry on ad nauseum about her beloved Fresno girls softball team. Yep – that’s the two of them on the left in the “Red Room” – their shrine to the Bulldogs.
The Bee did a good job profiling Dorothy and Frank, though. There can’t possibly be any more devoted fans than what the author calls “the practical Hunters”. Hah!
Click on the picture to download the story of their 40 year love affair with Fresno sports.
Another Addictive (and Useful) Tool?
At least two of my friends told me that my life would be better if I started using Jott. Yeah yeah, I thought. Another toy no one needs. Well, it turns out they were right! I’m already hooked!
Jott uses an amazingly accurate voice-to-text processor to convert up to a 30 second voice message into a neatly-formatted e-mail. Now, I can easily send an e-mail to one or many people directly from my Crackberry without typing on its teensy keyboard. And of course, Jott is free! There are even tools to allow bloggers to publish entries from a phone. Hmm… Interesting!
Posted in Computing, Toys
Leave a comment
Yeah, We Definitely Felt That One
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.
Posted in Bay Area
3 Comments
Unbridled Joy
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.
Posted in Bay Area, New Friends
1 Comment
Stuffed in Wisconsin
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.
Posted in Wisconsin
4 Comments
Does This Look Familiar?
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.
Posted in Bay Area
Leave a comment
Mmm… Speed
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!
Posted in Computing
Leave a comment
An Evening with Andrew
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.
Posted in Bay Area
Leave a comment
Fleet Week in San Francisco
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.
Posted in Bay Area
5 Comments
Klingons, Cupcakes and Art Cars
Where else, but at the Berkeley Art Car Parade, part of the “How Berkely Can You Be?” festival today.
More images here.
Posted in Bay Area, Design
Leave a comment
Gmail is Giving My Life Back
I have heard from other folks how much they love Gmail, but I had been a skeptic – until this week. Now, I’m a true believer. Gmail and Google Apps are the two best things that have happened to me in a long time. They have decreased both my workload and the amount of time I spend with e-mail.
I never thought I could be satisfied with a browser-based e-mail client. I need keyboard shortcuts, speed, IMAP, spell-checking, an LDAP connector, etc. Gmail does not allow me to connect to my LDAP server, or to create server-side folders like IMAP, but after using Gmail with Firefox for a few days, my old trusty mail client seems antiquated. Gmail in a browser is absolutely fantastic. It offers everything my old client (Thunderbird) did and much more. You just have to see how Conversations work to appreciate them. Then there’s the built-in Chat feature, the ability to use Google search against your e-mail, tons of free storage, ease-of-use, compatibility, world-class spam filtering and more…
I’ll keep Thunderbird around for a while, because it’s easier and quicker to send a large number of attachments with it. But for everything else e-mail related, I’ll use Gmail.
So, now I plan to move all of the e-mail domains currently hosted on my servers to a Google Apps account. This will reduce my workload and stress level while providing a greatly enhanced user experience for my friends. A true win-win!
Posted in Computing, Work
3 Comments
Wrong Lens, Ten Minutes Too Late
I made the trek up to the roof to try and shoot the sunset again, with mixed results.
The walk up the stairs was not a total loss, though. As you can see, when you put a few images side by side like this, the overall effect changes. The shots you see here are the best from four minutes of shooting on the roof. Oh – and the cherry tomatoes were delicious!
Posted in Bay Area, Photography
1 Comment
