A Nice Site Gets Nicer

thedude was thrilled to discover tonight that the official San Francisco Carnaval web site has given their home page a tune up, and now features one of thedude’s shots from carnaval 2006. They must really like the shot because they devoted so much screen real estate to it. Not even thedude.com features a photo as…

Redesign Complete

Now that IE7 will be distributed through Microsoft’s automatic updates, I feel it’s safe to incorporate PNG transparency into my site design. If you see a white box where the header should appear on this page, please upgrade to IE7 or better still, use a different browser! (Opera, perhaps?)

Everything in a Single File!

Just a quick note to ask you all to take a look at Tiddlywiki. I’m busy working on images for two other blog entries, but I just could not wait to tell you about this. When you view the TiddlyWiki site, bear in mind that you are viewing a single file. A rather small file,…

Not Entirely My Idea

I really wish I could take credit for the redesign idea, but it was the always inspirational Before and After Magazine that made me do it. The latest issue contains a story about this attractive site. What peaked my interest is that this design clearly rewards people with a lot of screen real estate. My…

Musical Keywords

The best thing ever to happen to computers is Adobe PhotoShop. Ask anyone who uses it every day. It’s mind-boggling. The second best thing is Winamp. Instant access to my vast music collection is a godsend. Winamp was such a breakthrough when I first saw it that I immediately sent my ten bucks to Justin…

The Golden State and Blog Categories

I’ve noticed lately that some of the pages on this site are becoming rather unwieldy. Some of my Category pages are enormous. My Photography link, for example, launches a page almost 8 megabytes in size! This is a problem, even on my 6 megabit-per-second connection. Since there’s no practical way for me to reduce the…

DAMMIT!

The frustrating thing about this is that I have no recollection of having done it. My guess is that I stopped at the red light, checked both directions, and then proceeded through the intersection – possibly thinking that I was turning from a one-way street on to a one-way street – a perfectly legal maneuver….

Butt Shot Number One

Almost all of the top ten most viewed photos on the Carnaval SF web site were shot by thedude. Can you guess which picture holds the top spot?

I Look 42% Like Bill Gates

You all know I’m a serious PhotoShop fanatic, so there will no doubt be some skepticism when I tell you that this is an unretouched image. I swear! These are the results I got when I ran a picture of myself through this fun face recognition software. (Free registration required.) Bill gates was one of…

Hey – They Stole My Image!

My good friends Jack and Tres learned through a friend that their image was being used prominently on a web site for a Santa Barbara spa. The trouble is, neither they nor I ever gave the webmaster permission to use the image from Tres and Jack’s wedding. The legal section of the site even proclaims…

More Fun from Jibjab

In case you’re wondering, I have not forgotten my blogging duties. It’s been a long time since I took some real down time, so Kelly and I decided to finish 2005 quietly. We did not attend any big parties or take any trips (‘cept for Fresno.) I also took a little time to do some…

I’m Apple Pie Proud!

Wow. I don’t even have a category for this one! This strange, somewhat creepy recording is part of the “Stanford Audio Recordings Children’s Development Series”. The jacket proclaims, “Now your child can improve all phases of his development by playing records!” There is no date on the red “vinylite” record or on the jacket. I’m…

A Million Dollar Idea

A story about this clever site appeared in the Wall Street Journal today. I expect he’ll have his million dollars within a week. Dang, why didn’t I think of this???

SysAdmin Appreciation Day!

Woo-hoo! it’s System Administrator Appreciation Day, and my bosses remembered with a cake from Cold Stone Creamery. How sweet! Thanks, Don and Karl. It’s great working with this group. 🙂

Worldwide Headlines

This is cool! 417 front pages from the newspapers of 45 countries, updated daily – in glorius PDF. (requires Flash.)

Intelligent Design?

Could this possibly be coincidence? I used to view these orchids as a perfect example of an evolutionary miracle. Now I have to wonder which came first – the orchid or the Tinky Winky.

Biology in Motion

Did you know that your incredible mind can easily and instantly tell the difference in sex, weight and mood of 15 moving dots on your screen. Don’t believe me? Here’s proof.

This Continues to Baffle Me

It’s worth taking a second look at this. I looked at it again today, and am still completely amazed by the fact that our eyes can be so badly fooled. (I even had to open the image in PhotoShop before I was completely convinced.) If you like this mind-bending illusion, you’ll find many more here.

Geek Love

Advertised as “the web’s fastest growing matchmaking and dating website“.

E-mail Worse Than Pot?

CNN.com – E-mails ‘hurt IQ more than pot’ Mark Morford has another look at this story.

Bad Feather Day?

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….

Another Entry for the OED

I guess this word has been in the Oxford English Dictionary for years now, but I just realized it. D’oh!

Fabulous Rom-Zom-Com

I have to mention that I saw an HILARIOUS movie last night at Andrew and Barbara’s pad. Shaun of the Dead must be one of the funniest romantic zombie comedies ever. I don’t like scary films, so I don’t really know much about the genre. Nevertheless, I laughed out loud at this movie. I’m sure…

In case you missed this…

The New York Times has an amazing graphic with a lot of detail and photos of the tsunami. (Opera users, press F11 and rejoice.)

Oh. My. God.

It seems that we have not heard the last of John Ashcroft’s schockingly bizzarre “Let the Eagle Soar”. Gee Dubya plans to have the song (and I use the term very loosely) performed during his inauguration! Look at this excerpt from MSNBC: “The inaugural ceremony will include performances by the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club,…

More Awesome Illusions

Have a look at the first two or three of these – at least. There is much to see here – many of the illusions are positively baffling.