Two posts in one month!

I’m not feeling like writing much of a story to go along with these photos. I feel more like getting back outside and taking more pics. Know what I’m sayin’? I picked up a mountain bike a few weeks ago. It’s now in a state where its ready for the trail. The weather has continued to be really nice out here and I’m itching to ride out somewhere with my camera.

I spent Thanksgiving Day with my mom at a place called Safari West. I definitely recommend that place if you’re interested in getting really close to animals that you only get to see on Discovery or 10 feet away in a cage. And as usual, I took a lot of pics and only two really turned out, haha. It’s happened so many times I’ve just accepted it now. I have no idea what this bird is called, but it’s gnarly looking. There were quite a few giraffes hanging out, waiting for people to feed them tasty plants. This guy was not afraid to ask me for tasty leaves two inches from my face.

I found my way to the Berkeley Pier one day. If you read that article, you will see that it’s incredibly long and it extends towards the skyline of San Francisco. I walked out as far as they let people go to try some pics of the city. It was nighttime, so I took my tripod out and equipped my telephoto with IS. I couldn’t for the life of me get a clean, steady shot of the city. It was really windy and I have a shitty tripod, I’m guessing that was the culprit. I imagine that the motion of the pier could effect photos on long exposures as well. I plan to try again some day from that spot (maybe with a heavier tripod?), but for now, I will have to settle for this happy accident.

And because I like linking photos, here’s a quaint shot of a pumpkin patch, lol

This is day two of the O’rielly Emerging Technology Conference. Maybe I’ll spew my general thoughts about the conference at some point but right now I want to mention a couple nifty things I have seen so far.

I was just down in the exhibition hall talking to some guys at the Sun booth. I’ve always thought Sun was going to disappear into the ether. I know what they did in the past but not now and they’ve never really had a foothold in any particular area. I still don’t think they do but at least they have a couple of interesting things going on. I’ll gab about one of them -

Project Blackbox
This is easily the most interesting Sun project I’ve seen. It’s basically a portable server room that lives inside a freight container. Now that I’ve said that, I’m sure your mind is spiraling with all kinds ways to utilize that. If you want details and installation examples, check out the site (I’m not going to repeat their info).

The guy at the booth was the dude that designed the cooling system for the containers. He was pretty fun to chat with, not being a salesman and all. Fucking salesmen. The one use that I thought was interesting (that I will repeat) was an implementation involving data transfer. Apparently, it’s faster to load up the servers in a container with 3 Petrabytes of data and ship it across the ocean than it is to transfer that amount over the wire.

Stamen and visualizations
This company has presented a couple times this week. They are here showing off their fancy data visualizations and they are pretty fuckin’ neat. Their work is plainly listed on the home page of their site so go check them out. My two favorites are both from Digg Labs. I like seeing how things are connected, so I find Arc and Swarm the most compelling.

Food Hacking
This was pretty out of character for ETech but it was definitely entertaining. Almost like watching street performers. It was an excellent reprieve for my brain which was already overloaded by noon on the first day

These guys simply want to understand the science of food, taste, etc and then manipulate it for fun. Making something eatable is sort of a secondary concern. “Avocado oil? Well let’s turn that into powder because we know how.” It didn’t taste very good. “Nitro glycerin? I know, let’s spoon crème in to it and then put it in our mouths! Because we can! Neeeaaaatooooo!”

Being programmers as well, they have spread their passion to the interwebz. I got an excellent shot of this while they were demoing the site.

There you go. That’s a little taste of ETech 2008. More to come

There’s nothing like watching 4 brain cells tackle 3 brain cells. Especially when you get to donate millions of dollars to FOX while doing it! They certainly are a worthy organization that could use more money. Without your support, Rupert Murdoch is going to have a much harder time controlling everything you watch, listen to and read.

Seriously, you’ve done enough thinking. It’s time to let good ol’ Emperor Murdoch do the thinking for you.

FOX would like to thank you for contributing to the viewership statistic that has allowed them to make 250+ million dollars in an afternoon on ads. To show their appreciation, they’ve prepared this gift card for you.

Feel like sparking up some neurons? Try this out.

Or

Learn about the super finger.

With soy milk of course.

I got a chance to talk with a local professional photographer at a Twitter meetup this weekend. I asked him about the Moon. He told me two things:

1. If you have a shitty tripod, the shutter action can actually blur your shot in sensitive situations (like low light). Guess what? I have a shitty tripod.

2. Being a real Magician, he knew of a formula called “Sunny 16“. There. I linked you to it, the interwebs have spoken. It’s basically a way to calculate a good exposure in sunlight. This secret can apparently be applied to moonlight as well. He wasn’t positive about it, but who is? Magic isn’t science.

Now I have a slightly better chance at the Moon next time I cross paths with it. Thanks Acme!

I linked you to Twitter at the beginning of this post. If you aren’t using it, you should. It’s fun. Also, all the cool kids are doing it. 99% of the people that are reading this are UAT alumni. UAT is about to get twitterfied. If you’re curious about what’s going on back at the Ol’ Ranch, you now have one more reason to twitter up.

While I’m writing about random stuff, here’s more.

I haven’t taken a “normal” self portrait since day two…I think. That was awhile ago. Todays shot returned to a more traditional style. This was actually an alternate, but the shot I was going for didn’t work out. I need some nifty lights or something to pull off the one I wanted.

I shall try again someday. Oh yes, I shalllll.

Anyone know what it takes to photograph celestial objects, for instance, the Moon? I’m sure the tubes know, but I don’t feel like asking them right now.

I’ve been eyeing the Moon all week. I decided to got out and try to get a shot of it. That didn’t turn out so well. There was a lot of blurring and crazy lens flares…Then I was like “Hey, the Moon is moving pretty damn fast isn’t it?” Is that the problem? I have no idea.

I left that shot alone for an hour or so and then looked at it again. I liked it better, so I posted it. The Moon seems to have a big grin even though someone stole the rest of it’s face.

Now that I’m doing the 365 project I find myself on Flickr even more. I’m posting more pics and putting in descriptions, etc. It’s definitely detracting from this. I also just got done catching up with Clint’s 365 project where he is doing a video a day. He posts them all on his blog.

Should I push each self portrait into it’s own post here? Hmmm. Photo blogging…phlogging. Kick ass name, but I don’t know what it would look like or if it would be obnoxious. I’m sure I’ll just get part of the US Constitution pasted into comments, but do any of you have thoughts or ideas on the subject?

Back to the 365 project. It was tough at first because I was slipping right past midnight for awhile when I was on vacation. I still took a photo every day but I didn’t always get to wifi in time to post. Now that I have resumed my regularly scheduled life, I’m finding it easy to do the shot every day. I haven’t run out of ideas yet, hopefully I can keep it going

This is one of my favorites so far. I planned the shot and nailed it. Usually, I’ll have an idea for a shot in my head and after I try it a couple times and realize it sucks I keep trying until I come up with something I like. So planning, executing and posting is a big step for me, lol

I’ve been hiding out in the Napa Valley for nearly two weeks. Half of my time has been spent in the nice little tourist town of Calistotga (north end of the valley). The Gliderport in that pic is actually shut down now. As a kid, it was always fascinating to watch the gliders float around the valley and land at that field.

I think I’m more stressed and worn out then before I left on vacation. I’ve heard people claim that, now I know what it feels like Too many people to see and run around with. That sounds selfish but I think its warranted. Some times you just need to get out and do your own thing, know what I mean?

I needed to sit on a quiet beach for a couple of days. Beach camping was actually planned, but rain decided to shit on that idea. I generally love the rain, it just happened to rain on the exact wrong days. I tried to make up for it by day tripping to the coast. I think I managed to get out there 4 different days. That helped.

I did take a lot of photos which was fun - mainly because a lot of them turned out good, lol. I only have 6 of them up on flickr so far, but there are a lot more to come once I get a little time to sift through them.

Speaking of photos, I started the 365 project on the 1st! Weee! A couple days before NYE I was leaning towards not doing it. Seemed like an exhausting project I didn’t have the energy for. Then on the 1st I had an “Ah, Fuck it.” moment and decided to go for it. I’m gonna try my hardest to keep it interesting…or at least sexy. Who votes for sexy? *zip*

If you find value in something, there’s nothing wrong with throwing money at it. That’s how it should work. However, there are plenty of companies that want to take your money. They’ve created a business model that simply gets in your way and there’s no way around them - or at least they try to make it that way.

Some start off with good intentions and then their purpose fades, but they persist, becoming leeches.

Fileplanet. Leeches.

I went to grab the latest version of Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat tonight. I think it’s fair to say its basically the free multiplayer version of Call of Duty 4, hehe. Anyways, I was prompted with two download options for North America: Fileplanet or a Torrent. Who the fuck clicks on Fileplanet? Seriously, who are you? I’m coming for you.

I quickly clicked on the Torrent and it fired up to about 600 kB/s, making the ETA 25 minutes. I would have sat in line at Fileplanet for that amount of time before the download even started! WWWWTTTTTFFFFFF?!!!!1111oneoneoneone

“Torrent” is not a bad word. Don’t let fear mongering gatekeepers squash the advancement of technology. Use torrents. Legally, preferably, but whatever. Just use them.

Thanks to Kent for getting me fired up at The Man.

Oh also, here’s a neat fire photo. I really like the colors

I got to hang with Tozie and Clint today in a coffee shop. It was mostly a random occurrence which made it even better. I knew Clint was going to be in the area but we hadn’t set anything in stone. One phone call and a twitter later, the three of us were streaming our geeky convo via uStream.

I love how easy it’s getting to connect with people locally and extend that experience to anyone. For us, we can utilize all the gear we use normally on a day-to-day basis. We don’t need special equipment to connect to magic satellites for a feed or lug around big cameras. Everything we need is in our pockets these days.

I’m especially proud that I was able to shoot good photos and post them right away - very little processing. One of the things I’m trying to work on is being quick about this. I actually edited and posted these photos from the coffee shop before I left. The only thing I was slow about was this post

Granted, maybe the planets were aligned correctly so everything went smoothly. Be it luck or skill, I’ll take either

Tonight I bring you two photos I’ve always wanted to try. Both of these shots are classic: one of them I nailed, the other I need to try again

The first one is a “side mirror” shot. Getting this one right is gonna be tough but I didn’t do too bad my first time around. I think I should try again with more light and more interesting subjects. The desert is boring. It was around sunset and even with IS enabled it got a little blurry. Doesn’t help matters that I drive a go-cart either, lol. I feel the road.

I love this one. Unlike the photo mentioned above, this one is completely unedited. BAM! I was riding shotgun at the time and playing with camera just before Blythe, CA. I thought to myself “I should try a rad blurred car lights shot…”. I got it through the windshield and everything, hehe. Now that I know this type isn’t hard to do, I want to try some more at different ranges and framing.

I’m still going to put together a post about our road trip with lots of pics, but I need to get all the photos for it ready first. This is a build up to that. A really slow one…like ambient techno. Ooonts…………………..ooonts……..oonts oonts………..ooonts……