This is Echo Lake, the start of our 16 mile hike.
A panoramic view of Lake Aloha, the hike destination. Click on the images for larger versions. These images are plagued by the horrible smudge that was on the lens.. but you at least get a sense of scale of the landscape.
This is a digital snappy taken at lake aloha in the Sierra Nevadas.
This was part of a weekend trip with friends to South Lake Tahoe. I call it the “workout trip,” since the first day was lower body (a 16 mile hike) and the second day was core and upper body (kayaking on Lake Tahoe). Both were awesome, but I got a really bad sunburn on my feet!
i took this on my trip to the abandoned naval air station in alameda.
on my past few photo trips, i’ve found myself focusing on repeating patterns. also, something really intrigues me when i use color film to shoot mostly monochromatic scenes. i guess it’s about finding the subtleties in life.
this one is from the same drive, but in emeryville.
today i decided to go to the hayward camera show, but it wasn’t until i was heading down the peninsula that i realized it’s tomorrow and not today. i was already on the road with the pentax and film, so i decided to go to Alameda. you can see my route on the map.
aside from getting what i think will be great images of some of the buildings on the grounds there, i met dennis, a medium format shooter! he was out in alameda, where he just moved, with his pentacon. i recognized that camera a mile away, since it’s a cousin of my kiev-60. we had a little show-and-tell, since he had been thinking about a pentax but was disuaded from getting one. he showed me a czj 180/2.8 he has — that lens is crazy! anyways, we had a great conversation and i hope to bump into dennis again.
tonight i made my first successful attempt at printing on something other than photographic paper. this is a piece of a ‘keep out’ sign, the cheapest plastic sheet i could find at my local hardware store.
i used rockaloid’s “liquid light” product.
here are the basic steps you take:
i had trouble getting a decent print really, i was happy to get what you see above. but it was neat to see it work for the first time. i wonder how clean an image one can make with liquid light.
my goal is to eventually use this method to print a portrait onto glass.
here is the back of my print:
There’s been an email thread discussion among my friends concerning sexual racism. It’s reminded me of an experience I had when I was in highschool concerning race.
It’s funny how time always makes edits in your memories. The farther in the past events are, the more different they become. Lately I’ve been reminiscing about my high school years, since many of my former classmates are popping up on Facebook. I grew up in a town I consider “pretty white.” That is to say, people are generally Caucasian and there is a small, barely visible minority. It’s strange, since our town of 12,000 residents was home to one of the largest Islamic centers in North America, and is a suburb of what was later called one of the fastest growing cities in the country. I remember when I was in 7th grade, there were a few black students but they were juniors and seniors at that point. But I digress.
When I was growing up, a majority of the state had a single utility company supplying its power. Their headquarters was in our town, on a massive lot in a very long building. I never knew anyone that worked there, nor had I been in an office building that large before. I was so curious what was inside, especially in their computer room. I convinced a friend of mine to go on a tour with me.
We both went up to the front lobby in the middle of the building and introduced ourselves. We explained our curiosity and they agreed to give us a tour. They found someone to escort us through the building. We were walked though their office and got a tour of their data center. My career went down that path, so by now I’ve seen so many server rooms of that vintage the exact details no longer matter.
I think what struck me most was the number of African-Americans working there. I knew nearby Indianapolis was more racially mixed (though not exactly integrated), but I never imaged such a level of diversity in my home town. I’d like to think none of the feelings I had that day were out of hate or racism, that my recollection hasn’t been sugarcoated by later experiences and accumulated wisdom. Thinking back on it this morning, to me it was a mix of shock and curiosity. That was my first big wake-up call, that my home town was just a fraction of a fraction of what the world had to offer.
I later attended college in Indiana, and that was the next major culture shock to me. I definitely remember once making the mistake of thinking that someone from Taiwan was “Thai”. Embarassing, now. But can you blame a white boy from a white town?
Looks like there is now an iPhone-native Wordpress client.
Recently I’ve been re-ripping my audio discs into Apple Lossless, ever since I discovered I can stream 16bit PCM through the airport express all the way through to my Sony receiver. The cost of doing this is the increased track file size, larger by a factor of 4. That means the amount of music I can sync to a portable device decreases by a factor of four.
So it seems I need to somehow maintain two iTunes libraries, one in a “portable friendly” compressed format, and one for home where the audio and storage resources are much greater. My initial thought is to keep the lossy data on my desktop, since that is where I sync my phone from. I can rip the lossless data to a separate folder and keep it on my home Linux server, which then serves it via an iTunes share by way of mt-daapd Firefly.
I would love to just have the two song encodings in a single library, but maybe keeping them separate makes sense. It means I need to rip all new content twice. Might be time to buy more disk for the server.
on june 11th, our group at work went to beresford park in san mateo, one of their many municipal picnic areas. it turned out to be a warm day and, with a lot going on at the office, a nice break to be outside.
i brought my rolleicord for the day, with some ilford delta 100. most of my shots were at 1/500 and nearly wide open. looking at this image, i’m glad i took my camera with me that day. i only shot 6 frames on that roll and only scanned two of those, and i’m posting just one.
my coworkers all have very diverse backgrounds and histories. most have them have been employed at the same company together for many years (i’m the “new” guy just passing my two year mark in a couple months).
i love how snapshots like this bring a moment in time (and the people pictured) out of context.
this is my work day commute, as logged by a qstarz q1000p data logger boman got for me. i was looking for a device i could take with me on a drive or hike, and be able to mark spots i could come back to. boman found this device after much research — the q1000p does just what i was looking for. it has a slider switch to change modes (off, nav, and log). it has one button, which marks the current location as a POI (point of interest). you take it out with you, then eventually return home to dump the data into your computer. the included software comes with a gui tool which has a google mashup built in, which overlays the gps data on top (see above). sometimes it can take a while to get a good gps signal, which can be annoying. but once it’s locked you just throw it in your backpack and forget about it.
this satellite view shows me driving into work (blue line), parking, then walking into the left building. the pink line shows me leaving work, stopping by the gas station, then heading towards the freeway to go home.
gps data is weird stuff.
hopefully i will remember to take this device with me on drives and be able to easily return to spots i discover.
this dish, lomo saltado, is a dish i’ve cooked a few times. i made it for dinner tonight, for “monday night dinner,” a nearly weekly gathering of a few friends. this time i decided to add a little to what i’ve done before. this time, instead of chopped potato, i pre-made thick cut french fries to put in the dish. i also added quite a bit of heat (two cerrano chiles). the heat was great– not too crazy, but very present. along side this i served a chateau st jean 2004 malbec. equally spicy.. maybe a little too much? we cooled down with some grapes and pink lady apples before calling it a night.
two weeks ago i joined this month’s SFlickr Meet, a monthly flickr folk gathering. it was fun meeting other local flickr users. i brought my pentax 6×7 along to shoot some pics of the event on some ilford delta 3200.
talk about a technology refresh.. i’ve moved my blog content from movabletype on solaris to wordpress on linux in a virtual machine!
my main drivers were:
so.. done for now. i may work on the wordpress template a bit more.. i had to tweak the ‘classic’ theme to my liking. nothing too bad.. firebug makes doing css editing super easy.
over the weekend, ryan and i made the first move on a big project to reduce the amount of stuff we have.
our first phase was to get rid of all the packaging that comes with compact discs, audio and video. some disks has very little material while others had inserts, advertisements, slip cases, liner notes with lyrics, and bonus material. when it comes down to it, we buy these things for the music or the video. did i really need a plastic case with a single sheet of paper (with no useful information on it), with a cover? all that goes away and one compact disc goes into a large caselogic album.
one thing i did find, after going through my 400 discs, was this ticket stub. i went to the test for echo tour concert for rush. this ticket was inside the cd case for the album, a reminder that i had seen the artist perform this live at san jose arena (now hp pavillion.)
the reminder has been transcribed into a blog post at this point. when you’re ridding yourself of non-essential items, it’s things like this that make you pause.
last weekend i was in portland, oregon. ryan was attending a conference and i decided to tag along. i brought my pentax 6×7 and several rolls of portra 160vc. portland turned out to be a fresh, clean city that was easy to get around in.
this image is a picture of the portland center for the performing arts, the most iconic views of the city.
I’ve been kinda bummed lately, but OTHER PEOPLE ARE NOT HELPING.
At work, I’m standing in a short line in front of a cafeteria food station while the cooks are dancing around, making noise signals from one station to another, and burning items and messing up orders. I recently had something prepared incorrectly while I was the only one in line.
I went to a mall food court today for lunch, where I placed my order as one customer of many in a line that moved sequentially. They managed to somehow mess up the order of the dishes and I had to tell them whose plate belonged to which customer. I paid for my food but was still waiting for one last item. The girl behind the counter asked me IN SPANISH what I was waiting for.
Later today, hoping to get a predictable service, I went to a Starbucks in which the barista incorrectly prepared a Carmel Macchiato. I’m no barista, but I’ve had the drink enough times that I know how it is made. Shouldn’t someone employed by Starbucks know the procedure better than a customer? After all, I haven’t read the training manual. (Didn’t they just retrain 135,000 employees?) About three years ago I challenged a Starbucks employee who misconstructed a drink. They dug up an employee manual to confirm the procedure — and I was correct.
Maybe it’s not me. I feel that somehow (and lately), everybody is just not caring. I mean, is it difficult to warm a hamburger bun on a grill without completely charring it? Is it difficult to keep plates of food in order? What about following well known, published directions?
I know it is not my job to police, educate, and train the masses at large. But when I am dealing with stresses of my own and need some predictable, reliable services, where can I turn to? You do your job, and I’ll do mine.
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on saturday we threw a birthday party for ryan at nikon whiskey lounge at folsom and 14th in san francisco. extensive whiskey bar, great japanese food. we reserved a private even room upstairs for our party. we topped off the party with two delicious cakes from miette.
i decided to bust out my polaroid spectra camera to document the occasion. it was a big hit, everybody seemed to enjoy using it and watch the prints develop. they all turned out great!
(640×797)
feeling grey lately. i think it’s stress from work, joint troubles, and continued house-hunting.
i decided to wake up early this morning and do a self portrait. i understand why some artists make them.. it’s sort of a “portraiture for introverts”. when you make something, what’s going on in your mind is projected through it. you not only see how you look to others, you see yourself subconsciously interpreted.
ilford hp5+, rodinal 1:50 for 12 minutes. negative scan.
shot with an 19″ apochromat red-dot artar with a dark blue (tiffen 47) filter taped to the front. wide open at f/11.
light was 400 watt-seconds from a speedotron 202vf head in a medium softbox above. white reflector below in butterfly position.
position self with pre-measured twine. open packard shutter. pop flash with meter. close shutter. develop sheet film, something i haven’t done enough of lately.
last night ryan applied a m0zaikit from shalgo industries on his new macbook pro. it turned out pretty well. it’s a set of pre-cut vinyl stickers, all cut in the same pattern with one color per sheet. you pick the pieces you want to lay out the pattern.
it was an excuse to setup the softbox and speedo. our little canon g3 does well with the right light.
this week I was asked at work if we had any internal blogging platform. of course we didn’t, but I was interested in setting one up. I chose wordpress, specifically wordpress-mu, a multi-user, multi-blog setup.
it took a while to get used to how wpmu does things. an ldap plugin for wpmu worked perfectly to tie my installation’s authentication to active directory. now anybody with an active AD account can login, create an arbitrary blog, and start posting.
i also took a while learning how to manipulate layers in gimp to produce a header graphic for our new internal blog site. i’m pretty proud of it.
now we’ll see what happens. i’ve seen internal blogs take off before, i’m interested to see if it takes off here. if you build it, they will come..
i really do think blogs have a place at work. at my last job, we (well, mainly jim, myself, and our manager) saw the potential. we used a blog to record our status, thus saving ourselves the need to take time out of our day to report to our management. it brought visibility into what our group was doing. at my current employer, we have many sites, peers in different offices, and a large development site on the other side of the planet. maybe this will help bridge some of the usual communications gaps that happen. there are already many internal forums, drupal sites, and other places (including the horrible microsoft sharepoint) for information, but this will be the first centrally managed, cross-organization, freely open system.
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