This Guy Has Too Much Free Time
Some guy customized his CPU case and peripherals to match the look of Half-Life 2. Pretty sick. Check it out (lots of pictures, not for the bandwidth-impaired).
Thanks to Ian for the link.
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November 29, 2004
November 20, 2004
Random Photos
Well, it's a pretty ugly day and I'm feeling a bit unmotivated to get out so I've been scanning a lot of my slides. I'll post some of the more interesting images here on this entry throughout the day. In passing, I should mention that I have been pretty happy with my Nikon Coolscan V ED film scanner. But you don't have to take my word that it's a good scanner. Practical Photography selected the Coolscan V ED as their Tester's Choice in a review of eight film scanners in the October 2004 issue.
Anyway, on with the photos. I'll start with this image that I took one afternoon of some rather large thunderheads in east San Diego county. For a few weeks in late summer this year, thunderheads were forming nearly every afternoon. But, by the time I'd get off work, the shape of the clouds would be completely flat with no detail. This phenomenon would occur as the clouds moved westward, perhaps as a result of air pressure as they moved over hills. I never quite understood what created that effect although I have to admit I didn't spend much time studying it. Here in this photo, the thunderheads managed to hold their shape well into the afternoon, giving me enough time to get home from work, grab my camera bag, and head out to a hill in the Scripps Ranch area near my friend Tom's house. You can see a bit of the effect I described earlier near the top of the clouds, creating a sort of mushroom appearance. Normally I don't like to include buildings and other man-made structures in my nature shots, but in this case I think they give good perspective and serve as indicators as to how large these cloud formations were.
This next photo was taken at Mission Trails Regional Park. I usually go there to chase dragonflies, but there are all kinds of flora and fauna in this area. By the way, there is a campsite at this park which is great for little weekend getaways if you want to get your outdoor fix but don't have time for planning a big weekend somewhere. It's only about 10 minutes from where I live so I often grab my camera and head over there to shoot pictures for a couple hours. I found this lizard halfway up a tree near the San Diego River which runs through the park. I shot this photo with my 105mm macro lens, probably my favorite lens in my bag. I like this shot because the dark background makes it look like the lizard is about to leap into an abyss.
During that same trip I also encountered this young great blue heron. They are much more striking as adults as they develop plumes on their head when they get older, but I didn't see any adult herons in the area. This one was actually being quite aggressive, so I speculated that it must have been really hungry. It came within just a few feet of where I was standing. It isn't very often that nature cooperates with me, so I took advantage of the opportunity and fired off a few shots.
Most people remember the wildfires from last year that did so much damage in this county. Many are still recovering from that disaster. Almost 300,000 acres were burned in the Cedar fire alone. See more stats here. I've taken a few drives out to the Julian area over the last year and along the way I like to stop at a small campground with a trail loop (I forget the name of the place) that is about 7 miles before Julian. Here, you can see a lot of the damage up close. This is a photo of some manzanita trees along the trail loop. Keep in mind this photo was taken almost a year after the fires.
Another of my favorite places to frequent is Cabrillo National Monument. I usually spend most of my time down at the tidepools, where you can find all kinds of interesting plant and animal life in the intertidal area. Of course, the old lighthouse is here, also. Built in 1854, the original lighthouse was first put into service at dusk on November 15, 1855. Thirty-six years later, however, the light was extinguished for the last time on March 23, 1891, having been placed in a poor location where fog and clouds limited its visibility. Today you can walk through the old lighthouse and learn a little about its history.
November 17, 2004
Hotmail Finally Delivers
MS finally did good on their promise to upgrade the capacity of Hotmail accounts. At some point during the day my limit jumped from 25 MB to 2 GB. If you can call that a jump...I should really call it a catapult. I'm still liking the threaded view that Gmail uses, though, and have already switched to that as my primary email, which is a testament to the importance of time-to-market. I mean, if you're going to be months behind the competition, you'd better be prepared to overwhelm the market with your product. Granted, both products are free so it's hard to make a real case here, but I think the message is still there.
I've found zero press articles on the upgrade actually taking place, btw. Not sure if it was just being rolled out slowly, or if I just missed an announcement somewhere. Although, on my Hotmail home page there has been a message saying that upgrades were coming in the Fall, but that has been there since early summer.
November 16, 2004
Fuji Film Day at Chrome Digital
Today is Fuji Film Day at the Sorrento Mesa Chrome Digital lab, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. I spent about a half hour there this morning talking to a representative from Fuji. It was nice to see that Fuji is staying committed to film shooters and plans to introduce 5 new films in the next few months, 2 reversal films and 3 negative. This includes a new 100 speed Velvia, which I personally am very excited about. The newer E-6 F series have some of the highest grain of all transparency films and although there was generally some disappointment with Velvia 100F I think it'll be exciting to see what this new one will offer. My hope, of course, is that it will offer the rich color saturation of Velvia 50 in a 100 speed film. If so, it could become the new standard for landscape and nature photography, as well as provide a good wildlife film when pushed to ISO 200.
November 15, 2004
What's New
Mary and I went up to Santa Barbara this past weekend. Saturday was spent visiting some of the wineries in the Los Olivos area just north of Solvang. Mary calls Solvang "where Disney barfed", and I have to say I can't really disagree. But the winery areas are just gorgeous, there are lots of rolling hills and the weekend weather was perfect. I took some pictures but I shot mostly film, so I'll have to put them up later when I get them back from the lab. Sunday we spent down around State St. and the beach area. The locals had set up a war memorial right next to the pier. There were hundreds of crosses set up in the sand as a tribute to the men and women who have lost their lives so far. Here are some of the locals putting name tags on the crosses and setting up the area.
The weekend was very relaxing and Santa Barbara is a beautiful town, this was the first time I had been there. On the way back I took several sunset photos which I hope to post soon. I've also been playing around with night photography lately, mostly by necessity since it is way after dark by the time I get home. I've been reading Night Photography by Andrew Sanderson in order to get some ideas and improve my technique. One thing I have noticed is that most people tend to use black and white film for night photography. There is some logic to this, as you can get various color casts depending on the type of lighting, type of film, etc. Here is a shot I took of an oil pump with my digital camera, and converted to black & white. The exposure is 30 seconds long, taken about a half hour after sunset. The pump is illuminated by a single orange sodium light.
November 12, 2004
Nikon F6 Available Now
With all the hype surrounding digital cameras these days, it's pretty easy to see how I missed this bit of news, but back in September Nikon announced their latest professional film-based SLR camera, the Nikon F6. The F series are Nikon's top-of-the-line professional cameras. The F6 is currently available (although on back order) from B&H for about $2300. If that's too rich for your blood, as in my case, then you should be able to get an F5, still an amazing camera, at a pretty good price. Lots of amateurs have been dumping theirs on eBay after replacing them with digital SLRs, so you can get them for as little as about $1000.
The profile is smaller and, as expected, it is a little lighter than its predecessor, the F5 (2.15 vs. 2.67 lbs.), although I have to say I would prefer a higher profile since it would be easier to handle by people with large hands. My small finger and ring finger frequently slide under the camera when I'm taking pictures with my N90s, which is roughly the same height as the new F6. Of course, you can add an MB-40 battery pack and get a higher profile that way.
Microsoft Search Beta Is Here
The Microsoft search engine beta was launched yesterday (can a beta be called a launch?). I haven't played around with it much, but I'm glad to see that my site is the #1 hit when searching by my name! I'm also glad to see that, unlike Google, they don't distinguish between 'a' and '
November 8, 2004
If You're Thinking About Buying a Digital SLR...
...now is a good time to do it. Digital Photography Review is reporting that Canon and Nikon have announced their fall rebates.
November 4, 2004
World of Warcraft Street Date Announced
Blizzard announced today that World of Warcraft will be available on November 23rd. I've been playing the beta for a couple days now and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. It is just what you'd expect from Blizzard...a very high quality game from a company that knows gaming. Tonight I spent a couple hours running around with my level 8 gnome mage. The quests are plentiful and fun. There is very little downtime, at least at the lower levels. The interface is intuitive and easy to learn. So far I'm having a blast.
November 1, 2004
World of Warcraft Stress Test
Blizzard is announcing that the World of Warcraft game client is available. This download is being provided to help stress test in anticipation of the upcoming open beta. Fileplanet will undoubtedly be innundated with requests. If anyone hears of a bittorrent download available anywhere, please post or email me.
Definition of Stupid
stu
Godzilla Turns 50
But he doesn't look like he has aged a day! The final Godzilla film, "Godzilla: Final Wars", is scheduled to be released next month in Japan. He'll go against no less than 10 other monsters and wreak havoc in several cities across the world, including New York (do I hear any "Godzilla rampaged through New York and did $10 billion in improvements" jokes?), Paris, Shanghai and Sydney. No idea on when it will be showing here.