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2008-12-09T17:33:13Z

Got back from Yosemite late last night. Pretty exhausted after lots of driving and hiking. The trip was incredible...I'll keep this entry short since I have lots of work to do, but here is a link to the photos. Enjoy!

Where Is That Sam Guy?

2008-12-06T17:50:48Z

Visiting Yosemite National Park this weekend with a few friends. This is my first trip here, believe it or not. The weather is a bit cold, evenings are down around 10 degrees, but the days are a nice, balmy 40 or so. :) But it's nice and clear. We're all staying in the lodge, no roughing it this time. Probably a good thing, considering the weather. Here is a shot from just outside my room, not a bad view first thing in the morning, eh? You can see the (sparse) upper Yosemite falls just left of center.

12 Megapixel Phone Camera?!?

2008-11-18T02:03:27Z

It certainly looks like it might be a reality soon. Sony announced today a 12MP CMOS sensor for mobile phones. This is pretty interesting news to me, as I have long been awaiting the day when the phone (and we really need to think of a new name for it) will soon be your "everything" device. We're already seeing GPS functionality on most new phones, allowing you to get directions, find friends, geotag photos, etc. And with current flash memory capabilities you can store a good chunk of your music and listen to it on the same device. Now, with the ability to actually take some decent hi-res photos...what's left? Well, power is the obvious issue. Micro fuel cells? We'll have to wait and see.

Note: It was time for a new look for my blog, I hope you like it.

Choco, Again

2008-10-24T19:33:56Z

If you look really closely, you will notice a subtle difference between this photo and the one I posted a couple of weeks ago. Yup, you guessed it. Choco actually rolled over onto his other side. Amazing, huh?

WoW Combat Log Parser, Part Deux

2008-10-24T18:09:27Z

So, Blizzard radically changed the combat log format with patch 2.4. I took down my old log parser since it would not work with the new format, and have slowly been working on a newer version. Well, I've got an initial version of it working. It is by no means a complete work. For example, it doesn't count things like amount of damage mitigated via blocks, partial resists, etc. Nor does it keep track of spells to which your target is immune, etc. I also don't do anything with the timestamps, such as trying to calculate DPS or anything like that. But it does have fairly good coverage of damage and healing.

The other big change is that it is not web-based like the previous one. I decided to write a standalone executable and, since the log files can get fairly large, I decided to write it in C++. What this means to you, if you decide to try it out, is that you will either need to build the executable yourself from the source code that I provide, or you can use one of the exes that I will post. There is more information on the page that I have set up for it here.

More Baby William

2008-10-21T03:42:54Z

Here are a few more pictures of the proud parents and the new baby. Congratulations, again!

Baby William

2008-10-20T19:05:49Z

It was a very busy weekend, lots of driving up in L.A., but managed to get quite a few things done and make some long overdue visits to friends. I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Ian and Elizabeth and seeing their new little baby boy. I will put up a post later with some photos, but right now I'm swamped with work. I thought I'd throw out a little teaser, this is also one of my favorite photos from the trip up.

The Circle of Life

2008-10-07T18:43:48Z

It wasn't more than three months ago that I was saying my final goodbyes to my mother. I still think about her every day. The pain has lessened, somewhat. The difficult part for me is, as a friend of mine put it, the whole finality of it...that she can't see what a beautiful day it is today, or watch her favorite TV show (Law & Order), or go visit my nephews and niece. That we'll never hear her play piano again...that I'll never get to be her tech support person any more...so many things I am going to miss for a very long time.

Life goes on...and the amazing thing is that as we lose loved ones, new life is brought into our world, too. I want to congratulate Elizabeth and Ian, who are the proud new parents of a beautiful baby boy...William Isaac Lucas Douglas, born on October 3rd. I haven't been able to make it up there to see them yet, and I'm sure mom and dad are going to want some alone time for a while, but I hope to have some pictures soon. Until then, well, here's a picture of one of my cats, doing what he does best.

The World Got Uglier Today

2008-07-11T01:15:20Z

My mother passed away early this morning. She had been in the hospital for the past month with kidney problems and pneumonia. After an initial few days in the ICU, she had shown signs of improvement. Sadly, about a week ago she started developing problems again and things deteriorated from there.

To say this has been devastating is a huge understatement. Although she was 74 years old, she seemed to be in fine health and was always running around all over the place. She was well known for just dropping in at people's houses with little or no notice, it was just part of her charm. I guess I sort of expected her to be around forever.

There are so many things I learned from her. She was an incredible woman. I can't imagine what it must have been like raising two boys mostly on her own. But I can't recall ever hearing a single complaint from her. I can't even say I ever heard her say anything mean or derogatory about anyone or anything. She lived modestly and didn't seem to care about material possessions or social status. Despite being from a part of the world that is still very sexist, I think she was a great role model for modern women. She was very independent and self-sufficient, and did anything she wanted to whenever she wanted to. Yet, at the same time, she was one of the most giving people I know.

The pain that I feel in realizing that I can't just drive up to go see her any more, that I'll never hear her voice again, is almost unbearable.

If anyone is interested, services will be held at the following location:

Forest Lawn Memorial Park
21300 E. Via Verde St.
Covina, CA 91724
(800) 204-3131

The viewing will be on Tuesday evening (7/15), and the interment will be Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. the following day. Flowers may be sent to Nivea Ibarra at the above address.

Italy Update Soon

2008-07-01T17:49:24Z

We just got back from Italy at 2:00 a.m. this morning, a 28-hour day of planes, automobiles and sitting in airports. We're both pretty beat and are trying to get over the jet lag. I will be posting a lengthy blog entry about the trip with lots of photos. It should be up within a day or two.

Four More Days

2008-06-13T18:59:36Z

The big day is almost here, I'm getting really excited about this trip. We're landing in Venice on the morning of the 18th, we'll be there for 3 days, then we head to Lerici for 6 days, then finally to Florence for 4 days. Aside from Venice and Florence, other cities we plan to hit include Pisa, Lucca and Siena. And, as Lerici is so close to Cinque Terre, we will definitely spend one, maybe two, full days in that area.

In order to help us navigate our way around Italy, I picked up a TomTom 130S. BTW, Costco has this unit on sale right now for $179.

I used it around town and was quite pleased with how it performed. The only issue is that the standard configuration didn't have enough room for the US/Canada map and the Italy map, so I had to remove the US/Canada map for now. As you can see, the unit is very small and easy to carry around. It comes with a mount that you can attach to your windshield. Or, remove the mount attachment and it fits nicely in your pocket, great for walking around town. But, the really cool thing is that Google Maps lets you push waypoints directly down to your device.

Makes it a piece of cake to plan your entire route and add all your POIs along the way. FYI, I'll be uploading photos as often as I can considering I'll be spending most of my time out and about. But, if you're interested, here is a link to the Picasa album to which I will be posting my pictures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jorge.velazquez/Italy2008

Murphy's Law

2008-05-24T03:42:17Z

So, I go out to my truck this afternoon. If you live in southern California, then you know it has been raining for most of the day today. I get to my truck and notice the windows are halfway down. For those that don't know, I drive a Nissan Titan. Pretty damn nice truck, too. I love it. So, anyway, I'm like, WTF? I know I didn't roll the windows down, it has been pretty cold and, if anything, I've been using the heater. Now the inside of my truck is pretty wet and I'm more than a little annoyed. Turns out, there is a "feature" with the remote keylock which allows you to open the windows remotely by pressing and holding the unlock key. Yeah, I wonder who the genius was that thought that was a good thing to do. The unlock key must have gotten pressed somehow (I always have my keys in my pocket) and I was completely unaware. Now I get to sit in a rain-soaked seat while I drive around. Nice. I became aware of this "feature" by searching the web looking for possible reasons my windows seemed to roll themselves down. Interestingly, there are lots of other owners who have had the same thing happen to them, and it always seems to happen when it's raining or snowing. :)

Goodbye, Weather Podcast

2008-05-02T19:32:05Z

It's a sad day...I've decided to remove my weather podcast. The reason for this is an email I received from weather.com which clearly outlines their T&C for use of their XML data feed. Specifically, I am concerned about these conditions:

"YOU MAY NOT USE THE SERVICE IN CONNECTION WITH AMONG OTHER THINGS...AS ALL OR PART OF ANY STREAMING VIDEO OR AUDIO CONTENT OR FOR DELIVERY BY ANY MEANS OTHER THAN STATIC DISPLAY ON A TRADITIONAL WEB PAGE ON YOUR WEBSITE OR DESKTOP APPLICATION."

"Your Website or Desktop Application must...display weather data for no more than three (3) locations at a time..."

I am most likely in violation of one or both of these. The whole T&C seems to go against all of the reasons that would drive you to provide an XML feed in the first place...to me, at least. It certainly makes it impossible to use for any type of mashup or any other interesting app.

So, I can get weather data for no more than 3 locations and can only display it as a static web page...whoopdeefuckingdo. Completely useless.

Howdy

2008-04-16T18:48:46Z

Well, I haven't posted a blog entry in, like, forever. I guess I just sort of lost steam, too much going on to really sit down and post anything useful or interesting. Although, I did want to put up a picture or two, blog entries just seem to be so much more interesting with photos. I've been shooting a lot of kid events lately, since so many of my friends have kids that are getting to the age where they are starting to play sports and have other activities going on. You can see most of my work on my Picasa site. I am particularly proud of this picture:

That is the oldest son of one of my good friends. He is 13 and has been playing water polo this year, and is quite good at it. I rented a 300mm lens from George's Camera on 30th and University, specifically for this game, and was quite pleased with the photos. Here is another:

Well, expect to see more photos up. I'm going to try to post a little more often, and am also going to try to always include a photo or two.

Vista Still Sucks

2008-02-21T20:29:17Z

Wow, how many ways can Microsoft bungle Vista? I'd love to sit down and write a lengthy blog entry on all the things that are wrong with it but, thankfully, a few faithful readers and other news sources have it covered way more in depth than I have the time for.