Halloween Weekend Fun

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I had a pretty good (if not terribly productive) weekend. I got a new "normal" lens for my camera Friday morning and spent a fair amount of the weekend testing it out to see how I like it. The results so far seem positive:





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The above shots were some that I took in Berkeley while visiting with Rick, who was nice enough to have lunch with me and ramble around Telegraph and environs.

I have more shots, which I took of the CoreTech Band at beer bash on Friday, here:



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Saturday night I went to DaveR's party where I was treated to food, drink, and Halloween ambience par excellence. Maybe had a leetle too much food and drink because I felt really queasy the next day. Oh well, the price one pays I suppose. Anyway, a great, if tiring weekend overall. Didn't I get a spare hour somewhere???

Oh, and I learned something cool. If you accidentally shoot in high ISO (like you crank the ISO up to 1600 to get some low light shots one day and forget to reset it) you can still get nice looking pictures if you desaturate the image completely (i.e. change to black and white). It looks grainy still, but it's like big silver nitride black and white photos.

Petzold: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?

I ran across this article on Slashdot the other day. "Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?" Ordinarily I would just ignore this as the usual anti-MS rantings one finds on Slashdot, but I did a double take when I saw who had written it: Charles Petzold. If you've done any Windows development and you read a book to learn how to do it, there is a decent chance you read one of Petzold's Windows Programming books. So, to hear him questioning Microsoft's main development environment was pretty interesting. Good read if you're into software development.

Texas to Ban All Marriage?

Stole this from Kristi's blog, because it's too priceless...

Evidently, in an effort to be even more hard core than those pansies trying to ban just gay marriage (or possibly just confusion over what English words mean), a proposed Texas constitutional amendment would potentially ban non-gay marriage as well as gay marriage. Part of the amendment reads:

"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage." (emphasis mine) Good for them for trying to get read of that archaic institution. Why should married people get all the benefits?

[article]

Washington Man Dies From Having Sex With Horse

The King County Sheriff's department is investigating how exactly a Seattle man came to die of injuries sustained from having sex with a horse, reports the Seattle Times in this article.

Ok people, maybe a horse schlong is just a tad too big for rear entry (or front entry for that matter) for animals other than horses. Damn.

Ring, Ring

Hmm, the land line appears to be working again. Mixed blessing.

Into the Wild

Finished this short non-fiction by Jon Krakauer. Good book. Chris McCandless was a kid with an incurable need to tramp around. After he graduated college, he essentially divorced himself from his family, got rid of his worldly possessions and hit the road. He ultimately wound up on a journey to Alaska to live alone in the wilderness, presumably to learn something. Who knows what. Through a few miscalculations he wound up dead in the woods. Kraukauer collected some info about McCandless from his friends and family to try and figure out why McCandless wound up where he did.

Trying to make sense of where you belong in the world can be hard sometimes, I guess. I can certainly relate to that.

Microscopic Art

CNET has an article about about microscopic art hidden away from our sight. Primarily they discuss images inserted in various microprocessors such as Waldo, above. They also mention a really cool site called the Silicon Zoo, which has all kinds of way cool microscopic images, such as The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man:



Also naturally occurring substances, such as Vitamin C:



... and lots of other images.

[CNET article]

HP Lovecraft Comic

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Just in time Halloween, the website Lovecraft Country has published a comic based on the writings of HP Lovecraft that you can view online. Actually, I'm not sure if they just published it, but it is online. Not so bad, what I've read so far. Hoping there is more to come, though.

Pumpkin Party Pix

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Went through my Pumpkin Party pictures and culled out what I think are the best ones.

Pumpkin Party 2005

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Went to Noelle's annual Pumpkin Party yesterday. There was much pumpkin carving enjoyment for all. Met some new folks and some old folks (Keira made it, yay!). Drank cool beverages and had some nice Halloween themed treats. The above picture is Morgan's diabolical pumpkin within a pumpkin, which attached with screws and twine (It's aliiiiiiive!).

At the apres party we watched Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis and Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave. The former is stain on the fine reputation of the original RotLD. The latter is the funniest anti-drug movie since Reefer Madness. Both feature an oddly leering Peter Coyote, who looks very much like he put in the wrong pair of dentures. Seriously, what is up with his mouth/facial expression?

Anyway, I've done the first pass on processing the pix I took and should have a gallery up tomorrow.

Porcupine Tree Revisited

Went to see Porcupine Tree at The Grand at the Regency in San Francisco tonight. It was kind of a mixed bag.

Pros:

• Different set from previous shows. They played several songs from Stupid Dream and a bunch of other albums that I didn't recognize.
• Some of the songs were great: "Heart Attack in A Layby" and "Arriving Someplace But Not Here" were outstanding.
• It had a lot more of the acid-trip-gone-horribly-wrong visuals I remember from previous tours.

Cons:

• The sound was awful. I think they were using stacks meant for arenas or something. When they did quiet bits, it sounded pretty good, but as soon as low frequencies came in, it became very muddy. Dunno. Maybe it was me.
• They started pretty late. The opening act started at 9pm and the garage I parked at closed at midnight, so I had to skip out on the end of the encore.

Overall, I'm kinda glad I went alone. I think I narrowly enjoyed it, but I don't think anyone but a nutty fan like myself would have had the least little bit of a good time. Unless they were drunk. That might have helped. Oh well.

Blog Spammers, Begone

Hopefully turning on the word verification for comments will keep those thrice damned blog spammers out of my blog. Grrrr.

Change In the Weather

Now, I don't want to suggest that the wind was unusually strong tonight, but I did see an evil looking old woman flying through the air on a bicycle tonight.

All this turbulence is stirring up negative energy or something. I've been in a strange, somewhat dark mood this evening. Which hopefully didn't scare the people who got to hear me singing "Hey Man, Nice Shot" at the top of my lungs at the stop light tonight.

Maybe I'll be feeling more human tomorrow. Hopefully this isn't human.

Twisted Fairy Tale

Found this twisted fairy tale over on my friend Kristi's blog and felt compelled to share:

The Cutie Bunch Friendly Pal Pack

Funny Puberty Explanation Spoof

You may have seen those boring old health movies where they explained what puberty is all about. Now someone has taken the time to make a fun cartoon that will catch kids' attention on the subject of puberty. This highly amusing short film is from The Puberty Pals and is entitled: "What the Heck Is Happening to My Genitals?"

WARNING: Not work safe. Not safe to play around children. Contains images many people would consider very objectionable, such as anthropomorphized genitals. Contains vulgar humor. Do not play with sound turned up in public places. May be contrary to local customs and practices. You probably shouldn't even consider looking at this.

Ok, don't say I didn't warn you: What the Heck Is Happening to My Genitals?

How To Screw With Bulk Mailers

So, are you tired of getting all that spam in the mail from various companies? Do they send you those postage paid envelopes? This guy claims that you can mail pretty much anything under 72lbs back with postage paid envelopes and the bulk mailers get to pay the postage for it. He's mailed tires, shingles, etc and provides detailed instructions on how to do the same. I don't know if it's legitimate or not, but it is damned funny. Check it here.

30 Second Cartoon Movie Summaries...

... done by bunnies. Found this site this afternoon on milkandcookies.com. Very amusing, very short films. All the characters are bunnies, even say, the Alien in the Alien summary.

It's done in flash, so be sure to move your mouse over parts of the last frame when it's done for easter eggs (if you will).

[angry alien site]

Speaking of Lou Dobbs...

I caught some of Lou Dobbs' show last night and was really taken aback. I have always thought of him as a pretty straight laced, middle of the road kinda guy since he's primarily done business news for CNN for the past six million years. However, he was tearing the government a new one left and right last night. With respect to the Commerce Department report on outsourcing that they sat on, he basically said that the administration or someone in it was lying and when could we expect the truth? Holy shit! I have never heard an American journalist out and out call someone a liar. He called the Congress a "do nothing Congress about the matters that Americans really care about." Wow! I know it was late night and probably six people were watching, but wow!

Commerce Department Fudges Offshoring Report In Election Year

I saw this on Lou Dobbs' show late last night. So, in December 2003 Congress asked the Bush administration to produce a report about the effects of the offshoring trends in America. They were supposed to produce it six months later, in June 2004. The report was never made public until that liberal muckracking institution Manufacturing and Technology News filed a FOIA request. It turns out that the 12 page, $335,000 page (yep, $28,000 a page) report was ready well before the November 2004 elections, but strangely was kept from being released to the public. Further, the conclusions of the final draft, created by political appointees at the Commerce Department, are at variance to the initial conclusions the analysts who worked on the report arrived at. It basically concludes that we can't really be sure what effects offshoring will have on the American workforce. The analysts, however, wrote, among other things, that "there is growing pressure in corporate America to offshore IT work."

Now some people will probably not be surprised that this report didn't make it's way to the public in an election year when the people writing the report are the incumbents, but it's nice to see that dirty laundry gets aired sooner or later. Here's the whole article, read it for yourself.

A History of Violence

Went to see the latest David Cronenberg movie tonight and it was solid! The plot was way more approachable than a lot of what Cronenberg has done lately, but compared to adaptations of Naked Lunch and Crash that's not saying a whole lot. It's the story of Tom Stall, who has to defend the diner he owns in podunk Indiana from some criminals and draws the attention of some more Bad Men who think they know him. Cronenberg doesn't skimp on the gore (which has gotten more realistic than his earlier work) and the kinky sex scenes. But the pacing is kind of slow, in a deliberate sense. Things are very matter of fact and then BAM, craziness happens. There is some humor (some people were laughing at weird spots during the movie, not sure what that was about) and irony even. I think the idea of the movie is that Tom Stall represents our society: He wants a quiet, peaceful existence, but has the ability to be savagely brutal, even as he denies that he has this ability.

MIT Students Test Archimedes Death Ray Weapon

I saw this on slashdot. In 212BC the Greek scientist Archimedes supposedly used polished mirrors to set on fire some of the Roman ships besieging the Greek colony of Syracuse. People have long been skeptical that this actually took place and the Mythbusters on TV evidently "busted" it since they couldn't reproduce the effect. Some kids at MIT however, appear to have different results in their seminar class. The yellow line is a paint stripe, btw, not (as I had previously thought) a "death ray." Check out the rest of the story here.

Cheese, Gromit, Cheese!

Saw Curse of the Wererabbit last night. I got my requisite Wallace and Gromit goodness. Their tale of of their humane pest control system and how they deal with a strange new pest is basically one sight gag after another.

More Amusement From Pat

And people wonder why televangelists are so disliked. I stumbled across this article in The Nation talking about all the shady deals Pat Robertson and front organizations he has organized have been up to. Like using African disaster relief money to buy diamond mine equipment and buying interest in precious metals in Liberia. Since Operation Blessing (a Robertson run relief organization) is a prominently featured FEMA relief organization for Hurricane Katrina, one wonders if he'll use the donations from Katrina to buy oil drilling equipment. [article]

iPod Halloween Costumes

The company iAttire has Halloween costumes for iPods (Possibly for the same people who enjoy dressing their pets in costume?). They have Frankenstein, Ghost, Mummy, Pirate, Vampire and Witch costumes, as well as a set a paper mask costumes for your pod. Costumes are $39.99.

Home Again, Home Again

Back from the Eastern Sierra. First day was kind of an adventure, as I couldn't find my tripod head and ended up going to Palo Alto to get a new one. On the bright side, I have a much nicer tripod now. Drove through Yosemite and stopped for a sec near Olmstead Point to snap a few pics. Went over the Tioga pass into Lee Vining. The sun was setting, so we drove up the Walker Creek Road took some pictures of some aspens at near peak color. Drove on to Mammoth once the light failed. I saw the Milky Way from the car and it lived up to its name for once. Got to Mammoth Lakes a little before nine. We discovered that the town pretty much rolls up the sidewalks at 9, so we had a spot of trouble getting dinner.

Got up the next morning at four AM. Actually, I fell asleep on the bed while "resting". Drove up to Convict Lake before sunrise. There were some nice trees at the base of the mountains surrounding the lake. I shot wide, mostly. Discovered the ring mount for my neutral density filter was not in my pack. Damn. It was still awfully dark there at eight, so we moved on to June Lake where we got coffee before moseying onward. We went on the June Lake Loop and found a really cool stand of aspens in color from which I got the above picture. We went back up the Walker Creek road which turned out to be quite an adventure, so it was good we had the 4WD truck. It was wicked fun ramming around on that road! Got some more mountain and foliage shots. Took a short break to catch our breath and offload images back at the hotel and then we headed south, to Bishop in the Owens Valley. We stopped there to check out the Mountain Light Gallery, which was started by Galen Rowell. Beautiful pictures there. We then hopped in the truck and headed southward still to Big Pine and then up to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. We got there before sunset, but only just, so the shooting was a bit rushed. I guess we'll have to go back again some time. Those trees are amazing. Some are over 4000 years old! It was well after dark by the time we got back and was really peaked at that point.

The last morning I got up at 4:30 so we could get to the South Tufa shore on Mono Lake by 6. We did and I think I got some neat pictures such as:



We then had a fine breakfast at Nicely's in Lee Vining and headed back to the Valley. We took Route 108 in hopes of spotting some more foliage on the way back, but that didn't pan out. The scenery (what I didn't sleep through) was really nice nonetheless.

I was really tired most of the time, but I am otherwise pleased with this trip. With a little luck, I got some decent pictures that I will post at some future time. Oh, last night I slept over twelve hours, so I'm feeling a lot better. :-)

Hitting the Road

Heading out for three days of photography in the eastern Sierra. Nancy and I will be staying in Mammoth Lakes. Be back soon!

Gelb Music Sale

I just got an ad for Gelb Music's annual private sale, which is Thursday, October 6. I can take up to three friends. They're also having a public version of the sale on the 7th and 8th. Maybe they'll have that telecaster I've been looking for. :-)

Serenity

Saw the movie Serenity this weekend. I hadn't seen the show Firefly upon which it is based, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Well, I was in for a pleasant surprise. This is a spectacular film! The writing is solid, as is the acting, and effects. I will almost certainly have to see this one again in the theater. I shall have to investigate this Firefly thing more thoroughly. Too bad Fox didn't realize what it had at the time. Again.

The Wonderful Weekend of Gaiman

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Whew! I had a full weekend that seemed to largely revolve around Neil Gaiman for some reason.

Friday: Noelle and I were supposed to see Nine Inch Nails, but the show got postponed, so we went to Neil's signing in Berkeley with Zak. I split out of work a bit early and slogged through rush hour traffic, got onto BART, then hoofed it through downtown Berkeley to find that the tickets weren't at Cody's but at the site of the reading. Arrived there sweaty, disheveled, and not at all gruntled. Neil read a bit from Anansi Boys and then did Q&A for about an hour. That made me more gruntled. And the signing began. And went on. And on. And on. After about four and half hours, we finally got to Neil. Noelle got her iPod signed (that's in the picture). Neil looked really tired at that point and probably still had another half hour to go, at least.

Saturday: Spent much of the day reading Anansi Boys. It's the story of Fat Charlie, who is the son of Anansi, the spider god of legend. Fat Charlie has not had much of a relationship with his father who really embarrassed him as a child before. Anyway, Anansi dies and Fat Charlie find out a.) he's the son of a god, b.) he has a brother Spider he's never known about and c.) his brother has gotten all the "god stuff." Fat Charlie arranges to meet his brother and his life takes a turn for the worse from there. This book started off a little slow, but picked up speed and I ended up staying up all night reading it. I think like this one almost as much as Neverwhere, which is my current favorite Neil story.

Sunday: Saw Mirrormask with Noelle and Kevin. This was an awesome movie, just what I hoped for. The visual effects were just crazy, absolutely crazy. It's a kind of an Alice in Wonderlandesque tale. The main character Helena ends up in a strange fantasy world where she resolves to awaken the white queen and restore balance to the world which represents her unconscious mind (I think). I will probably go again.