MC Lars

I heard MC Lars' tune "Hot Topic Is Not Punk Rock" a few days ago and I really like it. You can check out some of his stuff on his myspace account, which surprisingly enough, does not suck. Auto-loading music tracks is evil, though.

National Pancake Day

Ok, kids. Some genius decreed 2/28/2006 National Pancake Day. As a consequence you can a free (FREE!) short stack at participating IHOPs tomorrow between 7am and 2pm. Don't say I never did nothin for ya. [more info]

Just For the Record...

I was out of town that week. It seems that residents in and around Skowhegan, Maine (which is roughly where I spent many of my formative years) have been reporting weird, unexplainable tremors. Geologists are unsure what the cause is, since no seismic tremors have been recorded. [article]

More Death Valley Pix

(click to go to album)

Edited a bunch of picture over the weekend. Almost done with the set from Zabriskie Point in Death Valley.

RIP: Darren McGavin

Darin McGavin has passed away at 83, according to his website. McGavin is probably best known as the actor who played "The Old Man" in A Christmas Story or Kolchak in Kolchak: The Night Stalker. He appeared in a variety of tv shows and movies over the years including The X-Files (inspired by Kolchak) and Millennium, produced by Chris Carter. He will be missed.

The Upside of Anger

That was a surprisingly entertaining movie. Best Kevin Costner movie I've seen in ages.

Death Valley Pix Day 1

(click to go to shutterfly collection)
Some pictures from the first day of my trip to Death Valley. Since I got there around sunset, there aren't a lot of pictures in this collection. I did get some nice night exposures.

Also the first shot from the second day. I call it "Go"


(click for larger image)

Trippy Images

I was over at the William Orbit website (new William Orbit album, YAY!) and I found this trippy animation. If you go to the site (click on image above) and click on the "dancing girls" link in the side bar, you will see a very trippy and relaxing video.

More On Death Valley

(click for larger image)

So my mom and I headed down to Death Valley a week ago Sunday. Through a lucky coincidence, the rental place at the airport had a Land Rover LR3 available for a reasonable price, so I jumped on that. Had fun seeing what the nav system thought we should take for a route. Made it down in a reasonable time, although it was pretty tiring (7-8 hours). We stayed at the Furnace Creek Ranch and I did some long exposures in their date palm grove, despite being thoroughly exhausted. It was very pleasant there, in the 50s I'd say (at night).

Got up early the next morning to go to Zabriskie Point (see previous blog entry for a shot of the moonset there with Manly Beacon in the shot). Then we drove down to Badwater, which is the lowest spot in the western hemisphere. It's pretty funny to see "SEA LEVEL" painted hundreds of feet up on the cliff wall near Badwater. Drove a ways down 190 and shot some pretty yellow flowers that were covering the hillside. After heading back to ranch for a quick lunch and offloading pictures, we headed out to try and get to the Racetrack for sunset. Unfortunately, due to pilot error, I took a wrong turn and drove over an hour down the wrong road. Did make it as far as Ubehebe Crater by sunset, but it was too late to get to the Racetrack which is down 27 miles of nasty washerboard road (hence the 4WD vehicle).

The last morning we got up at O' Dark Early to take pictures at the dunes at Stovepipe Wells. That was super cool, although there were some people climbing on the dune I wanted to shoot, which kind of bummed me out. It was really quiet there, except for the occasional car jetting down nearby highway 190. I just stood and listened to the silence (well, except for the unfortunate background noise in my ears :-p) for a few minutes until I heard a bird singing. It was a really tranquil moment. We had been there three hours before we knew it. Drove back to the hotel, bugged out and headed back home. Stopped for a short side trip at Darwin Falls (a smallish waterfall that runs year round) where we hiked into a canyon for a few hours. On the way back saw the wind kicking up a huge cloud of sand and borate, which was pretty cool, as was the site of joshua trees in the sunset. Overall, an excellent trip. I'd like to go again some time (not during the summer).

Still haven't processed many pix. In the meantime, here are some teasers. Click to see larger versions.


(moon over Stovepipe Wells)

(sunrise at the dunes)

(near dawn at the dunes)

You Know, Maybe the UK is OK

A British company has given its employees free iPods to listen to comedy tracks on their commute to work. Bloody decent of them, I think. [article]

And Ice

(click to see larger version)

So, a few hours after I dropped my mom off at the airport, I went over to my friend Donald's place and we headed off to Yosemite.in the Land Rover for a photo tour of Yosemite in the winter. I've always wanted to go there at this time of year. As we were driving up the Merced River valley, I lamented the lack of snow, but as we rose above the plains into Yosemite valley there was snow! And it was good. We got into the valley right around sundown, in time to take a few pictures. I like the above one of half dome in the snow. I should have more pix to show in coming days, but I have about 6.5GB to go through, counting the Death Valley pix. :-p There will probably be an annoying number of shots of Half Dome as it was a frequent subject.

On the morning of the second day there, we got up early to go shoot Half Dome and Yosemite Falls from the valley floor. It was so cool in both a literal and figurative sense. Temps were below 20 degrees. But it was really great to be out in the wilderness with just the sound of the falls to hear. We went back towards El Capitan and got some cool pictures in the woods right before El Cap.

(click for larger image)

That afternoon I hiked up part of the Yosemite Falls trail to Columbia Lookout and got some more nice shots of Half Dome. On the way back from dinner that night we saw a zillion stars on the way back to our rooms. It's so cool being away from civilization!

On the last day we got up before dawn again and drove past Curry Village to go to Mirror Lake. As we were making our way there, we heard coyotes calling. It was overcast out so it wasn't too too cold. After we finished up at Mirror Lake we had a nice breakfast and cleared out. Got some more nice shots on the way up to the Tunnel View on 120. Then it was time to head back to the Valley where the chilly, rainy weather seemed pretty warm in comparison to the past few days.

Fire

(click for larger image)

Land Rover Rental: ~$90/day
Furnace Creek Ranch Cabins: ~$130/day
Driving Down Hwy 190 In Death Valley While Playing Repo Man Sountrack: Priceless

Just sent my mom back east a little while ago having returned from Death Valley. I want to add that to the list of national parks I would revisit. Weather is great in February. More words and pix later. I have to get going on my Yosemite trip. Whew.

Fire and Ice

So later this morning my mom and I are headed out to Death Valley. I hope to see Zabriskie Point, Badwater, and the Race Track. Maybe some ghost towns too. We head back on Tuesday, so I guess we won't be able to see too much. We're staying at Furnace Creek.

Then on Wednesday (the same day my mom flies back east), I am heading to Yosemite for some winter photography until Friday. Should be a really busy week!

Strong Words, Strong Bewildering Words

I saw this baby tonight trying to upgrade some .NET frameworks on my windows box. Not sure what XP is trying to tell me here.

Personality Defect Test

So, this meme has been making the rounds and I had nothing better to do, so I did one of those online personality tests. I have some problems with it, but I tested out as the Robot. However, I was kind of on the fence on a couple traits, so I could also match the Capitalist Pig (don't think so), the Hand-Raiser (those who knew me in high school know that it sure matched then), and the Spiteful Loner (this seems a closer match to me than Robot).

You are the Robot! You are characterized by your rationality. In fact, this is really ALL you are characterized by. Like a cold, heartless machine, you are so logical and unemotional that you scarcely seem human. For instance, you are very humble and don't bother thinking of your own interests, you are very gentle and lack emotion, and you are also very introverted and introspective. You may have noticed that these traits are just as applicable to your laptop as they are to a human being. In short, your personality defect is that you don't really HAVE a personality. You are one of those annoying, super-logical people that never gets upset or flustered. Unless, of course, you short circuit. Or if someone throws a pie at you. Pies sure are delicious.
To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.


Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Class Clown.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hand-Raiser, the Emo Kid, and the Haughty Intellectual.

[Deflicted Personality Test]

Iranian Newspaper Sponsors Holocaust Cartoon Contest

A newspaper in Iran is sponsoring a cartoon contest mocking the holocaust to test the open mindedness of the West. This is in response to the cartoon of Muhammed that seems to have a lot of people setting shit on fire these days. I am not entirely sure what the point of this is, given that there are not a lot of Jews in Denmark. Wouldn't a satirical cartoon of Martin Luther be more in order? But why let logic and reason get in the way of a chance to make light of the holocaust? [article]

Trailer Remix Fun

So, not quite as funny as the "Shining" trailer remake, but still worth a chuckle is "The Fight Club," a trailer portraying Fight Club as a chick flick. (requires Quicktime)

Caliban Sees Something Down There

(click for larger kitty cuteness)

Fun With Long Exposures

(click for larger image with star trails)

So I was at the Radiant Vista web site and I found that they also have tutorials there, including one on shooting pictures at night (55MB .mov file), which is cool since I have been thinking a lot about that sort of thing of late. The tutorial had a bunch of good ideas and inspired me to dig out my tripod and see what effect the sodium lights on my my street have on a really long exposure. This one was a tad over seven minutes long and sure shows up the accumulated pinkish light from the street lights. I used a tungsten white balance to cool things a tad. If you drop the temperature to 2000, the sky actually gets blue, although the foreground is still unnaturally yellow. Guess the remote shutter was a good purchase after all. If you look at the larger image you can see the stars tracking across the sky.

Night Pix of San Jose

(click to see album)

I was heading home from work last night, when I saw a jet coming in on my way to the garage. It looked really, really cool because it just kind of appeared out of nowhere in the fog and left these shimmering contrails behind it. Unfortunately the pictures I took didn't really capture the moment very well. Hard to shoot fast moving objects in low light. I took some more of downtown SJ though. Those are pretty good for not using a tripod.

And These Guys Are Our Allies

A new Turkish film, set to open today features a squad of American soldiers who break into an Iraqi wedding, murder a bunch of members of the wedding party, and haul the rest off to Abu Gharaib, where a Jewish doctor cuts out their organs to sell on the black market. Oy vey! Evidently this movie feeds on Turkish discontent with their relationship with the US. I wonder what our enemies would produce for a movie about us. Oh, the best part? Gary Busey plays the Jewish doctor. Not making this up. [article]

Puxatawny Phil Sees Shadow, Six More Weeks of Winter

Which is just fine by me. Maybe I'll get some skiing in eventually. :-)

Whither Now, Oh Macbook?

Man, I need them to start shipping Macbooks soon. This is no longer simply the desire to have a faster machine, but also because the hinge on my TiBook is looking very messed up and I'm afraid my trusty warhorse may not be long for the world. :-p