Not really, but I did create a “page” on Facebook for my photography hobby. This will give me a place to showcase my more professional work without it cluttering up my personal Facebook profile.
See the “Like” link on the sidebar to the right.
Setup an account on 500px. I’m pretty selective about what I upload, only 15 photographs so far.
The ketogenic diet is going very well.
We have been able to reduce the amount of medication Sarah takes by about 30% over 4 months, and our seizure control has remained good.
We will continue to experiment over time. Maybe someday she won’t need meds at all.
She’s brighter and more alert than ever.
Today we went to the park and introduced her to the tire swing, one of her sister’s favorites.
As I drive around town I yearn to stop by houses I once inhabited and just spend time there. I sometimes drive by my old houses and sit in my car outside just staring at the house remembering my childhood contained within.
Just ring the doorbell, walk in, “don’t mind me I only lived here for 20 years of my life”, and just hug the house from the inside, and say, “I miss you soooo much house”.
I was in Tustin today on an errand, and I yearned to visit my friend’s old house, but his family hasn’t lived there in years. What would I say to the people? “I know you think this is your house, but I lived here longer than you ever will, and the walls of this house have been present for my history”. I wish, once you moved out of a house, it died and self imploded. The thought of strangers in my old houses bugs the shit out of me.
I yearn to visit my old house in Alaska. Perhaps the strongest attachment of all, I have a recurring dream I’m back in my house in Alaska.
It’s funny, I don’t think it’s at all an attachment to the people in my life at the time, but just the actual physical location.
I get VERY ATTACHED VERY EASILY.
When my wife and I went back to the big island of Hawaii to the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel we looked for our wedding spot, a little area carved out of the rocks above the ocean. It was gone; they had rerouted the trail and vegetation had grown over it. I was so sad. I get uneasy when my history changes, when I go back to places and they’re not the same that they were. It creeps me out and I get melancholy. I miss my house in Irvine, and my friend’s house in Tustin. I miss my house in Lake Forest and my house in Laguna Beach. And more than anything I miss my little log cabin in the Alaskan wilderness and our family home on the big island of Hawaii.
If I had the money I’d buy all these places back and kick the a-holes out that live there now. I’d fly between them all frequently.
The V700 had dust inside it stuck to the underside of the glass panel. I didn’t notice until a few days into my scanning I started noticing the same blotch on all my photos. I looked closely and sure enough there were pieces of debris on the underside of the glass. Good job Epson, aren’t you supposed to build scanners in a clean dust-proof room?
I took the V700 back and am waiting for a new once to come into stock. For now I am scanner-less.
On March 19th 2009, (Bringing Back Memories), I began an effort to digitize all my photos I shot before I went digital.
Unfortunately 20 years worth of my father’s slides got added to that mix so I never actually got to scan any of my own stuff and since March of 2009 I’ve been working on getting his stuff scanned so I could get back onto my stuff.
33 months later I am done, (with my father’s slides).
I burned up the Epson V500 Photo scanner in the process, and ended up with a V700 Photo to finish the job.
It’s a great scanner and I appreciate its ability to scan 12 slides at a time compared to the V500 which could only scan 4 at a time.
Now I can begin scanning all my own stuff! Detour complete. Below are a few of the thousands of old pics I scanned.
After months of my blog being unresponsive I kicked my old host to the curb. I’m now with Dream Host. Hello World.
Another shoot with the lovely Minna. This time indoors. I’m very fortunate to have her and Ryan as my friends. Thanks again guys I had a blast.
From nikon rumors. 
Nikon’s new professional camera, (to be announced in January), is a 16 MP extreme ISO performance camera.
Here are the rumored specs.
Am I missing something?
The Megapixels
When 21 and 25 megapixel cameras have already been out for years why after all this delay and time is Nikon’s new flagship model only going to be 16 megapixels? I realize megapixels aren’t everything, but after all this time to be coming out with a professional camera that takes lower resolution images than many consumer cameras just seems odd to me. If this is going to be priced the same as the D3, then the old Canon EOS 5D Mark II is looking more and more attractive every day.
The ISO Performance
And ISO performance up to 12,800? Who needs that? I never shoot past ISO 100. I’d be perfectly content for the rest of my life if my camera only went up to ISO 400. What audience is Nikon catering to with these specifications? Blind people with small printers shooting in caves with only available light? Maybe I’ll call this the “cave man camera”.
Of course I’m still holding out hope that the 36 megapixel D800 will be affordable, (in my dreams).
Sarah has been on the Ketogenic diet a few months. Her mom has already begun slowly reducing the amount of medicine she receives each day.
It’s tough to tell if being on less medicine means Sarah has greater cognitive ability.
She’s six years old.
Below is a video of her sister preparing a meal for her.
Major thanks to Ryan and Minna for making this all possible. Thank you both very much for providing me this most excellent start on my path of becoming the world’s greatest model photographer. I had a blast.
Below is a set from our first photo shoot with two of my favorite pics highlighted.
First shoot using my new light meter. See how I can balance ambient and strobe light now? Woot!
[rant]
For the past four years I’ve struggled to build SOA systems in a timely manner. In every case it has been because it was decided to go with another department or companies service for a crucial system feature.
I’m a big fan of SOA; no one wants an application hitting 20 different database servers directly. SOA is the way to go, but you still need to be the owner of all the “S”ervices you’ll be using.
When other departments own and maintain the service or when other companies own and maintain the service, you are at their will. Their service goes down, you wait, and wait. There’s nothing you can do. At least if the service is home-grown and internal you can take action to get it back online.
In addition to run-time issues, I’ve run into countless design-time issues. If a service I need to consume is not owned and maintained by me, I may have to work closely with another department or company to learn the service, get them to unlock WSDL or deliver a spec, or provide me an API key. There’s nothing wrong with this, except that it all adds time.
If I’ve learned anything over the last four years, it’s that when you choose to use someone else’s service instead of rolling your own, you have no control over your timeline, and any estimates you make are purely wild ass guesses.
[/rant]
at the park in the dark
Sarah, on the 24th we’re taking you to the hospital, and we’re going to set you free.
Love,
Dad
Heading back to our car after a day at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, the stairwell had some good lighting. I regret the shadows on her face, but otherwise the shot came ok. This was with my 50 prime.
Someday she’ll wake up, and she’ll be free.
He just had the balls to do whatever he wanted.
I think he was a great product strategist and a great designer.
The aesthetics world has certainly lost a valuable asset.
The difference between Steve Jobs and any other great product/designer is that Steve didn’t have to contend with other people telling him what to do and when to do it. Steve didn’t ship things before they were ready.
Perfection takes time, and Steve was allowed to take time. In my experience, when striving for perfection, people usually cut you down half way there and force you to compromise. Steve didn’t have to answer to anyone. He also made a lot of crappy products too, people just don’t remember them. He was also an ass to work for.
We’ll all miss his contributions, but he wasn’t that special, he was just a guy, who had great marketing and design skills, and who had the luxury of doing a lot of experimentation without anyone telling him how or when to do it.
RIP Steve Jobs.
Rage came out today and I found myself defending its most certain lack of meaningful story. My defense was that if the game-play is fun, ala Doom, Quake, etc, then it doesn’t matter if there’s no story or the story is bad.
Most games have a start and an end. Getting from one to the other is just a matter of moving through pre-defined checkpoints. I ignore story a lot these days; I don’t read quest text. I finished Mass Effect, Bioshock, and Deus Ex Human Revolution without paying attention to the story. I couldn’t tell you what those games were about. I skip every cut-scene I can. I pick dialog choices arbitrarily because I know the game designers wouldn’t implement a story choice that leads to a dead end.
Essentially, no matter what I do in the game, as long as I kill people and move to the next checkpoint, I will ultimately get to the end; or one of a few pre-defined ends. I feel powerless, my in-game decisions physically can’t move me into story that wasn’t pre-defined on the media when it shipped.
Understanding that I cannot influence the story, and ignoring the story is of no consequence, what is the point of story in video games?
I ask because video games are supposed to be an interactive medium, yet the same as movies, we are only along for the ride; the story exists without us and we are powerless to influence it. So I say, story doesn’t matter. I am happy moving from checkpoint to checkpoint killing as many lifeforms as I can along the way.
All things I didn’t learn at the HTML5 Developer Conference 2011 in San Francisco.
The conference was unfortunately a bust. The venue was not large enough for the number of attendees and most sessions were full so you couldn’t get in the room. The sessions I ended up going to were mostly sales pitches from companies who have products to push.
I think I’m done with conferences for awhile, I’ve never learned anything from a conference anyway. The networking is valuable if you have time.
What I did learn this trip is:
And work wanted me to write a blog post, so this covers that requirement too.
San Francisco is a lonely place when you’re alone.
I like being alone because I can do what I want.
I dislike being alone because I’m lonely.
I walk around town, and I pass a hundred pretty faces, none of which I’ll ever speak to. It’s the loneliest feeling being surrounded by hundreds of people you’ll never say hi to. I could walk down Eddy just north of Market for some company, but getting raped by a drugged out woman isn’t as good as I had hoped, (see my last trip to SF; oh that’s right I didn’t blog about that!).
Why was I out of my hotel room anyway? That’s right, I was on my way to get some Indian food; an Indian place called Mehfil.
I didn’t make it. I got distracted by a neon sushi sign. Much like long legs in a short skirt, you can’t ignore Japanese. I hesitated for just one moment when I considered it was a place I had never been before, but the Indian place was another full block away. I caved into the Japanese; sorry Indian.
The place had no patrons in it; odd for 6:45 PM at night. I figured they’d all be streaming in soon. I ordered a chicken teriyaki bento box with California roll. It wasn’t until right after I handed over my Amex that I realized there was no kitchen. Kids, if you end up in a restaurant that doesn’t have a kitchen, it’s a sign that you should leave. I’m not quite sure what magical process he used to conjure up my meal, but it involved a lot of opening and closing drawers and using the microwave.
I asked for a drink, he offered me a Diet Coke. I asked him for a regular Coke, and he hesitated. Ok folks, I’m not that fat! I may be stocky, but I’m not huge. He reluctantly handed me a normal Coke. So here’s the deal. I’m going to get back onto my marathon training plan, and after I’ve lost 20 pounds I’m going to come back and call him a fatso.
I asked him how late he was open, he said 7:00 PM. Let’s see, no actual kitchen, just microwave meals, not open for dinner; OK I chose poorly. Not being one to judge a restaurant by its cover, I happily carried my meal back to my hotel.
The miso soup has spilled all over the inside of the bag and gotten the bottom of the bento box wet with yellowness. So, the next time you’re in a hotel room and the bed spread has an unpleasant stain on it, don’t think bodily fluids, think miso soup; because it happens people! Not my fault.
The food was pretty bad. The soy sauce was ok, but it came in a Kikoman packet so I’m pretty sure there was no way to screw that up.
I’m still drinking my coke.
Drop for drop more venomous than the black widow. We have 100s of these living in the stone walls of our front porch.
