Today's meme, began by Matt Haughey, is the Memorymap. An emergent collaboration between Google Maps and Flickr, people are taking satellite snapshots of their hometowns and annotating spots with memories from their past.

Brilliant.

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As has become our annual tradition, Rachel and I and a bunch of friends went to a nice brunch on Easter Sunday and took easter eggs to a cemetery where we did some sightseeing and photography.

The first year it was just Rachel and me wandering around the cemetery across the street from my apartment in Pittsburgh. Last year it was Karen, Crystal, Gina, and a tiny, old (150 years; that's old by California standards) cemetery in Half Moon Bay, where we dyed the eggs off the back of the car with vinegar we brought and cold water we got from the diner next door.

This year eleven of us went to a really fine brunch at Crimson then went to Oak Hills cemetery, a sprawling expanse of resting places in such a variety of ages, themes, and ostentation. Along the way we took plenty of pictures which I'm sure Rachel and I will be posting for several days.

To start things off though, I have a small gallery of portraits I shot at brunch and later. Last month I got a new lens, a fixed 50mm f/1.4. It's a really fast lens (lets in a lot of light allowing for fast shutter speeds and very narrow depths of field) and was great for indoor photography. Using spot-metering for exposure, I got a lot of nice pictures with good subject tones and completely blown out backgrounds. I really like this effect.

Mostly because they do a better job than I can, I've taken to using Flickr for most of my blog galleries for the time being. Feel free to comment on pictures there.

Enjoy!

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The latest photography meme is to take a picture of what's behind your computer monitor and make it your desktop picture. In addition to what a cool effect this is, it's another example of the power of Flickr, that I could just go there and find a collection of transparent desktop pictures that people have made in the last two days. I recommend the slideshow.

Also of note is that Flickr has added a 'popular tags in the last day' and 'last week' list, so you can get a sense of what's going on in the blogging world, and see the photographic evidence. It makes things like today's Playstation Portable release into a communal event.

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After rumors, cagey refutations, and more rumors of acquisition countered by rumors of next-round VC funding, Ludicorp (creators of Flickr) today announced that they have indeed concluded an acquisition deal with Yahoo.

Personally, I (almost) couldn't be happier with the news. Unlike a lot of acquisitions happening in this space by leading internet companies, Flickr wasn't a technological or 'quick-fix' acquisition. They've really hit the spot on how photo sharing on the net can be scalable, community oriented, and centered around the photographers, and not a proscribed business model.

Unlike so many sites based on premises like 'we can make money by getting people to print their photos through us' or 'we can make money by using other people's content to build the walls of our garden a little bit higher,' Flickr instead is a mirror of the web, where photos are atomic pieces of content, like web pages. The ability to create linkages between photos based on common theme, author, reader favorites, or collaborative groups, means that the Flickr site is a fertile bed, full of nutrients giving rise to communities formed through usage, instead of (well, in addition to) explicit friendship circles.

Flickr didn't start out as what it is today. Stewart and Caterina started Flickr small, with a group of users who were highly focused on both photography and online community, and they paid close attention to what worked about the site and what didn't, and they changed it again and again. There are so many features of Flickr that don't bear enumerating because they don't read well as an itemized feature list, but when you're actually reading or publishing through the site, you're constantly surprised by how well thought out it is, and how you can do nearly anything you want.

One of my favorites is the concept of monthly storage allowance. 500 megs of photo space sounds generous when you've only uploaded four pictures, but when you're at 450 megs, it seems a lot smaller. Opting instead to let people upload a fixed amount of data per month, Flickr allows users to throttle themselves if they're adding too much too fast, instead of forcing them to hit a functional brick wall when their quota approaches at highway speeds.

I was also encouraged to read that Flickr isn't seen by Yahoo as a Photos substitute. They each have their own user base, with their own wants and needs, and merging the two would only end up with muzak (and picking one over the other would result in pebcak, as one set of users' application knowledge becomes obsolete).

I'm eager to see how this fits into Yahoo 360, and hopefully I don't have more than a week or so to wait, though Flickr integration may take a bit longer, unless the deal's been signed for a while now, and integration is already well underway. Then again, maybe I speak too soon. Flickr already provides RSS and Atom feeds of almost any page you can get to on its site, so much of the groundwork may already be laid down.

Congrats Ludicorp, and congrats Yahoo. Now let's see if we can get Game Neverending back up off the ground!

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Talk about moblogging dedication. Heather always has her camera at the ready.

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Put a few representative color scribbles on a b/w image and the software will colorize it accordingly. The quality of the result is truly impressive.

After looking at the photo results, I was blown away by the video results. Looks like Ted Turner has a new toy...

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Rachel and I spent a quick couple of hours at the last day of Macworld Expo to see all the new goodies and do a little research. MWSF (Macworld San Francisco) is a tradition for me for over a decade, starting when Ben and I drove up from Los Angeles when I was in 11th grade, when nobody had CD-ROM drives and a color scanner cost $5,000. Boy have times changed. With the uprising of the Internet, the tone of expos has gradually changed until there are pretty much two kinds of vendors: the huge corporations with exhibition palaces and small quirky companies with science-fair booths. Rachel and I both brought our cameras to the show, and I'm happy to link you to our second joint album.

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Want to go to the expo, but you're not in the Bay Area or cant get off work? As is so often the case nowadays, Flickr members offer the next best thing.

Check out the Flickr slideshow of all images tagged 'macworld'. I'm going on Friday and will be sure to contribute a few pics of my own.

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So you're in an airport.

You're in LAX, one of the country's busiest airports, after 22 hours of intercontinental travel, waiting for the last puddle-jump that will take you back home.

Except the return flight is delayed two hours, and after watching The Terminal over the last hour on the Pacific flight and the first hour stuck in Terminal 8, both of you are punchy and in a weird airport headspace.

You also both have Nikon D70s, one with a 28-70mm and the other with a 105mm portrait lens. Huddled behind and under the departures monitors, what else is there to do but people-watch and document the event?

I've always felt that airports are strange, magical places outside of realspace. O'Hare and Denver remind me of the 'woods between the worlds' in Narnia, where each portal (gate) leads to another reality, and there exists no indigenous reality except a generalized amalgam of miniaturized chain stores.

This is Rachel's and my first joint album, but now that we are both so digitally-equipped, I'm certain that it won't be the last. We'd love to read your comments.

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Photos and stories of twenty injured Iraq war veterans

It's easy to forget that for each of the 1250 US soldiers who have been killed in Iraq, there are several times more who come back missing limbs, blind, paralyzed, or with metal shards that have torn through their brain. As amazing as the pictures are, the stories these people tell about their own actions and mindsets are even more stunning. I'm really surprised this got sponsorship, but I'm very glad it did.

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Last Tuesday Rachel had an endoscopy to find out more about what's been upsetting her stomach for the last six weeks and longer, and after a trip to the clinic, an IV (for her, not me) a camera-on-a-tube, and a doctor to take her picture so I could look at her from inside as well. Such a pretty duodenum.

I'll let Rachel tell the story but suffice it to say I'm happy that we could take the whole thing in good spirits.

Back when I was at Cal, I intended to sign up for one of the MRI calibration experiments, because I wanted to post a cross-section of my brain, but now I think this is even better.

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When a president sixteen years out of office dies we put his casket out for all to honor, first at the Presidential Library and now in the Capiton Rotunda where his body will stay for three days as tens of thousands of people will visit and pay their respects. Thousands of photos will flood the media for days.

On the other side of the world, when a soldier dies in Iraq nobody is permitted to take pictures of the casket under the rationale that it violates the privacy of the grieving family, even if the family explicitly gives their consent.

This photo honors a patriot

This photo commits a crime

Maybe there should be a checkbox on the enlistment form:

[ ] If I am killed in the line of duty, I would prefer the media not take pictures of my casket on its journey home.

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Well, not so much a 'review' as a testament that Rachel and I saw it last night and thought it was really good. Naturally, it's not the same kind of movie as the original (sequels so seldom are), but it's good in a different way. Strike out character development and use the saved time for more cameo in-jokes and oblique (and overt) movie, cultural, and fairy tale references.

The movie never lets the audience rest, but in a telling example, Rachel and I want to go see it again after a few weeks because we lost several lines because the audience was laughing too hard.

The soundtrack is also great. Any animated piece that has both "I need a hero" (sung by a fairy godmother) and "Funkytown" has gotta be worth a look-see.

Anyhow, today we're off to North Beach (San Francisco) with Ali and Mark to see if we can take so many pictures that we have to use my new Belkin iPod media adapter to drain the 1 gig card and fill it up again.

After that, we're all going to see Dido in concert at Berkeley High School. It should be a pretty full day.

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So now two of my friends chided me, grousing that each Tuesday the new Randompixel goes up later and later. Now it's 10:39pm, but it's still Tuesday! And in the spirit of Tuesday, I bring you Rick, this week's Randompixel camera!

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Okay, okay, my bad. Rachel's birthday was Saturday, May first, May Day, Beltane, whatever you want to call it.

We had friends over and had a wonderful time in our backyard, our sanctuary, our hummingbird paradise. Rachel pulled off a wonderful party (I helped a little) and everyone had a great time. Rachel even went above and beyond and took some absolutely beautiful portraits of the guests as we spent hours talking, watching the hummingbirds scurry, the light fade, and the glow of food and fun continue on after bringing the party inside. Six hours never passed so quickly.

Happy birthday, Rachel! May this year be your best yet, and may you bask in the glow of all those who love you as I do. Okay, well not as I do but, you know, love you lots, too.

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In a remarkable feat of sticktoitiveness, today I post Ammy to Randompixel:

Hah. and the real Ammy didn't think I could do it. :-P

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Doing some research on our new toy, I came across a teriffic article on Sports Illustrated's digital photo workflow.

Minutes after eight photographers stationed at this year's Superbowl took over 15,000 pictures in under 6 hours, it falls to two guys huddled around a monitor, giving the thumps-up or -down to two pictures a second, paring the shots down to a reasonable set, and that's just the beginning.

Just 18 months ago S.I. relied on film, two portable developers in a trailer, and a staff of negative-cutters and mounters to do the same job half as well. All-told, it's an interesting look at the melding of humans and computers in the workflow of managing 42 gigabytes of photos in under a day.

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Hot on the heels of releasing her photo site, Rachel (aka 'the grrlfriend') has finished construction of her weblog at phoenixfeather.net.

Cool design (getting cooler all the time), great photography, prose, and all the features Ben and Mena can churn out.

Of course she's also got an RSS feed, and I encourage all of you to subscribe. Rachel's turning into a more frequent personal blogger than I am, and if you read both, then we don't have to do double-duty posting on the same things, though I'm sure we sometimes will.

Go there now and read about our trip to Death Guild's 11th anniversary party, complete with photos of me dancing in the cage.

Yes, really. Go. Now.

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A photologue of a Japanese student's 1996 visit to North Korea.

Cherry blossoms were so beautiful,
but they only doubled our confusion.

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So, on to other topics (phew!) I'm really excited that Rachel's put the finishing touches on Phoenix Feather Photos. For the past several weeks, Rachel has been taking pictures for the new site, and she's putting them together into albums on the site.

Snuggle

I'm really impressed at her eye for framing shots, and her use of depth of field. I'm looking at getting a new digital camera, and I only hope I can get half as good with it as she is with hers.

Right now there are two albums up: Winter Yellows, and Simply Berkeley.

Rachel's also working on a few other albums at the moment, and is trying to gather some more candids of the hummingbird in our backyard, and of neon-lit churches, wherever they glow.

To keep folks up to date (everyone wants to be a little sticky nowadays), Rachel's also set up an RSS feed for Phoenixfeather.

For the curious, right now she's using an Olympus Camedia C730 with 10x optical zoom, but we're both looking forward to the new Nikon D70 digital SLR.

No matter what she uses to take pics, Rachel really has a knack for capturing the shots I can't even see when I'm standing in front of them, and I hope you enjoy her work as much as I do.

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So while I was at work and later at poker night, Rachel took the opportunity proffered by a clean and empty house to bring Nym, her cat, over from Ammy and Rick's.

Aside from a little crying while in the carrier, Rachel says Nym had a fine time at the house, including what was probably her first exposure to fish.

Blub and Mutant took the encounter in stride.

It remains to be seen whether she could be left around the fish unattended...

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Reason #448 of why Google is a fun place to work: Celebrity drop-ins. Last week Al Gore stopped by for lunch. About a month ago Howard Dean came to talk with us. Before that Jimmy Carter and Gwenyth Paltrow stopped by (individually, not together).

About 10 minutes ago Clinton stopped by. I suppose it was planned in advance, but the buzz ran through the building about 5 minutes before he came.

(If I'd known I'd have a better camera than my T616 phonecam)

He shook hands and I'm certain that if there were babies present, he would have kissed them. Anyhow, nifty Tuesday and a good distraction while waiting for my car.

Update (3:15pm): As it turns out, I have verified that there was a baby there and that she did get a kiss on the cheek. (Thanks for the scoop, Kerah!)

Update (4:35pm): Was Clinton's visit leaked to the press? Or maybe to The Onion? Judge for yourself: Clinton Googles Himself

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Hey from Albuquerque, where so far we have made three rights and a U-turn, but no left turns. We'll have to make a point of that.

We're at Napoli Coffee, just a few blocks off Interstate 40, where they have free wireless, and really comfy chairs! Oh god, comfy chairs...

Driving's been going great. Yesterday we had our first really long leg of driving, leaving Little Rock in the morning, driving through Oklahoma and into the Texas panhandle before stopping at Amarillo, Texas. It didn't even seem like that long of a day, despite Oklahoma City's sweltering heat and humidity.

Being the pit stop that this is, I don't have time to craft a real journal entry of the trip so far, but I'm attaching a bunch of photos I've taken along the way.

I hope all is well with everyone else. Our plan for now is to make it to the Petrified Forest and stop there, see it in the morning, visit the Meteor Crater 40 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona, then it's a little up in the air, so long as we make it to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon the following morning (Monday), where we'll spend the day and the night, then head from there to Las Vegas Tuesday morning, pick up Rick at the airport, check in to the MGM Grand, see Zumanity Tuesday evening, and "O" on Wednesday evening. Thursday morning Rick flies home and Ammy and I drive to Los Angeles to spend an evening with my family, then drive up to the SF Bay on Friday morning and afternoon!

Whew! Well, by miles we're well over halfway, and the latter part of the trip should be a little more pampering (though Hot Springs, Arkansas was a nice diversion).

For those who need to reach us, our cells should be a little more friendly now that Oklahoma and Texas are past, though I'm sure the Southwest has its fill of dead zones in the desert.

Oh yeah, Road Trip Photos.

Click for More!

Whew! That's a lot of work for one cafe stop. I think Ammy's giving me some content to post, so you may have some reading to go with the pictures.

Talk to you all soon! Oh, by the way, when you leave comments, I get them in my Sidekick inbox, and we read them from the road. Keep 'em coming!

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I love hazel eyes. Rachel and I both have hazel eyes that change color under certain conditions. Yesterday hers were a pretty blue-to-green-to-brown, so I decided to take a picture.

After downloading it, I noticed that the mirror of her soul reflected me as well, so I submitted the picture to Heather's Mirror Project.

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So now I have an iSight and nobody to talk to. what's a boy to do, but set up a webcam?

Quelle retro

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Last weekend Rachel and I ventured across Pennsylvania to attend a wedding where, incidentally, Rachel was the Maid of Honor. We left early Friday morning with a map and a timetable in hand.

Trying to make the most of my time left in the strange and foreign land known as Pennsylvania, I couldn't pass up the chance to drop in on the Pennsylvania Dutch, and so we planned a 30 mile detour just past Lancaster and deep in to the heart of Amish and Mennonite culture. In this case, a rural town called 'Bird-in-Hand'.

At the urging of the buggy company's web site, www.amishbuggyrides.com, we took the "quickest, then most scenic way" in to town, in defiance of Yahoo Maps's directions. It's a bit of a quandary, when you think about it: Who knows more about the optimal route? The computer that warns you that roads it tells you to travel on might not even exist, or the Amish who are forbidden to drive cars and haven't travelled more than 15 miles from their birthplace? In this case, Yahoo had the direct route right, though the way we took may have been a bit more scenic.

We were already behind our tight schedule that would bring us to Reading (well, Hiedelberg, but who's counting?) in time for wedding rehearsal prep (involving the bride, her mother, bridesmaids, and a distinct absence of moi). Still, we made it, and the Buggy Ride bird was now in our hands, and we weren't going to let it go. Thankfully there was no line, just a buggy, a horse, and a driver (footnote 1). In 10 minutes we were underway. With a family of four fellow travellers sharing our buggy, I sat right up front on a small wooden footstool, right behind the horse. Unfortunately, the previous sentence isn't the only one that uses both the words 'horse', 'behind', and 'stool', but seeing as this sentence fulfills that prophecy, I don't have to bring it up later, but it happened, and at a trot, no less.

The first bit of the ride was along the highway, in the 'buggy lane'. I was impressed that the horse looked both ways before merging in to traffic, a good thing since it turns out that because horses aren't machines, there's no license or age required to operate such a beastie on the open road. We quickly turned off the main road on to a smaller road, where our guide pointed out the ways to tell whether a given house was occupied by Amish (dark-curtained, unadorned windows, no wires leading in to the house, often simple clothes on the washline) or by others. We passed a carpenter's studio with a sign declaring that he would be happy to make custom furniture to order. A few moments later we were passed by a large tour bus. I got a momentary insight in to the Amish lifestyle as twenty tourists crowded to the windows and pointed at us, the presumptive Amish they had come to see through their tinted panes.

It wasn't too much further when we pulled on to a dirt road, heading towards barns and silos. It turns out that this was the first day in a month that they'd been able to take this path, as the earlier rains had made the path too muddy for the cart's narrow wheels. We drove between fields, seeing a horse-driven plow team here, a person tending to a garden there.

Amish look Amish all the time.

The average Amish family has about 10 children, which is why every day is laundry day. It also explains their culture's survival. the Amish culture has just about zero population growth, since so many of the kids leave the farm.

Driving past a barn and scooter (Amish will ride push-scooters, but not bicycles), we came upon three girls working in the family garden. they were probably 20, 14, and 3 years old. When the buggy came, the middle girl came out and offered us chocolate chip cookies, three for a dollar.

Amish know their cookies.

We went on our way, and continued between fields, with silos in the distance, and grazing cows near the path. Trundling by the cows, I wondered: Does our horse know he's a horse? Does he look down on the lazy fat cows as he works for his daily fare, or does he lament his position? Do the cows laugh at him? Is there a parallel to be found here between the Amish and wider civilization? Are we the cows?

Amish Factoid Time:

• Amish don't work on Sundays. Sunday is God's day.
• Weddings always happen in October and November, when they interfere the least with tending the land.
• An Amish man shaves until he is married, then he grows a full beard, but never a mustache.
• Weddings are always held on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It takes a full day to prepare for a wedding, and a full day to clean after a wedding, so mon-TUES-wed and wed-THURS-fri is the only way to ensure that nobody misses a wedding while preparing for another.
• After the wedding, Amish newlyweds go door to door to collect their wedding gifts.
• Amish aren't permitted to drive cars, but can be passengers.
• Those Amish who require phones for their business keep the phone in the shed, a fair distance from the house.

I forgot to ask if the Amish vote.

Coming back to the terminus after our 30-minute ride, we saw a field trip of 20 kids in identical blue t-shirts. they were all going buggying. We asked how they'd handle them all, and sure enough a long buggy with lengthwise benches emerged to the kids delight.

A quick gift shop pit stop later and we were on our way to the rehearsal, plus a jar of blueberry syrup and a slab of rocky road fudge.

Amish Mennonites know their fudge. (Know the difference between Amish and Mennonites? Check the FAQ!) Actually, truth to tell, we thought they knew their fudge, and we wouldn't know any better for another two days, but that's another day, and another story.

Footnote 1: Driver is an interesting term. I was having a conversation with Ammy a few days ago about words that persist in our culture, after the literal meaning of the word has been surpassed by technology. Her example was an article about TiVo where it talked about taping shows, as if TiVo has anything to do with tape. I tried to think of others, but it's not easy to do off the cuff. 'Driver' is definitely such a word, as it derived [npi] from the person who 'drives' the horses forward. (go back up)

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Uncaptioned as of yet, I wanted to post my gallery of pics from today's graduation. So much fun!

Click to see the rest

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Walking to the bus yesterday, I found that the recent rain had yielded tens of thousands of dandelions across the street. Later in the day I got to take a few pictures.

(See the others)

Let me know if any of these particularly strike you and I can make up some desktop pictures and post them.

So many potential wishes out there, and I really only need one.

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Los Angeles, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas, and the Carnival Cruise ship Elation.

Captions and stories for some pictures to follow later. Right now, just the images. Sorry for the huge index page!

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Karen and I went to Magic Mountain yesterday, rode many rides, including a few very fun new coasters. I want to blog, but I feel my next post should be the long post explaining exactly what happened, the events leading up to my deciding not to go to China, the inner torment before, during, and after that decision, and what's happening now.

However, we're just about to go and see "View from the Top" so I'll probably work more on that blog post tonight and tomorrow morning, though later tomorrow Karen and I are visiting the Getty Center.

I hope everyone's doing well. I've got email access here, so by all means email me if you like.

Till I write more, here's a gallery of pictures, mostly from Magic Mountain, and one from the Sherman Oaks Galleria:

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Okay, you're a puppy.

God doesn't give you paper-training, but he does grant you a little logic, so your guardian watches you carefully, and picks you up and places you on newspaper whenever you have that 'gonna make' look on your face.

After a while, you get the hang of it: Whiz anywhere, get scolded. Get placed somewhere and whiz: Get praised. This puppy existence ain't so tough: You pee where your master tells you to pee.

A few weeks later this silly geekus erectus thinks about his cute puppy, and glaces at his cute Sony Vaio. He grins and grabs his cute digital camera, deciding that a little cuteness is in order.

Oblivious to being cute, puppy thinks, 'Mmm.. I should start looking for that newspaper thing...'

With digicam in hand, master grabs puppy, opens Vaio, and places one atop the other. As master says "Stay" and takes aim, the puppy recalls the only trick he's learned so far, and does the same.

So you see, the puppy really isn't to blame.

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For a seminar yesterday, we were to make a collage of our bathroom, real or ideal.

I took pictures of my own bathroom and mixed them together for a cognitive level look at my bathroom, with more important things taking up more space.

I can't explain how I forgot the actual toilet...

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Just a pic of me in my all-weather gear. Note the resemblance to the 'Stop' and 'Yield' signs in the background. I hope that's not the message I'm putting out there! Maybe I should get some green pants to make the effect complete. Thanks to Kerry for the pic.

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As promised: New Years Eve pics. Commentary to follow, except to say that I just love these four pics, especially the ghost dancers. Wonderful digital camera serindipity.

(click to enlarge)

If anyone's interested in the full source for the ghost dance pic, let me know and I'll put it up.

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As previously mentioned, today was an incredible day. I thought I'd share a few pictures in hopes that it wold help convey the wonder:

(click to enlarge)

Hopefully this helps show the beauty I saw today...

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Well, not my mouth, but his mouth. This is the most creative (and mildly disturbing) photographic project I've seen in months. Really cool stuff.

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Snow keeps threatening to fall, or rather the Weather Channel keeps promising, with nature underdelivering. I'd complain except I expect she's saving it all up for a blizzard, and I'll wish I'd kept my mouth shut.

In the meantime, I've hardly got my camera locked up. The Fall colors here were (and, lingeringly, still are) stunning, and I took plenty of pictures.

For most of you, Fall is still in full swing and Thanksgiving, that cornucopia of Autumnal bliss, is just around the corner. With that in mind, I'm turning some of my better pictures into desktop pictures for those who want a little of the Fall spirit in your computer, without the worry of soggy leaves actually shorting out your screen.

Here's the first. I'll put the rest up one every couple days. for those using Mac OS X 10.2, you might want to try out the nifty new auto-change feature that can fade in a new desktop picture every day, hour, or 5 seconds, as you like. If you're on a PC, Wall Random does pretty much the same thing.

Choose your screen size:
800x600 | 1024x768
1280x854 | 1280x1024 | 1600x1200

Lemmie know if I missed any important screen sizes. The 1280x854 is for G4 powerbooks, and I figured (hoped) nobody was still running 640x480.

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So I know I've mentioned before on here that I live across the street from a cemetery, but those bare words don't do it justice. In the same way that Californians naively refer to 60-year-old buildings as 'old', most of use are used to nice neat cemeteries in nice neat rows; plots marked with plaques or short headstones following a common style guide: anonymity in all but the literal sense.

That's why places like the Black Diamond Mine cemetery, a true 'grave yard' is so nifty; the placement of the plots, and the headstones themselves tell far more about the character of a person, (or the people they left behind), than a bronze plaque could convey.

Come to think of it, I want my URL on my headstone.

Buffy was here.
(no, I didn't do it)

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Went to a great Halloween party last night, courtesy of Rich (all praise Rich! Give him money if you didn't at the party! If you were there! Why am I yelling?! I don't know! OK then!) Pretty much everyone there was from the HCI or Interaction Design programs, or with someone from there.

Click on Death to see the photo gallery:

Happy Halloween!

I didn't think I had a costume in the stuff I brought out from Berekely, (and so I didn't wear one to the party the night before), but in the end I remembered my communicator badge and pips I had in my special box in the closet, and my sweatshirt that I've always thought looked 'Federation Casual' and it all came together okay.

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The leaves they are a'changin' round these parts. Here and there it's as if a tree has burst into flame amongst its still-green brethren. More and more the trees are giving up this year's ghost, losing their chloraphil and letting their keratin shine through.

The leaves are changing, and changing fast. After a summer that stretched further into October than it ought'o've, Fall looks to be compressing itself into a few short weeks, as temperatures have been dipping from the 80s three weeks ago into the 30s and 40s now.

I think the trees were just hanging on until the cooldown, and are now feeling pressured for their wardrobe change before winter sets in, casting the city into a moder-world Narnia of snow and limb.

And they're rushing, too, perhaps because they're aware that the season's first snowfall is forecast to come as early as Friday.

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So I was up until 6:30 this morning, in the cold multimedia lab, before walking over to my office to take a nap on the couch, prepping for my 8:30 class.

My cellphone went off at 8 as I asked it to, and I opted for a 5 minute snooze before facing the next half of my 48-hour day.

Apparently reality and I have a difference of opinion as to what constitutes 5 minutes, or so I realized when I looked at my watch and saw that it was 9:55.

Pissed at being (so very) late, and having a flashback to the recurring nightmares of waking up 2.5 hours late for a 3 hour final, I got up moved my car which, after two hours of delinquancy, didn't have a ticket (small favors, I thank thee), and was grateful (for once) that Interactive Programming is a 3 hour class, and I'd be coming in just after our mid-class break.

Walking in on a presentation, I was still asked by Pamela to see her after class. I thought I was older than that. Wanh. (stomping foot)

Nevertheless, the presentation went off without a hitch, and all went well. She told me I should be working on more challenging programming projects, and I certainly could; I just have to clear my work buffer to the point where the assignment doesn't get shoehorned into the sandman's time, because sometimes he takes time when you've really got better things to do.

So some of the fonts won't work quite right, unless you have the full Lucida family on your computer, but if you're interested, here's the thing I made last night, a takeoff on the traditional hangman game.

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Walking off to class this morning, I almost tripped over this guy on my porch:

Here's lookin' at you, kid.

I got another picture of him in prayer, but I like this one because I can't tell what he's thinking.

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I'm sitting here in the University Center (dubbed 'the U.C.' which having come from a U.C. is confusing), fifteen minutes before my 9am Computer Music class, relazing and drinking my first chai in over a month.

Things are really settling in, and I'm enjoying the warm weather (94 degrees yesterday!) in the absence of the earlier high humidity. The cicada have all died off, and night has been reclaimed by the crickets. I can feel the days getting shorter, yet the perpetually forecasted 72 degree days are always several days off, replaced by scorchers as the days roll on.

All's well in Kevinland at the moment, and I'm doing cross-country-trippage video-editing in the off-hours. I dreamed that it snowed last night, and that day will probably come sooner than I expect.

Just wanted to wish everyone a pleasant morning, while most of my readers are probably still asleep...

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FilePile, one of the best sites ever for keeping up on cultural events, memes, kittens, and porn, has a thriving online community, but has closed new users accounts for about a year.

Today, a regular user put their spare account up for auction on eBay. This is one of the most relevant, ironic, and interesting cases of grassroots e-commerce I've seen all year.

It's a serious, valid auction, and there are regular filepile users I know who would pay $300 for the accounts they got for free, but the question remains, how much will someone bid for an account on a site they've never seen? FilePile has always been a word-of-mouth thing, and since it's free and the server's so overloaded, there's never been an incentive to publicize it.

This'll be fun to watch.

For the rest of us: I've been contemplating a 'best of FilePile' secion on Fury, where I'd share some of the gems that come through there...

(note: At posting time, the auction was at $31, starting from $0.01)

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Well it's Tuesday, and the eyes are about 85% of normal. Still no contacts for me, and probably not for another several days, but at least I can apparently sit in front of a computer and read without too much discomfort.

For those of you looking for an 'after' photo, here's how my eye looks now (compared to earlier). Still itchy (don't rub it!) but a lot better than before.

Now it's catch-up time at work, but I've got some posts I'll be writing on the train tomorrow, so hang in there. :-)

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And I thought last week's allergies were bad...

This weekend I went with my dad to try flying model airplanes. Out to Antioch we went, and we were there for no more than 30 minutes before I had the worst allergic response of my life.

Hours later, in the Alameda County Hospital emergency room, he snapped this picture of my swollen eye, and the other one's just as bad. (Only click if the words 'this picture of my swollen eye' don't deter you.)

Needless to say, contact lenses or any kind of reading for more than a few minutes is pretty much not going to happen for a little while (1-3 days, according to the doc), though the nice doctor gave Kevin some drugs to try (Zyrtec) so hopefully this won't happen again.

I really hate pollen.

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So naturally the part of my bio that's sparked the most attention is my cheese disclosure and subsequent 'skeezy cheese' amendment.

What is a skeezy cheese? It's different for everybody, and since this is a democracy, I'd like to see what you think is a skeezy cheese, and so without further ado...

First, get a grip on the skeezy clip from Buffy: The Musical.

Good. Now I've taken the liberty of venturing to Bev'n'Mo to document a good selection of cheese, and I put the question to you. Take a look at the selection and judge: Am I SKEEZY or NOT?

Later there may be a taste and smell test to confirm the web audience results.

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A pair of great links this morning, one for the eyes and one for the mind.

First there's a project sponsored by Kodak. A journalist took a 3,400 mile road trip from New York, New York to San Francisco, California (Actually, to the Marin Headlands, but let's not be picky). The interesting bit is that he took one photo at each mile along the journey.

Second is a remarkable piece of journalism from the New York Times (free registration required but worth it), where a reporter purchases a young steer and over nearly two years traces the life of a typical beef steer from conception via insemination to, yes, his own dining room table. This is a really eye-opening piece on how economics has pushed the cattle industry to the extreme, endangering public health and ecology in ways I'd never considered.

(linkprops to Metafilter)

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At long last, here's my Mardi Gras Gallery

It wouldn't have taken so long except that I took this chance to try out a new gallery model I've been thinking about. The whole layout is created dynamically, grabbing the image information out of a database. I'm planning on using this model, with more features like hide/show thumbnails and prev/next buttons and commenting functionality, for Randompixel, which means that with this gallery, randompixel is a big step closer to going live.

I'd like your feedback on what you think of the gallery design. Is it overbearing? Is it useful? I'm thinking most galleries would have smaller thumbnails, by the way.

Anyhow, enjoy the gallery. For those at work, the pics with the little exclaimation point on the corner aren't necessarily work-safe. It was, after all, Mardi Gras.

Have a great weekend all!

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So Wednesday I drove in to work, ditching the train. Driving up Mathilda towards Yahoo, I found myself behind a Honda Accord with the license plate "TECH CEO". Now most of you know of my penchant for interesting license plates, so I couldn't resist snapping a shot at the light.

You're not the CEO of me, man.

Immediately after I took the picture, the guy freaked. I assume he was looking in the rear view mirror as I snapped the shot. He waived his arm menacingly, as if to say, 'what the hell do you think you're doing?!' I give a friendly wave, mouthing "I like your plate" but I can't assume he can read lips from that far. Well, the light changes and the guy speeds off, changing lanes frequently, speeding up and slowing down. I don't follow, but the guy seems torn on whether he wants to run away from me, or know what the hell is going on.

Finally, at First Ave, he reaches the red light and stops in the middle lane. I pull up next to him, since I have to turn left to get to Yahoo's parking lot. We're both sitting at the red, so I roll down my window to tell him I liked his plate, and that was all. He's looking angry, the light turns green just then, and he barrels away.

I thought CEOs were supposed to be cool and collected. Then again, perhaps tech CEOs have cause to be a little more nervous in today's economy, which could explain a dotcom CEO driving a Honda Accord.

Whatever the reason for your freak-out, I'm sorry Mr. Tech CEO Man. I'm not trying to catch you in one act or another. I just thought you were cool.

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I'm loaning a friend my Vision Science book for her class in Visual Perception. I envy her this semester, taking Visual Perception with Stephen Palmer, and Mind & Language with George Lakoff. I remember when I was in those classes, and how clear it was that you were learning from two of the leaders in the field (and I mean that in the good way). She may also get the chance to study in a small neurology seminar with Rich Ivry. Ivry's great, not only because of his extreme knowledge (and ongoing research) in the field, but because he's easygoing.

Back when I took his Cognitive Neuroscience course (CogSci 127), I remember (and wouldn't you know, I've got the photos too) when he talked about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Basically, a TMS is a solenoid that generates a very powerful, but highly focused magnetic field that disrupts the delicate electrical potentials within its reach.

The thing is shaped like a ping-pong paddle, with a wire going from the handle to a computer that controls the pulse duration and frequency. The flat paddle projects a disruptive field a few cenitmeters beyond its surface. Scientists use it to create temporary harmless brain lesions. Basically, this will stop a select few square cenitmeters of a person's cerebral cortex from functioning for under a second per pulse.

As we in the class are all amazed by this, he rolls out a cart with a laptop and a TMS paddle on it and asks his head TA if he could come to the front of the room. It sucks to be the GSI. But no, the TA was going to man the computer, while Ivry took the paddle in his own hand, placed it carefully on the right part of his skull (right forward parietal lobe, the motor cortex, a little off from the top, the part controlling the left arm and fingers), holds out his left arm, and signals to the TA.

Professor Ivry takes his role as an educator very seriously.

The class goes very quiet. Shuffling stops, pens stop writing, the 360 students in the room completely fixated on what's about to happen. A flashbulb goes off and 361 heads turn toward me as I sheepishly lower the camera and everyone starts laughing. Once everyone looks back to the spectacle-in-the-making, Ivry gives the sign and the head TA presses a few keys. Pulses accented by quick beeps pulse though the paddle, and every four seconds the professor's arm and fingers twitch. "Okay, now I'm going to concentrate on keeping my fingers absolutely still" he says, and there's absolutely no difference.

I snap another picture without a flash, just in case it looks better (it did).

It starts to dawn on some of the students that he could move the paddle a little along the motor cortex and affect other parts of the body, the face, the legs, the toes, and right next to toes on the cortex, the genitals. Scattered pockets of giggling ensue. Made bold by the professor's daring, a few students call out requests: "Can you put it at the back of your head?" (occipital lobe: temporary lack of vision for part of the visual field (not darkness, but a completel lack of awareness that it exists)), "Can you put it at the front?" (prefrontal cortex: temporary lack of personality), "Broca's! Broca's!" (Broca's Area: inability to formulate coherent words).

But no, even when a few students volunteered to be guinea pigs (err, monkeys. I think this thing could probably disrupt a whole guinea-brain at once, and that wouldn't be good) trying, no doubt, to remember where the pleasure center of the brain was. Besides, it wouldn't activate it, as an electrode would. It would just disrupt it anyhow.

I wonder if the grad students ever mess with the paddle after office hours.

Ahh, I miss Berkeley...

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"Some days you find the content --
Some days the content finds you."
- Ancient blogging proverb.

So I was driving home from work tonight, and in the last mile, driving up Telegraph Avenue, I found myself driving behind an ambulance, 'off,' driving with traffic.

I noticed that the lights were on inside, and I could see the med-tech, leaning against the back (err, front) of the van, his back against the driver's seat, dozing.

A small part of me thought, "Wow, a long day for the EMT. He's probably catching a little shuteye while he can before the next emergency.

Ever the vigilant blogger, (err, journaller, err, blogger, err, documentor) I took my Elph out from my jacket pocket, waited until we were both stopped at a light (Telegraph @ Alcatraz, northbound, right lane), turned off the flash, and snapped a pic:

On preview (err, postview) I noticed the picture was a little blurry, so I wanted to take another. Of course, it would have to be without a flash. Two panes of glass, a dirty windshield, and 20 feet dont make for good flash conditions, and two moving vehicles don't make for good non-flash dark photography conditions. So I stayed behind them, waiting for the next stoplight.

Keeping my eye on the EMT, I caught a momentary glimpse lower into the ambulance, and I could see that he wasn't sleeping, but was slowly writing on a clipboard, always looking down at the paper, head unmoving, hand writing low on the form.

Webster; red light; no, green before we get there. Ashby is next, red light (and a long one). I get ready with the camera, but the ambulance turns its blinker on and edges to the right, never coming to a full stop. I can't get a good shot, and don't try. As it's accelerating out of the turn, pivoting up as it climbs onto the crowned road, I can see fully inside the ambulance. I can see that there's a patient on a gurney. I can see the face of a handsome black man in his late 20s. I see how his eyes are closed on an expressionless face, and his head lolls with the van. As the van edges up Ashby to Alta Bates, I realize that it was in no hurry. I realize that what I had originally assumed to be a resting EMT, then one filling out a little paperwork, is actually a man steadfastly keeping his gaze lowered to avoid the face of the dead man he's sharing the van with.

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Went to IKEA tonight, and I took a bunch of pics for fun and research to take back home.

Now I'm home and thought it'd be the perfect time to try out iPhoto's automatic Photo Album maker.

See for yourself.

More important, I bought lamps, which means I now have light, which is a Very Good Thing.

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Wouldn't it be nice if every potential partner's offerings were so clearly labeled from the outset?

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I had a lot of strong memories this New Years, spending time with some friends I really don't see often enough (Frank and Janelle), making some new ones (Derek and Heather), and visitng with old stalwarts (Karen and Crystal), among several others. The moment that will stay with me the longest is sitting in Dinah's car New Years afternoon, listening to 'Hallelujah,'mourning her Grandpa Bob, who passed away on Sunday the 30th.

Like last year, when Kristen's fiancee died in a skiing accident on Dec 30, this New Years mixed the emotions of loss and hope, sadness and rejoicing. I'm sure it was that way for a lot of people this time around, as most of my friends seemed to opt for small gatherings of friends instead of big parties to usher in the next cycle.

New Years used to be so much simpler...

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Reminder: Don't forget about the Leonid Meteor Shower this Saturday night/Sunday morning. If you're in the San Francisco area, watch the Eastern skies from 1am to 2:30am for a spectacular show with hundreds or thousands of meteors per hour. Other areas in the US, adjust your timezones accordingly. It'll be pretty simultaneous for North America.

This photo, taken during the 1999 Leonids Shower, is just amazing. This year's is forecast to be the biggest shower 'till 2099.

Incidentally, Lorenzo Comolli, the photographer who took this picture, has quite a collection of astronomical photographs, including a fascinating movie recorded earlier this month of Saturn being occluded by the Moon and reappearing on the other side (warning, it's in Div-X format, so it requires a special codec (linked to on the site)).

If you can't make it out of your city, then just stay up late and look skyward anyhow and you're sure to see some streaks, as long as it's not cloudy.

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Went geocaching today with Jish, Heather, Jay, Derek, Tim, Kristin, and Dave.

Because my Amtrak train isn't running for the next two weeks, and I have to get up even earlier to battle traffic, I'm going to shortcut and point to their words in addition to the obligatory, unedited gallery. A few excerpts:

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Gaskell's Masquerade Ball was a blast last night. It was a little lower-key than past balls (especially halloween balls) but it may have been even more enjoyable for that. People did a great job on costumes all around, and it seemed far more towards positive, fantasy-oriented outfits, rather than anything negative or literal. The ripples are still obviously still with us and will b