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Peace.

74- And they're off

And they're off... 5 CDs for the swap. Dropped them in the mail today, they told me at the post office they'll be a couple weeks.

I took the time to actually listen to the mix with all the patience in the world today at work. And I have to say, this one turned out pretty decent =D

73- Told you so

See... I told you so... skip the fries and you can have 16 cotton candies xD

72- Arts festival, final part

Final day at the downtown arts festival. I have to say, for a third year, it was well worth it...

A while back I was thinking that there were no decent contact jugglers anymore, and much less in this remote area of the world. I saw a couple of those streetlight performers a few months ago, but they really didn't measure up to my reference benchmark, which for the moment is David Bowie (yeah, David Bowie), in Labyrinth.

But then I saw this guy, calls himself Costrini de Sebastian Marcelo Guz. And, I take it back... I have now seen a decent contact juggler in this part of the world =)

The photos from the festival turned out real good... and there's a couple which are absolutely amazing. I mean, to the point where they popped up on screen and I just stood there thinking "wait.. that shot is absolutely amazing... I cannot believe I did *that*".

Still a few days to go of processing, calibrating, and RAW conversion. But as soon as they're out, I'll let everyone know!

I did put up a few shots in the gallery, in case anyone should want to see what's come out so far.

71- Arts festival, part 2

And once again, it's off to the downtown area for the arts festival...

70- Be safe

One of the annoying things about doing concert photos is that many times you end up sitting for hours on end next to a huge speaker tower. Happened to me last weekend: one of the best places for stage shots was the tip of the stage... where the towers were.

So, I figured out a solution. Went to my local hardware store and got these. About $3 for 31 dB of attenuation. That brings night club level sound down to more of less the level you'd have playing in your living room. Ok maybe a little louder than that =D

And of course, at that level you can still enjoy the concert. Only thing is, you'll miss the trip to the emergency room with busted eardrums the next morning.

69- Here comes the train

March 10, 2011



Saw a train going by... not exactly in the usual way though...

68- Out for a stroll

March 9, 2011



Sleepwalking is one of those funny human quirks. It's a condition where the mind is still asleep, but can perform automatic behavior: those actions you do every day over and over again and you can do without even thinking. Like opening doors, walking through the house, picking up objects, etc.

And nope, nothing wrong with the brain if you sleepwalk. Just another one of those processes that the mind sometimes goes through, a bit unusual, but normal if you have the genes. Kind of like being able to wiggle your ears.

According to biologists, it's an evolutionary thing. Apes developed a brain function that paralyzes the body while asleep, so they wouldn't fall out of trees. That's in part the reason why you can't scream or lift heavy objects in dreams. With time, beds and ground level buildings, evolution started degrading that area of the brain. In many cases, that causes people to twitch and talk in their sleep. And in some, it causes them to sleepwalk.

So, what's with the discovery channel lesson? Turns out this morning around 4:30 I hear a door close downstairs. Probably the wind, I think. Then I hear it open. And I hear it close again. Ok, that's strange.

Then I hear things falling to the ground. And I figure I better go have a look. And I go down the stairs, and find my dad opening and closing file cabinet drawers. I get closer and he doesn't seem to notice... and so then I think wait a second...

And sure enough, he was asleep all the way. It became more than clear when one of the drawers wouldn't open, so he let go, then tried it again, then let go, then tried it again, almost like watching a Roomba at work.

My brother talks in his sleep and sleepwalks. He's done it all his life. I guess I know now where he got it from =)

The million dollar question: so, do you wake them or not? According to experts on the subject, nothing wrong happens if you wake them. It's similar to waking someone up from a nightmare. They're bound to be confused and startled for a few minutes, but they get over it. My experience? It doesn't do much to wake a sleepwalker, since they sometimes fake waking up. They act startled, maybe say a few coherent sentences and act normal, but they're still asleep as ever. And f you don't know that part of their routine, you're bound to just let them walk off thinking they know where they're going =S

I wanted a picture so he'd believe me in the morning, but my mom was horrified at the thought of using a flash on him in that state. In the end she talked him back into bed and he went along. Experience from 30 years of dealing with my brother I guess xD

67- 102 days

I -was- going to go on about how I hate myself for not having ridden to work today after having to spend hours stuck in traffic, and actually having to turn back on my way home after being immobile for almost 15 minutes.

But then I found something better... my WD Mybook World II has now been up and running, without shutting down and without problems, for 102 days =D

If you recall from 2010, on October 17 one of the drives simply died, out of nowhere. The following days' exchanges with tech support led me to find out just how buggy, dumb and just plain strange external drives from Western Digital are. But, a month later Western Digital was true to their word and I got a replacement hard disk in the mail.

The replacement disk is still in the closet, in its unopened packaging. I had bought a replacement locally while the new drive from WD shipped and decided to keep it instead of opening the new one and stashing that one away. Eventually this year if I get around to upgrading to a desktop PC I'll use that new disk.

Well, it's been 102 days since I last turned the drive off, and it's still going. Without locking up, without making any weird noises, or anything of the sort.

And I'm pretty hopeful it'll keep on going that way, at least for a couple years more :)

66- Cashews

If you've ever wondered where Cashews come from, here's the answer.

A cashew is actually attached to the base of a fruit that we call marañon (Anacardium occidentale) that looks kind of like a mushroom.

They grow on trees and taste like, well, marañon. They don't really taste like anything else so there's no point of comparison. And they smell all the way across the house, it's that strong, though not really a bad smell, depending on whether you like the fruit or not.

The cashew itself is toxic when it's taken off the fruit. The seeds are acid and irritating, like poison ivy, so you don't want to break the skin on the seed. What you do is roast them over a fire, which gets rid of the top layers and produces the cashews you get in stores.

65- Kati

This is Kati Winnegrad. Aka "la doñita".

She's been around for as long as I can remember, always showing up at concerts all over the place. And while most people sit and listen, she'll dance all over the place to whatever the beat may be that day.

About a year ago, she got a voice. Someone decided to create a fan page for her on Facebook. And she had way more fans than anyone could have ever imagined. That was the day all 7.675 of us finally met Kati.

She doesn't say much about her past, probably because she's too busy living in the present. But when you talk to her, you realize you're not only dealing with some lady: you're dealing with a force of nature. One of those forces that the universe just steps aside to watch.

And one thing's for certain: whatever you might call the gift that she has, she's come to share it with the entire world. And she'll keep on sharing it for as long as she can.

64 - Developing

This weekend they're having an arts festival downtown. Which is a pretty unusual setting since the downtown area is generally seen as degraded, polluted, noisy, and unsafe to be in.

But it all makes sense when you throw in a good amount of police to watch over, and some really good performers.

Downtown San Jose is a neat case study. Most people all over the world are born into ready-made cities, which had solved their major problems long before. San Jose hasn't. Running the city like it's still 1950 and ignoring basic urban infrastructure laws has made the downtown area... as many would put it... a polluted, stinking town.

Fortunately 10 years ago some people started thinking about that. And 5 years ago they finally got the nerve to do something. And since then, the city has been transforming itself, little by little.

It's something I see as kind of a privilege... getting to watch a run down urban center transform itself. It's the stuff you spend years reading about in urban design textbooks, but can never quite put your finger on it until you actually see it happen.

63- Big ass latte

No work today. They were rewiring the office, so everyone got the day off.

So I ran all the errands I hadn't bothered to run in like 3 months, including going store to store to see what they had in monitors: I need to buy a new one, given that my old one got this annoying flickering there's no getting rid of.

I also took my old monitor to the repair shop, to see if there's anything they can do to it.

When I finally got home, I started poking around for old stuff in closets... and found an espresso machine someone had purchased, used once, and never used again.

So I made myself a huge family size latte.

62- How to clean a carpet

So, how do you clean 20 year old carpet? Given that I was out of that vintage cleaning solution they used to sell, and that the carpet was probably going to be ripped out eventually, I decided to bend the rules in the instruction manual a little bit.

So I took a couple buckets of water and dumped them on the carpet, the followed up with a bit of powdered detergent, and I scrubbed the whole room down with one of those hard bristle brooms.

Yeah yeah, I know, the manual says to never, under any circumstance, under penalty of law, never ever let your carpet get soaked. It also says that if you do your ears will fall off the next day, but I figured I'd take my chances.

Then I set the machine to maximum vac, and vacuumed the carpet dry. And opened all the windows and doors in the room and left it like that the entire day.

And it actually worked pretty good. Since there was a whole lot of water, the entire carpet foamed up and the foam did it's function of trapping the dirt in, instead of letting it fall back to the bottom. I dumped the water out of the vac.... and it was pitch black. 20 years worth of dirt for you.

Not to mention that now I can actually see some texture in the carpet again. Before it was just flat as a pancake, now the fibers actually rise again.

It's a shame eventually it's gonna get ripped out... good to see my experiment worked though =D

61- Virtual improvement

Did a little virtual improvement on an ad campaign I saw this morning =)

60- Here's to the brave ones

Here's to all those that still brave the morning ride despite the rain...

59- Rain and more rain

Wouldn't you know it, it never rains at 6 AM... except during the dry season and on the days when I just want to ride to work =/

58- Characters

Saw a well known character today...

57- Ground up

Went to shoot some photos this afternoon. Didn't get much... though I did get an interesting shot of the ground while calibrating exposure xD

56- Not so hot either.

Today was one of those days that just don't seem to go right. I woke up late, when I hopped on my bike it turns out the rear tire had gone flat during the night, after changing it both rims decided to remind me they need truing the whole way to work, my lunch plans went bust...

On the way back I found this insanely long traffic jam, with no apparent explanation. That is, until I got to the front of it. Seems somebody else's day wasn't turning out so hot either.

To top it all off, 2 blocks past the traffic jam it started raining.

Yep, there's something going around all right.

55- Maybe next time

I was riding past this old style playground today, one of those with equipment built out of steel channels... the ones parents outlawed something like 20 years back. And I noticed that on the bottom, it had two horizontal bars.

And well, immediately I had a flashback to Rocky Balboa doing situps hanging from the side of a barn, and I was like... ok....

But, once I was hanging there with no one to make sure my knees didn't slip... I had second thoughts. Uh, maybe next time.

54- Hooked

Ok, I admit it. I vandalized the company bathroom with an adhesive hook. I know, I'm a terrible person... I'll try to do better next time...

53- Middle of nowhere

Went to see a big block of concrete in the middle of nowhere.

52- You drive safely now

Don't you just hate it when you have to ride around with one of them on your tail,and you just have to start driving on your best behavior...

51- The chair

I have a chair, like mostly everyone else in the world. I bought it back in 2002 after searching all over town during several afternoons.

The thing is, last year it snapped a screw on one of the arms. So I took off the arm to fix it, but found that a piece of the screw was still stuck in the chair and there was no way to get it out. Long story short the chair ended up with a huge gaping hole in the side that day and no right arm. I made a mental note to fix it, but never got around to it.

A couple of weeks ago, the left arm snapped a screw. I didn't think much of it either, given my previous chair fixing experience, and ignored it. But for some reason the chair started to get kind of uncomfortable: it was leaning back a little bit too much, I had to use a pillow to work comfortably, and I even fell over backwards once when the wheel caught on the carpet.

It dawned on me a few days ago that it was leaning like that because in these cheapo department store executive chairs, the arms tie the back and the seat together. A snapped screw and no right arm means the back leans a little too far.

So today I went out on a limb again. I took a trip to the hardware store and bought some 1/4" bolts. Then I took off the arms and took a drill to the screw holes (dang chinese chairs use metric screws, and the bolts I had were US made). And then I pushed everything back into position and bolted it.

Wow. What a difference. My chair feels normal again. I mean, really normal. Like it hadn't felt in over a year. I don't need the pillow anymore, it doesn't lean back more than you need it to, it's like a whole other chair...

And it cost me $0.75 and about an hour. I don't know why I didn't do this sooner.

50- Coming soon

Last night just as I was going to sleep, this amazing idea for a photo composition hit me. It was an idea I had way back in the day, I probably hadn't thought about it for close to 25 years. It was so good I actually had to get up, turn on my computer, and type it up before I forgot it.

And today I got to work on it. Just some trial shots to see what I could come up with. Still a long way to go to get this concept to materialize, but it's on a roll. We'll just have to see what comes out in a couple of weeks...

Look at that, I just noticed... I hit 50 photos today.

49 - Idea

Seems someone had an interesting idea for Valentine's Day

48- Fluffy white clouds

Saw some fluffy white clouds on the way to work today.

47- Cloudy summer

It's been a cloudy past few days. Cloudy and cold. Maybe not as cold and december, but surely not what you'd expect by this time in February.

Something tells me this is gonna be another one of those years where it never does go completely sunny, and the clouds just kind of hang around until it starts to rain in May.

46- Traffic, again.

Ok, someone remind me why it's such a good idea and so entertaining to get to work in a car?

45- That day again....

So, how'd I celebrate Valentine's Day? I had myself a cupcake... and celebrated that I could just sit back and enjoy watching the rest of the world get stressed out over flowers, teddy bears, greeting cards, dinner reservations... and the likes...

44- Coming soon

In about a year and a half, there should be a huge shopping mall here...

43- Coding

There's this software that they got at the office about 2 years ago, promised heaven and earth... in the end we got something like 50% of what the salesman promised... figures.

So we've been suffering to get it up and running ever since. The way it's built, you can't really be sure it's working correctly, you can only hope and pray that the numbers come out right the next time you pop up the report screen. And when something goes wrong, nothing to do but call tech support and hope they can figure it out in a week or so.

Well a couple of weeks back I got fed up and started playing around with the program databases to see what I could find poking around. This week, it turns out I stumbled onto the right solution, and the whole DB blew wide open.

And I've been writing code like crazy these past few days to see if i can make something useful out of the $$$ we invested in that thing. And so far it seems to be working. I've been able to write code that gives me the reports and screens I need, where I need them, and how I need them.

So that's how I've spent my day today. It's been at least a good 5 o 6 years since I've sat down an entire saturday to write code. And, at home they decided to have a party today, which made it all that much more difficult to balance things out.

But in the end I did balance everything out, and the program's up and running. I can't wait to get to the office on Monday and see what happens when I plug it into my desktop PC.

What a second... did I just say I can't wait to get to the office on Monday? Ok, that's it... I'm turning this thing off before I start to say even scarier things.

42- Second day of school

The first day of the school year always wreaks havoc on the morning rush hour.

The second day... not so much.

41- How to get a crane up

Once someone asked me how you get a construction crane up...

The answer´s fairly straightforward: with another crane =D

40- Irony of the fire truck

One of those strangely ironic experiences you get every so often. I was riding home, and hearing a fire truck stuck in traffic behind me. Eventually the sound died out, "must have taken another street" I thought.

But a couple of blocks later I start hearing it again, louder and louder, it had managed to get unstuck. So the first thing that crossed my mind was "hey, neat, a fire truck!"... caught it just as it was going by.

So I keep riding home, and as I'm turning the corner I start hearing this backup signal... I turn the corner... and there's the truck parked right in front of my house.

Uhhhhhh.... hey neat, a fire truck... right in front of my house?

In the end it was nothing. One of the neighbors in front called in because they smelled smoke at their house, turns out they were burning grass clippings next door.

39- An elephant

I've always been like an elephant when it comes to remembering stuff... well, stuff that's important at least. I'm one who literally doesn't forget a face, and often when I'm talking to people I'll bring up stuff, in full detail, that they'd forgotten decades ago.

Strangely, it seems today I was in more of a hurry than I thought. I got on my bike, rode out of the parking lot, and as I was crossing the street I noticed something didn't feel right. The wind didn't feel right, and my back didn't feel right...

Oh, yeah. I had taken off my backpack to unlock my bike and put on the digital speed thingy, and had left it there, in a table in the corner of the parking lot.

Fortunately 30 seconds later I was turning around and heading back. I don't think anyone would have wanted my backpack anyway. It's been with me like 10 years, and is so beat up, the only value you'd get out of it is sentimental value.

38- Hair!

After doing the trees shot yesterday, I noticed something weird: this strange diagonal line going through my viewfinder. The line was there, clear as crystal, but it didn't show up in any photos. That gave me a pretty good idea of what it was.

And sure enough, upon removing the lens and looking inside, there was a big old hair on the viewfinder prism. Must have fallen off the brush and into the chamber, and rolled around until it finally settled on the viewfinder. A couple of shots from the blower was enough to get it off.

37- The memory of trees

Trying to do the initial conditioning of my new camera battery, so I need to run it down to about 25%. Now, most batteries come factory pre-conditioned, but mine being a noname chinese battery and on top of that having cost me only $10, I don't think so.

So I set it to shoot all afternoon, every minute. And even then after 5 hours I had only used up one line on the battery meter. These things last long.

So I went to long exposures,and I'm having a bit more success using those. I'm down to 50% battery after having shot a full hour in 30 second bits. From what I hear long exposures are notorious for eating up battery power. So I should be about done and ready to recharge in a few hours.

Interesting thing I read today, BTW, is that Li-Ion batteries don't like it if you store them fully charged. Seems that storing them at around 40% is the ideal scenario to maximize their useful life. You take them down to 40%, store, and recharge before each use.

But, I've been storing my D80 battery fully charged and to be perfectly honest it's still going and going after almost 3 years. Then again, it's always in the camera so the standby mode very gradually (and I mean very) wears it down, guess that must help somewhat to keep it in good condition.

Problem is now that I have 2 batteries, there's always one that's going to be stored, and will need periodic exercise and care.

36- Spiders

February 5, 2011



Took a quick trip to the Pacific side today. Along the way I found myself some spiders hiding out in a corner.

I'd always thought these were called daddy longlegs, but from what I'm reading on Wikipedia, that's one of those generic, erroneous names that can refer to a bunch of unrelated spiders. Formally these guys with the small round body and long legs are known as harvestmen, or Opiliones if you want to get really formal.

And these in particular I had never seen before. I'd always seen the round black ones, but looking at the macro I'm noticing these are shaped more like a tin can... or like one of those spider robots you used to see on the sci-fi cartoons.

Tried to point out specifically what it was, but I couldn't find it. And from what I read, there's really not a whole bunch of research on Opiliones. I imagine there's even less on opiliones in the tropics.

35- Altitude work

They were fixing the siding on one of the University buildings this morning. Which meant my usual biking route was cut off and I had to go around.

34- Intervals

Playing around with the intervalometer to see what it can do... 30 shots over 30 minutes at dusk. Couldn't catch the sunset today unfortunately.

Arrived finally!

I stopped by the post office today to see if by any chance my intervalometer had arrived. Sure enough and to my surprise, it had. All the way from Hong Kong, took about 2 weeks to get here.

Despite being shipped in one of those big document envelopes, it was well wrapped in bubble paper and came through just fine. And frankly, the price compared to the Nikon originals was quite a bargain. Makes me think about buying more stuff Hong Kong direct.

I'll try out the intervalometer this weekend, see if I can get some interesting time lapse photos.

Climbing hills

Took an alternate route home today, had to do quite a bit of hill climbing. The problem wasn't really the hills being steep, but rather them being long. The downhill part was pretty fun, I managed to hit 45 Kph before having to tap the brakes on a blind turn. I figure I could have hit 50, but during rush hour I'd rather skip that trial =)

Thinking about...

Guess you can imagine what was on my mind this afternoon.

That, after I read a sign on the cart that said one box of McDonalds fries is equal to 16 rolls... =D

#Expo365

Went to a photo expo this weekend, where the topic was two photo diary projects done in 2010...

Sure hope someday mine is up for show somewhere =D

The Tron Light

I had a problem. I usually work at my PC under low light, to keep the glare from the windows off the screen. And since I have a wireless keyboard which sits on my lap, the shadow from the desk makes it impossible to see the keys. Aside from that they keyboard itself is black, so that doesn't help much.

It makes it annoying to find the PageUp/PageDn keys and tell them apart from Insert and Delete since they're all bunched together. I figured I needed a keyboard light. So I came up with this one. I found some high intensity blue LEDs which seem to tolerate 6V real well, chained them together and put them in a piece of plastic network conduit I had left over. And the Tron lamp was born.

It runs off 4AA batteries, although I've managed to run it just as well off 2 button cells. I like the AA because, according to my calculations, I should get about 15 hours of light before needing to recharge. I doubt I could get that much out of the button cells.

The light is ok. It's not something you'd want to operate someone under, but it's good enough to let you find those lost keys in the dark. I also tried red light, unsuccessfully (LEDs were too dim). White LEDs could be nicer, but they were out of those at the store and you wouldn't get that cool blue glow.

Total cost for the whole thing was about $2. Mainly the LEDs and a couple battery holders. Plastic channel and batteries were free, since I had those around the house.

Squeak Squeak

My bike seat is making this annoying squeaking noise. And it's coming from the seat itself. In fact it's so loud people on the sidewalk notice it as I'm riding past.

Problem is the seat has no moving parts to oil. And I've already taken care of all the pressure joints where things come together, and it still squeaks.

I figure the glue must have come loose somewhere, and when it moves, it makes that squeaking noise. Gonna have to see how much I can take the seat apart in order to get oil into the right place.

So... what's for lunch?

Well, today's post is probably going to sound like something out of a self help book, but what the heck.

So, I came home and opened the refrigerator at 8 PM, to get the ingredients for tomorrow's lunch. And what should I find? Uh... nothing. The chicken I had left out was gone, seems someone had beaten me to it.

I checked the other side of the fridge, and there was chicken there, but it was more like a collection of chicken popsicles. If someone had broken in right at that moment, I could have probably beaten them to death with that frozen chicken.

So in the middle of the dilemma of whether to pack a can of tuna, change out of my pajamas and head out to the supermarket, or stop at the first fast food restaurant I could find on the way to work, I decided, none.

I figured it was better to think outside the box for a second. And so with all the love and care in the world I cut up 3 onions and a bell pepper, ran them through some olive oil and seasonings, and put them on the stove. And 15 minutes later I had myself a heaping bowl of onions and bell pepper. Which in the end turned out to be exactly what I wanted. In fact I had to stop myself from eating it right then and there.

And the chicken can stay in the freezer, for all I care.

I guess the moral of the story is, I like onions. I'm the kind of person who will actually consider eating 3 whole onions for lunch, if they're cooked the way I like them. =)

Lights.... on

And the stoplights are back...