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 =)