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Five Living Skies ·
That’s what it says on the Saskatchewan license plates: Land of Living Skies. We spent a few days out there earlier this month and the plates pretty well have it. if you’re a photographer, you’ll find yourself pointing the camera up quite a bit of the time ...
Whitecaps vs. Silverbacks ·
My son is an avid soccer player, has been in an organized league for four years now. Vancouver has a team, the Whitecaps, in the USL, one down from MLS. As a promotion, the boy’s team was invited to a match, some of them to march out with the players, some to play a mini-game at half-time. I went along and took the camera ... [5 comments]
CL IV: Peace ·
Most of these Cottage Life posts are going to be on the cynical side; with luck, good for a laugh or two. But there is a reason we do this, and here it is. With a furniture recommendation ...
Wet Botanicals ·
July was an excellent month, almost all sunshine. My flower-photo mojo had pretty well run dry, but then out walking after a shower, there were all these droplet-laden blossoms and there I was shooting away ... [1 comment]
On Screwdrivers ·
Screwdrivers are important. Really; you just can’t do anything without them. And it turns out that lots are lots better than just a few. This is about that. Illustrated ... [33 comments]
Happy Backyard Story ·
We bought our house in 1997 and were expecting our first child in mid-1999. This caused us to launch a pretty major Home Improvement project, which was painful but successful; herewith a small photo-essay ... [1 comment]
Nine Pictures of OSCON ·
Herewith some illustrated take-aways from OSCON 2008; I enjoyed it (and, I think, benefited from it) as much as any conference in recent years ... [1 comment]
SPotD: Shoes ·
There’s nothing wrong with kids having some weeks of flat time in summer with an empty schedule; they’ll look back on those days fondly. There’s also nothing wrong with the odd soccer or basketball camp. I rather enjoy dropping the boy off at these and watching the other parents, who appear, pre-9-AM on a weekday, in a remarkable variety of apparel and presentations. I caught one of my recent faves for this summer day’s photo ... [1 comment]
SPotD: Curtainshadows ·
We spend a lot of time on our back porch this time of year. Unfortunately, the beautiful plum tree that kept the setting sun from boiling our eyeballs died, and until the replacement gets big enough, we’ve been hoisting bedsheets on the west end of the porch roof at suppertime. Which can make for some interesting shadowplay, as in the Summer Picture for today ...
SPotD: Ball Game ·
On July first, we celebrated Canada and my son’s birthday by going to the ball game and fireworks. It was a warm, warm evening. The Summer Photo for Today is an outfielder and a scoreboard ... [1 comment]
SPotD: Lemonade ·
I’ve been too overloaded to write much or even post pix, but never (it seems) to take pictures, so they’ve been building up. I look at the buildup and discern a theme; herewith the first Summer Picture of the Day; more to come. And what could be more summery than lemonade? ... [2 comments]
(Last) RotD: Lucky Sunset ·
The last rose of the day is a “Royal Sunset” in the sunset, A lucky shot, another small instance of good fortune in what’s been (so far) an unreasonably lucky life ... [4 comments]
Good Morning ·
I like mornings. Especially bright ones on foot in the city. People are up and about for a reason; it’s easy to believe the world is on the whole is a well-organized purposeful kind of place ... [3 comments]
RotD: Morning Mist ·
We planted today’s rose in an awkward corner of the garden and thus had to move it; this summer it’s recovering and only produced one blossom. Pretty pictures are a relief, I hope, in a week that feels like summer’s Horse latitudes ...
RotD: UltraPink ·
This rose-of-the-day grows in our front yard, but we inherited it and I don’t know what it is. Plus, Nikon is making waves in the camera world ... [2 comments]
RotD: Wild! ·
I think today’s roses are Wild, but it turns out that label can apply to a bunch of different things, including the official flower of the next province over, where I sometimes think I’m from ... [1 comment]
CL III: Semantic Gaps ·
I do intend a Cottage Life post soon that’s not about maintenance, but this isn’t it. I thought I was trying to fix the water heater, but in fact it became a four-way semantic mapping conundrum ... [1 comment]
RotD: Yellow Rugosa ·
Today’s rose is awfully pretty, and is accompanied by amusing erudition-soaked dialogue. Rugosa is a rose species and “yellow” is self-explanatory. But the combination is rare ... [1 comment]
RotD: Single Petal, on Violet ·
I thought I’d shot my Flower-of-the-Day wad last month, but I have two problems: First, there are a lot of pleasing photos of roses on my computer, and second, I’m a bit bored. Thus, a Rose-of-the-Day series ... [4 comments]
CL II: Water-Displacement Forty ·
Cottage Life, unless yours is a mansion with full-time staff, is mostly maintenance, with a few intervening breaks for nature or beer. I’m neither deft nor mechanically gifted, but the right industrial chemicals can make up for that ... [7 comments]
Car-Free ·
Its full name is Car-Free Vancouver Day and it happened last Sunday. We hadn’t been planning to go but stumbled in more or less accidentally and it was good fun. It gave me an excuse to take pictures of people; something I’m too shy to do except in a crowd ... [1 comment]
Not Much ·
Two photos of not much in particular, but with explanations ... [1 comment]
Main Art ·
Our house is near, and my office on, Main Street, which despite its name is not, nor has it ever been, the main street of anything. These days “The Main” is starting to be hip and fashionable, but the process is hampered by the fact that the buildings are, on average, old, and mostly weren’t very good when they were built. So it was kind of nice when some street art popped up on one that I walk by every day ... [5 comments]
Cottagers! ·
Now we’re real Canadians. As of June 11th, Lauren and I own a cottage on Keats Island (Wikipedia, map, keatsisland.net). The consequences include a sudden interest in remote-area Internet options ... [15 comments]
Flamenco Sketches ·
Photographic sketches, I mean. Earlier this month, Eve and Eli were up from Seattle to visit and after dinner, we all dropped by the Kino Café to take in the flamenco. It was passionate and sexy and fun ... [2 comments]
San Fran Shadows ·
Last week I took a brief trip to San Francisco, and managed to escape for a walk. Lots of buildings had interesting shadows on them ... [2 comments]
Cup of Tea ·
This would be on Zipang Sushi on Main Street in Vancouver ... [2 comments]
(Last) FotD: May 24 Menton ·
Just like last year, I haven’t published all the flowers, but enough is enough. Let’s end with three “Menton” tulip photos; they’re of a colour that I don’t think English has a word for, although “flesh” might do if you limited your flesh-tones to the European spectrum. Anyhow, I think I saved the best for the last ... [1 comment]
FotD: May 21 Tattered White ·
Pear-blossoms actually, and en masse elegant; the individual flowers have a tough life but still deserve a look ... [2 comments]
FotD: May 18 Violet Riot ·
The magnolia is just coming off its riotous pink and purple peak. So instead of yet again zeroing in on one or two blossoms, I shot a whole bunch ... [1 comment]
FotD: May 16 Orange and Blue ·
Orange and blue and green, actually. I could give you the flower names and so on but why bother, it’s just some blossoms and leaves, cheery stuff ...
FotD: May 15 Trillium ·
I’ve written about them before, how the flowers start out the purest and most delicate white imaginable and then fade into purple decrepitude. Wikipedia suggests this is Trillium ovatum ... [1 comment]
FotD: May 14 Icelandic ·
I’ve run a few pictures of these over the years, repeatedly mislabeling them as California poppies, and each time been corrected by better-educated readers; it’s an Iceland poppy ... [2 comments]
FotD: May 13 Flaming Spring Green ·
Last year, it started a month earlier; a couple of weekend days around the town and my computer is bulging with spring-flower shots. So, with apologies to those who come here for technology, we’ll be in Flower of the Day mode for the next little while. Today’s Flaming Spring Green is a tulip, about my favorite of this year’s crop ...
Propeller ·
Being a picture of one, with some other things ... [4 comments]
Wet, with Forget-me-nots ·
Tulips, I mean. Our front yard is riot of tulips all shouting “Look at me!” It rained and I thought “wet tulips, mmmm”, and by coincidence three of them had forget-me-nots somewhere in the frame ... [3 comments]
Tulips! ·
This will not be of interest to those who are here for the technology; move right along. It will also not be of interest to serious photographers, who scoff at bright pretty pictures of bright pretty flowers ... [3 comments]
April 18, 2008 ·
I had a little slack in the schedule heading for the airport, so when I left work, I stopped on to photograph a marsh ... [2 comments]
The Anticipation of Pleasure ·
I plan to re-use that title once each springtime as long as I go on writing this. This year, tulips about to open ... [2 comments]
Early Spring ·
I finally got around to unloading the memory card from the pocket cam and gosh, were there ever a lot of garden shots on it. Hey, Spring is happening, which means these pages will be flower-infested for some weeks now. If you like flowers at all, you’ll probably agree that the little Ricoh has a gift for ’em ... [2 comments]
Lightroom Ping-Pong ·
Here’s the short form in geek-speak: Apparently, you can use rsync to keep two computers running Lightroom in harmony. The long version is well, long, and digresses into Deep Vein Thrombosis and Olympic Table-Tennis qualification ... [19 comments]
Candlelit Quiet ·
I mean Earth Hour. Lauren lit a bunch of candles and we just sat there enjoying the silence. Well, until I got out the camera ... [4 comments]
FSS: Under Paris 1994 ·
Friday Slide Scan #34 (wow, it’s been over a year) is from early mid-1994; views of Paris, including a couple I bet you haven’t seen ... [2 comments]
Maui Ladies ·
Here are three photos of two ladies taken on Maui, one of whom is addressed with a capital L ...
Reflections ·
It’s a word for thinking, “reflection”. That’s odd, because thinking is more than echoing the world back to itself ... [6 comments]
Frankfurt Moods ·
So, I got into the hotel room and found that blogging grumpily at my travel and blogosphere problems didn’t cheer me up. Lauren and Simon each sent me the number of someone I know around here, but I was just too pissed at the world to pick up the phone. So I picked up the new camera instead and went walking ... [6 comments]
Granville Island ·
In single-Dad mode on this brilliant Sunday morning, I decided to pack the urchins up after breakfast and take them down to Granville Island. It’s one of Vancouver’s nicest things and too often we abandon it to the tourists (In fact, on this occasion I helped a posse of Germans figure out the parking-ticket machine). Well, and I had a new camera burning a hole in my pocket ... [10 comments]
F.C.o.t.Y ·
“First Crocus of the Year”, I mean to say. For me it’s a major transition when, after the months of grey, our garden starts to have some colour in it. Not the best crocus photo ever, and probably not the best crocuses either. But they’re important to me ... [1 comment]
Them Bits ·
Earlier this evening, I finished scanning the slides I have that my Dad took. That’s a lot of slides and a lot of bits. With observations about Wal-Mart and Ubuntu and the end of optical storage ... [10 comments]
In the Lane ·
I have written here before about alleys and back lanes and today I took my daughter and my camera for a walk down ours. She has only recently learned how to walk and this has been the first couple of days of decent weather since ... [1 comment]
Spring? ·
We’ve had snow on the ground for days and days and days, which is not how it’s supposed to be in Vancouver in February. Today finally some sun, and signs of Spring even ... [2 comments]
Soccer Practice ·
Being a blurry photo of boys having a ball with a ball in the gym ... [1 comment]
Winter Magnolia ·
I’ve photographed this member of the Plant Kingdom any number of times, even wearing snow. Those who feel this happens too often can have their money back ...
Mystery Interloper ·
It snowed a bit yesterday, and then sort of sleeted and rained a bit on top, then froze in the morning. So overnight passers-by had their footprints preserved. Whose are these? ... [8 comments]
SSS: My Family ·
Over the past few years I’ve been slowly working through an inventory of some thousands of 35mm slides taken by my Dad and others in the pre-digital era. I used to run a “Friday Slide Scan”. It fell off a bit because I neglected to scan for months at a time, and because the sequence I was working through was all adorable babies and cute toddlers; of limited interest. Well, it’s not Friday, and these are that kind of picture. But still ... [5 comments]
Sin and a Tiger ·
Whenever I walk around, I have the little Canon in my pocket. Since I’m shooting JPG and have a 2G card in there, it holds a more or less infinite number of pictures, and I have to remind myself to unload ’em every couple of weeks to see what’s there. Often I’m surprised ... [3 comments]
Uncommon Light ·
Three photos on bright December days; not common in Vancouver, so this is a quality of light you don’t often see ... [10 comments]
Christmas Eve ·
The family gathered this year here with us in Vancouver. Intimations of mortality occurred, but I’m still glad of the visitors ... [1 comment]
Across False Creek ·
This is just to celebrate being able to run Lightroom again; a photo looking south across Vancouver’s False Creek at night, from Bill and Trish’s place ...
上海: Shanghai Wrapup ·
Miscellaneous pictures and thoughts to wrap up the Shanghai series. These should be taken very lightly, based as they are on a big four days of jet-lagged reportage ... [4 comments]
上海: That Light ·
I haven’t been to China since the Nineties and that was Hong Kong, but I remembered the special Hong Kong light. There it was again in Shanghai, so maybe it’s Chinese light, or at least South Chinese ... [3 comments]
上海: Those Buildings ·
I already noted that the really in-your-face thing about Shanghai is its forest of huge soaring buildings. Enough pictures have probably been taken, but I couldn’t resist adding a couple to the collection ... [1 comment]
上海: After Dark ·
The lights are bright in Shanghai at night, most places ... [1 comment]
上海: 430 km/h! ·
When I arrived, they’d said to take a taxi to the hotel so I did, and the price was reasonable, but it was an hour of dice-with-death Shanghai driving through not-very-exciting neighborhoods. But then I found out about the MagLev train to the airport. It’s really fast, and the station (a short taxi ride from the hotel) is totally all mod cons. I lashed out for the first-class ticket ... [1 comment]
上海: Under Construction ·
Shanghai really is. They’ve built a mega-city in a young lifetime and they’re not slowing down at all ... [2 comments]
上海: Hidden Stories ·
I have a lot of pictures, but not so many words, from Shanghai. I’m impressed but inarticulate because after four days on the ground, I’m mostly mystified. I’m old enough to have a few regrets, and among the sharpest is that I’ve never taken the trouble to be really fluent in a language other than English. In particular, I am in awe of my colleagues who switch back and forth between Mandarin and English three times in a sentence. And everywhere I look I see stories I’ll never know, because, first of all, how could I ever get into a conversation with the woman on the back of the bicycle behind the other woman on the bicycle, both of them laughing so hard they’re in danger of swerving in front of a BMW? And if I could, I wouldn’t understand the words. And if I did, I maybe still wouldn’t get the joke. And there are twenty million people here, that’s a lot of stories ...
Autumn ·
The big trees are haven’t turned en masse, but there but Those Colours are still everywhere you look ...
Dawn Foam ·
Four pictures of Northern California waves at sunrise ...
Those Sunsets ·
Aptos is a little town not far from Monterey, where I and a couple of hundred other Sun engineers are hiding to talk about what we’re doing and what works and what doesn’t. Can’t report on that much, but the next best thing about California after computer technology is sunsets. So here are two.
Urban Sunset ·
There haven’t been enough pictures here lately ... [1 comment]
Early Autumn ·
I spent time with the baby in the garden this afternoon, and we both had fun ... [3 comments]
Fall Colours ·
Brown and yellow, to be precise. Leaf and Volkswagen ... [4 comments]
Summer’s End ·
It wasn’t that great; there was some good weather but not enough, and much of that while we were off in Berlin or Saskatchewan. But there were compensations, family things ... [2 comments]
Some Clouds ·
Taken from an airplane heading into the Pacific Northwest at dusk ... [1 comment]
Lauren and Jean ·
Hey, this is my blog, if I want to run a picture of my wife and my mother, I can ... [3 comments]
Dalmatian Ballerinas ·
I mean birch trees not Adriatic dancers. Although some times they are nearly spotless and others more statuesque than sylph-like. Whatever; I love ’em ...
The Prairie ·
We’re also visiting Lauren’s mom and her husband on their farm near Stockholm, Saskatchewan. People talk about doing “photo-walks” in glamorous urban locations; you’d have just as much fun touring around a nice piece of prairie ... [5 comments]
Mom’s Flowers ·
We’re visiting my Mother in Saskatchewan. Here are some of her flowers ... [2 comments]
Sunset Edit ·
I posted that apricot-rose picture last night, late, and when I looked at it on the big screen at work this morning, I thought “Ouch, that’s borked”. It turns out that I’d cranked Lightroom’s “Fill Light” control all the way over to the right, liking the effect on the centre of the blossom, missing the damage elsewhere ... [5 comments]
Sunday ·
One of those great summer days. Baseball, happy boys, good food, and sunlit flowers, all among friends ... [1 comment]
Echinaceas ·
This is the second ongoing post which more or less just two pictures of Echinacea blossoms. Hope that’s OK ... [3 comments]
The Moon ·
I was coming home from a late night out and the moon hung full, bright in the windshield. I’ve tried to photograph it so many times over the years and generally failed. Finally, a partial success, which I’ll indulge myself by sharing with the Net ... [9 comments]
Honeysuckle ·
This one is always a midsummer highlight; I’m sure it’ll keep appearing here as long as I live next to it ...
July Flowers ·
They’re everywhere. This one is orange (a nasturtium) ... [1 comment]
From Route One ·
A beach, somewhere north of Half Moon Bay. It’s getting late ... [3 comments]
Trains and People and Restaurants ·
I’ll close up this miniature series on Germany’s capital with observations on getting around, the people who live there, and going out to eat ... [13 comments]
Going for Beers in East Berlin ·
Since I wasn’t personally close to any of the wedding party, the big day for me in our Berlin trip was the Sunday after; our one day of interrupted sunshine, and we spent it all in beer gardens with attached playgrounds. In the morning, we had breakfast (no beer involved) with some of Lauren’s old school buddies, and in the afternoon we had dinner and beers with some geeky ongoing readers ... [3 comments]
Schloss and Dom ·
In German, the first means castle, the second “dome” and often, by attribution, cathedral. In the center of Berlin, one’s right beside what used to be the other ... [2 comments]
The Boy’s View of Berlin ·
When we’re out and about and I have both cameras, I’ve started offering the little Canon to our son, just turned eight, asking him if he wants to shoot a few. He almost always says “Yes” and if you will indulge the fancies of an indulgent Dad, I think he’s good. Here’s his take on Berlin ... [7 comments]
07/07/07 ·
On the seventh of July this year, we participated in the global lucky-number wedding boom by attending Gerhild and Reinhard’s wedding in Berlin. Here are some photos, which are only of interest if you like weddings or modern Lutheran ecclesiastical architecture ... [1 comment]
The Number of the Rose ·
The title refers obviously to the Umberto Eco work which anyone who cares about knowledge and its preservation ought to read if only for fun; but the picture refers only to itself. With exegesis from Larry Wall. [Oh, my; give this audience a chance to indulge in linguistic pedantry and, well, you don’t have to ask twice. If you like this kind of stuff, don’t miss the comments.] ... [16 comments]
東京 XII: Changing ·
I’ve been coming to Tokyo since 1991 or so, and while Japanese culture is often called insular and set-in-its-ways, the changes have been dramatic ... [6 comments]
東京 XI: Lounging ·
On the Tuesday evening before I left, we had some pure fun, attending the “Developer’s Lounge”, organized by Sun but attended by a menagerie of geeks, every flavor. Think of a short unconference with free food and beer ...
東京 IX: Working ·
This is just a thank-you to a few of my Tokyo colleagues, but it has my favorite picture from the whole trip ... [1 comment]
東京 VIII: Shopping ·
Whatever you may say about Tokyo, whether you like it or not, it’s a great place to shop. For selection not bargains; there is lots of stuff you just won’t find anywhere else ... [3 comments]
東京 VII: Drinking ·
The last couple of months I’ve been in both Tokyo and London, and I visit Silicon Valley all the time. Tokyo and London are like each other, and unlike the Valley, in that they have a business-drinking culture. Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that in the Valley you have to drive everywhere, and you’d have to be pretty booze-hungry, or just suicidal, to load up before getting behind the wheel on 280 or 85 or 237 or 101 ... [1 comment]
東京 VI: Recharging ·
Tokyo is big and fast and intense and it’ll make you tired. And, many months of the year, hot and sweaty too. Fortunately, it offers a solution for these problems ... [5 comments]
東京 V: Playing ·
I don’t know what Japan’s largest export is, but I think its most important export is culture. Pop culture to be precise; there are few places where as you walk the streets you see things you’ll see on fashion catwalks and in TV-show backdrops and and Paper pages this time next year; and Tokyo is one of them ... [3 comments]
東京 IV: Phoning ·
Here’s a travel tip: When you go to Japan, rent a phone! It doesn’t cost too much money or time and it simplifies life incredibly. With remarks on Japanese phone culture and a completely unrelated picture ... [2 comments]
東京 III: Traveling ·
Tokyo is huge any way you measure; one of the world’s largest cities by population and not built up that high, so it sprawls forever across the Kantō plain. Even the city’s core, which I would roughly say is everything inside the Yamanote JR Line or walkable from one of its stations, is pretty vast. Most times, though, you don’t notice because everywhere you go, you go by train, often underground or with not much of a view ... [5 comments]
Tokyo ·
Here I am in superultrahypermegaTokyo. I’m tired ... [3 comments]
AFS × 3 ·
I believe it’s been a couple of years since I’ve inflicted a Vancouver sunset on ongoing readers, so here are three. What happened was, Eve Maler and her husband were here; we had dinner together and went for walk in the dusk west from Kitsilano beach. I was itching for a chance to work out the new wide-angle lens, and the mountains and the ocean are just the ticket ... [1 comment]
Irises ·
The roses keep going for months, some of them into autumn; the irises are here only for a few days. So they have to try harder ... [1 comment]
Apricot Poppies ·
These are some pretty darn nice poppies just down the street from our place; also an example of the power of wide-angle photography ... [2 comments]
Internet Slush ·
Sometimes it seems that’s all that’s out there, and out the other day, strolling the Drive, we discovered that it may even have a business model ...
Three Flowers ·
I’m programming these days in an environment that makes me grumpy, so I console myself by shooting flowers. These are especially tasty, I think ... [3 comments]
Spun Gold ·
In the Rumplestiltskin story, the miller’s daughter had to spin straw into gold or die, and however evocative the dwarf’s overheard song (Wikipedia has nine versions) I could never stop wondering what the spun gold might look like. Now I know ...
White ·
Herewith a couple of shots of young, half-formed Astilbe flowers. [Update:] Oops, I had the wrong end of the stick. These are actually “Native Solomon’s Seal” (Smilacina racemosa). But they grow where the Astilbes do (or actually, where they will, in a couple of months) ...
Orange ·
Man, I love California poppies. Along with the cheery but intense colour, the petals’ rough-ish textures make me think of Japanese architectural woodwork. [Hmph. It’s been suggested that these are Iceland poppies. Maybe so.] ... [1 comment]
Blue ·
Cornflower-blue to be precise; few shades are more intense ... [2 comments]
The London Illustrated News ·
I spent the week in London. Fun was had, pictures were taken, I learned things. Herewith illustrated notes on transportation, energy, finance technology, businesslike drinking, women’s clothing, Groovy, excellent lamb-chop curry, and a round red anomaly ... [8 comments]
One Wheel ·
We went for early Sunday dinner at the terrace at the Jericho Sailing Club and then of course for a walk on the pier. On the pier was free entertainment; Kris Holm was having a performance filmed. He claims to be the world’s best known Mountain Unicyclist, a category that’s new to me. I got a few pictures ... [2 comments]
My Other Office ·
In this space, I write often enough to whine and bitch and moan about business travel, so I ought to give an occasional tip of the hat to the parts that aren’t too bad ... [6 comments]
(Last) FotD: April 22 Rhodo Overload ·
I still have a few flowers in the folders, but the backlog is mostly cleared. I’ve already run one picture of pink rhododendrons, but that day at the Botanical Garden produced lots, and you just can’t have too many. So here are five more. [1 comment]
FotD: April 21 Magnolia ·
The magnolia looks better every day, with the leaves starting to fill in around the blossoms, which are pretty well at their peak. Yes, I take too many pictures of this tree; deal with it ...
FotD: April 20 Scarlet Tulip ·
Looking down from above, you could imagine parachuting in. But also check out the blue flashes of forget-me-not in the background.
Interop Impressions and Pix ·
We worked from noon till six Monday, and from 8:30 till the middle of Tuesday; a little over twenty people in the room. I got the Ape talking to a few and failed with a couple of others, but in those cases the problems were implementation glitches, not the protocol. Surprises? I saw a couple of servers that didn’t accept Atom entries, just various kinds of media objects. OK, I guess. Pleasant surprises: getting pretty well complete interoperation with (on almost the first try) Nikunj Mehta’s code and (after a bit of work) Kevin Beyer’s and James Snell’s. I’m running a few shots of the event just because I like taking pictures of people. I’ll write another piece drawing some technical conclusions ... [1 comment]
FotD: April 18 Early Azaleas ·
This bush, Alex Waterhouse-Hayward told me upon hearing its description, is a Japanese Azalea; distinguished by vanishing, when it’s in full bloom, behind a solid mass of blossoms. When so covered it requires substantially greater skill than mine to photograph because the all that red overloads the camera. But at the moment it’s tractable. [2 comments]
FotD: April 17 Rhododendron Buds ·
When these open, they’ll be rhododendrons and probably very pale yellow. Once again, two pictures, but quite a bit different. I find that I don’t really have a word to describe the colour ...
FotD: April 16 Tulips ·
Yellow tulips with scarlet sprinkles at the peak of their youthful beauty. I had two shots that I liked and was agonizing about which to run but hey, this is digital, bits is free, right? [2 comments]
FotD: April 15 Trillium ·
We have a little trillium patch in the corner of the yard in an angle of the cedar hedge where there’s not much direct light. This is a Pacific Northwest native; I don’t know if it’s the same plant as Ontario’s provincial flower. I once threatened another human being with death over this these flowers ...
FotD: April 14 Pale Rhododendrons ·
After having shown this shot in yesterday’s Lightroom rave, I guess I should give it pride of place in its own piece. Another Botanical-Garden capture. I have a whole lot of rhodo shots but all the others are pink ... [1 comment]
Lightroom Fanboy ·
I really don’t often use this space to blather on about how good some piece of commercial client-side closed-source software is, but, well... Adobe Lightroom is a truly great piece of work. Not only is it just the thing for the serious photographer, I think it may have advanced the state of the GUI art ... [9 comments]
FotD: April 13 Fallen Magnolias ·
Another shot from the botanical garden; the magnolias there were fading and those ones are hard to shoot even at their peak because they’re on 50-foot-high trees. But the pink-on-brown under the trees was attractive to the eye as well.
FotD: April 12 A Different Daffodil ·
There are still lots of daffodils splashing their yellows around cheerily but they’re past their peak, and our attention’s turning to the rhodos and azaleas and tulips. So this is by way of good-bye for 2007. When I was shooting I didn’t even notice that one of the flowers was special. [1 comment]
FotD: April 11 Wet Pink Rhododendron ·
On the weekend we took Mom, who’s visiting, to the UBC Botanical Garden. It had rained earlier and the sky was mostly grey. The magnolias were past their peak but charming; the rhodos were just ramping up their first wave of flowers, mostly wet that day ...
FotD: April 10 Camellias ·
I always have trouble growing camellias. Either I’m not giving them enough love or there’s something wrong with our soil; so the leaves and flowers turn brown. The other day I was walking through the neighborhood and there was this big (way taller than me) camellia bush that was just the picture of glowing health; every leaf and flower seemingly perfect.
FotD: April 7 Magnolia ·
Some combination of arriving in Spring, thinking about cameras, and acquiring Adobe Lightroom has led to flower-filled photo folders. I was trying to think of a clever way to organize them but couldn’t, so I’ll do a Flower of the Day till I run out. Today, white magnolia blossoms, black branches, blue sky. [1 comment]
Shellflower V ·
I really had fun with this one, and if you think you’re tired of these shell pictures, well maybe not just yet. [Series intro here.] ... [1 comment]
Shellflower IV ·
Once again, scanned using the Waterhouse-Hayward technique, the obverse and reverse of an eroded seashell. Offered only to please your eye. [Series intro here.] ...
Maxed ·
I’ve been doing less technical writing here recently, the kind of stuff about the Web and Sun and so on that I think is why most people come visit. I think this is because I’m getting deeper into the Sun internal ecosystem; morphing from a wild-eyed guy cruising the halls muttering radical ideas about REST and Ruby and RSS, to being up to my elbows in some skunkworks and products and communications programs. In an ideal world this should result, down the road, in some really meaty pieces in this space. In the interim, I can post pictures and report on the camera market ... [5 comments]
More Californipix ·
Another forty-eight hours in the Golden State, half of them rainy. I was looking around the Sun campus for a cool rain shot I could call “Sun in the Rain” but struck out. I do have an interesting city pair and and a dangerous wet-pavement thing ... [1 comment]
Dueling Daffodils ·
As I noted yesterday, I was having no luck with pictures of daffodils. The problem is that the outer fringe of petals is so much lighter than the inner trumpet that it’s hard to make the trumpet look good without over-exposing the fringe. I’ve still got some ideas to explore, but I am making progress, I think ... [4 comments]
Magnolia Raindrop ·
The rain let up about three and we got out to do a little pruning and gardening. The daffodils look good but I got something wrong and even under a cloudy sky the yellows were too much for the Pentax. Hmm. The magnolia is maybe a week and a bit from showing blossoms ...
Travel Pix ·
I broke down and got a Canon A710 IS and, like the reviewers say, it doesn’t weigh much, it didn’t cost much, it has a great big zoom and seems to take OK pictures. There’s nothing very inspiring about it and I would probably have been willing to pay twice as much for something with RAW and more interesting glass and so on, but apparently the camera biz has walked away from the high-end compact ... [4 comments]
Mashing with Mike ·
Today we had that Mashup event at the Sun campus with Mike Arrington. There were somewhere between 100 and 200 people there; I had fun and learned things ... [4 comments]
Shellflower III ·
Ooh, I got the Waterhouse-Hayward technique working with the flatbed scanner; it’s wonderful! Check out what happens when a dead mollusk collaborates with several years of intense surf. [Series intro here.] ... [4 comments]
Shellflower II ·
Still haven’t debugged the scanner process, so this is another Pentax/Tripod/Tamron shot. Series narrative here. Damn, these are pretty shells ... [2 comments]
Shellflower I ·
Attentive readers will remember that in January of this year, the family and I spent some time in Gippsland, Australia, in particular on the beach at Cape Conran park. On the big beach there where they surf, you can find remarkable sea-shells. The process by which the waves slowly turn them to white sand is transparent here, as you can pick up all sorts of shells once cone-shaped which are eroding away, revealing in the process unsuspected beauty of internal structure. They look like flowers. I brought a bunch home and I’m trying to photograph them ... [3 comments]
Characters in Grey ·
The grey is the sky, all we’ve had for some weeks, and the characters are a closed shop’s sign becoming a palimpsest ... [2 comments]
Photo Camp and High-End Compacts ·
At Northern Voice, one of the best sessions was the Photo Camp; the only problem was that, at ninety minutes, it was way too short. I did a little presentation on the state of the high-end-compact market (summarized below), but as usually happens at an Unconference, I learned more than I taught ... [32 comments]
Camera Blues ·
Both my cameras are having problems so I’m grumpy; I’m cheering myself up by watching the digicam market, appreciating what I have, and enjoying flash photography ... [15 comments]
2007 Crocus Crop ·
Round about this time every year, photos of little violet blossoms start to show up in this space. I worried that I might be repeating myself, but how can posting spring flowers not be a good thing? ... [2 comments]
The Jagged Edge of the World ·
Caught in pixels for your, well, not pleasure exactly. I’m talking about the World Press Photo Contest Winners’ Gallery. If you have any kind of a heart, there are pictures here that will tear holes in it. And some that are just insanely pretty. This year, parents of babies might want to avoid looking at the “Spot News” category. [2 comments]
Winter Streetlights ·
It’s been an incredibly nasty winter so far, but this last week has been cold/bright, what Vancouver gives you when it’s not grey/mild ...
How Many Pixels? ·
Now that you have a ten-megapixel camera, do you sneer at miserable peons like me who are still limping along with a mere six or seven million? It turns out that you may not be getting the use of all the pixels you’re paying for. There’s an intensely technical debate between Charles Sidney Johnson and Nathan Myhrvold (yes, that Nathan Myhrvold) at The Luminous Landscape (boy, does that site ever wrap some beautiful pictures in some butt-ugly web design). Frankly, I didn’t go slowly enough to follow all the math, but that’s OK, because there’s a tutorial called Diffraction & Photography over at Cambridge in Colour with a working demo where you can see how cranking the f/-stop decimates your pixels. Oh, and while we’re on things photographic, here’s some extreme camera porn. [2 comments]
Café ·
My local, in fact, where, if I added up all the cash spent on coffees in the course of a year, I’d probably be shocked. Which is probably why there are so many of them ... [1 comment]
Mountain ·
The left-hand side of North America has big mountains, many of them apt to erupt one of these centuries, at this time of year all snow-covered. This is one of them ... [1 comment]
Aussie Snaps ·
The last of the beach pictures: weathered rocks at Cape Conran ... [1 comment]
Aussie Snaps ·
Skyscapes with eucalypts; one, in a sense, firelit ... [1 comment]
Aussie Snaps ·
A farm scene in Gippsland, with eucalypts and drought colours ... [1 comment]
Aussie Snaps ·
Two large-scale shots of the beach at Frenches Narrows at Cape Conran park, with people fishing into the surf ...
Aussie Snaps ·
This is another flower from Sally’s garden, an agapanthus ...
Aussie Snaps ·
The moon over Melbourne on a delightful Southern Hemisphere summer evening ... [3 comments]
Williamstown ·
This Saturday we took the train out to Williamstown, a waterfront neighborhood near where we’re staying. We found its charm considerable despite the putrid weather, a uniquely Australian combination of grey skies, high temperature, and howling wind ... [3 comments]
Aussie Snaps ·
We took the kids to Melbourne Zoo, which is OK if in parts too old-fashioned (but the Australian-animals section is fine). I find zoo animals kind of depressing so I usually don’t take pictures. But there was an attractive red-headed black duck swimming in murky water with its baby chicks—a volunteer I think, not a zoo animal—and they were too cute to resist ... [4 comments]
Aussie Snaps ·
Two random roses from Sally’s front yard in Newport, a suburb of Melbourne ... [7 comments]
Aussie Snaps ·
My writing energy here in Australia is about fully occupied by a writing assignment I took on for O’Reilly; details when there’s something to point to. However, lots of pictures are occurring. Today, Melbourne, inside the Victoria Market butcher section, early on a Sunday New Year’s Eve morning ... [4 comments]
Christmas Pictures ·
Another Christmas in the bosom of the family; we got all of Jean Bray’s children, their spouses, and her grandchildren together, which we don’t manage often enough, in Calgary. Like many others, I find with every year that passes that the people seem more important, the eating and drinking and so on less; but I got an outstanding present ... [5 comments]
East Second ·
A picture of a derelict building on 2nd Avenue east of Main in Vancouver, which is an interesting neighborhood ...
Damage ·
The tree doctor came by this morning and gave us the bad news; the wounds were fatal. So the plum tree, the one Maryam said grew the best plums she’d ever eaten, pictured here and here, will be firewood early next year ... [1 comment]
The Colours of Snow ·
We’ve had a lot of snow and and a long freeze to keep it on the ground. All those shades of white and grey pulled the camera out of my pocket as much as any summer day’s flowers, this year ... [1 comment]
Photobits ·
There’s been much jawing about David Pogue’s claim in the New York Times that 5 megapixels is enough. He didn’t just claim it, he claims to have proved it. I think he may have a point, but the quality of evidence is crappy. First of all, he doesn’t say where the 13MP picture came from (probably a pretty high-end camera), nor how he photo-reduced it (PhotoShop and friends have all sorts of smart anti-aliasing), nor how the print enlarging was done (are the results comparable to the ones you’re going to get at your local print-shop?) It would have been way more interesting if he’d taken a two carefully-composed pictures, one with a 5MP camera and one with a bigger one, had them both photo-enlarged at the nearest drug-store, and compared those. Also, he ignores a real advantage of having more pixels; you can crop a picture way down to focus on the interesting parts and still have enough pixels to look good. Weirdly, he also fails to point out the downside of bigger pictures; they’re slower to transfer, edit, and display on-screen. So this is hardly a triumph of journalism. In this week’s other photo-news, the much-ballyhooed Leica M8, maybe the world’s most expensive consumer digicam, turns out to have quality issues. I still want one; but that would be unforgivably self-indulgent, I’ll only award myself one as a prize, say if I manage to bring peace to the Middle East, or (even tougher) make my Ruby parser go fast. [6 comments]
Brutal ·
That bad weather I wrote about a couple weeks ago is still bad, the baby and I are both sick; things could be lots worse but complaining is a sacred human right. With pictures ... [1 comment]
A Light ·
A photograph of a light ... [2 comments]
Bad Weather ·
You don’t really expect much from the weather up here in the November Pacific Northwest, but boy, it’s been brutal. We’re way past the average rainfall for the month and we’ll probably set a record; enough Wednesday to dump landslides into the reservoirs and now we’re all drinking boiled water. Trees down in the wind, and a four-story steel-frame building under construction. Nobody hurt on that one—it was at night—but you gotta feel sorry for the guys who showed up to work on the site in the morning. I took a picture outside my office ... [3 comments]
Stimulating Pictures ·
I don’t know why this tickles me so much, but it does: ongoing is getting a couple of thousand visits a week from people searching for “tea” or “cup of coffee” on Google Images. The piece entitled, well, Tea, is number one! And for “cup of coffee”, A Damn Fine Cup of Coffee is #5. Interestingly, neither of them show up anywhere near the top in the image-search functions of either Yahoo! or Microsoft’s Live Search. In fact, typing those words in and seeing what the three engines produce is kind of interesting (Live Search notably includes actress Téa Leone). [2 comments]
Frankfurt Verticals ·
This week I saw quite a bit of Frankfurt and for some reason all the interesting pictures were of tall things ...
München ·
That local spelling is nicer than the ugly English “Munich”; the even uglier airport code is MUC. It’s a rich, shiny, gleaming place ... [4 comments]
Autumn Leaves ·
At RubyConf, a person I’d never met before said “You should be running more pictures” and he was right, for some reason the camera hasn’t leapt out of my pocket as readily in recent times. But today I was walking down to the store and there was this tree with the sun behind it and the leaves just reached in and pulled the camera out ...
Ubuntu Baby ·
What happened was, we had Kerith over to take some real family portraits (they came out great) and when I scanned her negatives, there were gigabytes of pixels that I didn’t really want to copy around the network, so I thought I’d drop ’em on a DVD. This fragment combines Open Source serendipity, Microsoft-bashing, and adorable baby photography ... [7 comments]
Pilings ·
On the weekend, we visited Steveston, a touristy little waterfront town in the south suburbs. It’s got some mildly-interesting shopping and a lot of good food. Some of the restaurants are elegant, but we prefer Pajo’s; fish & chips on a floating dock at the west end of town. Good fish & chips are not that easy to find. The waterfront was formerly industrial (fish-canning mostly) and is becoming recreational/residential. But there are a lot of old wooden pilings left in in the water ... [1 comment]
‘Waterlily’ Autumn Crocus ·
We came back from the Botanical Garden with pictures; along with that Gunnera, there was this dramatic pink flower that I wanted to run but couldn’t remember what it was, so I asked Daniel Mosquin, the main man behind Botany Photo of the Day, and he told me; it has two pretty names, of which one appears above ...
Portobello West Colours ·
What happened was, I was listening to the podcast from CBC radio 3 and there was this great track from something called Lola Dutronic (@ MySpace); I emailed the distributor and all the record stores they sent me to were sold out, but he said they’d have a stand at Vancouver’s new-ish Portobello West market, so I dropped by and they were sold out there too, but I totally recommend the market. There were some deeply cool clothes and other oddments; I bought some candles and just avoided a couple of shirts. And also captured some serious colour with the camera ...
Angry Cow ·
What happened was, I was strolling in the pasture trying to get a camera angle on a hill across the road and I just about stepped on this cow that was sleeping in the long grass with her calf. We were both surprised ...
Hay Bales ·
In mid-August Saskatchewan, the first crop of hay bales is out in the fields ...
White Rock Dock ·
Central Vancouver is about 50km north of the U.S. border. Down at the border, on the seaside, is the town of White Rock, which has a beach extending right to the edge of America, a traditional pier, and a whole lot of restaurants. I’ve been living here mostly for over twenty years and never visited it, so we did, and I took some pictures off the pier. There actually is a White Rock; I have no pictures of that, but I do have an international-boundary shot ...
Kite Boy ·
A photograph of a boy flying a kite, in Saskatchewan ...
Columbia Industrial ·
Last week at OSCON, I had dinner downtown with David Van Couvering and then we walked over the Steel Bridge to the conference. We were worried about making it there for the opening session, and the wind was howling so I was worried about losing my hat, but there was a photo op. [Updates: an explanation and another photo.] ...
Ubuntu Gimp Intelligence ·
Well, I was going to have to do it sometime. I got out the USB cable and plugged the camera into the Ubuntu box, not expecting much ...
Pale Blue to the Max ·
There aren’t that many really great pale blue flowers; the object of the game for the plant is to attract the bugs’ attention, which is tough if you blend with the sky. Hydrangeas are a notable exception. Shot with a new camera setup, too ...
Pretty Cloud ·
Just a picture of some pretty clouds over a mountain from an airplane, with a mildly funny story ...
FSS: Brothers ·
Friday Slide Scan #33 is from early 1962; it features my bare bottom ...
Canada Day Fireworks ·
The only substantial show in Vancouver this year was at Nat Bailey, the minor-league ballpark ten blocks from home, much written-about in this space. Since Canada’s birthday is also my son’s we took him along and let him stay til the end to see them. They aren’t the world’s biggest fireworks, but the intimacy you get in a little park like that is hard to beat, and nothing improves the enjoyment of the fireworks experience so much as having a kid along. Now I’m going to waste your bandwidth with six different fireworks pictures, none exhibiting any photo-realism ...
Raccoontongue ·
In the neighbors’ back yard there’s an immense cherry tree; someone told me it was a leftover from the orchard that was here before the houses were built, but ours was built in 1919 and it’s hard to believe the tree’s that old. Anyhow, the cherries—as is common with old fruit trees—are probably not that tasty any more, but we don’t know because they’re way up there and hard to come at, and the wildlife get them first. This evening in the late sun there were two raccoons having cherries for dinner, and I got a couple of pictures ...
38 Weeks ·
Everything happens at once. The pregnancy draws heavily to its end, the house is being renovated (we need another room), the kid’s in baseball playoffs and rehearsing for his summer festival and school is winding down. Work’s busy, too ...
FSS: Double Wedding ·
Friday Slide Scan #32 is an early-nineties picture of a wedding. It’s not a double wedding, but it is a double exposure ...
Underground, Invitation, Le kick and rush ·
I wonder if there’s any real benefit, when someone whom I’ve already highlighted writes something exceptionally good, in pointing to them again and saying “read this!” But sometimes you can’t not do it. Item: my brother Rob on the joy of underground high explosives. Item: Alex Waterhouse-Hayward on Ana Victoria (oh, my). For my last link you’ll have to be able to read a language somewhat but not entirely unlike French; Mondial 2006 is the World Cup 2006 blog from Libération ; its torrent of high-velocity low-rent French baffles me in places, and it doesn’t help that I’m not 100% au fait with les Bleus, but you have to like pieces like Panini, beer & Co.
California Poppy ·
These are happy things, perhaps not the world’s most refined flower; modest in size, they come in cheery orange, cheery yellow, and the occasional white ...
Sink ·
A photograph of a bathroom fixture ...
FSS: Domestic Bliss ·
Friday Slide Scan #31 is a 1992 fireside shot, with a candle and a secret added bonus ...
FSS: Avebury ·
Friday Slide Scan #30 is from a 1988 visit to Avebury, a place in England with standing stones, not too far from Stonehenge and a much nicer place to visit ...
Dumbarton ·
This is the name of the southernmost bridge across San Francisco Bay. At the west end is our Menlo Park campus, where I usually work while I’m here, and at the east end is Newark, a salt-mining town, where I usually stay. So I’ve driven across that bridge a lot, usually in a hurry, often noting that there’s a walking trail at one end and a wildlife refuge at the other. Yesterday I stopped at both. Herewith the pictures, with remarks on tequila and hell ...
Raintulip ·
Spring encourages the tulips and then the rain dampens them. Wet or dry they’re fine by me ...
Spring in White on White ·
Most people would generally prefer a climate where it’s bright and warm most of the time. But for Canadians and others who live where it’s not, there are compensations, and one is the experience of spring. I have a picture ...
Jacobs, Pictures, Spartans ·
Jane Jacobs died; the city I live in, Vancouver, is pretty solidly Jacobsian both in its current shape and its planning dogma. By choosing to live here I’m empirically a fan. Oddly, few have remarked how great Jacobs looked; her face commanded the eye. Which leads me Alex Waterhouse-Hayward’s wonderful Jane Jacobs & Viveca Lindfors; surprising portraits and thoughts on decoration. W-H’s blog has become one of only two or three that I stab at excitedly whenever I see something new. For example, see Sex Crimes, Homicide and Drugs and yes, that’s what it’s about. Staying with the death-and-betrayal theme, and apparently (but not really) shifting back 2½ millennia, see John Cowan’s The War (after Simonides), being careful to look closely at the links. I’ve written about those same wars.
FSS: Pink Flowers ·
Friday Slide Scan #28 is two Eighties florals, one interior, one exterior. With a confession ...
Spring Pix ·
Three pictures around Vancouver; one of a fresh green springtime tree, two of rotten old buildings being torn down ...
Picture Frames ·
On this vacation, given that Lauren is seven months pregnant, we picked something that was low-stress and low-adventure (starting with the location; there’s a direct Vancouver-to-Kona flight). I like lounging by the pool and sampling the local beverages as much as anyone, but with a deadline-free week, I also found time for some recreational programming. The result is something I call “Framer”, which generates borders and/or drop shadows for images in most popular formats. It writes PNGs with variable alpha channel so the drop shadows will look OK on any color background. It has some options and you’re free to use it, but it’s not problem-free and unless there’s a lot of interest I’m not going to open-source it. Illustrated with groovy Big Island sunset photos ...
The Big Island ·
I’m good at vacationing; sleep a couple hours extra every night, lose all ambition, disconnect from work. Here are some photos from the Big Island, which is a good vacation spot, and remarks on: palm trees, resort maintenance and economics, bad clothing, lava, the size of things, where to buy fish, beer, flying with the kid, weather forecasts, Kailua-Kona and sea turtles ...
FSS: Hawai’i ·
Friday Slide Scan #27, like #26, has two twenty-year-old photos from Hawai’i, the Big Island; but unlike last week, these are ordinary pretty-plant pictures. Like last week, I picked them because we’re going to be spending the a week there, leaving tomorrow, April 1. If anyone I know is going to be there too, let’s get together for a Mai Tai ...
Tea ·
I’m trying to stay on top of one or two too many things and feeling kind of stressed out, so I thought I’d post a picture of a tea service ...
FSS: Hawai’i ·
Friday Slide Scan #26 has two twenty-year-old photos from Hawai’i, the Big Island; unusually for such photography, neither includes the ocean, nor any flowers, nor any plants even; there’s one non-native animal. They’re pretty enough, and that island’s in my mind because we’re going to be spending the a week there starting next Sunday, April 2nd. If anyone I know is going to be there too, let’s get together for a Mai Tai ...
Pink to the Max ·
As noted elsewhere today, we visited the UBC Botanical Garden, and only the early rhododendrons and a few magnolias were in bloom. I didn’t get any good rhodo shots, but with magnolias you can’t miss. If extreme densities of the colour pink bother you, please stay away; but these are some awfully great-looking flowers ...
Jon and the Minotaur ·
Jon Bosak (father of XML, terrific photographer, good person, etc.) was in Vancouver for some meetings having to do with UBL (and be warned, there’s going to be some more UBL tub-thumping around here), and encountered a monster ...
Snow, Death, Verticals ·
This trip is supposed to be for Spring Break, but in Saskatchewan, Spring hasn’t arrived yet. It’s been hitting -20°C at night, with the wind brisk; that’s a nasty combination. Well, you don’t come here for the weather, but the photo opps have been scarce too; the March light, until Friday, was alternately hazy and harsh. Herewith four pictures of snow ...
1921 Church ·
Here are three shots of the oldest Swedish Lutheran church in Canada, which you’ll find down a side road off a side road that doesn’t go anywhere else ...
Saskatchewan ·
It’s Spring Break, so we’re in Saskatchewan with the kid visiting his grandmothers. I’ll be out at Lauren’s Mom’s farm for the next three days with lousy Internet access. This is partly by design; I am seriously behind on my Java One deliverables and a day or two hiding upstairs at the farm, away from the Net, while Lauren hangs out with her mother and the kid with the animals, may help get me caught up. In the interim, here are three very Saskatchewan photos ...
Salem ·
On Friday morning I flew down to Portland, drove to Salem, and helped out with a Sun sales presentation to the state government from 10AM to 5PM. I don’t get to do many sales calls which is a pity because I love them. I probably shouldn’t queer the pitch by going into details (I will if we get the business, because it’s interesting), but I have to say that the state-government people we w