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Junepix 1: Car-Free ·
I was editing some pictures (which I organize per-month) and realized that there were a ton in the June folder that I’d been meaning to run, and now it’s not June. So let’s populate the first few days of July with some of ’em. First, musical faces of Car-Free Vancouver Day ...
Royal Sunset Again ·
Yes, I run pictures of this one particular plant’s blossoms all the time. I can’t help myself, particularly when the sun goes to work adding drama ...
Gryphon Rose ·
The rose is a Mme. Alfred Carrière, the gryphon is just a garden ornament ... [1 comment]
Grainy Eye Candy ·
Here are two images with nothing in common except being kinda grainy but pretty anyhow ... [3 comments]
Spanish Bluebells ·
They’re pretty, but they’re aggressive. Many of those in this picture, taken only a few days ago, are now history, slaughtered to make growing room for something we like better ... [4 comments]
Tulips ·
We planted a bunch a couple of years back, and now you get a chance to look at a few every spring if you want. These two are white and violet with slinky stems ... [1 comment]
Trillium, etc. ·
A photo of a three-petaled flower on a plant whose leaves come also in triples ... [1 comment]
It’s a Beautiful Day ·
Opening Day, I mean. Around here that means Little Mountain Baseball, for boys and girls aged 4 to 12. That first number’s not a misprint; they have this thing called “Blast Ball” for the near-toddlers. The sun was up and the colours were bright ...
The Anticipation of Pleasure ·
I try to do this once every spring: Run some pictures of where there are going to be flowers pretty soon. In this case, the magnolia in late-spring-afternoon sunlight ... [4 comments]
Ground Zero Balls ·
The kinds of balls that go on the ends of cables hanging from cranes I mean; don’t even know what they’re called. These particular balls and cables and cranes are on the Ground Zero site in lower Manhattan ... [4 comments]
Ouch, That Smarts ·
Quoting from About Photography (1949) by American photographer Will Connell (hat tip Brendan MacRae): “Every medium suffers from its own particular handicap. Photography's greatest handicap is the ease with which the medium as such can be learned. As a result, too many budding neophytes learn to speak the language too long before they have anything to say.” [10 comments]
Sunday at the Seaside ·
If you’re fortunate enough to live in a city by the sea, you should bloody well go visit it sometimes. This last weekend I was on single-Dad duty, so Sunday morning I ignored the lowering sky and general dampness, bundled the protesting urchins into the van, and took them to the beach ... [5 comments]
On Media ·
This last Friday and Saturday I spent in the company of 250 or so people who self-define as contributors to the Net, at Northern Voice 2009. On the one hand, it’s like being in a warm bath; everyone here thinks it’s normal to want to tell your story to the world, usually on more than one channel. On the other, everyone goes around talking about “Social Media”; the clock is totally ticking on the time when you can do that unironically. Having said that, our traditional media are looking pathetically clapped-out and we are sure as hell going to need something to fill the gaps. With pictures ... [1 comment]
Crocus! ·
I just realized that just because in every previous year I’ve run an excited photo of the spring’s first crocuses, that’s not a reason not to run an excited photo of this spring’s first crocus ... [2 comments]
Eight Pictures of 香港 ·
Poor travel planning: Twenty-four hours in the air (13 there, 11, back) and less than 72 on the ground in Hong Kong, which is a sort-of-phonetic rendering of the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters in the title above meaning “fragrant harbour” ... [2 comments]
2008/12/23, Four PM ·
We spent time near Christmas at a family farm near Esterhazy in Saskatchewan. Regular readers will know that I enjoy photographing this part of the world. On December 23rd, as the clock marched toward four in the afternoon and the December sun (at 50°39'12"N) neared the distant flat horizon, I resolved on a photo-walk. It was around -30°C with a mild but painful breeze in the fast-changing light; one of the most intense experiences in my 2008. Herewith eight pictures, mostly of snow ... [7 comments]
Fog, then Steam ·
I’ve whined recently about Vancouver’s untypical and long-lasting fog problem and, as I write, it’s back, accompanied by freezing temperatures. But we had some bright relief ... [3 comments]
Cloud Interop Session ·
I spent Tuesday at the Cloud Interop event organized by Steve O’Grady and David Berlind. Scientists say that even a negative result is useful in advancing knowledge; I’d go further and say that a wait-and-see attitude in the heat of a hype cycle is often optimal. By those criteria, this was successful. My attendee count peaked at 51 ... [3 comments]
Fogbound ·
That’s been our weather for days, and it doesn’t look like changing ... [3 comments]
Snow Bitching ·
Vancouver’s weather has been sufficiently bad this winter to have made the national news a few times, and if you follow any local online voices, you may be growing tired of our whining about the weather. Well, I’m going to publish a few pictures of the carnage anyhow ... [11 comments]
Cow Hair ·
Being two photographs of cow hair. Live and on the cow I mean. Really ... [9 comments]
The School Concert ·
Our son is attending Grade Four in a specialized program that includes a compulsory String Instruments class, thus he’s been struggling to master a screechy little violin since September. It’s a public school; by some budgetary jiggery-pokery they manage to retain the services of a nearly-full-time Strings teacher. Last Thursday night was the Christmas Concert featuring the fourth and fifth graders, and we had no idea what to expect ... [6 comments]
Decemberblossoms ·
Walking down to the shops at the corner in the damp Pacific Northwest dimness, a hold-out rose caught my eye. It’s beat up and soaking wet, but this time of year you take the flowers you can get ... [2 comments]
Fuzzy Clichés and Money ·
Being an illustrated ramble through the last three days, which I spent in Manhattan talking about money. Some of the photos are the most painfully obvious clichés and to make it worse fuzzy and blurry too. Those adjectives might apply at least in part to the money business too ... [5 comments]
CL V: Rain and its Culture ·
There won’t be any more Cottage Life pieces till next year, because we spent American Thanksgiving, when you can’t get anything done anyhow, closing the place up. We found out why they call all those great big trees a “rain forest” ... [3 comments]
Eggplants ·
I actually don’t like hardly anything made with eggplant, but I’m glad other people do so that there are baskets of them at the market to take pictures of ... [9 comments]
Round Yellow Tree ·
The mixture of green and autumnal yellow produces the illusion of a springlike colour, but in fact this is pure November ...
Sunlit Autumnals ·
In which I once again ignore the conventional photographic wisdom holding that shade is your friend and sunlight your enemy ... [3 comments]
Container Cranes ·
On a recent weekend we took the Seabus over to Lonsdale Quay. The Seabus is both romantic and reliable, a rare enough combination in this world. On the way back, I took a photo of the big container-handling cranes ... [1 comment]
London ·
I spent four days there last week and enjoyed it. Herewith words and pictures ... [2 comments]
Shells ·
Being a photo of some jetsam on Vancouver’s Point Grey foreshore ... [1 comment]
Yellowing ·
There are still a lot of green leaves left, but we’re definitely in early-autumn mode. Check out these many shades of yellow ... [1 comment]
Blues Pix ·
I’ve got a touch o’ them old autumnal-financial-meltdown blues, so I’ll post a couple of garden shots as therapy ... [1 comment]
Driving ·
Like most people on the left half of the New World, driving has informed and constrained and enriched my adult life. I’ve enjoyed it. Indications are that mine will be one of the last drive-everywhere generations. The shape the tribe settles into may be more pleasing, and strengthening local culture is a fine thing, but the loss of the time-behind-the-wheel, with the music playing, going places, well, it’s sad ... [9 comments]
Trying Again ·
Being three photographs of a lonely old rose. In June of 2004 I said I’ll try again next year, and I did too but this is an elusive target; follow that link to read why. This year, what with the cool spring, it didn’t bloom till September ... [1 comment]
White on Green ·
Being a photo of a cluster of small white flowers against a leafy backdrop ... [2 comments]
Treeset ·
Being a photo of the sun approaching the horizon with no clouds to serve as a canvas for its setting rays. But there’s a little tree ... [3 comments]
Horizon ·
Being a photograph of a Saskatchewan hayfield and a cloudy sky ... [2 comments]
Turning ·
We left summery August Vancouver for a week on the prairies, where blazing heat and lashing storms alternated, thunder often in the distance ...
Western Wear ·
I’ve always had a weakness for cowboy fashion, and when we visit Saskatchewan, we always drop by the big Cowtown store in Regina to do our bit for the Prairie economy, not that it needs it what with grains and potash and petroleum all booming ... [3 comments]
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 ... [1 comment]
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 ... [34 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 were pitching to had smart questions and were endearingly obsessive about the application; and I would be too in their position, it’s one of the Things That Matters. I flew home out of PDX that same evening and damn was I tired. But the State Capitol is worth looking at, so I took a couple of pictures ...
Busy Pix ·
Well, I didn’t have time to do the Friday Slide Scan, and I’m not going to fit the 5✭♫ for Monday in either; just too much happening. So I thought I’d post a couple of random—extremely random—pictures ...
FSS: Cypress Hills Again ·
Friday Slide Scan #24 is a shot that should have appeared in FSS #6: Cypress Hills; it caught my eye when I was going through the files and it is, if you like the Prairies, just too pretty to skip. As a bonus, there’s a Prairie story of jailbreak and highway terror ...
OSBC Pix ·
I unloaded the pix from camera and there were a couple from the OSBC trip last week, which gives me an excuse to say a couple more words about the conference, Microsoft, and copyblogging ...
FSS: Zürich and Yvoire ·
Friday Slide Scan #22 is two pictures from 1990, Zürich at dusk and old stones in Yvoire. I have some history with Zürich ...
Crocuses! ·
Regular readers have been putting up with quite a bit of whining about the endless weeks of solid rain. Well, that seems to have blown itself out with a bang, and the sun rose this Sunday morning. It turns out that all that rainy weather was also kind of warm, and the first flowers were more than ready to show their faces ...
FSS: Feather, Gauze, Vase ·
Friday Slide Scan #19 is from around 1990 and is well-described by this fragment’s title; it’s really very pretty ...
Surprising the Eye ·
What happened was, I was speaking at a conference, sharing the stage with the Chairman of the SEC (by video) and (in the flesh) the SEC’s CIO and the FDIC’s Deputy CIO. No pointers because it deserves serious coverage. For the occasion, I (obviously) wore my best custom-made Italian suit (grey) and an understated-but-strong tie (mostly blue), along with my dapper new Bailey’s fedora. Then I took off for two heavy-geek meetings at Sun campuses and a visit to Technorati. When I pulled into the Sun parking lot, I thought about pulling the tie off and the jeans on but decided it would do ’em good to see a geek in a suit, and I have to say I got as many blank-faced WTF-is-this looks as anyone could want. But then, at the end of all my meetings, while I was trudging down a SoMa street to my alarmingly-huge Avis van ($20 in gas for a day going up & down Route 101; dear America, something’s wrong), I saw something really alarming ...
Football, Beans, Sunshine, Sex ·
What happened was, we had some friends over for the Sunday football games, and the day turned out very pleasantly in a bunch of ways; herewith an illustrated narrative ...
FSS: Roads ·
Friday Slide Scan #18 is from my Dad’s “Roads” category; three pictures spanning three countries, two continents, and two decades ...
Pictures of Not Much ·
I’ve used “prognosticator” as a veiled insult, just because it sounds so nasty. Last year I played that game though, in a post with a title like this one’s; now it’s a quiet New Year’s Eve (we’re tired and have a big day tomorrow), so why not consider last year the start of a tradition? So let’s look back and see how I did last year, then try again. And again toss in some pretty pictures of not much ...
FSS: Lichens ·
Friday Slide Scan #17 is from August 1971, featuring lichens from Mount Lebanon ...
Vibrator Repairs ·
Recently my Mom and I found ourselves driving around in an industrial subdivision of Burnaby when we ran across this, which I think is worth reproducing ...
Frosty Leaves ·
We had a week or two of clear bright cold (well, down to -3°C or so) weather; each morning each leaf was limned frost-white ...
Yellow House ·
It’s been bright and cold the last couple of days in Vancouver, and at 49°N., the sun never gets that high, which makes for strong shadows wherever you look. I walk by this yellow house on my way to work every day ...
From Nob Hill ·
I stayed a night last week at a hotel on on Nob Hill in San Francisco which was only OK so it gets no link, but my room was on the nineteenth floor looking south, and the Fogtown morning air and the vista’s breadth were way too much for my little pocket camera, but a couple are worth publishing anyhow just because they’re fun to look at ...
FSS: Henna Hand ·
Friday Slide Scan #16 is from July 1983 and is labeled “Loni MM, hand painted: henna” ...
Pix You Like ·
The idea of the little picture on the right side of the screen, aside from the fact that it pleases my eye, is that it’s supposed to tempt you into wandering into the back rooms here at ongoing. So, does it work? Not very well; there’ve been twenty-five thousand or so such visits since ongoing launched in 2003. It’s evenly distributed; the top article so visited got 476 and the tenth most popular 284. The ten ongoing fragments most visited via the little picture are What Japan Looks Like, California Wedding, Lustre-Lustrous, Javapolis Jet-lag, Warm Wind Off the Ocean, Dynamic Java, The Island Rose Trip: Day Two, Foo Camp 2004, More Patent Funnies, and Genx Status. Unsurprisingly, most of them have lots of pictures, except for the last, which has only one.
Old Chinatown ·
This morning took us down to old Chinatown on a shopping mission. We don’t live that far away but it’d been a while; I’d forgotten its cheerful grubby intensity, and you can get some bargains. With a Cantonese-food lament ...
FSS: Swirl ·
Friday Slide Scan #15 is a picture of, uh, well, I’m not sure what it is. The other night I scanned through the relatively small number of surviving slides that Dad had classified as “Art”, which we’ll be mining for the next two or three fridays. Reasonable people might disagree about whether this is “Art”, but it is kind of pretty ...
On the Naming of Roses ·
I have on several occasions linked to the UBC Botanical Garden Botany Photo of the Day (“In science, beauty. In beauty, science. Daily”), and while Lauren and I did help by encouraging them to launch, I would have done this anyway, just because it’s great. Yesterday’s entry, entitled Rosa ‘Harwanna’, is outstanding, both for the ethereal rose photo, not taken with a camera, and for its discussion of the intersection of intellectual property and flower names. Did you know that flowers can be patented? And further, trademarked? And further, that these practices damage our ability to talk about flowers? This entry touches me at an uncanny number of points: Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, the featured artist, took the best picture of me that anyone ever has, and the flower is named after Jacqueline du Pré!
Irises ·
The 30th was our ninth anniversary, and I brought home flowers ...
Atlanta Abstracts ·
I was going to call this “XML Abstracts” because the reason we were in Atlanta was the XML 2005 conference, which came off pretty well and which has been sufficiently reported elsewhere. I’ll write up my Why not to invent a new XML language as a big piece here some day. But instead, here are a couple of pretty pictures of not much at all from Atlanta, plus an O’Hare interloper ...
FSS: Chipmunk and Lacy Dress ·
Friday Slide Scan #13 is a picture of a squirrel cadging food from Lynne, who was a good friend for a long time but we’ve lost touch with; you can’t see her face, but her summer dress is remarkably pretty. This was shot sometime around 1990, on vacation by the waters of Georgian Bay, near Parry Sound. ...
Novemberlight ·
We’ve had brutal fall weather, repeated heavy rain & wind warnings, have had to shovel rather than rake the fallen leaves. But today that slanting winter sun came out and tempted the photographer’s eye. Very Vancouver. [Update: the next morning, it’s pouring and grey. So if I snarl at you in an email or over the phone or whatever, it’s early-onset Seasonal Affective Disorder at work.] ...
FSS: Baldini Sunset ·
Friday Slide Scan #12 is a picture of a sunset near Fort Vermilion, Alberta, which is way up north. It’s by my Dad, and while it’s pretty nice, it’s not his best, not even his best sunset; but it’s the oldest I’ve scanned so far, dating from 1953 ...
The Spirit Moving ·
Containing three travel photographs from Oct. 28, 2005, one enigma, an out-take from Genesis 1, and a tugboat ...
Red Berry Leaves ·
In our garden, there is nothing more intense than the color of the blueberry leaves come autumn ...
Autumn Echinacea ·
Two pictures of dying flowers; I can’t think of a way to say “maybe you really want to check these out” without sounding immodest, but maybe you really do ...
Autumn Eye Candy ·
This weekend’s been rain-free, which in late September in Vancouver is a notable event. I have a ton of pictures, but let’s do them in little thematic chunks. This one is just dead vegetation ...
FSS: Dad, Rob, Bike ·
Friday Slide Scan #11 is from the summer of 1964. It shows my Dad fixing my bike, with my brother Rob looking on. The location is the Beka’a valley in Lebanon, so there’s some back-story ...
Extreme Low Tide ·
A couple of weekends back, we took a walk on the beach when the tide was way, way out and the sun clear and slanting ...
Slovenia From Above ·
Was just cleaning out the camera, and there was this photo taken during the climb out of Ljubljana last week; it suffers, obviously, from being taken with a pocket camera through an airplane window, but is still kind of pretty ...
Memory ·
Tuesday evening and Wednesday were in Edmonton, Alberta which, oddly, is kind of my hometown. I did a couple of lectures and took pictures and dealt with unexpected sorrow. In this fragment we spend some quality time with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, consider whether electronic documents will outlive books or vice versa, and conclude with a conundrum ...
Prague Street-Lamps ·
It’s a tourist town, you see, but that’s OK; I come from one so I understand. Herewith Prague words and pictures ...
Check out Marlowe ·
Marlowe is a kitten and joined our family two weeks ago. Herewith some cute-kitten shots and stories and also some kitten ethics ...
How To Shoot Flowers ·
The admirable Botany Photo of the Day sometimes takes a side-trip into photo technique (as for example in today’s remarkable shot). A few weeks ago they pointed to this lesson in lighting technique from Nature Photographers Online Magazine; I suspect anyone who’s snuck up on a flower with a camera will find it interesting. Oddly though, I found that in that photo sequence, I vastly preferred the first, unimproved, shot, with the sharpish shadows highlighting the petal textures. What do you think?
Yellow Rose ·
It’s been far, far too long since I wrapped a fragment round a flower. That’s because our summer, and hence our garden, was generally pretty terrible here this year in Vancouver; the exception being a bumper crop of blueberries. Anyhow, here we have a picture of a yellow rose blossom and a couple of buds, that’s all ...
Sorry, Kids ·
Starting way last year, I noticed occasional fetches of the big versions of the pictures here at ongoing from places like xanga, LiveJournal, and MySpace. Turns out it was mostly teenage bloggers using my shots as background images, it seemed harmless, but then the volume went up and up and I did the arithmetic, and it was adding up to many gigabytes a month. So I blocked ’em, but I feel a little sad; herewith some notes on who these kids are and what kind of pictures they like ...
i9900, Again ·
I don’t often do straight product plugs here but I just spent some quality time grinding out prints from the Prairies trip, and while I don’t have a deep knowledge of the competition, here’s the ultimate compliment: The Canon i9900 makes me look like a much better photographer than I really am, the prints are wonderful. Also, no setup hassles, on either OS X or Windows. Also, it works remarkably fast.
Saskatchewan ·
While everyone else was off at those foobar camps, we spent the weekend (and will spend the week) in Saskatchewan, hanging out at the kid’s grandmothers’ places and mostly still working, but in in a different kind of topography. Saskatchewan is a good place for taking pictures ...
Don’t Feed the Bears ·
Just some pretty pictures, that’s all folks, nothing here to think about, move right along. Including, along with the title shot, one AFS, one AFSF, and a plum in a dishrack ...
Crane on Hastings ·
I took this weeks ago and liked the geometry, but the picture was still a little on the boring side. So I abandoned photointegrity and jammed the PhotoShop controls all the way over. Which, among other things, covers up the collateral damage from the War on Drugs ...
Donkeys ·
We visited The Donkey Sanctuary in Devon; it’s a nice place, follow that link and read all about it, and if you’re anywhere near, drop on by. But this entry is just two cute donkey pictures, that’s all; no larger lessons or technology metaphors. [Malcolm Rowe writes to let me know that “Devonshire” is at best book language, at worst ignorant-tourist talk. So “Devon” it is; anyhow shorter is better.] ...
Lyme Light ·
Our long English weekend was almost entirely unlit by sun; but the colours and light of that countryside are worth looking at, even with grey overhead. This small photo-essay features Lyme Regis, a likeable kind of place ...
Impure Art ·
Herewith two pretty outdoor-summer shots, one featuring a humble spoon. Dear reader, my motives are not entirely pure; I have in my hands a beta release of an actual Atom 1.0 newsreader, and, well, yes, I’m debugging. But still, that spoon shot is one of my prettiest ever, I think ...
Summer Things ·
Early summer has been so undistinguishedly grey that I was considering declaring a unilateral case of SAD in July, but finally we’re seeing some real light and feeling some real warmth. Herewith some pictures of the summer things that people do ...
Harmless Family Fun ·
First, you have three glasses of wine with dinner. Then, you look at some pictures that are kind of interesting but not really up to scratch. Then, you go berserk with PhotoShop ...
Kelowna Chutney ·
We took our friend Sally on a mini-vacation this long weekend, up to the Okanagan Valley, B.C.’s wine country, distinguished also by beaches, outdoor fun, beautiful mountainside views, and generally nature. Here are some tourist tips and a first photographic fruit ...
agnès b. ·
Herewith photos of two San Francisco storefronts, one whose name I don’t know, the other whose name I liked enough to use for a title ...
FSS: Snowy Rainbow ·
Friday Slide Scan #10 is a bit of a mystery, the file was in a folder labeled “Ontario” but it really looks to me like a winter shot of Long Beach in Pacific Rim National Park. Which I would highly recommend as a tourist destination to anyone ...
Oceanspray, Creambush, Ironwood ·
These are all names for Holodiscus discolor; it’s a Pacific-Northwest native and the last of the names is a translation of what the aboriginal people called them, apparently the wood is hard enough to make knitting needles and so on. It’s three years since we put it in, and the first year it’s flowered ...
Royals 8, Giants 1 ·
We took in the game Tuesday night; here are some notes on the occasion, a nice picture of the ballpark, and a recommendation for an online ticket seller ...
Caynes’ Cairn ·
I’ve been asked why I keep pointing to “that dude’s incomprehensible gibberish”, but hey, this is my blog. Anyhow, visit Tim Caynes’ Latest and either read it or don’t, but do follow the link at the end to a really remarkable picture labeled “cairn”.
People in Tokyo ·
Last Thursday and Friday I had a bunch of meetings with people in Tokyo and Chiba and thus there are stories and pictures ...
Sports Photography ·
As previously noted, we bought the Pentax DSLR because we already had some Pentax lenses around the house. Except for, we stuck the general-purpose zoom on it and that’s about all we’ve used, until this weekend. The kid plays soccer and baseball, and I thought I’d try out the telephoto and make like one of those Sports Illustrated photogeeks. Yow! This could be addictive ...
Spring City Skies ·
Herewith two photographs featuring cloudy Vancouver skies on a mild Spring day ...
Winner of the Rose Race ·
This year, one of the Rugosas out by the back fence was first across the line. There’s magenta and then there’s extreme magenta ...
Spring ·
Through most of March and the first two weeks of April, Winter was a cold grey dam holding the next season in check; on April 19th or so, the dam broke and we’ve been in a glorious flood of summer since then. One of these pictures is remarkable ...
Spring Baseball Weather ·
The weather, shifty this weekend, held off until just after the Little League game. It was sunny even, then we saw that behind the bright branches half the sky was storm-coloured. As I snapped this, the first hailstones fell, you can even see some ...
FSS: Yellow and Blue ·
Friday Slide Scan #8 is from sometime in the late Eighties, a dandelion in a sea of forget-me-nots ...
Three Geometries ·
I take and even publish pictures of, well, nothing, when the shape demands it. Blame that math degree. Two of these these are on the Steveston waterfront which is pretty darn nice on a sunny day; the other in a random sunlit stairwell.
Three Azaleas ·
There’s this azalea in our front yard (you walk right by it on the way in) and it’s a photographer’s problem because at its peak it vanishes behind a solid mass of red petals, bright red, arguably garish but you have to smile; only no camera, film or digital, has come close. “Beauty is hard” said the poet, and so are extreme reds. Anyhow, here are three shots of its prepubescent phase in very vertical sunlight ...
FSS: Still Life ·
Friday Slide Scan #8 is from October 1992, a still life featuring a computer and some daisies in an oddly empty room in Waterloo, Ontario ...
FSS: Chinese New Year ·
Friday Slide Scan #7 is from whenever Chinese New Year was in 1984, in Vancouver’s Old Chinatown. It is egregiously PhotoShopped ...
Worst March Ever ·
I’ve been living here intermittently since 1983 and I haven’t seen a springtime like it. Sad ...
Pictures of Lauren ·
She needed some photos for professional reasons, so I took a bunch and then, while fiddling around with PhotoShop, discovered that you can have some serious fun in the glamorizing line. Herewith Lauren Wood, Ph.D. with plumblossoms, twice ...
Sudden Sun ·
The weather’s been terrible pretty well all month, we’ve hardly seen the sun and the temperature’s hardly been over 10°C. At six-ish this Equinox afternoon, I glanced out the front window and gasped aloud; a trailing shaft of sideways sun sliced through the drizzle, some of the visuals were surprising. Then my integrity slipped ...
Melliodendron ·
What happened was, an unexpected email from Quentin Cronk led us to a feast of flowers, which may spill slightly onto the Net. This gig comes with fringe benefits, you betcha. While over-long, this fragment has a picture of a very beautiful flower that almost nobody’s ever seen ...
Geometries On Main ·
My “Home Office” isn’t actually at home, it’s over a store near 21st and Main in Vancouver. Main Street is interesting; at heart still pretty grungy and low-rent, it’s trying to gentrify. It’s hard to tell, looking forward, whether it’ll retain its essential grubbiness or vanish under a wave of mall stores and Starbucks. For the moment, it’s visually fetching ...
The Anticipation of Pleasure ·
Last year, I waited till May 2nd to write a piece with this name about the forthcoming flowers. I got a couple of hours gardening in today and the anticipation is sharp ...
FSS: Totemic Jet ·
Friday Slide Scan #7 is from Alert Bay on Vancouver Island, and dates from September of 1986; it shows a totem pole and an airplane ...
Spring ·
The second half of February was pleasantly bright; but chilly, with the mercury dipping into the frost nearly every evening. A few flowers managed to get their heads above ground, but were kind of stunted and unenthusiastic. This last week’s been warm, alternating sun and rain. If you stand still in the garden, very still, you can almost hear the flowers growing ...
Errors and Omissions ·
Attending a meeting in a downtown office building in Vancouver, I photographed the nameplate on the door of a business that I hadn’t known existed ...
Search Optimization (Low-Rent) ·
In Vancouver, as in most cities, the poles that hold up the traffic lights and streetlights and, well, anything, are plastered with posters advertising soon-to-be-famous rock bands and tarot readers and, well, anything. Search Engine Optimization, too ...
FSS: The Mission at San Diego ·
Friday Slide Scan #5 is from the Spring of 1990: an internal shot at the old Mission of San Diego in the city of that name; Unix and the Oxford English Dictionary took me there ...
St. Valentine’s Hibiscus ·
I had the good fortune to grow up in a warm climate, surrounded by large hibiscus bushes, well-supplied most months with luscious tropical blooms, in our case usually crimson. But in Hawai’i they come in apricot too, and what could be more appropriate for this day? ...
A Chair ·
Hey, this is my space, if I want to run a picture of a chair I can. And it’s a nice chair ...
Valley Morning ·
I’m here in the Valley for this and that and especially the Sun Analyst Summit, where I’m part of the entertainment. Here are a couple of sunrise pictures from the east side of the bay ...
Crocuses! ·
Those who have been following along here since I launched almost two years ago know that in the spring, There Will Be Pictures of Crocuses. Those who haven’t lived lived above 49°N latitude may have trouble understanding how much these little violet flashes mean to the winter-weary Canadian eye.
PhotoShop Elements 3 Review ·
Skipping to the conclusion: It’s good, if you’re using Elements already go upgrade. But along the way, there are thoughts on software’s lifespan and pricing. Plus, a thin black woman kissing a flower taller than herself ...
Wintry ·
Last week, we had one of our rare Vancouver snowstorms. But the stuff’s still on the ground ...
Photointegrity Again ·
Anyone who, like me, worries about the relationship between photography and truth, should take the time to read this New York Times piece on the subject. [Update: What was I thinking? I neglected to mention probably the most thoughtful writing ever on this subject, which was of course by Susan Sontag; some is online here and here.]
Canon i9900 ·
We’ve spent quite a few bucks this last couple of years with one photo-finisher or another, and recently Lauren’s been cooking up business ideas around photography. So she went out and got a Canon i9900 and I got my hands on it first; wow! It’ll probably end up plugged into one of the fixed machines but we didn’t have the right cable, so I FireWired it into my Mac (grr, had to reboot to install the driver) and ran one or two of my favorite prints at 300dpi and well, my goodness gracious, they look just like what comes back from the online print service, only better. I’m sure that a fine professional photo-finisher who puts their soul into their work can do better, but that’s not what I’m getting when I upload my JPEGs to one mass-market printshop or another. And there’s lots of playing-around to do with DPI and paper finishes and colour spaces and so on. I assume that, things being what they are, the competition is about as good too, which is very good indeed.
Vancouver Winterbeach ·
Weekends here at 49°N latitude in the short-day months, if the sun shows you really need to get out into it. We favour the beach, in particular the Point Grey Foreshore, which is nicely rough and scrambly and uncrowded. Herewith some winterbeach pictures ...
Darkening ·
This time of year, weeks yet till the shortest day and still it’s dusk so early, and the weather not helping; only today there was light enough for pictures, albeit dark ...
Lustre-Lustrous ·
I am the lucky owner of one of the plates used to print the original 1928 version of the Oxford English Dictionary, a trophy of the years 1987-89 when I worked full-time on a sideshow of a sideshow of the production of the OED Second Edition; this fragment’s title is the range of words that were on that page. Herewith a brief visual essay on the plate, which surprisingly includes a curvy fashion shoot ...
The Last Leaves of 2004 ·
Back in September of last year, I wrote: “There’s a visual effect that I’ve only seen here in rainy green B.C. and has so far eluded all my cameras. It works like this: On a grey day, as dusk gathers, something you’d think would be unremarkable, like a fern against old wood, or these autumnpearleaves, can make you look twice or three times, colour reaching deep into your machineries of vision. I think it’s of the mind rather than the eyes, but haven’t abandoned hope for lucky light on a dark day with camera in hand.” This one gets halfway there ...
Canon Upgrade and Eulogy ·
My beloved Canon S50 has not been doing that well. It takes pretty good pictures, but it’s been dropped and whacked a few too many times (my fault) and has been in the shop twice for a problem which just now recurred, here in Washington at XML2004. Over at DPR, they’ve reviewed two generations of S50 successor (S60 and S70, how imaginative), all very positively, and a close reading reveals that the things Canon had changed are exactly the ones that had been irritating in the S50. So rather than fixing the S50, I escaped the conference for a bit—ah, balmy sunny DC autumn day—and got an S70. Lighter, stronger, thinner, better lens, can re-use the old flashcard and battery so now I have two. Very nice. Plus, prices haven’t adjusted in Canada to the recent steep climb in our dollar, so I probably saved $50 or better by buying down here, even after I pay the sales tax at the border. By way of eulogy for the S50, here are three recent nature abstracts; evidence that a little wee pocket camera, when the photographer gets lucky, can hold its head up unashamed in the company of titanic cameras three times its size and ten times its price ...
Yellow ·
A few minutes of sunshine on a mid-fall day with leaves on the ground, not everything is yellow but there sure is a lot of it about ...
Drive People ·
When I grow up, I want to take more pictures of people and fewer of flowers. It’s photos of faces that move me, but—to be brutally honest—I have a courage deficit when it comes to pointing the camera at people I don’t know. On Saturday we had brunch at Havana on Commercial Drive, “the Drive” in Vancouver parlance; Havana has managed to stay stylish for years and years, the food’s good, room and patio are nice, and the Drive has outstanding people-watching. So I shot some of ’em ...
Thanksgiving ·
Canadian Thanksgiving, that is, today, October 11th; I won’t be working much. So, late on Thanksgiving eve I say thank-you to the world for being what it is, and to my family and friends for being what they are, and to the people at work for the good stuff there. And I’ll throw in a photograph of the Autumnal bounty ...
Floatplane! ·
A day trip today, Vancouver to Victoria and back; some might not find it self-evident that Victoria is on Vancouver island but Vancouver isn’t. There are a bunch of ways to get there; herewith a little photo-essay on the best ...
The Last Warm Weekend ·
The forecast says rain setting in tomorrow then a few days of mixed grey; which in Vancouver, this time of year, could stretch for weeks. So let’s share some sunny-weekend eye candy ...
Autumn Leaves ·
That would be a jazz standard by Johnny Mercer and Joseph Kosma, two verses in English and one in French (Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s’aiment/Tout doucement sans faire de bruit), awfully pretty and sad, just like, well, autumn leaves. I have pictures ...
Caught In Action! ·
Herewith a rare excursion into wildlife photography; I got lucky and captured one of our featured local species showing a burst of speed ...
Frontwallback ·
This is just a photograph of a wall. [Update: Enriched with a geek metaphor.] ...
Brussels × 5 ·
Brussels again, and there’s something about the place that makes me reach for the camera. Includes yet another WiFi story ...
Three Chapels ·
The Brussels airport has three chapels all in a row: Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic. I found myself walking back and forth spending time looking at each, and now you can too, without going there ...
Late Summer ·
Vancouver’s summer was good but ended, more or less, August 10th, so when on this last weekend the Sun manifested, we felt recompensed a little. Herewith some illustrated words on flowers that end in -ia, learning about the world, Jericho, harvesting and fishing ...
Grass ·
When we were in Saskatchewan earlier this month, I didn’t (unlike last year) get many interesting Prairie snapshots; a pity, because it’s always a feast for the eyes. But I got two ...
Sweet Pea Shadow ·
To bring you this photograph, Dear Reader, I braved the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune or at least skepticism on the part of my loved ones, provoked merely by my taking seventy-four exposures, each different in the fast-setting sun, of this little tableau ...
My Mother’s Garden ·
My mother Jean Bray is an avid gardener who contends mightily with the Saskatchewan climate (zone 2B for aficionados); her space is in summer always a delight to the eyes ...
Loosestrife ·
Some point each year (well after “midsummer” in late June) comes to feel like the heart of summer; it’s been there a long time, it’s going to be for a while yet, days are still long, the garden has left its spring sprint behind but is still running strong. This year’s midsummer-pictures assemblage features “Gooseneck Loosestrife,” and what a name that is ...
Yucca Year ·
This year our Yucca has flowered, the first time since we bought the place in 1997. So are all the others in Vancouver ...
White Bricks (Many) ·
I understand that there are those who may not wish to look at photos of a large brick building with many windows. I find that hard to understand ...
Brick, Dusty, Creamy, Silky ·
There’s an old rose in our front yard that we inherited with the place; it’s slender and spindly and not very tall, and produces only one or two flowers each year; its colour has, every year since 1997, defeated my photographic wiles. This year we have a partial victory ...
Ungilded, Emerging ·
Herewith two lilies and an emerging hydrangea. The latter, in particular, deserves a visit ...
Second-Rate Roses ·
It was bright today, very bright, and I did a Nasturtium follow-up but spent time too with some journeyman roses ...
Nasturtiumleaves ·
There’s a hanging pot on the back porch with a thriving nasturtium. I had a close look ...
Alan’s Bluebells ·
On display here. I love massed displays of little flowers and I shoot tons of pictures of ’em but they almost never come out any good. I wonder what Alan’s doing right and I’m doing wrong.
Airphotos and Levels ·
Herewith two shots taken on the trip to the Bay yesterday, with an advisory on the awesome power of PhotoShop ...
Two Birds, Many Candles ·
Recently, while digging through old photos of tourist attractions, I ran across a few taken in Chartres. This small town, 96km southwest of Paris (the train is fast and comfy) holds a cathedral that has been, for the last 800 years or so, arguably the most beautiful structure on the planet ...
*ist D ·
No, that title isn’t a misprint, it’s the name some trans-Pacific Lost-In-Translation scenario conferred on the Pentax Digital SLR we just got. Some notes on the new world of Digital SLRs ...
Asakusa ·
I just posted some old snaps of Japan’s #1 tourist attraction, and while I was digging through the pix ran across these, of Asakusa, a Tokyo shopping district whose name written phonetically in English would be “Asaxa.” Japanese words transcribed into English contain many instances of the letter “u” which are not pronounced even though Japanese will insist furiously that they are there (a consequence, I think, of using syllabics for phonetic readings). Asakusa is really nice, a good place to shop, eat, and drink, and if you’ve ever seen anyone’s tourist snaps of Tokyo, you’ve probably seen it; but perhaps not these. [Updated: A note on Japanese pronunciation.] ...
3 Views of Mount Fuji ·
What happened was, tired in an airport looking for lightweight reading, I grabbed The Last Defender of Camelot, collected late works of Roger Zelazny, who was at the centre of the SciFi universe a few decades back. It has a piece called 24 Views of Mount Fuji, by Hokusai which won a Hugo in 1986 and as a story is only OK but as a narrative wrapped around a famous set of pictures it’s awfully good. On impulse, I typed “hokusai 24” into Google, to discover that there are 36 pictures in the original series, but that Tim Eagen, back in ’98, poked around the Web and assembled the 24 images from the Zelazny story; a fine piece of curatorship and really an essential companion to reading the story. Looking at one of them, I thought: I’ve been there. There’s an amusing narrative to accompany the views ...
On Digicams ·
The digital-camera world is in motion and there’s a lot of interesting stuff out there to read. Herewith a quick summary of the state of play, with pointers ...
Layers ·
Sun, kitchen, grating, handles, choose yours ...
Maggie Time ·
A typically crappy cross-country trip following on two days’ East Coast insomnia has left me feeling pretty grungy, like the old campfire song has it: “My head hurts, my feet smell, and I don’t love Jesus...” But hey, I stumbled by the camera shop where the expensive repair job on the S50 was finished (not covered by warranty, mechanical failure due to external impact, sigh) and there are compensations, namely Maggie the Magnolia, often photographed in this space but really at her best this afternoon ...
SI Workflow ·
There’s a fantastic article by Eamon Hickey on how Sports Illustrated moves pictures from the corners of the field to the cover of the magazine. For any digiphoto hobbyist, it’s a must-read. [Update: Oops; I’d written “by Rob Galbraith”, having failed to read the byline; apologies to Mr. Hickey.]
Pansy Sweat ·
Vancouver is a very garden-centric city, so when I say that Murray’s is the best nursery in town, that’s a strong claim. To get there, get on Balaclava Street and go way, way South through the horse territory by the river until you see signs ...
Violet Secrets and Pearblossoms ·
The light in spring isn’t like any other time of year; maybe it’s just our winter-starved eyes all atingle, or maybe it’s the crowding flowers tossing the new sun around in a positive-feedback loop ...
Red to White ·
I walked by this tree this afternoon; it’s mostly still mostly-red buds, but the flowers are mostly not red at all ...
Flowering Trees ·
Here in Vancouver we have multitudes of flowering trees. At this time of year they delight the eye, but are a challenge to the photographer. A bit of progress on that front, with a note on infused vodka ...
Hamburg Sunflower ·
I got finished a little early Thursday and when I got to the hotel the sun was coasting low with not many clouds about, definitely a photo opp; so I tossed the gear in the room and sallied forth with the camera. Unfortunately, it was about 0°C with a brisk wind, so I sallied right in again before very long, with numbed extremities. But I got three shots that I think worth looking at. I seriously considered splicing them into the narrative I’m going to write about OpenOffice and the future of XML and blogging clients and so on, just to force the pix on the geex, but that would be dishonourable ...
Brussels × 7 ·
Herewith seven photographs of Brussels, with some remarks on the place. Three, no less, of the airport, and this from a jaded traveler ...
Horrifying, Beautiful ·
Via Jeremy Hedley’s excellent Antipixel, a pointer to the World Press Photo 2003 prizewinners. This has some of the most beautiful pictures you will ever see, but don’t go there if you’re feeling fragile or depressed; this is news photography, and news is usually all about pain and death and tragedy. In particular, if you have a little boy that you love, be careful; 2003 was a year that terrible things happened to little boys and photographers were there. For more cheer, skip down to the nature category, especially the lake-view of Chicago; really almost beyond belief.
Spring Again, with Blood ·
We had rare Pacific-Northwest February sunshine today, and girded our loins for some serious pruning and cleaning. I took pictures and was editing them and thought “decent, but I had pictures of spring flowers (some of the same ones) this time last year.” Then I realized that was stupid; do I not look at this year’s flowers because I saw last year’s? And there are people who are living in places where winter is probably starting to wear ’em down again who might be cheered by a preview of what they’ll be seeing in a few weeks. So herewith the same old crocuses and daffodils, but this story has a pretty severe barb to it. [Update: Identified the mystery flower, worth checking out.] ...
Perfect Tool: C-Clamp Mini Tripod ·
If you carry a camera around you should hide one of these at the bottom of your bag; there’s always one in my briefcase. It will turn a lot of basic shots from impossible to easy. [Updated again: blogging e-commerce in action!] ...
Oz Out ·
Heading home; herewith more illustrated downundernotes, plus thoughts on crowded schedules and on retirement ...
Downunder Christmas ·
Since the friends down here knew we’d be visiting in February, Sally left her tree up and cooked everyone fabulous Aussie-style Christmas dinner (on the barbecue, of course) ...
Double-Headers ·
We were visiting our friends Sandra and Malcolm here in Melbourne and picked up a couple of striking closely-related photographs ...
On Decay ·
Those who walk on beaches and through forests with me have been heard to complain about sudden stops provoked by what they see as rotten pieces of junk and what I see as photo opportunities. My eyes love the progress of metamorphosis, entropic transmogrification by Nature’s undirected and indifferent hand. Here’s my side of the argument ...
Open Source Person ·
I thought it might be entertaining to give a blow-by-blow account of my job hunt here, naming names, trading off pluses and minuses, telling all. Then it dawned on me how incredibly clueless and lame-brained that would be. But I do have some vignettes—one notably optimistic for our profession—and a couple of pictures, and also an explanation of the essay’s title, which doesn’t mean what you think it does. [Update: Found! Jonas the G.J.S.L.w.n.e.] ...
Winterwillow ·
Its high bare branches rise bright in low sunlight against the cloudscape ...
On Darkness and Film and Bits ·
Winter solstice, which at 50°N latitude means damn few hours of light, and in this grey corner of the world the light is poor stuff, a dark cotton ceiling, edgeless, colorless. Which, plus an interesting essay from Glenn Reynolds has me thinking about film and computers and pictures and the light that isn’t here ...
Entropy ·
In this universe, life in general constitutes a losing battle against entropy, with intelligence perhaps our best tactical asset in that struggle. Recently we launched a domestic counter-offensive; herewith some battlefield reportage ...
One Corner of a Cat ·
Previously I wrote in One Corner of a Cube about an Asian sage, name unremembered, who said that if you’re painting a cube, you need only get one corner right. In this follow-up we identify the sage and include lots of pointers and two samples of the “One Corner” school, one by its founder ...
Paint Shop Pro for Windows ·
These days, I’m in heavy scanning (see also On Time) mode, which means that I’m using Windows a lot (and also, should you be a regular reader, that there are too many photo essays in your future). The downside is Windows’ egregiously ugly choice between cartoon-bright and battleship-grey colours, plus this idiotic notion that each Window should carry its own menu around so you can see eleven at a time each wasting precious screen real-estate even though nobody can possibly deal with more than one at a time... but I digress. The nice thing about this process is that I’m spending some quality time with Paint Shop Pro, a totally excellent and ridiculously cheap software package from JASC (of which company I know nothing). Should you be a Windows user and by some chance not already have Paint Shop Pro on your computer, run not walk to your nearest Web Browser and buy it already. In terms of putting what you need to do all the time under your fingertips and letting you do a whole lot of serious photo engineering in a big hurry, nothing comes close. In particular, Adobe Photoshop (and I’m not gonna put a link here, because Adobe’s Web site doesn’t make it easy to link to it, what’s wrong with them?) doesn’t come close in ease of use. Having said that, Photoshop has some seriously cool stuff that’s probably cost-effective for me given that I’m trying to get serious about photography, but in terms of easy-to-get-the-job-done, it’s poor by comparison. Anyhow, in case it’s not already clear: Windows + Pictures = Paint Shop Pro. Go get it.
On Time ·
An unexpected interruption here today, not working and time to think and time on my mind, so here are some words and pictures on the subject ...
Seaweedshadow ·
Just more beach pix, but I used the number-one technique of professional photographers and one or two of ’em are surprising ...
Dublin Burning ·
We were walking home to the hotel—cold but no rain on Hallowe’en—and the city sounded like a war zone, fireworks rattling and banging in every direction, pink and green lights against the sky. Down one little alley the explosions were particularly intense and I saw a wall painted in colour by leaping flames, and simultaneously firetrucks incoming. “Let’s check this out” I told Lauren and without giving her a chance to wonder if it was a good idea, headed down the alley into a different Dublin ...
Heathrow Sucks, Plus Arctic Lies ·
This is mostly a rant about the extreme crappiness of the Heathrow experience and will probably be enjoyed by those who’ve shared it a few times too often; plus some pretty neat aerial photographs and a confession ...
Dublin in a Rainstorm ·
Twenty-five minutes’ slog back to the hotel across downtown Dublin, the mist turned thicker then to real rain, thank god for the Akubra but my good grey suit is drenched; the wool can take it but in my head is a loop of Sinéad O’Connor crooning Dublin in a rainstorm at the opening of Troy, that croon explodes in that song and I saw her do it once live with just an acoustic guitar, more petrifying than the record (The Lion and the Cobra), though she should have credited Yeats’ No Second Troy for the lines she stole. As for Dublin, it’s pretty nice; this note is just visitor’s impressions and a couple of snaps ...
Serious Rain ·
Last week, we almost set a couple of different records for rainfall, and there was serious flooding not too far from the city. Real Pacific rain isn’t like a Midwestern bucketing or a tropical monsoon; days-long waterdrumming, never violent but never stopping. On the second day of this, the local paper distinguished itself with the headline “Drought Officially Over” (they weren’t being ironic, we really did have a drought) ...
White Pink Red Blue ·
This is just another bunch of garden shots, some of the autumn colours are remarkable. In which context I want to send a long deep tip of the hat to Doc Searls, his shots from the Foo camp put me completely to shame. No flower is as interesting as a human face; I look into my heart and realize that up till now I just haven’t been brave enough to point my camera at people and focus in hard. Mind you, to Doc’s further credit, I’ve heard a few voices saying “When did he take that? I had no idea!” So I guess you have to be brave and sneaky, too ...
Trains and Taxis and Shop-Window Geeks ·
Travel sucks, but some times less than others. Three days of TAG meetings, socializing, and jet-lag had left me pretty well an empty shell. But I had all day starting in Bristol to make the 4:15 to Vancouver out of Heathrow, an (infrequent) chance to just kick back and enjoy the process of getting there ...
On Reducing Images ·
Here in ongoing, the images normally are scaled down to a width of 300 pixels (linked to a full-size version). Currently, I’m using the open-source GD image library to do the photoreduction; the usability is excellent but I’m unsatisfied with the quality of the results. Herewith a survey of some approaches, because I’m sure lots of other people have this problem too. [Update: Holy Cow, did people respond. This is now photoreduction comparative research world headquarters.] ...
West England Web Architecture ·
I’m writing this from the West of England: Bristol, to be precise, where I’m attending a face-to-face meeting of the W3C TAG. Herewith a few illustrated notes on the place, the country, Canadian History, and the dreaded Semantic Web Insurrectionists ...
One Corner of a Cube ·
I recall a Confucian thinker (or Kongfuzi himself? or a Taoist? or a Buddhist? I can’t find the reference) arguing that if you are painting a picture of a cube, you really only need to paint one corner and do it right ...
Decent Week ·
We ended a very nice week very nicely at the beach, you don’t really expect to enjoy balmy temperatures in crystal sunshine late into September up here, so the beach was busy as the citizens drank it in. I took a million pictures while I thought about good things that happened this week, many of which are the usual “Vancouver nestled in the mountains in the slanting sun” thing, but I didn’t put any of those in here. Question: what do the children of urban fisherpeople do? ...
Leatherlight ·
The early-morning sun this time of year slants through the prismatic window beside the front door and for the last couple of days the incident rainbows have danced with the vertical slats of the big old leather chair ...
Autumnal ·
Our endless golden summer ended, the grass is a happier green but the bike-ride to work is getting chilly. Vancouver’s at fifty degrees north latitude, and when the sun is out it’s coming sideways a lot of the time, which is photographer-friendly. There are still lots of flowers, but autumnal blossoms have to be twice as good as spring’s offerings to get half the impact, and they’re not. Still, they photograph well ...
Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown ·
We moved Antarctica from funky fashionable Yaletown to smack in the middle of Vancouver’s downtown core. We got more space, better space, escaped our bubble-era lease, saved big bucks, so the move was a no-brainer. The downtown experience is way different; among other things we have front-row seats at a hot flashpoint in the coffee culture wars. Plus, I finally got a picture that shows how Vancouver really looks ...
Autumnpearleaves ·
The pear tree is showing early signs of autumn. It’s old and tattered and unpredictable, the fruit prolific but lousy some years, scanty and excellent others, I can’t spot the pattern. This year is lean but good—the best pears I’ve ever tasted in fact—but we need a visit from the tree doctor, the leaves are going too early and showing signs of disease. But the symptoms are not unpleasing to the eye ...
Late Summer ·
They say midsummer’s June 21 but that’s silly, midsummer is right now, the endless hot slant of afternoon sun pulls pictures out pretty well anywhere you look, here we have not just flowers but wildlife and a little illustrated family story ...
High Throughput ·
In co-operation with Dave Orchard of BEA, I’ve spent the last few days hosting a face-to-face meeting of the W3C Technical Architecture Group here in Vancouver. I’m pretty tired, since there’s been some heavy lifting, with a background roar of allegorical artillery. But there are compensations ...
The Island Rose Trip: Day Two ·
(For context, see the Day One narrative.) In this day’s narrative & pix: beaches, a bald eagle (!), a visual physics lesson, and an orgy of roses. (Later: there’s no Day Three; the camera stopped working. Sigh.) ...
The Island Rose Trip: Day One ·
What happened was, we have a house-guest from Australia who’s already seen a bit of BC, and we also have an Internet-retail relationship with the Old Rose Nursery, which is found on Hornby Island, a speck in the ocean between the mainland and (the very large) Vancouver Island. We wanted to visit the Nursery in the flesh, and they say Hornby’s pretty nice, and not only Sally but we had never been there, so I took Friday off in honour of the USA and we went. (This part of the world ain’t real wired, thus ongoing has been silent. Not thinking about work and syndication technology was a refreshing change. But this is addictive you know; I really missed posting to ongoing.) ...
The End of Innocence ·
I’m sorry, this has just gone way, way too far. Words written in public become deeds, and some deeds are inexcusable and I see no point in excusing the inexcusable. There are those who may not be able to forgive me for veering over the edge of politeness, but nobody can claim I’m the first to go there, and I just don’t care. (Update: extra fact-finding.) ...
Big, Small, and More ·
Today’s weather went grey but stayed warm and we decided on a Sunday-afternoon outing to the beach, where a touch of soft rain only sweetened the waves’ welcome. This was balm to the eyes and after a bit the soul. Which was in order; it’s been a stressful weekend on the professional front and the sturm und drang seems to have momentum, so perhaps I can share a bit of that balm with the world via a tiny photo-essay. (Plus a practical undiscovered-Vancouver hint.) ...
Poppies! ·
In the remotest, least-favored spot of our property stands a clump of poppies; Lauren thinks the label on the packet said “California Poppies,” but I’ve grown those before and I don’t recall the out-of-this world colour shadings. Really remarkable, and they’re also highlighting a problem I’m having with the new camera ...
Mastering the Art ·
Back home, I took a million pictures of roses yesterday in the slanting afternooon sun, and very few came out. I think this magicamera will provide the ideal combo of quick-shoot and good-pix, but I’m going to have to invest some real effort in learning all its ins and outs. Herewith one more rose photo, skip if you’re tired of ’em (but it’s a good one) ...
Wet Pink ·
Very wet, very pink. (Warning: May be found lascivious by ascetics.) ...
Pix From Mars ·
Slashdot had this today, tremendously impressive pictures of the Earth/Moon system and Jupiter, taken from Mars, the proper image credit is NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems. A bit mind-expanding; for me, it was the Earth and Moon seen in the same frame, from a distance, that for the first time made me feel like I really knew how big the pieces of the system are. Hats off to the people and machines who did this. But the pix are a bit too pretty. In fact, the photo-enhancement bothered me, so I deconstructed them a bit ...
Domestic Nürnberg ·
Lauren was away on business for two weeks and managed to get in a few days' vacation in Germany, where she used to live. She took lots of photos, including a few heroic shots of the reconstruction of Berlin. But a couple of domestic shots around Nürnberg (what we'd call Nuremberg) were the ones that I thought worth sharing ...
Faunality ·
Some hours were profitably whiled away this past weekend in the garden, I think more high-tech fly-wired types ought to devote an hour or six thusly, net sanity would benefit. Faunality, you ask? I suggest, by etymological analogy, sexual feelings in a gardening context, mind you this time of year in the Pacific Northwest when the women, mad with sunshine, discard the sweaters and slickers and boots for, well, much less, those feelings are On The Agenda anyhow, but check the magnolia out and see if you think I have a point ...
Glacier, God, Cat ·
We've got the slide scanner pretty well in production now, and last night I ran a roll that Lauren shot in early 2000. Reviewing the captures is a joy, memories in each one and then sometimes treasure ...
Korean Turquoise, Trillium Pink ·
My Mom left for home yesterday, and my wife for two different meetings in Europe, so it's suddenly quiet with just me and the kid around the place. My Mom's a serious devotee of the arts of gardening, so before she left we went for a walk around the Van Dusen Gardens, which I think would be impressive even if you're not a flower geek ...
A Perfect Spring Afternoon ·
A golden afternoon here, some of it captured photographically by defeating the wiles of my camera-nemesis. The first in the collection below is, I claim, the single canonical, definitive picture of Spring in Canada. A couple of 'em are well worth the click to enlarge ...
April Flowers ·
Well, the rhyme with “showers” predicts the flowers in May, but we've got 'em now, here's the evidence ...
Spring: Floristruck, Birdwillowmoon, etc. ·
Up here north of 49°, the evenings are already getting longer, and after dinner, the sun came out, and drew us poor mossy rain victims with it. Some nature treats for the light-starved Pacific Northwest eye. (Warning: six big pix, modemistas beware.) ...
What the Rain Leaves Behind ·
It's been raining really a tremendous amount recently, if we didn't like it we wouldn't live here, right? A couple of after-the-rain photos ...
Nasty Spring Day, with Pictures ·
It's a nasty March day. Nasty because despite occasional sunshine, it's cold and blustery here in Vancouver, really unpleasant to be outside. Nasty because on the other side of the world, men, women, and children are suffering and dying in the service of, or in resistance to, geopolitical strategy. So this weekend, I'm writing about binary search and gardens ...
Towerhang Raintinsel Elevatorsaint ·
Walking from one meeting to another through Yaletown, a nice part of Vancouver, the city kept throwing these weird rainsoaked scenes at me, or maybe it's just that I'm semilucid in the grip of a severe cold and suffering from a virally altered state of consciousness ...
The Beauty of Cities ·
Conventionally, beauty is to be found in nature, and that is especially true here in the Pacific Northwest, which has mountains, trees, and other jewels waiting round every corner. But a couple days ago I stepped out the office door and the afternoon winter sun was spilling between the towers and streetlamp poles and bathing the construction sites, and, well, I'm a city boy. People create beautiful things, and among the most beautiful things they create are cities ...
Illustrated Conversation With the World ·
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?" [Lewis Carroll] And what is the use of a weblog, etc? ...
Heavy Pixel Lifting ·
So, as a (strictly amateur) long-time photo weenie, I have a really fierce legacy problem, and I suspect others must as well, so this is going to be a number-filled digiphotogeek tech-out relieved only by a few (warning: BIG) pretty pictures and at the very end, a technology investment hint ...
Spring! ·
This bee was sexing it up something fierce with the crocuses, and while my current camera is not quite up to capturing something that fast with really sharp edges, between the flowers, the bee, and the sunshine, some pretty serious fun was being had here ...
Current Camera: Fuji Finepix F401 ·
I've had a camera almost always since I was a little kid; my Dad was a fine and prolific photographer. Got the first digicam in 1998, a 640x480 Fujifilm, and this F401 in Tokyo in late 2002. I'm not that happy with it ...
How to Publish Pictures Here? ·
I feel naked when without a camera, and frankly don't care if anyone likes the pictures in here, because I like taking them and looking at them ...
YVR Geometry ·
Was killing time in YVR (Vancouver's airport, regularly selected by travel magazines as the world's best, don't know if I'd go that far but it's OK), getting my shoes shined in fact, and I noticed the graceful geometries hovering under the ceiling ...
Construction on Homer ·
Just down the street from our office, lacy white cranes and a bright blue winter sky. In a few more months the infill around our office will be finished and the place will feel unnaturally quiet ...
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