I’ve uploaded the first of the photos from last weekend’s trip to the San Diego area. We were staying in a hotel in Del Mar, and on one of our walks along the beach I managed to capture some surfers. All done hand-held with the 300mm lens, and even then too far out to be useful anywhere but on the web.
With some cropping though I think a few came out well. Check them out in my Flickr photostream.
From a walk around the San Francisco Botanical Gardens (in Golden Gate Park). You can see more photos from that walk in my Flickr stream.
Somebody asked me for the original file from one of the photos I took in Maui last year (one from Wailea Beach) the other day. While getting that from by archives I noticed that there were a lot more photos I hadn’t uploaded into Flickr.
To remedy that, I have uploaded a selection of photos from my trips to Cancun, Mexico and Maui last year. I will probably be uploading more over the next few days. Then I can get to the ones from San Diego last weekend and Golden Gate Park a few weeks back.
The iguana in the photo is from the Mayan ruins at Tulum, near Cancun, in Mexico.
Seems that BART is now catering to pirates too. Not the modern kind that “steal” music, videos or software, but the more traditional kind that wear eye patches and walk on wooden legs.
In case any of these pirates take over the train and need to get rid of some of the passengers in a hurry, there is an emergency plank that they can be made to walk. The sign on the door shows very clearly where it is located, and which direction victims should be made to walk. Captain Jack Sparrow and his fellow pirates should be very happy that BART took their needs into consideration 🙂
Gizmo Project, my preferred VoIP service which I’ve been using for over a year now for all my international calls and many others, has just started offering a new plan called All Calls Free. The plan makes calling many other Gizmo members free even if you call their home landline or, in some countries, their mobile number.
Calling any Gizmo member in Canada, China, Cyprus, Guam, Hong Kong, Malawi, Malaysia, Puerto Rico, Russia, Saipan, San Marino, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, United States, US Vigin Islands or Vatican City is free on either their registered landline or mobile number as well as using their Gizmo name or number.
Calling members in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, French Antilles, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, Venezuela or Zambia on their landline is free, but not on their mobile numbers.
Members just need to make sure that their landline and mobile numbers are stored in their profile and other Gizmo members will be able to call them for free.
Take a look at the photo and see if you can tell what type of computer is being used there to create a cool photo book at Yophoto. It is clearly a Mac, although they have airbrushed out the Apple logo. Why would anybody do that?
Simple, the online user guide for the software that you must download and install before you can create one of these photo books says this:
Please note that unfortunately the software will not work on an Apple Macintosh.
So, the Mac was cool enough to use in their home page photo, but not actually cool enough for them to support with their software. And what is with the software anyway? Why is this not a web service that I upload my photos to, or something built on top of another photo site like Qoop? Shame because the books look like they’d have made nice gifts.
Another spare the air day, and another example of how to waste public money. Funding people’s family days out does not seem like a valid use of the limited funds.
The evening ferries to the east bay on previous spare the air days, including yesterday, have been packed full of people returning from a free day trip to the city. The ferry service was running two additional boats to cope with the extra passenger load (most of whom would probably have stayed at home had the service not been free).
If the goal of funding transit is to encourage commuters to use public transit, then there are many better ways of funding them. If the goal is to allow everybody to get out of their houses and travel around the bay area for free, then the current scheme is great, but why do it only on hot weekdays? How about a weekend of free travel so those of us that have to work can have a family day out for free too?
Here’s a few suggestions for how to use the spare the air funds a little better. These come from conversations I’ve had on the ferry on the last few spare the air days with other regular commuters who also believe that the current system is not working.
Of course, that works well on the ferries but it doesn’t really deal with train or bus services. BART, with its automatic ticket system, could require tickets that would have been valid for the journey, but just not deduct any fare. They could also issue return trip passes valid for the same day, although that might require changes to the ticket system programming (and given how good BART is at updating its software this might be best left alone).
Another thing worth thinking about: by spending the money more wisely, it would be possible to fund more spare the air days in the year. As it is now, most regular commuters I spoke to will be happy that today is the last free transit day this year. Perhaps next year the money will be spent more wisely…
This sign was up in the wall of a dim sum restaurant in San Gabriel in southern California. Isn’t it the point that at least some of the food you order in a dim sum restaurant will be hot? And I would have thought it was even more obvious that Hot Tea would be hot – people would probably send it back if it arrived at their table cold.
Then, the other night I was watching TV and saw a commercial for a car – a Suzuki I think – where a gentleman all dressed for work in a suit and tie walks out of his front door and base jumps down the side of a rock to get to his vehicle. On the bottom of the screen they had a disclaimer that it was a stunt actor and viewers should not try to do the same thing. Really? You don’t say.
A few years ago I remember seeing a sign at Yosemite, in one of the pools at the top of a waterfall, telling people not to swim there. I wondered at the time what sort of person would choose to swim at the top of a waterfall that was several hundred feet high.
What happened to common sense?
I have heard a recording of Alaskan US Senator Ted Stevens talking about net neutrality a few times now. Each time I hear it I am puzzled initially by how somebody who has so much trouble speaking coherently got into an office where public speaking is so essential. But then I wonder whether it is just that he feels so passionately about this issue that his mind is racing ahead of his mouth (I’m sure we’ve all been there before).
Once you get past that issue though, you can easily separate out his arguments:
An example of the Comic Art Effect from macmerc.com. Here a photo of Celina was processed using a sequence of effects in Photoshop to produce something resembling a comic book image.
It is a relatively simple thing to do, though I would recommend perhaps writing the steps down (or printing them out) first unless you have a large enough screen to have the browser, the image and Photoshop’s toolbars all visible at once.