A butterfly hovers, wings beating fast, over a thistle flower on Angel Island. Taken a couple of weekends back, during our hike around the perimeter road, this butterfly was quite happy for me to get relatively close with the camera while it went from flower to flower.
Angel Island is where I took my favourite thistle flower photo too. Seems to be a good place for thistles.
Been playing with some of the AJAX web development libraries that have appeared to simplify the creation of AJAX enabled web sites. I have a few sites I am working for Devicescape where I’d like to use some AJAX, and a new site that I am working on that will be using it a lot.
I started doing all the work myself, but while looking for a web content management system for one of the new Devicescape sites I discovered script.aculo.us and I am impressed so far. I am starting on my own site, and have replaced all my manually generated requests with script.aculo.us calls as well as adding some new things like drag and drop and fade effects on transitions.
All sounds good, and indeed script.aculo.us does abstract many of the browser differences that I’d had to be cogniscent of when writing all the Javascript myself, but I still had issues getting it working on Internet Explorer (versions 6 and 7 still seem to have issues with CSS rendering), Safari (which was actually the hardest to solve) and Opera (which I’ve heard has very compliant CSS rendering).
This little scrub jay stopped by while we were eating our Boudin’s Bakery box lunches on Angel Island.
At first he stayed in the top of a nearby tree, then he got a little braver and came down to sit on the edge of a log next to our picnic table. At first he was unsure of the camera’s shutter sound (the 20D is quite loud), but he got used to it pretty fast.
Later he came even closer to collect crumbs from within a few feet of where we were sitting.
Updated: Changed blue jay to scrub jay following bloodnok‘s comment pointing out that this is a scrub jay and not a blue jay.
Almost an alien landscape, or perhaps a view over the top of a rocky canyon, but not (unless you’re the size of an ant). Instead, a close up and low angle shot over a weathered log, sitting alongside the perimeter road trail on Angel Island. It was alongside the picnic bench where we ate our lunch; a box lunch from Boudin’s Bakery.
Sorry for the lack of updates. I was on vacation for a week (in Orlando) and without any connection to the internet, not that I’d have had any time to use it even if it had been there. This week I have been catching up and getting ready for a two day meeting tomorrow and Friday. Busy, busy, busy.
This shot was actually taken at Huntington Beach in California – our trip to Orlando started with a brief visit to LA. I will get some Orlando photos up over the holiday weekend hopefully.
I received a more creative Paypal scam email than the normal ones. Instead of ‘a new email has been added to your account’ or ‘your account has been suspended,’ this one was a Paypal receipt for a new Sony Camera that had been billed to my account. There was a link in the email for me to dispute the charge. That, of course, goes to a fake Paypal site that asked me to login.
I still see a number of these each week, along with the lottery scams from the Netherlands.
The new Pier 14 gate, reflecting in the bay water. This was taken a week or so back before Passage appeared at the entrance to the pier.
The pier itself is built on top of a breakwater added to protect the ferry terminal. It was numbered 14 since its location is closest to the old pier 14. It will finally open to the public on June 16, 2006, along with Passage. While Passage will only spend 6 months there, one hopes the pier will last longer.
The metal woman is in fact the Passage, by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito. She is the mother of a mother and child pair that debuted at Burning Man 2005.
The pair will be located at the entrance to Pier 14 in San Francisco for six months. The pier and the exhibit will open June 16 this year.
Interestingly, one of the crew on the production of the passage was none ofther than Simon Barber, one of Devicescape‘s founders and its current Chief Scientist.
More photos of her, and her currently headless, child in my Flickr stream.
Getting off the ferry this morning at the SF Ferry Building, I noticed a metal “sculpture” on a flatbed truck next to the Amtrak offices.
This evening, she was being assembled right there on the water front. I can’t believe that is her final location though as she is currently just standing on steel frame. Perhaps she will be moving to the end of Pier 14?
You can see a couple more photos of her in Planet Vicster’s photostream (one, two). I will take my real camera tomorrow and see if I can get some better shots of her – she might also be completed by tomorrow evening.
Simple configuration of wireless networks is a hot topic at the moment. Microsoft’s Rally program will include an implementation of the Wi-Fi Alliance‘s new protocol, code named Simple Config. Microsoft’s version is called Windows Connect Now-NET. Intel released an open source reference implementation.
Frank Hanzlik, the Wi-Fi Alliance’s managing director, is quoted in a WiFiNetNews posting though as saying “Simple Config isn’t quite as simple as all that.” For somebody implementing it, that is perhaps true, but it should be much simpler for end users.
Devicescape, my employer, is holding a free seminar next week to explain simple config from both a user’s perspective and, perhaps more importantly at the moment, from an engineer’s perspective.
Following on from my Asterisk enabled access point last year, I will be showing how to integrate Devicescape’s implementation of the proposed protocol (called Easy Access Technology) into a consumer device. That device this year is a home-made digital picture frame that connects to Flickr for its photos.
If you are going to be in the vicinity of the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose around 8:30am on Wednesday June 14, please stop by, pick up breakfast, say hello or ask any questions you might have about simple config or building a digital photo frame. If you can’t attend, or would like more information, drop me a line at my work email: john <at> devicescape <dot> com.