Open Top Public Transit

Open Top TrolleyLast weekend MUNI was running this open top trolley along the Embarcadero, apparently as a shuttle service for something. Aside from being a trolley I haven’t seen often, it also caught my eye because it was flying both the Stars & Stripes and a Union Jack flag (it is the one on the far side in this photo).

Not sure who it was shuttling, nor why there was a Union Jack flying on it – anybody know?

Alien Landscape

Alien LandscapeIn fact, not a landscape at all. These are jelly fish, which all sit together in what might be called upside down (relative to the orientation of other species) on the sea bed.

These ones were photographed in one of the hemispherical tanks that are part of the Jellies as Art exhibition at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

Tree FrogsUploaded some photos from my visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium a few weeks back (heading home from Big Sur). The frogs were something I hadn’t seen there before. In the Flickr stream though you’ll find some jellyfish photos. What visit to the Monterey aquarium would be complete without the clichéd orange and blue jellyfish? But there are also some other types from the Jellies as art exhibition area that you might not have seen.

Oh, and don’t miss the otter photos.

Schmap iPhone Guides

Alexander & BaldwinTried to blog about this a couple of days ago, but that was when Flickr was having problems, and blog posting seemed to be one of the things that wasn’t working!

Schmap have now launched a version of their online city/region guides formatted for the iPhone. This is a very handy tool since you can access it over the iPhone’s cellular connection while you’re actually traveling (I don’t normally carry my laptop around when on vacation, but I do take my mobile phone with me).

No special URL needed (though I’d like it if one was available); the site will automatically give you the iPhone version when you visit from Mobile Safari.

Flickr Problems Today

Looks like the folks at Flickr are having a busy Monday! There have been site problems all morning as they try to stitch everything back together. The top of every page currently reads “Seeing various site problems? We know! Check this forum topic.” And the forum starts with this information:

Lots of people blaming the recent addition of video support to Flickr, though there’s no evidence that this is actually related so far.

Update: The forum thread about this makes for some interesting reading for those thinking about operating a large consumer facing web application. Kudos to the Flickr staff, especially Kevin who is posting the Flickr updates to the thread, for their restraint!

Location Tagger, AT&T Wi-Fi and Twitter

Starbucks, AlamedaI installed a new app on my N95 the other day from the Nokia Beta Labs: Location Tagger. This is one of the things that should have been built into the camera application from day one on a GPS enabled phone, but I’m glad to see they’re catching up.

The photo on the right is my first test of this new feature. The photo was automatically geo-tagged (so, if you visit the photo’s page in Flickr, you can see it placed on a map). Flickr seems to be confused about the city (it thinks Alameda is Oakland!), but it shows up in the correct place on the map.

Why was I at Starbucks? Well, I stopped by to see whether AT&T had disabled the free Wi-Fi for iPhone users. The special free login page has indeed gone, replaced by the older iPhone login page, though it did still let me on using the iPhone credentials I had stored in my Devicescape account 🙂

Finally, I finally signed up for Twitter, and added the Twitter feed to the left column on the blog. Since it is connected to my IM client (Adium, for those wondering), I can send it short messages about what I’m up to, and they’ll end up here on the blog as well as on my Twitter page.

McWay Cove

McWay CoveYellow sandy beach, waterfall, clear blue water and a beautiful sunny day down at Big Sur. What could be better? Well, it would have helped if the trail from the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park parking lot to the observation deck had been open, but as it happens you can get almost the same view from the road above the cove.

This is the Nokia N95’s take on the view; the ones from my 20D will be coming later (once I have them off the camera). The rest of the day was spent driving back along the coast towards Monterey, where I stopped off at the aquarium, then back down south a little into Carmel for the sunset and dinner.