White-Handed Gibbon

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Perhaps my favourite of all the animals at Oakland Zoo are the white-handed gibbons. A native of south-east Asia, these primates have the distinction of being the only higher primates to form pair bonds (excluding humans).

This one was perched at the very top of the highest tree on their little island. Since they will not go in water at all, a small moat is all that is needed to keep them from escaping. This makes them a lot easier to photograph, if only they’d keep still long enough 🙂

This is also the first shot I’ve posted here taken with my new Canon 75-300mm lens (complete with the image stabilisation feature). My initial reaction is that I love it, and while IS works well, for the 300mm shots the tripod I took with me to the zoo was still very useful.

London

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I have been wondering what, if anything, to say about this week’s cowardly attacks in London. In the end, I think the message that I took away from the many posts I’ve read on news websites, and perhaps more importantly blogs, is that London has demonstrated to the world exactly how to deal with terrorist attacks: pause to treat the injured & respect the dead, support their families & friends, and then calmly resume life.

In addition to the photo reproduced here which I believe captures what I see happening (albeit from 6000 miles away) in London almost perfectly, I also recommend London Bombings: Personal Reflections at PhotoSydney, A Letter To The Terrorists, From London from the London News Review, a posting at The Triforce that starts “A funny thing happened to me on the way to work this morning. My tube blew up.” and a posting at Casino Avenue.

Finally Flickring the London Bombings at the Daily Irrelevant ends with: Yesterday, the reaction from Brits seemed to be “Eh, fuck yeh, we’ve been through this before. I’m going down to the pub for a pint.” ‘Nuff said.

The Gizmo Project

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or don’t go online much), you’ve probably heard of Skype, but have you heard of the Gizmo Project? If not, check it out. It is very similar to Skype in concept, but it has one big difference: it is standards based.

It is built by the SIPphone.com folks, so when you register you’ll get a SIP telephone number as well as your username. That means that people using other SIP phones, even on other networks in many cases since they peer with each other, can also call you, and vice-versa.

Although the software itself is still in beta, it seems pretty stable on the Mac at least. Since the network underneath it is very stable, the call quality is great. I have made computer-to-computer calls and a transatlantic call from San Francisco to the UK.

So, download it and try it out (you get $0.25 of free credits so you can test call-out calls too). If you do try it, call me (Gizmo name: john94501). I don’t have it on at work yet (the Linux client is still in development), but leave me a message and I’ll call you back 🙂

Monterey Bay Aquarium

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Despite being a member, I hadn’t been down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in a long time. Sunday, we made the two hour journey down there and spent some time walking around both the new and old exhibits.

One of my favourites is the jelly fish display in the Outer Bay exhibit. While the new “Jellies: Living Art” exhibit is interesting for the variety of species it contains, I still find the amazing orange jelly fish contrasting with the deep blue of the tank more impressive.