Phase 18 – Harbor

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Didn’t attend last week’s lottery, but Carl kindly posted the average prices on my blog so I have updated the graph for the Harbor prices. Notice that they were down very slightly this time from last – I assume that this is because of the larger lot sizes in the previous phase bumping those prices up rather than this phase’s actually going down.

I also updated the master plan to indicate that phase 18 has been sold now.

I noticed some comments on the previous entry including the new excuse for the lottery system (the limit on the number of permits that the city releases). This is as weak as the other excuses, but at least points the finger at an external body thereby deflecting the criticism. Why is it weak? Well, they could still maintain a list of people interested in each floorplan, then rather than the lottery they could simply call the next person on the list for each plan. If you don’t want it, you drop to the bottom of the list for that plan.

Bayport Update (Coming Soon)

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Very busy at the moment, but thank you for the updated average prices. I will get the charts and the master plan updated this week if at all possible. We were actually away this weekend, so we couldn’t be there on Saturday morning. For those who were there, what was the attendance like?

Blue & Yellow

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The last of the shots from the last Hawaii trip that I wanted to post here. This was taken in the Dole Plantation garden. Not sure why I liked it when I took it, and even now I don’t really know what appeals to me about it. I’d been debating whether to post it or not ever since I cropped it down to the square shape it is here, which I did the same night I prepared many of the other Hawaiian photos from the trip for posting.

It is so mysterious that I almost posted it without words, like I did with the Hawaiian beach panoramic. I don’t think that would have worked as well though. The beach scene was a tranquil, peaceful scene that words, much like voices, would have spoilt. This is just mysterious, almost alien.

I hope you like it, or, perhaps even better, become as mystified about its appeal as I am 🙂

Power Buttons

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These power button photos could become quite addictive. Partly because they are something I can do at home at night after a long day in the office, but also because they are oddly pleasing.

The new Devicescape home page now has a random choice of three background images featuring a power button.

Perhaps it is not the power button per-se, but rather the unusual close up view of everyday objects. I will have to try some other things from around my apartment.

Devicescape Software, Inc.

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Today, Monday January 17, 2005 marks the day when Instant802 Networks, the company I joined around 18 months ago, becomes Devicescape Software.

A few people around the SF bay area might have already caught sight of the yellow sweatshirts sporting the new company marketing device (they were handed out at a private launch party last Thursday held at the Bubble Lounge in San Francisco). The photo on the right is a clue as to why the rotated letter ‘e’ is the ‘icon’ over the name. You’ll find similar shots on the new website, though perhaps none as good as this one 😉 That said, next time I will remember to clean my keyboard before taking photos – you can see the dust on the top of the power button if you look closely! [Hint: you’ll probably want to click on the photo to get the larger version before looking for this.]

David Allio

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While on the subject of photographers, David Allio left me a comment on my Hawaiian Photographers entry pointing me at his daily postcard from Kaua’i.

While looking around on his site though I found that he has daily postcards from a couple of other places and one showing flowers from Kaua’i too, all accessible from his main menu page – you also get thumbnails of each postcard for the day on that page.

PhotoSydney

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Came across a blog with photos from one of the cities I’ve enjoyed most in the world: Sydney, Australia. The blog, called PhotoSydney, seems to be quite new (archives only go back as far as December 2004).

While there, I found some other blogs that are worthy of mention too:

There are many more great photoblogs out there for Australia, and checking somewhere like photoblogs.org is a good way to find them (and spend a few hours surfing too).

El Al Bans Canon Digital SLR and Apple iBook

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Matthias Bruggman writes that El Al banned him from boarding a flight with his Canon EOS 1Ds and Apple iBook. This really has gone too far.

A comment on the original post over at Gizmodo quotes Matt as saying he was told by the El Al security personnel that “the 1Ds and the iBook are too complex to be taken apart.” Hold on a minute. Forget complex, no way am I letting any airport security person take apart any piece of sensitive electronics. Apart from invalidating the warranty (I doubt Canon would accept one of those obnoxious paper slips left inside the camera telling them that the camera had been opened for a security inspection, and how they could make it easier for the security people to open in the future), I doubt any of them are equipped with the necessary tools, the appropriate anti-static work environment or, for that matter, the necessary skill, to take apart any complex modern electronic device and put it back together again.

Oh, but I forgot, they all have the magic disclaimer that states that they are not liable for damage resulting from “this necessary security precaution.” Or in other words, they can break whatever they want and there’s nothing you can do about it. Have a nice trip.

Ritz PV2 “Single Use” Cameras

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For a little while now people, myself included (though intermittently due to other committments), have been working on getting the newer Ritz PV2 cameras unlocked so that they can be used as cheap digital cameras. This is not so much because they have stunning image quality (most, if not all of us have much, much better quality digital cameras already). Part of it is for the challenge. For me though there was also an element of being able to give a cheap camera to a couple of young kids I know and have them play with photography.

The PV2 is ideal for this since it has an LCD (enabling them to see the photo they’ve just taken immediately), it is cheap (no real loss if it gets broken), it runs on standard AA batteries and it was designed to survive well enough to be recycled by the store (and they are in a pretty tough plastic case).

Recently, there has been a bit of a breakthrough and the camera can now be reprogrammed a little bit so that an easily available Windows (and Mac OS X for that matter) driver can read the photos from them and reset the counter to zero allowing the camera to be used again. You can get more information about this from a number of places:

I’m sure I’ve missed some. Almost all of those pages have links to other sites though so keep following them. There’s a lot of information out there. The I-Applicance forums are perhaps the most up-to-date, but they can be a little difficult to follow these days since there is so much activity there.

Framed Panoramic Pair

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Had Ofoto print the two panoramic shots on a single 8×10 sheet for me so that I could place them into a nice 11×14 frame I happened to have. The frame already contained a two window panoramic matte (actually a double layer matte). I like the final result (the print arrived in the mail Thursday having been ordered Tuesday evening), which looks something like this:

Obviously, in real life the mattes have the nice 3D effect edges, and being a double layer, one window cut smaller than the other, you get a nice border effect which is not shown in this simple HTML rendering. You get the idea though. The calm beach vs the crashing waves. Both taken on the northern shores of Oa’hu.