I’m in the process of processing/printing out some photos for Mandy. They are turning out quite well. :) You can see some of her work at the Stanford Art Gallery starting next week; the Stanford Product Design grad students are having a little show.

OK. I’ve just printed a few of these out, and they are the best prints I’ve seen come from the Epson 2200. The 1Ds is amazing.

Not long ago, I was elated to have discovered the use of mixers for normal home audio.

I’m still excited, but I wasted a significant amount of time trying to get everything set up properly. First of all, the mixer I purchased for $69 was advertised as having “TRS 1/4″ Stereo Outputs.” Fine! So I bought two 15′ TRS 1/4″ stereo cables (and also borrowed two of them from the-other-Eric while I waited for them to be delivered). Well, it turns out that the outputs are not balanced. Have you ever used balanced cables in unbalanced jacks? The results sound horrible. So I have now acquired unbalanced 1/4″ cables, and everything sounds just great. :)

Another problem unearthed itself when I tried to mount the Genelec 1029a studio monitors on the wall. The wall-mounting hardware on Genelec’s web site is some unknown part here in the States (read more »)

A discussion at wetpixel made me a little upset (one person posting very confidently that you have to be blind to think that a digital image can compete with a drum-scanned slide), so I posted a page containing crops from a well-processed image from my D60.

There is no scanned slide to compare it to. I don’t think it needs that to demonstrate how much information a clean digital image contains.

Hello, readers! If you have a moment, can you leave a comment here to tell me who you are and how you originally found this site? :) I did this one some time ago and learned a lot about who is lurking out there; I thought I’d try it again. No names necessary, if you don’t feel comfortable. :) Thanks!!

~ unrelated: Elliot was talking about a cool Rube Goldberg-esque machine setup made out of car parts last night. here it is. :) it turned out to be a real contraption.

also, nash sent me a funny variation of the “all your base are belong to us” video called “all your iraq are belong to U.S.“

Seeing Mandy and Elliot twice in one week is unheard of these days (!), but it happened this week. Our schedules recently are rather unfortunate; I used to see Mandy just about every day, and would tuck her in and turn out the lights before heading home (when I lived in Mountain View). Anyway, we hung out for awhile in the Stanford Art Gallery, where the design students will be having a three-week show. Photos –> [see some photos]

Earlier in the day: I met with Sumit for coffee late this afternoon before heading down to Palo Alto to meet with Oliver to catch up and chat about game development. Afterwards, Ben and I joined a bunch of students to play for the first round of the ongoing Stanford Symphony conductor search. I really hope Stanford finds a good conductor. “Good” at Stanford means someone who makes orchestra rehearsals something to look forward to and who takes into account busy student lives that are not centered around music. It wasn’t like that when I was there, and as a result I only played for two tours, and during one quarter when Gabe played a concerto. The rest of my musical time was spent chamber musicking. :)

jwz is my new hero for finding and posting cool links. Check out these videos of astronaut Don Pettit drinking tea and eating various gooey foods up in the space station:

[Reel 1 (4.9 Mb)] [Reel 2 (1.4 Mb)]
[Reel 3 (2.5 Mb)] [Reel 4 (2.6 Mb)]

Unfair Housing - North County neighborhoods once quietly shut out other races, religions -
5/5/02 - NCTimes.net http://www.nctimes.net/news/2002/20020505/61547.html

“While no one remembers any ‘Whites only’ signs like those in the South, many San Diego County neighborhoods prohibited blacks, Asians and, in some cases, Jews from buying property…

“City councils did not impose the restrictions, so it is rare for broad areas to have restrictions. Rancho Santa Fe appears to be an exception, since its protective covenant, adopted in 1927, applies to every home within the community. Far from subtle, the restriction was the second paragraph of the covenant’s first article.

“‘No part of said property shall be sold, conveyed, rented or leased in whole or in past to any person of an African or Asiatic race or to any person not of the white or Caucasian race,’ the article read. Also, no ‘domestic servants, chauffeurs, or gardeners who are members of a race other than the white or Caucasian race may live on or occupy the premises where their employer resides.’ However, with the association’s written approval, they could live in a ‘hotel, club, student boarding house, hospital or other building.”‘ (read more »)

I apologize for the lateness of this announcement. Adam Tow has released the first version of Soybo, a cross-platform and device independent technology that allows applications to publish their functionality as web services, accessible by any Internet-enabled device.

I’ve watched Soybo grow since it was just a gleam in Adam’s eye. It’s certainly much more than that now: Soybo allows data access and application control (with two-way data flow) from arbitrary remote devices like mobile phones and PDAs (anything with a web browser). It is a framework more than a packaged product, and if you are tech savvy enough, you can extend Soybo to do just about anything. Currently, Soybo runs best on Mac OS X. In theory, Soyba works (currently with limited functionality) on a PC, but it has not yet been tested thoroughly on that platform.

From Soybo.com:

This is SO COOL. Here’s a site that pairs San Francisco locations used in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film “Vertigo” with how they look today.

Hmmm. It got dark outside sometime during the last few hours. I feel straaaange — and I even went outside for awhile today.

Also, my sis’ sent me this link: U.S. Forms Own U.N. The Onion rules. :) And, look what you have to do to get into Stanford! (Once again, the Onion rules. :)

After going to bed at 5am the previous “night,” I crawled out of bed at 10am and drove down to Stanford to see Mandy Knox and Elliot Sather. Mandy and I roamed around Town and Country (that Japanese store in there is so cool!) while we waited for a table at Hobie’s for brunch. Anyway, the real point of the Peninsula expedition was to photograph some of Mandy’s jewelry and clothing design. I set up two umbrellas and some strobes in the design loft photo area, and Elliot and I went to work. Unfortunately, the loft’s large softbox and umbrellas were BROKEN. BOO! (and so, I had to use my own)

Mandy’s work is really beautiful. I am a little pissed because I discovered inordinate amounts of dust on my camera’s CMOS sensor, which I never noticed before because I hadn’t shot anything at f32 with the 1Ds yet. :) Anyway, with no sensor swabs or speckgrabbers in my photo case, I just kept shooting. The photos still turned out well. :) A select few photos can be found here (along with some other random photos) –> [see some photos]

Did I mention that I packed and shipped 13 boxes today? I had a slurry of ebay auctions end yesterday; 13 people paid immediately, so I had to ship out a bunch o’ crap.

I’ve also “cleaned” journal entries back through June 2002. That leaves six more months to entries to go through. :) After that, I will probably delete all of the /output entries, since they will be mirrored here!

Heidi Hau gave a house concert tonight at my place for a crowd of about thirty. I’ve known Heidi for around eight years now, but it’s only recently that I’ve started to get to know her better. She played brilliantly, and I’m sure my piano appreciated a workout by someone with real ability; normally, it is subjected only to my amateur tinkling. :)

The program tonight: Valses nobles et sentimentales - Ravel (15 min), Tarantella - Liszt (15 min), Diabelli Variations - Beethoven (55 min). Afterwards, Bill, Jeremy, Pjammer, Loni and I made a late-night run to Chika for sushi. I love that place. :) [see some photos] [other home recitals]

Heidi’s Biography –> (read more »)

I have discovered the magic of mixers, thanks to the other Eric.

I have two computers, and iPod, two CD players, and a miniDV/SVHS deck, all in my study (collected from various areas in the house). In the past, each computer got its own set of crappy PC speakers, and my “serious” audio widgets were blessed with quality amplification and speakers. But now, I can run them ALL into the same set of audio monitors. And after that, these little tinny PC speakers can go away. Er… at least, I will be able to once they arrive in the mail (along with wall brackets and the proper cables). I can’t believe it never occurred to me that this “typical” scenario is a perfect application for an inexpensive mixer. And so, the Art of Fugue is playing from my CD changer, while Outlook bleats at me to indicate that I’m getting new e-mail. :) I LOVE uncompressed audio! MP3s are great for convenience, but they really do sound like shit.

Eric — I was highly tempted to get a more expensive mixer, just for the jumping level-indicator LEDs. :)

This is very strange for San Francisco. My sister just looked up the census data on race for my block in Noe Valley in the year 2000:

Total: 124 (100%)

Population of one race:
———————–
White alone: 108 (87.1%)
Black or African American alone: 0 (0%)
American Indian and Alaska Native alone: 0 (0%)
Asian alone: 6 (0.05%)
Some other race alone: 3 (0.024%)

Population of two races:
————————
White/Black or African American: 1 (0.008%)
White/Asian: 2 (0.016%)
White/Some other race: 3 (0.024%)

Population of three races:
————————–
White/Asian/Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander: 1 (0.008%)

Things have probably changed since then (for example, the addition of my household and my neighbor’s household adds FOUR Asian folk to the block), but it’s still weird.

Sweeet! [read the article]

“A colossal squid has been caught in Antarctic waters, the first example of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni retrieved virtually intact from the surface of the ocean…

“‘Now we can say that it attains a size larger than the giant squid. Giant squid is no longer the largest squid that’s out there. We’ve got something that’s even larger, and not just larger but an order of magnitude meaner.’ …

“This squid has one of the largest beaks known of any squid and also has unique swivelling hooks on the clubs at the ends of its tentacles…

“This combination allows it to attack fish as large as the Patagonian toothfish and probably to also attempt to maul sperm whales…”

Adam Tow is following Vienna around on her East Coast tour. He has posted the first round of photos, but you should check out his site periodically, as he will likely be posting more.

Thunderclap! Looks like more rain is coming. It was freeeeezing in my house last night (that means low-60s for you non-Californians out there). It’s funny. As June approaches in San Francisco, I start to feel like winter is coming. For those of you who have not spent June in San Francisco… it gets pretty cold. Mark Twain is supposedly quoted (not confirmed) as saying, “The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco.”

A bunch of the EPNY/ex-EPNY boyz have regular poker nights at Emile’s place. I don’t play poker, but I decided to go anyway because Jeremy was going to be there (another guy who doesn’t play poker). Peter and Karine had expressed a mild amount of interest in going as well, but they didn’t show up. I hadn’t seen Ankur or Jason in quite some time; a lot has happened since the last time: Ankur got married (!), and Jason went off to Google.

Also in this batch of photos are some more near-infrared shots. Photos –> [see some photos]

Allon (along with his trusty canine Reno) is the proud “owner” of a new Delaware corporation called “Two Two Systems.” Its goal (I’m guessing) is to make La La Land accessible to everyone… or something like that. :) He’s a funny guy. None of this is going to make any sense unless you know him.

Went out with Allon, Peter, Karine, Emile, and Zhenya to have tapas at Thirsty Bear tonight. My sickness is still plaguing me (”You have SARS!” Ha ha. I haven’t heard that one yet. ;), but aside from the cough itself I feel completely normal. But I think I have become addicted to Nyquil.

Anyway, it was fun to hang out with the old EPNY crew + consorts. :) Photos –> [see some photos]

Bush and Blair: Endless Love

Cheesy romance, with a twist: romance.swf (courtesy of Alex)

Har har har. Try to buy one of these. :)

George Foreman USB iGrill

The low-fat, high-bandwidth solution to your networked cooking needs is finally here. The George Foreman USB iGrill conveniently connects to your home or office PC using USB 2.0 technology, and provides a sophisticated web-based cooking interface.

Download recipes, enter in the type of food, weight and desired degree of doneness, and the iGrill handles the rest. Did you know that a medium rare 1/4 lb. hamburger made from 80% lean beef takes 1 minute and 45 seconds less cook time than an identical patty made from 95% lean prime Black Angus? The iGrill does. As your meal cooks, the subtle glow from under the unit increases brightness and pulses faster until your meal is perfectly done.

Running late at work? Need to get dinner on the table? It is easy to warm up the iGrill from any internet connection. With a little advance planning, your meal can be ready when you get home!

Using the USB current to directly charge high voltage capacitors, the iGrill does not require any additional power supply, making it perfect for dorm or office cooking.

I just imported all of my old entries from Greymatter. Unfortunately, this means that the majority of the photos that I included in entries prior to March of 2003 will be broken in some way. So if you go back in time through the new journal interface, beware. :)

Ugh. I just went back and looked at the entries. This is going to take some major clean-up work. Don’t look at those entries until I tell you it’s ok to do so. You’ll regret it, if you do.

Cleansing progress: