The Treo 600 (finally available for Verizon) is amazing. Not long ago I SSH’ed into echeng.com from the phone, just for the hell of it. And now I am tapping away on it, updating my site from the comfort of my bed! I am a huge nerd. (Addendum: Don’t try to use the Treo’s browser with b2. It will create many entries for each one that you try to post! I may have to get b2’s blog-via-e-mail feature working, instead.)

I’m migrating servers over the next week. If you’re seeing this, you’re on the new server. Yay! (I now have a dedicated server at Austin Web Development. I highly recommend them. If you’re interested, contact Chris, and tell him that I referred you!).

Gotta keep my whereabouts last weekend from the public, for now. I went up to Portland to visit Kenny, and had a really great time with the nearly all-hospital crowd (his party) at a lounge called Aura. The best thing about the evening? The female-to-male ratio was probably something like 4:1! Kenny was surrounded by nurses for most of the night, and I have the pictures to prove it (username: kenny, password: bunghole).

I really like Portland. It’s has an intimate, comfortable feel about it, a strange clash of granola and cosmopolitan. Kenny keeps telling me to move up there (just until he’s done with residency), and I might consider it, under other circumstances. Even though I’m gone all the time, I am quite attached to the Bay Area. :)

There are more than 113,000 files in my top-level photo directory (which thankfully now resides on a RAID 5 box in the closet).

Data loss terrifies me, and so I have finally have started the arduous process of archiving everything onto DVD-R. (read more »)

I’m not really a digital artist type, but the other night I was inspired at 4am to sit in front of my computer for awhile. (read more »)

West Palm Beach: The conditions were finally right, and Jimmy and I had 40 minutes of flying time before the winds started to pick up out of the west. I never knew that buildings and other entities that extend up into the sky could cause so much turbulence, but we were up near 1000 feet in altitude, and we could very clearly feel the vortices caused by the wind blowing across the condos on Singer Island. Jimmy’s buddy Gary was also up in his flying boat, and I had a good time photographing him from ours — that is, when I wasn’t worried that a lens cap would fly out of my hands into the propeller. :)

I also remember it being easier to take self-portraits with the D60. The 1Ds is a really heavy camera, and holding it out at arm’s length against the wind is not such an easy task. [see some photos]

Anna Abernethy, Alex Tabah and I stopped by suburban Miami to see Mari and Samuel Gruber for dinner. I only met them last year, but already I feel like Mari has adopted me as a son. While I was there I fulfilled my duties and cleaned up her computer, which was infected with all sorts of bad things. I also finally met Aya and her husband Brett. I have heard a lot about Aya over the past year and am happy to report that she very much lives up to the hype: cute, smart, musical, and hydrophylic! [see some photos]

I’m not afraid of sharks, but I discovered that I am afraid of alligators. There were nine of them around us off of a little road near Everglade City, and with the water’s visibility at around 2′ or so, it was impossible to see them when they submerged themselves. And they are really fast. One of them rolled over and emerged fifteen feet downstream before I could even think about reacting.

I’m also afraid of mosquitos. Even though I tell people that mosquitos have an affinity for my blood, they usually have to see the relationship in action before they really believe it. I was probably bitten thirty or forty times in the hour we were out there — through a thick layer of 25% DEET. And don’t even get me started on no-see-’ums. I hate those guys even more.

But despite all the biting, swatting, and swelling, I still had a great time out in “old Florida” with Anna and Alex. It was neat to see that part of the country. [see some photos]

My roommate is awesome. Two conversations from today:

Me: “Hey. Check [this photo] out. It’s me and Alex eating grits for the first time.”
Elliot: (looks) “Is that white crap grits?”
…
Elliot: “What are the Giants’ colors? Orange and black?”
Me: (pause) “Who are you asking?”
Elliot: “I know a lot of people that would be disappointed in us right now…”

I can’t believe he asked me about team colors. I’m the last person you’d want to ask.

If you are having problems with Mozilla Firefox 0.9.x (my browser of choice) launching two windows every time you click on a URL from your mail reader or other application, you need to apply a registry fix. If you aren’t using Firefox, you totally should.

I’ve been struggling with this problem for… well, about a year now. Whenever I have taken my old Dell Inspiration 8600 (which is now in the hands of my sister) or IBM Thinkpad T41p onto a moving boat, the machines lock up periodically — specifically, when I am using Adobe Photoshop CS. I used to think it was a RAM problem, but now I think it’s related to the hard disk and the motion of the boat (or vibration of the engine). The Thinkpad I’m using has some sort of acceleration detection software that stops drive access when it detects anything out of the ordinary, but I have disabled it because it is too damn sensitive.

A friend on the last trip who had an iBook had his machine freeze for small periods of time while we were underway, but it always recovered moments later. There two other Windows machines on board that ran without problems as well. But both my Dell and IBM just freeze, requiring a hard reset. But when I am stationary, I have no problems and the machine is rock-solid. I do have both of the machines set up with the same software packages, and so must conclude that it is some problem with what I have installed and the motion/vibration of the boat/engine. It’s bizarre, and it’s pissing me off. I don’t remember my older notebooks (Sony TR-1 and IBM Thinkpad A31) ever having this problem, but maybe my software configuration differed then.

Anyone have similar experiences? :)

A tiger shark named Baby Cakes
“On July 10th, 2004, a group of eight photographers boarded the M/V Shear Water at Riviera Beach, Florida for the first ever organized Wetpixel trip. On board leading the trip were well-known dive operators Jim and Anna Abernethy, who have been running shark and dolphin trips out to the Bahamas for many years. Alexis and George claim that I had been selling the trip as a “Dolphin Encounter” trip, but I just checked my records and at no time did I ever leave the word “Shark” out of the title. :) Our goal for the trip was to observe, interact with, and photograph sharks and wild dolphins; our special itinerary even included a day at Tiger Beach, a shallow (13′) sandy area where tiger sharks are frequently seen…”

I haven’t had the opportunity to upload normal “life” photos for awhile now. In fact, I haven’t been able to do anything, really, and only had the last two days to even attempt to get some work done and to see some friends.

Violinist Chee-Yun came into town yesterday for a short festival in Sonoma. Geoff Nuttall picked her up from the airport in my old Volvo with the stolen left turn signal and we met up at a Mexican joint in Glen Park for lunch with Stephen Prutsman and Vienna Teng — quite the musical group! I laughed a lot; Stevie and Chee-Yun have known each other for a long time and were taking jabs at each other pretty much non-stop.

Earlier in the week I had a meal with Andy and Carrie Manson, who are in town for a little vacation. Also, there’s a photo of Victor Alexander in the mix. :) [see some photos]

I have been frustrated with my Verizon mobile phone service for the past couple of weeks because I have been driving up and down 280 (dead zone near Trousdale), driving in San Carlos (dead zone on the back side of the mountain), and hanging out on Stanford campus (altogether crappy service on campus). But now I’m sitting outside of gate B12 in the airport at Charlotte, NC, and I’m getting 18-20kB/sec using my phone as a modem! That’s the way it should be. Now if only bluetooth were involved in the mix…

For four years now I’ve wondered where to buy computer stuff in San Francisco. Previously, I would just order online or wait until a fortuitous trip to Palo Alto enabled me to go to Fry’s Electronics (a place I love to hate). But from now on, I’m going to go to Central Computer. I bought some stuff there the other day, and the place was full of shiny computer parts, many of which had little lights on them (irresistable!).

Central Computer: it’s at 837 Howard Street, a couple doors down from Buca di Beppo.

group photo, slsq workshop 2004
I have been refreshed, musically: my playing callouses are back, I can churn out a relatively decent sound (although not always in tune), and I catch myself involuntarily singing random cello lines all the time. And I met a ton of interesting, talented, fun musicians. I love music camps. [see some photos and stuff]

Unfortunately, I will now put away my cello — for several months, probably. How sad…

My friend Alex King has announced a hosted service for the use of his Tasks and Tasks Pro web-based task manager. Check it out, and get organized. :)