My Treo 600, defective orange blob, and Pat’s cool Audiovox/Orange SmartPhone
I love my Treo 600, but I am on my third unit already. A friend of mine is on his seventh (!).

The first time my Treo died was about a month ago, and like last time, Verizon Wireless replaced my phone with a “new” reconditioned unit within two days, shipping it to New York to meet me here. The problem this time was an orange stuck-pixel blob that kept growing larger every day (the excellent mobile office support guy who I talked to had seen this problem before), which you can see in the photo, above. The best feature of my 2nd Treo was the “answer and hang up at random” feature, which made talking on the phone especially exciting.

Pat has a cool new Audiovox Smartphone, which apparently is a rebadged Orange SPV C500. It’s the first PDA phone I’ve seen that seems to be the right size for a keyboard-less unit. I have extreme gadget-lust for it, but it’s GSM-only. :(

Look at these two products: Pocketsynth and PocketSynth Pro. I wrote the original Pocketsynth in 1996, and the folks at PDA Musician wrote another product with the same name many years later, a product for Windows CE. Despite the fact that the program they wrote is probably very useful, it’s unfortunate that they chose the same name. I suppose that I would take action if I were still supporting Pocketsynth, but since I’m not, I guess it’s not worth it.

In a fit of annoyance, I submitted a PalmGear review and sent an e-mail to Wolfgang, the author, who wrote back a message this morning that was both polite and slightly confrontational. Granted, my original e-mail was confrontational as well, so maybe I’m at fault. However, both of us agree that we are not interested in pursuing any sort of ugly war. And my product isn’t supported anymore, anyway.

But what are the “rules” about product naming, anyway? What if someone unknowingly uses a name you have already used? Do you have to have a trademark on the name in order to win a legal battle?

RedStart Design, Mandy’s company, is on Gizmodo! Buy some rings, y’all. They’re very cool. You can see a photo of my sister on the product page. I took the photo. :)

More info from their site:

The Subtle Safety™ Defensive Ring (patent pending)

Some 1.9 million women are physically assaulted annually in the United States, and 15 percent to 25 percent of all American women will report a sexual attack or rape at some time in their lives, according to studies conducted by the Justice Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. - August 15, 2004 ABC NEWS

The Subtle Safety� line of jewelry is a reminder to make safe choices. The Subtle Safety� ring is a expression of confidence. Orange whistles are garish and weapons can easily be turned against you. Subtle Safety jewelry is worn and available right where you need it.

I love performing with Vienna Teng and band. As you all probably know, I’m not really a non-classical cellist, but I learn a lot each time I have the fortune of being up there on stage with her. AND, it’s just so much fun. :)

At the show were the usual suspects: Erik, Michele, and “Klaorman,” who all participate religiously on the forum (see Klaorman’s photos from the show, which look properly white-balanced, which is to say that the photos do not resemble what they did in actuality. digital cameras are tricksy! :). It’s both cool and weird to have a friend who has a discussion forum dedicated to her life (e.g. details of each performance, what she eats, who she is seen with, etc.).

Like the last local performance, we went to Pho Hoa after the show to gorge ourselves on pho and spring rolls. And den, I went home.

Sorry it’s taken so long for me to get these images online. I’ve been running around these past few days with almost no time to myself (where “myself” = me + computer). Before you look at all the photos, you should definitely check out this photo of Jim Batcho — another one of those “best photo ever”moments. :) [see some photos]

I actually had a slumber party last night. Well, that’s not entirely true. Sherry had a slumber party at my place, with the following repercussions: 1) I didn’t get much sleep, and 2) I was awoken in the morning by Sherry-and-Jess-the-steamrollers. It’s always great to see those girls because they have a lot of energy and it always illicits involuntary smiles + laughter.

me ‘n the girls at vienna’s show
Unrelated: Vienna called today after performing at the Asian Film Festival in San Diego, where she sat at a dinner table with John Cho and Kelly Hu — and during the conversation I fully expressed my disappointment that she didn’t take like a million photos of Kelly Hu for me. She told me that she thought that I might be her only friend that would appreciate her proximity to the Harold and Kumar people — you know, one of those slightly back-handed compliments that she’s always talking about at her shows. But I’ll take it as a FULL compliment. :)

OK, so I have to admit that I enjoyed the baseball games I’ve been watching for the past few days (even though I didn’t really care who won). It’s hard to avoid watching sports when you’re surrounded by sports people.

I spent the last couple of days in Houston hanging out with Andy Biggs, his wife Lesley, Caroline, and James. After spending a few nights working hard on the Wetpixel DEMA update, it was really nice to have some time to just hang out without any responsibilities. I’ve also discovered that I really like retired racing greyhounds: no smell, no hair, and a mellow personality! Andy’s dog, Jax, is great.

After going out to have dinner at Benjy’s (good food!), Caroline gave me another acupunture/acupressure treatment, sticking six needles into me in various locations. I like getting treatments from her, although they might be more effective if I had some kind of chronic problem I wanted fixed; I’m generally a pretty stable guy. The ending massage is definitely my favorite part. At least one of my friends hates massages — an opinion I can’t even begin to imagine. I just spent the last couple of hours on one of Cindy’s electric massage chair thingies. :) [see some photos]

So, I went to Heidi Hau’s recital at Hellman Hall SF Conservatory on October 9th, and she rocked. The usual suspects were there — people who I’m sure will come over for house concerts when I start having them again. :)

Um. Here are some photos. Also included are photos of Geoff/Livia/Korean feast, and Cindy at my Oakland place.
[see some photos] [see just heidi photos]

Last Tuesday I had the great fortune of sitting in with Vienna Teng, Alan Lin, and Marika Hughes at the Mucky Duck in Houston, Texas. It was a lot of fun to see them all again; it is only by pure chance that I get to see Vienna while she’s out on tour. Normally, I have to wait until she returns to the Bay Area. Anyway, the Mucky Duck was packed full of rabid fans that evening. Caroline brought eight people, and I brought a bunch of people in the dive/photo industry who were all in town to attend the DEMA Show (the same reason I am here in Houston now), including Lucien Schmidlin (TopDIVE), James Wiseman and Sarah Bernhardt, Andi Voeltz, Lars Kirchhoff, and Aline Kadach (my Berlin hosts from a few weeks ago), and Leslie Biggs + cousin (who are not in the dive industry). ’twas a lot of fun to get to touch a cello again, even if it wasn’t mine. Marika’s cello is very nice. :) Speaking of Marika, she got a few boos from conservative Texans for announcing her website, to which she replied, “it doesn’t take any courage to voice your opinion where everyone is like you.” Marika rocks. Another exciting moment was when Vienna told me, “close your eyes and open your mouth” — a comment that can easily invoke fear, but perhaps less fear when coming from a woman.

At around 1am we drove out to have Vietnamese food at Mai’s, where the floor has a lovely slippery coating reminiscent of what is on the floor in some men’s restrooms. I was joking around about not being able to stand without my shoes slipping, and received a serious inquiry from someone at the dinner table: “are you familiar with rooting?” Um. I was like, joking and stuff.

Anyway, I spent the past day screwing around with safari photographer Andy Biggs at his new place here in Houston. Tonight, we (Andy, Leslie, Caroline, and Todd) went out to eat downtown at Cabo. I have had many fish tacos today. :)

Ummm… I’m tired. Eyes burning. [see some photos]

Temporary message: sorry if I’ve been ignoring correspondence. I’m at an exhibition, and it’s been kicking my ass! Literally no time for anything non-exhibition oriented. Will recover in a few days, I’m sure.

Update: I’m done, sort of. Now I can sleep.

I’m so behind with posting photos that I don’t even know where to begin. Actually, I’ve had Chester’s Nikon D100 for the past week or so, and I must say that I’m glad I’m a Canon shooter. But it was nice to get to know the camera a bit. I didn’t realize how much I lean on my 1D Mk II’s clean high-ISO operation combined with big-aperture lenses. I was nearly unable to shoot low-light stuff without flash!

Too tired to write more. The NCUPS meeting went very well tonight, I thought, except that I might have scared a few people into not going digital with all my tech talk. :)

Very Mediocre Photos: visit to San Diego to hang out with photographers Brian Skerry, Mark Conlin, and Steve Drogin; Joechang’s visit to SF; Livia at a diner; Wendy and Sarah; Philippe Quint, Livia, and Daphne Wang at Luna Park (one of my favorite restaurants); Livia weeding; Stephen Prutsman in his studio, Geoff Nuttall and new violin. [see some photos]

Suddenly, mobile phones are much more useful.

I’m featured in this quarter’s issue of ScubaCore, a quarterly DVD magazine run by Bobby and Anat, who I met in Wakatobi last year. I was a bit nervous about being interviewed IN VIDEO, but they managed to take all my rough edges and make me seem polished and stuff. I was very impressed! Anyway, if you are a diver or enjoy the underwater world, check out their DVD magazine. I like it. :)

Oh yeah, I’m speaking at the NCUPS (Northern California Underwater Photographic Society) meeting tomorrow. It’s at 8pm in Fort Mason. Lots o’ big prints, I will be bringing. You can show up if you want to heckle me.

Also, I have a message from Heidi Hau, who will be performing at the SF Conservatory of Music on Saturday at noon (it’s free!). (read more »)

I have a server with a 3Ware Escalade 8506-8 S-ATA RAID card in it, running Windows XP Professional. Today I thought, “Well, I might as well upgrade to SP2. It’s been working just fine on my other machines!” Bad idea. Machine no boot now.

Looks like I may have to reinstall. Luckily, the system itself is installed on a standard ATA IDE drive, so it’s not as complicated as it could have been. I only regret not imaging the partition before attempting the service pack patch. Stupid me! Argh.

Update: A fresh install from a SP2-slipstreamed XP Professional CD does not solve the problem. Upon reinstallation and reboot, the system hangs at the XP logo screen.

Update: I’m back up and running (hours later). Solution was to reinstall XP and apply the XP SP1a update (reinstalling all drivers, including the 3Ware Escalade driver).

Stupid computers.