Here are a couple photos of me taken by my friend and talented photographer Mark Conlin.

me, photographing the feeding of the pens

me, photographing the tuna in the pens

All I have to say is that the dudes whose job it is to freedive down into the pens and grab the tuna — with their hands — are really tough. Mark ventured over to that side of the pen once, and had to crap beat out of him by flailing tuna and human limbs.

While I was visiting Jim Watt last week in Kona, I discovered that I really like free-diving. We were out on his boat for eight to ten hours at a time, and would occasionally moor up at a local reef and hop in the water, just to take a break from what we call, “expedition mode.”

I’ve never really free-dived just for the sake of free-diving. Normally, I have my camera with me, which both prevents me from both seeing how deep I can go and from focusing on the actual act of diving. In the Bahamas, it’s common to have to dive down twenty-five feet or so to photograph dolphins feeding in the sand, but as a photographer I would never think to ditch my camera and just go swimming. :) (read more »)

I’m hosting some events at my place soon, and I was wondering: does anyone know of any computer telephony solutions that can be set to automatically answer incoming calls from a certain number and play back DTMF for ‘9′?

Sure would be handy.

I guess I could hire a door monkey.

• New server at home is running. You know you’ve got a lotta frickin’ storage when one of your programs switches to scientific notation to specify free space. I’m copying 600GB over gigabit. It’s going to take a long time.
  
  

• Wetpixel redesign is basically done. DNS switch has been flipped.
  
  

Here were the steps involved for the Wetpixel redesign:

It’s taken hours and hours of hard work, and I couldn’t have done it without James Wiseman, Markus Nolf, and Alex King. (read more »)

Our french horn player today had a sticker for the band, “God Hates Computers.” Aftering seeing it, I said (jokingly), “I want one of those stickers! I’d cross out ‘God’ (and the ’s’ in ‘Hates’) and write ‘I’ instead. ha ha ha.”

I was being facetious, but that was because I didn’t know that the remainder of my evening would be spent setting up my new server — all of which was going well until the Intel Express software CD installed something that corrupted the newly installed system. So, I’m starting again.

This is after literally weeks of waiting for Lian Li to get me a set of missing screws and accessories for the damned case (read more »)

I’m tired. These 16-hour layovers called “home” are gettin’ to me.

I spent the other day in a pen filled with 600 bluefin tuna. It was awesome.

I seem to have missed these, somehow. Also, I updated the Denver post with some photos.

Livia cooked up meatloaf tonight. I’m stuffffed.

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vt, painting

I know a post a ton of photos of this chick… and here are some more.

I flew back from Denver a few days ago and got sidetracked on my way home from the airport by blue pillows, blue paint, and 2am Mexican food in Alameda. I also got hopelessly lost in Vienna’s new studio space and wandered around an aural jumble of drums, pianos, and wah-wah’ed electric guitars before her phone finally connected with the world to give me a studio number.

I stapled 60 pillows to the wall.

There are also photos of Vienna’s Stir TV interview at my place. Can’t wait to see the segment on TV — anyone know when it’s going to air? :)

view photos »

I just had a 200GB Western Digital WD2000JB-00DUA0 fail after being connected to a Promise FastTrak 100 RAID card for only a year and a half. Luckily, it was running RAID 1, so I didn’t lose any data. I have a friend who is also using a 2-channel Promise RAID card, and he has lost two WD2000JB drives within the last year and a half.

Are these cards cursed or something? Losing three drives between two cards in less than 2 years is pretty bad.

UPDATED 2/13/05 Photos, y’all. Visited old friends Rod Saito, Angela Filose, and newer friends Eric Miller and Alex King. Thanks for the good time, guys. :)

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Out here in Denver, with web app whiz Alex King. He’s sort of out in [a comfortable version of] the boondocks, and has the cutest puppy ever. Google Maps (thanks, the other eric the all-powerful god-of-sex eric!) sure would have helped tonight when Rod and Angela tried to find their way out here for dinner. :)

But, yeah. Google Maps. I want to have a monitor permanently open with it on my desk at home. Google wins, again.

I’ll update this entry with photos, later.

view photos »

amanda, superbowl

Other than walking around the block this morning to get a bagel with Livia, I haven’t left the loft in three days. But I will be heading out to the airport in just over five short hours, which I’m sure will make my morning just peachy.

Superbowl Sunday! Geoff, Livia, Robert, Mandy, Elliot, Monica, Wuy, Lesley, Vienna, Jim, Steve, Sigrid, and cute kids AJ and Elouise came over to watch the Superbowl and feast on Geoff’s amazing, spicy chili, Geoff’s amazing, garlicky guacamole, Vienna and Jim’s tasty cheesesteaks, and the V-team’s healthy fruits, hummus, and pita. Livia and Robert were gone for much of the day because they had to play a concert somewhere out east. (read more »)

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Anything that doesn’t go privately will eventually go onto eBay or Craigslist. Add shipping to all listed prices. Send me e-mail if you’re interested in anything! (read more »)

These links, courtesy of Eryn and <a href=”http://deadjournal.com/users/merrydeath/”">Meredith:

- Awesome video of a guy singing to himself
- I Wanna Love You Tender

Also, I’ve been reading up on Papua New Guinea because I’m going there in August and was diving just off of Irian Jaya last month. This account of a trip in pursuit of first contact is worth reading. The areas I’m going to have had contact with whiteys for seventy years or so, but what will no doubt be fresh in my mind are the photographs and stories I’ve read in books like First Contact and Throwim Way Leg.

UPDATE - Closet computer geek Vienna Teng reminded me of the top 100 quotes at bash.org. Don’t click on the link unless you have half an hour to laugh hilariously. Uh.. that is, if you find that sort of thing funny. Extensive chat room and/or MUD experience helps. God, we’re dorks.

I live within walking distance of the Regal Jack London movie theater, a geographic blessing, I thought, when I decided to move here from San Francisco. However, having now been to three movies there, I have decided that I’m never going back. Bad experiences? 3 for 3. Problem areas include film burning up in the projector, crying babies at 10pm action-movie showings, and dudes talking non-stop during movies like Million Dollar Baby (which I saw tonight with Livia — it was excellent).

I’m also going to try to avoid the annoying, faux-gangsta’, size-44-jeans street punks at Century Daly City. I guess that only leaves indie theaters, and the Metreon. Livia insists that from now on we’re only going to see movies at the Metreon, but I recall one instance when we had to convince a security guy to expel some obnoxious kids in front of us. Is it possible that one must pursue even more yuppie theaters to get a proper viewing environment?

Unrelated: this afternoon, Vienna pointed me to a video that Nick Parlante made to teach people about pointers. Nick is clearly insane. :) (I had Nick for 3 of my first 4 CS classes at Stanford: CS 193d, 107, and 108).

Will you be my valentine?

Just kidding. (read more »)

OK, this is funny. I’m normally pretty straight in my news postings over at Wetpixel, but in a strange burp of personality, I referred to the Nikon D2X as “Nikon’s Last Chance” [1], which spawned a huge thread over at DPReview (which is typical). Ha ha ha.

We’re talking about it over at Wetpixel, too, but that thread has evolved into a chat about diffraction.

[1] “last chance” — that is, for most of the Nikon working pros I know. you can debate all you want, but what i wrote has a lot truth to it.

Hey! Can someone verify that the Superbowl will be broadcast in HD on Comcast’s FOX Channel 702 here in the Bay Area?

There is all sorts of speculation about whether the broadcast will be in HD through Comcast (in addition to the Superbowl’s free, over-the-air, HD broadcast). I did find it in Comcast’s program guide, but I want to make sure that I don’t disappoint my friends when they come over. :)

I’m having a Superbowl get-together, and I don’t even know who will be playing. There was talk about reading [classical] music before-hand, to which Vienna replied, “this might be the strangest Superbowl party I’ve ever been to.” Unfortunately, poor Livia has to play in a concert during the Superbowl. That’s super lame.

My SMC Barricade SMC2804WBR router (w/802.11b/g) goes to sleep if my machines don’t talk to the outside world for awhile. All network connections have “limited connectivity,” and it stops giving out IP addresses via DHCP. Power cycling the unit fixes the problem temporarily.

I called customer service a couple of months ago, and a nice Indian man sent me new (unreleased) firmware as a fix — but the problem is still happening.

So finally, I set up one of my machines to ping echeng.com every 10 minutes, which in theory will keep the router alive. If that doesn’t work, I may have to get a new one. Computers suck.