luciana souza @ yoshi’s

Luciana Souza is amazing. We (Geoff, Livia, Vienna, Jim, Roy, Jay, Brandi, and I) went to Yoshi’s last night to hear her last set. I’m no expert when it comes to Brazilian-influenced jazz, but I was really impressed with the purity of her voice and her ability to use her voice as an instrument (rapid-fire! perfect intonation!). Romero, her guitarist, was amazing as well. Jim kept saying that it looked as if his fingers had evolved in response to being used to play the guitar.

Luciana was one of the soloists in Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasion Segun San Marcos, which we toured as part of the West Coast premiere in 2002. (read more »)

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karine and peter @ aer

Peter was really surprised when he walked into the the upstairs dining area at En Japanese Brasserie. (part of his response was: “there are, like, people from California here!”). Karine spent weeks prior to their recent trip to Africa planning the surprise party, and Allon, Emile, Alvin, Jason and I all came in from out of town to join the NY locals for a crazy evening of celebration. (read more »)

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tony and pat @ great jones

A few photos from visit to New York last weekend. I seem to like New York less and less with each visit, but it’s always fun to see my friends who are out there.

(hung out with Emile, Pat, Tony, Jamie, Victor, Isaac, Peter, Karine. did the requisite dim sum meal plus visit to Chinatown Ice Cream Factory)

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victor

Also a few weeks ago, Victor Wishna came to visit us here in the Bay Area. I spent most of a Friday with the Victor; we wandered around Oakland for a bit before heading to San Francisco to see Mandy and Sara at the Redstart Design workspace.

Victor was particularly entertaining this time around because he arrived in California obsessed with taking pictures. :)

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sather siblings

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Elliot’s birthday at Wuy’s place in San Francisco. Wuy cooked up an amazing vegan meal, and Monica made the richest, vegan chocolate cake EVER.

Happy birthday, Elliot!

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Photos while visiting my mother in Taiwan last week. Text later.

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Computers are frustrating. I ran out of DVD-R media and went straight to Meritline to purchase a 100-Pack Genuine Ritek RiData Super Grade 16X DVD-R (Silver Matte) Blank Media 4.7GB (DRD-4716-RDCB501). My IBM Thinkpad burns it just fine, but my Dell with NEC-3500A DVD+-RW drive refused to use it as blank media. Turns out that I had to update the firmware. (read more »)

My schedule has flipped by 12 hours a few times in the last week. I came back from Taiwan on the 14th and was picked up from the airport by Livia. Went over to their house for a yummy dinner cooked by her and Geoff, drank some wine, went to sleep at their place at 1:30am, and was wide awake by 4:30am. Argh. Worked on a deadline the next day and then went to the concert I described in the last entry. Afterwards, was stuck on the bridge for a few hours, and finally got to bed at 4:30am or so.

Hung out with Victor A. on Friday, which was really nice, although I felt guilty that I didn’t get much work done. But I think I needed the time to just relax geek out on media stuff. Unfortunately, as a result of our collaboration, my place is going to have 15 speakers in it: 2 x 5.1 systems + the existing 2.1 on my desk. How is it possible to have so many speakers in a single room? Again, went to bed at 4am after chatting with my mother on Skype.

Today, I woke up to the phone ringing. I was very confused, because my clock said something about it being five o’clock. Surely, Sarah would not be calling at 5 in the morning, right? And why was it so bright?! Eventually, I figured out that it was actually 5pm, and that I had been asleep for 13 hours. I suppose I needed the rest. We went to see 2046 tonight at the Landmark in Berkeley. Great movie for just sitting there and soaking it all in.

stevie and vienna

Tonight I went to see the SLSQ perform at Herbst Theater with FLUX and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett. It was a very interesting program and crowd: fancy, concert attire mixed with heavy metal t-shirts, long hair, and a bunch of SFSU students (who had free tickets). The first half featured Ozzie’s Last Round and Dvorak’s American String Quartet, which the SLSQ did an amazing job of performing. It was the best I have ever heard the American quartet performed. I sometimes forget that my friends are such amazing musicians!

The second half, however, was much stranger. (read more »)

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My friend Jenny at Reef & Rainforest is donating a scuba diving trip to the Galapagos aboard the Peter Hughes Sky Dancer. Trip dates are October 9-23, 2005, and minimum bid is $1,000 for this $5,390 trip! They’re taking bids until Friday. Hint: there have been no bids so far, so you could end up getting this trip for really cheap. [more info @ wetpixel]

Do any of you out there have experience with global pre-paid SIM cards for tri-band GSM phones? If so, I could certainly use some advice. I am looking for a card that will allow me to use the phone in the various areas I frequent (Taiwan, Indonesia, Ecuador, Bahamas, etc.), but I haven’t found any that are that expansive in their coverage.

I’ve just discovered that Verizon works in Taiwan, but the website says that it costs $0.69 for roaming, plus rented carrier charges. I’m afraid to use it.

If you are a Skype user, you may be interested to learn that as of Skype Beta version 1.4.0.47, DTMF tones (touch tones) seem to be working (finally!). It may have been working in earlier versions, but this is the first one I’ve downloaded that fixes the problem. I can’t send DTMF tones too quickly, but it works if you place a deliberate pause between each tone.

I can’t believe it took them this long to fix the problem. Not sure if it has been resolved in non-Windows versions.

sport diver cover

I have the cover + some images in this month’s Sport Diver Magazine. Check it out at your local bookstore, if you are interested! Many thanks to all of you who voted for the turtle in the Sport Diver poll back in July.

Some history of the turtle: I was out in West Palm beach before a Bahamas shark trip in February, 2003. The little guy is a juvenile Caretta caretta loggerhead turtle rescued from a nest (unable to get out by itself) and studied by the Marinelife Center of Juno Beach before being released into the wild by my good friend, Jim Abernethy. I was a lucky participant in its release, and followed the little guy around with a camera for a little while before watching him swim off. Experts have suggested that the turtle may have mistaken my dome port for a jellyfish, which may explain the “I’m gonna eat you!” open-mouthed expression. :)

This is a little weird, but did anyone happen to see me on PBS last night? Benjamin said that he saw a close-up of me playing the cello in some feature about the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and that the music being played was Dvorak Quintet (which definitely wasn’t what I was playing, but is something the SLSQ play quite often). He said that it was during the 7-8pm hour before Victor Borge, which would mean that it was aired on Spark, a show I’ve never seen.

Speaking of PBS, Vienna was on PBS while I was away in Papua New Guinea (I always know when she is on TV because people call and e-mail me whenever they see her on the tube). And den, that same PBS audience went to see her experimental show at the Independent with The Animators. hehehe. funny. (read more »)