I’m presenting my photography at an evening called “Build Meaningful Meatspace Conversations Through Blogging” on Thursday, May 25th, in Redwood City. It’s part of the 100 Geek Dinners in 100 Days events and is hosted by Kai Chang and Brad Fitzpatrick (founder of Livejournal). At the venue, they’ll have cases of Stormhoek wine, signed copies of Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone, and other prizes to give out. I’ll also be raffling off some of my prints.

Contact pjammer at gmail for an invitation if you want to come. See you there!

A couple of weeks ago, shift-clicking to select text in Mozilla Firefox stopped working (v1.5.0.2, Thinkpad T42, Windows XP SP2). I can still hold shift down and use the arrow keys and home/end keys, and holding shift-control while using the arrow keys works as well. But throughout my browser (both textareas and normal HTML text), I can no longer click on one spot and then shift-click another to select everything between.

I need to do some more testing. Any suggestions?

UPDATE It was the AdBlock extension. It disables shift-clicking, and if you double shift-click on something when AdBlock is installed, it (the element you double-clicked on) disappears altogether. Thanks, Neal, for the reminder that Firefox has extensions. :)

After posting the tiger shark videos last month, Stephen Frink asked me if I would answer some questions for Scuba Diving Magazine’s 2006 PMA Report. The results are online as part of ScubaDiving.com’s SNAP Exclusive.

I’ve had the Motorola RAZR V3C for a few months now, and while I like the form factor of the phone, the user interface is incredibly slow and Bluetooth support has been crippled since its release. Verizon has finally announced that they are enabling OBEX for data transfer over Bluetooth! The firmware update requires a visit to a Verizon store. It’s about time, you bastards.

UPDATE It turns out that all of this isn’t exactly true. Older phones with the firmware update retain OBEX functionality, but newer ones do not. See Howard Forums and this update for more news.

My good friend Peter Kim sure is strange. He took the s out from between his first and last name and tacked it onto the end, resulting in a website designed to track all the Peter Kims out there in the world (inspired by a conversation we had about the Grace Lee Project). So if your name is Peter Kim, get your info onto PeterKims.com!

I’m giving a talk tonight with Tony Wu in Singapore. We’ll be chatting about photographing sharks and whales with Canon cameras.

Date: 20 April 2006 (Thu), 19:00-22:00 hours

Canon Digital Media Hub, The Theatrette, 3rd Floor, 750 Victoria Street, Singapore 188062

UPDATE FiNS Blog report.

I have to go back through Manila again tomorrow.

traditional bamboo-stick dance, kadai village, yap

The local Yapese culture is fascinating. In other places, there is an attempt to con tourists into thinking that all of the fancy dress and dancing is what they do every day for some bizarre spiritual purpose. But in Yap, our elder host (Stan) wears prescription glasses and talks about World War II and the kids these days preferring rap to traditional song and dance. (read more »)

a greeting to dan, while mailing a 66 lb 4 oz box from yap

Dan managed to get three large cases out to Palau before Continental’s baggage embargo started (bastards!). On the Palau to Yap leg, he managed to get special permission to check the third bag in as cargo, but he was unable to get the thing out of Yap even though we had several business class passengers helping him. So Veitch and I dragged the thing to the post office today and mailed it insured via Express Mail. Total cost to Chicago was $188.40, which isn’t so bad, actually. In two days, I have to lug two 60 lb cases through Manila (my favorite airport) to Singapore, and then back to San Francisco through Manila (argh!); I am likely to pay overweight luggage fees on both legs. It is probably worth the money to ship — assuming I could be sure I’d see my box again. Veitch had some stuff mailed to Yap from the States back in November; one package arrived a week ago, and another never made it.

I had a lucky day 4 at the Manta Ray Bay Hotel in Yap. The rest of the Palau Digital Shootout folk left on a 3am flight this morning, and I said my farewells at 1am as they loaded onto the bus to the airport. At 7:30am, I was on a boat out to Mi’l Channel in search of Manta Rays again, and was finally rewarded with a single pass over a cleaning station — enough for me to squeeze off a couple of shots and finally be able to say that I saw a manta ray in Yap. (read more »)

I’ve been a photo pro at the Digital Shootout events for three years now, and the staff (and one of the participants) and I have become pretty close. These are friends and peers that I see only for 1-2 weeks a year while working at select island destinations, and while attending various dive expos around the States, but the intensity of our shared experiences are building what are likely to be lifelong friendships. Here in Palau and Yap, I can’t help but feel that I’ve just finished a 2-week camp, complete with cliques and distinct personalities that have caused subtle social eddies to swirl around during our all-day interactions and geographical confinement. (read more »)

We digital underwater photographers struggle a lot with sunballs underwater (a “digital bummer,” Berkley White says). While diving Blue Corner the other day, I shot the best digital sunball I’ve ever taken. (read more »)

jellyfish are cool

I shot this same lake in Palau five years ago on the trip that turned me on to underwater photography (my first trip shooting underwater), and I’ve wanted to come back here since then to see what I can do now. Enjoying life here, despite the 7am to 10pm work schedule. :) (read more »)

Apple Bootcamp is what we’ve all been waiting for!

More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.

Now that I’m starting to do some video, I’m tempted to make the Switch. Of course, I say that about once every two years, so who knows… :)

Keep track of me at the Wetpixel webcast of the Palau Digital Shootout 2006. More soon…

I was on a dive boat the other day, hanging out in the middle of a bunch of rock islands in Palau, and we pulled up on a boat full of Japanese divers. (read more »)