I went to have lunch with Jim and Dane over at visit VUVOX today, and the beta release of their new multimedia presentation product is really impressive. In just a few minutes online, I whipped up this remix of the Green Caravan Drive videos I made with Vienna Teng. Click on over to the old post, or continue reading here to see the Flash presentation… (read more »)

hanging out at taino beach, bahamas

Before last weekend, I had never been to a destination wedding. On Saturday, Hilary and Jeremy were wed on a beach on Grand Bahama. I love weddings that do not require shoes! (read more »)

In general, I am a big fan of SmugMug, a great photo sharing service. I use it to distribute photos and prints of events because I can set passwords, control pricing, and allow original file downloads.

Having said that, its standalone Mac OS X uploader leaks incredible amounts of memory. After I uploaded 45 high-resolution files, the app was hogging nearly 2GB of real memory (!). (read more »)

The new direction my life has taken in recent years is one that is particularly effective in keeping me away from the cello. During my brief stints at home, I spend most of my time frantically catching up on correspondence, checking my (snail) mailbox, processing photographic deliverables, and coordinating projects for Wetpixel. But during all of the rushing around and multi-tasking, I constantly feel an almost tangible pull from within my cello case, which sits on a 90-degree bend halfway up the steps to the stage.

Here’s the unfortunate thing: it’s a race against time. As the pent-up, musical frustration builds, I am slowly becoming less able to respond to its call.

bev, vienna, pat, karine, peter and me @ sushi yasuda [see all]

My head might be as much as 50% wider than Peter’s head.

Sound check at Wolf Trap in Virginia [all photos]

After driving across the country with Vienna Teng, I accompanied the band down to the Wolf Trap in Virginia, where I heard them perform for the first time in over two years.

Man. I might as well rename this journal, “Adventures with Vienna Teng. :) (read more »)

I can’t think of many things worse than a cross-country, red-eye flight that gets in at 5am. In order of crappiness, I rank Continental’s SFO-Houston flight first, and AA’s SFO-Miami flight second. Both of these flights get in between 4am and 5am, and with a 3-hour time difference, it makes me feel like it’s merely 1 or 2am, which is normally before my bedtime. So here I am in Miami, and my computer clock is telling me that it’s 2:33am. I still have 5 hours to wait before I board the 50-minute puddle-jumper to Freeport.

I was upgraded to first class for the leg I just flew, and as always, it confused me. I’m am pretty much always in cattle class, and when I get to sit up front I am often not sure what to do: during a 5-hour red-eye, do I sleep, or do I stay up to eat?? I feel like I should eat to get the most “value” out of the flight. But how much is a good nap worth? Ahh, decisions.

Despite the crappiness of such itineraries, early mornings on aircrafts have presented me with some of the most beautiful images I’ve ever encountered.

I woke up midway through our descent into Miami. The plane was in the middle of a slight bank to the right, and when I opened my eyes, the oval window presented only blackness, with only the the slightest suggestion of movement from a dark texture I couldn’t quite see. A pale cream sickle moon wandered into the frame from the right with an impossible smoothness, an illuminated arc created by the slow yawing of a large object. Barely high enough in the sky to suggest a celestial origin, she cast a shimmering pathway upon the water below — inviting, but impossible to follow.

Bill Addison over at SFGate spent 10 weeks checking out 85 Bay Area taquerias. I’ve been to many of the places he mentions in the article and agree that burritos here are quite good. The article focuses on brick ‘n mortar establishments, which unfortunately precluded taco trucks from the comparison. I love a good taco truck taco; each time, before I wolf down my first one, there is only that brief flash of worry over the lack of running water in the truck before I forget all about it.

Last night, Dave Patchen, Ilya Levtov and I ended up at Tia Margarita up on Clement, which was (as Dave described it) “like a Mexican restaurant in the Mission, but twice the cost.” Oh well. The food was good. :)

When I was living in SF proper, I went to Taqueria Cancun at least once a week (the one at 29th and Mission, usually), but now that I’m in Oakland, I’ve lost my burrito routine.

Whoah. Nash just posted about burritos as well. What are the chances that we’d both post about burritos on the same day?

On my way back from Indonesia two months ago, I noticed dramatic cloud shadows cast by a low-setting sun. The lesson here? Always keep your SLR handy, even when on airplanes. And be sure to turn off your flash. :)

Taken with Canon 1Ds Mk II @ 28mm. Manual exposure: 1/250 f9 ISO 100.

cindy and pete in santa monica

Geoff, Livia, Baby Jack and I drove down to Los Angeles last weekend to attend Cindy and Pete’s wedding, which took place at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. (read more »)

Dearest Lazyweb and Final Cut Pro / Compressor gurus — I have a question for you. Let’s say I have a bunch of clips in a timeline. Is there any way to automatically overlay text from metadata values onto a video clip? Let’s say I want to embed:

1. a copyright overlay
2. the clip name
3. the timecode

What would be ideal is to be able to overlay the text onto each clip and render out special, watermarked versions for layout in a timeline. This must be a standard thing — I’ve seen it done. I’m just not sure how to do it. :)

Right now, I am doing #1 and #2 by hand, and it’s … tiresome. I have no idea how to do #3, and some some old(er) film types tell me that they use some sort of hardware box to do it. That seems lame.

Gotta love that new Macbook keyboard. I guess it can take some time to get used to. :)

Just over a year ago, I posted the results of my first time with a video camera underwater. While in the Bahamas, I took footage of tiger sharks, great hammerhead sharks, lemon sharks, bull sharks, oceanic blacktip sharks, and Caribbean reef sharks.

I gave a talk on big animals at the 53rd Boston Sea Rovers Clinic last month, which became the perfect excuse to edit down all of that video footage into a 2:25 montage. Enjoy! :)

Hello, divers. I’m running a dive expedition to the Solomon Islands this coming September, and we’ve just had a cancellation for 1 spot! Check out the trip details and let me know if you’d like to come with us! I’ve also put up a gallery from my last trip to the Solomons.

The Solomon Islands are one of my favorite places in the world to dive. Advanced divers only, please!

(Cross-country drive with Vienna Teng) We made it to New York! And now, I am going to go to sleep.

Here’s today’s video: (read more »)

I met someone I’ve totally fallen for. No one was more surprised than I — I’m not sure how this is going to work, given my schedule, but it’s still exciting nonetheless! (read more »)

(Cross-country drive with Vienna Teng) We spent most of the daylight hours today hanging out with VT relatives (eating pizza, frolicking in the park, etc.) and didn’t hit the road for Cleveland until nearly 5pm. The roads in Chicago seem to all be under construction, but we made pretty good time and rolled into Independence at 1am.

For dinner, Vienna picked a random Chinese restaurant in Toledo from the GPS directory, but once we arrived, we decided that a Lebanese/Greek place a couple doors down looked more interesting and ended up eating there and socializing with Sam, the owner and cook.

Video follows: (read more »)