This is quite random. I was watching the behind the scenes video of Paul Steward’s experience in Tari (Papua New Guinea), capturing video footage of birds of paradise for BBC’s Planet Earth. I met and befriended him while we were both there.

Anyway, in the footage, they show Huli men dancing, which reminded me that I have a bunch of (crappy) video from Mt. Hagen and Tari taken with my old point & shoot camera (mostly shot to capture an audio track).

So here’s one of the videos. It’s footage of the Chimbu’s dead child “dance”, which they performed continuously at the Mt. Hagen Cultural Festival. (read more »)

me, livia, and ilya. i have a sword (photo: geoff nuttall)

Dressed in a somewhat unimaginative costume, I ventured out tonight to Ilya’s Halloween party south of Market in San Francisco. I wore the kung fu uniform I bought for Emile’s wedding and strapped a broadsword to my belt.

I gotta say… there’s something satisfying about putting your hand on the hilt of a sword strapped to your waist. I like the feeling. (read more »)

infrared panorama, serengeti national park, tanzania

Much to Al Vinjamur’s dismay, I keep shooting stitched panoramas without using a tripod. This panorama was shot with my infrared-modified Canon 20D, and those dots in the middle are elephants. It’s hard to see at 600 pixels wide (the original is over 10,000 pixels wide), but you can also download a 1024-pixel version.

elephant in tanzania

yee-haw. i’m posting some more elephant pictures. you know, to complement the elephant fart video (which is now the #1 result for the google search, “elephant fart video“). (read more »)

Dear WorldMate Live and TripIt:

Would you please merge your applications? It would be fantastic to have a service that automatically parses confirmation e-mails and creates shareable itineraries (TripIt) that syncs its data with a cool application on the Blackaberry (WorldMate Live). And if you could support syncing with Google Calendar or iCal syndication, that would be great too.

Thank you,
A Blackberried Traveler

(I tried importing Orbitz travel documents through to WorldMate Live, and it failed miserably. I’m not using Outlook, so I had to forward them in Mac OS X’s Mail.app. Maybe that was the problem (they claim to support Orbitz).)

everyone is excited when baby jack eats

I thought I’d post a link to my latest photos on Flickr. There are images in the set from Open Studios in SF (RedStart Design), Baby Jack, Geoff + Livia, Sarah Kemble, Gabe Trop, and Eli Woolery.

I found a funny letter I wrote to my sister in June of 1984 (when I was 8). She was at my uncle’s place in Indiana, but I don’t remember why. (read more »)

all i was doing was holding down the mouse on the contrast slider!

I’m really good at finding bugs in software. :)

Oh, and that giraffe photo is one of my favorites. I happened to have the wrong lens on my camera when the giraffe in the rear walked by…

To take my mind off of the fires in San Diego, I thought I would post a few photos from the Solomon Islands. I enjoy traveling with people I know well because we frequently end up having a great time underwater.

me, with my seacam/ikelite rig (photo: douglas seifert)

Douglas took the above photo of me, which is perhaps the most interesting portrait I have of myself, to date. Look at those strobes! The image screams SERIOUS RIG, doesn’t it? :) (read more »)

According to the map at SignOnSanDiego (they have swapped out the crappy one they had earlier for a Google map), the area of the fire has expanded to include the location of our house.

map of san diego fire area as of 4:10pm

Luckily, the burned structures list doesn’t include any houses near ours (yet). (read more »)

Photo: JIM BAIRD / Union-Tribune

Ahhh, my home town. Why must you make it so easy to mock you, even during times of emergency?

Here’s the description from the source page (which has intermittently been down over the past day, presumably because everyone is going there for fire news):

Oct. 22, Rancho Santa Fe: Fire, along S6 between Lake Hodges and Del Mar (Villa de la Valle at the Del Mar end, Via Rancho Parkway nearer Hodges). These people did not want to be photographed; they were westbound at mile 6 of Via de la Valle, with a Jaguar leading a horse at slow walking speed, and behind them a horse trailer that was full.

fire status as of 2:04am

The fire is pretty close to my parents’ house now. Since both of them are out of the country, there was no one to grab files, photo albums, and other valuables during evacuation. (read more »)

The fires that are burning out of control in Southern California are mere miles away from my parents’ home. Luckily, both of them are away in Taiwan at the moment and don’t have to deal with the mandatory evacuation orders. Still, it’s really scary.

pink shows estimated fire area

SignOnSanDiego has an a map of fire areas and road closures, but the website has been really slow today. There’s also a thumbnail of the map and links to breaking fire-related stories (some of which don’t actually go anywhere) on their home page.

LATimes has more useful articles linked from their local news site, including this one that talks about the 250,000-household evacuation in San Diego.

I’m printing out envelopes from within Pages.app. When kicked off from my Macbook Pro, they print out fine. But the same document prints totally wrong when printed from my Mac Pro. On the screen, the document looks the same. The printer behaves properly for other documents. If I try to fix the problem by changing the orientation in Page Setup, the envelope document looks totally wrong (becomes vertical instead of horizontal — clearly not the desired result).

Argh.

Three elephants in the Serengeti, near Wogakuria, Tanzania

Clearly, I need to find some time to process my safari pictures from earlier this month!
UPDATE: Andy has just posted three people pictures from our trip.

As of right now, I am the #1 hit for “elephant fart video“. However, I’m barely on the first page for the more generic “elephant fart“. Need more google power! [see the elephant fart]

Hey guys. In preparation for an upgrade to the Mk III series, I’m selling off my Mk II gear:

1. Canon 1Ds Mk II digital SLR body - SOLD
2. Canon 1D Mk II digital SLR body
3. Seacam Mk II underwater housing

The for-sale listing is up in Wetpixel classifieds forum. Check it out, if you’re interested! Images of the camera are available upon request.

I returned from Tanzania last weekend during the middle of my 10-year college reunion. I was so tired that the last thing I wanted to do was drive the 50 miles to Stanford and back, but I finally decided that I should probably go — especially after having missed the 5-year (I was actually on campus, but was preoccupied).

me and carrie casselman

Adam Tow and I met up at Livia’s place on campus and walked over to Tresidder together. It was funny — the first people I saw were Mandy and Elliot, who had just returned from their honeymoon. Mandy was nicely tanned; I assume Elliot tried to tan himself as well, but his Minnesotan blood probably noticed the attempt and blocked the effort. (read more »)

baby jack races toward the bathroom

More miscellaneous photos of Baby Jack from the past week… (read more »)

My good friend Livia Sohn’s upcoming CD entitled Opera Fantasies for Violin is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com! You can also pre-order MP3s from Amazon’s new(-ish) MP3 store.

The CD features Livia’s virtuoso playing along with compositions, arrangements and supporting performances by three more friends (and others): Geoff Nuttall, Stephen Prutsman, and Osvaldo Golijov.

As a bonus, you get a beautiful photo of her on the jewel box cover. Do you know how hard it is to get Naxos to put an author shot on the cover of one of its CDs? It’s *very* hard. Normally, you get an abstract rose photo, or a drawing of a composer, or weird stone carvings, or a close-up shot of strange spices…

Here’s a blurb from Livia’s bio:

Livia gave her first public performance at age eight. In 1989, at the age of 12, she won First Prize in the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition.

You know what I was doing when I was 12? I was playing computer games and lighting things on fire. Oh, there was a bit of piano and cello thrown in there as well, but laziness and two parents at work full-time meant that I didn’t practice 8 hours a day like Livia did.

Anyway, here are links to the Amazon preorders: [opera fantasies CD] [MP3]