james, oliver, jamie, me @ nola's
heads perfectly centered.

You know? One of my pet peeves is that every time I give the camera away to get a photo taken, heads get centered. The above photo is a perfect example. I mean, it's not that big of a deal; after all, the person who takes the picture is doing a favor for me/us. But... it's funny because when the person puts the camera up to his face to take the photo, I just know that our heads will be centered. :) Why is this bad? Well, you can read about it. Basically, it violates the Rule of Thirds and makes the photo look crappily composed.

The Rule of Thirds finds its basis in the Golden Rectangle. Draw two vertical and two horizontal lines in a golden rectangle so as to divide it into thirds, creating nine smaller rectangles and four points where the lines intersect. Experience has demonstrated that by placing objects over these intersections, a pleasing and balanced arrangement often results. (The rule applies equally whether the rectangle is horizontal or vertical.)

When an image's center of interest is placed at one of these intersections, you can often achieve balance in the picture by placing a secondary object (known as a "counterpoint") at the opposing intersection.

-excerpt from photographytips.com (click for more)

Use it as a general guideline, and your photographs/visual creations will be more pleasing to the eye. Pleeeeeeze! eheheheh

I drove James down to Palo Alto tonight to meet up with Jamie and Oliver at Nola's. Nola's is a quite a happening place, if you're into the "I'm done with my yuppie private college experience but want to feel like I'm still there" scene. I'm not sure why I have such a bad attitude about the clientele there, but I just walked in and felt uncomfortable. Maybe it's only because it's so different than San Francisco. I don't know. Somehow I like to think that I don't fit in at Nola's, but I probably do. Anyway, so having the four of us there was like a mini high school reunion. Lots of fun. Jamie takes off in a couple of weeks to finish up his last year at Harvard Law, but he'll be back (hopefully!) next year. James was talking about how nice it is these days (at ucsf) not to have to experiment on cats, who are "all splayed out with their tongue hanging out." (he demonstrates what it looks like with his hands). "We knock them out, and they basically never wake up." They stuck electrodes in the visual centers of cat brains and showed them movies. Sick research, huh? I think it's cool, actually.

james	jamie
ollie	the parking garage under city hall

Peter and Allon were both over today to go over some stuff for werk. So naturally, I took some pictures. :)

hiro, on his cat house thing	beautiful green eyes! if I were a girl cat, i'd be lost. :)
freak-o peter	peter
trying to get ra to look my way...	allon, on the computer

Finally... I'd like to present a picture showing an
expression few people will ever see in person. :)

Hmmm... Kenny tells me he took 150 photos today, in the hospital. I can't wait to see them! It's a um... really uh... educational resource. Yeah! That's it. :)

kenny: dude, what're you doing in that picture?
kenny: that's too funny.
eric: hahah
kenny: it's like a "oh shit kenny is going to stick that up my ass" face.
eric: A friend was laughing about a previous pic, so I tried to reproduce it.
eric: she doesn't knwo me that well..
eric: so she's never seen me like that.
eric: cuz I'm really reserved around new people./
kenny: neither have i.
eric: hewhehe.
eric: yeah...
eric: maybe only my sister and **** have.
kenny: that is really wild.
kenny: i can't stop giggling.
kenny: (in a manly way, of course.)
eric: I can imagine...
eric: you're funny.

Wow... I'm chatting with Kenny (further), and am learning about "tacking up the dura." There are some neat photos to illustrate the process, too. Oh. more chatting...

eric: fancy shit.
kenny: heh
kenny: not really
kenny: you usually don't see those white tubes
kenny: this was some fancy epilepsy surgery (my first one, actually)
eric: what do they do?
kenny: if you look closely you can actually see wires in the white tubes
eric: ok...
kenny: the tubes carry signals from a patch of electrodes that is placed on the surface of the brain
eric: ahhhh
eric: wow.
kenny: so we can hone in on epileptic foci.
eric: so you can SHOCK EM when they misbehave?
kenny: better than a regular EEG.
kenny: heh
eric: hey! stop seizing!
kenny: probably.
eric: ZZZZZZAP!!
kenny: when i interviewed in san antonio
kenny: the showed me this device
kenny: that has a magnetic field that it alternates quickly
kenny: creating current.
kenny: if you place it over the right area of your head, you can make your arm or leg jump.
kenny: so he put it over my "arm" area and my arm started twitching.
eric: eheheh neat.
kenny: it was awesome!
eric: can you make yourself fart?
kenny: uh
eric: I mean, with that device.
kenny: not that i know of. but maybe i'll do research in that.
kenny: farting is a complex process
kenny: the coolest thign about the brain, which you can't appreciate in these photos
kenny: is watching it THROB.
kenny: very eery.

Hmmm... usually, Kenny brings up the "farting" parts of our conversations.

Also, tonight I happened to search for an old friend (whom everyone is wondering about, because his self-effacing nature has made it difficult to find him), and found out that he worked for Trilogy in 1999. That makes it highly probable that I know someone that knows what he's doing now, since I interned there in 1996, and there were so many Stanford people at both Trilogy and CollegeHire.com. Hahahah. How sad. I talk about Trilogy (the company, not just my experience there) in the past tense.

For one of CollegeHire.com's recent placements--Chip Killmar, who graduated from Harvey Mudd College, in Claremont, Calif., last December and started working at Trilogy Software Inc., in Austin, as a software developer last January--noncompetes are nothing new. They have been part of his professional life since he was first asked to sign one during a college internship at Compaq Computer Corp. in 1997. "I don't think much of having to sign [noncompete contracts] because it is all part of the process," Killmar said.

- zdnet article: "Lawsuit brings focus to noncompete contracts" by Aileen Crowley , eWEEK, April 19, 1999 12:03 AM ET