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November 18 Greetings from Mexico!all checked in to the Holiday Inn, Peurto Vallarta! so far we've eaten and slept, swam. eaten more :) life is good. heres the view from my room. October 16 walt bailey trailOn saturday some friends and I went for a day hike in the Mount Baker area... 2 hours drive and 2.5 hours hike to get to the lakes at the top, but amazing views at the top. i wanted to try flickr so this time my photos are posted here:
also, wanted to mention www.washingtonhikes.com where i got most of the information for the hike. Great site and thanks for sharing! the hike was amazing.
September 22 ZuneGot a chance to beta test the Zune.. here a picture! i have not gotten the software for it yet though, so have not yet been able to put music on it or use it very much September 15 D80 arrives!my d80 has arrived! heres a picture with the 18-200mm VR (my only lens for now). I'm trying to resist the temptation to buy all the neat gadgets that i could get for it. Chatting with Ervin is particuliarly bad since he already has every camera toy under the sun (sometimes he even has two!) Wish i bought Canon so i could just 'borrow' all his stuff :) So far i've only done a little night shooting on sunday night near Pioneer Square / Pike place market - when i get around to it i'll put up a few pictures in the gallery. August 31 who says dslr's cant take videos?.. check out these surprisingly moving clips here: http://www.martincrespo.net/clips.htm with some discussion about them from here: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?for... August 22 the tyranny of choiceits a terrible choice we consumers have to make when we're about to make a <relatively> large purchase - so many manufacturers to choose from... my search for a dslr continues. after closely examining the a100 from sony, i've decided to give it a pass based on its less than stellar high iso images, as well as the relatively short supply of sony branded lenses (i know you can pick up used KM lenses but it seems like a hassle). plus you never know if Sony is going to abandon the whole effort and leave you stuck with a bag full of expensive glass. That leaves me looking long and hard at the canon and nikon offerings, mainly the 350d, the 30d, and the upcoming nikon d80. My friend Ervin and i had a long conversation about the relative merits of each but i'm still torn - Canon is announcing a new cam, rumoured to be a 350D update on the 24th of august and photokina may also hold some interesting surprises. I wont bore you with all the <time consuming> reading i've been doing but here are a few good links that i've found. lets start with some actual photos: http://www.pbase.com/fotoopa/water_figures&page=al... then some early pics from the d80 http://photo-cafe.jp/scoop/index.html http://nikonimaging.com/global/products/digitalcam... http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/review/2006/08/1... two very comprehensive SLR lens review sites i've found (somewhat depressing) http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/index.php http://www.photozone.de/8Reviews/index.html and two fascinating articles on the future of photography: http://www.pcphotomag.com/content/2006/june/Future... http://www.colorado.edu/isl/selpubs.html this one is a very interesting read - Wavefront coding is going to be revolutionary.... imagine taking a photo and focusing after! the possibilities here are mind blowing. Also, it's a nice blowback to my Uni days - it might be worthwhile to brush up on my signal processing! hard to imagine once upon a time i could write that gibberish :) August 16 random musingsokay, so that appeared to work without issue - now i have no excuse for not blogging since its as easy as jotting a note down in notepad - its also gratifying that the component that i work on helps enable this slick little app. anyways, i've been meaning to post this for a few days now http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Reference/metrics/foottome... what the heck? why doesnt the US just move to metric and get it over with? SLR envy - had a huge urge yesterday to go and buy a DSLR - the sony alpha looks pretty tempting but the reviews show that it has signficantly higher noise than the canon d30... still looking for a head to head shootout between the 350d and the alpha. The image stabilization and anti dust trick on the alpha is pretty neat, but if ISO 1600 on the canon is usable but i'm stuck at iso 400 on the sony then 2 stop advantage of the IS is moot. July 24 Time flies.. and so do I! (albeit briefly...)its been ages since my last post, (pretty much nothing since my trip to oregon! in the space of time inbetween i've been busy working on the a DLL release for Passport authentication which will be open to the public. Last weekend my friends helped me ring in my 22nd year with some responsibly enjoyed alcohol (i'm not posting any pictures from that though...) and this weekend, a few of my friends took the plunge and went sky diving!
Picture album has been posted of our trip out to Kapowsin for some free fall! We took an Otter up to 13,500 feet and walked out the door.. let gravity do its thing and free fell for one minute, then glided down from 3,500 feet to a gentle landing on Terra Firma (about a 5-6 minute descent with parachute).
I have to say, the whole experience was a lot of fun.. the best part for me was the plane ride up to our drop height, and that moment when you jump out the door of the moving plane. amazing :)
I jumped first (blue parachute in the photos), then Nipun (red and white parachute) then Sameer (yellow parachute i think). The most amazing part about Nipun's flight was screaming like a girl all the way down (jk nipun), and the best part about Sameer's drop was feelling like his harness was going to fall off (i'm glad i didnt feel that way!)
The Free fall itself was neat but it went by too quickly...I could feel the temperature of the air increasing as I fell and the view is pretty nice - when the ground is so far away it looks pretty harmless. when the parachute deploys you feel yourself getting yanked up and jostled around a lot and the spins that the Tandem instructor puts you into are also pretty amazing.
After the jump we packed up and went home, stopped by the company picnic on sunday (it was far too hot), and its back to work tommorow. Lookign forward to the next weekend though!
ps. saki graciously came along and helped us take photos and look after our things.... thanks Saki! (she also had the list of "Emergency Contacts" just incase she had to make some phone calls, which luckily she didnt). June 08 photos from the road triptiem flies when you're having fun...
my vacation / roadtrip (oregon coast, SF and yosemite) has come and gone in the blink of an eye, and its already been more than a week since i've been back at work. I finally managed to post a few of my photos from the trip, enjoy!
Special thanks to Shups, for making the trip over here to visit me yet again :)
As an interesting side note, my clutch totally crapped out when i got back to Redmond.
1) thank goodness it only stopped working back in redmond
2) I was able to get it working again thanks to some excellent information on Motorvate.ca...(apparently i have a slow leak in my clutch line somewhere, but all it really needed is a good flush and some TLC). Motorvate an excellent site if you happen to have a mid 90's model Maxima.
April 27 Windows Live ID has shipped!windows live ID has shipped! you wont really notice the change much at first, although some nice interface improvements will start to become visible in the next few weeks. For now, the only thing that is visibly different is that the sign-in page shows "windows live ID" at the bottom in tiny letters...but rest assured, the curtain willl soon be lifted.
Make sure you install the messenger 8.0 Beta refresh and install the "Windows Live Sign In assistant". It will enable some really cool sign-in scenarios in IE in the coming weeks (no firefox support yet).
Also, an interesting article, titled "I Pencil"
highlights the importance and amazing complexity of the infrastructure that we all take for granted. Ra Ra Ra, yay for the invisiible hand. (lol) April 18 Talking about Windows Live ID whitepaperHeres some information from my Team Blog on what it is that I actually work on during the day. Quote Windows Live ID whitepaper April 15 Office Live and Port RoyalAs some of you may know,my brother Edmond has started a Seafood restaurant in Calgary called "Port Royal Seafood" along with the "Dockside Lounge" last year. Seeing as how the restaurant didn't have a web presence, i decided that this would be the perfect oppurtunity to try out MS Office Live, a new microsoft product that offers free domain name registrations and the ability to use thier templates and tools to create simple websites.
Heres what half an hour of mucking around can yeild...
not exactly cutting edge, but very functional. Pretty good for a few minutes of work and no financial outlay!
<begin shameless plug>
By the way, if you are ever in south Calgary, do check it out. Port Royal offers good seafood at reasonable prices and hang out at the dockside for a few beers, pool, Big Game Hunter, and Karaoke night once a month... no guarantees that the singing will be of good quality though :)
</end shameless plug http://portroyalcalgary.com/> March 31 Thanks Dubya! you're a real hero.Special thanks to Pres. Bush for pushing through useful intiatives ....
Beginning in 2007, Daylight Saving Time is extended one month and begins for most of the United States at: 2 a.m. on the Second Sunday in March
to 2 a.m. on the First Sunday of November. Also had a few friends see V. for vendetta.. reactions ranged from "great!" to "not bad" so i'm guessing on the whole it wasnt terrible like i thought it was going to be.
Most of my negative opinion came from the trailer and that horrible Guy Fawkes mask, which looks like the Jokey from batman.
It was also bugging me that i didnt know who guy Fawkes was, so here you have it. From wikipedia:
Guy Fawkes was an English soldier and a member of a group of Roman Catholic conspirators who attempted to carry out the so-called Gunpowder Plot in 1605. The plot was an attempt to assassinate King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) and the members of both houses of the Parliament of England.
[he and his gang were arrested and hung/drawn/quartered].
Well, the more you know. Might come in handy for trivia night :)
March 28 Happy birthday EdmondHappy birthday edmond! my brother passes one of life's signposts today.. and he got a blackberry 7130 to commemorate it.
lol.. now he can get his email everywhere! the chains are getting tighter. :)
in other news.... i'm the number 1 hit in MSN search! look up "Marks space" in msn search and i'm number one! Msn must be re-indexing ( that or i'm really really relevant!)
here's a random image to celebrate, photo credit goes to a random email i receieved a long time ago. Domokun! vaguely reminds me of edmond chasing the cats.
March 27 MSN spaces gripes3/28
update.. i downgraded to ie6 and now things are a little better, at least the photo control works, which solves problems 2,3, and 6. which just leaves MSN search being not that relevant and ie7 not working with spaces ;) -----------------
first time trying to really use this thing, and it's driving me nuts
1) which album is displayed in the module is so unintuitive. After much digging, I now know that its the last edited album which displays
2) i have no idea how to control where my images are getting uploaded.. they keep showing up in my 'favourites' album... even though i dont want them to.
3) theres no way to move pictures between albums?! give me a break. that is pretty silly.
4) MSN search has a lot of trouble getting information on MSN spaces tips for some reason. i had to use google.
5) the photo management page is broken with IE7 beta 2. ARGH. i have to use mozilla just to add photos, and that isnt working either, because i'm getting "page contains no data" errors when i'm trying to add photos.
6) after i add photos to my post, they dont show up in the preview pane... it just shows that i added photos, it doesnt let me actually view them... there seems to be no way to view a post, apart from having a sperate browser where i am not signed in. Blog updated! New snowboard gear!for the first time ever, i've updated my space! i uploaded a few of the images that i've taken over the years - make sure you leave me a comment or two! I'll post more images later. Also, I finally took the plunge and bought snowboarding gear! i'm all set for next season, and my upcoming trip to Utah! My new kit: Atomic Radon 154cm , Salomon Synapse boots, Flow bindings. Also have a Rossignol Scope 154cm to play with (three cheers for end of season discounts!). I'll also endorse the following shops for good deals: Evogear (http://www.evogear.com) and SkiMart (a branch of SturtEvants) in Bellevue on 20th. |
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