Archive for the ‘photography’ Category
Moon Jelly (or UFO)
Monday, February 15th, 2010“I’m helping”
Friday, February 5th, 2010Kimi made banana bread last night. Sophie helped.
We ate up there
Friday, January 1st, 2010
There’s a maxim my dad told me when I was a kid, after dragging us into some tourist trap of a restaurant by some beach somewhere: “The better the view, the worse the food.”
There’s another rule of thumb engineers talk about also: “Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two.” (Meaning you can’t have everything — there’s always a compromise that has to be made with either the schedule, the budget, or the quality.)
Well, the Sky City restaurant rotates at the top of the Space Needle in Seattle, where we ate this evening. It seems to defy both rules: The view is truly magnificent yet the food was good too. I had the clam chowder followed by Dungeness crab mac and cheese, and it was sublime. The other entrees chosen by our group (my wife and my sister-in-law, plus my two kids) all seemed delicious as well, if not especially gourmet. Kimi’s crab cakes were perfect, and Tomi’s French toast with espresso creme was wonderful.
As for that second maxim: The food was good, but it wasn’t fast or cheap. The speed didn’t bother us — more time to enjoy the view. We were planning on riding up to the top of the needle regardless, and since no restaurants were open nearby on New Year’s Day, it seemed prudent to eat there.
The maxim I will pass onto my kids is this: “The better the view, the more you’ll pay for it.”
Great treat to start the new year, though! Happy New Year, Zeigen.com readers. (Both of you.)
The Letter V
Saturday, November 7th, 2009Sorry, every other letter in the alphabet, you’re fired. The letter V has completely dominated popular culture.
Vvvv vvv vv, V vvvvv, vvv vvvv vvvvvv vv’vv vvvv vv vvv vv “v.”
![[Collage of images involving the letter V from popular culture, including V, True Blood, V for Vendetta, others]](http://www.zeigen.com/blog/wp-content/v.jpg "The letter V in popular culture")
(Click to enlarge)
In the collage, roughly from left to right:
- Supermodel Anne V (Sports Illustrated photo), wearing a v-neck bathing suit, from her 5-year SI run.
- Actress Morena Baccarin as Anna in the new “V” series on ABC.
- The energy drink V.
- XKCD illustrating Valentine’s Day (V Day). (Notice that the bottom half of a heart forms a V.)
- The band Live’s album V.
- V logos for Virgin brands as well as the TV series “V” look similar.
- The annual music festival in the UK.
- The victory gesture with 2 fingers; Churchill (his arm, at least) and Nixon are demonstrating here. Nixon is really demonstrating three Vs.
- The graphic novel V for Vendetta, written by Alan Moore, drawn by David Lloyd, which later became a movie.
- In the HBO series “True Blood,” adapted from the Charlaine Harris novels, vampires are known as “Vs,” and their blood is a drug known as “V” (reminiscent of “X” for ecstasy).
- Visitors, visitors, everywhere. In addition to the current “V” series (where the Visitors are called “Vs”), there was the original two-part 1983 miniseries, a three-part 1984 miniseries, a short-lived 1984 TV series, and various novels and comics.
- Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, V.
- The V subway train, familiar in orange to residents of New York.
- The Gibson Flying V, made famous by Lonnie Mack and Jimi Hendrix.
- V Day (or V-J Day), and the world’s most famous photograph of a kiss in Times Square.
And there are probably a dozen more I could have included if I had thought of them.
Hello, Jack-O-Lantern
Saturday, October 31st, 2009Kimi carved this at a pumpkin-carving party at Bob P.’s place today. Nice work, sweetie!
Halloween dry run
Thursday, October 29th, 2009Just a test.
First bicycle ride for Sammy
Sunday, September 20th, 2009Sophie counting chins and ears
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009Sam the Bear
Friday, July 10th, 2009His aunt Erin gave Sammy this bear for Christmas in 2007, along with a book about him, confirming the bear in question really is Sam the Bear. Sammy the boy and Sam the Bear are inseparable. One time we went on a trip and didn’t bring Sam the Bear. There won’t be a second time.
Natural Bridges, Santa Cruz, CA
Sunday, June 28th, 2009Saturday was the beginning of the heat wave, so we head to Santa Cruz for some beach time.
When heading down Highway 17, usually I expect the least traffic at the crack of dawn or after noon. But even waiting until noon didn’t help, and it took over two hours to get there (when normally it’s about 45 minutes). The slowest traffic was on the surface streets in Santa Cruz, and even trying some offbeat routes didn’t help. We stopped downtown to eat the Walnut Street Cafe to give the tangle some time to disperse before heading to Natural Bridges. (It costs $8 to park now! How on earth can it save the state money to close these parks when they charge what should be enough to break even? I was happy to pay if it meant helping out the state during the budget crisis.)
As it turned out, we got there right after the morning fog burned off, and there was a bit of a wind, so it was a great way to cool down.
I experimented a bit with the new video feature of my new iPhone 3GS.
Now that’s after upload to YouTube, and that process seems to introduce a lot of artifacts. On the plus side, iPhone video is convenient — I will amost always be carrying my phone — and it’s not nearly as sensitive as the Flip to shake. But the brightness changes are jarring, and the overall image quality is not as good. (You can view my other video tests on my YouTube channel.)
sammy
^^^^^ Sammy typed that. Pardon the intrusion.
After the sun started to sink, we headed to the wharf for bread-bowl clam chowder and to watch the seals and sea lions and pelicans. Sheets of mist draped the pier, giving the whole scene a surreal and wonderful edge.
Armed with salt water taffy from Marini’s, we headed home at 9, and once again ran into crushing traffic. While everyone else slept in the car, I tried every trick I knew to take the non-beaten path, but wasn’t able to get home until 10:30pm.
Worth it.
Living is easy with eyes closed
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009![[photo of Sophie Mack, 20 months, eyes closed, Mountain View, CA, June 9, 2009; photo by Kimi Mack]](http://www.zeigen.com/blog/wp-content/sophie-eyes-closed.jpg "Sophie Mack, 20 months, eyes closed, Mountain View, CA, June 9, 2009; photo by Kimi Mack")
Sammy puts toy dinosaurs in the water test video
Saturday, March 14th, 2009A second test video, in which Sammy dunks three toy dinosaurs in water. They are expected to expand to 600% size over the course of several days. (“Just add water!” it says on the package — and then wait three days, they don’t use the big font size about that part.)
This one was shot with the Mino Flip HD as well (see previous post), using the tripod. Here I have problems keeping Sammy in frame, there appear to be a couple of audio sync issues, and the low light is a little more problematic. However, for a device smaller than a pack of cards, dealing with the fact that it was dusk in a room with no lights, it’s not too bad. As I learn to use the zoom and position the thing properly, I expect the quality to improve.
Mino Flip HD: Preliminary review and test video of my daughter Sophie
Saturday, March 14th, 2009At Costco today, I bought myself an early birthday present, a Mino Flip HD, which is a video camera in a small form factor — about the size of my iPhone. (You can read this PC Mag review for more details.) Costco carries the 60-minute Mino Flip HD in black with a bonus tripod for under $200.
We do have a video camera, and it has more features than I’ll ever use, but it uses mini tapes, and it’s difficult to capture the video on computer to edit or publish here. It’s also not as ultra-portable as the Mino Flip HD. I’ve been interested in it ever since I saw David Pogue review it on The New York Times “Circuits” show a few months ago.
The package includes a soft pouch and wrist strap, plus composite cables for quick playback on your TV set (but that’d be in SD, obviously, given the cable). The product itself is well-designed in terms of UI, stripping down the feature set to only the bare essentials. It has only the most minimal controls, to make video capture simple.
I took two quick test videos, one of Sophie and one of Sammy. The first test video, of Sophie, quickly showed that I don’t have a steady hand and should really use the tripod.
For the second test video, I used the tripod, which helped the stability a lot.
The light wasn’t great for either test, and it looks like the Flip did a better job of handling low light conditions than our handheld Canon camcorder.
The Flip does capture in HD (see below for specs), and it was very simple to use the built-in USB to transfer the videos to my computer. After installing the software (automatic the first time you attach the Flip to your PC), transfer only took a few seconds.
The supplied “FlipShare” software is a little too stripped down. While it has very basic editing (titles, clip beginning and end, organize clips into a single movie, add music) and has functions for uploading to YouTube and other sites, there’s not enough control over the file conversion.
My one minute Sophie sample file was 70 megs in the native MP4 (H.264/AAC) file format, at 1280 by 720 resolution. FlipShare can convert to WMV on a PC (or apparently to MOV on a Mac). So I had it convert for me, but the version it produced for sharing via e-mail or uploading to a web site was 10 megs, in 640 by 360. It didn’t offer me an option to change that resolution or compress further. Ten megs a minute isn’t bad, but is too big a file size for uploading here to zeigen.com.
The YouTube upload is seamless, however, and it’s painless to embed (plus I don’t have to pay for hosting — thanks, Google!). The first test is below.
See, I wasn’t kidding about the jerky video. Sophie is now 18 months old.
Overall I haven’t used the Mino Flip HD enough to give a full review but I’m cautiously optimistic.
Tell me about Fall
Friday, December 12th, 2008
For Barbara
Friday, December 12th, 2008My Aunt Barbara called me last week. She told me she checks this blog every day, hoping to see a picture of Sammy or Sophie. I can’t help but feel I’ve been letting her down lately.
So, this is for you, Barbara…
Not the greatest shot, I know. (The one I liked best is next.) But this is the one Sammy wanted to give you.
Peek-a-Sophie
Friday, November 7th, 2008I have been so remiss in updating the blog that I have not really described how quickly Sophie transitioned from cruising to walking. She’s firmly in the middle of an adorable stage where she has almost figured out walking entirely, but wobbles to and fro as she goes. A few weeks ago she’d handle a step or two. A week later she was good for ten steps. Then twenty. Now her record is probably thirty.
Sophie’s travels
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008Sophie has, thankfully, been sleeping through the night for the past few weeks — in fact becoming a champion sleeper, sometimes sleeping as long as twelve hours. The pitfall of having two kids is that Sammy, in contrast, has been really fighting his bedtime. This is due to the increased daylight hours (bedtime is 8, but darkness is more like 9:30), plus he’s used to having his own room. (We’re still camped out in the temporary house while the remodeling work is done.)
Sophie has become a much more vocal (and strident!) babbler. In the last couple of weeks she’s learned how to sit up by herself, and she can roll over adeptly now, but still no crawling. She’s moved from baby food level 1 to 2 to 3 to real solid food quickly, and in just two days went from being unable to pick up a piece of cereal to mastering the pincer movement pretty much right on.
The other night as Kimi gave her a bath, she started splashing the water and cracking herself up. Over and over and over.
This last weekend for Father’s Day we joined up with Kyrie, Jack and Andy and headed up to Pier 39 for lunch at a crab place and a visit to the Aquarium of the Bay. A better father’s day I can’t imagine.
Monterey
Monday, May 19th, 2008Friday was a teacher in-service day, so I took the day off work and our family escaped the unseasonal heat wave and made our way across the Santa Cruz mountains (stopping in Moss Landing for a 100% deep-fried seafood lunch) to Monterey, where we stayed for an Aquarium weekend. After checking into our hotel and heading out for a drive, the kids promptly fell asleep for their naps. (We could have timed it better.) So Kimi and I enjoyed the 17-Mile Drive in nearby Pebble Beach. They woke up just in time to see the lone cypress, and then we picked up overpriced sandwiches from the Lodge market and ate on the beach as the sun started to set. (In turn, the mosquitoes had their own dinner.)
The kids adjusted to the hotel room pretty well , and we enjoyed the aquarium on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Sammy was particularly impressed by the hammerhead sharks of the Outer Bay exhibit, but also enjoyed watching the otters play, touching bat stars, walking through the giant wave room, gazing at the jellies, peeking in on hermit crabs, and much more.
I can’t say the weekend was without stress (particularly on Saturday trying to find a good lunch spot, and Saturday night, when a loud neighbor kept us awake), but it was great to get away. The hotel pool was fun too.
Crappy iPhone pictures from Pebble Beach follow (as a placeholder until I have some time to see if any of the real camera’s pictures from the aquarium came out).
Life’s ups and downs
Sunday, May 4th, 2008
Yuri
Sunday, April 20th, 2008Last Saturday, Kimi and I took a break from packing, got a babysitter and went to Yuri’s Night Bay Area over at Moffett Field, with Tracee and her friend Rafique. The event was an all-day affair, 2pm to 2am, with plenty of talks and interesting exhibits in addition to the music. It was quite Burning Man-esque, except without the playa dust, blinding desert heat, dust storm white outs, camping out for a week, driving several hundred miles, and the no commerce thing.
I would have liked to explore more, but based on our babysitting arrangements and when Tracee and Rafique could join us, we only made it there at around 9pm. The main attraction for Kimi was seeing Amon Tobin perform, which was around 10:15. The immediate problem was food: There were only a few booths, what they sold was a bit weird, and the lines were extremely long. Kimi and I waited in one long line, only to arrive at the front just as they ran out of food. So we bought some overpriced organic juice. Repeat again at the next line, where all we ended up with were some bizarre chips made from weird roots, and some chocolate. That was dinner. For an event of this size, they clearly didn’t plan the food situation well enough. More vendors, more choices, and adequate food supplies at each vendor would have helped a lot.
We spent a bit of time near a fire sculpture, talking with friends, and gradually made our way around to see different displays, some aeronautical, some environmental, and a few rides. We waited in line for the psycho-bike ride, which was a lot of fun: Four people pedal on bicycles, which spins around four seats in a merry-go-round. First you pedal and then you ride (or vice versa). I haven’t ridden a bicycle in a while, so it was a bit of a workout.
We had to relieve the babysitter at midnight, so we weren’t able to stay too late, but we did enjoy the performances, and I thought the light installations were very well done. The music was so loud, though. I guess the kids today can’t have it any other way, but I was very glad Kimi remembered ear plugs. I was a little put off to see one dad had dragged along his (approximately) seven year old daughter and plunked her down by the speakers. She didn’t have ear plugs, and clearly wasn’t enjoying herself. Same kind of parent who drags toddlers to horror movies, I guess.
Amon was outstanding, and did make the evening worthwhile. There was a bit of cognitive dissonance in wandering past hangars and flight trainers, across a parade ground and runway, only to arrive at a rave on an airstrip. I would love to attend this event next year, prepared with having eaten at home and being able to attend more of it.
(Apologies for the bad picture quality; the only camera I had with me was the iPhone.)
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