Archive for the ‘Bay Area’ Category
Sunday, June 25th, 2006
As mentioned in a previous post, we’ve been in the process of looking for a dog. It’s been a little difficult, but today that search came to an end. :)
This little girl is the newest member of our family. She’s a one and a half year old Australian Shepherd / hound mix. At least, that’s what the nice folks down at the San Francisco SPCA think.
She doesn’t have a name yet, so if anyone has any suggestions…
UPDATE: There’s another image of her on my photoblog. I’m sure more will be coming.
UPDATE #2 (7.05.06): We finaly picked a name, it’s Maggie Moo. I personally voted for Itchy McMoo, but Anne Marie didn’t go for it. So far she’s turmed out to be a really wonderful dog.
Posted in Bay Area, Personal | 16 Comments »
Monday, June 19th, 2006
If you come here regularly, you may recall a post from a couple of weeks ago, stating I was going to start a photoblog, and I was looking for suggestions on software.
It came down to 2 packages… Wordpress, and Pixel Post. They both have advantages and disadvantages. I really wanted to use Wordpress, because I’m pretty familiar with it, and I just like it, a lot. Pixel Post has the initial advantage of being specifically made for photoblogs, so there is less configuration needed to start.
After much debate, and playing around with each… I’ve gone with Pixel Post. My thanks go out to everyone for your suggestions.
I’ll be the first to say that Wordpress is actually far superior as far as blogging software goes. It’s infinitely more flexible, scalable, and manageable… but I came to the conclusion that it is way overkill for what I wanted to do. My plans are much more modest.
If you’re interested in setting up a basic photoblog, you may want to give Pixel Post a serious look. It’s easy to set up and get going quickly. The only time you’ll spend is in tweaking the template, if you choose to go that route. My only real complaint about Pixel Post is some of the documentation seems a bit out of date. The developer community for Pixel Post is much smaller than Wordpress, so I think things tend to fall through the cracks a little more.
So, by this point you’re probably saying, just give me the link to your new site already. Ok, ok… the site is called Highly Subjective. It isn’t completely finished yet. I still have some tweaks to do. I hope to be finalizing it this week.
The name comes for the old notion that “pictures don’t lie”… you’ve heard that saying, right? Well, I couldn’t disagree more. Pictures do lie… because they are open to interpretation. All photos should be treated as ‘highly subjective’. I’ll be getting more into that when I get around to writing the ‘about’ section of the new site.
My goal is to post a picture a day. Ideally, that would mean shooting a picture a day, but I’m not sure how realistic that’s going to be with my schedule. This weekend was beautiful, so I took the opportunity to go out and dust off my photography skills. I was definitely a little rusty.
The last time I was really into photography, I lived in a much more rural area, in Arizona. Now that I live in the city (San Francisco), I am somewhat fascinated by random happenings on the street. I don’t have a lot of experience shooting people, especially out in the wild, so I thought this was a good way to get back on the horse. I kind of wanted to push myself into new directions.
It felt a little odd starting the site with just one image, so I went ahead and populated it with several of the images I shot this weekend. I’ll hopefully be starting the one-a-day posting, tomorrow.
Posted in Bay Area, Music, Art, & Design, Personal | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, June 14th, 2006
This Friday (the 16th), a new public art installation will open to the public. It’s called ‘Passage’, and it will be located at Pier 14 (Mission and Embarcadero), here in San Francisco.
Passage is a mother-and-child sculpture created by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito for Burning Man 2005.
It looks pretty cool, I think I may have to go down and check it out this weekend.
For more information, check out the whole story over at Laughing Squid.
Posted in Bay Area, Music, Art, & Design | 2 Comments »
Monday, June 12th, 2006
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may remember me talking about our dog, Emmitt. We lost Emmitt last year to cancer. We’ve always known that we would get another dog at some point, but it wasn’t until recently that we felt ready.
This past weekend we took the plunge and started looking. Things have changed a bit since the last time I adopted a dog (17 years ago). Everything is online now. We went down to our local SPCA knowing exactly what dogs they had, and which ones we wanted to look at.
We had picked out nine dogs that we wanted to meet. For a while it seemed like we were going to have trouble coming home with just one. But, in the end, we came home empty handed.
For one reason or another, we decided eight of the dogs were just not a good fit for us… but there was one that we instantly fell in love with. Her name was Honey. We so wanted to take Honey home with us, but the SPCA wouldn’t let us have her because we live in The City. Apparently Honey came from a more rural area, and she has some sensitivities to noise. They say she doesn’t do well on busy streets.
On one hand, I try to look at it like this is best for Honey. If she really would have problems with where we live, an not be happy, than that’s a bad thing. It wouldn’t be good for her, or us. On the other hand, I’m very disappointed. Honey is only 1.5 years old, and I think she would adapt.
I’m trying to be positive, and say that things worked out for the best. A dog is a lifetime commitment, and it’s no good for anyone if your dog isn’t a good match for you, or your lifestyle. We’re continuing our search.
Posted in Bay Area, Personal | 4 Comments »
Friday, June 9th, 2006
As mentioned in my previous post, I’m going to be starting a Photo Blog. I haven’t had the time to actually do it yet, of course, but I have been looking around at more Photo Blogs than normal while researching what software I want to use.
During that process, I came across the work of Juan Buhler. I very quickly became a fan of his work. From the images I’ve seen so far, Juan concentrates primarily on people, in everyday situations. He’s captured some really wonderful moments, and he definitely has an eye.
Juan has a few different Photo Blogs set up on his site, so make sure to spend some time exploring.
Coincidentally, Juan is currently living in The Bay Area. Maybe We’ll see each other one day while out shooting.
Link: Juan Buhler
Posted in Bay Area, Music, Art, & Design | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
I live just a couple of blocks away from the San Francisco Apple Store. With the announcement today of the new MacBooks, I was hoping to make it down there for a little hands on review. Apparently, Scott Ard, of cnet news had the same idea. I didn’t make it down, but Scott did, and while he was there he witnessed Apple Security tackle a shoplifter, for trying to nab a few iPod accessories. Maybe I’ll re-think my plan of trying to stuff a MacBook down my pants.
Found via Mac Fanatic
Posted in Apple, Bay Area | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006
I’ve read about these a few times before, but this is the first time I’ve actually come across one in person. It’s an iPod vending machine. Just put in your credit card, and it will spit out any flavor of iPod, and a variety of cases, cables, and docks. What will they think of next?
I came across this one at the Serramonte Mall, in Daly City, CA.
Posted in Apple, Bay Area | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006
photo by Armondo Walter
I’ve never heard of this, but it sounds pretty fun. This Sunday (5.7.06) is the 2nd Annual Mermaid Parade, here in San Francisco. The parade starts at 1:00pm at the 100 block of Minna Street, across from Yerba Buena Gardens, and ends at The How Weird Street Faire, with something called Neptune’s Ball starting at 5:00pm. Count me in!
Found via Laughing Squid
Posted in Bay Area, Just for Fun | 1 Comment »
