In the past, I dressed up as my female alter-ego, Elsa, for Halloween. This year, I decided to try on a different take, that of Apache Chief from SuperFriends! You remember Apache Chief, whose super power was the ability to become a 50 foot tall giant! Umm… err… well they did need to bring some multi-culturalism to the show… who cared if the superpowers of Black Vulcan, Samurai, and Apache Chief were lame, right?!?

After attending the SyncFest 2001 event in San Jose, I raced home to print my facial and body tattoos on my printer. I bought this tattoo-making kit a few months ago from Bel, Inc.. The stuff works with inkjet and laser printers where you print your design on one piece of paper and stick it to an adhesive backing. After a few minutes, you can remove the adhesive backing, press it against your skin, and use a sponge to transfer the sticker-like tattoo. After a few minutes, voila! You’ve got yourself a fake tattoo! These tattoos are great fun, since I doubt that I’ll ever get a real tattoo. With these, I can change my look whenever I want to without being stuck with it for the rest of my life! How about that for dealing with indecision?

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SyncFest 2001 was the first “gathering of Palm-Powered device users” focused on showcasing products from the Palm Economy. You can think of it like a mini-Comdex comprised of companies developing products for the PalmOS platform. A number of my friends and colleagues were at the conference in San Jose that day, including Alexander from Blue Nomad, Flash, Glen, Roger, and Saul from WideRay.

There have been PDA Expos in the past and there’s always the contigent of handheld developers at conferences such as Comdex, PC Expo, and Demo, but I don’t believe that there’s ever been a conference devoted exclusively for the Palm, PalmSource excluded. Although the turnout of developers was not as high as I would have liked, it was nice to see a portion of the Palm Economy come out, along with hundreds of users. Expert and novice users alike were present at SyncFest, learning all about the platform that they choose to use on a daily basis.

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The first time I heard about the Skyline to Sea trail was on Kevin Gong’s excellent hiking web page. Skyline to Sea weaves it way through the Castle Rock and Big Basin Redwood State Parks before concluding at the Pacific Ocean at Waddell Beach along Highway One. If you start at Castle Rock off of Highway 35, the total mileage for the trip will be about 35 miles.

Since the beginning part of the trail parallels Highways 9 and 236, Rae and I decided to start at the Big Basin Redwood State Park Headquarters, at the end of Highway 236. We weren’t really interested in hiking along the highway, nor hearing the cars racing by us in the evening. We drove two cars, parking one at Waddell Beach and taking the other one to Big Basin. If you’re planning on hiking Skyline to Sea, using two cars is a good idea.

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I hadn’t checked my PO Box mail in quite some time, so I made the trek down to Stanford campus in the mid afternoon. I first stopped by Keeble and Shucat in Palo Alto. Three weeks ago at Joe and Cam’s wedding in Fremont, I misplaced one of my lens caps, and I found out that my D30’s eyepiece was very loose. So, at Keep It and Shove It (my affectionate name for K&S), I picked up those two accessories to the tune of $17. It was necessary, but that’s stealing, to be honest!

Fall Quarter is in full gear here at Stanford. Sigh… another year’s gone by. While walking through White Plaza, I was reminiscing about my first stroll to the Post Office eight years ago in 1993. Eight years! Time has flown by so quickly. I can still remember what it was like being a freshman, wide-eyed and naive, not to mention ultra-studious! Sometimes I wish I were back in school, but other times, I’m glad that I’ve graduated and moved on. People used to tell me that the college years are the best. What do you think?

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Some time ago, Rae told me that she was going to the wedding of one of her friends, Anita. She had created this illustration that she ended up giving to them for their wedding. Today, I got the chance to meet the newlyweds, Brian and Anita, at their place in San Jose. Turns out Brian works at Epiphany, a company at which a bunch of my friends used to work. Funny how you run into people that intersect your own social circle, you know?

On Friday night, I hung out with Randy in Mountain View. He convinced me not to bring my camera. After all, we were just going to go have dinner at this new Malaysian/Singaporean restaurant on Castro Street. Who in the world would we run into anyway?!?

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The street fair was organized by the people who run Theater Artaud. They were soliciting donations to help the theater continue running in the future. Times are tough for many businesses these days, not just the high-tech firms in the grasp of the economic downturn and the Silicon Valley bust.

The organizers did use a different technique for raising money, though. They announced to the crowd that for every donation they get, they’ll remove an article of clothing. Minutes later, they were naked on the stage! I was setting up the video camera to record the next performance, so I wasn’t… umm… able to catch the revealing removals. My eyes, however, recorded the event indelibly into my brain. Yes, we were definitely not in Mountain View anymore!

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I’ve been meaning to write about some work that I’ve done which has been published recently. The September, 2001 issue of TPL Entertainment, a Colorado periodical, published a photograph from my Drug Bust! Photojournal. The panorama shot outside my house was taken one April night when I spied this apparent drug bust. I got an email from the editor a couple of months ago with a request to use one of my pictures for an upcoming article on substance abuse. How could I say no to that?

I also wrote the foreword for the recently published book on web development for Palm-powered handhelds, Palm OS Web Application Developer’s Guide. A few years ago, I started a guide of my own on web clipping development, something I have yet to complete; due to my current schedule, it’s not one of my priorities to complete these days. That being said, the guide that Ben Combee and team have produced is an excellent means to learn how to develop web-based applications for Palm-powered handhelds. I wrote in the foreword that many of the techniques that you’ll learn will also apply to designing applications for the next generation suite of Internet-connected mobile devices.

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I was up at 2:00 am Saturday morning, debating whether or not I should drive down to Palo Alto and sleep out at the Apple Store. The Sandman wanted me home, however, and I acquiesced to his sleepy demands. As I had already been to the Apple Store at the Mall of America in Minnesota in August, I figured I didn’t need to be the die-hard Apple supporter this time.

My alarm clock woke up me a few hours later, but I was in no condition to get up. “Ugh, do I have to go? After all, I’ve already been to the Apple Store in MN!” I kept telling myself. Lying in bed for an hour, I pontificated on my lethargy and laziness before dragging my butt out of the house and into my car. My equipment consisted of the Canon D30, a Gitzo tripod, and the 70-200, 50mm, and 17-35mm lenses. Along the way, I was thinking about what type of shots I wanted to get. Judging from coverage I had seen from the other Apple Store openings, I knew that there would be many cameras covering the event. I wanted something unique and it hit me what I wanted: a rooftop view of the opening. It helped matters that this was the first (and only?) Apple Store that’s freestanding.

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During my Russian River Adventure in July, I met a number of interesting people, among them two artists, Mina Reimer and Patrick Roddie. Mina actually is the cousin of Nancy, a former co-worker at Palm. Following the trip to the Russian River, I kept in touch with both Mina and Patrick and followed their artistic exploits on their respective web sites.

Last week, I got an invitation to a reception that Mina was holding this Thursday in San Francisco at the NewOrangeland Atelier, located at 1242 Mason Street (between Washington and Jackson street). I braved the Silicon Valley traffic, arriving shortly before 6:00 pm. Over the next few hours, this small and quaint studio welcomed many of Mina’s friends and colleagues. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the company of so many artists (lately it’s been musicians). For instance, I had a good time meeting and speaking with Loren, the owner of a web design company and Trudy, a painter. Patrick also showed up, and we had a jolly time talking about our recent or upcoming wedding shoots. The photo project he did at Burning Man this year have to be seen to be believed. Never thought hips could be photographed to such dramatic effect!

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No, this wasn’t the Stanford Newton User Group meeting tonight at the Printer’s Inc. Cafe; that was last week and the fourth Tuesday of every month. Many of the same people who attend the SNUG meetings were present at the SPUG meeting, however, including Flash, Glen, Dave and Roger.

Rounding out the crowd were two representatives from Handheld Computing Magazine (formerly known at Tap Magazine), Shiloh Rusk and Quinn. The folks at Handheld Computing have been organizing SyncFest 2001, a gathering of Palm Powered Device Users happening on San Jose on October 27, 2001 at the San Jose Airport Hilton. There’ll be exhibitors, users, developers, and representatives from Palm present at the first ever SyncFest. If you’re interested in meeting people from the Palm Economy, this might be a good event to check out!

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