Last year, I travelled to France for the wedding of Anne and the New Year. Air travel was less stringent back then, as I brought everything aboard the plane in my LoweAlpine Contour IV backpack. This year, my Swiss Army Knife stayed at home and my tripod was checked-in for my flight to Texas.

My family’s trip to the Lone Star state took us to a number of museums, monuments, and historical buildings, and I took over 500 pictures with the Canon 1D, learning much about its feature set and idiosyncracies during my eight days in Texas.

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The Rodin Sculpture Garden at Stanford University is home to 20 bronzes by the famed French artist, Auguste Rodin.

Most people are familiar with Rodin’s The Thinker sculpture. There are a number of casts of The Thinker around the world, and one used to be on permanent display in front of Meyer Library; right now it’s on loan to a worldwide travelling museum. The Burghers of Calais is another one of Rodin’s famous sculptures. They used to be situated “randomly” in the garden when I first came to Stanford. Now, they form a circle along the walkway to Main Quad. This new orientation forms a much stronger statement of solidarity, appropriate for the heroic actions of Eustache de Saint Pierre and Calais’ leading citizens against King Edward III during the Hundred Years War in 1347. The Hundred Years War was really a series of conflicts from 1337 to 1453. Can you imagine being engulfed in such a situation for a hundred years? Even in the current climate, we should be thankful the world’s not like it was back then.

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I have been performing a number of tests of the Canon 1D Digital SLR. This document is focuses on the following topics:

March 21, 2002: This document was originally written analyzing an early-production EOS-1D. Since then, Canon has released a number of firmware updates and a hardware fix that upgrades the performance of these early 1D’s performance to the level of currently shipping units. This document will remain online (for the time being) as document for historical purposes. For the most up-to-date information on my 1D’s performance, please visit the photography section of this web site.

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On Saturday night, I got a curious email from an online retailer. The Canon 1D that I pre-ordered had shipped! Uh… suffice it to say, I was not expecting this email, especially since I heard horror stories of the camera not being available until January or February. I kept my eager eyes on the FedEx tracking number, watching the shipment make its way from Dulles, VA to Memphis, TN, where all FedEx packages must go through. On Monday morning, it arrived in Sunnyvale and was placed on the van at 8:03 am.

I was clearing my coffee table around 10:19 am in anticipation for Mr. FedEx when the doorbell rang. I knew instinctively who it was and leaped from my crouched position to open the door. Sure enough, the FedEx delivery man was carrying a rather large box containing a brand-new Canon 1D Digital SLR. I’m a poor man now, but it’s all for a good cause in the end.

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Nancy, ever the party organizer, brought together her friends to her home in Palo Alto for a holiday party. Nancy’s been learning winemaking, and she had a number of her potent potables available, in addition to a great spread of delicious delectables. There were a number of wine tasters from her winemaking club on hand to test her latest creations.

The apple cider she made was great, but I have to admit my winetasting skills weren’t good enough to rate her red zinfadel. It had a nice start, but my palate didn’t like the end as much. Rest assured, professional wine tasters, your job is safe from me!

Suzanne’s friend Peter was at Nancy’s last night. I remember seeing him in the early Palm VII promotional advertisements and commercials. Before I left Palm last month, I made sure to pick up one of his posters to give to him.

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If David doesn’t look as chipper as he did when you last saw him in July, that’s because he’s on a whirlwind tour of California pediatric residencies. In the span of three weeks, David is interviewing with 12 programs in 5 cities and 2 states. The problem is, his interviews are organized somewhat chaotically. One day, he’s in LA, and the next in Sacramento. Two days later he’s in Oakland and then back in LA the next day! I’m glad that I did not become a doctor!

According to Dave, however, this is the good life of being a medical residency candidate. The programs act all nice and feed you lunch. It’s all to prepare you for when they work you to death as an intern, assuming you match. Man, hearing David talk about “The Match” makes me cringe in memory of the housing draw at Stanford. The housing draw at Stanford, however, didn’t determine the course of the rest of your Stanford life! Egads!

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The Churchill Club is one of the premier business forums in the Silicon Valley. Every month, there’s at least one panel discussion featuring individuals from the who’s who list of the industry’s top executives, thought leaders, and future stars. On December 11, 2001, the Churchill Club joined forces with the San Jose Tech Museum in co-hosting The Tech’s final forum in its Opportunities and Issues in Technology series, Turning Bits Into Memories: Digital Photography Comes Into Focus. Proceeds from the ticket sales benefited The Tech’s Annual Fund for Education.

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It’s not every day that you can whip out the old tuxedo and attend a black tie event, especially not one at the lovely Pacific Bell Park. On Saturday night, the home of the San Francisco Giants played host to the annual holiday party of the San Francisco Tennis Club.

PacBell Park was really something to see. Up until Saturday night, I hadn’t ever been to the park to see a game or to visit. I’d drive by it and always thought that it looked great, but I have to say that it’s much better in person. There really is something to be said when every seat has a great view of the game.

The staff at PacBell Park provided a tour of the baseball facilities at PacBell. Guests were able to walk onto the playing field (though not on the infield grass), as well as the visitor and home team dugouts. Underneath the field, we saw the batting cages and pitching rooms for the visiting teams, complete with clear partitions for studying the opposing team’s techniques and tactics. Overall, PacBell Park was an impressive facility, making stadiums like Candlestick or Jack Murphy Stadium look like second-rate!

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The past few days have been pretty busy in the Bay Area. I have been doing some extensive plumbing work on tow.com. Like Scotty did to the Enterprise in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, I’ve got tow.com running so that a “chimpanzee and two trainees could run her.”

In the past, updates to the site were a laborious and manual process. I speeded things up in July when I started using a custom PHP script to help me automate the image gallery and photojournal generation, but it still could get time-consuming. In addition to the photojournal files themselves, I had to modify three other files on the site to reflect the new entry.

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At noon today, I went to Fujisan Sushi in the Milpitas Ranch 99 shopping complex to have lunch with some former Palm co-workers. Over two sushi boats and a number of other appetizers, we talked about the changes happening at Palm and where the company is headed. We also had a healthy discussion about digital cameras and DV cameras. Everyone seems to be buying or is about to buy a digital camera these days.

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