Does anybody actually read what I write on my web site? Or, are you coming here just to look at some pretty pictures?

This morning, I drove Randy to San Francisco International Airport. He’s travelling to Singapore to visit Juliana. That’s a 21 hour flight, which is ungodly long. At least he’s flying on Singapore Airlines, home of the prettiest airline stewardess’ around!

As is typical with these airports, there was an international flavor to the crowd. People were coming and going to destinations unknown and familiar. Some were businessmen returning home after meetings in the Bay Area, while others were families departing for their own European Excursion or Asian Adventure. Many were taking pictures before they left, capturing their lives on a cosmic blink of silver halide molecules or bits and bytes.

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I’ve been feeling a bit restless lately with my photography, so I decided to go to Stanford to take some long exposures photos with the EOS-1D tonight. A little over a year ago, I had taken similar shots with the EOS-D30, which resulted in some beautiful prints of Main Quad at night.

Mounted on a Bogen 3041B tripod, the 1D performed pretty admirably in the evening cold at the Farm. I do wish that the noise reduction system were as fast on the 1D as it is on the new EOS-D60, but I can’t complain too much, given the results. The images at ISO100 and above are definitely cleaner and more detailed than a D30’s. The D60 with its 6 megapixel CMOS sensor might give the 1D a run for its money, however. The next COBA meeting will have a D60 on hand, so if you’re interested in checking out the latest from Canon, come on March 7th!

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Rae, Levi, and I were at De Anza College Saturday afternoon to work on a short film for Levi’s film class. Rae and I were the only actors in this short silent film that saw us sitting at a bench and munching down on Hershey chocolate bars with almonds.

Since we had to do multiple takes, we had to keep bringing out fresh chocolate bars to open and eat. I must have stuffed the equivalent of three to four bars in my mouth during the shoot! Ah well… it’s all going for a good cause, right?

We should see the results of our work in about a week, which I’ll try to post online in my Video section. I recently added one movie that I helped make during my sophomore year at Stanford. My CS447/ME296 project team worked on SportScope, a digital wireless binocular system for sporting events. Pentax recently announced something that bears more than a passing resemblance to SportScope. It only took some 7 years for someone to do it!

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On Thursday, I had lunch with Sumayya, a former co-worker of mine from Palm. We had lunch at Los Charros, home of the famous and delicious wet burrito. That’s a delicacy that Dardy introduced me to. Yummy!

After lunch, we took a walk over to the Mountain View City Hall, where we hung out in the cavernous Council Chambers Hall (where we hold our COBA meetings). It was fun pretending that we were city council members, debating over the future of Mountain View’s water supply using the chamber’s microphone system. The picture at the top of this page is the roof of City Hall — pretty beautiful isn’t it?

Afterwards, we went back home to do make some prints on my Epson 1280. I thought that I had gotten the color right on my printer after following some tips from other photographers, but for some reason, the 1280 refused to output anything remotely similar to what was on my screen. I don’t think that it handles certain tones very well. Sigh.

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Ever wonder why the shins and insides of your feet hurt so much after exercising or extended walking? You might be overpronating. Ever since I dislocated my elbow last year, I have listened more closely to the signals my body sends me. The last few times that I’ve exercised, I’ve experienced the wonderful feeling of shin splints and plantar fasciitis. In the past I would have chalked it up to being out of shape, but I knew better.

A visit to the podiatrist the other week explained everything for me. I overpronate and I have 10 degrees of forefoot inversion. Ugh. I was surprised to find out that many people are in the same boat. We don’t really think about our feet until it’s too late. When we have hammertoes or some arthritic foot/ankle/knee condition, we’ll hit ourselves in the head for not dealing with the situation earlier.

Take a look at your shoes. Is the wear on the heel even or is it more pronounced on the outside (or inside) edges? If the outer edge is all worn off, chances are you might be overpronating. Take a look at my worn out Kenneth Coles below and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

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I had dinner with Randy, Renny, Alf, and Joon-Mo this evening at the Southland Taste Restaurant, located at 10825 N. Wolfe Road in Cupertino. This restaurant’s claim to fame is that it serves authentic Taiwanese food. I’m not Taiwanese, so I wouldn’t know if it was authentic or not, but Alf assured us that this was the case.

He recently returned from Taiwan, where he related to us some interesting stories about massage parlors and comfort hotels. “Uh, my Mandarin is a little rusty, what were those last two items again?” Those Taiwanese… so clever in their capitalism!

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As the adage goes, “Newton never dies, it just gets new batteries.” Eric Schneck has released his Newton iTunes plug-in that works in conjunction with iTunes and Eckhart Köppen’s MAD Max MP3 Player for the Apple Newton MessagePad. Who needs an iPod when you have a Newton, eh?

The picture on the left shows Tori Amos’ 1,000 Oceans playing on my Newton MessagePad 2100. How cool is that?

In all seriousness, the Newton doesn’t come close to the iPod as an MP3 player, but it still remains an impressive device (for a left-for-dead platform and technology). Did you know that the Newton’s processor is the direct ancestor of those used in the latest PocketPC and future Palm handhelds? That’s right, the SA-110 StrongARM processor powers the Newton at a blazingly fast 161.9MHz. That processor was powerful enough for real-time, accurate handwriting recognition, and it was on the cusp of being able to deliver voice recognition.

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I found myself at Muwekma-Tah-Ruk, the Native American Theme House at Stanford, where Po’k and his Homestead posse were filming some scenes for a short film. Javier, Randy, Bill, Tom, Casey, Ryan, and Joon-Mo were present for their kitchen scenes, where Javy, Bill, Tarun, and Ryan were tied up by the men in black. I hadn’t seen Javier since Stanford Graduation last year; he and I lived in the French House during my senior year at the Farm. Javy’s been DJ’ing at Pockets on Castro Street in Mountain View. Next time you’re there on a Saturday day, stop by to say hello to him!

With Joon-Mo as the camera man and Randy as the best kung-fu grip, all Po’k’s got to do is direct, right? If only it were that easy! Filming is a lot more than whipping out the videocamera and pushing record. Watching them set up the lights and arrange the props makes me appreciate the time and effort people put into filmmaking. Taking photographs is much easier, I’ll say!

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It’s been a fun ride with the D30 since I bought it at the end of October, 2000. Since receiving the EOS-1D in December, I have found that the D30 was gathering more dust than being used. So, I decided to sell the camera to Eric’s friend, Luke, on Thursday. I bet that Luke is looking forward to taking pictures with the camera. In time, it will call him, “Masssster!”

So now I’m down to two cameras, the 1D and the Leica M2. I guess I could throw in the Kodak PalmPix, but I’ve come to see that more as a gimmick than a camera.

After dropping off the camera to Luke in San Mateo, Rae and I drove up to San Francisco along Highway 280. Man, did you see the rain and fog coming down in the afternoon?!? We could barely see 10 feet ahead of us! Fortunately, most of the people on the road were driving cautiously, though there were a few crazies who insisted on speeding at 70mph with very little visibility. Turn on those lights when you’re driving in the rain and fog, please!

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This year PalmSource is at the San Jose Convention Center. Previously, the Santa Clara Convention Center was home to the conference. The change is probably a good one, since Santa Clara lacks the energy and excitement of downtown San Jose. No, Bennigan’s doesn’t qualify Santa Clara as hip and happening!

PalmSource was originally going to be held in October, but the events of September 11 pushed it to February 5-7. The extra three to four months were beneficial, however, as they allowed Palm to prepare and showcase more material, such as the Palm OS 5 Preview and the i705 wireless handheld. In addition, travellers to PalmSource had more peace of mind travelling to San Jose; I heard from the organizers that there were a number of out-of-town exhibitor and attendee cancellations following September 11.

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