Odessa Chen performed at Eric’s in San Francisco on Saturday evening. This might be the last time that I attend a musical performance at Eric’s in the forseeable future, as he has left for his year of nomadic adventures around the world.

There were a few new faces at the performance tonight, including Chester, Carmela, Joanne and Mark (I think that was his name), Michael (with Sophia), and Gabe. Actually, I think that I’ve met Gabe once before, but I don’t seem to remember exactly when. Vienna, Jim, Jeremy, Victor and Athena (COBA), Dave (COBA), Wendy, and Bill rounded out the guests that I knew. I enjoyed speaking with Carmela, who’s a frequent visitor of tow.com. I haven’t had that many “noticed you on the street the other day” moments, though Carmela mentioned that she has seen me along the streets of Palo Alto several times in the past. If anyone ever sees me on the streets, don’t hesitate to say hello! I don’t bite (yet)!

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On Friday night, the Summer of All Fears ‘03 descended on the house in Cupertino. There were many reasons for celebration. Randy has recently left his job, Ann started her new job, Joon-Mo’s Korean class ended, Javier and his AQW crew are moving into a new house, Jamie’s birthday was on Friday, and I’m off to start a new Fellowship program at Stanford in the Fall. Preparations for the party began earlier in the week, as Randy and I cleaned up the house, moving non-essential equipment from the open areas to our rooms. We also notified the neighbors on our street so as to avoid any unnecessary entaglements with the authorities.

Javy and Osvaldo transformed our house into Da Clubertino with their rocking light and sound show. Randy and Joon-Mo plastered the walls with streamers, balloons, and photos of the guests of honor. I initially objected to Randy’s use of my Apache Chief photograph, but in the end, it was all good.

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Ten years ago this month, Apple Computer, Inc. released the highly anticipated Newton Personal Digital Assistant at MacWorld Boston. Ten years ago I was a wide-eyed freshman entering Stanford University. Much has changed in my life in the ensuing decade, but in the handheld space, sadly, not much has changed. PDA’s have gotten smaller, though in the case of the TabletPC, they’ve gotten bigger, but the functionality remains pretty much the same. When people think of handwriting recognition, they think of Graffiti, the system used by Palm handhelds. Sorry, but that’s stroke recognition, not handwriting recognition. The excellent print recognizer of the Newton goes unmentioned, even though it remains to this day the best recognizer I’ve ever used. The system used on the Pocket PC’s is not bad (and it’s a direct descendant of the Newton’s original HWR system by ParaGraph), but the digitizers on the PPC’s blow in comparison to the one on the Newton.

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On Friday evening, I left behind the heavy camera and instead took along Rae’s PowerShot A70 to the APAture Fundraising party at the Blind Tiger Lounge in San Francisco. The A70 has a suprising number of advanced features for an entry-level digital camera, such as aperture priority, shutter-speed priority, manual controls, and flash-power adjustment. These features give the camera more flexibility than a simple point and shoot digicam like the smaller PowerShot S230. The A70 is no replacement for the 1D, but it is much more pocketable and convenient.

Jay and David were both at the fundraiser to document the event with their large DSLR’s. Jay recently got a Fuji S2 Pro, and I was suprised to see how small the camera was. Based on an Nikon N80 body, the S2 is tiny compared to the 1D! He was shooting with a Photoflex Light Dome (with a wireless slave setup), which proves very useful in dark environments like bars and clubs. David’s off to Burning Man this coming week, and he’ll be lugging along his Kodak DCS 760 to the desert. Watch out for dust!

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CenterRun Datacenter Software held their company party Friday at their Redwood City offices. The company recently was acquired by Sun Microsystems, and the party was a celebration of the past three years of accomplishments. A Caribbean band was present to provide the musical tunes, and there was a full complement of fun activites to be found, including a rock climbing wall, American Gladiator-style jousting ring, and a wild (foam-filled) bull. I had been hired to photograph the event, thanks to Mike’s referral. Mike and I go way back to freshman year at Stanford, where we were in the same frosh dorm. Go Disco Donner!

On Saturday, I went to the grand opening of the King Library in San Jose. The new library is a collaboration between San Jose State University and the city of San Jose. According to its web site, the library is the “largest, all-new library west of the Mississippi, an innovative collaboration which has created an invaluable community resource open and free to all. A feast for the mind, as well as the eyes, the King Library boasts a collection of roughly 1.5 million items as well as delightful public art installations awaiting your discovery on every floor.” The place was indeed immense, reminding Rae of a busy airport terminal.

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The August 2003 meeting of the Camera Owners of the Bay Area was held today at the Orange Room at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The three presentations covered the Hasselblad H1 Medium Format camera with the Kodak Pro Digital Back 645H and software for processing and organzing one’s digital photo collection. The speakers this evening included Uwe Steinmueller of Digital Outback Photo, Roger Meike of Pixlabs, and Alex King.

Uwe got the evening started with his review of the H1+645H combo. He stressed the importance of having a bright viewfinder and the flexibility that a square image format brings to the table. Image quality between the Canon EOS-1Ds and the H1+645H were comparable, but the cropping ability of the latter stood out as a definite plus. Uwe also pointed out that this was one of the few MF Digital Cameras that could function completely untethered from a wall power source or a computer, a boon for people who work away from a studio. He brought to the meeting several prints from the H1+645H, and they were indeed quite impressive. For the price you’d pay for that camera, it had better be impressive!

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Pretty much everything that moves on the planet produces it, but few have the ability to talk about it in such colorful terms as the man behind Track15.com, Dardy Chang. Yes, I’m talking about poo, cacas, merde, shit, or all those words that are used to describe the fecal matter we send off into the sewers each day.

Rae found Cacas: The Encyclopedia of Poo at a bookstore in Berkeley a few weeks ago, and we both thought it would be a great present to give to Dardy. Yesterday evening, we met up at Los Portales in Mountain View for a little Mexican dinner with Dardy and Randy. When I lived in Mountain View, I used to come here frequently for dinner. I especially like to order Sarah’s (formerly Sal’s) Special Enchiladas. Yummy, yummy for my tummy!

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Ahn was in the Bay Area this weekend, and I met her and her friend in the City on Friday evening. They had never driven in San Francisco before, so it took us awhile to finally see each other. We originally planned to meet at Union Square, but I ended up tracking them down on foot as they circled round and round downtown, eventually settling at a parking space between Fourth and Fifth along Mission.

We had dinner at Ar Roi in what I think was Thai Town, judging from the number of Thai restaurants along the street (Post and Taylor). Ahn has been gobbling up Thai food since she arrived in LA earlier in the week. Georgia must not have a lot of Thai restaurants in the area! Sadly, I have yet to eat at a Thai restaurant that has changed my opinion of the cuisine. There’s something about it that hasn’t fared well with my taste buds.

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On Sunday, I took the Blue and Gold Fleet ferry to Angel Island State Park. From 1910 to 1943, Angel Island served as the “Guardian of the Western Gate.” It handled the flow of immigrants to America’s western shores, and it also served as an ideal detention facility for Chinese immigrants. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 were a series of laws aimed at restricting or even prohibiting the immigration of Asians, most notably the Chinese, into the country. Chinese immigrants eager to start a new life were held at Angel Island from as little as three weeks to as long as 22 months at the facility, which was small and crowded.

Still legible to this day, poetry carved into the walls speak the tales of the detainees. Our school systems’ history books rarely recount the tales of America’s hand in dishing out suffering and humiliation. We’re always the good guys, it seems, when in fact it’s often the other way around. Coming to Angel Island, which is just a few minutes boat ride away from San Francisco, brings to light some of the injustices that are still being carried out to this day by our government (though the names and races may have changed). But, we must be good citizens and not speak badly of our country, eh?

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Eric’s leaving in a week to attend graduate school in Colorado. On Saturday, he and his roommates, Paula and Joey, held a going-away party for him. Paula’s leaving too to teach English in France; I’m envious of her, as I’d love to be able to live in France for an extended period of time!

In the afternoon, Rae and I went to Culture Cache, where they were holding an anti-war art exhibition entitled, Get Your War Off. “In response to the United States Government’s ‘War On Iraq’, twenty artists from 5 states have joined forces to exhibit new works relating directly to recent U.S. military action in the Middle East.” We especially liked the Freedom Fryes piece by Charles Glaubitz.

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