Random Brain Dump

A few weeks ago, my dad & I took an early morning hike at Rancho San Antonio. After a good hour of hike, we got up to an open meadow with a great vast view of the entire bay area. We saw buildings from downtown San Francisco, the bay, the east bay hills. I managed to take some panoramic shots of the valley. I didn’t do a good job of keeping the metering constant across the photos so the stitching wasn’t as smooth as I wanted, but it’s still pretty cool. I’ll try again next time.

There were many signs from nature that spring is coming– greenery was everywhere and flower buds ready to bloom. I’m looking forward to do more hikes and take more photos.

By the way, when viewing individual photos, you should see “View Panorama” command link for each panaramic photo. Clicking it will launch an applet for viewing panorama, which allows for panning left & right– simple but pretty cool.

The comedians are having a ball poking fun at the VP’s hunting accident. Here are some of the funny ones:

David Letterman: “Good news, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction: It’s Dick Cheney.”
Jay Leno: “I think Cheney is starting to lose it. After he shot the guy he screamed, ‘Anyone else want to call domestic wire tapping illegal?’ ”
Jon Stewart: “Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt … making 78-year-old Harry Whittington the first person shot by a sitting veep since Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, of course, (was) shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird.”
Borowitz Report: HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT UNVEILS CHENEY ALERT SYSTEM: Color-coded System Would Warn Nation of Future Attacks by Veep.

Ran across this interesting piece of news today…

Apparently after nearly 150 years, Western Union has discontinued its telegram service. I’m only surprised it didn’t happen sooner; it’s a technology made obsolete by telephone, faxes and emails. I haven’t never sent a telegram in my life, nor received one. I did remember my dad sent quite a few in the 70’s to my grandparents in Asia. I wonder what future communication technology awaiting us.

I spent several weeks reviewing my photo collection and put together a gallery of the best 25 photos of the past year. These photo represent the best of my “work” as an amateur photographer. These represent best in terms of sentimental, artistic & technical values to me. With almost 3000 photos to chose from, the process wasn’t easy– too many I wanted to include…

During the review process, I took notice of my progress as a photographer. I became more comfortable with my Canon 350XT. I can’t say I have mastered it, but I’ve learned to use most of the functions it has to offer. I started out the year relying less on the fully automatic modes. By spring, a good number of my pictures were shot in aperture-priority mode, which remains my favorite shooting mode. By summer, I began to experiment with longer shutter times. I outgrew the kit lens that came with the camera and recently added a Tamron 28-75mm lens to my collection after months-long research. I yet to put it through its paces, but it is currently my favorite lens.

The highlight of the year in terms of photo opportunity has to be my trip to Yosemite. While I really enjoyed the excursion, I regret that I didn’t have better lenses then– could’ve used a wide angle lens. I was surprised I didn’t get more “high quality” shots with the trips to Hawaii and Tahoe. Then I was reminded that traveling with kids doesn’t leave you with alot of time to shoot these type of shots. On the flip side, I did get lots of sentimental shots of our family, just as well. 🙂

For the new year, I hope to find more time exploring photography. I am planning to add a wide angle lens soon since I’m highly anticipating spring. Hopefully, I will find time for short photo excursions when the weather gets warmer.

Stats:
1st shot of the year: 1/16/05 – 1:41pm (family trip to Monterey Aquarium)
Last shot of the year: 12/31/05 – 7:23pm (Festival of Lights @ Vasona Park)
Total shots for the year: 2973 photos (not counting hundreds deleted unwanted ones)
25 Best Photos: 0.84% of total number of photos shot in 2005

Note that you’ll need a Flash player installed in your browser to view the gallery.

Given the increasing super-hype about Web 2.0, there’s lot of “noise” going on around the web. The way people are hyping it, you’d think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Proponents like to use the term to describe the 2nd generation of web development. Is it just smoke of is it something of a new beckoning?

Many people credit Google Maps as one of the 1st Web 2.0 tool. As somebody who’s familiar with web development, it blew me away. It made mapping more interactive than other traditional mapping sites. Recently, I ran across Meebo. It’s basically a web-based instant messenger and another fine example of what AJAX can accomplish. Meebo feels like an application, not a traditional web site. You have collapsible and draggable window frames. It’s interactive & is an exemplary of a Web 2.0 application.

Like most developers, I was so ingrained with a static web, so it’s refreshing to see such thing possible. Interativity has always been the Archille’s heel of web development in term of usability. But for most users, it has all been promised before. DHTML, Flash & Shockwave to name a few. So why should this be any different? First and foremost, while these technologies are popular, they never made it down to the platform level and therefore never ubiquitous. What makes Web 2.0 promising is AJAX. This approach uses plain Javascript, HTML & XML which are supported cross browsers and operating systems. It’s encouraging to see the possiblity of the web as a platform to deliver application. It’s what Netscape promised over 10 years ago but never delivered.

My feeling is that all this is just evolutionary rather than revolutionary that some proponents trying to lead you to believe. The short of it is that Web 2.0 doesn’t represent new technology or breakthrough. Web developers are just getting better at what they’re doing, learning to apply existing technologies in more effective ways. No Intelligent Design here, we developers can evolve too! 😮

Star Locke is a longshot candidate for the Republican nomination for the governorship in Texas. This cowboy aims to kill property tax by taxing on 3 things he find undesirable instead:

1. $10,000 per abortion tax on medical clinics
2. 10% tax on sodas with sugar
3. 50% tax on violent video games

“I take the position that the Founding Fathers took: that the power to tax is the power to destroy,” he said. “So our concept is that we need to tax things we don’t want and you want to not tax things that you want to encourage.”

Where’s the bandwagon? Sure sounds like a killer plan to me… 😉 Man… Are all Texan politicians just nuts wearing spurs & donning cowboy hats?

I was watching TV last night and heard Allison repeatedly said “you time out!” I turned around and saw Allison sternly pointing her finger at our front door and said “Bad Fo, you time out!” I looked and saw nothing at the door so I had no idea what she’s doing. Suzanne & I were amused but for a sec, I was confused and a bit alarmed thinking that perhaps she has an imaginary friend named Fo or something.

So I got out of the sofa, knelt down next to her and asked what she was doing. Allison looked up with her face remaining serious, and again repeated “time out!” in a stern voice while still pointing at the door. I asked her “who are you timing out?” but again she simply repeated “time out!” This time though, she came closer to and pointed at the bottom of the door. I still saw nothing, so I came for a closer look and couldn’t help but bursted out laughing.

On the floor next to the door was a tiny plastic frog. You see, the corner next to the front door is where we usually time out the girls. So she was playingly disciplining her toy frog and had meant to say “bad frog, you time out!”

The fact that she put on a stern voice & serious face for punishing this little tiny plastic toy of hers was all too funny.

We were playing Hide & Seek with the girls tonite. We divided into 2 teams: Mommy & Katelyn versus Allison & Daddy. So at one point in the game, it was Suzanne & Katelyn’s turn to seek, so Allison & I went and hid in a bedroom closet. I closed the door and we sat there in the dark. I repeatedly reminded Allison to remain quiet. But when Suzanne came into the room and didn’t find us, she called out “Who wants candy?” Allison bolted out of my lap, flung the door open and ran to Suzanne yelling “candy!”

Game over… 🙂

The government is trying to peek at what you’re searching for on the web! US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asked a San Jose federal judge to order Google to hand over search records of millions of its users and 1 million random web addresses in the search engine’s databases.

The administration claims that this is part of their anti -pornography efforts. But along with the recent wire tapping efforts, this is yet another encroachment on individual privacy. Furthermore, I am certain the government wouldn’t know what to do with such sheer amount of raw data. It’s a lot of data that for sure, but is it useful data to anybody? I doubt any insightful stats can be drawn from raw data like this without user information which wasn’t being requested. Worse, misleading or even wrong conclusions can be drawn from misinterpretation of this mountain of raw data. Perhaps, the feds will try to acquire user information next? Why not, if the feds get their way this time around.

I applaud Google for fighting the feds. It’s a shame that other search engines like Yahoo, MSN & AOL quickly caved in and handed the data to the feds. Kudos to Google….

We took the kids to Nicholas & Wesley’s birthday bash @ a place called Pump It Up earlier this month. This place in Sunnyvale has connecting rooms with gigantic bounce houses. The place is smaller than we had imagined, which is good because it is less crowded than places like The Jungle. Suzanne & I joined in the fun, bouncing around and sliding with the kids. Was a good work out for us as well. 😉

We got some pics here, including this funny one where I managed to capture Nicholas giving Wesley an "evil eye." Notice how innocent Wesley looked, as if he’s a helpless lamb waiting for the big bad wolf to pounce on him.