Random Brain Dump

RAW is a picture format that is available on the high end cameras like dSLRs. Unlike JPEG, its data is uncompressed. The photo information is recorded pre-processed representing the digital equivalent of film negative. On the flip side, RAW isn’t the easiest format to work with. RAW files are large and processing software isn’t readily available on most systems. In addition, up until the announcement of the unified format of Adobe DNG, most format have been vendor specific.

There are a lot of confusion out there as to the use of RAW, but are some links that I find to be useful on this:

• Wikipedia entry on RAW
• Ron Bigelow’s “Why RAW?“
• “RAW, JPEG and TIFF” by Bob Atkins
• Microsoft RAW viewer for WinXP

Check it out…

This BBC article reports that American sugeons are choosing a disfigured patient to perform a face transplant on. This is life imitating fiction (remember Face Off the movie with Travolta & Cage?).

However, computer modeling indicates that the new face will neither look like donor nor the patient since it will be placed on a different facial skeleton. The docs pegged success rate at only 50% though.

Ethics aside, it’s fascinating as a medical advancement. It’s also gross if you imagine it!

This photomosaic of Van Gogh’s painting is composed with over 200,000+ photographs. You zoom in to see the individual photographs!

Very cool.

Last Tue 8/30 as Katelyn’s first day of school (pre-school, actually). All week long, Suzanne & I have been telling her about her new school. The day before, her grandpa & I brought her to the school orientation with us. She was happily playing and exploring her classroom. So on her first day of school, she was actually happy and excited– dressed up and excitedly posing for pictures.

When we got to school and I handed her over to her teacher Ms. Bina, she was okay. Until, her daddy madea big deal of it– gave her hugs and madeher posing for pictures, she finally realized that I wouldn’t be there with her. And she began to cry. I walked her into the classroom and then quickly left (kicked out by the teacher was more like it).

I felt a weird mix of feelings as I drove back to work– aweful, guilty and proud all at the same time. My baby’s fist school day. Wow…

Here are some pics of her first day of school:/monthly/august_2005

For those of you who have lived in Texas, you know how true this is. They actually have a Chili Cook-off about the time Halloween comes around. It takes up a major portion of a parking lot at the San Antonio City park.

The notes are from an inexperienced Chili taster named Frank, who was visiting from Springfield, IL.

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For those part of the Asteroids and Space Invaders generation, check this cool Futurama clip my co-worker sent me (Thanks Steve!).

It’s full of references to old, ehhh classic (that’s what I meant), arcade games!

In June, I quit Vitria and we sold our house. Needless to say, it was rather hectic 3 months for me between April and June. I had a week off between jobs and needed to unwind; so I grabbed my camera along with a tripod and took off to Yosemite by myself for 2 days.

Yosemite Valley was just spectacular in June, prettier than I ever remember. The heavy and wet winter fuels the waterfalls, wild flowers were blooming everywhere, bears and deers were out feeding… It was a great place to unwind and take pictures. I finally get a chance to try experiment with my new camera. I did wish that I had a wide angle lense. Though only a few of the pictures came out decent, I was satisfied with the results. Not bad for the first photo trip. I can only get better… 😉

Here’s the photo gallery of the trip:/trips/yosemite_2005

We took the kids on a week trip to Oahu at the end of July. First real vacation trip for both Katelyn & Allison. The kids had fun and didn’t give Daddy & Mommy any troubles, so all in all it was a good summer trip for the whole family.

Here’re the photos:trips/hawaii_2005

So, after a 3 month-long downtime, I finally spent the time bringing my blog back online. I was forced to shut it down mainly because we moved in June and was without net access for some time as a result. Between the move & new job, reviving the blog was buried deep in my long to-do list.

Finally, it’s time to get to it and this time, I decided to stop running my own server– these pages now are being pushed to you by bluehost.com. First thing I will try to do is to post pictures from our Hawaii trip last week. It will take a few weeks before I manage to migrate my old blog content over and finish the design of the site. So in the meantime pardon the dust…