Troutmaster

Happy Birthday Dio

Dio turns 2 today. Happy Birthday Dio! And he's in a great place for his second birthday, Las Vegas. Maybe he'll buy a round of milk for everyone at dinner tonight. :-)

Tres Amigos

Timber and her parents went to Las Vegas yesterday. As such, I'm at home now with three dogs, Toby, Fuzzy, and Wookie. It is going to be an interesting week filled with pee, poop, barf, and a lot of barking. I've already realized that I can't walk all three at the same time. Stay tuned to see if I can survive the week.

Dubya Not Too Popular

According to the BBC, Dubya, and more specifically his policies and actions are not too popular around the world, and they are trending downward. Interestingly enough, the only countries that seem to have a favorable opinions of the US at this point are Nigeria, Kenya, and the Philippines. maraming salamat!

More For Me

According to this article the number of visitors to Yosemite National Park keep going lower and lower each year. I guess people would rather stay at home or do other things. Too bad for them, but that's more of the park for me. Thanks.

Lame Snowboarding Season Thus Far

It is now late January and we've been snowboarding once this season. We haven't gotten all that much snow and there are no prospects on the horizon. This is officially lame. At least it has stayed cold so the resorts haven't lost much snow, but we really need two good storms before I'm willing to hit the slopes again. It is time to pray for some good February and March snow.

Happy Birthday Wookie

Today (Jan 22nd) is Wookie's birthday. He is now 3 years old. We got him one year ago today from the Oakland SPCA. It has been an interesting year with him to say the least. I checked my entry from when we got him and I said something along the lines of he'll be a perfect dog in no time. It will take a little bit longer than that but we have certainly made progress. Over this past year I've learned that he is a heck of a guard dog, he is very fast and agile, he loves the snow, he loves to go walking, running, and hiking, he doesn't like strangers but he will start to like people if given enough time, and he is always happy to see Timber and I when we come home. He loves anything with lamb in it and could care less about anything else. And he loves his squirrel. For his birthday we are getting him a pfd for when we take him kayaking with us. It sure beats having Timber freak out when he jumps from the kayak into the middle of Loon Lake and it will save me having to jump in after him. Cheers Wookie, you're a great dog.

Uproar over ban on gays' blood

I heard about a case on the news where a gay high school student was very unhappy about being turned away when he tried to donate blood. An article on the issue can be found here. Here is my advice to that student. Don't take it personally. You are not being singled out for being gay and no one is trying to deprive you of your rights. Lots of people are banned from giving blood. Timber can't donate blood because she lived in Europe for a while. The restrictions include anyone that is gay, anyone that lived in Europe between certain years, if you've ever taken drugs via needle, prostitutes, if you have certain health conditions, etc... The ban (which is very extensive) is to keep the blood supply as safe as possible. I'm one of the few people who is able to donate blood, but if I try to donate blood while I have a cold they will not let me. So instead of worrying that you will be humiliated or made fun of because you are gay think about the big picture and get some perspective. I know that is hard to do when you are young. The rules are in place to keep the blood supply as safe as possible. It is not personal or targeting any one group.

The Real Super Bowl

Mark my words. Today's football game between the Colts and the Patriots was the real Super Bowl. The Colts are going to go on and win the Super Bowl in 2 weeks, and the game probably won't be as good as today's game was. I was glad to see the Colts finally make it to the big game, and it was even better that they did it by beating the team I hate.

iPhone

I finally got to watch the entire keynote from MacWorld last week and I think the iPhone is going to be really cool. I think it is starting out in a great place (phone, video ipod, web browsing, google maps, email, etc...) and I look forward to it getting added capabilities like gps, better camera (not going to use it for that anyway), the ability to buy songs through the phone itself, video phone calls, ad hoc networking capabilities, terminal, tv remove, sdk, etc... If they do it right Apple is going to sell a lot of units.

Wookie Bath Mayhem

Last weekend Timber and I decided to give Wookie a bath at home. We usually give him a bath at the pet store because they have the facilities (tub or stall, water, shampoo, towels, hair dryers, etc...) and we don't have to do any of the cleanup afterward. But this time we had everything at home and he really needed a bath. So we gave him a bath in the office bathroom and at the end when we were drying him he escaped from the tub and ran into the office and shook several times sending water everywhere. We then tried to grab him and get him back into the bathroom but he evaded us until we were eventually able to get him. He made a big mess before we did finally get him back into the bathroom. In the future I think we might go back to giving him a bath at the pet store, or at least make sure the door is closed so he can't run amok on the house while he's still wet. Ah the joys of having a dog.

Another OYE Article

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MacWorld

Yesterday Timber got to go to SF with her collegues to attend MacWorld. She brought her camera along and took some photos. Among the booths, banners, and other hoopla she got some photos of the new iPhone. It was in a glass case on a pedestal and from the photos it looked like people were gathered around gawking and taking photos. It also had a few security guards assigned to it. So enjoy the photos included in this post courtesy of Timber.

Aperture Experiment

I heard that Apple did something different when they came out with Aperture 1.5. They opened it up for a free 30 day trial. I've been chomping at the bit since Aperture first came out because it seems like a really powerful tool for managing digital photos and the workflow of getting the photos onto your computer all the way to publishing them, printing them, etc... And since I got a new MacBook recently I figured I would download it and give it a try. Honestly I wasn't sure if my MacBook would be powerful enough to run Aperture 1.5 . Luckily I had no problems getting it to run, and I was also able to run other apps like iTunes, Eclipse, Mail, etc... at the same time with no slow down.

Initial Setup::
The initial setup was easy, it even asks if you want to move photos from iPhoto over to Aperture. Also importing images from any other location is very easy. I went through process of importing all the images (roughly 25,000 of them) from my external backup drive into Aperture. The process was seamless and suprisingly quick. It took a little bit longer due to the way that I manage my photos (organized by month).

Metadata::
I love the fact that you can put just about any type of metadata on your photos that you want. You can rate the photos with starts (ranging from 1 star to 5 stars), you can add keywords, and you have the metadata that was added when the photos were taken. This makes finding the photos you want that much easier.

Finding Photos::
An example of finding photos for me is that I wanted to find photos of Wookie that were taken in 2006 and were rated at 4 stars or higher. The query was simple (date = 2006 && rating >= 4 stars && keyword = wookie) and quick and I found exactly what I was looking for.

Image Integrity and Support::
Aperture now natively supports RAW images which is pretty cool because the way I manage my RAW images now is to use the Canon software that can read the RAW images and then convert them to jpeg. Sorry Canon, no need for me to do that anymore since I can work with the RAW images directly in Aperture. For image integrity when you edit an image (limited to contrast, brightness, etc...) you are not editing the original image. In fact the original image is never directly touched and can be stored anywhere (external hard drive, local hard drive, network drive, etc...) which is pretty cool. I don't have to use my MacBook's hard drive to store all 25,000 images that I want manage and play with.

Managing Workflow::
The process of managing the workflow using Aperture is pretty good. I was able to take my memory card, plug it into my memory reader, plug the memory reader into my MacBook, automatically launch Aperture, and ask where you want to put the photos, and import. Once you have the images in Aperture you can add keywords, ratings, etc.... You can also do basic editing. You can also easily export the images you want to do more work with to Photoshop. There are even plug ins for Smugmug and Flickr, so you can push your best images there, along with the metadata. On top of the workflow that you can come up with via Aperture it is also extensible via Automator. So if you have processes that need to run against lots of photos or some routine for managing your photos you can easily automate it. A good resource for learning how to automate Aperture tasks can be found here.

Conclusion::
Now that I've played around with Aperture for a month I can see why many professional photographers have moved to Aperture. It is very flexible and powerful, kind of like iPhoto on steroids. I plan to take the vast majority of my photos from now on in RAW because I can use Aperture to easily work with the images. I definitely want to continue using Aperture 1.5 after my 30 day trial runs out. I'll see if I can negotiate a discount or something. :-)

OYE As A Service

I put up another blog posting on our OYE blog on how to run OYE as a service using the Java Service Wrapper by Tanuki Software. I wasn't aware of how involved it was until people started asking for someone to blog about it. In the forums I answered a question on the subject by pointing them to the tutorial page, but it sometimes helps to have a more detailed description. I went through the process and got it to work, but I'm not a big fan of writing .bat files. I'll take a perl script or at the very least a shell script any day of the week instead. :-)

Timber Birthday Weekend

Timber's birthday was this weekend, and this has been the first day since I have known her that she hasn't had to work on her birthday. And I've known her when her birthday was on a weekend before. :-( At any rate she wanted to do some snowboarding this weekend. So we left on Saturday morning, but after having to pick her car up from the tow yard and having to drop Wookie off at Spots our prospects for snowboarding on Saturday shrunk to a half day. But as we got closer to Truckee we decided to skip snowboarding on Saturday and head straight to Reno. We stayed at the Silver Legacy in downtown Reno. After we got checked in and situated we went for an early dinner at Brew Brothers. The beer was good for the most part, and so was the food. Timber got a New York Steak sandwich and I got a buffalo burger. After dinner she wanted to do some shopping, so we went over to the Summit Sierra Mall, which in my opinion is one of the worst mall concepts I've ever seen. The really bad thing about it is that it is an outdoor mall. This means that you either have to go to a few stores and then drive to the other end of the mall or take a shuttle (at least they have one). But the problem is that it was 30 degrees. Who want to go to an outdoor mall when it is freezing outside? I certainly don't. After trying to find another mall we decided to escape back to the Silver Legacy where we spent the rest of our evening checking out different things. On Sunday we went to NorthStar and found that many things had changed. For one they have much more parking than they used to, and for another the village is almost complete now. They also have a new 6 seat chair lift called the Tahoe Zephyr Express. We spent some time on the front side and the backside and also tried out the new chair. It was very crowded in the morning but as the day went on and we got away from the beginner areas the crowds started to dwindle. Overall the conditions were not that great and I would wait for one or two more storms before going snowboarding again. It also looks like NorthStar is going to add even more parking and expand their terrain significantly. I'm excited by the prospect of new terrain, but not at the prospect of more lines and crowds. This is definitely moving me toward more backcountry snowboarding.

2006 In Review

1. We adopted Wookie.
2. We celebrated Dio's 1st birthday.
3. Wookie passed the snow test.
4. Went to Jon's wedding in Tucson and then met up with my parents in Las Vegas.
5. My mom came to town for a visit.
6. Late season snowboarding with Jackie @ Mammoth Mountain.
7. Finally got to check out the much photographed ghost town of Bodie.
8. to the Castroville Artichoke Festival.
9. Logan Ching is born.
10. Went to the POMS Conference in Carmel for my project.
11. Went to Linda's wedding.
12. My truck hit 100k miles (and is still running)!
13. Took Wookie for a hike through Ventana Wilderness.
14. Went on an excellent trip to the Eastern Sierras that had it all (hiking, fishing, camping, etc...).
15. Took Wookie to Fort Funston.
16. Kayden Kuan is born.
17. Did some kayaking in Monterey.
18. Did some kayaking (and Wookie went for a middle-of-the-lake swim) and camping at Loon Lake.
19. Ava turned 2.
20. Went on an amazing fishing trip to Skilak Lake (on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska) and caught roughly 65 Dolly Varden.
21. Took Timber to Cabo for her birthday.
22. My brother and sister-in-law came to visit for 2 weeks.
23. Finally got to check out the De Young Museum.
24. Celebrated Chrismas with the Native Americans.

The Story Of My Life