FARK it

This is a photo I modified in Photoshop for one of the comments on FARK.com. Click on the image to see the other Photoshop'ed images. I drop by FARK.com once in awhile to get a laugh out of all the images they Photoshop the crap out of into impossible (or possible) scenes.

This is the first time I've Photoshopped something for FARK.com and I couldn't resist adding the Partridge Family to this scene, it just seemed the right thing to do. A good site for Photoshop gurus with way too much time on their hands.

People submit a normal image then everyone goes to town on it and posts their reditions in the comments.

*Warning, for those who are sensitive FARK.com may not be suitable for you due to the nature of some images. For the rest of you that means click away.

No POTD Nov 28-29

Shot photos but not for the blog. This blog may be on its last legs soon.

Loose zips sink ships

And they said President Clinton couldn't keep his zipper up while in office. How about Dubya?

Fly into sky

An egret takes off from a pasture and flies above the Kohala Mountain Road as I was making my way from Kohala to Waimea Friday. You can usually find these birds standing on the backs of cattle making a meal out of whatever insects are trying to bother them, it's a nice symbiotic relationship.

One for Wenatchee

Here goes a photo for Wenatchee, Washington where Andrea's dad keeps an eye on his little girl. Andrea and Carly take some final looks at the newspaper pages before putting the paper to bed. Now that we're publishing 7/wk we will always have people working on holidays.


Friends for Fitness is having another corporate walking challenge down at the walking path. I've already been asked to join 2-3 teams already. No doubt folks have heard about how like a nut I kept walking to the point and shin splints and beyond. This time the teams want to get serious and win.

Back to work tomorrow and it'll be a few short days before the end of the National Novel Writing Month contest is over. I challenged Max, Karen and Maile and so far only Max and I have written (as far as I can tell) for the competition. It's supposed to be a 50,000 word novel by the end of this month, I think my vacation was actually a negative to novel writing since I was out doing stuff instead of being in a routine at work. The only real way to win is to do like Elvis Costello says, "Everyday I write the Book." One of my favorite Costello songs. Time is getting short for me to write. blah...lots of ideas and plots but haven't spent much time writing.

Archive changes

The Archive list on the right used to be listed by weeks but it got to be a very long list so now it's organized by months. What this means is that if you click on an archived month you may have a long wait to view all the images on the page since they have to come over the internet. Time to move to broadband folks.

Printer Woes

Got a new printer the other day, an HP Photosmart 7960 from Costco. It was at a pretty good price and I was tired of my Epson 2000P with its old drivers, not so good plain paper quality and expensive pigment inks. Don't get me wrong, the Epson could produce beautiful prints and could do it up to 13"x19" paper size too but that printer was huge for my needs. I really needed something more for printing correspondence and such. The Epson didn't use ink, it used pigments which are fade-proof, but don't print that nicely on plain paper.

So I got this printer, tried to install the software and the computer didn't want to recognize the printer. After long chats/talks with HP online (they are very patient and helpful, beyond the call of duty), numerous driver reinstalls it became obvious to me that it was my computer software and not the printer. The printer works flawlessly when connected to my Windoze laptop and when I installed the software on a back-up partition on my laptop, but my main working system wouldn't work.

So this meant my final option which I put-off until today, was to re-install my operating system. So I spent several hours today re-installing and updating my operating system (Mac OSX 10.3.6) and reinstalling the printer software. Now the printer works fine, it really is a nice printer, but I need to fix some applications on my computer which broke in the process of the system redo.

And I need to go back to Costco for another problem, I had 80 5x7 digital prints done for an order, but there was a glitch in the system and it printed digital streaks over all 80 prints. So I have to go back and redo the order today.

Anyone want to buy a used Epson 2000P?

Yepp, another mp3 player

While on vacation I picked-up this tiny MP3 player, the Samsung Yepp player. Actually it's more than a player, (geek-speak ahead) it can also encode line-in audio straight to mp3 up to 128 bit encoding. It also has a built-in mic that records to .WAV format and has an FM tuner which can have audio encoded to mp3 in the unit. This thing has more record features than play features. It runs a long time on just one AAA battery, and has better sound than my Apple iPod.

I got this thing to take audio notes and to record some FM radio programs to listen to later. Oh yeah, it also acts as a USB keychain drive so I can use it to transfer files around, another good reason to carry it around. It's like a Swiss Army Knife of mp3 players. I got the idea from Adam Curry on one of his Podcasts where he needed something with good quality and reliability to record his Podcast program, he does it on this little thing.

Sure the iPod has much more storage space, can play back Audible.com content but this player is great. I'd almost consider selling my iPod but I like listening to Audible.com books and at 256MB this tiny player doesn't have enough space. The only other issue with this player is that you need very good vision, the screen is tiny.

POTD on vacation

Been busy on vacation, too busy to shoot any photos (or too lazy) so you'll have to do without photos for November 20-22.


Hopefully things change soon and probably will once I get back to work after Turkey Day.

Laptop Latte

Finally got the blog updated thanks to a Venti Gingerbread Latte and the Wi-Fi at Kona Coast Shopping Center. Now to work on the novel.

Back in Kona

Brian and Jennifer at Durty Jakes. Jennifer is a college friend of Brian's visiting as Brian plays tour guide and entertainment while she's here. A nice cool night out in Kona town with the bar was filled with Canadians who had Juni playing country music all night. See what happens when Shania Twain country comes to Kona? Now all we need are Canadian rocker Avril Lavigne and Kittie fans to show up but I think we'll have to wait a generation as they'd be too young to drink, but i do listen to Kittie (some of it at least).


Andrea and Jaymes mug for the camera as they hang out and avoid possible explosive action going on. Notice the white-trash tats on Andrea. Some guy with a powder-keg temper was dissing some guy in the bar over what else, a girl. The guy was all pumped up and yelling at the guy a few inches away from Andrea so the move was a good one to avoid possible shrapnel and flying body parts. Luckily nothing happened, at Durty Jakes anyway, maybe Mr. Explosive went somewhere else to reach critical mass.


Brian mugs the Lynndie for Jennifer.

Whiskey a go-go

Got a nice surpise gift that was waiting for me at work. I've been helping someone in Taiwan, Clarence Lee, with some information about Kona for his visit during the Kona Coffee Cultural Festival. And as a reward he stopped by the newspaper with a gift bag for me, a nice polo shirt from an expresso bar in Taiwan, Orsir Coffee Co. Clarence, I know you're reading this so you can correct me if I'm wrong via comments. He's the MIS Manager for the shop and has set up the webcam at the coffee shop and found me via this blog and we've chatted online a bit. As it turned out I was in Los Angeles during his visit to Kona so we didn't get to hang out but the gift is most appreciated.

Actually the photo of the gifts was an experimental shot I did from what I learned at the photo workshop. I shot the photo with the light from a little LED flashlight. It's a technique called painting with light pioneered by David Black and he had a photo session I attended demonstrating it. In the demonstration he used the little LED flashlight to paint light over a model and motorcyle during a two-minute exposure. My subject was much smaller so I just did a 30 second exposure. Not too bad for a first try.

Mahalo Nui Loa for the whiskey and polo shirt Clarence.

Adam Curry gets my name right

I've been listening to Adam Curry's Daily Source Code Podcast (see the link on the right) so decided to email him with the URL of a pretty cool audio file online of a binaural recording of Aiea forest and he mentioned it and played the audio on his Podcast today. Surprisingly he even pronouced my last name correctly, which most people not familiar with Japanese names don't. Click on the above graphic to go to the Podcast. Gotta admit Curry's not just the big-haired Vee-Jay from MTV fame, he's pioneering Podcasting, is pretty technical (aka geeky) and can fly a helicopter.

Come fly with me

Finally, heading back to Kona and away from big traffic jams and the rest of my laid-back vacation. The islands have been cloudy and rainy lately but I got some shots from the plane as I left Oahu. Here's a shot of Sand Island (renamed Rainbow Island in the 70s but it never stuck) and Honolulu Harbor. Click on the photo for a larger version.


Another shot that you can click on to enlarge. Waikiki with Diamond Head in the bottom right.


Finally a shot of Hawaii Kai and Hanauma Bay, the last shot I could get due to the clouds and rain we ended up flying through. I once drove over 100 miles in one day looking for feature photos for Sun Press newspaper in Hawaii Kai area including Sandy Beach. We photographers had always considered looking for feature photos in Hawaii Kai and Mililani areas the most difficult during a weekday. Both are bedroom communities where no human beings are doing much during the day that we haven't already photographed. It's amazing what we did shoot in these communities, we knew these places inside and out.

The sounds of Xmas

Tried to find a nice air-conditioned, quiet place to have a latte and type on my laptop so I went to Starbucks in Kahala Mall (the first Starbucks supposedly in Hawaii, actually I think the one in Barnes & Noble came first). Got a nice Gingerbread Latte and since it was a weekday it wasn't very crowded for once at Starbucks. So I went to work on my novel (that's another story) and was banging out paragraphs, if not pages, then the real banging started.

Behind me in the mall was this army of workers on a putting together a two-story tall metal Christmas tree, I think this is one of those that is composed of potted poinsettia plants. I think this thing is held together with metal bolts that needed to be pounded into place. Metal on metal banging which was pretty relentless and annoying. When I finally turned around to get a video clip with audio the guy stopped banging his hammer, so no audio but here's a frame-grab from the video. It must be getting near Christmas.

Back to skool

A rainy day in Honolulu and driving through Kaimuki I decided to drop by my old elementary school, Epiphany School. That's right, a private church school which I attended K-5. Being a church school things were pretty strict here and I kind of used to think of it as like prison with a big wrought-iron fence that used to go around the church yard but now I see that it's been removed which is quite nice.

You have to been a regular member of a church with old Gothic type designs like this to really give you the feel for movies like The Exorcist and Damien. My memories of going to church services here is that it was like a dutch oven, hot as hell in there, I thought it would be more like heaven instead of heat like the other direction. It didn't help that we wore robes and other stuff while in the choir and the Reverend Linscott was waving some urn thing around spreading incense smoke. I remember as a little kid sweating away, in my Sunday best and robes over that, looking up to two tiny oscillating fans on the ceiling trying to concentrate on whether or not I could feel any breeze, none could ever be detected. Of course being kids the favorite songs of me and my friends were Onward Christian Soldiers, musta been the army aspect of it all.

Here are the classrooms of the school. Beyond the school is the H-1 Freeway which they were just finishing while I was in kindergarten and it was quite a noisy mess, I remember huge sheet of plastic flying around the area. The school has been bought/merged with Mid-Pacific Institute which shouldn't be much of a surprise. I never knew how this school survived, small classroom sizes and limited enrollment at the small campus. We didn't even have our own play field, we walked over to Kaimuki Park to use their courts and ball fields.

It was probably an unusual elementary school compared to public school. As a little kid during 'nap-time' the Reverend would play classical music on a phonograph and tell use the name of the musical piece and the composer, I thought we were supposed to be sleeping? The next day he would quiz us, he'd play some piece of music played in the previous days and ask if anyone knew what song it was and the composer. We were literally quizzed in our sleep! Also in school we learn poetry like Robert Frost and stuff like that. But I've always liked one poem I found in the poetry book as I procrastinated to learn what I was supposed to be memorizing.

The Flying Squirrel

The Flying Squirrel is the most amazing thing,
it hasn't a feather and hasn't a wing.
Yet through the air it sweeps and swoops;
it doesn't fly it parachutes.
--Author unknown

Yep, I actually remembered that from elementary school (sure I also know some Frost but this was easier to remember). And yes, the author was listed as unknown in the book. It was an tough but in reflection interesting time that I had in school. In a moment of sanity my folks finally decided to pull me from Epiphany to attend public school for 6th grade. No doubt my grades were making them wonder why they were spending so much money sending me to private school. I once told my mom they should have sent me to public school, saved the money and bought me a car as a high school graduation present, she was a bit incredulous saying "but that's where you learned to read." I told her I probably would have learned in public school, plus I might have traded the squirrel poem for a car, ha.

Now I found this sign a bit bizarre at the school when I visited. Father Linscott was the Reverend at the school when I attended, I'm pretty sure he's listening to harp music by now so I'm a bit perplexed as to why this sign is there. Is it out of respect? Is there another Father Linscott at the school?

When I moved to Kona I found an interesting connection to my Honolulu roots. While having a chat with Sherwood Greenwell he said Linscott had been the Reverend at Christ Church in Kealakekua, Kona before he went to Epiphany. Sherwood noted that they had always had a reverend there but Linscott insisted upon being addressed as 'Father' like a Catholic priest. Strange how serendipity occurs.

*UPDATE* Got the following email.
I believe the man you refer to from your childhood (“Father Linscott”) is my great uncle. He’s still alive, believe it or not, residing in Honolulu. He was the eldest of three sons, and the last them to survive- must be the temperate Hawaiian climate. His two brothers (one of whom was my grandfather) spent their lives residing in their native Ellsworth, Maine. Though I’ve only seen him once (and that was briefly as a young lad), he occasionally sends my family gifts (especially for my young daughters, currently 6, 5, and 2).

Well, anyway, thought you might find that interesting.

Greg Linscott
Pastor, Faith Baptist Church, Skowhegan, Maine
http://linscotts.blogspot.com

The first scratch

Back in Hawaii, on Oahu at least. My dad drove his brand new 2005 Toyota Camry for a couple of weeks and some lady back into him. Despite him blazing his horn at the lady she just kept on coming in a parking lot. So now there's a nice bunch of scratches where the paint is gone. The lady's insurance is paying for the paint job.

It's good to be back in Hawaii, but today it's kind of hot. But then again it's always hot in the Kapahulu area.

Leaving Laguna

Chaz cooks up a whole package of maple flavored bacon for the B&B. Good stuff, he does it the old fashioned way and makes perfect bacon, no microwaves involved.


Here I am with Chaz and Linda about a few hours before my leaving Laguna Beach and Los Angeles. They have a first-class operation there at Eiler's Inn and it was good to have some aloha spirit on my trip.


Ah yes, one last trip on the 405 North (I think) to make me miss living in Kona, where we have only one lane of bumper-to-bumper traffic sometimes instead of six lanes of traffic all the time.

I'll have some Frys with that

What would a trip to Los Angeles be without a trip to Fry's Electronics, this is their Anaheim store. Talk about a geek-fest. They have all kinds of gizmos and gadgets in here along with refrigerators, stoves and other major appliances.


Finally made it to IN-N-OUT BURGER. I've never been to one so I decided it was about time, a bunch of the photogs at the SportsShooter.com workshop were making meccas to the burger joint but I had a hell of a time getting to one. I saw plenty as I drove around town or on the freeway when I wasn't hungry or couldn't get off the freeway. When I tired looking for one for lunch I couldn't find any, the guy in one store was hopeless as he gave me instructions that turned out to be bogus.

When I was in Hollywood I finally found an INOB, drove up to it and there was a car stalled right in front of the entrance. What are the chances? So I had to drive past and got onto the freeway back to Laguna Beach. I knew there was one near Huntington Beach on PCH so I headed for that (even had it waypointed in the GPS when I had passed it a few days before). And I finally got there to try these special burgers.


So I get in there and find this menu board. I expected something like a Baskin-n-Robbins of hamburgers the way people talked about this place. It was more like an ice cream shop with two flavors, vanilla and chocolate (hamburger and cheeseburger in this case). But what they're known for is speed and quality so I ordered a combo: cheeseburger, fries and coke. Hey look Ron, fries don't come with the burger here, you gotta order it separate on in a combo.


Here it is, the cheeseburger combo. I'm sure this same meal has fed movie stars, NFL football players, professional surfers, whiz-kids of dot-com companies and Fortune 500 CEOs. I can just see Jesus now handing out cheeseburgers, fries and cokes from an endless basket if he were alive today.

It was a pretty darn good burger. Pretty close to the Harbor House burgers in Kona ranking I'd say. The ingredients did taste fresh and they have an army of kids behind the counter pushing spuds through a cutter before tossing them into the deep fryer, flipping burgers and swiftly dealing with drive-through customers. I wish they had workers and service like this in Kona everywhere.

Waterworld is great, the live show, not the movie

Okay I got to play tourist today. Besides tooling around Los Angeles shopping I also headed over the Universal Studios. This is actually a great time to go here since it's not hot and there are no crowds. You pretty much have run of the place, short lines for all the shows and rides.

Yeah, I did go on the Mummy Returns ride which is new there. What did I think? It's a rather short ride on a roller-coaster that is in pitch-black for about 80% of the ride which is supposed to add to the scariness. But I think it would be more scary to actually see stuff around you as you whiz by on the ride knowing that some insubstantial rail or bolts are all that stand between you and death. But I digress, it's a pretty good ride that's inside of one of the big sound studios, lots of screaming going on.


Here's a panoramic view of the Waterworld set at Universal Studios, click on the image for a larger view. Had to check-out the Waterworld show. I actually saw them film Waterworld (the movie) on sets near Kawaihae Harbor. I shot huge explosions, airplanes, helicopters, boats, jet-skis all that stuff during the filming (okay I wasn't on set but I was on shore with a telephoto). I also shot photos of the atoll they used in the movie as it was in pieces after production was done (even walked up and touch the stuff, the metal armor on the atoll seemed to actually be fiberglass).

My photos appeared in Vanity Fair magazine when they did a huge spread on Waterworld. Even got to party with the Waterworld crew every weekend at Big Island Steakhouse in Waikoloa during the filming. The place was dead after filming ended.


Click on the above image for some video clips I shot during the show (about 3MB in size so broadband or patient users only). Overall a great show and much more entertaining than the actual movie.


Ah yes, and the drive back to Laguna Beach. Is there ever a time when there isn't traffic in Los Angeles? I mean, I drove there morning noon and night and a few times in between and there was always bumper to bumper traffic on the freeways. While on the mainland I used my Garmin iQue 3600 to guide me around town. All I needed to do was plug-in the street address of my destination and it would tell me the route to take, an actual synthesized voice told me when to get on/off the freeway or when the turn on a roadway. This darn thing was amazing, it could take me right to the doorstep and even tell me what side of the road to look for my destination. Can't get lost with this thing.

Burning cool

A bad thing happened today, I had sashimi and liked it. Let me explain, I never eat raw fish as I don't like the texture of it so I don't eat sashimi or poke. But tonight I went to 5' restuarant in Laguna Beach with Chaz and Linda, they had this blackened sashimi appetizer so I decided to give it a try. It was really good, so were the veggies that came with it. It even had some poke stuff on the side which was good. This cannot be good for my wallet if I start liking raw fish.


Linda and Chaz at 5' (actually the resturant's name is pronounced Five Feet) before getting our food, notice how they're bundled up from the cold weather? We all liked the cool weather but it was turning pretty cold at night. Linda and I both ordered the same thing which was ono and scallops cooked with a a chili sauce and it came with veggies, peppers on a bed of Thai noodles with peanut sauce. It was delicious but my mouth was on fire. The food had slices of jalapenoes or something similar and I ate a green slice, then my mouth was burning but continued eating as it was delicious, then like a fool I ate another but this time red. At first it was like eating a slice of bell pepper, no burnning. Then the heat kicked in and it was like I ate pepper spray, whoa! I guess the name of the entree should have been a clue, it was called Hot, Hot, Hot. I should have gotten a photo of it but we were hungry and got busy eating quickly.


After the food we strolled over to Hennessey's Tavern a very nice tavern nearby.


Linda in the tavern.


Got a round of Keoki coffee drinks to let the whipped cream put out the fire from the peppers, Linda's mouth was also burning from the food.


Ready to drink our nightcap.


After getting back to the Inn Chaz broke out his Gibson electric and jammed a little Hendrix for us.


Click on the above image for a little video of Chaz playing. Had to convert it to black and white as it was so dark I had to boost the video and color was bad.

In at the Inn

The courtyard in the Eiler's Inn where breakfast is served, an herb garden grows in pots. The courtyard is peaceful to hang-out in.


Chaz and Linda are up early and starting to prepare breakfast for me and the other guests at 7 a.m. Here's Chaz pouring some eggs in the pan as Linda sweeps through also preparing food, silverware and other goodies for breakfast.


Chaz works on scrambled eggs for breakfast.


Linda works on putting together a cream cheese and blueberry strudel for breakfast. She popped it into the oven and it was delicious for breakfast.


Breakfast is fresh fruit, Kona Coffee, toast, scrambled eggs, sausage, blueberry cream cheese strudel and various cereal, tea and other stuff is available. As usual the Bicoys know how to set a spread.


The sitting room at Eiler's Inn where you can relax with a fireplace, comfy chairs and they have a TV to watch. There are no TVs in the room which is actually quite nice. It's a B&B and not a hotel so it's a place to relax and hang out.


I had to check out the beach and the Inn is only a stone's throw away, one set of set of houses back from the beach. This is the walkway down to the beach.


On the beach looking north.


On the beach looking south. This time of year it's starting to turn cold so nobody was in the water, though one of the other guests at the inn went swimming. The south side is supposed to be pretty good for surfing.


Chaz up on the sun deck. Notice how short his hair is due to a self haircut experiment gone awry. Apparently he bought some kind of home haircut kit and Linda gave him a nice haircut. Then he noticed there was a shorter cutting attachment and while Linda was gone he tried it out on just the side of his head but it mowed across leaving a very short section so he later told Linda to just buzz the rest of his head to match. This is after his hair has grown back a bit, he said it turned out to be the attachment for the shortest buzz cut in the kit.

Driving down PCH

Driving down the Pacific Coast Highway on the way to Chaz & Linda's. A nice drive though I started later than I thought. Spent time hanging out in L.A. doing some shopping, went into Fry's Electronics were the ceiling was leaking water in about a dozen spots. They were having a hard enough time dealing with water leaking in an electronics store so I didn't feel right adding to their misery by shooting photos of them squeegeeing water on the floor and cardboard laid everywhere to prevent people from slipping on the wet floor and sopping up water. Pretty bad. It's been raining here in SoCal off and on.


Offshore ships and rigs seen from PCH off Long Beach. You can see seagulls and pelicans all along the shore area. You just about never see seagulls in Hawaii. Seagulls and Pelicans can't process salt water so they can't fly to Hawaii though we do have migratory seabirds in Hawaii along with the usual birds.


By the time I got to Eiler's Inn it was getting dark and Chaz and Linda were wondering where I was when I finally pulled-up. Here Chaz hangs out with me behind the inn, talking-story and catching up on old and new times.

A Beaching Time

Had to stick my feet in the Pacific Ocean so I trekked down to Hermosa Beach with a couple of other Sports Shooters. The air was cold and it had been raining earlier and skies were grey but clearing slightly. It isn't a Hawaiian beach, seagulls flying overhead, pelicans dive bombing into the ocean to catch fish just offshore and kelp washed ashore.


A mollusk on the beach. Nobody was in the water and only a few scattered people were on the beach, pretty deserted.


Me and a couple of photogs starting to head back to the hotel.


A shot of myself in a mirrored window along the boardwalk at Hermosa Beach.

Meeting a legend

Bill Eppridge and myself in the lobby of the hotel. Who is Bill Eppridge? He's the LIFE Magazine photographer who shot the photograph of Robert Kennedy after being shot by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles. Eppridge explained in a session how he covered Robert Kennedy on the campaign trail and what happened when he made the incredible assasination photo. Eppridge is pretty gruff but he's a straight shooter as he doesn't water down how he feels about stuff.

The assasination changed him. He was assigned to cover Hubert Humphrey's campaign after that, but his heart wasn't into it, as he kept looking over his shoulder and into crowds, still haunted by the assasination. He has never covered politics since then. Today he still shoots for National Geographic and Sports Illustrated.

Listening to him speak was like listening to John Stewart talk about the media today. Eppridge said the media isn't doing their job, they're just doing a terrible job of covering politics and he said that's why we have what we have in the White House today for another four yeas. Obviously not a fan of Dubya.

Eppridge said Robert Kennedy had told him and a reporter many times that when he became president the first thing he was going to do was to pull out of Vietnam. Instead Kennedy was assasinated and Richard Nixon ended up in the White House. Eppridge points out that thousands of U.S. servicemen were killed after the elections, thousands of north and south Vietnamese soldiers and civillans were killed. All those lives would have been spared had the assasination not occured. The death of one man ended up costing the deaths of tens of thousands.

I had a chance to talk with him just before this photo was taken about the media today, who was doing it right and who was doing it wrong. He thought almost all TV, most magazines, with the exception of National Geographic, and just a few newspapers like the New York Times, another paper in Wyoming and another in Florida were doing it right. He claims we shouldn't be objective, we should take a stand. He had a lot to say and I won't post it all here, if you want to know just ask me.

Jenna, Bob and Emily

Jenna Isaacson who gave me the idea to start this picture of the day blog. Jenna was a pretty colorful sight with the aloha shirt and flower. Actually the whole group of photographers were quite a technicolor wonder with only a handful of folks who didn't wear aloha shirts, but they paid the price by being forced to dance the hula in front of the other 400+ photogs at the start of the workshop. Nothing like public humiliation.


Bob Caplin with his fiance Emily at the luau. I was lucky enough to be one of the first to find out about Bob's proposal to Emily when he drove across the county this past summer as I helped him set-up a Moblog for his cellphone during his road trip to his LA Times internship. I checked the progress of his trip and saw the proposal photos the day it happened.

Wi-Fi & Wide-Foto

Someone either has a Wi-Fi access point in their hotel room or I'm catching the signal from this base station named 'boardroom' from across the street. Either way it means free Wi-Fi access in my room but I'll probably end up paying for access later today via that Lodgenet network if I can figure that out.


Not much of a view but this is how it looks outside my window (click on the image for a larger view). Workshop starts today, registration at 11 a.m. and it's already 9:30 a.m. so I've got to get going.

I'm here, got beer

Finally made it to Redondo Beach and before I even took the elevator up to my room I was handed a beer in the lobby by this motley crew of photogs.

My plane out of Honolulu was about 45 minutes late, much of that due to being stuck on the tarmac at Honolulu International Airport. Not sure what the hold-up was, maybe it was due to HANG (Hawaii Air National Guard) deciding to do some drills. We were sitting on the taxiway forever then the whole plane shuddered and I saw an F-15 go screaming past on afterburners rocketing up on the active runway. I guess when they wanna play war-games they get priority.

Pretty unventfull flight, I was supposed to meet another photog at the airport and give her a ride to the hotel and lucky for me she stopped the rental car place from closing on me. And while at baggage claim another SportsShooter.com saw me and I gave him a ride too into Redondo Beach.

I'll probably be updating via my cellphone so updated photos will appear in the little photo box on the upper right of this blog page.

Windows sucks

Okay, enough political editorializing for now, back to stupid personal news. The past few weeks have seen some pretty heavy rain, thunder and lighting. For some reason the window box is leaking rain like crazy in my apartment. I mean like 1/4"-1/2" of water on the landing area below the window in my apartment (lucky it's a tile area, but it does lead to a storage closet too). So when it's bucketing rain, with wind it's like someone turned on a garden hose in this window on the inside.

So crazy, quick-fix is to design something to direct the water pouring in back out to the window frame slot where it will drain outside. That's the reason for the foil held by gaffer's tape in the window. After one big rain and this problem a week ago I found some silicone sealant and I sealed the window frame on the outside to seal against water, but it's not coming from there as I found out, it's coming through the ceiling and/or window box frame. Sounds like it's gonna take some ripping stuff out, spackling or caulking stuff, etc. Told the property management company to fix it as I'm going to the mainland and won't have to deal with the noise. Hopefully this is all solved by the time I get back home.

And yes, I fly out to Los Angeles tomorrow to attend the SportsShooter.com Workshop & Luau 2004. This is a great photography workshop, much of which is not sports photography but photojournalism in general. It's called a luau so we don't have to wear a coat and tie, everyone has to wear an aloha shirt. We look pretty weird when we go someplace to have lunch or dinner en mass. I will still be posting while in L.A.

Oh yeah, and Microsoft Windows does suck. I was using Virtual PC today (another Microsoft product) and it was super-slow running Windows XP. *warning...geek-speak ahead* I think the WinXP SP2 update really screwed things up. Like they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I think I'm going back to running Win98se on VPC, Microsoft's last great operating system. I take that back, X-Box is probably Microsoft's last great operating system.

Maybe I should join the GOP

To think a decorated war hero lost to a draft-dodger. But I guess that isn't news, Bill Clinton beat George Herbert Walker Bush too.

Dubya stays in office for four more years. John Kerry just couldn't do it, he couldn't win the electoral votes, he couldn't win the popular vote. This election wasn't stolen, the majority of voters got what they wanted fair and square. But the question all Democrats have to ask is "what should we do in 2008?"

In 2008 Bush will be a lame-duck and the GOP will field a new candidate. Who will that be? Nobody expects VP Dick Cheney to run. Most likely someone like Rudy Giuliani will run; someone popular that can catch the imagination of the right.

Who would the Democrats field against someone like Giuliani? Hillary Clinton? No way, there aren't any Republicans that would vote for her (Chelsea Clinton would get more votes from Republicans) and as this election shows you need to capture the spirit of both the left and right to win decisively. John Kerry again? I don't think so, he couldn't win against Dubya, I don't think he would stand a chance against Giuliani. Tom Daschle? No way, he just got voted out of office. Howard Dean? Nope, too far to the left for conservatives to sway their votes. Al Gore? Ah...I don't know if he wants to go through that again plus he couldn't win against Dubya either.

What the Dems need is someone who is a moderate to win votes from both sides, someone of stature, charisma with the credentials. Bill Clinton was a moderate and a popular president, at least until that whole cigar incident.
Barack Obama? Nope, too green, he's a rising star but I don't think he will be ready in four years though he may come the closest. In other words the Dems don't have anyone to go up against the GOP machine.

So that's what I mean, there is nobody in the Democratic party close enough to the center to win the election so I have an idea. You need to think outside the box. If we can't move to the center from the left why not move to the center from the right? The GOP machine will probably take the 2008 campaign from what I can see at this early stage. If we want a moderate politician closer to the center maybe we should throw our weight behind someone from the GOP.

I mean, the GOP doesn't like someone like John McCain, one of the more moderate Republicans. Yeah, Giuliani is also somewhat a moderate in the party as is the Governator Aaaaarnold (but he can't run according to the law, he's a foreigner). Should we throw in the towel as Democrats and re-shape Washington from the right? If the GOP decides to start throwing weight to some hard-core, right-wing republican it might be our only choice.

Of course in Hawaii you don't need to declare your party. You go into the primary and choose your party in secret as it should be if it's truly supposed to be a secret ballot. You could be a flaming liberal and pull a GOP ballot, or be a diehard conservative and pull a Green Party ballot.

The great thing about Bill Clinton when he ran for office is he reunited Fleetwood Mac. The great thing about Bush and Kerry running for office was that they cured voter apathy. Let's just hope it sticks.

Four more years

The crowd yells "4 more years!"

Nobody said math was going to be involved.

The snail won

In a tight race the president made it through, Kerry conceded and it reminded me of a line from the movie Apocalypse Now

COLONEL KURTZ (on tape): I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving.

No doubt the President was on razor's edge with this close election. Maybe now we can go to a popular vote and eliminate the electoral college? Bush won the popular vote.

Choose or Lose

I voted, did you?

No Vote = No Complain

Crowded at the polls this morning, strange seeing the news on websites. Some websites like CNN have lots of numbers for the electoral votes. Not sure if it's from exit polls or actual numbers. Other sites like The New York Times has very few of the electoral vote reported. With all the electronics, internet, computers, etc. can't the government have an official website with the real numbers that are up to date?

I think it's time we went to a popular vote to determine who's president. The electoral college has past it's usefulness and we need to really respect the will of the majority of the people out there. No matter who wins you can be sure that half of the country is going to be pissed.

Bush's victory salute

Salute movie

Whip it out and make your mark.Get out and vote.

This is a photo I shot before the primary but it applies to the general election too.

Creative eating

Stopped for lunch today, finally, at the Nasturtium Café in Kainaliu. It's just outside of Kainaliu town proper on the south side. I had passed by here many times, before I had seen a sign saying Seven Senses Café and now it says Nasturtium Café. I finally found myself with some time instead of rushing past as usual on my way to or back from assignments.


The re-worked wooden building is very easy to find is nice inside, it also has a nice outside lawn dining area in the back as you go through the resturant.


I almost ordered the ostrich tenderloin quesadilla for lunch, I've never had ostrich before and it's supposed to taste more like beef than my imagination of chicken. Instead I ordered the Chevre Goat Cheese and Artichoke Wrap. I'm not normally a big artichoke fan but the vegetarian wrap sounded pretty good and healthy. In fact you can see that I totally forgot to shoot a photo and took a bite or two before I remembered, duh.


Here's a copy of their menu (hint: click on it to see a bigger image) and I have what I ate outlined. The menu on their website a little outdated. I'd highly recommend this place as a great place to eat. It's a little noisy in the resturant due to the traffic close outside the door but with soothing music inside it covers it a bit and if you want to get farther away from the street noises you can always head back to the outside area.

I talked to the owner Diane and she said she cooked and ran the Seven Senses Café with some other folks but she changed the name and now she runs it by herself. They are open Monday through Friday 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and have a pretty tasty looking breakfast menu (click to view).