Computers are dumb

So the AP has a story about the guy who was portrayed as the "Soup Nazi" on Seinfeld opening a chain of soup joints. And they have a automatic engine that links to stories that have similar content so it links to stories about Nazis. But this story isn't about Nazis, it's about a guy and his soup kitchens.

And the guy wouldn't talk to the AP...guess they didn't read his RULES.

Are Mashups the future?

Another great mashup. First there was just cover songs to recycle music, then there was sampling, are mashups the next step?

Lots of mashups by Pheugoo.
Listen to: Last Dance with Jlo

Another Mashup artist Voicedude Jr.
Listen to: Papa Was A Rolling Stone Named Jack

Volcano assignment

Okay, not as exciting as it sounds. Had an assignment today with Betsy, our new reporter, at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. They remodeled their vistor's center. So no photos of lava spewing into the ocean, or rocketing up in the air, sorry. Lava is going into the ocean but it's just a trickle and quite a hike from the road plus you have to wait till sunset for a good view, we didn't have the time.


Betsy's first trip to HVNP so we stopped at the steam vents. Not good for camera lenses unless you like that fog filter effect.


Lunch at the Lava Rock Cafe in Volcano Village then back to Kona for deadlines. it's a two hour trip to get from the office to HVNP without any stops so over four hours of driving today.

Full moon part deux

Went back to the scene of the helicopter ditching to see if they had pulled it ashore yet. Nope, it was still in the water. But the pilot, his student and a crew of helpers arrived with snorkle and scuba gear to attach a sling to lift up the helo that afternoon. Plus they were looking for the pilots wallet and other items.


Click on the above image for the video. It's about 12MB in size so dial-up users can either take a nap during the download, pass on it, or have another reason to get a bigger pipe.

To read about both of the scenes in the video go to West Hawaii Today.

*UPDATE* I just recompressed the video with the new Apple H.264 codec. What this means is that the video that was 12.1MB in size originally is now just 1.7MB in size which is doable for dial-up users. This is a great day for video bloggers! I just found out that QT7 isn't out for Windows users yet, but it shouldn't be long.

Full moon effect?

Chopper 2 goes flying off without any patients as nobody was hurt in the helicopter ditching. Tried to get a shot of Chopper 2 flying over the skid sticking out of the water but the tide was too high and waves were covering the skid when it flew over, the skid appears 30 seconds after the helicopter had flown by.

Do more accidents, fires and crazy things happen around the full moon? Worked a split-shift today and had a basketball game to shoot at night. But got a call a couple hours before the game after a helicopter ditched in the ocean.

Actually it was pretty much a controlled landing in the water as the pilot did a great job of autorotating the helicopter down to a safe water landing. Nobody injured, aircraft in good physical shape (but soaked in salt water), minimal reef damage and only about 30 yards off-shore. You can read about it in West Hawaii Today. Didn't get a chance for too many photos since the skid was backlit and only seen above water in the trough of the waves. Made for a long walk down the long beach to get to the site with all my gear.

Birthday Girl

Birthday girl Peggy and Travis. A group of us got together for some late night food and drinks for Peggy's birthday. After working the whole day then driving back into town there wasn't much of the day left.


Half of the Cassandra's group. Peggy, Travis and Aaron.


Me and Carolyn with the birthday group at Cassandra's. I didn't take many photos, this one accidently had the flash off, the one with the flash on had our eyes closed, not that we were that far gone since Carolyn was Jim's DD.


Besides Juni's Karaoke the entertainment of the night was having 5-6 police cars stop to check-out a pair of folks sitting along Alii Drive. Not sure what kind of business the cops thought they were busting up, they searched the bushes behind them, talked to them awhile and finally let them go.


At the end of a late night. Didn't they ever teach Travis in elementary school to put his cigarette out before nap-time?

Mirror, mirror

Tried to get a different angle on this assignment, didn't quite work out. Couldn't get a shot of the guide with the sunglasses looking the right way with the group I was hiking with. But you can see me kneeling on the ground giving it a shot, Abbie to the right of me taking notes in the photo. We were hiking at Pohakuloa Training Area in the center of the island.

Art Installation

Today's images were created by Sophie via my Garmin iQue 3600. I think she's getting the hang of drawing via the little sketch application. I told her she needs to become famous so these little pieces of artwork will make me rich. Although the top left picture reminded me of the cave photo below that her mom is in she assured me that it's a rainbow.

Hula Drama

Today I photographed Kanu o ka Aina students rehearsing for a hula drama which they are performing on May 14th.

Click on this link to have a listen to their practice, you can hear me shooting photos in the background.

* Pizdets Comrade

Here's a little snippet of the kind of junk mail I get every day. I can't even read this stuff, it's all in cyrillic. Some of the Palm OS Software I wrote ended up on a number of Russian websites including this one. So they've picked-up my email address and bombard me with junk mail.

I have no idea what the emails say, maybe this is a Russian Viagra ad or Microsoft Office for a few rubels. Or maybe the latest round of cheap Rolex watch ads? Give me a break. I just keep throwing them in the trash. Hopefully none of them are from someone offering me money for my programs because I can never read the stuff.

*If you don't understand that Russian headline above click on it. Thanks to the Swearsaurus

Dolphin art

Spent most of the day in Waikoloa as there was a major power outage (see the Tuesday West Hawaii Today. I went into the Hilton Waikoloa and found that they weren't affected at all, electric trains running, lights going, etc. Stopped to get this quick shot of the dolphin sculpture in the lobby.

If you haven't already figured it out note that this blog often isn't updated right away anymore, nor is it always posted in the correct order. So this post, even though it's dated 4/18 is actually being posted on the 20th. And I back-posted by adding in more photos from my Hilo trip a few posts back. Sorry for getting things out of order but if I'm busy or discover photos I've forgotten to post I try to fill in the blanks.

If you're a fan of this blog you might want to make a habit of scrolling back, sometimes there's somthing new. And for geeks there's always the RSS feed via the orange xml thingy on the right.

Take a hike

My hiking buddies. It always nice to be rewarded with a great view of waterfalls after the getting to the back of Waipio Valley at this overlook on the White Road hike. You never know how the weather will be back there. And a few minutes after this the clouds rolled in obscuring the opposite valley wall and the waterfalls. A good day for a hike when we did it.

That waterfall on the opposite side of the valley is about 1,000 feet away and probably that tall too.


A pause for a photo.


Abbie in a cave. The hike is so easy, even a caveman could do it.

Hello Hilo

Spent part of the day in Hilo on a Big Island Candies run. This gal was cutting up a big sheet of chocolate. I thought it might be brownies but looking closer it might be something like their Crunchies candy which, if you can believe it, has macadamia nuts and potato chips.


Ah, Kona isn't the only place with traffic. This very long line of cars going on for blocks is in Waiakea as parents pick-up their kids from school. This is actually worse than the usual Kona traffic jams as the cars weren't really going anywhere, just a long parking lot on the road.


Ever since working on a railroad story for work I've been interested in seeing the old Hawaii Consolidated Railway roundhouse in Waiakea so I drove by there today. It's still there in Waiakea next to the 'Sparky' Kawamoto Swim Stadium (the place with the round roof in the background.

In old photos of this roundhouse there was a big turntable in the front of this half-circle building where a locomotive could chug onto, then the whole turntable would rotate with the engine on it so it could park into one of the roundhouse stalls. The building has vented crowns to the roof to no doubt let the soot and smoke rise out of instead of being trapping in the building. Today the turntable area has been filled-in and paved over as the roundhouse looks like a storage area. An unglamorous end to the glory days of rail travel in Hawaii. Would be a cool place for a train museum in Waiakea. You can find old photos of the roundhouse and many other HRC images at the Laupahoehoe Train Museum. A good place to visit if you're a train buff and visiting the Big Island.


Couldn't decide where to go for lunch. Cafe Pesto? Kay's Lunch Center? I decided to try somewhere I've seen plenty of times but had never gone in. Itsu's is a combination lunch stop and fishing tackle store. I saw plenty of folks buying shave ice and hot dogs, the sign says they have the best in town. But I was hungry and they also sold plate lunches so I decided to give them a try.


So I got myself a spareribs plate (or for folks who don't live in Hawaii more accurately a sweet-n-sour spareribs plate lunch). A couple scoops of rice, mac salad, spareribs and some shredded won-bok cabbage under that. The spareribs were just okay, could have used more flavor as the sauce tasted a little watered-down. Had a big bay leaf in my portion. I will say that they were boneless which was a big plus and the meat was very tender. Still, I'm used to the spareribs at Sekiya's but that could be nepotism.

Quentin Tarantino are you listening?

Okay, it's my day-off, no photos today. But I do have a couple more groups to recommend for music. This time something a bit less jarring than The Kills or Kasabian (hell, I just saw a car commercial with their song Club Foot being used, that was fast).

The Lascivious Biddies have become very popular amongst the Podcast crowd thanks to frequent playing by the Podfather himself Adam Curry. The music is jazzy, the Biddies themselves call the genre Cocktail Pop. Click on the album image and you can go their site where they have some sample MP3s of their songs. I ended up buying their CD Get Lucky after hearing their Smith's cover of Ask being played on Coverville. The girls in the group have even gotten into podcasting themselves which makes for interesting listening.

The Dansettes are another group of girls (okay, they've got guys in the band backing the singers) with some music I hadn't heard before Podcasting. Click on the image of the gals to get to their website. Funny, when I listen to their music (they have three MP3 samples online) and close my eyes I can see a Quentin Tarantino movie set to the music. They have the typical kind of retro-hip sound Tarantino loves to score in the background as some blood-letting mayhem is ready to happen. Give them a listen I think you'll agree. The song Bottoms Out played by the guys in the band is very cool. I don't think they have a CD out yet.

Actually both have music that I could see in his movies.

I think I've been reading too much about Tarantino and his movies lately. But hey, if you know Quentin, clue him in...tell him you heard it mentioned here first.

Big Brother is watching

Here's a satellite image of my old high school...Go Bulldogs! It is a satellite image via Google's new map service. Yeah they do maps like MapQuest but they have a feature to switch on high resolution satellite images instead of just drawings of maps. Click on the above image to try it yourself or go to: http://maps.google.com/

I still think that NASA's World Wind software has more of a 'wow' factor but it only runs on Windows. The Google website works on Windows or Mac.

Okay, Google's maps are not 'real high resolution', I mean they aren't KH-12 spy satellite images that can resolve if you're reading West Hawaii Today or the Honolulu Advertiser in the parking lot but they aren't too shabby.

Keiki sing

An audio post to go with the cellphone image of Kealakehe Intermediate students singing at Kona International Airport as they greet visitors.

Another shameless sales plug

This time my almost mint condition Palm Tungsten T3 is for sale. Click on the above image to see the eBay auction. Bettery hurry, the auciton ends Monday night (Hawaii time, might be Tuesday morning for others). More stuff to come as the Spring Cleaning sale continues. Some photo gear coming too, a bunch of Nikon CoolPix accessory lenses. Everything must go.

*UPDATE: SOLD!*