life, coding, technology, outdoors, photography
Lotta's Fountain, originally uploaded by Dave Schumaker.
Today marks 105 years after the great earthquake and fire ravaged San Francisco in 1906. I decided to take a stroll downtown and pay my respects at Lotta's Fountain.
I took this photo at 2:54PM. Three minutes later, a magnitude 3.8 earthquake hit the Bay Area. It was located on the San Andreas fault and was just southeast of where the 1906 epicenter was thought to be. What?!
This is an epically awesome photo by Chris Kotsiopoulos taken over the course of 30 hours near Athens, Greece.
[via Kottke]
"F this train! (Don't worry, it's all cool.)" - January 3rd, 2011
Even when I'm otherwise pissed off at SF Muni, the F line always pulls through. It's one of my favorite ways to travel through the city -- the historic cars, the old seats, and the awesome growl of the train as it travels down the tracks. It's not the quickest, but it's fun!
Divisadero at night, in front of Gamescape in San Francisco. I absolutely love their logo (it's the city skyline).
Ringing in the New Year with some simple light painting in our apartment. Here's to hoping 2011 is awesome!
Is it that time of the year already? 2010 has absolutely flown by! One of my favorite ways to reflect on the past year is to look back on it through the photos I've taken. See previously, my photographic year in reviews for 2009, 2008, and 2007.
One thing I find particularly striking is that I've used my iPhone and Canon S90 more and more, and my DSLR significantly less. It kind of bums me out. Something I'd like to refocus on in 2011 is getting back into using my DSLR!
Anyway, let the review begin!
We started the year off by seeing a friend's brother make a guest appearance during a Beats Antique show at the Independent in San Francisco. (If you haven't heard them, do check it out. Some great tunes and a good show featuring some interesting interpretive dance!)
We also got to dog-sit for our friends Scott and Marcie. Can you say cutest dog ever?
Of course, our cats would have something to say about that. Jealous, much?
More music, please! State Radio (one of my favorites) at the Fillmore.
Also, San Francisco can have some seriously great weather, even in January! Hello, colors!
The cats were always demanding attention. This was fun to wake up to.
Overall, a pretty mellow month! I did finally get a chance to go out and use my DSLR. A new sculpture was put up at Patricia's Green in Hayes Valley.
It's only February, and I already feel live I've been taking an overwhelming amount of cat photos.
Shot some things for my friends hosting BarBot 2010. (You can also see a video I shot of this thing in action.)
I got a new bike! Hello, beautiful!
Traveled to Austin for SXSW and gdgt live in Austin. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to take many pictures. But I did snap a photo of this bacon bloody mary. Umm, yes!
Returned to the Left Coast to spot this crazy art car in the neighborhood.
Doggie Diner Heads at the Laughing Squid going away party.
Bonfires on Ocean Beach!
Waited in line early in the morning for the iPad launch. An AP photographer snapped this photo as I picked up an iPad for the first time ever.
Might as well put the iPad to use -- banana bread baking!
Explored the SF Underground Farmers' Market. Pretty damn crazy!
Random trip to Southern California, where I stopped by Galco's Soda Pop Shop. Crazy amounts of soda! Check out my post on Laughing Squid.
Stopped by my parents' place and got to see Axl. It would be the last time I'd ever see him.
My old-roommate Julie celebrated her engagement with her new fiance, Ryan. A mighty fine looking couple!
And because of this, Kerry and I got to play dress up!
Also, Bacon Camp! Went to support my friends on the Starvin Marvins BBQ team!
And here are the tasty, tasty MOINK balls they made.
Another gdgt event! This time, we visited Chicago -- where I decided to use my phone to take crappy pictures with crappy toy camera apps.
gdgt live in Chicago was fun though!
June rolls around -- it's WWDC time in San Francisco, and that means a new iPhone is coming out!
So, of course I was there for the Stevenote on behalf of gdgt. Hey, Steve!
Later that month, I hung out with the Starvin Marvins team again as they went to a BBQ competition.
Huh, it seems like I haven't taken cat photos in awhile. Time to fix that.
New iPhone 4 finally arrived. I hear it has a pretty good camera. Time to test it out.
Also, the World Cup was going on! So, obviously we had friends over and it was time to cheer on the Red, White, and Blue. (Of course, Sanjin shows up in a Croatia jersey, but I guess it's the thought that counts.)
Speaking of Sanjin, he got married!
Needed to get away from the oppressive fog in the city, so we ventured up to Point Reyes, for a day of oyster shucking.
We also got ourselves a new office! No more working out of our apartments. Pretty nice. A photo from the early days.
Camping trip season! I discovered a creepily familiar Paul Bunyan.
Sitting around a campfire...
Canoeing!
More canoeing!
And back to the city and dealing with our transit system.
I love the F line.
And another Apple event soon approaches...
Another Apple keynote. iPods, Apple TV's, oh my!
We went out to Sacramento to surprise and cheer on our friends in Starvin Marvins at another BBQ competition.
They won second place for their chicken!
gdgt live in Boston! This time, I'm flying out early, so I can check some things out.
MIT
Near MIT - Kendell Square
Who met the Tron Guy? This guy!
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival arrives in town. I can't think of a better way to spend a foggy day in the park.
It's October. Do you know what that means? Hear that sound? "It's the sound of freedom." This time, I rented a gigantic, 400mm lens for the Blue Angels' show.
There were also some pretty crazy clouds in San Francisco.
Also, a street food bonanza was happening at Off the Grid.
Working across the street from Blue Bottle Coffee was proving to be dangerous.
Kerry took me on a surprise visit to the Napa Valley Wine Train.
This thing called a World Series happened in San Francisco. Since I'm a Dodgers' fan, I have no idea what that is.
San Francisco kept looking mighty fine, as always.
Party in the streets, as the Giants would go on to win the World Series.
An election happened...
City Hall was bathed in orange for the Giants win.
A World Series parade...
Aubrey Huff wears his "rally thong."
It was homecoming (for gdgt). gdgt live in San Francisco preparation resulted in tons of boxes in our office.
I don't care what people think, I still love dogs.
Quick stop in Southern California for a wedding in Laguna Beach.
Returned to San Francisco to find this nearby. Someone had a rough night.
I also began my transition from a hipster into a yuppy.
What can we say about December? It's rained a lot.
My dentist apparently has a crush on me.
Prepping for some awesome things in the 2011. It results in late nights at the office.
(And the month isn't even over, yet!)
In 2002, I went on a geology field trip to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Before hiking into the canyon, I took a shot of our class hiking down into the canyon with an old Olympus C-3000Z point and shoot (a crazy, 3.2 megapixes).
Recently, a publisher contacted me to license the photo for the cover of a geology textbook. After negotiating a price, I happily agreed! The featured photo is below:
Interestingly enough, a former girlfriend who was on the same trip (not in this frame), would proclaim a number of months later that I was a "poor photographer." Hah, it's ironic that this particular image ended up being licensed!
The media is abuzz about a mysterious "missile launch" that happened off the coast of Southern California yesterday.
Interestingly enough, while growing up, I remember seeing a number of missile launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base while at our home in Southern California, nearly 220 MILES east of Vandenberg's launch facilities! I looked through my photo archives this evening and found a series of (very blurry) photos I took on September 19th, 2002 from my parents' house in Redlands, California.
You can read more information about this particular launch (along with some REALLY COOL photos) right here. It was a test of the Minuteman III rocket and this specific launch is referenced as "Glory Trip 180GM."
It's a shame the Space Shuttle never ended up launching from Vandenberg. We would have had fantastic seats for the launch, even though we were 220 miles away!
Click here for larger size.
In 2008, a number of friends and I traveled around the Adriatic Sea on a sailboat, visiting various islands off the coast of Croatia. Toward the end of our trip, we stopped by the small coastal village of Korčula (map).
While there, I decided to take off for a bit and go on a hike outside of town. I stumbled across an old fort hiding in the woods.
Curious about it, I walked inside to explore it for a bit. I'll admit, it was kind of dark, dusty, and rather creepy. But also pretty cool!
I even found a way onto the roof of the structure, where I took the awesome panorama that you see at the top of this post.
As I was falling asleep a few nights ago, I thought about this trip and this structure specifically. I still didn't know anything about it and random internet searches over the past two years revealed nothing.
I had the idea to load up Google Earth and view a layer of Panoramio, which shows photos embedded at where they were taken. While viewing the area near Korcula, I noticed a number of photos near the fort I had stumbled across. And they were named!
The mystery was solved: Fort Wellington!
This is the English tower Fort Wellington that was built in 1813 on the place of the Venetian fortification of the open type from 1616. It is located on the hill above Korcula Old Town, about 20 minutes walk along the steps from Plokata - the main square. This building is currently deserted and is dangerous to climb the staircase inside the tower, as they are old and unreliable. Forteca tower is also devastated by horrible mobile phone network cables and transmitting masts that are placed there by Croatian mobile phone company.
Built in 1813, dangerous to climb, but awesome views. So fun! Interestingly enough, when I visited in 2008, they had actually taken the transmitting masts off the top of the building and moved them to a structure located near the building.
Anyway, it was a fun mystery to finally have solved! I'm glad I took the chance to go exploring for a bit. Bonus: the views on the hike back down to Korcula was top notch as well!
Here are some photos I shot during yesterday's air show practice for Fleet Week 2010 here in San Francisco. For this year's show, I rented a gigantic 400mm lens from BorrowLenses.com. You can see the full set here.
How crazy was this 400mm lens? Check out this photo of myself and Marcie Lynn (a fantastic Bay Area photographer).
photo by Scott Johnston