Police shot a homeless man brandishing a knife around 1:30 p.m. today shutting down several blocks around 6th and Stanford. The ensuing investigation prevented access to the UCEPP building where the Skid Row Photography Club holds its meetings.
According to an eye-witness, the police officers asked the man to put the knife down. When he allegedly lunged at them, they opened fire and shot him. The police then proceeded to handcuff him and called an ambulance.
The eye-witness noted that the ambulance took an unusually long time to arrive, upwards of 20 minutes. Normally emergency services arrive very quickly in Skid Row as their station is just a few blocks away. The suspect was still alive when loaded into the ambulance, but his current condition is unknown.
The Skid Row Photography Club, of which I am a co-founder along with Michael Blaze, meets every Tuesday at 3 p.m. at the UCEPP center. We have a gallery show coming up starting with a soft opening in the beginning of November at Stella Dottir's shop and gallery. The official opening will be during the Downtown Art Walk on the 13th of November.
I am very excited about the opening. The group has produced an amazing body of work. Too much to display in just one show. The website will be up soon so and you'll be able to see this wonderful work for yourself.
The crime scene from an officer involved shooting inconveniently blocks access to the Skid Row Photography Club meeting in this photo from earlier today.
The UCEPP building is inaccessible for the Skid Row Photo Club meeting due to an investigation of an officer involved shooting that happened earlier in the day.
Update: ABC 7 has a story along with video and photos from my eye-witness.
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 -
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Last Saturday Penelope and I hiked to the top of Mt. San Jacinto via Deer Springs Trail. It was our most challenging hike so far, covering nearly 20 miles with 5,200 feet of elevation gain.
San Jacinto is the third tallest mountain in Southern California. If you've ever driven out to Palm Springs, it's that giant mountain that seems to explode out of the desert to the south of the 10 freeway.
There are several routes to the peak, one of which is to ride the tram and then take a reasonably short hike up from there. A much longer route is called cactus to clouds and is about 23 miles up with over 10,000 feet of elevation gain. We chose the next hardest route, up Deer Springs trail.
The Deer Springs trailhead is located less than a mile from Idyllwild. We pulled in to Idyllwild a bit later than we had intended and secured our permit. We hit the trail at 9:30 a.m. and started our way up.
The first seven miles were very gentle, gaining roughly 500 feet of elevation per mile. The scenery was beautiful with changing leaves in hues of gold and orange and lovely views down the mountain. The weather was perfect, nice and cool with a gentle breeze.
We averaged two miles per hour on the way up. For the last few miles we felt great. The seventh mile was the hardest, we gained about 1,000 feet in one mile, but even that wasn't very difficult.
We reached the summit of Mt. San Jacinto at 2:30 p.m. and ate lunch. The view from the top is spectacular especially on a clear day. We took a few photos and then headed down.
We chose a different and slightly longer route for our descent. We passed through several verdant cienegas. Cienegas are basically swamps, but beautiful and in the mountains. The three was hiked through were lush with foliage and water flowing through their muddy banks.
Our route down took longer than we originally estimated and the sun set while we were a couple miles from the trailhead. Being a former Boy Scout I am always (over) prepared and of course we brought our headlamps just in case.
For some odd reason, those last two miles seemed a lot longer than they did nine hours earlier! We ended up back at the car right around 6:30 p.m.
The Deer Springs trail is a wonderful route up to San Jacinto. It was great training for our upcoming cactus to clouds hike. We look forward to doing it again soon.
The setting sun casts a red glow on the ground behind Penelope during our hike down from San Jacinto.
Dave and Penelope pose for a photo after reaching the peak of Mt. San Jacinto.
The view is beautiful from halfway up the Deer Springs trail.
Click here to see more photos from our San Jacinto hike.
Monday, October 27th, 2008 -
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Friday, October 24th, 2008 -
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I have an addiction to photo gear. I own a crapload of equipment and I'm always buying new stuff to the delight of my accountant wife. Along the way I've gone through a number of camera bags, each progressively better than the last.
I started out with a smallish Lowepro bag when I bought my first SLR. It had this incredibly dangerous problem in which the plastic buckle that held strap on would randomly come loose. I remember when I was at Samy's Camera talking to a saleperson and told him about my problem. He said that's why I should use Tamrac, as it's the best bag around. Ever since then I've been a Tamrac guy.
I started out with and older version of the Tamrac 5502, which is a relatively small bag. It worked fine when I had one camera, one lens and one flash. As my photo equipment collection expanded, I quickly outgrew the 5502. I currently use it to hold my Sony PCM-D50 audio recorder, Sennheiser MD46 ENG mic, Sennheiser HD 25-1 II headphones and various cables.
While I still used this bag for my SLR, I bought a nice selection of medium format Mamiya cameras and lenses from eBay on the cheap. I needed a giant bag to hold all of them. Tamrac used to make a bag specifically for medium format cameras called the Tamrac 622 [photo here]. They no longer make it, but I found one on eBay and purchased it. It's a great (both in size and functionality) bag. I don't shoot medium format as much as I would like, but at least it's well protected in that massive 622.
My next bag was the Tamrac 5608. The 5608 holds two cameras with lenses attached along with several other lenses, flashes, HV batteries, etc. This worked well for me until I picked up the tack-sharp Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS lens. Unfortunately I couldn't leave this lens on the cameras that were in the 5608. At one point I missed an amazing shot of a hawk while I scrambled to change the lens.
The missed shot happened during my vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico with my lovely wife Penelope. Shortly after that we hit a local photo store where I purchased the Tamrac 617, also known as the Super Pro 17. It holds two cameras with lenses attached, including one with the 70-200 on it. It also has room for another lens, a flash, cables and various other accessories. I now use my 5608 to hold my flash gear. The 617 is awesome and is my current camera bag.
The Pro 17 has one problem, it doesn't have room for my laptop. Because of this I have a backpack with my laptop and cables in it and a camera bag. This results in me frequently being without my camera as it's a pain to carry two heavy bags. I recently went to Samy's to check out a bag that I've had my eye on for some time now.
The bag I've been lusting over is the Tamrac 619 also known as the Pro 19. This bag is awesome. It's wider than the Pro 17 so it has room for two or three more lenses. It also has side pockets which will let me stow either my audio equipment or HV battery packs. Finally, and most importantly, it has room for a laptop and cables.
I ordered the Pro 19 tonight from amazon. Once I have it, I will rarely be without my camera gear. Hopefully this will allow me to take more photos for fun, as opposed to just shooting when I'm on assignment. I'm really looking forward to its arrival, Tamrac bags are wonderful and I fully endorse and recommend them.
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 -
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I shot this gallery yesterday and my editor and I turned it around in less than 24 hours. You can view the gallery here on Wired, if you like it, give it a digg.
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 -
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Yesterday Penelope and I hiked to the top of Mt. Wilson. It was a tough hike, but well worth the views, plus it's always nice to get a good 6 hour workout!
We started our hike from the trailhead on Mt. Wilson Trail road at roughly 9:30 a.m. The first two miles of the trail was highly trafficked with dozens of day hikers. This part of the trail is also barren thanks to a recent fire and in the morning the sun really beats down on you.
After a mile and a half we passed a fork down to the First Water swimming hole. Once past First Water we hardly saw any other hikers.
3.5 miles into the trip we reached Orchard Camp. This was the halfway point so we stopped and had some snacks and hydrated. We met two mountain bikers at Orchard Camp, they were the only folks on bikes we saw during out hike.
After snacking we headed up to the Winter Creek trail intersection. The last half mile before the intersection was the hardest part of the hike. The trail was narrow and exposed at times and there was little tree cover to shade us.
Once at Winter Creek trail we were excited to only have another 1.7 miles to go and we headed up the half mile and 500 feet of elevation gain of switchbacks to the old Mt. Wilson Toll Road. We followed the old road a half mile and then we took the small trail the final .7 mile up to the peak.
I always let Penelope lead because I tend to walk to fast and tire myself out and she's great at pacing us. For the last leg of the hike she was doing double time and we made it up to the peak quickly.
Once at the top I saw the parking lot and the tourists that drove up and said, "Wait you can drive up here?" Of course I knew there was a road up, but it was still funny at the time. Once at the peak we sat at a picnic bench and ate our lunches before heading down.
Going down the mountain is obviously faster than going up. What took us over three and a half ours to go up took us just over 2 hours to come down. We arrived at the trailhead seven hours after we started out, which includes roughly an hour for our snack and lunch breaks.
So the final stats: 6 hours of hiking time, 14 miles and 4,700 feet of elevation gain. It was a fun hike, although not as visually stimulating as Mt. Baldy. I'm not sure if this will be a repeat hike, but we definitely plan to drive up and do the observatory tour at some point.
San Gorgonio rises above the smog in the distance in this photo taken from the peak of Mt. Wilson on Sunday.
Dave and Penelope stand happily atop Mt. Wilson after hiking to the top in just over 3 hours on Sunday.
A wide array of antennas cover a hill close to the peak of Mt. Wilson.
You can view more photos from our hike to Mt. Wilson here.
Monday, October 20th, 2008 -
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Saturday, October 18th, 2008 -
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Awesome, internet-venerable website BoingBoing posted up a link and photo from my Industrial Landscapes series. It doesn't say so anywhere on my site, but limited edition archival prints of most images are available to purchase in both 13"x19" and 17"x22" formats. Email me for price and availability.
Friday, October 17th, 2008 -
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Three weeks ago, my lovely wife Penelope and I hiked Los Angeles County's tallest peak, Mt. San Antonio, also known as Mt. Baldy. It was a great day hike, with a hefty elevation gain and beautiful views of Southern California.
We started out later than we had originally planned, this was due to me sleeping in. I realized later that I slept in because I was worried about being able to complete the hike.
The route we took was 12 miles round trip, with over 4,000 feet of elevation gain. Those 4,000 fee up occurred in the first four miles of the hike.
We parked at Manker Flats and took the fire road up until we reached the Baldy Bowl trail. The trail cuts almost straight up from the road and is easy to miss, but we had a picture which helped us find it.
We headed up the trail for about two miles when we reached the San Antonio Ski Hut, also known as the Baldy Hut. At the hut we met some cool folks from the San Diego SAR team who fed us fresh baked cookies. After hanging out for a few minutes at the hut we continued on up the Baldy Bowl Trail.
Shortly after leaving the hut we reached some very steep switchbacks. It was tough going, and for the first time I can remember on a hike, Penelope was in no mood to make small talk. After we crested the last switchback she was feeling better and the chatting resumed, thankfully.
A few miles and another couple thousand feet of elevation gain later we were at the top. It took us roughly three hours to get to the summit. We sat down and enjoyed our well-deserved lunch. After eating we hydrated, put on a layer and headed down the Devil's Backbone Trail.
After the first part where the trail got narrow, I said, this isn't so bad, I wonder why people write that it is scary. A few miles later we got to the actual backbone, which was only a few feet wide with steep cliffs on both sides. It's not too bad in the summer, but according to my SAR teammates, it's quite frightening in winter when it's a giant ice-covered cornice of death.
When we made it down to the ski area we contemplated taking the chairlift down, but decided against it and continued down the fire road. The fire road isn't the most visually stimulating area and its long, gradual slope made for a somewhat boring end to the hike.
By the time we got to back to the car we were ready to get home, relax and have some tapas at Ciudad. We were exhausted, but happy that we made it, the whole hike took us just about 6 hours round trip.
Baldy was a great hike and we're looking forward to doing it again soon. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a vigorous day hike.
The sky is clear in the view looking out from the first mile of the Baldy Bowl trail.
This steel marker sits on the peak of Mt. San Antonio, AKA Mt. Baldy, the tallest peak in Los Angeles County.
Penelope starts down the Devil's Backbone trail after reaching the summit of Mt. Baldy.
Thursday, October 16th, 2008 -
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I have somewhat of a backlog of galleries for Wired.com right now. Earlier this week one of them posted, as well as a photo of my laptop. In case you were wondering I wrote all the captions and intros for the galleries, but the laptop one wasn't written by me.
This gallery is about a new technology that will allow a microscope to be squeezed onto a microchip.
That's my laptop.
This gallery is about a scientists at Caltech who have shrunken a still down to micro-size.
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 -
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I'm looking for my old friend from junior high: Adam Starr. We both grew up in the East Bay. We were both part of the Jewish Youth Group up there. I've looked for him on facebook and google to no avail. If you're around man, shoot me an email: [email protected]
Monday, October 13th, 2008 -
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I took some photos of a beautiful sunset behind some of the Windmills near Palm Springs a few weeks ago. Here is the resulting HDR image:
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 -
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Thanks to an unfortunate functionality change at the speech-to-text service Jott, I recently switched to reQall. Current generation speech-to-text (S2T) services allow you to call a toll-free number, record a short message and then actual humans transcribe your speech into text.
On my commute to and from work, I frequently think of new ideas for projects or tasks that I need to complete. I simply hit the S2T autodial and record whatever is on my mind. The S2T service then emails me the transcribed text.
OmniFocus, which I wrote about recently, has a nifty feature in which it grabs an email from Apple Mail with a predetermined sender and subject. It then adds the subject, which has the note in it, to my todo inbox. I think that S2T is one of my favorite tools of all time.
When I first heard of Jott, I was a bit skeptical. I didn't like the idea of a random person in some random country being paid a pittance to sit in a call center to listen to my thoughts and transcribe them. As I thought more about it, I realized that I would rarely if ever say anything confidential to the S2T service. So I started using Jott six months ago and I loved it. It was in beta and totally free.
Jott had some features that I rarely used, like the ability to send messages to any of my contacts. It also had features that I used every day, including its core function, speech-to-text. Once my note had been transcribed, an email with the note in the subject appeared in my inbox.
Recently, Jott stopped its beta program. In doing so it created a free plan, called Jott Express, which still allowed you to do S2T. The deal-killer was the fact that you now had to visit their website to retrieve the transcribed text.
That change broke my OmniFocus script. OmniFocus was expecting the transcribed text to show up in the email. There went the value of the service for me. I initially considered paying for the service, but decided to sleep on it.
I twittered a request for a Jott promo code, but instead got a response from a friendly hacker to check out reQall.
ReQall has the same basic functionality as Jott, but it's free. So far I have been very impressed with reQall. Its voice interface is slicker and more responsive than Jott's. ReQall also does a better job of transcribing my voice notes than Jott did.
All in all I'm very happy with reQall. If they end becoming a paid service I would choose them over Jott in a heartbeat.
Related Posts:
GTD with OmniFocus
Jott: Free Phone Based Transcription Service
Getting Things Done and How It Changed My Life
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 -
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Vera Gordon, 1912-2008
Many of my favorite childhood memories involve food. The smell of dinner fresh from the oven; the flavor of delicious home-baked goods; the joy that fills a happy kitchen. These visceral patterns were imprinted in my mind frequently during my youth and are still with me today.
At the center of many of my epicurean memories stands my beloved Grandmother, Vera Gordon. Clad in her apron, a smile on her face, a wooden spoon stirring a pot of bubbling borscht. Her food was not just made with love, it was love. And I loved every bite.
For my Grandmother's 90th birthday, my loving mother Rhoda created an amazing book honoring her cooking. Entitled "Vera's Table" this wonderful tome contained Grandma's best recipes. Each recipe was presented with a story written by a family member. I now, more than ever treasure this book and the recipes and stories it contains.
From pickles, to potato salad, from apple pie to poppy seed cookies I could never get enough of the wonderful delights she made. The pies she baked from the apples her loving husband Murray grew in their backyard were magical to me. It is something I will never forget, the time in her kitchen at her beautiful house by the sea in Santa Barbara.
My Grandmother also never forgot those joyful times, and one of her favorite stories was one that I don't actually remember experiencing. I was only nine months old on this particular visit to Grandma's house. On her table she had a big bowl of freshly made guacamole. To her great surprise and amusement I pointed at the bowl at the table and demanded "Taste 'em 'cados." ... see, even then I enjoyed eating.
My brother Dan and I always enjoyed our family trips to visit Grandma and Grandpa. Climbing the trees in the yard, eating (of course), causing mischief like little boys tend to do. I recall one time my Grandparents had just installed a brand new redwood fence around their yard. My brother and I were playing in the yard when I decided it would be fun to knock out the knots from their knot-holes with a metal bar. I encouraged my brother to join in and pretty soon we had turned the nice new fence into a wooden version of swiss cheese. That was the only time I saw my Grandmother truly upset, and looking back on the situation I don't blame her.
As Jewish Grandmothers tend to do, Vera always had advice for me. In my teenage years, this wasn't always easy to hear. No teenage boy wants to be told what to do, especially not by his Grandmother. Now that I think about it though, everything she told me was true, I was just to stubborn to listen.
Now that I've grown up, for the most part, I can reflect on the knowledge my Grandmother imparted to me. She told me about what it means to be a mensch and encouraged me to do the right things in life. To have a family and to raise them well. She didn't just tell me these things, she showed me by example.
I like to think I inherited some of my best qualities from my Grandmother: my humor, my wit, and of course my modesty, but most importantly my love of food and family.
Vera Gordon was a strong woman, a loving mother, a caring Grandmother, a powerful wordsmith, an amazing cook and a lifelong inspiration to me and many others. She will live on forever in our memories.
Monday, September 8th, 2008 -
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I just recently recieved one of The Great Internet Migratory Box(es) of Electronics Junk (TGIMBOEJ). The TGIMBOEJ is an awesome box of random electronics that various geeks send to each other. The idea was started by Lenore over at Evil Mad Scientist Labs.
Basically you put your name and contact info on a Wiki page devoted to perspective TGIMBOEJ recipients. Then someone finds your name on said list, and either creates a new box to send you or forwards on the box they currently possess.
The rules are simple, take what you want from the box, add some cool stuff, and then send it on to someone else in the list. You can see the status of the various boxes on this wiki page.
I received a box called Big Box of Electronic Booty started by someone who didn't add their info to the wiki. The box then made it to Jen Grier, who sent if off to Sidney who then sent it to me.
I will be mailing the box off on monday to Logan from Binary Tide.
I picked out a few cool parts including some LEDs, a giant buzzer and some zip-ties. I added a giant LED, a potentiometer and some other cool parts including a 1GB SD card.
The TGIMBOEJ project is awesome, I'm looking forward to receiving another box some time soon!
One of the items I kept from the TGIMBOEJ was the big red buzzer (upper left). I haven't hooked it up yet, but I bet it's loud!
Monday, September 1st, 2008 -
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After three years of life changing organizational goodness, I migrated my plain-text-based GTD system to OmniFocus.
My text list system has not been the most efficient implementation. I decided it was time for a standalone application. After reading this GTD application comparison and watching a screencast about OmniFocus I decided to download the trial and give it a shot.
OmniFocus is a slick application. Thanks to its Cocoa goodness, it integrates perfectly with OS X. It has an easy-to-use interface, but its plethora of features takes some getting used to.
The hardest part was manually importing my several hundred tasks and projects. I had to copy and paste these one by one. It would be a nice feature if OmniFocus could parse plain text files and import each line as a task.
Once my tasks were imported I created projects and folders as you can see in the screenshot below. I then created contexts, some of which you can see in the right hand column of the screenshot.
When I was using my text lists I didn't fully utilize contexts properly, but OmniFocus makes them easy to implement. You can switch to Context mode, select a context like "Office" and see all the tasks that can be done in your office.
OmniFocus has a nice feature called Perspectives, where you can save a predetermined view of your tasks. I have one which I use to implement Zen Habits MITs (Most Important Tasks). Every night before I go to bed I review my Next Actions perspective and flag the tasks I want to complete the next day. The MITs perspective shows my flagged items, which I then (in theory) do.
I also have the iPhone app installed. It's not cheap: $20, but it works fairly well apart from the syncing speed. It takes a very long time (5-10 minutes) to sync changes over the EDGE network, which basically make it close to useless for quick entry. If I know I'm going to be using is I can let it sync for a few minutes.
OmniFocus is supposed to sync to a WebDAV server, but it fails on my FreeBSD server running Apache 2.2.3. I am forced to sync using Apple's buggy Mobile Me. I hope they fix the WebDAV sync issues before my Mobile Me free trial runs out!
OmniFocus: The Good
- Feature rich GTD management.
- Contexts rock for doing what you can, where you can.
- Perspectives make reviewing, viewing and doing fun and easy.
- Simple, system-wide quick-entry is only a keystroke away.
- Due-dates and start-dates make planning and remember tasks easier.
- Automated email parsing pulls tasks from Jott and other email based note taking systems.
- SneakyPeak version with syncing is still in beta and thus is free.
OmniFocus: The Bad
- WebDAV export and syncing is broken.
- Syncing to iPhone app over EDGE takes over 5 minutes, making the app nearly worthless for quick entry.
- iPhone app is expensive: $20
- Desktop app is even more expensive: $80 ($120 for family pack)
Despite the imperfections and relatively high price, I really like OmniFocus. As soon as they fix the syncing (or they stop extending the free trial) I will be purchasing a license.
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 -
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This weekend my wonderful, beautiful backpacking wife Penelope and I hiked to the peak of the tallest mountain in Southern California: San Gorgonio.
We have been training every weekend for this backpacking trip by taking nice long day hikes. The difference between our day hikes and the San Gorgonio summit was its 24 mile length compared to the 6 mile trips and of course the fact that we were carrying heavy packs.
We started out early Friday morning and drove up the 38 and then seven miles on a dirt road. This road took us to the Fish Creek trailhead where we parked and started our ascent.
The trail was beautiful and green with a nice gentle climb of about 1,800 feet in six miles. We didn't see another person the whole day we were hiking. Fish Creek trail is definitely less crowded than the other routes to the top.
Once we got to Mine Shaft Saddle we headed down to our campsite at Mine Shaft Flat about a mile and 600 vertical feet downhill. We set up camp and cooked up some dinner, which was quite good despite consisting of various types of ramen noodles and a package of spicy salmon.
The next morning we headed about a half-mile down the trail towards Big Tree camp to fill our water bottles. The water was flowing nicely and was icy cold and fresh. We filled up our containers and then used an MSR MIOX to purify the water.
What I failed to notice was that the test strips which detect the level of chlorine ions made by the MIOX were expired by two years. This caused us to keep adding the MIOX solution and our water tasted like it was fresh from a pool. It ended up being ok to drink, but not the most pleasant experience. Better than being dehydrated or getting Giardia!
The next morning we ate breakfast, broke down camp and headed up to the trailhead where Fish Creek trail intersects with the trail to the summit: Sky High View trail. Once at the intersection we unloaded our packs and stashed our gear, bringing only food, water, first aid and emergency supplies, my ham radio and the SPOT messenger.
The SPOT was nice to have, it allowed us to send our family our position throughout our trip. If there was an emergency we could have also used it to ask for help of request a rescue.
Once we had unloaded our packs, the four and a half mile 3,500' elevation gain hike was actually pretty easy. We made it up in roughly two hours despite Penelope feeling a little tired at the end, probably from low blood sugar.
At the peak we rested, took some photos and ate lunch. We chatted with some boy scouts and their troop leader. I then made contact with someone in Huntington Beach via the Catalina amateur radio repeater.
We also met a nice Israeli astrophysicist named Amri Wandel. Amri happened to be in the LA area teaching a class at UCLA called "Astrophysics and life in the Universe." He hiked down with us and we had a very interesting conversation about Black Holes, Quasars, Pulsars, Unified Field Theory and much more. He has some interesting papers about to come out that I will likely cover for Wired.com.
On the way down we made good time, only stopping once to grab our stashed gear. We made it down the mountain in about four and a half hours from the peak to the trail head. In all we hiked 17 miles on Saturday and about 24 miles total.
We had a great time and we are looking forward to backpacking again soon. We plan on bagging Mount Whitney around this time next year and Half Dome some time before that.
San Jacinto stands tall in the distance as seen from San Gorgonio peak at 11,500 feet last Saturday.
Monday, August 25th, 2008 -
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Last weekend my lovely wife Penelope and I hiked to the top of Gaviota Peak. We have been training for a backpacking trip this coming weekend to the top of Southern California's tallest mountain: San Gorgonio.
Gaviota Peak is located about 20 minutes north of Santa Barbara a few miles in from the coast. The trail is fairly popular, but most people opt to hit the hot springs instead of hiking to the peak. The springs are less than a mile from the trailhead.
We started our hike in the early afternoon and made it to the top in under 2 hours. The trail is an old fire road in mediocre condition. The hike takes your from about 300 feet above sea-level to 2,458 feet.
I decided to bring my camera gear and tripod to shoot some panoramas at the peak. You can see one frame of the panorama below. Unfortunately the sky was quite hazy so you can't see very far. Ideally I would like to do this hike again after a good rain.
The hike was strenuous, but the enjoyable. I look forward to doing it again some time soon. I am excited about our San Gorgonio backpacking trip this weekend.
My wife and I stand on top of Gaviota Peak near Santa Barbara last Sunday after a nice 3 mile hike with over 2000' of elevation gain.
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 -
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Recently I picked up a new-to-me Selmer CL-200 clarinet. I love the warm sound it produces thanks to its all-wood construction. I have been practicing every day and enjoying it greatly.
I started playing clarinet in elementary school and played it through middle school. Sadly I stopped playing in high school, perhaps having to do with not wanting to be a band geek. A few years ago I bought a cheap plastic clarinet which I played once and put away.
Several weeks ago I had an urge to play again so I pulled my old clarinet out of storage and started practicing again. Surprisingly I hadn't completely forgotten my old skills and within a few days I was reading and playing music again.
I found a cool site created by a klezmer band in Manchester that had tons of klezmer PDF sheet music and MIDI files to download. I downloaded and printed every single song on their site and choose about a dozen to start practicing.
After deciding I really wanted to get into playing clarinet again, I started to yearn for a better instrument. When I played in junior high I had a nice old wood clarinet. It had beautiful tone and the grain was lovely.
I started to look around for a good deal on a nicely serviced wood clarinet online. I ended up finding the Clarinet Closet. The Clarinet Closet services used clarinets and sells them at a reasonable price. I certainly could have found a cheaper clarinet on ebay, but I wanted to buy from someone who actually spent the time to service and play the clarinet.
I opted for the cheapest wood clarinet they had for sale, a Selmer CL-200. It set me back about $260 plus shipping. I paid via paypal and the clarinet arrived in the mail just 2 days later. It's amazing that you can ship something through the USPS and it arrives twice as fast compared to UPS for half the price.
I love the clarinet. The SL-200 has a beautiful tone and feels great, especially for a student level / intermediate instrument. At some point I may upgrade to a higher level clarinet, but the CL-200 will suit me perfectly for some time.
Once I master a few dozen klezmer tunes I'm going to look for a violinist, organist and perhaps a DJ / producer to start a modern klezmer dubstep / drum'n'bass group. That should be interesting!
A close-up of the bell of my new wood clarinet shows the Selmer logo.
Monday, August 18th, 2008 -
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Last weekend I covered Defcon 16, the world's largest hacker convention for Wired.com's Threat Level blog. Like last year, I was paired with Kim Zetter, one of Wired's best writers and an all around cool person.
Zetter wrote all the serious articles, which I provided pictures for. These articles included:
I did end up writing a few features that weren't hard news, but were still fun to write and shoot:
The Defcon NOC piece ended up on the front page of Slashdot, Gizmodo, Hack A Day, BoingBoing and more. Some of the other pieces I wrote also got picked up on various other sites.
I had a great time this year at Defcon, it was my 8th Defcon and I can't wait for next year. I'm looking forward to working with Zetter again and getting another tour of the NOC!
Wired.com piece in which I toured the Defcon Network Operations Center.
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 -
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I have arrived in Las Vegas for Defcon and Black Hat (not in that order). I love Defcon. I believe this will be my 8th year at the 'con. I've been covering it for Wired since last year and for my own blog the year before.
I also posted a sneak peek of the Defcon 16 badge on Wired.com earlier this week. I can't wait to get my hands on a production version.
A nice selection of supplies covers my bed including 8 SD cards (for friends), IR LEDs, a soldering station, a bare bones arduino, a breadboard, various components and Maker's Mark.
Thursday, August 7th, 2008 -
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This weekend my lovely wife Penelope and I hiked up to the ruins of the White City Resort on Echo Mountain.
The hike is nice and short, a little over five miles round trip. The trail is mostly unshaded and gains about 1,500 feet of elevation on the way up. We didn't get going until around 11:00 a.m. at which time it was quite warm.
Once we made it to the top the hard work was totally worth it. The Mount Lowe Railway was once an amazing railway built to service 3 small resorts. It ended up being plagued by various disasters and shutting down around World War II.
The ruins on top are quite interesting and include foundations, a cistern (see below) and the remains of the cable wheel and part of a train. If you like ruins and deserted places you will enjoy this hike.
We plan on returning, but in cooler weather and heading to the top of Mt. Lowe, which is another 3 miles past White City. If you go on this hike, bring plenty of water!
Penelope stands on the edge of the Echo Mountain House's cistern after hiking for a bit over an hour.
Click here to see more photos from our Mt. Lowe / White City hike.
Monday, August 4th, 2008 -
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Recently I wrote my first Arduino program to fade LEDs. Arduino is an open source electronics platform designed to be easy to use by "artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments." Basically it's a microcontroller that can be easily programmed to do fun things.
I am using a low cost clone called a Bare Bones Arduino. One of the best parts about the Bard-Bones Arduino clone is that it comes in a kit. Soldering stuff together is fun!
Previously I wrote about my adventures with a BASIC Stamp. The Arduino is very similar to a BASIC Stamp, but uses the C programming language instead of BASIC. This makes it more powerful and extensible.
In the past I had only written one program in C to control some serial port extenders. Writing in C for this Arduino project was a lot of fun and it showed me how similar C is to PHP, which I have been writing extensively for over 10 years.
The program I wrote was based on some code from Peter Mackey at Pixelriot. I changed it up a bit so I could control the LEDs fading on an individual basis. I then made it do a Knight Rider fade (see video below). Here is a link to my version of the Arduino 5940 code.
A short video showing pulsing LEDs triggered by an Arduino controlling the TLC5940 chip.
The code controls a Texas Instruments TLC5940 chip. The TLC5940 is an LED controller that can fade up to 16 LEDs to over 4,000 levels of brightness. You can chain the chips together to control around 400 total LEDs.
This first program is actually a proof of concept for a project I'm working on. I can't really talk too much about the project, but it will involve a whole mess of LEDs and an old school public art installation.
Currently I'm working on a new Arduino project that is a multipurpose long exposure, intervalometer and sound and light trigger for Canon cameras. I'll post more about that when it's done.
I'm really enjoying both writing in C and playing with electronics. Microcontollers are awesome.
This Bare-Bones Arduino clone connected to a breadboard is controlling a Texas Instruments TLC5940 LED controller which in turn is pulsing the LEDs
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 -
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Thursday, July 31st, 2008 -
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Two weeks ago my Search and Rescue team practiced a highly complicated technique known as a highline during our training at Deep Creek. Basically a highline is a rope across a canyon on which a litter and attendant can move both vertically and horizontally.
We started the day by lugging the huge amount of gear a highline requires to our destination. This gear included over a thousand feet of rope, over 50 pounds of hardware, rock protection, webbing, the litter and our personal packs.
This training was different from our usual highline training because one of our teammates was shooting photos on rope. We rigged a separate system for him about 10 feet above the highline so he could get a good angle.
The first part of rigging the highline was getting the rope across the gap. To do this we employed a giant slingshot that we used to launch a little buckshot filled bag. The bag is connected to a high strength kevlar thread. Once this is across we attached it to a heave line which we attached to the thread. We then reeled it back in using fishing pole. That line was then attached to the ropes which we sent back and attached to an anchor.
Once we had the track line rigged we rigged another line through a pulley at the far anchor. Then brought it back to a very large pulley called a kootenay which is where the litter hung from. This line was used to pull the litter out away from the haul team.
Another line was attached to the other side of the kootenay to pull it back towards the haul team. Finally one very long line was connected through the kootenay and down to the litter on a pulley. This line was the reave line and was be used to raise and lower the litter.
As you can probably tell this was a complicated system. It saw strength levels not normally seen in a standard rescue system so certain special features like high-strength tie-offs were used. High strength tie-offs use two prussiks (basically loops or rope wrapped around a larger rope) to increase the strength of anchor point tie ins.
Running the system was also non-trivial as the haul team had to respond to commands other than just up down and stop. They also had to to move the patient and attendant horizontally.
At the end of the day we actually did a great job of rigging everything and got set up in a reasonable amount of time. Especially considering that we also needed to rig a separate system for our photographer.
Hanging from a highline Mark Kinsey works as a litter attendant during a training session for the San Bernardino Sheriff's Cave Rescue Team
More photos after the jump...
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 -
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This morning I took a 20 minute flight on Virgin America out to the Mojave Spaceport to witness (and photograph) the unveiling of WhiteKnightTwo. I had a great time and wrote an article about it for Wired Science that I posted on the tarmac waiting to fly back to LAX. I ran in to Xeni Jardin and met Brian Lam when I was there.
Monday, July 28th, 2008 -
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Recently I have been participating in the Skid Row Photography Club (SRPC). When I was part of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC) I requested funding for club which Michael Blaze started. DLANC ended up putting in $2,000.
Per the funding proposal I submitted, half of that money was to go towards purchasing cameras. We ended up buying six Fujifilm Finepix Z20FD digital cameras and six 2GB cards.
The 10 megapixel cameras remain property of DLANC, but each were assigned to a member of the SRPC. So far the participants have been very happy with their cameras. I have been ecstatic with the resulting images.
After a few more months of shooting, I will be curating a gallery show with prints from each member. We have another $1,000 in the budget to matte and frame the work. Any income from the sale of the photos will be split between the SRPC and the photographer.
It is inspiring to see the participants enthusiastically embrace photography. Each member of the club has their own style and interests. I am very excited about the upcoming show and this great group of photographers.
The Skid Row Photography Club meets every Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. in the UUCEP lounge on the corner of 6th and Stanford in Downtown Los Angeles. Everyone is welcome, no camera required.
Note: The Skid Row Photography Club is seeking funding and donations for more camera and computer equipment. We are also looking for a gallery or other venue to display the work during an upcoming Downtown Art Walk. If you know anyone how would be interested in helping, please let me know.
Members of the Skid Row Photography Club pose for a group shot in the UCEPP lounge in Downtown Los Angeles.
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 -
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Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 -
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Recently I took a trip that included 300 feet of rappels to the bottom of Cave of The Winding Stair. My Search and Rescue Team specializes in Cave Rescue. Every few months we do our best to train in-cave.
Last month we headed out to the Providence Mountains in the Mojave National Preserve. After camping overnight, we met up with some folks for the Barstow Mine Rescue Team for our joint in-cave-familiarization training (video of our previous joint training, in-mine). We then made our way on a relatively rough 4WD trail to the cave parking lot.
Being that we were doing a rescue scenario, we had to hump a good deal of gear. The trail is less than a mile long, but up the whole way. I prefer walking up-trail before caving. Walking up-trail caving is no fun.
Once inside the cave we split into two groups. The first group, which I was part of, was comprised of people who had never been in Cave of the Winding Stair. Our goal was to rappel down to the bottom and ascend back up while the second team prepared the rigging for the rescue scenario.
John Norman led our group, having been in the cave many times. He rigged each of the 3 drops and we rappelled down after him. The final drop was a 130 foot free hanging rappel. Fun!
We made it to the bottom of the last rappel in roughly two hours. Once there we climbed down to the lowest point of the cave and signed the register. After climbing back up to the main room we rested, snacked and then begun our ascent.
Rappelling is easy, you just go down the rope. Ascending is hard work. I use the Frog System which works well for tight squeezes and passing knots and rebelays. It's a real workout going straight up a rope, and even more challenging to go over an edge or through a squeeze. Either way, though, it was good fun.
As you can see in the photo below, I was wearing shorts. I probably should have worn pants as the rope ended up giving me an abrasion on my leg that made the final ascents painful.
Once we were back at the top of the cave in a section called "The Office", the second group had finished rigging the rescue scenario. To make things a bit more... interesting, we had two photographers from the Sheriff's department with us. We rigged a separate system for them which included an interesting winch-like device called a paillardet. The paillardet is great for raising and lowering a single-person load, but it weighs a ton.
We ran the rescue scenario successfully, pulling our mock patient, a litter attendant and both photographers out of the cave. Unfortunately I didn't get a free ride out!
Caving is great fun and I highly recommend it as long as your aren't afraid of tight spaces, the dark, spiders, bats, heights, exposure or getting dirty.
This photo taken by my teammate Jen Hopper shows me hanging at the bottom of a 130 foot rappel in Cave of the Winding Stair.
Monday, July 14th, 2008 -
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Saturday, July 12th, 2008 -
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Yesterday I climbed a roughly 14,000 foot tall mountain in search of a missing hiker. As I've mentioned previously I am a Search and Rescue volunteer. The mission yesterday was my most physically demanding search so far.
It all started out on Sunday when I got a call-out for a mutual-aid search near Bishop, Calif. I put down my homemade wood-fired pizza and responded that I would be there in the morning.
Because Bishop is roughly 5 hours from Downtown Los Angeles I had to be up at 3:00 a.m. and on the road by 4:00. I threw my winter alpine, cave and 24-hour gear in the FJ and headed out to the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office/Jail where we store our trucks and team gear.
At the SO I met up with John Norman and Mark Kinsey and we promptly hit the road to Bishop. Four hours later we were in Bishop and were given details about the missing hiker we would be searching for. We then proceeded to hurry up and wait (standard SAR operating procedure) for an assignment.
Finally around noon Kinsey and I were tasked with ascending Mount Agassiz to check the summit registry. The missing hiker always signed registries. If we didn't find his signature in the log we would effectively be narrowing the search area.
The Forest Service was running helicopter transport to our insertion point. They requested that we don Nomex flight suits as a precautionary measure, one which we've never had to do before. Once in our suits they dropped Kinsey and I off one at a time in Bishop Pass.
Bishop Pass is at an elevation of roughly 12,000 feet. Just a few hours earlier we had been at sea level. To say we didn't have much time to acclimate to the altitude would be a slight understatement.
We began our ascent of the western face of Mount Agassiz at 1:00 p.m. On the map and as the crow flies, the distance from the base to the peak is only about a kilometer. Of course that doesn't include the 2,000 vertical feet included in the walk up.
2,000 vertical feet in under a mile wouldn't be too bad if there was a nice trail up. Mount Agassiz has no trail, and every step of the way is on top of loose boulders ranging in size from gravel to VW Bus.
We made our way to the top in a little under 3 hours carrying 35 pound packs. The thin air had us stopping frequently to catch our breath. The loose rock made the ascent unnerving, especially when stepping on a large boulder caused it to shift.
Once we were at the summit we took photos of the register, snacked and then radioed in to the Command Post. They informed us that if we wanted a helicopter extraction we would need to be back down to the Landing Zone by 6:00 p.m. We radioed back our concern that we may need to push it to 6:30 or later. They told us that 6:30 was the latest we could be extracted.
We started on the descent, thinking that it would be faster on the way down. As it turned out it, scrambling down the loose boulders was more difficult than climbing up. When you step up on a giant boulder and it starts to move, you can simply unweight it. When you step down on a boulder and it moves you have already committed yourself and you can't just jump backwards uphill.
At one point I stepped onto a boulder the size of a refrigerator and it slid about 3 feet down the mountain. I surfed it until it stopped and quickly hopped to the side. That was interesting.
About half way down we called in to base and asked if there was any way we could be extracted later than 6:30. They said no. We decided to pick up the pace.
We ended up making it back to the landing zone right around 6:45. Lucky for us, the helicopter was running late. We threw on our Nomes flight suits just in time to catch a ride down the mountain.
Inyo Country SAR treated Kinsey and I to a nice dinner in Bishop and then we drove back to San Bernardino. I ended up getting home at roughly 3:00 a.m.
The mission was extremely taxing physically. Ideally we would have started our ascent closer to 9:00 a.m. Either way it was a great mission, although unfortunately we did not find the missing hiker. Hopefully he is ok and will be found safe and sound.
Update: Here area few articles about the search.
Update 2: Unfortunately DeVan did not make it. His body was discovered today.
The view from Mount Agassiz as seen on July 7th during a search for a missing hiker.
More photos after the fold...
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 -
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Our forefathers fought for our enduring yet oft threatened freedom for which we celebrate today. Amid the barbecued beef and the glowing fireworks we seldom think about the sacrifices good men made to create this glorious country. Instead of writing a long post today I quote directly from the great Declaration of Independence which put into words the sovereignty of our beloved nation.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
A series of small fireworks light up the night during an Independence Day celebration in Compton from this file photo I shot in 2006.
Friday, July 4th, 2008 -
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In the past five months I've lost over 30 pounds. I haven't been doing any strange diet or taking any weight-loss drugs. I am doing it the old fashion way, eating less and moving more. I have employed technology to help me reach my goal.
It's not hard to figure out that if you eat more food than your body can metabolize you will gain weight. The hard part is not eating more than you need. I am using an application called DietController to keep track of my caloric intake.
DietController has a fairly complete database of nutritional information including nearly all fast-food (of which I eat very little), packaged food and basic meal components. After every meal I enter in what I've eaten and it lets me know how much more I can eat and still be within my diet plan.
When you set up DietController, you tell it your height, age, weight and basic activity level. You then set how much you want to weigh by when. I chose 195 pounds by February 2009, which will just take me out of the overweight range. DietController then tells you how many less calories than you daily caloric rate you need to eat every day to reach your goal. For me it is 700 less calories per day.
Along with the eating less part, I have also been exercising almost every day. My sister-in-law recommended the Polar F11 which I picked up from Amazon. The F11 tracks your workout by testing your heart rate before each session. I actually disabled this feature and just set my age, weight and maximum heart-rate which I ascertained after a long sprint. Right now it has me working out six days a week, of which I normally do at least four.
For my workouts I started out walking. This worked well at first, but it started to get hard to get up to my target heart rate. Later I began jogging in place at home. A few weeks ago I started running with my lovely wife. Today I ran four miles and it felt great.
Every morning and night I weigh myself on a digital scale which I enter into DietController (see my night weight vs. diet plan chart below). Of course I always weigh less in the morning, but I like keeping track of both weights. The graph doesn't show the first few months of my diet as I didn't have a scale, but I know I weighed 268 when I went to the doctor in January.
After losing 30 pounds I feel great. I still have over 40 more to go, but it's just a matter of time until I meet my goal. Technology has played a big part in my weight loss, but my biggest backer has been my wife who has supported me every step of the way. Thanks Penelope, you're the best!
A screen-grab of my weight vs. diet plan chart from Diet Controller.
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 -
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I installed SpamAssassin on my mail server. Previously I had just relied on Mail.app's spam filtering functionality to deal with the hundreds of junk messages I receive daily. Now vpopmail sends every message through SpamAssassin which has been extremely effective in filtering the incoming crap.
Relying on your email application to filter spam works well as long as always keep it running. I take my laptop to work with me so I frequently don't have Mail.app running. This causes spam to pile up and makes it a hassle to check email using my iPhone.
Now SpamAssasin and vpopmail automatically move spam from my Inbox into my Junk folder. When I check my mail on the go I am no longer greeted with a bunch of junk.
My users are also benefitting from the install. They have given me positive feedback on SA's management of their spam. Nobody likes dealing with junk mail so anything that makes the process easier is always welcome.
I have noticed that SA doesn't catch everything and sometimes falsely thinks some good email is spam. I update the rule signatures nightly which helps. Soon I am going to implement a spam/ham folder heuristic update script. This will automatically train SA just by moving incorrectly filtered email into one of two folders.
SpamAssassin is a great addition to my mail toolkit. I am very pleased with the results so far and I am eager to help it do a better job. Thanks SpamAssasin!
Cans of Just Mutton sit ready for the buying on a grocery store shelf in Fiji during my honeymoon in 2006.
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 -
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Recently I created two templates for Cacti, the open source server resource graphing application. I have been using Cacti for years, but there were a few things that I was not able to find graphing solutions for.
Qmail is an open source, light-weight and secure email server written by Dan Bernstein. I have also been using qmail for years, but until recently I had no way of graphing its traffic. I found this helpful bit of code on Howie's Stuff which helped me get the raw data I needed from qmailmrtg. After I got that working I started out with this template, which mostly worked. I then created a complex graph and exported the template for it which I posted here. The results can be seen in the graph below.
A Cacti/rrdtool graph showing various information about a qmail server that I run.
The next service that I was unable to find a Cacti graphing solution for was djbdns. Djbdns is a lightweight and secure DNS daemon, also written by Dan Bernstein. Jeremey Kister wrote a great script called djbdns-stats for parsing the djbdns logs and presenting data in the perfect format for Cacti to undertand. I took the djbdns-stats output and created an input and graph (below) template for Cacti, which I then shared on the Cacti site.
A Cacti/rrdtool graph showing dns usage on my djbdns server.
I have found Cacti to be an extremely useful application over the years. I am greatly looking forward to the next release which will incorporate the helpful Cactiusers plugin framework.
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 -
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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 -
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Recently I have started running again. My wife has always been a strong runner. Her high school college cross-country running team was undefeated and she ran on a scholarship.
I have never been much or a runner due to my weight and lack of fitness. The one exception to that was in high school when I actually started to enjoy running in PE class. Now that I have lost over 30 pounds I am able to enjoy running again.
Last week Penelope and I ran around Not a Cornfield. It felt great. Later in the week we ran from out loft up to the top of bunker hill and the Disney hall. To take a break from running we hiked Chantry Flats on Sunday.
The hike ended up being a fairly challenging six mile loop. The abundance of steep climbs and descents made it a good workout. Now that we're in better shape we powered through the whole hike without stopping.
Someday soon my goal is to run Chantry Flats, now that will be a workout!
Downtown Los Angeles as seen from a parking lot in an industrial area east of the LA River in this file photo from 2007.
Monday, June 30th, 2008 -
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Jott is a free transcription service that makes sending notes and reminders a phone call away. I signed up for their free service and verified my phone number a few months ago. All I have to do is call a toll-free number form my cell and talk. A few minutes later a full transcription of what I said is waiting in my inbox.
It helps to speak slowly and spell out any hard to understand or uncommon words. Jott doesn't use voice recognition software for the transcription, they have people doing the work. Due to that fact I don't use Jott for anything sensitive or secret.
I use Jott almost every day on my drive home from work. Writing while driving is somewhat inconvenient not to mention dangerous. I have Jott in my phone favorites and when I have an idea I just call the number and leave a message.
I also use Jott to message contacts in my address book. When I call in they ask me who I want to Jott. The message ends up being transcribed, then emailed and sms'ed to the contact.
Jott is a service that I have really learned to love. It is one of those rare things in life that are free and awesome. If it becomes a for-pay service I will still use it. Now that's a sign of a good thing.
A sculpture consisting of outdated telephone switch parts adorns the wall of the AT&T building in Downtown Los Angeles in this file photo from 2007. Modern day telephone systems use computers instead of physical switching relays.
Friday, June 27th, 2008 -
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Getting Things Done (GTD) literally changed my life 3 years ago. Growing up I had always been highly unorganized. After reading about GTD on the internet I ordered the book by David Allen and instantly started to change the way I worked.
GTD offers a pretty simple theory for organization: Collect every task and action you have in one trusted place. Instead of the dozens of lists I had spread throughout my computer for various projects, I funneled them all into several lists in one place. I collected every little nagging task my head and put them in those same lists.
Having all my actions in one place allowed me to easily keep track and review what I had to do. This simple change completely altered the way that I worked. I am now extremely productive and I love it.
A few weeks ago I reread GTD and implemented a number of things I had not done before. I created an orderly physical filing system for all my important papers. When I first started using GTD I tricked myself into thinking that I did everything on my computer. Once my filing system was setup I saw that was hardly the truth.
After creating my filing system I set up what David Allen calls a tickler file. A tickler file is a series of 43 folders, one for each month and 31 for each possible day of the month. When I have a physical item that requires my future attention I put it into either the month folder that it pertains to or the day if it happens to be in within the next 30 days. Every morning I check my tickler file to see if any paperwork is waiting for me.
Getting Things Done has change my life for the better. There is no way I could have accomplished what I have in the last 3 years without it. Thanks to GTD, I can finally say I truly am organized. Being organized is awesome.
Route 66 stretches out into the desert near Ludlow in this photo I took after a Desert Explorers Rendezvous in 2007.
Thursday, June 26th, 2008 -
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With fuel prices higher than ever, I've been driving 55 mph on the freeway to improve my gas mileage. For years I have always been one of those speed limit plus ten people. Only recently have I decided to slow down and take it easy.
My FJ Cruiser (below) normally gets around 15 mpg on the highway. I found out that if I keep the rpms below 2,000 my mileage increases to over 20 mpg. On roughly level ground that ends up being 55 mph in sixth gear.
I keep an eye on my gas mileage using my ScanGauge II. It's a handy little device that plugs into the FJ's ODBII port and gives information about everything from intake temperature to battery voltage. The ScanGauge allows to me see exactly how many miles I am getting to the gallon at any given moment as well as the average for the whole tank.
So far driving 55 on the Los Angeles freeways has been fun and cost effective. The funniest thing about driving in the slow lane is that people still tailgate!
My FJ Cruiser near Madrid, during our trip to New Mexico last near.
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 -
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I've been spending my free time over the last few weeks working on my new photography website. My good friend Cedrick Osborn did the graphic design. I did the XHTML/CSS and backend programming.
The site is pretty basic feature-wise, but gets the job done. It has about 200 of what I consider my best photos, some of which have never been published.
Take a few minutes and check out my new site: davebullock.com. Let me know what you think in the comments on this post. If you dig my new site, don't forget to tell your friends and blog/twitter about it!
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 -
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Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 -
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Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 -
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Thursday, June 12th, 2008 -
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The Library Tower (AKA the US Bank building) is showing its Lakers pride with a custom lighting job on their crown. I'm sure you know that the Lakers won tonight's game. Go Lakers!
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 -
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According to dopiaza's Most Interesting Flickr set manager, these are my top ten most interesting photos on flickr:
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](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/407199210/ "6th Street Bridge and Downtown Los Angeles by eecue, on Flickr")
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 -
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I've been a Vonage subscribe for over 5 years now and I've been very happy with their internet based telephone system. Basically if you get Vonage you don't need a phone line, just an internet connection. When you sign up they send you a little box you plug in to your network to which you connect any standard telephone. Once you plug everything in you get nation-wide long distance for free for about $25 a month or you can get a 500 minute plan for $15 a month.
You can transfer your existing telephone number to it or get a new one. It's just like your normal phone service, but has some other cool features like the ability to simultaneously ring your cell phone and your home. You can also get a soft phone that you can use on your laptop from anywhere that has internet access. Right now they are offering 2 month of free service for both you and me if you sign up [click here to do so].
Monday, June 9th, 2008 -
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Thursday, June 5th, 2008 -
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UCLA scientists are working hard to fight cancer and their latest creations could target tumors directly. I toured the labs making these new nanomachines called nanoimpellers and took photos for Wired. You can check out the photos along with a brief intro I wrote by clicking here or on the photo below:
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 -
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On Sunday I shot some photos of the grand opening of Mister Cartoon's new shop in my building: The Last Laugh / Upper Playground. I just posted the photos over on blogdowntown:
Click here to see Upper Playground / Last Laugh Opening gallery.
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 -
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I no longer have a catch-all email address. For years the email (qmail) server that I run was set up to receive anything @eecue.com. So if you sent an email to asdflakhjflakjsf@eecue.com or daveisameanperson@eecue.com I would receive it. This was helpful as it allowed me to create addresses for every site that I submitted my information to, such as target@eecue.com, amazon@eecue.com, etc. That way if those companies sold my address to a list I would know they were responsible for the spam.
This seemed like a good idea until I started getting dictionary Joe Jobbed a few years ago. A Joe Job is when someone sends emails from your account to discredit you. In my case it was just a spam bot sending spams from random addresses @eecue.com. I don't think it was an attack on me, I just have a short domain name that has a catch-all address.
The joe-jobbing caused me to receive thousands of bounce messages. Today I finally decided to turn off the catch-all functionality in my email server. First I dug through my archived mail to find any important addresses that I still needed to receive mail at. I added aliases for the ones that would be hard to change. Any address that was easy to change I just logged into the site it corresponded to and changed it to my main address.
After getting rid of the catch-alls I set up a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record on my DNS server. SPF is a record on a name server that tells mail servers which IP addresses are allowed to send email for that domain. Luckily I only ever send email from my personal mail server so that was easy to fix.
These changes should greatly reduce the amount of spam and joe-job bounces I receive.
Friday, May 30th, 2008 -
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A few weeks ago I ran in the Revlon Run / Walk for Women, a 5K that raises money to fight women's cancers. I was originally planning on walking, but I decided to run instead. My final time as 34:54 and I came in 2,359th place out of about 65,000 people. I ran in honor of my beautiful, wonderful, strong mother who is a 5+ year cancer survivor.
There is still time to sponsor me, so far I've raised $220, but I would like to raise $2,000. You can click here to sponsor me. Thanks!
Thursday, May 29th, 2008 -
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On Sunday I spent the day covering the historic landing of the Phoenix on Mars from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. It was an exciting assignment for Wired that entailed four separate trips, one to Goldstone in the Mojave and three to JPL. Here is some of my coverage from the landing, click on the screen-grabs to read the articles:
Screen-grabs hosted by flickr.
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 -
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Saturday, May 24th, 2008 -
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I'm covering the Phoenix landing on Sunday from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Today was my second trip to JPL in as many weeks. I had a chance to interview two of the Mission Managers and I recorded them with my totally awesome Sony PCM-D60 using an excellent Sennheiser MD46 microphone and listening to it all with my Sennheiser HD 25-1 II headphones.
The first interview is with Joe Guinn, Mission System Manager:
My second interview that I recorded today is with Barry Goldstein, Phoenix Project Manager:
Screen-grabs hosted by flickr.
A funny anecdote: After interviewing Goldstein in Mission Control I asked him to move into some better light for a photograph with a good background. When he was walking over there I signaled Reuters photographer, Mario Anzuoni, to follow me so he could get a good photo as well. After I shot my photos Anzuoni took his, which is now up on Reuters. Here are some other great photos of the San Diego fire by Anzuoni.
Friday, May 23rd, 2008 -
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Last week I took an early morning drive out to the Mojave Desert to visit NASA's Goldstone facility. Goldstone is one of three Earth locations of the Deep Space Network (DSN). The DSN is used to listen to and control spacecraft and has been around since the 50's.
A few days later I headed to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to get some photos of Mission Control and interview a lead technician responsible for the landing [click to listen to the podcast].
I will be covering the landing live on Sunday for Wired.com. My Mars landing coverage can be found here on Wired Science. Click on the image below to see the gallery:
Friday, May 23rd, 2008 -
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(tags: china chinese.quake wedding photography)
Friday, May 23rd, 2008 -
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Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 -
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Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 -
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Monday, May 19th, 2008 -
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I'm trying to get in touch with Dane Reese. He was an inspirational teacher when I was in High School in Santa Fe, New Mexico. If you know or if you are Dane Reese and you're reading this, click on the Email button on the left hand side of this site and let me know how to get ahold of him. Thanks!
UPDATE: I got in touch with Dane. He's doing well and just recently got his PhD in Education (Transitive Learning).
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 -
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After months of not posting on blogdowntown, I finally put a post together from this month's Art Walk. It's a short photo essay from a few galleries and it's live now. Click here to see my Art Walk post on blogdowntown.
Click here to check out the rest of my photos from the May Downtown Art Walk.
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 -
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Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 -
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A gallery that I shot for Wired.com just went live this morning. The process for creating the metallic glass is pretty cool. The materials they are producing will end up finding tons of commercial uses in the near future.
Monday, May 12th, 2008 -
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Saturday, May 10th, 2008 -
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Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 -
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Friday, May 2nd, 2008 -
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After I was walking back from the protest today, I saw this totally awesome pipe-smoking fellow walking his fat fluffy bunny:
Thursday, May 1st, 2008 -
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Today's protest was smaller compared to last years May Day protest. I would say roughly 10,000 people gathered beside City Hall at the end of the day. There were three groups, and photographed each of them, the first while it was gathering at Olympic and Broadway, the second from their rally point in MacArthur park to the intersection of 5th and Broadway where I met up with the Legalize LA group, which seemed to be the largest of the three.
Here are some of the photos from today:
More after the jump....
Thursday, May 1st, 2008 -
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I spent the weekend shooting Coachella for Wired.com. Here are the posts I haven't linked to yet. Click the screengrabs to see the photos:
Screengrabs hosted by flickr.
Monday, April 28th, 2008 -
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Here's a link to some of the shots I took today on Wired.com's Listening Post:
Saturday, April 26th, 2008 -
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As I mentioned yesterday, I'm covering Coachella for Wired.com. I just posted a selection of the photos I shot yesterday over on Wired.com's Listening Post. I got a lift up in a cherry picker over the main stage and got some photos of the whole grounds at night:
Saturday, April 26th, 2008 -
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I'm liveblogging from Coachella for Wired.com. I just put up my first post featuring some photos I shot last night of the staging and art. I'll be posting a few times a day for the duration of the show. Check it out:
Friday, April 25th, 2008 -
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Friday, April 25th, 2008 -
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Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 -
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Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 -
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As I mentioned in my Mojave Wildflower post yesterday, I traveled to the revived ghost town of Shoshone for the Desert Explorers Rendezvous. We went on a few off-road trips, exploring mines and ghost towns along the way. It was my second DE Rendezvous, here is my post from the 2007 Rendezvous. Here are a few photos from the trip:
Click here to see the rest of the Desert Explorers Rendezvous 2008 photos.
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 -
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For years my blog allowed comments, but the system was hard to figure out and people rarely commented. Recently I have noticed a few sites using Disquss to power their comments and I decided to give it a try. It's easy to use from both a publisher and a user's perspective. One nice feature is the ability to export all the comments, which I'll likely do once I finish the rewrite of the software that powers this site. I hope you'll leave a comment if you enjoy reading my blog and viewing my photos. Thanks!
Monday, April 21st, 2008 -
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A few weeks ago I took a trip out to the desert with my lovely wife and my father-in-law, Jim Proffitt. The group that brought us together for this excursion to Shoshone is known as the Desert Explorers. They are a group of mostly older folks who have an immense pool of knowledge and love for the desert.
I found and photographed 11 different species of wildflowers. Alan Romspert is a botany professor at UC Fullerton and helped me identify the species I shot during happy hour in Shoshone. Here are a few of the photos I shot:
Click here to check out the rest of my Mojave Wildflowers photos.
Monday, April 21st, 2008 -
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This weekend my Search and Rescue Team did a joint training in Calico with the Barstow Mine Rescue team. Here is a video put together by one of our team members, Jeff Lehman:
Monday, April 21st, 2008 -
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Saturday, April 19th, 2008 -
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Friday, April 18th, 2008 -
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Thursday, April 17th, 2008 -
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Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 -
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Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 -
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Thursday, April 10th, 2008 -
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I will be walking in the Revlon Run/Walk for Women and I am looking for sponsors. The Revlon Run/Walk is one of the nation's largest 5K fundraising events and has distributed nearly $50 million for cancer research, counseling, and outreach programs. My strong, powerful and beautiful mother is a cancer survivor and I am proud to be walking in her honor.
Click here to sponsor me and help fight women's cancer
Thanks for your support!
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 -
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Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 -
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I have my second gallery show coming up this Thursday at the Spring Arts Collective Gallery during the Art Walk in Downtown Los Angeles. If you're in the area please come by and take a look at the four framed pieces I will be showing. The show is a continuation of my "Land of Nuclear Enchantment" series that just wrapped up at Niche Video Art. Here are the specifics:
Thursday April 10th, noon to 9 p.m. (Reception: 7-9 p.m.)
Spring Arts Collective Gallery
Spring Arts Tower on the Mezzanine Level
453 South Spring Street (on the corner of 5th and Spring)
Los Angeles, CA 90013
Please come down and check out the show!
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 -
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(tags: protest china tibet)
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 -
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Friday, April 4th, 2008 -
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Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 -
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Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 -
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A few weeks ago I toured USC's medical center for WIRED News. One of the interesting things I saw was their Surgical Skills Center. One thing they do there is particularly pertinent to a serious issue in our world, the Iraq War. Click here or on the image below to see the Heal a Robot, Go to War gallery on WIRED News.
[
](http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/03/gallery_iraq_medical_2 "USC Surgical Skills Center : Iraq Training on WIRED News")
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 -
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Monday, March 31st, 2008 -
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Last month I had my first gallery show at Niche Video Art. This month my show continued at Niche. I took some photos during the show as well as a couple when I was walking over. Here are a few, including my increasingly rare self-portrait shot:
Click here to see the rest of the Downtown Art Walk March 2008 photos.
Monday, March 31st, 2008 -
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This is the craziest email scam I've ever gotten. It would be totally plausible if there was any chance that Benazir Bhutto whould have had my email address in her address book. I almost want to respond to see what kind of a scam it is, but I'm sure it's just your average Nigerian Email scam:
From: XXXXXXXXXXXXX@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Benazir Bhutto
Date: March 31, 2008 10:28:38AMPDT
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Hello,
I want to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt appreciation to
you for your support during the hour of need. The enemy gave us a huge
blow when they took the life of my dear mother. As a matter of fact, I do
not know you personally except your contact details I got from my mom's
address book. I also pass on my sincere appreciation for the feat we were
able to record at the last elections despite the absence of my mom who was
the party leader until her brutal assassination. The victory was to all
Pakistanis as it clearly demonstrated their commitment to the course my
mom stood and died for. Your support is conspicuously recognized and
highly appreciated.
Losing her is the hardest thing I've been through all my life, but knowing
that she was a hero to many people does comfort me. I know she would
appreciate what you all did for her. All we just crave for now is for her
killing be probed by an international team under the United Nations. It is
the only hope we have of getting the possible plotters of her murder
properly investigated. Only this would help us convince our supporters
that there was some element of collusion between her murderers and agents
of President Musharaf who were determined to get rid of her.
Please do acknowledge receipt of this correspondence as I will be
confiding something very important in you when I get to hear from you
again.
Very sincerely,
Bilawal Zardari.
Monday, March 31st, 2008 -
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Earlier this morning I went on my tenth Downtown Walkabout. I just got a Polar F11 heart rate monitor, as recommended to me by my sister-in-law, Merrilee. After telling it your stats and doing a resting heart-rate test you then go through a series of gradually more difficult exercises. This allows the system to determine your target heart rate for varying levels of exertion. Then you tell it how much you want to work out each week and it takes you through a series of exercise levels during your workout. At the end it tells you how many calories you burned and how long you worked out. Pretty cool! After an hour and 22 minutes of walking at a very brisk pace I burned 777 calories.
Anyhow, here are a few of the photos I shot on my walk:
Click here to see the rest of my Downtown LA Walkabout #10 photos.
Sunday, March 30th, 2008 -
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Sunday, March 30th, 2008 -
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A few weeks ago, my lovely wife and I took a trip to the Los Angeles Zoo. We had a good time, but I couldn't help to feel sorry for all the animals on display for our enjoyment. Picturing them in their natural habitat frolicking to and fro instead of locked in a relatively small cage was somewhat depressing. There is no doubt that the animals are cute, but are they happy? Probably not. Either way enjoy the photos:
Click here to check out the rest of my Los Angeles Zoo gallery.
Sunday, March 30th, 2008 -
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