Sunday: scripture and code

We spent the morning and early afternoon at church, first listening to the Rev. Dr. John Kater talk about Lent, at a forum, then at services followed by a class called Confirm not Conform.

At home I settled into the task of adapting a graphic artist's CSS-plus-graphics treatment to a Wordpress template, also for church. We took a dinner break at Sara and Peter Bostock's (also fellow church members) and now I'm back on the Mac, learning anew the mysteries of CSS and php. We kind of have the 'serving the Lord' thing going on today... 10:18:49 PM

Back on the home range

Sweet spouse Linda said, as she walked in this evening, "The house smells like New Orleans." No wonder this marriage is in its 28th year.

And yes, we'd spent a couple hours this afternoon making roux, sauteeing mirepoix and very slowly blending it into a gumbo that has slowly simmered down to something resembling what we've been eating for the past 5 days in New Orleans. This was my dinner tonight as Linda was out with a friend. The gumbo will be on tomorrow night's menu with Alaskan cod and a salad of cherry tomatoes...

With camera in hand...

My new acquaintance is named Victor. He's the guy who hangs out on the corner of California and Birch in Palo Alto, near the Printers Inc. cafe. As we do a couple times a week we had a chat over cocoa (Victor) and coffee (me).

We were in range of the Printers Inc. Wi Fi, so I showed Victor his picture on the blog on my netbook, which amused him. Victor read me his poem, which he read from his copy book.

Under the bridge and through the snow,
Where do the homeless go in Palo Alto?
Loneliness and despair are our only friends.

The wet, cold sidewalks are our beds, some of us die.
God help us - hot food is needed

There are a few lines that I'm having a hard time reading. It didn't help that I made the rooky mistake of ignoring parallax while focusing close with my rangefinder camera (have to remember to tilt the camera down a bit - the M8 viewfinder apparently doesn't compensate for the Zeiss 50mm Planar). I think I'll take the digital voice recorder next time.... 11:48:19 AM



We went to hear Steven Charleston, Assisting Bishop of the Diocese of Northern California, speak at Church of the Nativity in San Carlos last night. Half Irish, half native American and a former Baptist, he has an amazing perspective on faith and culture in the 21st century. Well worth listening to, even if you are of the secular persuasion... 11:18:19 AM

A new theme

We're working on moving gulker.com over to the Thesis theme/development tool for Wordpress - so readers will be seeing some weirdness while we play with this tool. Scott thinks highly of Thesis, and we value his judgment (he recently put up a new blog for his consultancy using Thesis, and documented the process).  Fasten seatbelts, place your tray in the upright and locked position... here we go...

Content, by the ton

It would be wonderful to spend this stormy day blogging and writing essays, particularly in response to some pretty silly things floating around the net and social media on the topic of journalism and newspapers, but I promised sweet spouse Linda that I would dig into the task of evaluating the very easiest web site creation software for our church.

Linda has already done a ton of work evaluating different packages, and now wants a geek's eye view of the options. The goal is to make the site easily updatable over the web by multiple authors, both clergy and lay people, many of whom may have only basic computer skills. So we're heads down combing over the prototype site Linda cooked up with the help of a web developer, seeing if there is a way to make it even easier to use...

"Tweeku are poems economical in size, evocative in impact, lilting or crunching or slithering or slouching towards meaning in 140 characters" Just posted this to, where else, Twitter... 8:43:34 PM

The N Judah 'public beta'

It seemed to me that the 'book' feature in iPhoto would be a good way to assemble and view a portfolio of pictures. So I bundled up a collection of photos that I took on the N Judah streetcar and CalTrain while I was commuting to radiation therapy at UCSF's radiation oncology department in San Francisco.

We did a quick first draft, mostly to see how the repro in the book looked relative to the photos on screen (predictably, the shadows became darker) and then fixed up and sent off a second draft, which came back this past Friday.

I've posted a page which gives more information about the project, and allows readers to download a PDF version of the second draft - a 'public beta' (please feel free to leave your comments). With a bit more fiddling with some of the photos, we'll be ready to print a very limited run edition which will be offered for sale. We may also offer prints of some of the photos... signed by the 'artist'...

Reaching up (and out) to the brain

The bowls you see here are on a shelf in my kitchen that is a bit less than 6 feet from the floor. Since shortly after I finished radiation therapy in December 0f 2006, I haven't been able to reach them with my left hand.

As part of my rehab program, I started to try to reach them about a month ago (these are breakfast bowls, so I do this every day). At first I could only reach up to the bottom shelf. With repeated reaching (to this shelf and another where my medications are stored), I slowly was able to reach higher.

Two weeks ago I finally touched the top bowl, and managed to get a finger under it. This morning, I picked up the top two bowls (one for Linda) and lowered them to the counter in one piece.

I mention this not just because I'm pleased to have back some use of the previously all-but-paralyzed limb, but because it illustrates the theory of neuroplasticity, the idea that the brain can be made to rewire itself, to route around damage (in my case, a brain tumor).

My experience teaches that it takes multiple repetitions - some hundreds or thousands - of simple movements to get them working again. Building neural connections is like building muscles at the gym - and proceeds about as quickly. If you keep at it, it will come...

Thanks, Scott!

Turns out that one of the two old photo books that Scott gave me yesterday is listed on a collectors' site for $125. It is mine now, right, Scott?

After our 90-minute rehab workout at the Y in Palo Alto this A.M., I crawled California Avenue in Palo Alto for half an hour, snapping pix with the new Zeiss lens. I met a construction worker named Bob, before dropping into the Printer's Inc. Cafe for coffee. There was a man with interesting features speaking animatedly at the next table. Looked like a startup guy to me. I'm loving it... shooting pictures in streets and cafes... I feel like I'm 19 again...

Got an email in Arabic which seems to be an invitation to join the Arabian Hackers Crew (aka ArabIaN HacKerS CreW). Hmmmm... no thanks, guys... my hacking days are long gone...

How to Make Good Pictures

It was show-and-tell at gulker.com World HQ this morning after Scott, Lily and I completed our mile-and-a-half walk. I showed Scott my $36 framed 11x14 print (vs. the $200 I paid a frame shop for a similar production) and the first draft of my N Judah book.

Scott had brought two old photo books that his wife had come upon while dealing with her late mother's estate. One was a Kodak guide "How to make good pictures" (1951, 29th Edition) and "The Retina Way" (1957, 7th Edition) a guide to using Kodak's famous 'miniature' 35mm rangefinder. I'm still having fun thumbing through both volumes, each laden with sage advice. Cameras change, but the basics of good pictures are remarkably stable... apologies to Kodak if they regard this as a copyright violation...

In other news:

Cool new 3G modem: the Nova Media iCON 431 is a 3G modem with Mac, Linux and Windows drivers. Whoaa... global connectivity for my Netbook?

Howard has an interesting commentary about the vanishing newsroom quandary. Via Dave "Toppler of Paradigms" Winer...

My culinary challenge this week: healthy dishes made only with ingredients from Trader Joe's. Byriani vegetables and rice with salmon is the chef's preparation for this evening.They're inexpensive, too...

Working photos: is a new public gallery where I'm posting things that catch my eye, preparatory to doing some more serious consideration. The front end of the 'good picture' process...

N Judah, farther down the track

Spent yesterday afternoon working on the N Judah book: it's getting close to publication form - will likely do more today. We have the first draft version, in softcover, back from Apple's iPhoto book printer. A documentary on the people and small dramas aboard a S.F. Muni streetcar...

Super B**l Sunday

We're using "Super B**l" to avoid lawsuits... apparently NFL search-and-shake-down lawyers want bucks if you use the words 'Super' and 'Bowl' in juxtaposition, similar to the way another batch of attorneys feel about the word 'Olympics.' Anyway we're not watching.... Ms. 'Superfan' Hubbard has it on in the background, but even she is on her Mac. Q. How can you own words? A. With enough lawyers, anything is possible, no matter how patently absurd...

Another snap from Peet's

Hello, Picasaweb... where's my photo? Why isn't Blogger better integrated with Picassaweb?

Snapped this photo a few minutes ago, in Peet's Coffee in Menlo Park. It's just a quiet moment - I'm toying with the idea of a Menlo documentary project. Leica M8 with Zeiss 50mm... blogged 'live' via Netbook and Peet's WiFi...

Good (fully transparent) morning

I see my (klutz) adventures with a plastic tub of Whole Foods soup, have sparked a lot of comments. I don't mind being open about misadventures (think: Homer Simpson's 'Doh' moments). I'm a klutz and a geek. My friends know it, and I'm probably doing a wider audience a favor by letting them in on the secret. If you see me coming with a plastic container of soup, run. You've been warned...

Random stuff:

Thomas Keller's Slow-Cooker Cassoulet. Yum...

Speaking of working with dinosaur photo gear: Nikon Rangefinder SP Black 2005. I had a Nikon S when I was 19 and trying to break into the London photo scene...

The N Judah project is back on my radar. Made some good progress yesterday - news TK. I documented my 3-times-a-week journey on the blog. These are pictures I took on the eponymous streetcar while commuting to radiation therapy and slowly becoming half-paralyzed, in November and December of 2006 It was good to have something to do while coping with the 'new me'...

The lens as therapy

We're really having fun with the new Zeiss Planar, carrying it on either an M8 (digital) or M4 (film) body pretty much everywhere we go. I like the saturation, as well as the sharpness: this snap taken in the back hallway of the local Starbucks succeeds because of the richness of color and detail in the blond wood.

Working with a rangefinder again reminds me of how touchy the focus is - rangefinders were never as good as reflex cameras for normal and telephoto shots (the 50mm Planar is the equivalent of a 70mm on the digital M8). But, with instant viewing of the photo on the M8, I can correct static situations like this one if the first try is a bit off.

Working with the rangefinder is good therapy for my recovering left arm and hand, which really need work to get the fine motor skills back (I'm typing this with the left hand, also good exercise). THe new Zeiss has a stiff focusing ring - common in new manual focus lenses. While it should loosen a bit with use, the extra oomph is a good exercise for my week hand.

So, we're back to full-dinosaur snapping with the M4 which has no battery or exposure meter - the shutter spring and film advance require the photographer to flip a lever with the right thumb - which lever was itself a much-hailed advance when it debuted in the 1950s (I think). Heh, like the McDonald's jingle, 'I'm lovin it'...

The new lens

A week ago, Scott and I made a Saturday morning run to Keeble & Shuchat, one of the Bay Area's best camera stores. Scott was looking for a tripod and I was just looking (honest, dear). While Scott perused the very lightweight (and expensive) Manfrotto carbon-fiber tripods I gazed at the Leica shelf. I have been half-way looking for a 50mm lens for my Leica rangefinders.

In the old days, I used the Leica as a wide angle camera. My Nikons had normal and telephoto lenses mounted as I made my rounds, working mostly for daily newspapers. The Leica 21mm was very sharp and distortion free, and gave me an edge over the 24mm Nikkor then used by most photojournalists. The 35mm was a great 'normal' lens, and very useful shooting groups at social events. People on the ends didn't get that fat look that lesser wide angles produce.

Nowadays I'm using my Leicas as much as possible - in part to make my left arm and hand work by focusing the Leica (using rangefinder technology invented early in the last century). So a 'normal' angle lens was on the wish list. At the store, a new Leitz 50mm f2 lens was $2000. A beat demo lens was $1700. No thanks.

However, a Zeiss Ikon camera was sitting on the shelf, with a 50mm Zeiss Planar T* - my old film Contax camera had a Planar, as did my Hasselblad - I had always loved the images from both. The salesman quoted a price for the Zeiss lens that was a third of the Leitz 50mm. I made the command decision, and ordered one in black, to match my Leica bodies.

The lens arrived last Thursday - the pictures above were made with the new lens. The picture at top is a crop from the picture at left, and shows the Planar's crisp resolution and very nice saturation. This new Planar does not disappoint...

The Best Government Tech of the Bush Years

The Best Government Tech of the Bush Years | Epicenter from Wired.com: ""

The CIA uses Facebook to recruit...

Trojan virus spreads to '20,000 Macs'

Trojan virus spreads to as many as 20,000 Macs

(Via Boy Genius Report.)

The risks of 'free' (stolen) software...

The Cook Doctrine at Apple - Go West

The Cook Doctrine at Apple - Go West: ""

We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products and that’s not changing. We are constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot. And frankly, we don’t settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we’re wrong and the courage to change. And I think regardless of who is in what job those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well.

(Via Scott Loftesness.)...

Stacked interrupts

Thanks to Scott's evangelism I'm running friendfeed (now via FriendDeck) and Twitter via Tweetdeck, as I mentioned a couple days ago. A whole bunch of old colleagues suddenly surfaced: it reminded me of the heady old days of constant chatter and cross-linking on the then-nascent blogs.

But my day yesterday basically went to hell schedule-wise as I dealt with the data torrent. Something would catch my eye: when I explored that link something else would divert me to yet another location.

The whole process reminded me of the computer concept of interrupts, whereby a higher-priority process can interrupt lower priority code. Interrupts can be interrupted up to the ability of the processor's memory registers or 'stacks' to hold the interrupted code.

Yesterday's chain of interrupts waaaay overloaded my 'stack.' Spouse came home to find mail not sorted, wash not moved over and recycling bins still on curb. She was sweet about it, though. Nevertheless, this morning she looked at a half-dozen parallel waterfalls of posts, links, photos and other data pouring down the screen like the opening scenes from The Matrix trilogy and asked me if I thought I'd have time to shop and make dinner. Either I'm getting slower or the net is running a whole lot faster...

As good as I'm ever going to look

With all these new social media sites on my radar, I decided I needed a more atmospheric portrait. I have always relied on Anne Knudsen, a very talented Silicon Valley photographer, to render me as well as this old mug will allow.

Previously Anne has photographed me in the very flattering style that most corporate publications favor - appropriate for the large corporations I've worked for, as well as the startups where we were trying to look bigger than we were.

Today, between dropping off her daughter and an assignment in Menlo, she shot me - in about 15 minutes - after very carefully setting a single strobe. And, boy, did she nail it - I am one very happy 'client.' It really pays to work with a pro. Wow, and many thanks, Annie...

Too many feeds?

Scott and I cancelled our walk this morning: it was pouring. So I took the opportunity to take the leap into Twitter, which Scott has been discussing on our last couple of walks (yeah, sure... I've been a tech hermit the last 18 months or so).

Now I've got Tweetdeck running on one monitor, friendfeed realtime on another. Windows 7 beta is downloading in the background as is a Flickr upload utility. Sheesh... all these feeds create constant distraction. Dave Weiner posted an iPhoto snap that just had to be fixed. Scott tipped me to a French photographer, a couple old colleagues found me on Twitter, another on Facebook and, oh yeah, we have some blogging to do, and on it goes. And I still have brain exercise to do... I'm going to need it...

Too many feeds?

Scott and I cancelled our walk this morning: it was pouring. So I took the opportunity to take the leap into Twitter, which Scott has been discussing on our last couple of walks (yeah, sure... I've been a tech hermit the last 18 months or so).

Now I've got Tweetdeck running on one monitor, friendfeed realtime on another. Windows 7 beta is downloading in the background as is a Flickr upload utility. Sheesh... all these feeds create constant distraction. Dave Weiner posted an iPhoto snap that just had to be fixed. Scott tipped me to a French photographer, a couple old colleagues found me on Twitter, another on Facebook and, oh yeah, we have some blogging to do, and on it goes. And I still have brain exercise to do... I'm going to need it...

My NetBook

Here, btw, is my Netbook... not as tricked-out as Dave's (yet)...

Quick fix for an iPhoto snap...

Here's a quick fix for this Dave Weiner iPhoto snap. The halo around the screen is annoying, but the shadow detail picks up a bit.

The has-been

Holed up in gulker.com's World HQ against today's gray and chilly weather, we found ourselves thinking about our past career moves (helped, no doubt, by a colleague's invitattion to join her LinkedIn network). We have been:

• a dishwasher
• a merchant mariner
• a cab driver
• a tow-truck operator
• a freelance photographer
• a daily newspaper staff photographer
• a photo editor (and color page makeup person)
• a columnist
• director of marketing at a large computer company
• VP of marketing at a couple of startups
• product manager at a large software company
• blogger

Nowadays we're on disability (not our idea) and focusing on physical and cortical rehab of this currently half-broken body. We are certainly not averse to working, but the market for 57-year-olds who need to spend 3 hours a day on rehab and who disappear for various treatments a couple of times a month is a bit slow at the moment. We continue as blogger-in-cheif, cook and bottle-washer at gulker.com...

The 'emergent newsroom'

This iPhone picture was taken by Janis Krum, a man who happened to be aboard one of the New York ferries that diverted to the scene of yesterday's U.S. Airways crash (or splash) landing in the Hudson River. He published it to Twitter within minutes, in the process scooping every outlet in New York, media center of the universe.

Snapped and published in seconds, Krum's effort is a prime example of citizen journalism, a topic long espoused and delineated by Dan Gillmor. Dan, then a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, and I had an email exchange on the topic of what I called 'emergent newsrooms' or 'self-assembling media' in the aftermath of the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003.

In that case, shuttle-savvy bloggers contacted retired NASA engineers, did frame-by-frame analysis of video of the launch and came up with the theory - which turned out to be correct - that foam falling from the external tank had been the root cause of Columbia's breakup during reentry - hours or even days ahead of major media. Indeed, many major-media space correspondents were unaware of what had already been researched, written and thoughtfully analyzed on the 'net.

Nowadays, major media rely on citizen Internet resources for coverage of major breaking events. Regard the coverage of a New Year's day shooting by a transit policeman of a man during a scuffle at a Bay Area Rapid Transit station. Both major outlets - KTVU and the San Francisco Chronicle pulled video and frame grabs from cellphone videos posted by bystanders on YouTube.

Amazingly, the web of sites and commentary that springs up around these events tends to find errors and correct them, usually with no central authority. The importance of this mechanism is no small thing: it's pretty clear that old structures like print and broadcast newsrooms are going to disappear sooner than later. Many decry the void that this will leave, but I wonder if the transparency and immediacy of the networked world might not provide a viable, possibly better alternative.

Scott Loftesness posited using the rooms feature in friendfeed to quickly assemble related feeds, blog posts, photo and video, allowing skilled editors (or observant, skeptical readers of any stripe) to provide coverage - there are many other Internet mechanisms available as well.

It remains to be seen if a web of people with day jobs will suffice to do things like track corruption and lawbreaking in government, corporate excess and perform other other truth-sniffing services that have been vital to the survival of democracy for the past two centuries. Self-assembling news works well for events like plane crashes... but could there be a Watergate-style investigation in this brave, new, non-centralized world?

More Pescadero B&W

We're still experimenting, learning the ropes of Blogger... here we add an image from my main blog.

The pic below is from Picasa - I'm surprised I can't more easily snag a photo from Picasaweb to incorporate into this blog. Or are we missing something...?

Pescadero B&W

Scott and I took a drive over to Pescadero this past weekend. Scott was trying out his new Canon, and I brought along my Leica - here's one of the pix. You can see more, here.

We'll be checking out Picassa for Mac in a bit - it's still in Google Labs. I use Picasa for Linux on my Asus netbook - been a great tool for putting vacation pix on Picassaweb.

Losing it if not using it

A thread on one of my email lists was started by the observation of one correspondent, a writer, that his ability to read from paper media seemed to be declining - he, half-kidding, wondered if he should scan his paper documents so he could read them from a screen.

His thought to scan the book reminded me of an experience I had 13 (?) years ago... I was working at Apple and was introduced to Gary Starkweather in Apple's Advanced Technology Group. Apple was flush in those days and ATG was a group of 'mad computer scientists' who could write themselves pretty much any size check they wished.

Gary, the legend who had invented the LaserWriter concept when he was at Xerox Park, could especially do pretty much anything he wanted. That year ('95 I think) he contended, magnetic storage would become exactly the same price as paper storage, and would thereafter become much cheaper. To better learn to deal withe the coming paperless future, Gary had a small army of recent MIT and Carnegie Mellon grads scan in *everything* he read - his bills, his daily newspaper, magazines, books, mail, you name it - for the whole year.

He read everything on a Duo laptop or his home or work desktop Macs. I asked him if it was tedious and he answered that it wasn't as bad as it sounded. He challenged me to read a book-length document on a computer, so I bought (in the employee store) the Voyager (remember them?) hypercard (remember that technology?) edition of William Gibson's cyberpunk trilogy, which I read on my PowerBook Duo (remember the 25 MHz 68030-based Duo?) while on vacation, sitting on the porch of an old ranch house in the Anderson Valley.

He was right, it wasn't that bad. These days, as I read most books on a Kindle and almost everything shorter on my netbook or desktop, I see the prescience of Gary's experiment.

To my colleague's point about losing paper skills (he note his handwriting was getting bad, too), I've noted the same phenomenon. Norman Doidge addresses this in his book on neuroplasticity "The Brain that Heals Itself" - it really is 'use it or lose it.' When using some skill less often, the brain diverts resources to those things that are done more often - we really do get 'rusty'...as you can see in my handwritten to-do list...

The boy's wild weekend

So, both Scott and I found ourselves without spouse on Saturday and we decided to get together. I sent Scott an email suggesting we go drinking in topless bars - Scott didn't even bother to reply: you know you're getting old when it's just understood that behavior involving alcohol and unclad females is off the table... waaay off the table.

Scott has a new Canon 5D he wanted to check out, so I grabbed my Leica and piled into Scott's hybrid Honda with him and Tiger Lily. We just headed out, and eventually found ourselves in Pescadero, on the coast side of Skyline. There are a couple of picturesque, weathered buildings just outside of 'downtown' on North Street that Scott is fond of photographing - unfortunately, both were blocked by parked cars.

I found my own picturesque building - St. Anthony's Iglesia Catolica (seen above) and fumbled with the auxiliary viewfinder for the Leica's 16-21mm zoom, before realizing it was calibrated for a film Leica, not my digital M8 (I should have packed the M4, loaded with Tri-X).

North Street is also home to Harley Farms, makers of excellent goat cheese. Scott likes cooking as much as I do so we made a small raid on the farm store, coming away with chevre, goat ricotta and chevre buttons in herbed olive oil (num). After that it was take-out barbecue sandwiches from the market on Stage Road (with Lily, we couldn't eat at the celebrated Duarte's or the locals' fave, the Mexican restaurant in the Alliance gas station). We ate at a picnic table in Pescadero State Beach before cruising home the slow way...

Cross post from my other blog

[I'm playing around with MarsEdit, a blog editor, that makes it easy, among other things to crosspost...]

After Scott, Lily and I completed our morning marathon (actually a 1.5 mile loop walk) and ensuing coffee chat (I'm threatening to bring a mic and/or webcam to this twice weekly event), I was evicted from World HQ by our incredibly efficient cleaning crew.

There's a maelstrom of vacuum cleaners and dust mops rattling the house, and I'm holed up in the back bedroom while the rest of the house is mopped, vacuumed, dusted, polished and scrubbed into submission. My tiny Asus Netbook is on my lap, and we're logged in to World HQ's secure WiFi (got to keep those Russian spies and hacker riffraff from reading my posts before they're public). The WordPress interface works flawlessly in Firefox on Linux.

As usual Scott and I had conversed, rambling over a dozen topics as we walked or, afterwards, sipped Peet's coffee.  Scott, who is an expert in electronic payments, made the point that all the innovation in his field seemed to be coming from scammers who were constantly looking for ways to game big payment systems. 

Scott also showed me a Virgin Atlantic ad video on his iPhone that's running in Britain, featuring a bunch of sexy female flight attendants (remember when?) - the ad is set in the 1980s in commemoration  of Virgin's 25th anniversary. He figures it might not be PC enough for the U.S. - but Linda liked it.

We also discussed the tech feeds aggregator I built on Blogger, using a 'recipe' from Elise Bauer. Im currently waging a battle with my CSS template to incorporate the feed legibly into gulker.com.