Design by Committee: Photography

Loch Leven Lakes

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:36:55 GMT

Just posted a few snapshots from a Saturday day hike to Loch Leven Lakes, a wonderful and fairly accessible bit of the High Sierras. Haven't been there in a while, despite it being a fantastic place for some bouldering with the kids. It was good to get above California's persistent smoky haze for a few hours (though later in the afternoon even the high country took on a smoky hue.)

Happy Independence Day

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 06:16:03 GMT

Wishing everyone a last minute happy 4th of July, and for those of you who missed fireworks this year, here's a couple of photos to hold you till next year. Full Flickr set here.

Tamales bay, sky views

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:18:16 GMT

Had a great though brief visit from Paul, during which we toodled around the north end of Tamales Bay, bordering the Point Reyes National Seashore, the site of one of our successful backpacking trip a couple of years ago. My primary goal, the Drake Estero, was closed for Harbor Seal pupping season, but we had good fun anyway. Flickr set here.

Also uploaded and organized some existing shots from plane windows. Looking out the window is by far the best part of flying! Flickr set here.

Crooked Lakes Basin reprise

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 02:59:58 GMT

For an end-of-summer blast, an elite selection of Marsh family members returned to the Crooked Lakes Basin for an overnight backpacking trip. Photos are now online here, joining the set from our last visit a couple of years ago. The air was a little smoky from recent California wildfires, but it was fun to revisit a place and to dig up new subjects and try to do better on some shots I'd done before.

Tuscon snaps

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:55:34 GMT

Just posted a few photos from last weekend's trip to Tuscon for the Tuscon Gem and Mineral Show, a city-wide collection of gem, mineral, and fossil collectors and wholesalers from around the world.

Most of the shots are from a hike through Saguaro National Park, and a tour through the practically abandoned Biosphere 2. Many curious stories behind that expensive experiment! (I didn't say failed experiment! You can't make me say failed experiment!)

The desert around Tuscon is a pretty lush ecosystem, with jumbles of desert flora everywhere - my photos attempt to make some visual sense of the landscape. The colors, even in this season in-between hot and wet.

Enjoy.

Photo Use

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 06:13:21 GMT

This picture I made of the Gold Country Fair got picked up on the Placer Valley Tourism web site, after they asked my permission to use it. Cool!

Sunriver

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 16:59:18 GMT

Been in Sunriver all week with brothers, parents, nieces, nephews, sisters-in-law, spouse, daughters, aupair. It's been snowing a little pretty much every day, so we've stayed in with lots of games. I did find a few geocaches though before the snow set in, and sneaked out a few times into the icy air for a few photos. See them here.

Hacking in Brittany

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 03:36:15 GMT

I'm on my way home from France, having attended a very successful WSDL 2.0 Interop Event, in which we made dramatic progress in completing the test suite infrastructure, running tests of various sorts, fixing bugs in implementations, and even debating some ambiguities in the spec. Everyone worked incredibly hard (often into the wee hours - 4AM was my best[worst]), and the accomplishments are impressive. Merci boucoup to all who attended and worked so hard! Final victory is within sight...

But besides the nearly round-the-clock hack-a-thon, we did take a bit of time out to enjoy the local attractions - a nighttime tour of Mont Saint Michel, crepes and a walk around the old town of Saint Malo, an over-abundance of excellent meals, and even a few rounds of Werewolf. Pictures are available here.

Field trip!

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:56:27 GMT

Last week I accompanied my daughter on a field trip to the Mission San Juan Batista and Mission Carmel (they're studying California history), and to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Finally finished arranging, tagging and geotaggingthe photosets. You can find the photoset for Missions here, and that for the aquarium here.

Beyond Panoramas

Sun, 05 Nov 2006 15:54:10 GMT

I've come across a number of interesting variations on panoramas on Flickr lately, some of my favorites illustrated below.

Anyone intrigued by The Little Prince would naturally gravitate towards polar panoramas - in which a 360 degree panorama (or at least a nominally joinable one) is transformed into polar coordinates, resulting in your own tiny world to explore. Makes the world seem much more manageable, don't you think?

I often like leaving the edges of a panorama raw - the shapes can be quite interesting. In this vein check out Mareen Fischinger's panographic compositions - well over a hundred photos collaged to transform their rather mundane, colorless subjects into brilliantly rhythmic pieces.

And then there's the physically created panoramas, like this polaroid emulsion lift panorama from Cℓea tecℓea.

Or this moody, slightly spooky panorama stitched (in a darkroom I think) from sequential but otherwise unrelated photos on a film roll. View it large.

Childhood lesson in political action

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 16:55:24 GMT

Ali (age 7) has only one simple demand:

A trip down memory lane with Flickr Maps

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 20:17:05 GMT

If you love maps and GPS coordinates as much as I do, you'll find Flickr Maps irresistible. I've become an avid user in the month or so that the feature has been available, and you can find many of my sets (especially those that are outdoors) sporting location information. You can see a map of all my geotagged photos here.

First some history. Flickr runs on "tags", or keywords that users give their photos. These tags are vital for searching and grouping photos. Flickr has some pretty advanced facilities for tagging, including third-party tagging (a user tagging someone else's photo), and tagging just a part of a photo. For a while a growing set of Flickr users have added latitude and longitude tags to their photos, and developed some mash-ups for displaying their photos on maps. Now Flickr has built this capability in, with geospatial metadata given the same status as time, licensing, and viewing permissions.

Here's a zoomed in view of part of my map with satellite imagery turned on.

Each geotagged photo shows up as a dot on the map. Click on a dot and you get a series of thumbnails of photos shot in that location. Click on Show detail and you get a larger view of the photos.

So, why is this cool?

First, for those of us addicted to photosets as a way to view photos in order (generally chronological) in order to tell a "story" documenting some event, the order that you view photos in makes a big difference. And a map presents an interesting order in which to view your photos. For instance, the dots imply that our circumnavigation of Echo Lake was part water and part on land.

Second, if you're addicted to satellite imagery, you probably have found that while an overhead view gives you some sense of a place, when you actually go there you find that it can be quite different from your expectation. The ability to see some photos helps build a much better sense of what it would be like to be there. And you'll find new places you want to see - like Desolation Valley's Twin Lakes as captured by malaparte, which I found while reviewing my Echo Lake geotags.

Third, for the historical addict, grouping photos by location, and not by time taken, can give you a sense of how a place changes at different times of day or night, or even different seasons. Eventually I might be able to look back and see what a place was like a decade ago... This is especially valuable as the collective historical record grows. Click "Clear all" and the dots won't be limited to just your photos, but will mix in photos from everyone.

If you're a photoset addict, a satellite addict, and a historical addict, you had best resign yourself now to becoming a Flickr maps addict.

But what was unexpected to me is that the act of geotagging, rather than the chore I expected, is rewarding in and of itself thanks to the Flickr map/Yahoo map user interface. To walk through a set of photographs, and map them up either through GPS logs, or just manually placing them on the map from memory (which is surprisingly easy even for photos a year or more old), is like a trip down memory lane. You have to remember where you were when you took each photo in order to place it on the map. You correlate your experiences with the satellite imagery. You look more closely at the dates and times the photos were taken, and the relation of different photos in time and in space. You compare your photos with ones others have taken at the same spot.

In the end, it's like reacquainting yourself with old friends.

Fairly Abstract

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 03:17:45 GMT

I'm not a big amusement park lover. I prefer stillness and contemplation to noise and excitement. But my kids don't seem to take after me in that.

So when they want to go to the County Fair, I'm willing to take them, and enjoy their enjoyment. Even better is for them to bring friends along to go on the rides with. Then I just tack along and play with my camera when they're swinging through a constellation of lightbulbs in the dusk.

The photoset is here. A couple of my favorite abstracts below.

Philippe's Reflections on Toronto

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:08:42 GMT

It's always fun to see what another photographer does with the same material - same place, same time. Philippe has a set that interleaves with my Relfections on Toronto and Niagra Falls. Here's a couple of my favorites, or see Philippe's whole set here.

Niagra Falls for Dinner Anyone?

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:56:40 GMT

One of the main features of Toronto seems to be - that it doesn't have a lot of main features. There's the CN Tower, at which we dined last time we were in the city. And there's the waterfront, which we visited this time. But otherwise the topography is pretty flat (at least to the eyes of this westerner.)

But an hour and a bit away is a pretty amazing feature - the gigantic Niagra Falls. We scooted down there after WSDL Interop work one evening and enjoyed watching dusk and then night drop slowly over the falls. We kept to the WSDL tower theme by eating dinner in the revolving restaurant in a nearby miniature (but still quite impressive) of the CN Tower. Photos here.

What impressed me from the dry west, is the sheer volume of water (202,000 ft³/sec) plunging over the precipice. The only comparable river out west is probably the Columbia (262,000 ft³/sec). Even the Colorado (70,000 ft³/sec mean) which sustains half the West Coast is pretty modest in comparison.

Reflections on Toronto

Sun, 09 Jul 2006 01:08:33 GMT

Just back this morning from a productive W3C WSDL 2.0 Interop event in Toronto. When I arrived on Wed, I joined my colleagues for a stroll along the Toronto waterfront, followed by dinner. Of greatest interest to me are the ones of reflections of boats and buildings on the harbor water. Hope you enjoy Reflections on Toronto!

Steep Ravine

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:29:57 GMT

I'm still have over a week backlog of photos (and I've taken a lot lately!) but I managed to sort through and post a few of our campout at Steep Ravine Environmental Campground in the Marin headlands just north of San Francisco.

Nice cool (even foggy) weather. The dense coastal chaparral is full of wildflowers - lupine, monkeyflower, calla lily, lavender, poppies, queen-anne's lace, and many more, growing in tight profusion but still somehow miniturized by the harsh conditions. As my daughter said - "it's like living in three-foot land!"

A delightfully relaxing trip - though it had a serious purpose. We were testing our new camping gear in preparation for a three-day backpacking trip into Point Reyes. Look for those photos soon!

More photos of me

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 17:28:06 GMT

Probably the last thing you'd be interested in, but after finding Paul's nice shot of me kayaking, I made it easier to find photos of me (as opposed to by me) on Flickr by adding the AuburnMarshes tag to many of other folk's, especially Paul's, photos tagged as Marsh, Jonathan, Jonathan Marsh, and so forth. Nice that you can add tags to photos (at least to most peoples - don't know why someone would turn off this feature.)

I guess I'm not too vain though, considering my favorite pictures of myself are rather self-effacing (credit Paul for these.)

Pacifica

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 03:35:45 GMT

Just uploaded a few snaps during a wonderfully cool (compared with 108F at home) foggy day on the bridges and beaches of San Francisco. Not a lot of interest there unless you've got friend permissions - the waves-chasing-kids shots are my favorites here.

Ottawa

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 05:34:46 GMT

I spent a few days in Ottawa this week, at the WS-I Plenary meeting. Besides a bit of geocaching, we did a fair bit of walking around, biking, and even some kayaking along the canal. The light seemed quite odd to me, at last I realized that the air was so clear because there was essentially zero air pollution. Worth celebrating with some photos!

I had a hard time capturing some of the vistas of parliment, the river, and so forth in a single shot, and ended up taking more panoramas then usual. But as usual, I used Microsoft Digital Image Pro to stitch them - I still love the ragged edges on some shots- somehow it counteracts some of the wide-angle distortion and gives you a better sense that you are looking at the view then a cropped panorama can.

Ottawa is a fine city, clean and friendly with an extensive and varied restaurant district. Great pedestrian access (and hardly any traffic). There are also bronze statues or plaques about every 100 yards, commemorating some historic event or other, but not really pushing the boundaries of commemorative statues very much. I dreamed of satirizing this plaque-o-mania with a multi-stage cache which visited like 50 plaques within a 3 block radius of downtown, but alas my trip was to short and full...

Also caught some amazing molten-copper reflections off of Lake Michigan from the plane. Had to turn the saturation down to make them believable (even though less accurate.)

[Update 7/2 - found more photos on another SD card - now added to the Ottawa set.]

A Day Off

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:43:37 GMT

The last month has been absolutely packed. Between the creation and launch of Deanna's web site, preparation for the successful opening of her June show at the Artisan Gallery, the end of school activities for the kids, and of course squeezing in as much work as possible, there really hasn't been much time for blogging or photography.

But at last we had a day of rest, marked by the short hike along the North Fork American River to the strangely named Codfish Falls. The trail was lined with wildflowers of all types, and I took advantage of that to work on my macro technique a bit.

Results are in the Flickrset Codfish Falls, along with sets representing Springtime Landscapes in the canyon, and the Easter Rodeo, even a short trip to Boston, all of which had languished in the camera for the last two months.

W3C Tech Plenary photos.

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 07:25:25 GMT

A little late getting photos posted, but the week before last I spent in the South of France at the 2006 W3C Technical Plenary. Mostly I was stuck in the hotel in meetings or feverishly working online, rewarded in the end by successfully completing several milestones:

WS-Addressing Candidate Recommendation completion. The final issues were closed and dealt with and the interop work approached (but didn't quite reach) completion.
The WSDL Working Group held it's (probably) last full face to face meeting, as it enters it's fifth year. It now goes into a bit of slow motion waiting for implementations to catch up.
Put the finishing touches on the two "binding" specifications I co-authored with IBM, Oracle, and SAP.
Delivered a hopefully amusing lightning talk at the Tech Plenary, with Paul Downey, on the Chad voting bot and how Single Transferrable Voting can make getting to consensus, well, just a lot more fun.

In between I had some excellent company, excellent food, including a 9-course truffle menu at La Bastide Saint Antoine, and even toward the end of the week a couple of refreshing outings to find geocaches.

Photos are available in the Cannes set. Check it out!

Baby pictures

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 03:33:57 GMT

As of yesterday, we have a couple of new family members, a little black Barbados lamb (a twin on the losing end of sibling rivalry for milk), and another little guy to keep her company. They currently live in our shower at night while this cold snap lasts, and in their new paddock during the day. Kids are loving the regular bottle feeding necessary to build their strength up. And just like the rhyme, the lambs now follow them wherever they go...

Welcome to the ranch Samurai Jack and Lotus!

Photos here.

Stanford photos

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 06:54:00 GMT

Last week I spent three days chaperoning the Sierra Montessori Academy Field Trip. This interval it was about Science and Technology, with tours of Stanford and the Stanford Linear Accelerator, programs at the San Jose Technology Museum and The San Jose Museum of Art, and stops at the Intel Museum and the Computer History Museum. Belated posting of the resulting set of photos on Flickr (mostly restricted).

Spending time with the kids was really rewarding, especially the final stop at the Computer History Museum where I gave a short presentation tying together the early computers used by the defense department (linked by a netowrk), up through the semiconductor revolution spurred by Intel, from the early microprocessors like the Rockwell AIM and the first Apple II, where I could show the kids some of the ancient hardware we learned on, relating all this up to the development of the Internet and the Web, playing up the SLAC-Cern connection and the contribution of Tim Berners-Lee.

I've known my work has always been abstract to my kids, since the day in 2nd grade my daughter came home with stories of the Dad who visited the class in his work uniform - the flight suit he wears when flying U2s over Yugoslavia or Afganistan or who knows were. After she finished telling me all about it she said "and what do you do again, Daddy?"

But this time, by the end of my short presentation, Gen said "Gee Dad, you know a lot about this stuff." You should have seen my smile!

Fort Ross circa 1800

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 22:10:34 GMT

Pictures from the Auburn Discovery Montessori field trip earlier this week are now posted on Flickr as the Fort Ross set.

Fort Ross was a trading post of the Russian Hudson Bay Company, occupied from 1799 to about 1840, occupied by Russian traders and militia and Aleut indians who were experts at otter hunting. Our field trip was an overnight to live in the fort as the residents would have (sort of -- we had dish soap and sleeping bags :-). We dressed in costume and were assigned a role which included a Russian name and a workgroup - cooks, hunters, militia, gardeners, artisans.

We were cooks, so many of my pictures are in and around the kitchen fires. But we also danced, hiked, explored the beach, fired the cannon, and learned a lot about how the traders lived back then. Turned out to be a great way to spend time with the children!

P.S. Many of the 109 photos are of the children and are marked as private. If you wish to see them ask me to add you as a Flickr contact.

Vancouver

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 05:10:08 GMT

Just got back from Vancouver BC, where I attended the W3C Web Services Addressing Working Group meeting and interoperability event. Two days of implementers sitting quietly in a conference room banging on each other's implementations got us much closer to proving that the spec is ready for prime time. Paul and I had a great time designing the most complicated perl pipeline of XSLT on the planet to aggregate the results and display them. It really helped build the excitement to see how green squares spreading slowly through the matrix!

Vancouver was quite delightful too. The residents seemed to be celebrating the depression caused by the twin blows of having 28 straight days of rain, and then narrowly missing the record set in 1953 of 29 days. But having pouring rain for only half my stay was fortunate for me. Upon arriving, I found a hungry pair of English blokes (Paul and Marc) at the hotel, and joined them in cracking the shells off a succulent Spicy Black Bean Dungeness Crab and other Chinese delicacies.

During lunch a few days later Paul and I took a tiny rainbow-colored Aquabus over to Granville Island, which is a trendy artist colony with a great market, food court, and lots of art studios and galleries. I acquired a tiffin (essentially an Indian lunch box) full of savory Indian delicacies -- worth returning for another the next day on our way to biking the seawall path around Stanley Park on the west end of the island. We even tried for a couple of geocaches but only the one nearest the hotel succumbed to our investigations.

Pictures snapped during my explorations are now posted on Flickr.

Kodak EasyShare V570

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 17:50:35 GMT

Hugo led me to the Kodak EasyShare V750 announcements, and while nothing could shake my pride in my Casio Exlim Z750, the specs on the Kodak are pretty cool. It seems to have everything the Casio has (big screen, scene modes, full video), and more (wide-angle, in-camera panorama stiching, auto-rotation sensing, etc.). Even the size compares favorably with the Casio, at 1/2 an inch wider but smaller in overall volume.

The only spec not up to par seems to be battery life, which is exceptional on the Casio. Did I tell you my wife took the Casio to Switzerland, took over 400 shots over three weeks, and didn't even pull out the second battery I'd purchased for the occasion?

Photo Albums moved to flickr

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 22:33:16 GMT

I started out posting some photos directly here in MSN Spaces, but have migrated to flickr over time. This was prompted by Norm's report that these photo albums always came up marked as "new" in his RSS reader. And although the little photo album tab decorates my blog page a little I try to add photos into the text whenever possible, so the tab only slows down loading the page.

So you can now see the American River Confluence and Berlin sets on flickr, in a variety of sizes (larger than those allowed by MSN Spaces). And for some of you a couple new ones of Paul canyoneering now that I can take advantage of the friends and family permissions settings to keep his mug out of view of the general public ;-).

The Rural Life: Mini horses

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 03:15:52 GMT

Uploaded a few photos (some private) of the Loomis Thanksgiving Parade which the 4-H miniature horse project participated in on the morning before Thanksgiving.

Got a couple of interesting small town shots I think. The one at right is probably my favorite, though it's a bit hard to explain why. My eyes just travel around it for quite a while before they're ready to move on.

Scotland comes to California

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:22:34 GMT

Wet, foggy, and generally miserable weather here today.

However, since nasty weather is such a rare occurance, the change in the colors of the landscape is intriguing to me. Thus a small set of Misty Roads shots.

Also, as I'm thinking more on "vision" lately (both physical and the "where am I going" type), I found some metaphorical interst in empty roads winding off into the mist.

Update 11/30: Added even more misty road photos.

Talking about 50 people see... - a photoset on Flickr

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 06:09:52 GMT

If you like abstract colorfield paintings, here's a set of photo collages you won't want to miss: 50 people see... - a photoset on Flickr. Reminds me of Monet's haystacks for some reason...

Update 11/21: Paul got his hands on the averaging script, and is doing some fun work with it. See his new Averages set. I'm even represented.................

Troublemaker

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 17:47:51 GMT

I'm finally getting around to uploading a set of early morning photographs of the TroubleMaker rapid on the South Fork of the American River. We camped out there overnight back in October, and kayaked and inner-tubed down the section starting just below the rapid for a couple of miles. The flows were unseasonably high for fall, allowing for some great shots of the whitewater.

More Yokohama photos

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:29:23 GMT

Finished uploading a selection of my Yokohama photographs, and added them both to the Yokohama set, and to the W3C Web Services FTF Japan - 2005 pool, which includes photos from other attendees.

It's fun to see how different people in the same place at the same time captured quite different (though in some cases almost identical) shots.

Yokohama at night (mostly)

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 06:48:30 GMT

Just posted a few pictures taken in Japan, mostly at night, many of which are abstract. The Japanese urban landscape is very complex and still hard for me to understand visually, which is why many of these are either abstract or close-ups. Enjoy!

Experience Music Project

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 06:09:49 GMT

VisitingFrank Gehry's amazing creation for Seattle's Experience Music Project with my daughter yielded a few interesting shots...

Aquarium of the Air

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 19:19:41 GMT

We took a road trip on Saturday to San Franciso, to pick up our arriving German exchange student. As her flight was a bit late, we had time to stop by the 2005 Berkeley Kite Festival, which provides an excellent opportunity for some colorful shots. Since I chose the Casio Z750 you know I like saturated colors! A selection of some of the photos are posted over on flickr.

I loved the fact that many of the jumbo kites are themed as ocean life, turning the sky into a huge aquarium.

I also posted a few shots of our stroll across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Enjoy!

Fireworks and glowsticks

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 00:45:35 GMT

Played around with the nighttime presets on my Casio Z750. A small selection of the results are posted over on flickr (trying to overcome the picture size limitations associated with MSN Spaces).

Each photo has some minimal levels tweaking to increase the contrast, and some cropping (hard to frame moving targets perfectly in the dark with 2 sec exposures).

Enjoy!

American River Confluence Photos

Wed, 22 Jun 2005 01:21:13 GMT

Uploaded some of the photos from Paul and my 3/4 mile walk around the confluence of the Middle and North Forks of the American River. We crossed No Hands Bridge and rock-hopped back up to the car. Amazing how much you can see in such a short time - it's an amazing place. Hope Paul agrees - he's a little pink today ;-). Track of our exploration attached.

[Update June 23: Added one final photo of the rapids.]

[Update 2005-12-14: Moved the photos to an American River Confluence set on flickr.]

A rattler for Paul

Tue, 21 Jun 2005 17:22:26 GMT

Paul visited this weekend. I had to produce a rattler for him, though this one wasn't in the kitchen.

Casio camera reviews

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 16:56:56 GMT

My full-time digital photography expert (thanks Mom!) notes that DPReview has published a review of the Casio Exlim EX-750. And that a similarly-featured 5Mpx model is now available that's 40% thinner. How do they do that?! At this rate in a few years we'll have cameras that are the thickness of a credit card with the whole back acting as a display.

Reminds me of SD cards which (though growing in capacity) are unlikely to get any smaller because of the limits of human fingers to manipulate anything tinier.

Berlin photos

Thu, 09 Jun 2005 06:35:15 GMT

I finally updated the Berlin photo album. Check out Paul Downey's too, same time same place - different eye. I still have dozens of pictures of Berlin bears to sort through and do something creative with...

Many of these photos were taken in lower resolution mode (somehow I inadvertently changed the resolution I guess, bummer), which eliminated a lot of interesting candidates, but after downsizing for upload I'm not sure it matters too much. I did a little cropping and some and exposure balancing on most in Picasa. Panoramas were stiched in Microsoft Digital Image Pro.

Update 2005-12-14: Moved the Berlin photos to a new Berlin set on flickr. Added a representative photo here too.

Maps on the go and other camera tricks

Sun, 05 Jun 2005 08:25:51 GMT

Another use for the lovely 2.5" screen on the Casio EX-Z750. I took several pictures of the maps in my guidebook, and left the guidebook at home. Using the zoom feature I could navigate details of the map pretty well!

I also used the audio recording feature to record the expert pronunciation of a couple of Turkish menu items that were worth remembering but too foriegn to memorize for long-term use.

[Update 6/7/05: It's especially useful to take a picture of a map you couldn't take with you if you wanted - the most detailed maps are the huge ones in each subway station in Berlin. Several times on Sunday I snapped a photo of the detailed map between the subway station and my destination, in much greater detail than my guidebook provided. Enclosed is a small section of such a map shown at the actual size and zoom level of the screen. Perfectly readable, and as easy to scroll around to a larger area (about 15 screenfuls) as Google maps are.]

Instant digital microscope

Sun, 29 May 2005 02:27:10 GMT

My mom turned me onto this trick: take the eyepiece off an old camcorder and stick it on your digital camera. Voila, instant microscope! Between the maginfication of the camera's zoom, the eyepiece, and zooming in on the image, you can display the eyes of the spider on the viewfinder at at least 10x magnification. And the whole thing still fits in your pocket!

Of course, a more sophisticated solution can produce pretty amazing results!

Casio Exlim EX-Z750

Thu, 26 May 2005 22:30:55 GMT

After a lot of research and collecting advice, I finally purchased an ultra-compact digital camera!

Top ones in the running included the popular Canon SD500 and the Nikon 5900/7900. But the eventual winner was - The Casio Exlim EX-Z750! All of the candidates seemed to be of similar size, functionality and have similar fan bases. Side-by-side comparisons such as this one were not generally overwhelmingly conclusive (depending on a lot of personal preference). But the Casio has a couple of features that I fell in love with:

A huge 2.5" LCD screen which covers the majority of the back of the camera. This is turning out to be even more useful than I ever thought! Not only does the larger screen make framing the shot easier, but it's large enough to view the result (for instance, showing the image to friends) in a very useable way.
The user interface is very intuitive, and includes a large collection of scene modes which promise to make those average photos (not worth taking the time to optimize the settings) much better. For instance, the white-board scene sets the exposure parameters quickly, and then provides the option to crop the result and remove the parallax - which is very useful but would generally be too time consuming to warrant the investment.

My ideal camera would have two missing features of the Casio though:

No time lapse mode (why not? it's just software).
An option for both downloading to a PC and recharging the battery directly through USB (the cradle is very useful for the home base station, but a bit bulky to be convenient on the road).

The Climbing Roses picture is direct from the camera, using the "Flower" scene mode with no adjustments. I think it looks a bit better with a slight contrast adjustment (hit "Auto Contrast" in Picasa2).

[Update: 6/29/05 noticed that the above statement is not quite right - MSN Spaces resizes photos to 640 wide on upload, so I can't really claim it's right out of the camera...]