adrian is rad

I’m enjoying this piece debunking the air around pro photographers. A quick sample:

I often leave my ISO dangerously high. I get more email about why I shot something at ISO 800 than anything else and that tells me (a) I should get my act together and (b) y’all need to lighten up on the whole ISO issue.
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People ask me about how to use their flash in two groups balanced with ambient and I stare awkwardly at them and give them Joe McNally’s email address or home phone number and beg them to (a) never tell Joe I sent them and (b) never to speak of this ever again.

I have long forgotten everything I knew about the zone system and now expose purely in reverse. Shoot first, look at the histogram, then get it right, instead of the way I learn which was the more sensible “meter twice, shoot once.”

Yay, I’m not alone in some of those.

I left South Africa on Thursday and traveled for about 26 hours until I landed in DC on Friday morning. Everything has gone pretty smoothly so far. The flight and travel felt shorter than I expected; I got in before the big snow fall here; I’ve had a great time hanging out with friends; and the Steelers stopped their losing streak yesterday in a ridiculous game.

I was hoping for some cold weather and snow when I got here but I didn’t expect the biggest December snowfall in DC’s history. We mostly just huddled inside, had some beer and pizza. In the evening, we went for a nice walk on still-unplowed streets in picturesque neighborhoods. It reminded me a bit of Norman Rockwell.

It’s been a bit disorienting being back. Besides going from the hot summer to snow and winter, there have been some cultural shocks as well. People speak differently and think differently, things work differently, some things are easier, some are harder.

The New Yorker’s Platon shot many of the world leaders when they were in NYC for the UN Meeting a couple months ago. Not all the photos are great but it’s a great collection all together.

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I never knew that Norman Rockwell staged photos of his ideas and then painted from the photos. The photos are obviously very meticulously produced. Check out some side-by-side comparisons.

I’ve been on some photo adventures lately, first to Green Point Stadium and most recently to Cape Town’s container port. Both were fun and interesting and I think I got some decent shots.

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Today marked, I believe, my first subconscious use of SA slang–isit, meaning “really?” or “is that so?”. What’s funny about my saying it is that it still sounds odd to hear other people say it. “I’m going to the container port” “Oh, isit?” “Uh…is what?”

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I think it’s time to start learning some Afrikaans, even if it’s just greetings and how-are-yous and I’m-sorry-I-don’t-speak-Afrikaans. Most people at work speak it, some as a first language and its also my flatmate’s first language. I’ll just have to fit it in my head with English, German and touches of Spanish, Chinese, and Zulu. But that’s it! No more languages after that!

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I like this fun theory business. The idea is that the best way to get people to change their behavior is to make it fun. Here’s one example.

(It’s a marketing campaign for VW, by the way. Not sure of the tie in…)

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This is a pretty tremendous photo series covering 27 months in the life of a US soldier from graduating high school to returning from a tour in Iraq.

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I enjoyed this piece in Wired:

According to archival footage, Brown was standing on his toilet seat on the evening of Nov. 5, 1955, attempting to hang a clock in his bathroom, when he slipped and slammed his head on the side of the sink. Upon regaining consciousness Brown reported having “a revelation, a picture, a picture in my head.” A picture which he crudely scrawled down on a piece of paper and subsequently spent 30 years of his life and family fortune to build.

That picture, of course, was the flux capacitor. And as every high school physics student knows, it’s the device that makes time travel possible.

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The incidents leading up to the time machine demise also served as the basis for the award-winning documentary, Back to the Future.

on my street earlier in the week

I watched part of a debate in Parliament today. It was pretty interesting. Members of Parliament were asking ministers questions. The Ministers of Justice, Police, Correctional Services, Home Affairs and International Relations were all there and answered questions while I was there. There were some light-hearted moments, but there were also some contentious ones as well, particularly ones between the Minister of Justice and members of the DA, during which the above quote was said.

I should note that I had to go through four metal detectors to get to the public gallery of the assembly, but my belt buckle made at least two of them go off; they waved me through all four.

in Salt River

This week has been a bit all-over-the-place. Yesterday I went to the SA National Gallery. It was pretty good and it cost $2 to get in. What’s the last time you’ve been to a museum for $2? Even the Pez Museum in Burlingame is $3! My one complaint about the museum is that there’s too much British stuff–lots of old portraits of generals and things from the 18th and 19th century. Why have portraits of an army someone whooped? (Also, there’s plenty better art from that and other time periods.)

On Sunday I went to the Long Street Baths (where I’ve been swimming) and went to their Turkish baths. I spent two hours in the sauna, steam room, cold plunge pool, etc. Wow that’s so ridiculously relaxing.

in Observatory

Some family is in town, or at least in the area. I’m heading to Stellenbosch tomorrow to see my uncle from the UK and over the weekend I’m heading to Hermanus, where my cousin will be. He and his wife have a cottage there that they’ll be at briefly. I haven’t been to Stellenbosch or Hermanus since 2004, I believe, so it’ll be a nice time.

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I saw Welcome to the Sticks the other day. It’s one of those fascicle French films, with some really funny moments. Basically the main character attempts to land a transfer to the Riviera by pretending to be disabled. Instead he’s found out and is transfer to the dreaded North instead. Thinking she won’t be able to handle the depressing North, his wife stays behind. The main guy ends up enjoying it, but when he tries to tell his wife this, she doesn’t believe him, so he lies and says its horrible. This seems to make her happy. Everything’s fine, until she decides to visit. Apparently it’s the most successful French film of all time? It’s a bit strange to me that that’s the case.

It’s Heritage Day here. I started off wearing red white and blue and ended up in the green and yellow, so how’s that for heritage?

It’s also known widely, but unofficially, as National Braai day and I attended one in Fish Hoek, where my aunt and uncle are staying while they’re in town from Jozi. The boerewors was good as was the SA cricket win against New Zealand.

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sunset on the St. Lucia Estuary

It’s been a little while since I updated about what’s been going on, quite a while in fact. After Ingwavuma, I went to St. Lucia Estuary and Hluhluwe Game Reserve for a couple days.

a beach in St. Lucia. hippos were a few hundred meters away

St. Lucia is a tourist town, but getting a good meal was nice. In the estuary park, I went for a cruise on the estuary itself and saw hippos and crocs very close plus a lot of birds and some buffalo and waterbuck. I also walked along the expansive beach between the Indian Ocean and the estuary where fishers cast their lines into one or the other and hippos lounge.

a zebra in Hluhluwe

I went on a game drive in Hluhluwe*. It started at the crack of dawn (5:30am). I’d seen zebra and rhino before we even got in the gate. It was a pretty good morning, staring out over the beautiful hills and velds and seeing all sorts of animals both close and far away.

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Table Mountain as seen from one part of Tamboerskloof

I arrived back back in Cape Town about a week ago. It’s been pretty hectic since, trying to get set up and whatnot.

I moved into an apartment in Tamboerskloof. The TBK as I (and only I) call it is at the top of the city itself, towards both Table Mountain and Signal Hill. I picked the location because it’s quite walkable. Within a ten minute walk are a number of restaurants and bars, a couple grocery stores, a swimming pool and the start of Long St, which has lots more restaurants, bars and shops. So far I’m enjoying living here, though there certainly is some adjustment having been in either suburbs or very rural areas for the last month and a half.

But I’ve spent a lot of time the last week buying things for my room (bed, sheets, curtains, etc) and basic food stuffs. I’ve unpacked. I have rented a car through the middle of December and I’ve met with a couple places about potential jobs. So it’s been a busy time.

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I’ve been posting plenty of photos over at my photoblog.

*the hl sound in Zulu is sort of like ’shl’ except the sh sound is formed by trying to make the l sound with your tongue but instead pushing around your teeth into your cheeks.

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Addendum: All South Africans think that Americans only bbq hamburgers or maybe hot dogs. I guess this comes from movies. Perhaps I’m not the average bbqer, but I’ve grilled or seen a much wider variety of things being grilled than what’s grilled at the braais I’ve seen here (which is usually wors, chicken, chops and/ or steaks).

So there are three click sounds in Zulu and I’ve been practicing them quite hard. Today while trying to master two words, Abaqophi (the shortened name [1] of the radio project, I believe this is “recorders”) and uxolo, meaning “excuse me”. A Zulu guy was trying to explain the q click sound: “It’s the sound you make when you call a chicken.” “Uh…I’ve never called a chicken.” I’ve previously heard the x sound described as the sound one makes to call a horse. I feel like the average American may have problems relating to these descriptions.

Well, I’ll try to describe them a little more clearly. C is the sound you may make if you’re tsk tsk tsking someone. Back of the tongue is anchored on the molars and the front pulls down fairly softly right behind the front teeth. It’s fairly high pitched and has a bit of a ‘wet’ sound. Q is the sound you make if you place your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth behind your teeth and then pull down quite strongly, but don’t smack your tongue against the bottom of your mouth. It’s quite a strong, low and open. X is perhaps the trickiest for me. Anchor the front (on the palate behind the teeth) and back (on the molars) of the tongue and pull down with one side. It’s not a clean ‘click’ but it’s cleaner than the c sound. It’s medium pitch, a fairly percussive beginning and a ‘wet’ middle.

One final note: these sounds can have a n sound to them (nx nc nq), but in their purest form have no n sound to them. This is the trickiest part of their pronunciation to me. Alright? Got it?

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A few days ago Colin pointed out that there would be a race between a carrier pigeon and the ADSL of Telekom, SA’s (formerly?) national telecom company. The task would be to transfer 4GB of data between computers 50 miles apart. I told Colin that I’d be betting on the pigeon. Well, I would have done well if I’d bet money:

[The] 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 80 km (50 miles) from Unlimited IT’s offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card was strapped to his leg.

Including downloading, the transfer took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds — the time it took for only four percent of the data to be transferred using a Telkom line.

Wow–that’s pathetic.

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The line between hitchhiking and public transportation here is quite blurred. Public transportation, as I’ve mentioned consists of ‘minibus taxis’ which you flag down when you want to get on and get off where you want, paying a fair for the distance in between. Except in Ingwavuma, these aren’t just minibuses[2]. They’re pick-ups with benches in the back, SUVs and, this evening, a sedan. So basically the only difference between this evening and hitchhiking is that I paid the guy about a dollar.

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Above are the aforementioned potpits in the road between Bhambanana and Ingwavuma. Shown are somewhat benign examples. For a sense of scale, the one in front is about 2.5 feet across.

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The day after last Thursday’s soccer game, I felt fine. First thing into Monday’s game, I pulled—maybe tore—my quad. It’s fine when walking around but the first steps of running, it hurts like crazy. I’d better be careful about it.

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The power went out this morning so I couldn’t heat water for my bucket shower. I ended up taking a cold half-shower and with yesterday’s temperature dip, I was shivering the whole time. And yet, still, there is something about life here that draws you in. I’ve met a number of people here who came here for a year and are still here three years later. I wondered how that could happen, but yesterday and today I’ve been wondering to myself if I couldn’t postpone my return to Cape Town a few more days, a week, maybe.

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[1] Abaqophi basOkhayeni Abaqinile is the full name–the Strong Recorders of Ohkayeni; Ohkayeni is the primary school where the program is based.

[2] In Cape Town they are strictly minibuses and run quite regular routes and do generally work more like buses. The locals both here and in Cape Town just call them ‘taxis’ or ‘public transportation’.

A friend’s mentioning his overtime for working today reminded me that it’s a holiday in the States. I’d totally forgotten. Enjoy your day off. My next holiday is Sept 24, Heritage Day.

I’ve made some friends here, or acquaintances at least. There’s a group of young people working at NGOs, the hospital, schools and churches. They’re mostly from South Africa but there are some Germans and things in there too. These are some of the same people I played soccer with on Thursday. On Friday I went to a residence on the hospital grounds to play a board game and hang out with some of them. That’s what passes for night life here in Ingwavuma but it was a fun time.

On Saturday I took public transportation alone for the first time here. Public transit here (which is quite similar to Cape Town’s public transport) are ‘taxis’. These are minibuses, SUVs and the like, which people flag down to get in and then get off where they need to, paying a set fee for the distance to the driver. It’s sort of like a hybrid between a taxi and a bus in American terms. Fare from here to town is R7, a little less than $1.

I’d taken them with some people from Ziseze before, but Saturday’s trip into town was my first alone. Great victory! Except I got there at 1:10pm and the shops close at 1pm. What kind of town has shops that close at 1pm? But I walked around for a while and got a coke at a take-away place that was still open.

a sheep in the road in ‘town’ in Ingwavuma

The “town” of Ingwavuma consists of a small shopping plaza with less than a dozen establishments, only a few of those are bigger than the couple hole in the wall take-away places. There is a supermarket, a building supply place, a gas station, a furniture store, an electronics store and a barber shop. Across the street are maybe a dozen stalls where people sell (probably home-grown) vegetables and things. Goats may be wandering in the street; cattle aren’t far away.

the water spigot at Okhayeni Primary School–the school doesn’t have running water

One of the places I’d got to via taxi was one of the schools the radio project works in, Okhayeni Primary School. The radio project group has called themselves what translates to the Okhayeni Strong Recorders. I think this is a pretty rad name.

Sunday I went to a local church which is mostly made up of Zulus. The preacher spoke in English but a member of the congregation translated on the spot–I was really impressed with this guy, incidentally. The service itself wasn’t particularly noteworthy besides it lasting 3 hours, but as I sat waiting for the service to start, some of the gathered, mostly women, sang some hymns in Zulu rather spontaneously. One started a hymn without any prompting or communication with others but many others soon joined in, filling out the harmonies. Some of them were particularly gorgeous and gave me chills.

a somewhat typical homestead around here with some older mud-and-stick buildings and some more modern buildings

In the afternoon I went for a long walk down the hill along the main road, turning back only when I was hot and sweaty and miles away. The road was surprisingly quiet and besides the occasional homestead, it was mostly just grass and trees and hills and valleys around me.

Homestead does tend to be a more appropriate term than home here: most places people live have multiple smaller buildings bunched together. Often they’re separated out by function–one may be the kitchen; one may be the sleeping quarters.

One Zulu exchange that I’ve enjoyed particularly is as follows, and it definitely loses something in writing, in the rhythm and cadence:
One: Sanibona (hello, to a group)
Group, in unison: Yebo! (yes, or general acknowledgment)
One: Ninjani (how are you, to a group)
Group, in unison: Siyaphila (we are fine)

The boys are playing soccer today. On the gravelly red clay it’s a different game than the grass game, just like blacktop basketball is different from the hard court variety. I haven’t see a slide tackle; I don’t think anyone will take a dive to draw a penalty. I’m not sure if there are even penalties in this game.

Zesize: soccer field front. The center itself to the left. The yellow rondavel left of center, is where I’m staying

The idea of Lebolla–the bride price–is apparently still very much followed in rural South African culture. Fana, a guy who I’m working with here, suggested 12 cattle or upwards of R50,000 is required these days. Of course there are some who can afford it, but it seems some who are otherwise ready to get married are not solely because of the onus of the lebolla.

One of my favorite SA traditions is not really that old nor is it that impressive. On the country roads, there are often slow vehicles–heavy trucks, half-working bakkies, cautious drivers–while other wish to go highway speeds. The slower vehicles will often slide over onto the shoulder to make it easier for the faster driver. The faster driver will then turn on his hazards for a couple seconds—”thanks”—and then the slower will flash his headlights—”pleasure[1]“. I love that little back and forth.

I don’t know much, but I know that 25L of water weighs a fair amount. And if I carry that up a hill from the spigot to my place every day, I’ll have strong shoulders and back by the end of these couple weeks.

The colors here are instantly memorable–the dark red of the clay, the greens of the plants, the off-whites and browns of the thatched roof houses.

It’s hot during the day. It’s winter, remember. In Cape Town, it felt like winter. Houses don’t have heat and I was wearing a sweatshirt or an outer layer almost constantly. But here, it seems to be summer already. I may be wearing pants, but that’s more because it seems that’s proper at the center than the heat. It’s a dry dry heat. It’s not unbearable, but it’s warmer than one would expect for winter.

[1] often said as in “my pleasure”, the equivalent of “you’re welcome.”

[click to see it larger]

I found this while I was home. See if you can pick out my dad.

I was a bit surprised that while there are some Johnny Weismuller types in the photo, there aren’t the Michael Phelps-like triangles-on-top-of-legs that you see in every competitive swimmer today. And the people in the photo weren’t slouches–some of these people held records and beat international competition.

I guess it’s almost a month ago that I went to Yosemite for the first time. I went with my friend Dave and his girlfriend Sarah, who’d just gotten off the plane from the UK.

Dave has gone multiple times a year for many years, so I just let him say what we should do. We went hiking from Glaciar Point down to the valley floor. We ate and drank. We lay in a field and tried to pick out climbers on the face of El Capitan. We found a grove of Giant Sequoias. We did a midnight hike up to Mirror Pond and saw it again in the day time.

Photographically, I brought my D80 and my ’60s-era Yashica A TLR. (I ran Velvia 50 through the Yashica.)

More photos after the jump

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Powell-Mason Cable Car

I thought I’d give you an update on my SF Muni Project–my project to ride all the bus, light rail, street car and cable car lines in the San Francisco Municipal Railway system.

California Cable Car

Since the beginning of the project I’ve ridden the 26 Valencia, 67 Bernal Heights, J Church, 21 Hayes, Powell-Mason and California cable cars, 19 Polk, L Taraval and 28 19th Ave. I’ve sort of been setting some rules as I go: I have to ride each line for a certain number of stops, maybe 6. I’m not absolutely sure on that point. Also, I can’t drive to take a bus line. I need to walk or take public transit or something like that.

California Cable Car

Cable Cars How did it take me this long of living in the area to ride these? They’re awesome. I’m a big fan. I managed to ride when they weren’t that busy with tourists so it was just sort of a pleasant ride on the old, open-aired cars of the system. Fun fact: the California Street line grows out of the one that Leland Stanford started.

19 Polk

None of the other lines were quite as exciting. The 67 is fun in that it winds through a hill neighborhood with tiny streets. And on the 26 Valencia, the automated stop announcements say it “Valencha”–like the old-school Missionites, particularly the Italian-American ones apparently say.

L Taraval

L Taraval

Seen in Palo Alto. And, of course, they’re sold in packs of 50.

On Sunday, I went to the BYOBW (warning: annoying auto-play music), Bring Your Own Big Wheel event. It’s a race down Vermont Street with a Big Wheel, kid’s tricycle, or really any sort of non-powered transportation method. This is the 9th annual one, though only the second on Vermont. Previously it was on the more famous and not quite as dangerous Lombard.

the organizer was the first down the track

my friend Alan is in the white helmet

guys dressed as Koosh balls walked down the course at some point for no apparent reason

View my full photo album.

One of my favorite photos I’ve taken recently is one that I took with a plastic, disposable camera without really looking.

I guess I get in ruts sometimes where all my photos start looking the same and it takes something outside of that to catch my attention again.

Originally it was just going to be a hiking to a cabin to sleep for the night and hiking back out. Not too hard, right? Then the details started to reveal themselves: it was 10 miles each way of hiking…at altitude (between 6.5K and 10K ft.)…on sand (partially). That’s starting to get a little harder.

The hike into Haleakala Crater last weekend did end up being pretty hard, but it was well worth it.

After a day of sitting on the beach, snorkeling, eating and going to a luau, we woke up bright and early and headed to the eastern side of Maui, up a windy and increasingly colder road up up the gradual slope of Haleakala. We stopped at the ranger station; our 8 minute don’t-destroy-the-crater video out of the way and back-country permits hanging from our bags, we headed to the summit.

From the parking lot there, I could see the lava rock and the clouds below us. This is not bad, I thought…When I went to the other side of the parking lot, to the visitor’s center and I could see the full extent of the crater below. It was massive. There was some vegetation, but it seemed nevertheless like I was looking down into a lunar crater, with a mostly black rock landscape and a number of cinder cones sticking up.

The next few hours were down, down, down on sliding sands–in more ways that ones as that’s also the name of the trail there. The landscape was deep browns, reds and blacks and the ever-growing walls of the crater. The vegetation was sparse grasses and some silverswords–only found in Haleakala. It was quite mildly otherworldly compared to what we’d see later but at the time it was quite amazing.

We broke at lunch time at the first cabin–there were three cabins and we were staying at the farthest one in (of course). The woman who was staying there already had some water boiled for sanitization, so we filled up. Right around there, we started noticing the changing scenery. There was some brown grasses and small shrubs. We could see where we were going–to a small field under a set of craggy and lush cliffs.

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There’s a little patch of old industrial buildings at the intersection of the Mission, SoMa and Potrero Hill.

Are you getting sick of my cell phone pictures yet?

x Noe in Noe Valley. Yes, it’s early February.

It later missed the my station and had to reverse about a mile.

Conductor over the speakers: “Next stop: 22nd Street.”

[time passes]

Passengers, looking out the window: “Uhhhh wasn’t that 22nd Street?”

[time passes, train stops]

Conductor over the speakers: “Um. Give us a couple minutes while we fix this.”

I spent 48ish hours in Pittsburgh a little after Christmas. It was my first trip there in two years. I’ve already posted a couple from the trip, but here’s a bit more.

I love Pittsburgh. I’ve lived in something like nine places at this point, but the longest tenure and most formative years were spent in Western Pennsylvania. I didn’t really didn’t think much of it while I lived there, but in summers of college and afterward on visits, I realized how much I liked it. Let’s say that everyone I know who didn’t grow up there thinks I talk too much about Pittsburgh for their liking.

When Pittsburghers say “Pittsburgh” to non-natives, they often mean Western Pennsylvania. Culturally, linguistically and in landscape it is a region that is pretty unique region. And driving to Pittsburgh from Southeastern Virginia, I could tell when Western PA was getting near–Cumberland, MD seemed very familiar. A shrinking town in a hill with similar architecture. And maybe it’s selective memory mixed with nostalgia talking, but I think if you lean your head against a car window and look out, through the trees and at the sky, you can tell just from that when you hit Western Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh surprises me every time I go back, both by changing and by staying the same. I didn’t expect there to be cyclists on the road or to have the same experience at a number of places that I had 8 or 10 years ago. Coming from a place where bars and restaurants and people turn over every few years, it’s odd to be in a place where something is still pretty new if it was built five years ago and many people have spent their whole lives in the region.

One of my favorite traditions is late night pizza at Mineo’s. It’s cheap and good and the company is unbeatable.

A newish place to me is Pamela’s Diner. They have great food at reasonable prices, compared to what I’m used to. I’d been introduced to the original (in the Strip) a few years ago by a friend from out this way who’d moved to Pittsburgh. It’s still good.

I’d been to Jerry’s and to Paul’s CD but I’d never been to Dave’s Music Mine. I don’t know how that hadn’t happened before, but it’s a pretty cool place. It’s got a good used selection and their soul records are pretty good.

I had a couple pinball aficionado friends that lived in Pittsburgh for a bit. One introduced me to pinball at the Beehive. I liked the Spiderman one. It had plenty of action but it was still pretty straight forward.

I love walking around the South Side. There are such great buildings. Also, there’s a sweet Salvation Army Thrift Store. I bought a suit for New Year’s Eve for $6.50.

I went back to the Church Brewworks for the first time since 2000ish. It was still good and, hey, possibly even better now that I can/ like to drink beer.

I went to Gooski’s for the first time. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but I can imagine spending a lot of time at a place that’s halfway between its hard scrabble Polish neighborhood and the hip and alternative side of the clientele. Next time I’ll have to have the pierogies.

Primantis is as good as I remember it, but I’m glad I have Giordano Brothers the rest of the year for my Pittsburgh-style sandwich cravings.

I rode the incline, had cheap draft beer at a dive bar, and watched a football game.

Oh and did I mention I got to have buckeyes for the first time in a while? They’re a Christmas tradition for me and the region for whatever reason.

Pittsburgh always seems to tease me when I’m leaving, as if to say, look, Pittsburgh can have enticing weather sometimes.

Finally, all my friends now seem to have GPSs in their car. These are pretty funny in Pittsburgh, with its convoluted roads, one way streets and difficult geography because the driver inevitably says/ yells: “Why does it want me to go that way?? No, no, no, this other way is much faster.”

I posted my best of 2008 list yesterday over at the music blog. Executive summary:

1. Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago
2. J Tillman Minor Works
3. the Rural Alberta Advantage Hometowns
4. Horse Feathers House with No Home
5. Two Sheds Two Sheds EP [EP]
6. James Hunter The Hard Way
7. Joe Pug Nation of Heat [EP]
8. Silian Rail And I You, to Pieces
9. Johnny Flynn A Larum
10. the Dodos Visiter
11. Raphael Saadiq The Way I See It

More description and mp3s over at the music blog.

I’ve also posted my best concerts of 2008.

My Blackdrop Portraits series has reached 22 photos of musicians. Here’s one of Justin Ringle of Horse Feathers

Justin of Horse Feathers by Adrian Bischoff

Sometimes I have my phone with me but not my regular camera and so I take camera phone pictures.

[click for bigger image on any of them]

I walked over Bernal Hill last weekend. This is a photo from the top with my neighborhood, the Mission, in the middle of the photo. (Bernal Heights is in the foreground; SoMa and downtown are to the back and right, Hayes Valley to the back and left). From the tall yellow building left-of-center, I live toward the viewer and to the left a little.

I went to an SF 49ers pre-season game a few weeks ago. This is the view from our seats.

I went to Camden Yards when I was in Maryland in early August. It was my first trip there. I liked the stadium a lot, especially how it was built into some existing buildings (or walls, really) in the area.

I liked this sign on Del Mar beach in the San Diego area. I was there in early July for a wedding.

One year ago last Friday I moved for Taiwan. Right after I returned in December, I gave you a debrief/ by the numbers sort of post so if you want to see a lot of specifics of the trip.

When Dave, my friend and coworker who was there for the first week I was, and I arrived in Taipei, it was hot and humid. Sweltering, muggy, suffocating–whatever you want to call it. We were tired and it was hot and we didn’t understand the language. We attempted a day of work and made it most of the way through, though, to be honest, I don’t think either of us were productive in the least. Dave’s luggage didn’t arrive (except, of course, his tux for a wedding he was going straight to after Taiwan) so that 6′6″ guy and I went to the store to get some clothes to tide him over. He found a shirt that fit and some socks but the largest underwear in the store, as Dave hilariously recounts, wouldn’t make it past his knees when he tried them on later.

We went to get some shabu shabu for dinner that night. The menu was entirely in Chinese and the people working there didn’t speak English at all so we ordered by pointing randomly to a line on the menu. The beef, which–as it turns out–we had ordered was pretty good. A thus I started my almost four months in the country.

It’s so hard to sum up four months in a place with so many varied experiences. Theer was the time in Jianmen, the Taiwan (Republic of China) island 2km off of mainland (People’s Republic of) China that I went to because it had a very interesting history of isolation followed by English colonial-by-way-of-Singapore influence followed by heavy military presence and bombing. It was a fascinating place. The people there also spoke very little English and even though I was near the end of my time in Taiwan and I’d had a one-on-one Chinese tutor, my language skills were not enough to get me by. I was in way over my head. At a noodle restaurant that was drying its fresh noodle on racks outside, I pointed and gestured that I wanted a bowl of whatever everyone else was having and that I was just one person to be seated.

After 15 minutes of mulling around near the entrance, I took the proprietress’ pointing at a bowl to mean that it was mine and I should follow. It was not my food and when I sat at the tableful of strangers, it was obvious I had sat in someone else’s seat. One guy, who was at the table with his friend–the other person at the table, an old woman, seemed unrelated–got me a chair. Later he offered me some of the chicken he and his friend were sharing. Pointing at the chicken and then the three of us: “together.” He also gave me tips about the hot sauce: “good”, pushing over one bottle. Later when the proprietress gave me a funny look while he was paying I didn’t make much of it–after all, as far as I could tell, I was the only white guy on that island, so I got plenty of funny looks. He came back over to the table “you no pay.” I felt ridiculous for nearly crying in the middle of the restaurant but I couldn’t help it.

There were the hoards of guys in Bangkok that tried to sell me fake tours or “massages”. There was the cab driver in Taipei that short-changed me.

I obviously stuck out, perhaps not as much as my 6′6″ tall friend when he was there, but I did. Sometimes it was fine, or even good. I’d make a faux pas or get myself in a jam and people would give me some leeway or help me out. Other times it just felt more like I was a complete outsider. In four months of taking the bus every single day, both ways, and often again in the evenings, I saw another westerner on the bus exactly once. I’m sure the women on the bus thought I was a bit odd.

It’s hard to explain what living there was like because there were so many different experiences. On an average day, my activities were mostly the same: wake up, shower, eat, work, eat, work, maybe run errands, make dinner, and go out or watch TV or write or read or play guitar or whatever. It was just what I was eating was different and the surroundings and people were completely different; the language and writing were (for the most part) not understandable.

I’ll try to give you a better taste through some photos. I’ve picked out some of my favorites because they give a feel for the place, because I like them artistically or because I think they’re quirky or funny. Feel free to ask more about any of the photos if the caption isn’t sufficient and I’ll give you more info if I remember.

You can also read some of my posts from when I was in Taiwan or otherwise traveling.

Taipei, early September

Shabu Shabu restaurant on XingAn Rd.

taxi at an intersection

Danshui Night Market, at dusk

Longdong Park along the northern coast

Scooters near Keelung

seafood market along Fuji harbor

sales/ net girl at seafood market along Fuji harbor

a mock-up (machine) shop

(many more below the break)

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I’ll be posting a lot of my trip photos–and some older photos too–up on the collective photo blog over the next week or two. Check in there for new photos. Here are a couple so far:

You Go Girl, Brooklyn

Monk outside Snake Alley, Taipei

I’m going to my first (regular season Steelers game in Pittsburgh) on December 28. Woooo.

The other week I saw a photoset of a very cool building mural/ graffiti in San Francisco, based on an icanhascheezburger image (this one to be specific).

I was running errands in Chinatown during lunch and thought some things looks familiar so I went around back, down the alley and saw this:

It’s still there! As it turns out, the building owner consented to having that painted on there. It’s still pretty cool, though.

A billboard on the building opposite of my work’s:

15′x22′?? I don’t think so!

As anyone with spacial abilities can tell, that banner is not even close to a 1.46:1 ratio! From the windows and scale of the people, one can tell it is more like 15′x40′.

You can’t fool me, CBS Outdoor Advertising!

When I moved to Menlo Park in 2003, there were three car dealerships along the main drag, El Camino Real. By the time I moved away in 2007, all of them were closed up. I’d meant to do a photo essay on them for a while and I finally did one time in December when I was back there.

Click for larger images.

Both Andy and Dave were taking photos but I think this one’s by David.

I spent last weekend in Jinmen (historical and common English names: Kinmen or Quemoy).

The history here is important: it was historically fairly isolated but also had some rich residents that had traveled to SE Asia. Basically this produced some of the best examples of classical Fujianese architecture and South-east Asian Colonial architecture, patterned after British colonial houses in Singapore and Malaysia but with Chinese influence as well.

On the other hand, it was the front line, literally, for the war between Chinese capitalists (the Nationalists, the Republic of China) and communists (the People’s Republic of China), for many years, with it situated 2km from Mainland. It was bombed, invaded, shelled with propaganda fliers for over two decades.

So it ends up being a really interesting place–old buildings, old buildings in a semi-Western style, bombed out buildings, fields of sorghum with spike-topped anti-parachute landing spikes, beautiful beaches with anti-amphibious landing spikes, military bases, fishing vessels, and quaint villages.

I found it very interesting and photogenic. I took a lot of photos but they’re all on film, so I’ll scan them when I back in the U.S.

It was easily the hardest place I’ve been this trip or this year–possibly even ever–in terms of getting around and not knowing the language. (Scratch that–Tanzania in 2004 would have been harder but I had a friend that spoke KiSwahili.) It started out fine–all the announcements at the airports and on the flight were also in English, despite the fact that I appeared to be the only westerner at either the airport or on the plane. But then I was picked up at the airport by someone who didn’t speak English (identifying each other by the other person with the cell phone up to their ear looking very confused), and brought to a scooter rental shop that didn’t speak any English. It wasn’t until I got to my guesthouse that someone spoke some English. For dinner at a seafood restaurant, I ordered “fish” because that was all that was mutually understood. It ended up being steamed and in a sauce and marginally undercooked. I ate it; I didn’t have the ability to complain. In the end, I saw things I wanted to see; I ate food; I was able to get there and return; I didn’t die. I consider it a success.

Perhaps seeing that I was in a little over my head, a couple people did some really nice things for me (not to get into the overly sappy I-love-everyone blogosphere realm). I went to a restaurant the first day for lunch that served Kinmen’s signature handmade noodles. All the tables were taken so I was just hovering near the entrance. I indicated to the woman working the food area that I wanted one of what she was making, so when she pointed to one bowl on a tray and brought it to a table, I followed her. Turns out I had just invited myself to sit at someone else’s table. (That’s fine in Asia from what I’ve found–in fact this table already had two groups–two guys and an older woman at it.) When I got my food, one of the two guys pushed over the spicey sauce: “good.” I added some. When they got some fried chicken, squid and tofu, he added while making a circling motion with his hand “together.” So I had a few pieces. When they paid, the proprietress gave me an odd look. Turns out the guy paid for my lunch.

The next day, I wasn’t sure how to get back to the scooter rental shop, so the other guest at the guest house let me follow them there. They hadn’t been planning to go out; they got in their car solely to show me how to get to the shop and then they headed back to the guest house.

I spent the weekend in Taroko (pronounced “Ta-loo-ga”) Gorge.

Basically, on the east side of the island, there’s a mountain range made up of marble and limestone. Into it are a number of steep gorges cut by many rivers. So what you have is very steep lush green and marble and limestone walls and gorgeous, often-crystalline rivers at the bottom, often with large marble boulders in them. It’s really magnificent. I’d recommend a visit.

I left early Saturday and took the train down. It goes up north and east till it hits the coast and then south along the east coast. Often it is just about the only thing between a range of mountains and the ocean. The ride itself is pretty amazing.

I got to Hualien and sort of wandering around a little bit until I found the scooter rental shops. I could confidently answer their first question, about whether I’d ridden a scooter in Taipei before [1], but the first few still didn’t want to rent me a scooter without a local drivers license. (To their credit, this may or may not be what the law specifies–I’m really not sure.) The third place rented me a scooter without much problem: a Kymco 125cc.

So I set off out of town and onto the highway toward Taroko…or at least I thought so. I realized it was getting more built up instead of less. I asked someone at the next light: “Taroko??” He did not point the direction we were going.

So now going in the right direction, I discovered the joys of trucks passing me and kicking up stuff in my face and fun like that. After an hour or so I hit the park gates, stopped to get some maps at the visitor center, I headed off to Tiansiang, some 18km from the park entrance and the one small town with a couple hotels, a hostel and a couple restaurants. Up the mountain passes I went on my scooter, gradually growing more comfortable at every turn.

Once in Tiansiang, I went around for a while trying to find my hostel, and eventually found it, the Catholic Hostel, where I had a reservation[2]. No one was around and the desk bell wasn’t bringing anyone rushing. Eventually, someone came around the reception area and I paid and got my key and whatnot.

The first place I tried to go was the Baiyang Waterfall Trail, but it was closed, so I made my way to the Lotus Pond trail. Lotus Pond’s a mountain pond hidden up in the mountains of Taroko. 3km or so each way–should have been easy to do in the 3 hours I had. After a nice easy walk for half an hour, I crossed a single person suspension bridge. It was the first of many of these that I cross in the park–they were sort of like the ones you seen in Indiana Jones, but just a little less rickety.

Then the trail got hard–steep steps for nearly 2.1km. Or I presume so. After a while I realized I wasn’t going to make it up and back before dark and I was alone, without a flashlight, on steep stairs and without cell phone reception. Not exactly worth the risk. I made it almost to the top of the hill when I turned around and the views from there left me wondering how places like that exist. Pretty magnificent. I first heard, then saw, wild monkeys in a tree across a small ravine from the hiking trail as I neared the top.

Soaked in sweat, even though it was about 60 degrees out, I headed back to the hostel to cool down and relax a bit. I read a bit of my book, Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet [3], the only book I’d brought on the trip and after reading for a while, I realized I was about to finish it. With my no music on transportation rule, I would be left without a book and without music for the train ride home. Great…

It was dark when I put the book down and I decided to get some food and then have an early night so I could see everything I wanted to see the next morning. My dinner wasn’t very good and was only notable because at one point I felt something crawling on my hand and looked down to see the single biggest wasp/ hornet I’d ever seen crawling on my jacket–easily 3 inches long and uniform brown. I can’t find any pictures online or a description of what it was exactly but it seemed to be injured–it wouldn’t fly away, so I brushed it onto the floor and kept an eye on it.

I woke up at 6am and showered in the shared and open-to-the-outdoors showers at the hostel. It was chilly, even with hot water. I wanted to go to the Wenshan Hot Springs. The route is described like this: down steep stairs to a suspension bridge, walk across it, along a cliff and then you’re at these hot springs are carved out of marble and sit within the river (though I imagine the water is piped down from whereever the hot spring actually is). I thought it be great to go and sit in the early on this Sunday morning, but the trail was closed. Disaster. I headed back to the hostel, packed up my stuff and dropped my key before heading to probably the most famous trail in the park, the Tunnel of Nine Turns. It was only 7:30am so I had it all to myself. Pretty amazing views of the gorge and river from this short trail.

Just outside of the park are the Chingshui Cliffs–a section of highway north of Taroko (Hualien is south) that is cut into these marble and lush green mountains as they hit the ocean. I decided to ride up and down these before the road got too heavy with traffic and then hit up the last couple hiking trails before heading to catch my train. They ended up being stunning. Like the PCH but more sheer and more beautiful. There were even a couple points where you could walk down to the black sand beaches via a series of steps.

Back in the park, I walked the Shakadang trail, along a ridiculously clear greenish-blue river, and then the Eternal Spring shrine/ monastery trail. Both had something new to see.

Then it was back to Hualien on the scooter, back to Taipei on the train, back to my room on the MRT. The only part of the return journey that had a hitch at all was when my seat was either double booked or my reservation only went through the next station. I’m not sure, but eventually the conductor showed the girl who also had car 9, seat 31 on her ticket to a different seat.

[1] Thanks to my coworker, I had actually had a little experience with a scooter in Taiwan. I’d asked him to teach me how to ride a scooter prior to this trip. His lesson was sort of like this: “Here’s how you turn it on. Here’s how you open the seat compartment. Okay, have fun; I’m going back inside.”

[2] I called the Catholic hostel once a month or so back, trying to reserve a room for a previous weekend. A man answered. After a few words from each of us in different languages it was obvious that he didn’t speak English. After an apology (which he probably didn’t understand, I now realize), I hung up. This time, I was determined so I got a coworker to call and make a reservation for me. After the call she explained how it had gone: she had called and talked to the person working there and made a reservation, saying it was for her American coworker and one bed and the night of the 2nd, etc. The worker seemed to be ending the call so she asked, “Do you want me to spell out his name so you can write it down?” The response: “No, I got it: one bed, foreigner.”

[3] Separate post about this book later.

(note 1: I have a backlog of photo essays that I wanted to post. Here’s the oldest. )

(note 2: The lighting and social situation at the stadium were troublesome: the ring was brightly lit while the stands were dark. Taking photos of people didn’t seem to sit well with them and with the darkness, my camera used a secondary light to help focusing, so I had to switch to manual focusing and focus blind (by guessing the distance) much of the time while taking hip shots. Basically these aren’t all the best photos…)

(note 3: click to see bigger versions.)

Muay Thai is Thai Boxing. It involves punching, kicking, elbowing, kneeing and pretty much any other way to try to injure your opponent. It’s pretty violent. I saw a thing on TV on the science behind martial arts in movies with a panel of the top martial artists in various disciplines and found that a Thai Boxer could inflict the blow with the most force of any of them. His knee blow to your chest could pretty much instantly stop your heart. These are wiry and strong individuals.

When I was in Bangkok, I went to an event. Each night has a few rounds–mine had 9, with the welterweights being the heaviest of the day and in the 7th match. It’s well known that the boxing is a rip off; foreigners are charged somewhere between 3 and 10 times as much as locals to get in. They’re also highly encouraged to sit ring side, which isn’t all that much more expensive than the caged in 3rd tier. However, culturally, the most interesting thing going on is in that 3rd tier.

I made my way up to the third tier which smelled heavily of menthol eucalyptus, sweat, fruit and various drinks being sold and spilled all around.

When I got there, I found a spot and sat down. Fairly soon, a local began telling me that I didn’t want to sit there because everyone would be standing, shouting and betting during the matches. I told him I did want to sit there and that I’d stand when I had to. He told me I couldn’t sit there. I ignored this suggestion.

The prefight routines were highly ritualized: bowing to each other, bowing to their corners, circle punching slowly while walking in circles; high, sweeping knee lifts while walking around in circles and other similar activities.

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Japan is weird, a list:

1. Most restaurants have displays of their food made up of entirely plastic food
2. There is a neighborhood in Asakusa, Tokyo that is entirely restaurant supply places
3. The restaurant supply places are the suppliers for most of your fake foods
4. Within these fake food restaurant supply stores, you may purchase other oddities made to look like food, such as keyrings (I have an eel sushi key ring)
5. Among the oddities are fake food USB devices. Who needs a small, inexpensive USB flash drive when you can have a relatively expensive fake hamburger one

USB fake sushi:

USB fake hamburger:

I will talk about things that are Japan-related and things that are not Japan related. I had dreams of more well organized posts with photos and everything, but I’ll post now with possibly expanding on some of these topics later.

My ear is feeling (ie hearing) a bit better. I’ve started listening to ear buds again in limited (very quiet) contexts. First song back: “King of Pain”.

The rest of the Japan trip was pretty good.

I mean, it was great. It’s a crazy place. One coworker said something like it’s a very odd combination of a repressed/ conservative culture and a wild/ unashamed culture. Very strange.

Some of the stranger places included the hot bath that had a mildly electrified pool, the sushi place that required you to eat at least 7 dishes (of 2 pieces a piece) of mostly sushimi in less than 20 minutes, the Diago-ji temple that had a painting that I thought was a garden; either that, or it had a garden that was completely unreal in how beautiful and archetypal it was. They were also chanting in the part of the temple that’s at the top of the hill when we got there and I could hear it from maybe half a mile off. A strange beacon.

I’m not missing Thanksgiving. I mean, I’m not attending Thanksgiving and thus am missing it but Thanksgiving is such a non-event here that the only time I even think about it is when I talk to people in America. Also, I knew from May that I wouldn’t be doing Thanksgiving this year. I love Thanksgiving, but I’m prepared.

(Did you miss the Moon Festival this year? I didn’t; I participated.)

On the other hand, the prevalence of Christmas decorations, music and colder weather in Japan made it feel like mid-December, much close to when I would be leaving for the U.S. That caused many more pangs of homesickness.

During bouts of longing for America, it seems that any culture representing that will do, possibly with even the less sophisticated being better. No, I’m not talking about fast food; I’m talking about movies. Last night, I watched Must Love Dogs without shame; tonight may be 40 Days and 40 Nights. In Germany, I remember watching (possibly multiple) Freddie Prinze Jr movies. It’s crap.

I finished Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation last week. I’m not sure, but I think it’s racist. The book draws some distinction in various situations between pro-black and anti-white, but I think this book was possibly anti-white. For instance, the nomenclature was: Black, Latino, Asian, Korean (etc etc) and white.

Now I’m on to Chuck Klosterman’s Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, which is a book of Klosterman’s ridiculous pronouncements about culture, on everything from internet pornography to NBA basketball to Billy Joel. It’s entertaining, but I think I prefer his travel narrative, Killing Yourself to Live.

Sufjan’s having a contest in which you can win rights to one if his songs if you write the best original christmas song (which he then gets the rights to). I am thinking of something along the lines of a response song to a classic 1963 Christmas song. We’ll see if I can churn something out–I need to figure out how to do the instrumentation on this–maybe FruityLoops or something. My guitar through a built-in mic isn’t going to cut it.

The Steelers loss today was almost funny. It’s almost expected, the way the Steelers manage to botch the “easy” games. None of their three losses is even marginally excusable and if some columnist says otherwise, question his ability to analyze their games. On the other hand, they’ve been great in pretty much the rest of their games.

There is a baby crying down the hall. I hope this doesn’t continue. I don’t like crying babies.

On strange candies and confectionaries. Good: the two different Chocolate Pocky’s and Men’s Pocky, those weird mushroom-shaped chocolates that are sort of like Pocky, some Mentos (Fuji Apple, particularly and the Berry Blast and Sour mixes), mint Kit Kats, all Kinder chocolates. Interesting, but not great: Green Tea Meltykiss, those white + green tea chocolates, that incompressible Mentos that might have been cherry and also the strawberry and green apple ones, the mini-hamburger chocolates. Bad: apple Kit Kats.

The weekend in Kaohsiung was good.

Friday

High Speed Rail from Taipei to Zouying (outside Kaohsiung). It’s fast and smooth. I’m a fan. There was a mix up with the hotel about the shuttle and I ended up waiting at the station for 45 minutes and then taking a taxi. The hotel paid for it (their mix up).

Saturday

Breakfast. I’m not sure if I’d ever get used to traditional chinese breakfast. I had some toast. Then I walked to the ferry pier to Chijin island. The walk isn’t far but it crosses a bridge that doesn’t have a sidewalk. It wasn’t too busy and I’m alive.

Chijin’s a small community in a big city. Small houses, lots of bikes[1]. I like it. The temple near the ferry terminal is small but one of the nicest I’ve seen. Built in 1666 or something. Lots of nice detail. I sat outside and read for a while.

I walked up to the fort and lighthouse on the hill. Nice views obscured a bit by smog. On the main drag there are seafood stalls with the stuff still alive or freshly caught and on ice. I had soem fantastic mussels and shrimp. The mussels were among the best I’ve had–done in a similar style to 3 cup chicken [2].

I took the ferry back to the main island (Taiwan Island, that is) and walked back over the scary bridge to the hotel and took a break. After that I walked to the Tuntex Skytower and went to the observation deck. It’s an interesting building that’s like a stick figure person with no arms or head; there’s a gap at the bottom, basically. Between the Skytower and Taipei 101, I’m thinking that the Taiwanese do skyscrapers pretty well–they’re attractive.

From there I took a taxi across town to the Liouho Street Night Market. It’s bustling and big and fun. I got some weird and great food and did some people watching. I’ll post a separate photo essay on this.

The taxis from Skytower to Liouho and from Liouho back to the hotel were about $4 each. Why had I been walking so much?

Sunday

Struggled through breakfast again.

I went to mass at the Holy Rosary Cathedral, one of the oldest churches in Taiwan. Really beautiful. Mass is given in English by an Italian priest. I was wondering if the place would be half full. Catholics and English speakers aren’t exactly numerous around here, but it was packed. The answer: Filipinos, who often come to work as domestic workers, are very Catholic and often, I would guess, speak English better than Chinese.

Another thing that’s nicer about mass rather than just a walk around in beautiful old churches is the time to sit and absorb it. Holy Rosary is really nice. I went to mass in the Koelner Dom back in 2002. It was nice to sit there.

From there, I walked around, getting some papaya milk at the Kaohsiung Milk King and then sitting by Love River and reading for a bit.

A quick tour of Yancheng’s temples, lunch at the City of Steamed Glutinous Rice, and then I went back the hotel. They took me back to the train station.

I had dreams of the most efficient tourism route ever for this trip. I was doing pretty well. Lotus Lake, in Zouying is close to nothing…except the high speed rail station, so I’ll just go early, drop my bag in a locker and then walk around the lake, I thought. Brilliant plan, except for the fact that the HRS station doesn’t have lockers. The two things a train station should have–take note if you’re planning on building one–are trains and luggage lockers. So I ended up walking around the lake for a few hours with my fairly heavy bag. My knees are not happy.

The trip back was as smooth as the way there and the MRT connections once I got back to Taipei were fast, so I was back in my room ~22 minutes after I got off the train.

[1] There were a whole lot of bikes–I might have seen dozens–set up with bullhorn barns and a single gear. I’m a big fan of this style and I was happy to see so many of them in Kaohsiung.

[2] The best chicken you’ll ever taste, as made by Joy Restaurant in San Mateo. I’m now determined to make my own 3 cup chicken/ mussels.

Wulai. (”ooh-lai”) I spent yesterday in Wulai, which is known for their hot springs and one of the highest water falls in Taiwan. The hot springs were excruciatingly hot. If I hadn’t seen other people in there, I would have doubted that a human could sit in there. I got in and it was nice. But the advice of a fellow bather provied useful: “don’t move”. I think it worked similar to the recommended advice for falling into cold water: if you don’t move the water directly around the body get closer to the temperature of the body and acts as a protective barrier.

I walked to the waterfalls, about 1.5km. There’s a miniature railroad along this route. The cars are about 10 feet long and the tracks are maybe 2 feet apart. It’s really cute and I wanted to ride it but I decided that I’d do so on the way back, only to find I’m misread the hours and I’d missed it! Disaster. I really like riding odd rail and cable transportation[1], especially funiculars (being a son of Pittsburgh [2]) but others as well.

The falls were nice. Nothing like Victoria Falls or Niagara, but something nice to look at for a few minutes. From there I started walking toward Doll Valley, which the guidebook listed as about an hour away. As I walked away from Wulai, the scenery became lusher in the valley I was walking in and the cars and whatnot became sparser. Eventually I turned onto a foot path and saw a few people and a number of smaller waterfalls. I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to get back by sunset if I went to Doll Valley which I deemed a Bad Thing (TM) so I turned back but the hike was nice.

Sometimes it’s good for the head as well as the body, you know?

Wedding. Today I went to a wedding. Correction, I didn’t go to the wedding, which was held in the family’s home and wasn’t attended by many; I went to the wedding “party” (as they called it) or “reception” (as the Americans might call it). It was pretty interesting. For instance, the couple entered along with lasers and fog machines. The bride changed dresses twice (three dresses total) and the couple would reenter to much fanfare each time. As I understand is the case with many Asian cultures, the wedding presents were actually envelopes of cash. The food was largely really good: about 20 dishes (in 7 or so courses). It was way too much food, but I gave it my best effort.

This is a wedding, not a night club?

No one was drinking the bottle of scotch set aside for my table so I was given it to take home. Now it’s just time to see if I still don’t like scotch and if so see if I can change that.

Lugo’s catch (available here). Perfect. Perfectly timed in both execution and in shutting down a rally by the Rockies.

The Red Sox are highly paid but I’d like to note that they’re getting a lot out of players that aren’t very highly paid at all: Papelbon, Pedroia, Ellsbury, and Youkilis are all low paid players.

It made me really happy that Dice-K that got a two run single.

Couch. After two months, I may have found the only marginally comfortable position on my couch. That is a remarkably uncomfortable couch for sitting, lounging or anything else. Despite being aware of the recommendations I am using my bed to sit and lounge with my laptop or book when I get tired of the chair.

Arnold. They seriously show my governor’s movies all the time here. All…the…time. By the way, TV programmers: they’re mostly not very good, those movies.

[1] The best yet is Wuppertal’s Schwebebahn. If you’re anywhere near Wuppertal, it’s worth a trip just to ride that.

[2] at one point I dated a daugther of the American Revolution. she was really into that.

I slept late, later than I’ve slept in months probably. I was quite proud of myself.

Breakfast was cereal with “drinking yogurt”. That stuff is weird. I like cereal with milk or with yogurt. This was…okay..

Blue skies came out, albeit, not Palo Alto style–there were still a few clouds.

I left to seek out a few things I’d only read out online: taipei’s indie record stores and a store selling traditional chinese instruments.

(I’m abandoning capitalization except for I, because I am important. Okay, maybe I’ll still capitalize some.)

IMPO records is a small place on the 8th floor in the Ximen district. You couldn’t find this place unless you knew exactly where to look. Between that and their 2-6pm hours (closed Wednesdays and Sundays) and their out-of-the-way location, I’m not sure how they make money. They don’t have the newest stuff either and their prices are closer to the import prices in America for the most part, with a few deals. I liked the store and the owner, though. I got the Morr Music Japan Tour 2005 EP and an album by the Lodger out of the UK. We’ll see how they are.

I then went in search of a Chinese musical instrument store. The people on forumosa mentioned 3 locations that happen to be in a three block radius around the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial.. None turned out to be right. Literally right after I gave up on finding it, I found one at 9-2 Xinyi Rd., 1F, across from the CKS Memorial. I immediately saw the erhus and asked, in Chinese, how much they were. The proprietor proceed to presumably explain, in Chinese, how they were priced different based on material and quality of material. My blank stares led him to explain this in English. What I was more interested in were the double reed suonas, which I asked about. They had one and while it wasn’t expensive, it wasn’t cheap enough for me to buy it on the spot. Those things are possibly louder and shriller than their double reed cousins from Scotland. I want one.

I was walking back to the MRT and heard some sounds from Renai Rd. I went over there to discover a parade of sorts. I should note that this parade was going through the ZhongShen round-about, a very big intersection, but they hadn’t closed it to traffic. The parade would proceed whenever they had the green light and then stop when they had the red.

Anyway, this wasn’t any traditional parade or anything, more like a multicultural parade. Everyone had handmade costumes, everything from kids on stilts to storm troopers and jedis to flowers or angels to an African drummer and dancer (she was really good) to people simply walking with their flag and face paint of their country of nationality. It was very odd.

Looking down Renai Rd, lined in palm trees, I could see the blue sky and Taipei 101, which, I’ve mentioned, is not only the current tallest building, but a very attractive design, and all these weirdly costumed individuals.

Life is very weird. It makes me happy.

I continued on. White Wabbit Records was my next stop. It’s primarily a record label, but they also have a record store with records from other indie labels. As soon as I got there I knew I was somewhere I wanted to be. They had a indie good selection even by American standards, which compared to everything else I’d seen in my travels was an amazing selection. There were two taiwanese hipsters girls working behind the country. (I may have a crush on one or both now). Most of their prices were decent. They also exclusively license some foreign releases from other labels/ directly from the artists. Things like Giardini di Miro, Mum, Mice Parade and Explosions in the Sky are now produced for WWR in Taiwan. On these discs and on records by bands singed to WWR, their prices were great–a little under $12 new. They even had signed records from Saxon Shore and American Analog Set on the wall. I’m definitely going back there.

While I was there I was able to buy a ticket for the Apples in stereo, who inexplicably are playing in Taipei a week from Monday at the Wall (in the same building as WWR). Should be good. I saw the Apples for the first time over 7 years ago, as a freshman in college, and who I haven’t seen in probably five years.

It is/ was World Toy Camera Day, so while I was out and about, I shot a roll of Velvia 100 with my Lomo Fisheye camera, which, while it isn’t traditionally a toy camera (it’s not a holga or diana, basically), it’s not much above that. I think I got some decent shots. I miss shooting with film. I think I’m going to start carrying my N70/ 20mm f2.8 / Tri-x 400 around instead of my D80 sometimes.

In the foreground is obviously a 7-11. If you click and enlarge you’ll see more orange and green in the distance. This is yet another 7-11 across the street and less than a block away. That’s how many 7-11s there are here.

Jakarta Airport (CGK Soekarno-Hatta Jakarta International Airport). On the far right is a green “Nothing to Declare” customs line. Here people are lining up and having all their luggage x-rayed by customs. On the far left is a green “Nothing to Declare” customs line. Here people are walking freely through with no customs officials. There is nothing to determine if there is a difference or if people should or can use one or the other. I used the line without officials.

Last week I got to see the Legong of Mahabrata @ the Ubud Palace, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. The group performing was Sekaa Gong Jaya Swara Ubud. It was balinese dance accompanied by gamelan. Gamelan is an Indonesian (Balinese and Javanese) music with tuned percussion instruments, instruments like (but not exactly) xylophones (metallophones), tuned gongs, cymbals, barrel drums (kendhang). Sometimes, like in the gamelan I saw, they also have fipple flutes and a two-stringed spike fiddle called a rebab. (It should be noted: gamelan is a set of instruments, not the players/ history. The Berlin Philharmonic is the people, not the particular instruments they play.)

The venue, the Ubud Palace, is a courtyard of a 16th century palace. Not to be flippant, but it’s sort of like making the Great American Music Hall a lot more historic and even more beautiful.

The group came in, some dancers and the gamelan players shaking these tuned bamboo rattles called anklung in addition to the barrel drums mentioned above. The players went to their seats and there was a pause before the music began.

Gamelan itself means hammer. That’s because most of the main instruments are struck with hammers of various sorts. The music often starts fairly simple and slow. One line on the metallophones and one on the cradled gongs. More lines come in. People with hammers are hitting the instruments with one hand and selectively damping them with the other. All this while amazing and tremendously precise dance was going on in in the middle of the U made by the instruments.

I was completely enthralled from beginning to end. I have to say, I’ve been to some great shows this year, some that I might even call “better” but quite possibly none that kept my attention as singularly as this one.

Gamelan “Gender” Wayang – Krepetan (mp3)

(I searched for a while I’m really not sure where you can get this CD other than in Bali. Amazon has other Balinese gamelan CDs, though.)

Gamelan Gong Kebjar – Hudjan mas (mp3) (buy)

My other music experience while on Bali was marching ensembles in a Balinese death parade and ceremony (amazing for many reasons, but I’ll just stick to the one here.)

They played similar instruments to the gamelan: tuned gongs, hanging gones, cymbals and barrel drums, but they also used whistles and their voices, even breaking into the ketjak rhythm for a moment. Here I was able to get right up up next to them and be almost surrounded by the sound. The tuned gongs were doing a slower rhythm while the cymbals were being hit together at a very fast pace, only to suddenly stop and all by thrust into the air. It was great.

Taiwan’s possible bid for a UN seat is kind of a big deal here.

I’ve seen this banner on a number of buildings:

And yesterday, the world’s tallest building had a message on the side:

zoomed in:

Why didn’t anyone tell me that a young Red Sox pitcher pitched a no-hitter in his second major league game. Pretty cool.

The Time 100 (influential people list) is pretty interesting. I spent a lot more time with the Alt Time 100, a list compiled by a panel of “Xzibit, rapper and host of MTV’s Pimp My Ride; Bridget Marquardt, 1/3 of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend and star of E!’s Girls Next Door; Eddie Sanchez, UFC fighter; Tommy the Clown, krump dancer; Dr. Boogie, hairstylist and contestant on Bravo’s Shear Genius; Jimmy Jimmy Coco, spray tanner; Glenda Borden, party planner”. Here are some excerpts:

10. Hugh Hefner, editor
Everyone thought Hef should make the list. Then I explained that Bridget was one-third going out with him which made the panel very excited. If Bridget was two-thirds going out with Hef, I don’t think the panel could have taken it.

27. Mike Lazrdis, Blackberry founder
Tommy The Clown called him “a real life saver.” You can’t afford to be out of touch for a moment when you’re a krump dancer. That stuff breaks out anywhere, anytime.

45. Bono, singer
All that Africa stuff.

54. Monique, comedian
More good body image stuff. While not at all fat, the panel loves fat people. Though not enough to date them.

56. George Clooney, actor
The panel felt strongly about Darfur. The panel also felt strongly that the most important player in the Darfur crisis is George Clooney. The panel does not equate feeling strongly about something with reading about that something.

60. Magic Johnson, businessman
Xzibit thought that Magic has some secret cure for AIDS he wasn’t sharing and should be left off the list until he divulges his secret. Xzibit has strange thoughts about both medicine and the power of this list.

79. Howie Mandel, TV host
Without him, you’d just be looking at models holding suitcases. You need the Howie visuals to make you long for the suitcase models. It’s the yin-yang concept.

I’m a tree! Bischofia javanica. We’ll forgive the namer for forgetting an ‘f’. From now on you can call me Bishop Wood or Autumn Maple.

The Weekly World News is done and some respectable publications are doing favorable obits.

I could easily spend 3 months being amused by the signs here. Here are just a few I’ve seen.

[Some of the signs are hard to read in this size. Click for larger versions.]

Taiwan

There are signs everywhere, many of them lighted. They can easily fill your view.

Beef and beer, how can you go wrong?

Lobster and beer, is the only improvement, I guess.

On some signs, the iconography is unusual:

On some signs the language is–how should I say this–awkward. (Note, the screen they’re referring to has never been on that I’ve noticed).

Yes, they go fast, I get it! 39 m/ min fast!

Announced Tuesday along with the iPod Touch and the other things is the best designed cake in the world. It can hold 8 billion songs. 8…billion…songs…

Is the skin eating food or is the skin the food? I’m confused.

There is something about chicken restaurants. Thumbs up! You’re about to eat me!

“The best saporous fried chicken in Taiwan”. Where’s my dictionary? Is that a word?

“Super chicken” is the newest superhero…you can eat.

I know where I’ll go next time I need some mockery.

Hello! Damper Baby!

“Deep flied pork cutlet”. I’m not putting words in anyone’s mouth.

Some bring out the giggly high schooler in me.

Summer BEER Rock Festival

Beer
SUMMER
Rock
Festival
ACTIVE
->Activity Girl With Dream
Active girl has inside herself to be confident, fulfilled, happy and healthy. Active girl Power! is the power to speak your mind, to stand up for yourself, and to know what’s right for you. We want every girl to know: you are unique, you are valuable, and with your Girl Power! you can succeed. The future is yours.

Indonesia

No “tipping” <wink><wink> Ah yes, I see.

The only I saw can be disturbed aviation safety was me taking the photo of the sign.

Car maintenance shop, but in Indonesian!

Sort of like a Walmart but in Indonesia.

First photo album is online.

Yesterday I went to (what is officially still but not really) the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101. I like the architecture; it’s nicer than many of the very tall buildings. Cooler yet is that it has the fastest elevator at 16.83 m/s. It goes up to the top in 37 seconds. Awesome. Also it has the world’s largest tuned mass damper. They call it “damper baby”. It weighs 650 tons and can swing 1.5m in really bad winds or an earthquake. Good job, damper baby!

In other geek news, I saw a sign at the MRT that said something like “Beware. This escalator runs fast, as 37 m/ minute.” Yeah, they stated the actual speed (even though the unit is silly.)

Speaking of MRT, I “figured it out” last night and today. It’s a fast and efficient system, from the looks of it. Quiet, cheap. It’s also packed but given the other qualities, I’ll take it. Oh, and the tokens you get have RFID or some sort of other RF tags. You just swipe them to enter. It’s pretty cool.

There are 7-11s everywhere. I have been places where I am standing at one and could walk to two others each in a minute. It’s tremendous. It’s like Dunkin Donuts in Boston or Starbucks in Seattle. There are both of those here too, but not as prevalent. Mister Donut has a one-up on Dunkin Donut here it seems.

The National Palace Museum’s collection is amazing. Pieces from just about every era of China. I was amazed by some of the craftsmanship. Elsewhere I was amazed by the detail on some of the 3000+ year old pieces.

Went to Danshui for the evening and had my first night market food. Just cheap food from street vendors. You get small amounts from a few and that’s dinner. Little taiwanese tacitos, squid grilled before my eyes on a stick and “stinky tofu”. It tasted pretty good and I’m not vomiting yet.

This city is very bright and busy. I’m not sure if that’ll get old.

A common sink/ toilet maker here is Toto. Every time I see one of their products I can’t help but think: “I bless the rains down in Africa”.

(bottle reads “BIO Technology Fiber Drink”)

(I’m not the one enforcing stereotypes.)

I went to quite a game between the A’s and the Red Sox last night. Mark Ellis hit for the cycle. The Red Sox made a comeback in the 9th to tie it and send it to extra innings. David Ortiz almost homered in the 10th and then Chavez hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 11th. Haren pitched really well (whereas Tavarez did not).

Pretty exciting stuff.

Update: Photos here.

I scanned and uploaded a bunch of black and white photos to my picasa thing.

Galleries include Pittsburgh over Christmas, my first try at fisheye, the Oakland A’s last game of their sweep of the Twins in the playoffs, Jose Gonzalez @ Stanford, and John Vanderslice @ Stanford.

Dylan, Melissa and I went to the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford to see their exhibition of In the American West by Richard Avedon. It’s a set of photos taken from 1978-1983 of largely working-class inidivudal from the “West” against a white backdrop. It’s mostly working class and non-working people: miners, housewives, farmers, drifters, house-wives.

They were originally taken on 8×10 negatives. The prints are huge, 1.5-2x life size. You can see every detail and with the white backdrop, the audience is left to study the face, the eyes, the scars, the oil or coal or gypsum or drit from the hard day’s labor in the mine.

The exhibit is arresting. As a photographer, I feel like I would done it differently. I wouldn’t have done the white backdrop, for example, though I think it worked to good effect.

There are a few links I’ve been meaning to put up. Things I find interesting but I don’t want to add to the sidebar on the right.

Random links:

• designverb: a blog about design related topics, largely product design and the like. fairly interesting stuff.
• rbally has a nice Cat Power show from Berlin for download [update: rbally seems to have taken this down/ broken]
• youtube has a great chemistry lab safety video explosion. (dylan, are you seeing this?)
• bitsandpieces silly college humor, but sometimes entertaining
• wikipedia has a list of African countries by GDP (adjusted for purchasing power parity) per capita. South Africa’s on top, but barely. For reference, the US is 3rd in the world for GDP (PPP) per capita at about $42,000.
• oregon trail is it possible you haven’t played this game? there are even shirts about it. And you can download an emulated version
• Tom Wilson I feel like I should add him to my list of best producers. He did Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Velvet Underground and more

[This was going to be one post with the above part 1 and below part 3, but it was too much, so I split them up]
There was recently the kottke best links of 2006. Here are some of my favorites from that list (including some I’ve seen/ linked to before):

• How to Care for your Introvert (from 2003; describes a lot of people I know and, well, me) and a current interview with the author
• David Copperfield gets mugged but doesn’t lose any property because of…slight of hand!
• old timey (WWII-era) color photographs of America
• the JFK assassination Zapruder film, stabilized even stranger and freakier
• songtapper tap a rhythm, it tells you the song. didn’t work as well as I wanted, but still interesting
• shiny mud balls only from Japan…and a how-to!
• Amateur a non-piano player or drummer makes a music video with himself playing those two instruments with clever editting
• a photo essay of female soldier in Iraq
• free historical sounds (as mp3s) “I Have a Dream”(MLK) to “Luckiest Man on the face of the Earth” (Lou Gehrig)
• Sheep Market 10,000 sheep drawn by online workers via Amazon’s odd Mechanical Turk service
• crazy aerial photos that look like tiny model cities
• Lake Peigneur disappears a 14″ drill bit made a lake and much of an island disappear
• 1964 New Yorker article on Dylan
• hilariously bad movie pitches
  

  Idea #1:
  What if the Internet Turned into a Were-Wolf

• Photos of European football (soccer) fields very diverse and often in gorgeous settings

There were a number of the links on that kottke best links of 2006 list that I had already seen, but I’d enjoyed.

• Simpson’s beginning, in live action (British made)
• when indie yuppie took off (a term/ concept created by Vice records honcho Adam Shore and pushed by stereogum
• Wes Andersen’s odd AmEx add don’t leave home without it
• how to get a human customer service representative at a lot of companies
• a Henri Cartier-Bresson photo gets trashed on flickr
• a picture of eyes above an honor-system drink payment box makes people more honest
• easily mispronounced domain names whorepresents.com? still hilarious
• Jimmy Kimmel’s hilarious ‘Unnecessary Censorship’ video put bleeps where there weren’t any before and it makes things very funny
• devastating photo of a homeless heroin addict in the Tenderloin (where I often go to the Great American
• Aries Spears rap impressions
• Noah takes a self-portrait everyday for 6 years and makes a video of it interesting, haunting eyes

For my upcoming South Africa trip:

• 3 X 2GB SD cards (in addition to the 2 I already have)
• 6 X Velvia 100 color slide film, 6 X Tri-X 400 black and white negative film

Just because:

• One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost & Found
• one CD not to be named due to its embarassing nature (I’ll chalk it up to comfort music) [update: oh fine, it might be this]

[another update:] I also bought a few tickets to this year’s Noise Pop:

• Feb 28: Sebadoh (orignal line up) at the Great American Music Hall
• March 2: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists at the GAMH

I took a number of photos in Pittsburgh (including this one) and put them online.

Tonight Judit and I made gingerbread houses (from the Trader Joe’s kit).

a) I am now diabetic.

b) I should pretty much be a professional gingerbread house maker.

and more.

I’m pretty proud of my two-mini-candy-canes-as-a-heart innovation.

In the middle of a stream of bittersweet nostalgia, I took a bunch of photos this weekend.

They’re here.

I’m back in Pittsburgh for the Thanksgiving holiday. Today I went up to New Brighton in Beaver County to grab lunch with my friend Chris Atwell. He’s been working at his uncle’s business, Ceramic Color and Chemical Manufacturing Co. They take metals (inorganic chemicals), grind them and combine them in various ways to make pigments, which are largely used in tiles and other ceramics. He gave me a tour of the plant, which is mostly within a very cool 200 year old building and it was a bunch of industrial equipment. Man, I love factory tours. Giant mechanical equipment is my thing.

(Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any photos of the giant mechanical equipment inside.)

I also think it’s cool that they’re doing what they’re doing: growing slowly, competing on the global market with a family business using local labor. That seems increasingly rare these days.

We ended up grabbing lunch at the Backdoor Tavern up there. (I must admit, I winced after I hit enter in google with the search terms ‘backdoor’ and ‘beaver’ (it’s in Beaver county) thinking I’d get a bunch of dirty results but I was actually able to find the place I wanted.) I got a really solid meatball sandwhich and a Penn Pilsner. The total for the two? $7. In Palo Alto, I might get a mediocre sandwhich for seven bucks…

After lunch, the following sign caught my eye and I had to check out the Rosalind Candy Castle:

That 3ft tall chocolate Santa was like a little person but jolly and made of chocolate. mmmmmm three foot tall chocolate Santa…. (give me a minute here.) I ended up getting a Santa chocolate lollipop and some dark chocolate covered pretzels which my family agreed were excellent when we had them for dessert tonight.

Then I walked through downtown Beaver before coming home.

I put more photos from today online

(How is something so simple like going to the same place and getting a pizza so awesome? Wish you were there, Andy.)

I just ordered the Nikon D80, body only. I’m pretty excited.

I finally scanned in some photos of Jeff and Debi’s Wedding.

I also added a few of Colin to the Pgh 2006 directory. They’re from Colin’s first of two (or three?) trips to Eat N Park that day.

As has been mentioned, I saw Jens Lekman in a pizza parlor in Brooklyn before he played at Sound Fix. And there’s photographic evidence.

I also scanned some more pictures tonight of NYC (color, b&w) and Pgh.

on Woodside Rd in Woodside, CA.

Nikon announced the D80 earlier this week. It looks pretty good. One of my Nikon bodies (the N8008s) quit stopping down the aperature on the lens a couple weeks ago, so it’s darn near unusable at this point (and I’d spend more money repairing it as I spent on the camera to begin with) and I’m thinking of moving to a Nikon digital fairly soon.

I’ve also just about never heard a bad thing from a D200 owner so that is in the running as well.

Both of them are serious $$$, especially after already purchasing a Macbook and various trips I’ve taken this year.

I was entertained in NYC.

Rye Playland. I went to one of two parks listed in the National Registry of Historic Places on Tuesday. It’s a great old park. It has a few newer rides including one of those vomit-inducing spin-you-around-while-already-spinning you-around-in-a-different-axis rides (I believe my quote to my ride companion liz was “it’ll be a bonding moment when we puke on each other”—yeah, I’m gross), but most of the rides are classic older ones, including the Whip, the Swing, the (Mind) Scrambler, the Derby Racer (wow! 25mph on a carousel-like ride) and a great old carousel. It’s pretty similar to Kennywood in a lot of ways, but smaller. It’s an extremely photogenic park, with a main promenade and a common color scheme throughout. I hope some of my photos from the park turn out. I recommend this park if you’re into classic amusement parks.

Conan O’Brien taping. Despite waiting in lines for approximately the same amount of time that the show filmed, I enjoyed this quite a bit. I laughed a bunch (a chunk of which was during the audience warm up by Brian McCann). The theater is a lot smaller than I thought it’d be. As has been observed by others, seeing a taping does ruin a little bit of magic, though for years I’ve realized that the interview portion of the show had prompted questions and Conan doesn’t do a great job of hiding it. It was still funny and fun to watch.

Jens Lekman at Soundfix Records. We headed off to hipster-central, Williamsburg, Brooklyn to see Jens Lekman play an in-store at Soundfix Records. We had some pizza at a place down the street from Soundfix which was mostly not noteworthy except for Jens Lekman sitting in the catty-corner booth. I wished him a good show as he was leaving. The show space was in a separate room from the actual store part of Soundfix and when we got there it was packed and really hot. This was during the heat wave so the outside temperature was probably still in the 90s and the temperature in the room was probably between 115 and 125. It was like a (swedish) sauna. I wasn’t surprised that it was packed—it was a hipster band in a hipster locale; only later I realized that the last NYC Sleater Kinney show (and the fourth-to-last S-K show ever) was the same night; that’s why brooklynvegan, hipster extraordinaire didn’t fill us in with pictures from Jens, I guess. After we realized that one could stand outside, in the relatively cool air, and still hear the show fine, it was a pretty enjoyable, but rather short, show. I like Jens a lot. Afterwards I bought a couple CDs at Sounfix (the Wrens, Kelley Stoltz, Masters of the Autoharp) and we headed back.

Pat’s really kicking my butt on the baseball photos and many other types of photos.

Pat, when are you going to start posting some of this stuff on the photoblog that some of us are doing? It’d make us look good.

(Speaking of kicking my butt, Andy ups the ante over at the aforementioned photoblog.)

I scanned some photos tonight and put them in my gallery. Particularly, I scanned some older photos from Boston, some baseball shots, my last trip to Mexico, and local ghost town.

I’ve also started to post some photos on godhatesmath again.

• I should go to more risk concerts, fewer good concerts by bands I’ve seen before. For instance, I should see Danielson in a couple weeks and I probably shouldn’t be sad that I missed the Mates of State a couple weeks ago (I’ve seen them 8ish times)
• I’m trying to decide if songwriting taking into account all or almost all of my musical influences is possible. I like a lot of music. I like indie rock, post-rock, old-timey/ early american field recordings, celtic, african, other world music, motown (and other early R&B/ soul), oldies, some hip hop and the list goes on. In the past, I’ve managed to combine some influences together in my songwriting: the Greetings from Johannesburg stuff was largely an experiment in fitting world music ideas into indie pop (”Thaw” is based on the Balinese Ketjak rhythm, “Bitter” has Senagalese sabar drumming, “Nashville” cops a brazilian drumming line, “Drunken” has a 15 beat long beat-cycle). I also combined—in my opinion successfully—motown, indie rock, african drums and a banjo (which I couldn’t really call “old-timey” or country either) on one of the covers contest songs. But really, there’s a ton more stuff out there and floating around in my head. I always thought music had to be segmented a bit. Like Where’s Luke? was the folksy mostly-acoustic group, the Grievance Committee was going to be my post rock band. But many great bands aren’t like that: many of them combine a lot of disparate influences to make their music. I don’t know if I have the ability to do that.
• I’m thinking of trying to write some hip hop instrumental/ base tracks. I’ve been listening to a little bit of hip hop recently. I don’t like a lot of hip hop because a lot of it is a) musically crap and b) lyrically stupid (sometimes well-written but still stupid). Personally, I think a lot of the hip hop paradigms are stupid: songs about smoking pot and being misogynistic toward women aren’t for me. There is some hip hop out there that has good music and that tackles complex issues in the lyrics. I’m getting off on a tangent here. My point here is that a lot of hip hop has crap music and so I’m thinking of writing some hip hop music. I don’t think I could MC well, so I’ll either leave that for someone else or leave them as instrumentals. Any aspiring MCs out there?
• At a certain point I stopped really getting jazz. Most music has tension and release. Often in jazz the tension comes from dissonance in the harmonic structure and progressions. I don’t always find the way this is done in jazz satisfying. (On the other hand, I’ve really come to appreciate some “new” jazz, like Magali Souriau’s “Dersu Usala” which is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard.)
• I mostly don’t like this dance indie rock that is all the buzz (and has been for a year or so). It doesn’t get me going.
• I’m thinking of spinning of my music stuff into a separate blog and turn that into more of an mp3 blog. It’s probably be over at the new me. It probably me mostly indie rock mp3s, but I’d love it be a place where I could equally post Sacred Harp field recordings and rare Motown tracks. I don’t know what would be left here, though, as half of what I post here is music stuff and I’ve already moved most of my photo stuff over the godhatesmath.

A collective photoblog!

Initially, it’ll be Andy, Dave, Randy and I posting pictures.

Some tweaks to be done to the site, but I’m liking how it’s looking.

I scanned a bunch of pictures over the last couple days and put them online.

[Anchovies swimming around quickly in the Monterey Bay Aquarium]

I’ve added a bunch of new albums, including fall colors, Death Valley, DC for my birthday, Monterey, boston. I also added photos to around Menlo Park and Cabo.

A lot of the black and white photos look really grainy, moreso than other photos with the same film. I’m not exactly sure why.

Equipment. Color: Velvia 50, Nikon N70 w/ 28-70mm Sigma f/2.8-4. Black and white: Tri-x 400, Nikon N8008s w/ 28-70mm Sigma f/2.8-4 and 20mm Nikor f/2.8 and Pentax K1000 with 50mm f/2.0.

Pat’s post about the Canon 20D and the following discussion got me thinking about shooting digital photographs as both RAW+JPEG at the same time, which is something I’d read about professional photographers doing.

For a day I couldn’t figure out where it was, then I remembered it was in an article about the Sports Illustrated Super Bowl photography and the tremendous amount of resources they pour into it.

It was tricky searching for it, but I eventually found it. I find this article amazing because no only does it have a human story to it, but it takes you through absolutely every step of getting a photograph from the field to the printing press and exactly what equipment was used at each step. You could recreate a Sports Illustrated Super Bowl photoshoot with the information given; it’s very scientific in that way.

Here’s a list:

• Start my Pentax K1000/ Canon A40 self-made all-manual digital SLR
• get a haircut
• Sell 2-4 Wurlitzer electric pianos
• order shirts for, make silk-screen for, silk-screen “Adrian is rad”* shirts**
• have a blast with jon werberg while he’s out here
• ask landlady about painting my room, pick colors, buy paint
• try to find a firmer bed, a smaller desk, a dresser
• learn php, get a start on internal online ticket giveaway system for KZSU

*The shirt came first, the blog with the same name second. I made it with iron on red letters a white shirt with blue ringers; the ones I’m going to make are basically the same except they’ll be silk-screened.

**Let me know if you want one (and your size). I don’t think I’m going to be able to swallow the cost on them so they’d be $8-$10 or whatever they cost me. I’ll see if I can get a picture of the original up soon.

I have a project for which I need a Canon Powershot A40 or A70. If anyone has one to sell, let me know and we can make a deal. It can even be broken in certain ways–it needs to power up and take photos at least, but the zoom doesn’t need to work and battery doors and the like can be broken.

I finally got back and scanned some of my photos from my company’s trip to Cabo San Lucas in February. Here’s where you can find them.

I also scanned in some pictures of Pittsburgh mostly of friends, but some are of Pittsburgh and the AFC championship game.

I spent the weekend in Death Valley with Dylan, Andyl, and Dale. We’d heard that there was the best wildflower bloom in many years, some saying 50. When Andy originally suggested Death Valley, I thought it was about four hours away. Turns out that it’s about ten, maybe nine if you don’t stop for any breaks. California is quite large and there aren’t any direct routes there.

How do you fit twenty hours of driving and wildflower viewing and sleeping in a weekend? Well the last thing gets knocked a bit. We ended up leaving at 4:45am on Saturday; I’d gone to see Paddy Keenan on Friday night (to be blogged about later) and had ended up going to bed at about 1:30 and waking up at about 3:45 in the am.

We got to the park after stopping for breakfast and at the jerky guy previously mentioned on this here website at about 2pm or there abouts. We stopped in Stovepipe Wells, trying to figure out if we should camp there or go on–we didn’t get an answer from the rangers whether Sunset was already full so we decided to go on. We ended up finding a spot in the Sunset overflow tent campsite, which is basically a gravel parking lot. A flat parking lot with a nice view, but if you’re going, bring a mattress pad. Andy and Dale regretted they didn’t.

After registering for and claiming our tent site and setting up the tent, we headed off to some dunes that we’d driven by on the way from Stovepipe Wells to Sunset. Dylan has a bunch of photos online of our adventures climbing the dunes. We ended up making it to the top of a maybe 100 foot dune. It was quite a nice view over many dunes and into the mountains. We saw a muted sunset from up there and then made our way back to the car.

My big plan as soon as I saw the hills behind the Sunset campground was to get some PBR and go up into the hills a bit after dinner. Turns out the general store at Stovepipe Wells didn’t have any PBR, so we got giant cans of Foster’s.

Who could predict what would happen when we got into the hills and started in on the beers? I can. I will tell you what happened.

We invented a new sport. Competative rock stacking. The rules will be goverened by the IFRS (International Federation of Rock Stacking). The short of it: you must stack reasonably sized rocks as many high (serially, no parallel stacking) as you can. Dale won a tight contested match against Dylan 12 to 11 with a questionable rock 1.

We ended up going to sleep pretty early and waking up around 6:30. After breaking camp, we did a quick hike at Natural Bridge and a stop at Badwater Basin (lowest point in the US!) we hit the motherload. There are a couple areas between Badwater Basin and Salsbury Pass that are just spectacular, especially near the mill ruins and one right near Salsbury Pass. Fields entirely yellow, like velvet from afar.

I’ll develop my films in the next couple weeks and get them online.

Lauren wanted to show her friend some photos of Tanzania, so I had the motivation to finally scan the rest of my photos in. Here they are.

Five kids in Lauren’s village of Dareda Mission, Manyara, Tanzania:

I’ve scanned some of my slides with my Dimage Scan Dual III. They’re here.

Here’s one I like:

It has some feeling of documenting of suburban malaise, like the movie Hundstage or some of the photography of Thomas Struth. More than that, and also similar to those two photographic work, is the way the colors and the distance make it seem like one is a voyeur—and almost a voyeur not of life but of a carefully constructed diorama of life.

I also scanned some of Stanford and my trip to South Africa and Tanzania. More are to come.

All slides are taken with Velvia 50 film and a Nikon N70 film camera. B&W are taken with a Nikon N8008s and a variety of films, mostly Neopan 400 and Tri-X 400. My lenses are a Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8-4 and a Nikkor 20mm f/2.8. I use both lenses on both bodies. It’s fairly obvious in which pictures I use which lens. The super wide-angles are the 20mm.