Lightroom 2 *RAWKS*

I can't express how much of a joy and time saver Lightroom has been ever since I started shooting with my D40. What happened when I got my D40? I started taking a lot of pictures, that's what. While I was in Indonesia I was shooting over 300 pictures a day. There's no way I'd be able to sort through over 2K+ pictures from a week of vacation in any reasonable amount of time and get them processed without Lightroom.

And now they've fixed the biggest annoyance I've had with it in the new version: lack of support for Nikon's proprietary color profiles. It's only in beta right now, but now I can get my pictures to look as good on the PC as they do on my camera's LCD without a ton of post-processing. Want to see what a difference this makes? Check this out.

And that's not even getting into the other improvements (so much faster! support for multiple volumes!) and new features (that I've yet to really play with).

KBR Day 5

Today was just an amazing day. All four dives were fantastic and chock full of critters. Even got to play around with a couple octopi!

The first dive of the day was at Kapal Indah ("Beautiful Ship"), a wreck dive where we found a pigmy seahorse.

The second dive was at Jahir 2, where the highlights were a frogfish and a leaf scorpionfish (no good shot of the latter though).

For our third dive, we went to Hairball. Spent a long time here with a seahorse and an octopus.

If at first you don't succeed... Went back to Aer Prang 2 to try and catch the mandarinfishes going at it. And joy of joys, there were feeling frisky tonight! As an added bonus, an octopus came by to play while we waited for the mandarinfish to do their thing.

KBR Day 4

Did something unexpected and different today -- drove to the northwest side of North Sulawesi to dive at Pulau Bunaken. Another couple had made all the plans and I just tagged along. It's a completely different sort of diving there, all wall dives where you just drift along the current.

I'd hoped this meant that I'd be able to put my wide angle lens to better use, but the visibility there was working against me and most of my shots came out less than satisfactory. It's entirely possible that I just don't know how to take these kinds of shots/how to work with these conditions...

The first dive was at Mandolin; a fun, relaxing and enjoyable affair. The wall was teeming with life of all sorts, and there were large schools of fishes everywhere (very unlike what I'd been seeing in the Lembeh Strait), but I have to report that there was nothing really impressive per se. This of course only in comparison to the amazing critters I'd been seeing the past couple days.

The second dive at Lekuan 2 was a little better: saw an orang-utan crab as well as a green turtle which swam by us in the open water. Tried to go after it, but couldn't really get a good shot (the visibility issue).

Totally unrelated to diving, but still pretty cool nonetheless was who I went to Bunaken with: Joshua Marston, the writer/director of Maria Full of Grace, who was nice enough to talk a little about the movie business.

I made it back to KBR just in time to go watch the mandarinfish perform their mating dance at twilight. Unfortunately, they weren't in the mood tonight and we ended up spending a really boring 45 minutes hanging out underwater before we called it quits and cruised around for another 35 minutes. The only shot I was happy with from this dive was of a couple nudibranchs:

KBR Day 3

Did another four dives today, one more than anticipated because I wanted more practice with the camera. My discovery for the day is that diving with a big dSLR housing is not exactly a walk in the park. The first dive was a complete blur; all I remember was struggling with the camera and buoyancy control. The good news is that I'm improving with practice and am getting reasonably comfortable with it. My biggest challenge now is that I'm muck diving and only have a wide angle lens instead of a macro lens to get up close and personal with my subject. I may not have be able to get really nice shots of the 4mm pigmy seahorses we found, but I think I managed to get some pretty pictures nevertheless.

A few more numbers for the day:

• spent a little over four hours underwater
• saw two pigmy sea horses (we're talking about 4mm or so here!)
• saw the biggest lobster I've ever seen: about 3 ft in length, not including it's whiskers, which were another 3ft in length!
• saw 1 electric clam wedged into a crack
• saw 1 octopus with 4 legs
• saw 1 cuttlefish with hundreds of colors

KBR Day 2

It's 10pm right now and it's definitely time for bed. Some numbers for today:

• 4 dives (3 day, 1 night)
• almost 4.5 hours spent underwater
• maximum depth of 81 feet
• 3 sea horses (never seen them before)
• 2 cuttlefish (never seen them before either)
• 1 huge puffer fish with a remora latched on to it (totally cool)

And that's just the first day! There were also many moray eels of all kinds, lots of puffer fishes (kept thinking fugu! every time I saw one), and basically a ton more life than I've ever seen any where underwater. Definitely some of the best diving I've ever done.

Tomorrow I'll be bringing my camera along...

KBR

After many hours of travel I'm finally at my home for the next 8 days: Kungkungan Bay Resort in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, where I'll be diving for the next week. Woo-hoo!

The room is amazing, as is the view out my porch. All I'm interested in right now though is some food, a shower, and sleep...

Diablo 3

Haven't played any computer games for a while now (Civilization IV Beyond the Sword was the last one), but I have to say that I definitely got the shivers after watching the Diablo 3's debut trailer. It's been a looong while since I've been tempted to buy a computer game...

I can already hear the click click click. Can you?

Green Change #4

Been doing a lot of driving recently, and with the price of gas as it is, enough is enough. It's time I changed the way I drive and practice a bit of hypermiling:

1. slower starts
2. keep (closer) to the speed limit
3. keep tires inflated
4. ride my motorcycle more since I get almost twice the mileage on it than my car ;)

I've been trying to put this into practice lately and #2 is definitely the hardest. I've been able to keep it under 70 in my car, but on C's V6 Accord it's a bit harder.

As for #3, McCain's been in the news lately for being an idiot on this point.

Diving in San Diego

Drove down to San Diego last Thursday to do a bit of wreck diving with the fine folks from Aquatic Discovery. I haven't dived in California for years because of the cold water here and I'd promised myself that I'd learn how to use a drysuit before trying again.

Which I did, before the trip. I'm happy to report that I'm now a firm believer in drysuits. Even with the rental drysuit that didn't fit particularly well, it was just sooo much more comfortable. It's not 100% dry, but it's a heck of a lot better than a wetsuit, and you're much warmer as well.

On Friday, we dove Lazy Days (where I missed seeing a six gill shark swim by) and Seven Fathom Reef; on Saturday, we dove the Yukon and the Ruby E; and on Sunday, we dove the Yukon twice more. The Yukon, an ex-Canadian destroyer that was sunk to form an artificial reef, was definitely worth three dives.

Thief Thief

Saw Jeff's band Thief Thief play at Mama Buzz in Oakland tonight, and was surprised at how good they were. Much better than their recordings on their MySpace page, and they've certainly come a long way from their early days.

I have to admit I had my doubts because it's not exactly my kind of music, but I should have known better. Go Jeff!

Danny's Bachelor Bash

Helped Danny celebrate his upcoming nuptual last weekend. It started with a round of frisbee golf in Golden Gate Park, and then it was back to his place in Belmont where we took it upon ourselves to get him rip-roaring drunk. I think we did a pretty good job...

The picture on the left is how I recall the end of the poker game. The picture on the right is how Danny recalls the end of the poker game. More incriminating shots available on request, and video is available for a fee...

Dr. Horrible

Joss Whedon's at it again. This time it's a musical. A supervillain musical! It's good, but it's going away soon. To a DVD that is. The three acts are only going to be free to watch online for a limited time, so don't delay. Unless you're the kind who likes to wait and get the entire season on DVD. Then you should probably just wait.

New Notebook, Part 2

When my shiny new Dell Studio 17 finally arrived in the mail a few days ago, I was like a kid in a candy store. So shiny! Alas, reality is slowly setting in and the candy's melting.

I've no real complaints about the core of the notebook itself. The screen is gorgeous although I've some concerns on how well the new hinge will hold up after extended use.

What's driving me batty right now is the new keyboard and touch pad. I've only seen positive comments about the new keyboard in reviews floating around the net, so I have to wonder if those reviewers actually do much typing on their notebooks. The problem is that they've added a dedicated number pad on the right, just like a standard standalone keyboard. Sounds good, right? Not for me:

• The center of the home keys are now shifted to the left, which means that when your hands are on the home row, you're effectively off center of the screen, which is not an ideal situation. This is compounded by the fact until I get used to this, my hands start out shifted, so my instead of having my left hand on a-s-d-f, it's on s-d-f-g instead.
• While this shift is something I'll probably get used to, the fact that they moved the Page Up/Down and Home/End keys to the top of the keypad is not. Those keys are so far away that reaching them now requires me to move my entire right hand to reach them instead of just angling it a little. Very frustrating for a touch typist.
• Finally, the track pad edges are now so smooth that when I'm not paying attention, I don't even notice I've moved past its edges. Another thing that I'll probably get used to, but right now, it's a little hard to find the edge to scroll around.
• I'm not even going to mention the silly media buttons.

And don't get me started on the software. It came with Windows Vista installed, and it is my first real experience with the new "improved" OS. What a load of crock. I now totally understand everyone's complaints with it. It seems hell bent on making it twice as hard to accomplish anything other than starting up applications. I'll try and live with it for a couple of weeks, but I haven't really encountered any redeeming qualities so far.

In both cases, my complaints are against the UI. I've come to expect certain modes of interaction, and I'm easily annoyed when those expectations aren't met. While in the back of my mind I'm wondering if it's because I'm getting old and set in my ways, I can't see too many good reasons for the changes that have been made, other than perhaps "it looks cooler," which is not a good reason in my book when you sacrifice functionality.

New Notebook, Part 1

When I first found out that I could get a new notebook at work, I thought it was a blessing. Silly, silly me.

Due to the way the budget is set up, I had to order the notebook before the end of June or the money would just disappear into some accounting black hole. Not a problem, I thought. I'd always been a fan of Dells, surely they'd have an updated version of my current Inspiron 9400 I could get. After all, I'd fairly simple requirements:

1. 17" screen that supported 1920x1200 resolution (this is my primary work machine)
2. some kind of digital video output (i.e. HDMI or DVI)
3. The control key must come before the function key on the bottom left of the keyboard (because by now my typing is pretty much accomplished through muscle memory)

After much research, I realized that I had very few choices. #1 rules out most notebooks. Dell, in their infinite wisdom, decided to remove the DVI outputs on their 17" Inspirons, so those were out, and their XPS's are just ridiculously heavy. Lenovo and Gateway notebooks all break rule #3. The only thing I could find that met all my requirements was something from HP's business line.

Unfortunately, at almost twice the price of anything else, the HP notebook wasn't quite going to fit into the budget unless I cut out on more options that I really wanted to. A few days before the deadline though, Dell announced their new Studio line, which pretty much gave me everything I wanted in a slightly lighter package to boot. Problem solved! Or so I thought...

Reading Binge

Been reading a lot of thrillers lately. Seem to have found some reliable writers in Clive Cussler, Jack Du Brul and Steve Berry. Short, fast paced, and just enough of an escape... probably in response to the fact that our tivo has died and we haven't watched any tv in a while.

Steve Berry's books have the added benefit of being educational since they're borderline historical fiction, and he takes care to inform readers exactly what's real and what's a figment of his imagination in the appendix.

FISA Ammendment Act

Now that Obama's the nominee I'm paying a bit more attention to how he's voting on major issues. So far, it's not been too good -- he voted for the FISA Ammendment Act. Booo!

For the record, McCain also voted for the ammendment, while Hillary voted against.

Hope: 0
Disappointment: 1

Green Change #3

Time to do something that will require a bit more effort: no more paper cups. I'm a coffee fan, and while I'd love to drink coffee from a real cup, more often than not I find myself getting it to go, which means I end up using either a paper or plastic cup. This month I'm going to give that up as much as possible. This means being prepared and traveling with one of those travel mugs.

I've not quite decided yet if I'm going to go so far as to say that if I don't have my travel mug I'll just skip the drink. I'll have to play it by ear and see how frequently this problem crops up.

Lesson of the Day

Today I learned... that if I ride my motorcycle around with a bottle of root beer in the trunk, it will have exploded by the time I get to my destination.

Harvesting Shampoo

We had a few friends over for some board games on Thursday and the conversation somehow made a detour into the topic of "harvesting" bottles of shampoo when staying at hotels. While this definitely qualifies as a very Chinese thing to do, I also pointed out that this wasn't very eco-friendly either. These mini bottles of shampoo are almost more plastic than shampoo, and collecting them means you end up throwing out way more plastic. I argued that not only should we not be harvesting them, we shouldn't even be using them -- just bring some shampoo from home.

If you don't want to travel with your Costco sized bottles of Shampoo, the best alternative is to fill one of these mini bottles with shampoo from home and just carry that around instead.

The most unfortunate thing about the recent decision by airlines to charge for checked bags is the spate of news articles discussing how to pack light, with an emphasis on disposable items. Today's San Jose Mercury News' Travel section's front page had the following tips which made me groan:

• For overnight trips, use half-sandwich size baggies to pack squirts of soap, shampoo, etc. and toss them when done.
• Just bring the basics and a small allowance to buy inexpensive things at your destination. I assume if you couldn't bring it with you, you're not taking it home with you either, so that's more trash generated.

Kung-Fu Panda

...is awesome. Absolutely hilarious and 100% entertaining. If you haven't seen it yet, you've got to go watch it as soon as possible. 5/5.

Oh, and a couple notes:

• Shifu's name actually translates to "master", which I found endlessly amusing the first time I heard it...
• Oogway's name translates to tortoise, which I didn't realize until after the movie when C told me.