January 19, 2009
January 8, 2009
tiltshiftmaker.com
tiltshiftmaker.com – Transform your photos into tilt-shift miniatures
What are tilt-shift style photos?
Tilt-shift miniature style photos are pictures of real-life scenes that are manipulated to look like model photographs.
Now you can easily transform your existing digital camera photos into tilt-shift miniatures using tiltshiftmaker.com.
This is an interesting app.
But why would you want to do this?
January 5, 2009
January 4, 2009
Almost Twelfth Night
We keep the tree up until at least Twelfth Night, mainly because I have a hard time giving it up after all the work to get it ready. … but some time after Epiphany the tree =will= come down so I’m enjoying it while I can.
December 24, 2008
Has it been that long?
I have a framed John Byrne Cooke photograph of Mimi Fariña on the wall to the right of the front door. She’s standing at the top of the hill, at Union and Montgomery, goofing off with Debbie Green. I like the picture because it shows the waterfront behind them as it was back when the picture was taken, in 1966, and because it shows Mimi Fariña full of life.
It took me years after I first stumbled on the image on the Web to decide that his price was worth it and to contact Cooke and arrange to swop him $$$ for a print.
I’m still glad I did.
Depending on my mood, the photograph makes me smile, or tear up.
Same with DIAMONDS AND RUST.
The YouTube video is from 1975. Has it really been that long?
I guess it has.
yes I loved you dearly
and if you’re offering me diamonds and rust
I’ve already paid
December 16, 2008
Weird back-ness
So I’m back. We flew Air Tahiti Nui from Papeete to Los Angeles, leaving Tahiti at 10P Sunday and arriving LAX around 8:15A yesterday. Time difference only two hours, which is nice.
Checked in through immigration. Picked up our bag at the carousel and checked through Customs with our bag and carry-ons. Easy-peasy. Smoothy-oothy. Got to the Virgin America desk before 10A and saw that they had an SFO flight at 11A. Asked if they could shift us from our 2: something flight to the 11A: flight. The cheery staff said, sure, they’d put us on stand-by. Then they popped us to the top of the stand-by list because we’d joined their frequent flyer program before we flew out.
The flight was delayed because it was raining in San Francisco (which slows the landing pattern to about 1/2 of normal) and they weren’t getting clearance to leave LAX until they had a chance to land at SFO. The plane carried a number of staff deadheading to SFO, but there was still room for us. Together. With a window seat for me.
I dozed off a bit because I hadn’t slept well on the overnight flight from Tahiti and there was cloud cover and nothing to see. I woke up again and enjoyed the last half hour of the flight. Cloud cover had broken. I could see the beaches along Monterey Bay and the wooded hills climbing to the east. I took photos from the window of the sunshine on water,
Elkhorn Slough
San Francisco skyline
Beautiful day coming in. Even with the delays, we arrived at SFO two or three hours earlier than we would’ve.
Got home to a giant pile of mail inside the front door and a week-ago’s Sunday paper lying outside. We can never quite figure how SFC figures out when your “away” start and stop dates start and stop. His nibs thought he’d stopped after Saturday morning’s delivery, but no.
We puttered around. Cleared the stack of mail. Washed the laundry. Downloaded all the photos from the camera. Had ricotta-spinach ravioli tossed with butter, fresh garlic and Parmesan cheese for dinner. Tucked in.
His nibs was off to work relatively early today because it’s been chill and road conditions are weird. He needed to get in to work for a meeting at a certain time and decided to take plenty of time.
We had hail downtown when we were coming in from the airport in the Super Shuttle yesterday afternoon. Snow down to 500-1000′ this morning. Hwy 17 over from Santa Cruz has snow on it. Snow plows in Scotts Valley last night. Colder than we’re used to.
… and I’m … not allowed to eat. No solid food at all. No milk, if I want coffee. Only clear liquids, consistency of water. I don’t think they mean tequila or vodka here. … I guess I’ll subsist on maté until tomorrow.
Tonight at seven I get to drink a liter of prep and tomorrow at five in the morning another liter, to clear out my innards because (yippee!) I check in for a colonoscopy at 9:30A tomorrow. His nibs needs to accompany me home and for the rest of the day I’m not allowed any sedatives or alcohol and I’m not allowed to operate a moving vehicle or heavy or dangerous machinery.
Maybe Thursday I’ll really be “back” and we can get a Christmas tree and start freaking out that Christmas is JUST A WEEK AWAY!
Colonoscopy is no fun. I have to have one every five years, ever since my next older brother was diagnosed with colon cancer (which by then had spread to his liver) in 1998. So 1998. 2003. 2008. 2013. and so on ad infinitum or ad mors or whatever.
He died in June 2001 and I miss him. I see things I think he’d like, weird things [a glass block etched with a DNA pattern] [magnetic wall paint], interesting books, scientific paraphernalia.
The colonoscopy is just another reminder that he’s not here. And why.
Quite the abrupt and bruising return from a short but warm and welcome vac, but there’s only me to blame. I consciously scheduled the appointment for tomorrow, because they couldn’t schedule it back when they’d intended because we had other things happening and I just want to get it over with as soon as I possibly can. Back yesterday. Today for fast and prep. Done tomorrow by noon. Just get the pall and the memories it dredges up over with and carry on.
Thursday. Thursday will be a much better day.
November 30, 2008
Pier 39. Decked out for Christmas.
This is last year’s pic but saw it today and it looks just the same.
Went for a walk down the steps this afternoon. Mailed some letters at the bottom of the hill, walked out Sansome to the Embarcadero, then walked along the edge of the water until we cut in toward Cost-Plus and B&N. We cut in a bit earlier than we really needed to because the crush of people was shredding my nerves.
Our destination had been Cost-Plus because they were having a wicked sale with 2 for 1 Christmas ornaments and deals on this and on that, but once inside I saw nothing I really needed. A few things I wanted but not enough to open the wallet.
We skipped B&N, which is next door to Cost-Plus and always the next stop, because I have a mile high stack of books to be read. We did stop at Trader Joe’s on the way home for milk and for crackers for the Boccalone coppa di testa we’ll be eating for dinner tomorrow.
Tonight will be chicken thighs with trumpet mushrooms, shallots, garlic, sour cream, marsala. Rice. Some vegetable.
Last night was dinner at Coi with friends. Absolutely delish. We plumped for the paired wines with the tasting menu. We wound up with that and with a couple extra glasses of wine thrown in as well as one of the dishes none of us had ordered when choosing “or” at one point. Delish, that.
The Coi staff is wonderful. Welcoming. Relaxed. Not as starchy as Gary Danko. Did I mention the food was delish?
Our reservation was for five folks at 6 p.m. They ushered us into a private room in back that I didn’t know existed. We had the room to ourselves. Four hours later we rolled back out onto Broadway, us to walk up Montgomery home, our three friends to head down the peninsula.
We went for a walk today because the weather sparkled and we needed to make a vague effort to work off some of the calories for last night.
(0.9mi over and the same back, according to maps.google.com. 2 miles, if that.)
Did I mention we saw the Christmas tree at Pier 39?
November 29, 2008
Just hanging in the sun.
Sun peeking out from behind the grey for a few minutes. (And the grey has since drifted back into place.)
Sitting in my chair, which faces the bay. Reading a library book. Back from a walk down to the Ferry Building for bread from Acme and coppa di testa from Boccalone. Down to the Ferry Building and back up the steps, all 223 of them, but who’s counting?
Concentrating on the words before me (Elizabeth Berg: The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation). In the background I can hear the parrots — not chattering, not arguing, not squawking, as they usually do. Susurration. Murmuration. Low. Affectionate.
I get up out of my seat to see what they’re up to.
Just hanging in the sun. [Click on the picture for a closeup look. They blend into the cypress in the smaller view.]
November 19, 2008
LIFE photo archive hosted by Google
LIFE photo archive hosted by Google
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.
[via Scott Beale @ laughing squid]