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Yet more pictures from the past

These pictures are quite old – I’ve just installed a new Mac for myself, with Apple’s Aperture for image management. I’ve been using a combination of iView (now owned by Microsoft) and Nikon’s Capture NX, but Aperture is very well integrated into the Mac environment, and I have a plug-in that automates uploads into Gallery, which is the software I use to manage my photo galleries online.

Capture NX has one unique feature that I really like – the so-called U Point technology that was created by Nik Software. This allows edits to be applied to regions identified both geographically and by tone. The result is the easiest way to fix a wide range of localized image problems. The bad news is that while Capture NX does stellar work on Nikon raw (.nef) images, Aperture converts images to TIFF before passing them to Capture NX (or any other external program). The good news is that Nik’s Viveza software, which supports U Point technology, is supposed to be available integrated with Aperture 2.1 in May. So perhaps at least I’ll be able to get some of the integration that way if I can stomach the price, which is more than the cost of Aperture!

The new gallery contains some old pictures from a trip to Annapolis in 2000. They are actually negatives that I scanned – not the best way to do things, but the only choice for a second life for these old pictures.

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A few new pictures

Volvo Ocean Race: PortsmouthWhen we were living in England, I followed the Volvo circumnavigation race – big powerful boats doing up to 500 miles in 24 hours under sail. They visited Portsmouth, and we went down to see them and take some pictures. This boat is the Brazilian entry, who came third in the Portsmouth race, but I was supporting ABN Amro One – a European entry, but skippered by New Zealander Mike Sanderson, the ultimate winner of the race. I have infinite respect for these sailors – this is extreme sport taken to the ultimate, with a months-long race in the hottest, coldest, toughest conditions anywhere.

Ducklings in the sunI’ve also put up a few pictures from the UK – Horseshoe Lake. This is one of the many gravel pits in England that have been flooded and are now used for sailing, fishing etc. We used to go to Horseshoe Lake to sail, but on this occasion I think we just pottered around and enjoyed the very tame birds that were hopping around on the bank.

De Young Museum, San FranciscoFinally some pictures from San Francisco: the De Young museum in Golden Gate Park, designed by the Swiss firm of architects Herzog and de Meuron. I learned about them from an exhibition at the New Tate museum in London, where there was an extensive display that described their process, including a lot of the work they did in designing the De Young museum.

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Site abberation

The site was down briefly – sorry! What happened was that my domain was set to renew automatically, but it didn’t. Instead of getting a message from the registration company, they just unlinked the site. Thanks, Beachcomber. Not. Anyway, it’s back up now, following a simple PayPal transaction. 

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New Zealand pictures are up…

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A bit of a rush job – it’s challenging to get all the pictures edited, organized and posted, and I think some of my edits might not have made it through to the posted jpegs, but here they are anyway. The main page is here.

Over time I’ll try to get in and edit some of the notes so you know where they are from and so on, but I have at least organized them into sub-galleries, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find your way around.

One of the best things we did was a trip to Akaroa, and a swim with the local Hector’s Dolphins in the wild. These are the smallest dolphins in the world, and endangered. The Akaroa Harbour is a sanctuary for them. Here’s the site for the company we went with – their pictures are better than mine! Akaroa was a French colony, and retains some of the French character in the street names, for example. Also some great cooking!

Have fun!

tim

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Back from a great trip to New Zealand

Jeremy and I went on February 6th, and Marina and Caelean joined us on the 16th. We spent our time in Christchurch, where I have a school friend who was kind enough to have us to stay for part of the time and to help us get oriented. We rented a house in Diamond Harbour, about 45 minutes from the center of town, and across from the main port of Lyttleton.

More to come, including some pictures as I get organized.

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Baja and Danzante!

Danzante from the beachAfter too long I’ve finally found the time to post some of the pictures from our trip to Danzante! in Baja. We were there just before Thanksgiving – a few days stolen from the working year. We had a great time, lapped up the sun, did very little, ate great food, and enjoyed excellent company. What more can you ask for?

The resort is small enough that everyone gets to know everyone else. We sat around a single large table, and enjoyed an extended happy hour every afternoon, which ensured we were relaxed and ready for dinner.

The picture of the resort is not mine, but you can see my gallery here – a lot of pictures of people jumping / falling into the water, but a few that give you an idea of the landscape. You can download the originals at full resolution from the gallery if you’d like to.

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Home again

We’re back from our whirlwind trip to Seattle. Today we went to the Boeing museum close to the Sea-Tac airport, which has an old Air Force One (707), and a BA Concorde. Also a great exhibition of first world war planes, the Blackbird, and a simulator that the boys enjoyed (twice!).

Yesterday I met a friend at Amazon and had the chance to see one of their buildings – beautiful art deco exterior, with amazing views of the mountains all around. We were pretty lucky with the weather – one rainy day and three fine, with two blue and clear. At one point I could see Mt. Rainier, the Cascades, and the Olympic mountains, all clear and cloud-free.

We did go to the Experience Music Project yesterday – the building is famously by Frank Gehry and the project funded by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen. Lots of great interactive displays (recording studio, instruments etc.), and we all had a good time. I was disappointed by the building – it seemed a bit arbitrary on the outside, and frankly dingy and rough on the inside. I think the passion and intensity of the music it houses and describes could have been more effectively expressed. But still, it was the first Gehry building I’ve seen close up, and it was interesting to see how he used the power of CAD to create shapes and textures that would have been too difficult previously.

I didn’t take any pictures of the EMP – there are enough out there already and I had a camera-free day, just enjoying the sights.

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Enjoying Seattle

We’re just enjoying a few days in Seattle – visiting the Public Market, the first Starbucks store, and today trips to Bainbridge Island for lunch, and the Boeing factory north of Seattle. Typical Seattle weather, I gather – lots of cloud, some rain, but today a bit of sun. The trip to Bainbridge Island was especially beautiful – I’ll post some pictures in a while.

At the Boeing factory we saw the production lines for the 747, the 777, and the new 787 Dreamliner, which will fly later this year. Despite being 50% lighter than a 777, the 787 is only 20% more fuel-efficient, which was a surprise to me. Still a big step forward, based mainly on much greater use of composites (carbon fiber etc.).Our plan for tomorrow is to see the Seattle Center – the Experience Music Project and the Pacific Science Center, and of course the Space Needle.

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I’ve re-instated www.tim-barnes.com

As a tool to learn about Django and Python, I spend the last few days building a new site based on a sort of extended blogging model. It covers my consulting interests, and is completely styled in CSS, with its own RSS feed (which you can access directly here). In the past I’ve written about content management and LAMP – there’s a new generation of web frameworks emerging that have taken a lot of the learning of past systems. Django is one of these. It’s built in Python, which provides a huge variety of built-in classes to support almost anything you might want to do, and it interfaces to a range of relational databases. I’m using SQLite, which is an amazingly small and capable database that requires no configuration at all.The total size of the code for this site is about 250 lines combining templates, database models, and the logic that drives the site. Everything else comes courtesy of the Django developers and the power of Python.

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Porsche 944 Turbo RIP

Alas, my car was destroyed by a rear-ender in Los Gatos a couple of weeks ago. I think the driver was changing lane and didn’t see the line of traffic in front. The collision was strong enough to push me into four more cars, but I think mine was the only one to be a total loss. Fortunately no-one seems to have suffered any real injuries, although I had a stiff neck for a while. Apart from the loss of a car of which I was rather fond, the biggest issue is the time and cost of finding a replacement.

I’ve settled on an Acura RDX as a replacement: it’s a small SUV like thing that drives like a car, but is a bit higher and has good space and practicality. The practicality will finally allow me to tow a small boat, as well as taking lots of tools and wood etc. in its boot.

It has a voice operated control system that has trouble with my accent – I say things like “navigate to home” and it replies “air conditioning off” or “fan level six”. I just hope it’s not running Windows.

This image is from the launch of the car – mine is a pearl white – rather like my first 944 Turbo.