New York

OK, this is too cool.

Apparently, just seeing cool satellite views of your own city wasn't enough for Google. Now they're adding photo quality street-view tours of some of the major metro cities. I think New York has the most comprehensive coverage from what I can tell. Check out Times Square!

I think they got Vegas and San Fran as well so far. Niiiiice.

Save Internet Radio

You know, I'm VERY jaded when it comes to politics. I've always done my part...I've been a voting citizen for about as long as I can remember, but in my heart I'm not sure my vote has ever really made any difference.

BOTH times I'm actually proud to say I voted against having Bush in office. Yet that idiot is still there. Don't get me wrong, when it comes down to someone else in another country talking smack about America I'll still defend the country and his position on office vehemently, but he is what he is...

And then in my last job at a local ISP, we had a period where we were participating some kind of bill preventing companies like Oceanic from monopolizing their cable broadband network. Yet...big business won in the end. It's really deflating when you're working your hardest as a small business to provide a good service to people, only to be ultimately blocked at all sides.

So...suffice to say I only participate in politics as a principle nowadays. I think it's all bullshit at some point.

Here's another cause I want to bring up because I care somewhat about this. Remember a few months back I brought up one of my favorite sites called Somafm.com? I've been listening to streaming music from them for years now. Good stuff....material most you and I would never hear otherwise beyond just the crap you hear doled out on normal radio sung by a half dozen American Idol castaways.

Apparently now they're being targetted by insane royalty hikes which will drive them and just about every internet radio station out of business. It reminds me so much about our experiences back in the ISP. Just more corporate greed and indifference out there squashing the little guys.

Honestly, I'm not expecting anyone to do much. Like I said, I'm very jaded about politicians actually doing anything in the public's interest. But if you could spare some time, you can at least do what I did and write a small letter or email to your state Senators to support The Internet Radio Equality Act that has recently been introduced in both the House (H.R. 2060) and Senate (S. 1353) to save the Internet radio industry.

I wrote to State Representative Ambercrombie because I met and helped him once back when I was working at Hungry Ear Music. He was genuinely nice back then...which to me is a surprise given that he's a politician and I was just some young music store salesperson.

In the end, if SomaFM disappears...I really don't know where I'm going to hear independent music anymore. So saaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

Break time

The 3 Stooges on my face are going away thank God. I had to battle that this weekend along with just some tiny cold symptoms. Basically just some exercise and some better diet helped all of that.

My Zeno thing still didn't arrive in the mail yet. I guess I don't need it yet but I'll be ready to zap the next little sucker that decides to show up again. I wonder if that thing really works? It better for the price I paid for it. There's a guarantee on that thing for so many weeks...but can you imagine how gross it is to mail that back? Blaaaaaaah. I don't even want to think about it.

It should work though according to all the favorable reviews about it. I mean we're so jaded these days about products that promise they do all this and that for you, but in your heart you just kind of assume it probably won't do all it says? Just like all those "As seen on TV" products. But once in a while a product surprises you and does EXACTLY everything it should. I've been meaning to type up a list of these things sometime. Maybe my next breaktime I'll do this. There are some things I've used and I'm 110% happy about it. They deserve to get at least some recognition for good designed products.

So I'm getting all into this CSS programming stuff a bit. Hey it's something new for a change, I'm pretty proud of it. On the other hand I'm sure I just scratched the surface of what it can do. I've been meaning to pick up a couple books about that stuff. Yeah I know that's the total geek thing to do but unless you take a class on this stuff the only way to learn it is to pick up some book and try to read your way through it without falling asleep.

Come to think about it, I've gotten quite a bit of books related to business or design lately. I'm going to have to find space for all these books soon. Which isn't going to be easy now that I have to clear out extra space for my fiancee who will be moving in soon. These books are expensive too, they add up. The worst part about buying computer related self-help books though are that they become obsolete when the next software version comes out. I got all all these old Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, etc books from all kinds of versions just sitting there gathering dust now.

Maybe I'll recycle the books into some weird post-modern artwork.

Hold still damnit!

So you tink you know photography eh? I tell myself that all the time. I don't know if I ever mentioned this site before. Called "Sisters" this is a personal blog of a wedding photographer over in the Mainland. I've somewhat "talked" with this guy once or twice on a photography related message board. Nice guy.

I think it's simply AMAZING photography work on his 2 daughters. I've tried taking shots of little kids before but I simply can't do it. They move around like little mice and all I get are just mediocre shots that look like any simple point-an-shoot photo...otherwise I get a lot of motion blur. OK OK, before you start thinking anything, they were pics of my best friend's kids ok? I'm not stalking the playgrounds or anything.

My god the expressions he catches are just so....dare I say "adorable"? I know it's not very manly to use a word like adorable, but with those kid's expressions how can you not be melted down into a giant floor puddle? How does he DO that? He says he goes through quite a bit of effort to get their attention like that. I believe it too! Those kids might hate it now when daddy drags them off for another photo...but 30 years from now they're going to be very happy with these.

3 Stooges

Ugh, I got 3 huge zits on my face this week that came out of nowhere. Maybe my lack of sleep and bad diet this week caused it. Maybe they're not to noticable to everyone else, but they certainly feel like 3 new heads to me. I've taken to naming them the 3 Stooges. I bought this fancy high-tech device called Zeno which I heard was some miracle device to control acne. Maybe it can zap Larry Moe and Curly away. Let me see if it will work. Until then...don't look at me I'm hideous!!

At the very least I hope it all clears up before the wedding. If not it will be immortalized on all my wedding photos. Hey, at least I got Photoshop!

It's getting close to my wedding. Everyone's always asking, "Are you ready?", or saying "tick tock tick tock". You know what? I'm really not sweating that part. At least I'm not nervous yet. The really huge thing I'm most excited about is seeing my fiancee again. It's been 5 long months. /sigh.

OK, some small obligatory design-related topic. I've been using all the new CS3 Adobe products now for about a couple weeks. I'd say it's worth the upgrade if you're at all familiar with these programs.

Photoshop CS3 has some nice new features I'm making good use of so far. The ability to make selections are MUCH easier and faster now. That alone might be worth the price of admission I think. I haven't made much use of the smart filters yet which was supposed to be the big thing. Maybe I'll get into using that more along the line. The bridge is much faster and much more powerful.

I was fearful that Adobe would wreck Dreamweaver after they bought it from Macromedia. They had their GoLive program so I figured it would be a strategic move to buy out their competitor and just retire it. BEHOLD! Dreamweaver CS3 is back and everything is still there. Now it works and operates more seamlessly with the Adobe products and so far little details have made it an instant favorite for me. Just in handling CSS alone it's much more flexible then the Studio 8 version that preceded it. Once again, it's a huge time-saver.

I should invest in Adobe. They have yet to do anything wrong in my eyes.

Web Accessibility

I've had about 3 hours of sleep over the last 48 hours. Nuts huh? I think those of us out there that does anything having to do with coding knows what an all-nighter is. We all do this every once in a while... it's so sad too. I got empty cans and candy wrappers around me, my face is breaking out, I got what my fiancee calls "panda eyes", and I probably don't smell very good right now too. Yesterday I didn't even break much for dinner too...I heated up a crappy Maruchan instant noodle and that's about all I had the whole day.

What got me so obsessed? Well, I finally bit the bullet & learned a new way to do my coding. This is no small thing for an old dog like me that's been doing web design since 1996. I'm so used to doing it the same way all these years it's hard to think of another way.

Over the last 3 or 4 years there's been this huge push to make websites "compliant" and accessible to everyone. This is especially important for government or non-profit websites that needs to reach the most people it can, regardless of any disabilities. Not to mention these days, people are starting to view websites on their cell phones and little PDAs, it's had to force us lonely developers into this mode where we've had to learn something new.

Of course we've all been trying to do that since day one, but I think it wasn't probably until the latest versions of browsers came out that it totally gave everyone the ability to take it to a new level.

Enter this thing called CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets. Basically without boring you guys out of your minds, what this essentially does is separate the design of your website from the content. So imagine you have all your website information reachable / printable / viewable on almost anything you use to reach it. With CSS you can. There's no way that would happen if you built your entire site in Flash for instance.

One of the coolest sites that demonstrates the power of CSS is this site called css Zen Garden. Click on the different designs on the right hand side and you'll instantly see the website completely change it's look with the same information. Imagine having all kinds of different versions of your website to reach different people...all from the same source. Anyway, there are some REALLY creative designers who have submitted to css Zen Garden. It's a bit of a bragging right to get posted there I think. You'd probably have to be a web designer to care, but the cool part about how Zen Garden works is that just 1 single file is all it takes to make such drastic changes to the design.

Anyway, long story short I've been having a hard time switching from the old ways of doing things to this CSS method. And it's really been bothering me too.

48 hours ago, somehow it just clicked. And then somehow my mind went into full-focus mode and then it was just wham bam thank you maam and just out of nowhere I created 2 new sites using full CSS web standard. And I tell you what... I must admit it's easier & more flexible then I ever imagined. So long HTML tables...good riddance. Hopefully these 2 sites will be finished in and around the next couple months and I'll be able to show them here. I'm quite happy with them.

I was so elated I went out a 7:30am (I was already awake remember?) to buy myself my favorite Spanish Omelette with Home Style Potatoes breakfast over at Andy's in Manoa. Hooo...that shieeeet is good!

This will give me some edge I think. I don't see many teams here in Hawaii focusing on web compliant design. This kind of steps me up the ladder somewhat and that's good.

Now if only I can step away from my computer for a second I can finally take a shower and EAT!

Random Rants

Some things are so frustrating.

I get these contact lenses for my eyes that are 2 week disposables. They're special lenses because I have astigmatism so they're toric...meaning their weighted just so that they'll automatically position the right way on my eyeball.

Every 6 months I have to call in to refill these suckers right? The annoying thing is that they won't refill these lenses unless I take a stupid eye exam once a year. The last 5 or 6 years I'd go through these dumb exams only to find out my prescription hasn't changed a bit. Then I'm down between $100 - $200 paying for an exam I didn't need after all. I just hate spending money I don't need to.

Yesterday I go to the dentist for a cleaning. Because my current self-employment insurance plan doesnt' include dental, I ask them for the most basic routine stuff. I don't need the flouride rinse that costs $30 do I? Once again I didn't want to spend money unnecessarily. What do you know....the doc finds a small cavitiy and now I'm down another $150. Summammabeetch. Screw the cavity let my tooth fall off damnit!

OK OK, yeah a cavity has to be filled. But that eyeball exam is STILL a waste of money I don't care what you say my invisible head voice.

My fiancee tells me to move to Hong Kong instead. She says there will be nobody forcing me to look after myself over there.... yeah I get the point. Why did I find someone so sensible?

Bachelorhood

So there's roughly about 3.5 weeks left of my bachelorhood life left. I don't know if that's sucken in yet because I've been so busy. The weeks have been flying by so I'm not really sure if I'd notice. Pfffft, like I was such a party animal before my life would be changing so drastically?

So am I ready? Yeah I guess so. Everything so far has been going the way we've planned it. My first stop is to fly up to Hong Kong first for the big 200+ people reception dinner that precedes our wedding ceremony. Yeah, it's a little backwards because my fiancee is moving here. So we got a dinner first in HK, ceremony here, and then another smaller reception again over here.

It's going to be HOT. I'm not looking forward to that. You've never felt hot until you've felt hot in Hong Kong. It's like super high humidity. I keed you not - if you have glasses, the minute you step out of a building your glasses would be completely fogged up. I'm going to be in some kind of suit or tux for this event and I don't know if I could hold up. I'll just have to run from one air conditioned room to another.

I'm not looking forward to the plane ride over either. Last time I made the trip I didn't do so well the last 3 hours of the journey...I started looking for barf bags already. Is it just me or do flights no longer give barf bags in the back seats? I don't remember seeing one in years. Flying towards HK is a bit longer then coming back. Coming back is easy.

I better get used to it. I wouldn't be surprised this journey over eventually becomes an annual trip. I have an uncle & aunt that travels between LA and HK regularly like that. Of course they always fly first class so they can sleep the whole way. I have to find a way to do that eventually. I think if I had more seat space on flights I wouldn't have such a hard time. I figure I'll start seriously recording frequent flier miles.

When I fly it's sometimes pretty embarrassing. I just HAVE to have something to do. So the contents of my entire carry-on is entertainment. I'll have a stock of some cookies & candy, my PSP, my iPod, & a book. That may not sound so bad, but I can't stick on one object for more then 10 or 15 minutes then I have to shift to another. It's like I get attention deficit disorder on the plane. Must be the air.

My back is usually killing me by the 4th or 5th hour on the plane seats too. I pity any hijacker that would be on any of my flights because by the last half of the trip I'm so upset I think the alternative of getting out of my seat to wrestle a hijacker with a box cutter would actually seem like a welcome respite. Sad huh?

UGH. I should stop thinking about the journey, it's making me sick already. Yet, I love BEING in a different country. I'm going to pray to the tech god that someone invents a teleporter soon.

5 minutes of fame for Browny!

Hey! Browny got listed as a Dirty Wow Wow! hahahaha

That's funny shit. Oh I have such simple pleasures these days.

My Dirty Wow Wow

OK....... get your mind out of the gutter you suckas. Don't pretend you didn't think what I think you're thinking after seeing the title.

I stumbled across this little competition online to submit photos of your old stuffed animal treasures, called "Show Us Your Dirty Wow Wow". I thought it was kind of cute. My old stuffed friend, Browny, came immediately to mind.

Yeah he's a little nappy looking huh? Hey, he's just about as old as I am. This little guy has ridden many plane trips through the years let me tell ya. He's falling apart for sure. My ma once put Browny through the washing machine once and then he got really screwed up and nearly torn to shreds. But later Grandma took some stockings and repaired him a little bit for me.

Come on...look at that fat belly and that goofy smile. As nappy as he is I don't think I could ever throw the little guy away.

So anyway, I submitted him to that site. It might be cool to see the little guy up there next to all the other nappy creatures.

Happy Birfday to MeeeEEEeee

Happy Birthday to MEEEE!

I planned to take the day off today from work...but everyone else I know is working. So what's the point? I sat around for about an hour watching marathon episodes of "I love New York" and I can't take it. I either have to get my butt out somewhere or I'll just have to end up working after all.

I guess it's ok being older. This is a good year. The only thing that sucks about being 36 is that I've moved into the next checkmark category. You know when you fill out forms and there's the age thing? There's usually (18-25)(26-35)(36-ancient).

Yup, I've moved up to a new checkmark.

Bananaman Race

Did another action photo gig this morning. The 2007 5K Jamba-Juice Bananaman run.

It was ok. From a photography standpoint I didn't get any photos that I thought were that amazing. But I was here to help a friend and these were the types of shots he was very happy about so I guess it's all good. Personally I want to do something different already.

The race itself looked pretty fun. Maybe I can convince my fiancee to come run this with me next year. I think you win something if you beat the Bananaman to the end of the race. I was actually disappointed...I somehow had pictured all the racers tackling the big running Bananas as they caught them.

First place finisher come in at something just over 12mins. That is INSANELY fast. I think I would take twice that time. The winner should become the Bananaman for next year don't you think?

Shark Week

That whole incident with that bad client the other week hasn't resolved itself yet. We'll see. It sucks ass but I know it comes with the business. I'll consider it as a very expensive learning lesson.

It's a very funny effect in the field of art or photography. I discuss this with my photography friends as well -- the less you charge someone, the more you're taken advantage of & the less respect you get. Sometimes, the people you end up attracting for business but not be the best people you want to have for long-term clients...in fact, these are the very people who will jump ship on you the moment they find someone cheaper. That's the sad thing...they don't look at it like you're doing them a huge favor by saving them some money.

The same thing happens in photography. A photographer can put up his photos up in a shop wall for $25 and never sell a single one. He takes this SAME photo to a fine arts gallery and marks it as a $600 art piece and he'll sell it. Why? Well, the people who can afford to spend money on art, aren't going to question the price. They know what they're getting. It's the people who might even stop to question a $25 print that end up to be difficult.

See how it's all somewhat bullshit? Yup, it may be time to start charging more for some of my services, I haven't touched my rates in like 7 or 8 years.

OH, talk about a random tangent... I was sitting there at Aloha Tower today watching the little fishies swim around by the pier, and a FREAKING 4 or 5 foot white-tip shark pretty much swims right past me!! No no, I was nowhere close to the water of course, it's not like my feet were dangling into the water. I was a few feet above the water sitting on the pier...but this was like the first time I've ever seen a shark in the "wild" like this. I thought it was kinda cool.

I was the only one who saw the thing too. You know how sometimes you might witness something really cool and then you look around you hoping someone else saw it too? Yeah, so I look all around and the nearest tourist couple a few feet away were looking the opposite direction. I was thinking, "Holy shit man, you should have filmed over here to the right you would have caught a cool looking shark for your home video"

And then my next thought was, "I'm NOT falling in THIS water"...and a immediately took a few steps back and walked away. I watch the Discovery channel man, I'm not stupid. Did I warn the tourist couple? Err. No. Hey...it was only a 5 foot shark, they wouldn't die if they fell in. Just little nibbles.

Today was another blood donation day. It went fine, I didn't actually feel any needle pricks this time around which is good. But I didn't like how they put the big plastic bag full of my blood right next to me afterwards. I had to think pleasant thoughts so I wouldn't hurl. Keep that stuff out of my sight...just TAKE IT and GO!

Mmmm hmmm. Why do I feel like my life is slowly turning into an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld?

Toy Cars

Well, I'm all on autopilot until my wedding vacation about 6 weeks. Week after week it feels roughly the same. So I'm not really finding any good juicy news to post about much lately. This reminds me of the few times I tried to do a journal as a kid and I'd end up with about 4 or 5 entries in a row that said "Dear Diary....nothing much happened today." Seriously, not much happens when you're generally stuck in the home office all day.

If there was anything interesting lately was the birthday party for my best friend's little boy Ethan. My little ring-bearer-to-be is 5 years old now. Man how time flies.

So I went shopping for his gift lately...which is usually pretty fun for a little boy his age. It's SO easy... he likes toy cars just as I used to love them when I was his age. I'm so glad not all of today's kids have totally abandoned traditional toys in favor of video games.

So anyway, I'm at the shop looking for these cars (trying very hard not to pick some up for myself), and I got really disappointed that the toy car selections really suck these days. Those of you guys out there who used to play with toy cars probably know what I mean. These days all they have are Hot Wheels. And CRAPPY ones at that. All the cars are funky looking and bizarre. Half the fun of getting a good car when we were kids was finding the actual replicas of cars on the road at the time. Not these bizaare things with wacky dohickies all over it.

Whatever happened to all the other types of die-cast car models as well?

Anybody remember Pocket Cars? These were the cars that were the most authentic & detailed. They usually came with real moving parts where you could open the doors or trunks. They had suspension and usually extra parts for things like the lights and interior. If you rolled these cars, these rolled the best. They were SMOOOOOTH. I actually had the one pictured above too. What twisted sick kid left this car in the original blister pack? I had some damn good Pocketcars until my younger brother came along like a freak hurricane and wrecked them all. That sucka.

I don't see Matchbox around as much anymore either. These were a little more heavy duty then the Pocketcars. Sometimes they had good moving parts. Both Pocketcars and Matchbox had good wheels...if you rolled them they generally ran straight and true. Unlike Hotwheels cars which always drifted all over creation.

And then you got the granddaddy of all die-cast cars which were the Hotwheels. These were the cars that withstood the most abuse. I remember taking firecrackers to these things and they still held together. You could take these to the beach, you could roll these through Slime & Playdoh...and they'd STILL come out ok. I had the "Poison Pinto" pictured above too! Oh the memories.

Only Hotwheels seems to have survived today. That kind of sucks. Maybe I should start a die-cast car company.

Photo Retouching

I stumbled across this other gem of a site last night. AmyDresser.com has some pretty awesome demonstrations of her photo retouching and illustration work. You know how I have my portfolio showing my work from the beginning sketches to the final result? Well, it's because I really LOVE seeing the artist's process. For example, I think Michelangelo and DaVinci's best work are their scrapbook sketches don't you think?

If you go to the "Retouching" section of her website (the website navigation itself is a little bit....retarded, but maybe that's just me. I'm lolo), you can see a number of examples of how she took some pretty good shots and turned them into some incredible product images. A good example to show your kids if they have self-esteem issues...here you can see even the best model shots needs a lot of work before they even appear in the magazines.