Catchin' a plane

My friend Mr. Jimmo pointed out that there is a tiny plane I just happened to catch in my Seattle skyline shot. Take a look at the picture linked in a post below and scroll to the right side so you can see the Coast Guard ship, the scroll up ... it's a tiny little dot of a thing, but definitely there!

Printed, framed Seattle Skyline

Here is a quick pic of what the panorama below looks like printed out and framed. I cropped it a little so it would fit in six 8.5 by 11 frames that I had. Hopefully, this is the temporary home for the images (above the closet in our library). I'm going to scout the house for a better location -- we have plenty of blank walls ;-)

Pano-bana-rama

I took 15 separate shots of downtown Seattle from West Seattle's public boat launch area on Alki. Just handheld shots, no tripod. I used the nearly magical PTGUI tools to stitch them together. The resulting image is about 7 feet long!

Here is the final image [warning: 3+ megs].

You'll notice some banding in the sky itself, but otherwise, very good for just reeling off 15 shots with no real plan to do this.  (For example, I stupidly left my camera set on ISO800 from a previous shot, resulting in a lot of graininess in these photos -- ISO200 would have been much better).

I have sent the photo off to be professionally printed (for around $21) on a 7-foot poster sheet, but in the meantime, I just printed it myself on my inkjet printer and framed each individual section, and it looks really great hanging on my wall.

Our transportation changes

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but with the motorcycle thing, it seems appropriate now.

We have two cars (SUV and convertible), a boat, and two motorcycles.

The plan is to sell the boat, the two cars (and now maybe one of the motorcycles at least!) and replace it all with a Toyota Prius or other gas/electric hybrid.

With me commuting 40 miles a day (usually in the SUV) and with Laurel usually taking the bus (instead of her Audi TT), it makes a lot of sense to downsize to something more economical.

The problems so far: Need to actually sell those vehicles. The boat isn't selling so far, and we haven't put the others on the market yet. Also, the Toyota Prius is so popular that there is a $500 deposit required just to get on the waiting list for one in Seattle!

The Prius does sound pretty cool, though, especially if you get the top-end package which has the stuff I "need" like navigation and a "smart key" that just detects that you have the key in your pocket so you don't actually need to use it to unlock or start the car.

Hurricane Paul making landfall this weekend

Laurel's college friend Paul is coming to Seattle this weekend, after a stop with his boyfriend Grant at the Portland Open Source Conference.

Yes, that's right: An openly open-source couple in my home! To be fair, Paul isn't particularly interested in computers; I think he's just interested in Grant, who happens to be a Linux guy.

At any rate, I've not met Grant before. If he's a typical humorless Linux guy, this weekend will consist of numerous rants against Microsoft, which as the good host I'll have to just endure (to me, enduring means making sarcastic comments that I just hope go over the target's head).

I'm sure he's a good guy, though ... If Paul likes him, he must not be all bad.

Totalled?

Still waiting to find out what the mechanic thinks of the state of my motorcycle ... My first reaction was that it was totalled, but looking at the pictures we took, it doesn't seem that bad (or at least, the parts that look bad seem like they could be popped off and replaced pretty easily). Right after the accident, though, a lot of fluid was pouring from the bike, which might indicate some hidden damage elsewhere.

Even if it is OK, I'm not sure how much I'd want to ride it. Setting aside the general question of whether I will ride at all, I'm a bit upset that the front left-side discs brakes appear to have just "popped off" the wheel ... I was braking pretty hard, of course, but should there be a point at which your brakes would just come off? Note that I slid on the right side, so the left side shouldn't have any damage.

Motorcycle accident

I'm back from the emergency room after a motorcycle accident. Some pictures here. I really thought I'd have more to say about it, but I guess I don't ... maybe tomorrow. The basics: Coming home on I-5 South, traffic was flowing about 40 mph, then suddenly stopped. I could have either hit the car in front of me or dumped the bike and slid. I "picked" the slide -- although physics probably picked it for me, fortunately. I'm basically fine, a few bumps and bruises and general pains.

"Thrilling" roadside report moments after my motorcycle accident

Alan Ball has written 57 songs....

and they're all about Nate.

So the point of all that mess last week was to bring Nate back to work at Fisher and Diaz? Oy.

To goatee or not to goatee?

Move your mouse over the image below to decide for yourself:
[Updated] You can vote on which is better.

Blogs are for egomaniacs

People sometimes say I have a big head, but this is ridiculous.

Jump rope

When my personal trainer said she wanted me to jump rope for an exercise, I said, "I don't know how. I've never done it." She couldn't believe it. Why hadn't I ever learned? "Because I'm not a girl."

As sexist (and funny) as that answer may have been, it was true.

So anyway, she pressed on and taught me, and today I forced myself to jump rope by myself ... got up to a record of 29 hops in a row!

I was also sweating like a pig and gasping for air after only five minutes. Now I know why boxers do it, although of course as a 35-year-old American, all I can think of is Doc from the Love Boat (if you're old like me, you'll remember it, too).

Latest knitting project

Here is one side of a knitted bag from the Spring 04 issue of Family Circle Easy Knitting. They did it in non-descript baby blue cotton chenille. I'm doing it in Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky in Limeade. BTW the magazine has nothing in common with Family Circle other than the name on the masthead. It is published by (and shares and editor with) Vogue Knitting (which AFAIK has nothing to do with Vogue magazine).

Tres chic, or mega freak?

I decided my goatee was getting a bit ragged, so after a few attempts to clean it up, I just shaved it off. Laurel is sitting in the corner, arms around knees, rocking back and forth and quietly mumbling, "It'll grow back, it'll grow back," but I'm already used to it.

As seen on TV

So occasionally the Stewart household falls prey to the lure of infomercials. Here are some things we have purchased and how they worked:

The One Sweep broom - works really well on floors. Only so so for getting pet hair out of the carpet, but all in all a good purchase.

The Perfect Pancake - worked well but fell apart, was good for quesadillas.

The thing for popping hard-boiled eggs out of their shells - did not work well at all.

The egg-shaped thing for making scrambled eggs in the microwave - also not very good.

The Natural Bra - I really should have known better, only provides enough support for women who don't need to wear a bra in the first place.

Dave, what else have we ordered that I have forgetten?

Just a little Photoshop artwork on a day that's too hot to do much of anything.

My brother has an Emmy

Does yours? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Photography workflow articles

Posting this mostly as a reminder to myself to check this at home and print it out, but here is a blurb from an interesting series of articles on digital photo workflow I found on the web today:

The Ideal Digital Photographer's Workflow, Part 1 by Ken Milburn -- Ken Milburn offers a workflow that digital photographers can follow for preparing for a shoot and determining a shooting procedure, and for downloading, cataloguing, tracking, and archiving the image files that result. Ken is the author of the upcoming Digital Photography: Expert Techniques.

Career-limiting email

We have a term here (and probably where you work, too, although you may not know it): Career-limiting email. It is any piece of mail that you figure will probably get you either fired or forever pigeonholed as someone the upper-ups find too bothersome to promote.

I'm on a roll today ... I used to try to keep it down to one per week, but it is only Monday and I've written at least five.

Worst. Episode. Ever.

Nine out of 10 Television Without Pity readers agree, last night's episode of Six Feet Under just sucked, And that 10th one? He's on crack.

Update: Day 2 of the Stevie Nicks closet explosion

More pictures from the West Seattle "Med Fest" today.

Dave's Varmint Hunt!

We've had a problem since we got our new sod installed. Every morning, the edges of the sod get turned up. We had a range of wild theories for this. Then, we remembered that Laurel had seen an opossum hiding under the stairs of our house a few months ago, and I had heard what I thought was a cat climbing the tree near our house. We then figured -- it was the opossum.

So tonight, armed with a nightvision camcorder, I set out to catch it in the act, and it didn't take long before I did!

However, on review of the tape, we think it is a racoon.

See the video of the scoundrel caught red-pawed.

News flash: Stevie Nicks' closet explodes in West Seattle

Wow ... we never even knew it, but the "Mediterranean Festival" has been going on in West Seattle for 17 years (Photo album here). Tucked behind a high school, we almost walked right by it without noticing it -- but it was PACKED. People of all shapes and sizes, lots of women dressed in belly dancing costumes, and some great falafel ... Laurel ran into a woman from her old group at Microsoft who is dancing tomorrow, so we're going back! I'm taking more lenses and more memory cards tomorrow, too -- can't believe I ran out of space, there was so much to see.

Belly Dancing in West Seattle?

My massage therapist told me about a street festival that is happening in West Seattle today, featuring belly dancers. We're about to go check it out!

Full-body fat guy morph

I had to use different software for this one, so if might pop up a different UI than the previous movie: Click here [warning: 3+ megabyte file]

Mighty Morphin' Fat Guy

It had to be done: Animation of Dave's 15-week weight-loss progress.

Ouch

Got up to join Dave at his 8 AM workout this morning. Started my usual run, then @ mile 2 my leg started hurting. Having learned my lesson about running through pain a few months back, I stopped my run and stretched a bit. Didn't help. So I finished out my workout on the elliptical crosstrainer. Final stats - running - 2.2 miles in 19.5 minutes, elliptical 4 miles in 40 minutes. And my leg now hurts when I walk on it (though the elliptical didn't bother it). Guess I'll take tomorrow off from running and see how it feels.
As for the rest of my day - I treated myself to a post-workout espresso at Starbucks, then went to Uwajimaya for some groceries (and sushi for lunch) and came home. Up next, after I take some Aleve for my leg, cleaning my bathroom (but not cleaning Dave's). :)

More cam fun

I remembered that you can not only stream from a webcam, but also from pretty much any media source -- such as a TV tuner card. So ... when you'd otherwise see boring darkness or no movement at all, you can now instead see boring public TV (I can't rebroadcast copyright material, of course) ... assuming I remember to flip the switch over.

WebCam how-to

I've had some email asking how I'm doing the streaming webcam. It's easy and free!

First, download Windows Media Player Encoder 9. It works with pretty much any web cam -- I have one called the Veo Stingray which I literally picked by going to Fry's and buying the absolute cheapest one I could find ($15).

You have the option of streaming directly from your computer or "pushing" the stream to a server, which is what I'm doing -- although for most folks without a free Windows Media Server, this isn't a great option ;-)

Next, you just need to embed the player onto your webpage, using script like what you can find here (this is good because it helps you work with browsers other than IE on Windows -- my wife uses Safari for Mac, for instance, and it works fine there, too!)

For the non-streaming webcam, I wrote my own software for that in C# -- it just grabs a picture every 15 seconds, draws the caption and date, and pops it up to an FTP server. I'm not really ready to "share" that program ... but WebCam32 is a good option, if you don't want to write something yourself.

Up on the roof

I went up on the roof today to see why my wind speed and direction indicator wasn't working. I figured it was off its mount or otherwise jammed, but once I got up there, it looked just fine. So I then figured it must be unplugged. Tracing the wire, I found the actual problem -- a year of scraping against a metal gutter had cut the wire in the middle. So at least I know how to fix it ... patch the wire? Nah, by buying a whole new one, of course! Hopefully it will arrive in about a week.

Why I take the bus

I have ethical issues with the single-occupant vehicle. Read the news - this country has a lot of problems due to our dependence on fossil fuels.
West Seattle is well-served by frequent bus service that is supported by my tax dollars.
Entertainment. There is always at least one crazy person on the bus.
I suppose I could knit while I drive myself, but it's probably safer to do it on the bus.
Gas prices being what they are, it is cheaper to ride the bus.
I get more exercise walking to the bus stop than I do just walking into my garage.

Tuesday's workout

was much better than yesterday's. One hour of weight-lifting with my trainer followed by a short run. 3 miles in 27.5 minutes.

Today's workout...

...was pretty sucky really. 4 miles in 37 minutes. My usual goal is 6.5 to 7.0 miles in 60 minutes. Nothing was good today - my stomach hurt, it was hot, and I'd packed the wrong sport bra. Here's to a better workout tomorrow.

Cam Slam

I went ahead and added the office cam back on to the page. Unfortunately, it can't "stream" like the home camera (due to some restrictions on the Microsoft corporate firewall). I did, however, add a new feature to my web cam app that lets me type in a little message and have it display on top of the picture. This saves me from having to put post-it notes on my forehead (prompting my father to think I'd gone nuts) and also gives my cam that "letterboxed" look.

Hello from your guest blogger

I have found that most people treat you as a bit of a freak if you are 33 and not working by choice (unless you are a mother - which is a whole other rant). Comments about a "life of leisure" and questions like "what do you do all day" are what I mostly hear. No doubt, people picture an endless cycle of eating bon bons on the couch while watching Ricki Lake. That's not quite true. More or less, my time is filled with all the things that other people try to cram into their nights and weekends, never end up doing at all, or pay other people to do for them.

So here is how my day has gone so far:
9:00 - for whatever reason I had agreed to take a phone survey from Group Health this morning. It lasted until 9:40 and at least I got a Barnes and Noble gift card for my time.
9:40 - this is when I would normally go work out and get that over with, however due to some really poor planning on my part, neither my ipod nor my phone had been charged so I plugged them in and rearranged my day a bit.
9:40 to 12:00 - did the dishes, scrubbed kitchen floor, vacuumed upstairs, made bed, did 3 loads of laundry (by the way, Dave, your Pro Club card was in your shorts)
12:00 to 12:30 - made and ate lunch, posted to Dave's blog

So now I'm off to catch the bus downtown so I can finally work out.

Later, people.

Isabel Sanford

Let's hope she's "movin' on up" ... (ok, the only reason for this post was to use that obvious joke).

Another guest blogger: Laurel!

My wife, Laurel, decided that she wanted to be a guest blogger, too ...

Not what you want to hear from your mother when you are 35

Vicki says: David Stewart.....you are nasty!!

Why I love West Seattle

Where else could you see someone like this, just having a grand old time on the street? OK, pretty much anywhere on the west coast, I guess.

Listening to "Children of the Korn" by Korn from the album Follow the Leader

And you always run into someone you know here

(Although they may not be ready to have their pictures taken.) ... Dan and Tilly at the West Seattle Street Fair

Listening to "More Human Than Human" by White Zombie from the album Astro Creep: 2000 -- Songs of Love, Destruction

Feeling old

Speaking of personal trainers, Laurel relates this story of her (much younger than her ... and by simple logic, younger than me, too) personal trainer David:

While working out, the song "Staying Alive" by the BeeGees came on. Trainer said, "You know what's weird about this song? It says, 'I'm a woman's man' but it's a woman who is singing it!" Laurel died a little inside and explained that BeeGees in fact means "BROTHERS Gibb."

This was even worse than when Rush came on and he had no idea who it was.

Then again, perhaps age doesn't have as much to do with cultural references as we think ... we've run into some folks recently who had no idea what the Jonestown Tragedy was, or even more incredibly, who had never heard of the Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon sync-up thing.

Guten Tag, Melanie!

Welcome to Melanie, my German personal trainer -- without her, the pictures you see below wouldn't be possible! She added me to her IE favorites tonight ... I can't wait until she sees me on the webcam in my office just sitting still for hours on end.

Famous Melanie quote: "Belly button in!"

Before and after, all in one

At my Dad's suggestion I put together a single picture with all four "before and after shots" ... click here.

Guest blogger feedback survey

Tell us what you thought about Eian's performance as a guest blogger.

Survey: How did Eian do?

New guest blogger: Jerry!

Please welcome Jerry, our new guest blogger.

If there was any justice in the world, Jerry would be our next president. So thank God that there is no justice in the world.

We eagerly await his week of posting -- how could it be worse than what Eian did?

Big Dave, slightly less big Dave

You have GOT to see this.

I've been involved in the 20/20 Program at the Seattle Pro Club for the past 15 weeks. It is a Microsoft-sponsored health plan at our local gym to take care of all kinds of metabolic disorders. OK, they make fat people less fat.

You work out 5 times a week and eat right ... and here are the results.

• Full-body (before)
• Full-body (after)
• Face (before)
• Face (after)
• [Update] All in one

In addition, my blood pressure went from "head about to bust open" to "normal" ... my cholesterol went from "Colonel Sanders would say, 'Whoa, son! Slow down on the fried stuff!'" to "The Artery Superhighway" ... and I've lost more than 40 pounds! But still have a long way to go in the last 12 weeks of the program ...

Bye, Eian!

That was a quick week -- or should I say WEAK. Eian posted three times (apparently so desperate for material at one point that he was just reporting wacky human interest stories) and only came up with a single bit of "dirt" on me -- that I one time pretended I was bad at math so I could buy everyone lunch without them feeling bad about it (OK, well ... years of journalism study kinda knocked the math genius right outta me, I used to be pretty good at it, but now ...)

At any rate, bye Korn, your week is up!

I've had some more interest in being a guest blogger from other folks; we'll see how that goes.

Old cam back (already!)

Well, that didn't work so well ... had to turn off the streaming webcam -- my streaming host was just not 100% reliable and wouldn't let me stream more than about 5 minutes at a time.

Live "motion" webcam!

The webcam is now streaming -- which means you can actually see me move in near real-time (actually about 20 seconds delayed, I think). See how little I move during a day!

competitive eating update

On July 4th the 5'6" 132 lbs. Takeru "The Tsunami" Kobayashi won the annual Nathan's Famous hot dog eating event. In the process of blowing by his competition with 53.5 dogs in 12 minutes he also set a new world record beating his old record of 50.5.

Robot basketball

Just a little Photoshop fun.

Greenlake stroll photos

Some photos of our walk around Greenlake on July 4.

Buy official Dave's Stuff stuff!

Check out our online shop ... (yes, I'm serious). Lots of neat products featuring your favorite Dave's Stuff images, including Davezilla, "Will Code 4 Food," lots of Laurel, and even PEN HATS.

Blog the vote!

I've create a "web service" that allows for super-quick setup of a new survey (I was doing it by hand before). So expect more dumb polls like this: Blog the vote!

4 step free lunch program

1. Order lunch
2. Have server give you a single check
3. Ask Dave to let everybody know how much they need to pay
4. Watch Dave fumble with simple arithmetic for a while before finally giving up and paying for everybody

Trends fly by so quickly

That pen-on-the-hat thing? That's so over.

New survey: Fahrenheit 9/11

Blog the vote!

If you care about this sort of thing, I just upgraded my polling software to work with SQL server, so it should be a bit more robust. We'll see.

Some dirt nobody will ever know about me

1. I travel under the name Xavier St. Cloud with a Belgian passport.
2. Laurel is my second wife. I was only married to my first wife for seven hours and never knew her name.
3. I use 100 dollar bills to light cigars made from 1000 dollar bills.
4. I can never again step foot in the town of Racine, Wisconsin.
5. My driver's license says I weigh 250 pounds, but at the time I got it, I actually weighed 250 and a half pounds.
6. I am the only living American who can't stand the Eagles.
7. I had to shave my head because my hair emits a strong monkey pheromone, which made my job as a zookeeper rather difficult.

a change in purpose

Originally my purpose in being a contributor to dave's blog was that I would be able to use it as a means of opening up his hidden secrets for the whole world to see (or at least the three people who read this blog and aren't searching for M3 information). Unfortunately, I discovered a bit too late that I didn't really *know* any of dave's hidden secrets.

I'm not going to really let that stop me though; I will continue digging just as hard as before. Not even dave can be so uninteresting as to not have ANY tabloid material. I won’t let you all down.

But as a result of my immediate lack of dirt I am amending my original purpose. Basically, I am also going to strive to bring a bit of sanity and balance to dave's blog in the week I have been allotted (my special Eian branded form of sanity and balance anyway).