Trailbuilding with VOCAL

I recently did an incredible volunteer trail building project with a great group called Volunteers for Outdoor California (VOCAL). They are incredibly well organized and do trailbuilding and maintenance projects all over the SF Bay Area. They're different from other organizations in terms of how well they treat their volunteers: they almost always coordinate camping for the night following the first day of a project, and provide great meals, coffee, snacks, sunshowers, etc. A recent project I heard about had smoked tri-tip for dinner, as well as on-site massages! I worked extremely hard for a full day and still felt spoiled. The volunteers and the crew were without fail enthusiastic, friendly, and welcoming - I met some great people, and will be working with them again as soon as I can. Visit their website and see if you can help - I promise they are a well organized and inspired group that deserves it!

From the top of Mt. Diablo

A place to bring yourself, and invite someone you like along.

Beautiful iPod skins

Below is a just one example of the excellent iPhone and iPod skins available at http://www.gelaskins.com/index.php

Eye Candy

The site Colourlovers.com is my new favorite procrastination destination. The site has hundreds of appealing palettes and patterns to browse through, as well as a super cool custom pattern creation tool that lets you start with pre-made patterns and color them as you like. Its as easy as picking the colors for each part of the pattern.


















I could do it all day. I almost just did. Below are some quick attempts.




































Here are some samples from their site:






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Blublu

Ok. You must click on this book and watch the video that follows. Quite simply and truthfully the coolest video I've seen in ages. I'm not going to spoil it for you by describing it.

Watch this one first (click on book)
















Then go to this page for more (click on book)

hitotoki and Z-Trip

So my uncle, surveyor of all things online and fabulous, sent me this site today (click to visit):




Its calls itself a "narrative map of the world" and basically maps moments, words, and photos onto city maps. If you happen to love New York, Tokyo, or Shanghai, or any other of the cities it covers, its a great site to poke around. Also a great place to submit short essays to if you're an aspiring writer/photographer/one who communicates moments.

On another note, DJ Z-Trip played at the Mighty last night in SF. It was one of the cooler dance scenes in SF I've found - some great dancers were there, and the music rocked all night. I did however almost get in fights with TWO amped-up girls who felt I was dancing in their space. So i'm not sure if Ztrip has a militant fem-nazi following, but it sure felt that way, because I have done a lot of dancing in my time, and that has never happened to me before. Let's just say in the last two years I've learned a lot about de-escalation, and I was able to soothe the wild beasts before returning to this:

Click here to listen to DJ Z-Trip


Also thanks to Yoda for the VIP passes.

Words trapped in water

Masaru Emoto is a Japanese researcher who contends that if spoken words or human thoughts are directed at water before it freezes, then the crystals that result will display characteristic patterns. These patterns will be ugly if the words/thoughts are negative, and beautiful if the words/thoughts are positive and life-affirming. He claims to have experimented using prayer, and written words attached to water-filled containers. He has published many volumes under the name, Messages From Water. Each volume displays the crystals and the emotions/thoughts that produced them.

By Claudia Ricci: read more here

Crazy, or beautiful?

Fireball

First pic from new D200

The need to color correct your screen

Thanks to a photo buddy, I was alerted to the reason that my carefully calibrated colors in photoshop don't come out the same when I order prints. My monitor is not color calibrated. There is a neat little software/ gadget package you can get called Huey that will take care of this for you. It includes a magic wand you stick to your screen that reads how your screen displays Pantone colors and then calibrates accordingly. Most monitors are defaulted to display color/contrast for easy reading of documents. Huey corrects this and generally brings warmth, yellows, and greens back to your too-blue screen.

Don't EVER mess around with colors in photoshop unless your monitor is calibrated. That is an order.

Check it out here.