An image galleryhttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar http://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#DescriptionWelcome to my newest website! The focus of this effort has been digital photography/imaging. There are a number of cool features here some of which are ready and some of which are only partially completed! I've implemented a ton of image processing and web gallery generation code in this web service. It makes it a snap to get all my images onto the web with nearly no effort on my part. Every single image on these pages is dynamically generated. Of course I haven't written this service with only myself in mind. In the days ahead I hope to open up this page to others allowing them to create and share their own beautiful images! Take a look at some of the features below! View the full gallery! - George (xilvar [at] yahoo.com) XML automatic galleryput photos in a directory and webpages for them simply exist. image qualityphoto quality is improved automatically by image filters. dynamic imagesphotos are created on the fly from the originals. never worry about when to save. image cachingcommonly viewed pictures are always available quickly. image editingretouch your photos when you have time. a progressive approach to content creation. image sharingsend links to friends and they can both view and apply their own filters to your photos. image embeddingeasily embed pictures elsewhere, and have editing done here immediately appear everywhere. Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2008_08_24_Wandering_I sort of like wandering aimlessly and sf provides a great space to do that in. I'll follow many more randomly chosen paths while I'm here, but here's a sequence from my accidental trek to coit tower, and return via china town. started out going by epicenter cafe. excellent if slightly pricey croissants baked fresh on site. most of the baristas do a good microfoam as well. super comfortable roomy space to work on a laptop. headed over in the general direction of thirsty bear via abandoned roadways next. there are still quite a few vacant office buildings in soma. they have that look of buildings raring to be remodeled and retrofitted as the expansion continues. img:DRW_8729,DRW_8732,DRW_8733,DRW_8737 eventually I wandered up to the waterfront and walked a fair ways along the piers themselves avoiding the embarcadero sidewalk itself as much as possible. img:DRW_8739,DRW_8740,DRW_8742,DRW_8745,DRW_8747,DRW_8748,DRW_8752 seeing coit tower in the distance I followed an old brick lined street heading directly towards it. img:DRW_8753,DRW_8754,DRW_8755,DRW_8756,DRW_8760 the road terminated at the base of a steep staircase zig-zagging up the hill towards the tower. as it turned out the staircase itself was a verdant pathway through the very heart of a neighborhood. img:DRW_8761,DRW_8769,DRW_8771,DRW_8772,DRW_8774,DRW_8777,DRW_8780,DRW_8783,DRW_8784,DRW_8785 finally, at the end of many flights there was coit tower itself. frankly I don't really like the thing very much. however the murals are pretty nice, and I have fond memories of the penny machine from my childhood. img:DRW_8787,DRW_8789,DRW_8792,DRW_8794,DRW_8797,DRW_8798 my way back turned out to be through chinatown. I'll need to spend more time there some other time. It was getting chilly, so I ended up with a pretty tasty bowl of rice porridge at new king tin restaurant. img:DRW_8800,DRW_8802,DRW_8805,DRW_8808,DRW_8809,DRW_8811 Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:34:16 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2008_08_10_Moved_into_sf_Well I finally got around to moving into SF, so I figured I should start updating my photo website again. I took a quick walk at sunset one day and got decent city photos. Note that I carefully avoided photographing the homeless people and suspicious looking pools of liquid... I'll til later :) First up is the leaving of the apartment. img:DRW_8669,DRW_8673,DRW_8671,DRW_8675,DRW_8680,DRW_8681 And then a meandering stroll through the moscone img:DRW_8684,DRW_8686,DRW_8687,DRW_8688,DRW_8689 A quick pass through uh. whatever this area is called img:DRW_8693,DRW_8695,DRW_8696,DRW_8699,DRW_8700,DRW_8702 A skirting of the metreon img:DRW_8701,DRW_8703,DRW_8704,DRW_8705,DRW_8706 And finally... arrival at the westfield mall! img:DRW_8712,DRW_8714,DRW_8715 Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:26:19 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2007_04_14_An_egg_a_streetlight_a_fire_escape_and_urban_sunsetSome random photos. weird lookin egg eh? img:DRW_6489,DRW_6515,DRW_6508,DRW_6521 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2007_02_09_What_to_do_while_fixing_my_car_I've had a bunch of minor repairs done to one of my cars recently and I ended up walking the entire length of san mateo a few times this week while waiting for the car to finish. On the plus side I took a few decent photos with black and white printing in mind. I'm using the scruffy but cheap epson 2200 printer I obtained from an auction recently. It turns out that regardless of the printer (pretty much) black and white is actually pretty difficult to get 'right' img:DRW_6344,DRW_6342,DRW_6338,DRW_6283,DRW_6278,DRW_6273,DRW_6272,DRW_6271,DRW_6267 The basic problems can be summarized pretty easily. 1: Every printer made which can do color has generally been designed and tuned for color by the manufacturer. 2: The printers generally use carbon in some form for the blacks. carbon is actually _brown_. And brown is sort of a very very dark yellow. 3: To make the brown become grey or black like the user expects it is necessary to use some cyan and magenta to counter that shift towards brown. 4: In general the printer makers have been unable to tune this properly AND keep their setup reasonably well tuned to color at the same time. img:DRW_2743 The above image is my main test as I continue to tune my printer for various different papers and inks methodologies. I'm trying to use some software called QuadToneRIP (an inexpensive shareware program which uses the printer drivers from GutenPrint and builds a fairly precisely tunable black and white print engine on top) It was taken at that orangish canyon park near Las Vegas which I've forgotten the name of. Notice how the striations seem to SHINE out of the stone. And how the large deep deep patch of shadow on the right upper side has some VERY dark detail in it. If you can't see anything in there your monitor is probably not set quite right. try turning the brightness up and the contrast down a bit. Anyway, when I print this photo out with the standard drivers it's magenta. Under some lighting less magenta, under other lighting more magenta, but always magenta. Additionally, there is no detail at ALL in the shadows, and those brilliant striations are blown out to overexposed white with no detail. I could certainly try to fix these 3 things with various color control sliders but it seems unlikely that I'll REALLY be obtaining what I want. Another approach which has a large number of adherents the art community is to use photoshop curves to carefully correct these problems. I may still give this approach a try, but it does seem a little silly to carefully figure out how to undo the over magenta-ing of the image when I might as well start with NO magenta or cyan and apply those corrections myself. Enter QuadToneRIP (QTR)... It doesn't use the epson drivers to do any coversion of grayscale values to dots. Normally you tell the epson driver things like : In this area I want a gray value of 127/255 (50%). Then the driver decides what sorts of dots it wants to put down. In the QuadToneRIP case it tells the driver : Put a black dot here, here and here. Then a light black dot here and here. The mechanisms for tuning QTR are non-intuitive to say the least. There are also a LOT of ways of going about it and it doesn't help that there's really only ONE easily findable guide on doing this which of course only does it one way. I think I'll write a quick and dirty guide as to how I set QTR up since it was a fair bit different from that one guide, but I'll summarize my position here. 1: Get as close as humanly possible with the basic correction factors. All of them are low order curves and thus very natural looking. 2: The most important things to assess are : 95% black needs to be visibly different from 100%, 5% white needs to be pretty damn light, tonality needs to smoothly go from light to dark (assess that using a SMALL circular gradient : one here) 3: Use as little ink as possible while still getting to the blackest black your printer can make. 4: _IF_ you linearize then make sure that circular gradient still looks smooth. Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2007_02_09_Man_I_hate_photos_of_myself_It has come to my attention (a friend noticed this) that there are no recent photos of me on my site... Not surprising since I'm generally holding the camera. The problem is there ARE some photos of me on this site but they are truly terribly as usual. So lets see if I can find some sorta ok photos of myself to offset the horrible photos... img:DRW_3966,DRW_3836,DRW_2341 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2007_01_29_Haiku_Hm. Forget why, but I was looking at haiku and realized I haven't made one since I was in 4th grade or so. So my first haiku in 2 decades! wintery grey skies nowhere to go in the cold wish sun would return img:DRW_5995 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2006_10_1_Palo_Alto_Dragged_through_the_mud_One of my friends arranged a pretty cool mud wrestling event over on the stanford campus. I wasn't terribly sure I REALLY wanted to participate, but I took a few photos, drank a little beer... And then a few of my friends colluded to separate me from my camera and send me into the muck. img:DRW_5551,DRW_5558,DRW_5560,DRW_5561,DRW_5563,DRW_5566,DRW_5576,DRW_5580, Not too bad! A little cold... a little grainy... scrape the mud from my teeth and we're all good! Except that for the 3rd time my poor phone was immersed. I've fixed this phone so many time now that I'm fairly sure I can build a new one from parts off of ebay if it ever dies a final death... img:DRW_5590,DRW_5591 As you can see above the phone has a few parts missing post mud removal and drying out... Amusingly enough it works just fine missing the entire screen, earpiece camera module. Only in speaker mode though. Eventually I got everything working again with the original parts other than the screen backlights. I'll just have to order a new screen module I guess. Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2006_09_22_Las_Vegas_Somewhat_reluctantly_but_excellent_foodI'm not really a Vegas sorta person since I've never really gotten into gambling. But I do love good food and since a friend of mine was going I went along! The food was excellent, and I think the best food was at Le Atelier de Joel Robuchon in the MGM Grand. Aside from the food I also caught a cirque du soleil production (Ka) and I was quite a bit more impressed than I expected to be. I was quite glad that the omnipresent miasma of cigarette smoke was weaker than usual... Normally it's so pervasive it hurts my head. Unfortunately what WAS still pervasive was the insane perfume the Venetian has been pumping out by the gallon in the casino area presumably to cover up the smoke. Someone needs to tell them that their solution is even worse than the problem. Did a little shopping while I was wandering around and finally replaced my wallet. Pricey, but nothing compared to my friend's expenditures... img:DRW_5495,DRW_5500,DRW_5501,DRW_5511,DRW_5512,DRW_5514,DRW_5515,DRW_5516,DRW_5517,DRW_5518,DRW_5534,DRW_5542 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#Assorted_random_photos_during_random_periods_of_time_img:DRW_2743,DRW_4626,DRW_4627,DRW_4634,DRW_4635,DRW_4711,DRW_4767,DRW_4915,DRW_4916,DRW_4759,DRW_5434,DRW_5413,DRW_5432 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2005_12_11_San_Francisco_Cruising_in_the_bayMy (now) prior company did a cruise for a christmas party. The cruise itself was ok but not great. The scenery was sort of a different view of SF than usual though so that was fun (and a lot easier to take photos of than when one is on an actual sailing ship.) img:DRW_4403,DRW_4417,DRW_4413,DRW_4406,DRW_4447,DRW_4422,DRW_4440, Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2005_11_20_San_Francisco_The_new_De_Young_museumQuite a bit of furor as the new de young museum was completing. It's architecture and general design aesthetic are quite different from everything else in golden gate park. Personally I like it, but then I tend to appreciate things that are aesthetically pleasing more than worry about how they've altered the overall aesthetic of their surroundings. img:DRW_4203,DRW_4206,DRW_4214,DRW_4217 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2005_11_06_San_Francisco_A_concertimg:DRW_4118,DRW_4141,DRW_4142,DRW_4152 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2005_10_23_San_Mateo_Nightimg:DRW_3984,DRW_3982,DRW_4014,DRW_4027 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2005_10_22_Oahu_Hawaii_Wandering_aroundHaven't updated my blog in a long long time, so I thought I'd backfill a little bit starting with this entry. After getting my new camera I went to Hawaii to shoot a friend's wedding. Afterwards I wandered around for a while and took some random photos. img:DRW_3684,DRW_3689,DRW_3693,DRW_3715,DRW_3819 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2005_04_08_Yay_New_camera_I sold my Digital Rebel (300d) to a woman in Santa Cruz about a week ago, so I've been without a camera for an _entire week_! Well ok actually I have somewhere around ten other film based cameras from 4x5 to 35mm, but absolutely no other digital cameras! So why would I do this? How could I go without my primary camera? Well some friends of mine are getting married in the fall and I'll be shooting the wedding... The digital rebel was definitely going to be a little slower than I'd want to chronicle a potentially crazy, hectic wedding. Those memories are really important you know? Thus did I decide to move on up to an EOS 20d. Pretty hefty purchase, and it took a week or so to get here since I only placed the order after I sold the rebel. Yay! Now I have a new toy!! Anyway, since it's the only digital I have right now I have to take pictures of it with itself, and here it is along with a first run of some crummy photos with it. img:DRW_0353,DRW_0340,DRW_0338,DRW_0333,DRW_0332,DRW_0328,DRW_0326,DRW_0311,DRW_0299,DRW_0296,DRW_0263,DRW_0246 Advantages the 20d has over the Digital Rebel (300d) that care about so far? A secondary rotary dial for easier and faster manual exposure. Lightning fast startup time. Extra durable and rigid magnesium body. Better focusing screen and prism for manual focus and composition. 8.2mp (Not sure I care about that one). 1/8000 shutter speed (Could be useful in the crazy bright cali sun). Much more grippy rubber grips (Did you know I don't use a camera strap?). Proper mirror lockup. ETTL2 flash (Finally distance info combined into the flash data! Did the Nikon patent expire?). Ability to turn off info overlay in playback mode. Ability to display histogram by default in record mode image display! (No more blaming the lcd for incorrect exposure). Better auto white-balance (It still stinks relative to the point shoots). Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2005_02_06_Art_or_not_(4 more pieces added 2005.02.17) I've been struggling with my artwork for some time now. A very similar problem to the problem I have with my technical projects. Is it really worth doing? What does this gain me? Is this really something new? Does it need to be new? For example, my intention for this imaging website is to be able to do everything in one place. PhotoShop style processing, Image blogging, Gallery creation, Gallery and Blog sharing, RSS feed creation, RSS feed aggregation, mail order printing, etc. Not only do I want to do everything in one place, but I want it to follow naturally from a simple clear user interface. What has been built so far is basic features in nearly all of those areas. But it is an extremely large scale project to build the necessary full powered UI and extra support to make the site excell in all those areas. So the same problem with my art. I'm a photographer and I'm fairly decent at some aspects of photography. My mind has been kind of stuck in a rut for a while though. Is what I'm doing really art? I'm not bad at it, but I'm mostly just capturing slices of the world that I find aesthetically pleasing. To make my work really worth it I need to move on to other aspects of art such as dealing more properly with the human form. This would be a big committment though! I would need to begin building relationships with models, studios, other artists, galleries, other display venues, etc. I don't exactly shy away from communication, but that's a heck of a lot of communication! Where do I find time for anything else? Oh well, in any case here are some of my photos which have been heavily warped, distorted, shredded and mangled by judicious application of my many filters. They've been chosen because they in many ways resemble that form of art known as 'modern art'. I suppose one would usually create these with a brush. Nevertheless I do feel that these are just as creative as any oil on canvas piece. Why? Well remember I created every single one of my filters from nothing. Code was written to create the filters themselves and then the filters were employed in various patterns, strengths, repetitions and modes to reinterpret the captured light of my photos. So are they art? Are they not? Are they more art than my normal photos? I don't know... What do you think? Oh yeah, when viewing each image don't forget to hit the 'nofilters' link on the left side to see the original photo before my meddling. img:0690,0955,1252_z,0076,9897,9896,9895,9005 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2004_12_25_Mexico_The_Riviera_MayaTook a pretty long winter break and headed off to Mexico to escape this ever so cold California winter. We sure are spoiled here in Cali eh? Anyhow, a large chunk of the eastern coast of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico is known as the Riviera Maya. Across this boundary is scattered ancient Mayan ruins, opulent resort hotels, quaint rustic towns, massive tourism cities, pleasant, relaxing islands, and exceptional coral reefs. We spent a while wandering around, so we saw a bit of almost everything. img:9781,9780,9763,9750,9745,9741,9731,9728,9719,9708,9700,9696,9689,9687,9678,9658,9626,9619,9609,9579,9569,9557,9551 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2004_11_01_Sand_Sun_Waves_and_ShadowPretty clear day on sunday so I headed over to the beach a couple hours before sunset and wandered around at san gregorino beach for a while. This may well be the very first time I've actually paid the $6 entry fee which allows parking for a day at all the northern california state beaches. Usually I end up at a beach where no one is manning the booth and soliciting fees. Well, I got some excellent photos so I suppose it's worth it! With both sun and tide fairly low the texture and flow of the beach sand was brought out in sharp contrast. Additionally, san gregorino is quite a wide beach with a variety of different sand structures. img:9078,9077,9072,9071,9068,9062,9059,9056,9055,9048,9047,9046,9038,9037 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2004_10_31_Nice_colors_Hm.. that RSS entry down there is pretty boring. Some interesting photos I've taken recently to add a little color! Note the obvious use of the recently added feature of being able to save filters. Also note the use of my new Canon 250d achromatic closeup filter (macro lens). Quality is excellent and I've had a chance to compare it directly against my non-acromatic hoya closeup filters. More on that later, but for now notice the absolute lack of red and blue fringing in the corners of the closeup photos. img:9033,9025,9014,8986,8978,8977,8975,8763,8761, Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2004_10_31_RSS_after_all_Stabilize.net can now generate RSS feeds from it's wiki style pages! See the XML link above? It was actually quite a lot more trouble than I expected but it does pretty much everything one would expect yet still fits within the existing system. I'll probably have to refactor it at some point if and when I move away from the freeform wiki style editing I currently use. Ran into a bunch of issues such as : Laying out stabilize.net's deeply nested structure in RSS which allows only one level of nesting - Ended up flattening all levels with at least a little body text into RSS items, and leaving out sections with no body text. Automatically adding appropriate RFC822 date/time to each article when the pages are edited freeform - Ended up maintaining hashes and times of each of the above flattened sections so that changes to sections of the page could be detected independently and assigned times. Linking from RSS items back to a 'real' article - Used those #blah page relative URLs (I have no idea what they're called), I generate them in parallel in the RSS generator and the HTML generator. Why did I bother? I've been seeing those XML links around for quite a while now, and frankly both the desktop installed and web-based RSS aggregators still stink. Yet for some reason a lot of my friends have taken it into their heads to actually use those RSS feeds they get for free from various blogging software. How can I resist outputting my page in a format they'll actually look at? (maybe) Anyway, I suppose after having gone to this much effort maybe I should double my effort and make a decent aggregator website too. :) Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#China_Beijing_Escape_from_the_airportWouldn't seem likely, but we managed to land ourselves in a chinese police station within minutes of picking up our bags from baggage claim. No, we weren't carrying anything nefarious like say nail clippers or some such. We were simply marked by a con-artist upon arrival. How embarassing! Basically : Business casual attired guy comes up to us outside of baggage claim and asks if we need a taxi. He brings us outside to the pick up curb and makes a call from his cellphone. A car drives up, he stuffs our luggage in the trunk, and we get in the car. In passing as we enter the car I note that it doesn't really appear to be a taxi like say the NYC cabs I ride on occasion. It really looks more like a private car, complete with tissue paper dispenser on the rear deck. The lady driving pulls away from the curb rather rapidly and at a pretty extreme angle. Police lights start to flash at the second curb, and a police car cuts her off with lights blazing. After much incomprehensible Chinese is exchanged between cop, driver, and hao (I don't speak mandarin at all) Hao tells me that the faux-taxi driver was in fact scamming us. After a bit of surreal drama involving the driver begging the cop for something or other (probably to be let off) on her hands and knees and with tears streaming we're brought to the airport police station. They write up a statement for us, and Hao signs it. Finally they direct us to the shuttle bus area and we're onto a bus headed to our hotel. img:7935,7936,7937 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#China_Beijing_Ming_TombsWe have three days of greyline tours to bring us in and around beijing and to various sites, so our first stop is the ming tombs. img:7944,7947,7950,7965,7968,7976,7979,7983 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#China_Great_Wall_Sideways_RainNext stop is the great wall at badaling. It begins to rain immediately as soon as we reach the wall and worsens gradually as we ascend. By the time we reach the top (highest point in this area) we're soaked and watching the horizontal sheets of water flicker by with a sense of bemusement. Quite typically for my luck, the rain vanishes as we descend. img:7993,7999,8001,8005,8008,8009 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#China_Beijing_The_scorpions_the_shrimp_and_the_duck_After the great wall we convince a german lady that was climbing the great wall with us to visit a peking duck restaurant recommended by our tour guide. Among other dishes we're entranced by a dish having deep fried scorpions atop shrimp chips surrounding sesame crusted duck. Our companion bravely takes on the scorpions with us and eventually agrees that they do in fact taste a bit like deep fried shrimp. img:8010,8011 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#China_Beijing_Tiananmen_Square_the_Forbidden_City_and_Totalitarianism_101Well I'd like to say that we got to see the tiiananmen square, but we basically didn't. Our new tour guide for the day brought us over there perfectly on schedule, but as we arrive we find legions upon legions of police blocking all access to the square. No one even bothers to ask them why the square is blocked because random government blockades of arbitrary sites are apparently quite frequent. The police and government have never answered any questions before, so why ask now. One would just get 'detained'. Oh well, it is just a square after all, so I don't really care terribly much. The communists can keep their square. So on we go towards the forbidden city in the distance. As we walk along the edge of the square various other silent officers of the communist oppressors begin to raise a flag which is decidedly not the chinese flag. Ah, if I recall my world geography correctly that's the flag of Albania. Perhaps visiting officials from Albania? Perhaps the Albanian president? Oh well, whatever. img:8023,8037 We enter the forbidden city easily enough and after we enter our tour group pauses briefly for a few people to use the facilities. As we get going again what do we see in the distance, but more goose-stepping communist officers. They promptly line up across the main courtyard and block all access to the central pathway through the city. Not a problem! We use the side passages. But at every courtyard where we could access the center of the forbidden city we find yet more of the faceless legions blocking our way. It happens that everything to be seen is in the center and it looks like the government has decided to be particularly arbitrary today and essentially close the entire forbidden city to everyone so as to let the elitist party officials and whatever albanian official or president they're fawning over go through without risk of coming within 500 meters of all those abhorrent commoners and peasants. Oh wait... what was the point of the communist revolution again? I seem to have forgotten... do they know? img:8040,8053 Anyway we essentially saw nothing for the day despite having paid for our tour and our tickets to enter the forbidden city. I would be much less irritated by a closure like this if the government had at least seen fit to announce the closure beforehand so as to allow tours to be scheduled around the times it would be closed. But no. That would be telling the masses too much information. Who knows! They might rise up against their communist masters and dare to look them in the eye! To add insult to injury once we finally reach the end of the side passage we find that we're not even allowed to leave because the communist officials and their 'foreign friends' might eventually decide to leave themselves. Of course no estimate is provided of when such an auspicious event might occur, so tens of thousands of people are stalled in the side passageway as the 'elite' meander along. Being american-born I am by now quite angry, but the vast majority of the people surrounding me seem quite resigned to their lot in life. How do they do that? Did the communists lobotomize them all? So as to make them all good communist slaves? And why on earth is someone from albania taking advantage of this? img:,8082,8097,8100,8102,8109,8110 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#Muddy_rivers_brown_grassimg:7430,7427,7422,7413 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#Roses_iso_3200img:7405,7402,7400,7399,7397 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#Seattleimg:7335,7332,7328,7325,7320,7314 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2004_05_21_Manhattan_New_York_CityA couple weeks ago I needed to travel to the New York area on business. Since I don't really spend much time in the east anymore I decided to take some time off as well and wandered around NYC a bit with Hao. We wandered all over the place, but I only took pictures in a few areas. New York was a great environment to get some good use out of the 8mm peleng fisheye lens I bought a while back. With an ultra wide angle it's possible to capture sweepingwide views and tight spaces. My first pictures (pretty typical for me) were of tasty food. I saw a food network show a while ago about Manhattan and the one place that really stuck in my head was the oyster bar in Grand Central. I actually had no idea there _was_ an oyster bar in Grand Central until I saw that show. Liking oysters the way I do that was the first stop! We had decided to stay just across the hudson in Jersey, so next we rode the subway down to the Path train stop, across the river to check in, and then back again. It happens that the most convenient Path stop for us coming from Jersey city is the World Trade Center stop. We passed through many times during our trip, and I took a number of pictures of the site. Later in the afternoon and evening we slowly wandered through the city examining fairly random buildings and sculptures before returning to our hotel. img:7155,7088,7083,7104,7100,7096 The next day we wandered around quite a bit as well, visiting among other places 'Manon Cafe' which serves Illy espresso, and Leonidas chocolate. Leonidas is probably my favorite chocolate maker. Their chocolates in manhattan stores are flown in from belgium every week to ensure perfect freshness. They're not excessively sweet like most American chocolate makers and are actually quite reasonably priced for a premium chocolate. Most of their collection is pralines, and I'm lucky enough here in San Mateo to have ready access to one of the few sources outside of manhattan (Draegers). After some good espresso in the cafe and a bit of chocolate we wandered around a bit more before heading over to Broadway to see 'Hairspray'. Great Musical! See it! After the show we hurried over to an absolutely delicious Ramen noodle shop named 'Menchaiko' near Broadway just before they closed. Menchaiko was recommended by Hao's Japanese hair stylist, and it didn't disappoint. I had a bowl of delicious thick ramen noodles, and Hao had the chef's choice Oden. As our usual custom when we eat we swapped dishes a couple times during dinner in order to 'maximize the breadth of our experience'. I have to admit that the noodle shop was at least as good as my usual exceptional noodle shop in San Mateo (if not a touch better). After dinner we wandered around some more and ended up in Times Square before heading back to the hotel. Unfortunately I was too busy eating and didn't take pictures of anything except the hairspray sign, and Times Square. img:7134,7129,7125,7122,7118,7116 The Met! img:7235,7231,7227,7224,7221,7220,7213,7193,7187,7163 Central Park! img:7250,7245,7240 Back to JFK img:7288,7278,7276,7274,7273,7261 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2004_04_08_What_images_to_capture_What I really want to capture in my photos is something I think about a lot. Over the years I've had a variety of different leanings, but some themes are more common for me. Landscape - What can I say... I like to capture the beauty I see in the world about me. The vast sweep of nature surrounding me makes me feel like a part of the world even when I'm alone. Capturing those feelings that nature inspires is one of my goals. img:6652,6477,6582 Light and Shadow - Bursts of sun, soft leafy shadows. Everywhere a ray of sun strikes there is an accompanying transition to shadow. The transitions and tonalities are as varied as the world. Seeing the dynamic interplay as the sun drifts across the sky gives me a sense of depth. img:6555,2565,6629, Tactile - Grains of sandy beach, fibers of wind gnarled wood. There's a certain mental tactile feel to close cropped segments of things we can easily imagine touching with our hands. I think my liking of this stuff has a lot to do with the way my mind works. I visualize EVERYTHING mentally from concepts to code, not just things which are in fact visual and tangible. img:6662,6665,6667 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2004_02_16_Yosemite_in_WinterHao and I headed up to Yosemite over the Valentines/President's day weekend for some fun in the snow! This was the first time we had been to Yosemite in the winter and we were surprised to discover that although there was quite a bit of snow in some areas there was almost no snow left on the trees and most of the roads were entirely clear! We arrived on Saturday and spent a little time that afternoon and evening wandering around the yosemite valley before heading out of the park to our motel in mariposa. On Sunday morning we got up long before sunrise and headed over to badger pass in search of some good snowshoeing. There was much more snow around badger pass and we were able to hike and snowshoe through the snow for about 13 miles. We had originally thought that we'd manage to make it to ostrander lake, but apparently we're not quite in good enough shape make it the 21 miles that would have required. By the end of our trek we were both quite sore and tired so we ended up heading back to yosemite village for an extremely filling meal at the Camp Curry buffet. We had intended to return to the park on Monday morning (president's day) but the morning was heavily overcast and the steady rain coming down showed no signs of letting up. Therefore we decided to head back to the bay area and spent a pleasant afternoon and evening at home. View the full gallery! img:6283,6287,6290,6291,6297,6301,6308,6313,6324,6328,6342,6350,6351,6361,6371,6374,6378,6386 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2004_02_08_Close_up_filters_diopters_I picked up an ultra cheap set of tiffen close up filters to fit onto the front of my Canon 24-85 USM lens. Despite Tiffen's high regard in the film industry they really don't got much respect in the still photography world. Generally speaking Hoya is better for the same price, while B+W, and Heliopan produce exceptional quality. Nevertheless Tiffen filters are probably better than most random no-name brands. The filters I got aren't great. They're not coated at all, so will have lower contrast and effective resolution than multicoated filters. They also only cost me $10+$5s/h for a set of +1 +2 and +4 filters. These filters and the equivalents from the other filter makers are single element diopters. The primary issue with a single element diopter is that they are not 'achromatic' they will cause a sort of red and blue bleed around high contrast subjects (say light sources). In reality the bleed is caused by various colors in the light spectrum being in focus at different focus positions. For the final word in proper diopters one has to buy a dual element diopter which corrects for this problem by combining two elements which cancel each others' focus divergence. Common dual element diopters are filters such as the Canon 500D and the Nikon T6. They're awfully expensive though costing over $100 each in the sizes I need. At that price one might as well buy a real macro lens such as the Canon 100mm Macro USM. The results would be better. So why do I want diopters? Well they're a heck of a lot smaller than carrying an additional lens! They're even smaller than carrying an extension tube (another method of achieving macro). Will I be satisfied with the quality? Well I'm really not quite sure yet. Here are a few sample images. View the full gallery! img:6237,6239,6241,6245,6248,6249,6250,6252,6253,6255,6256,6258 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2004_02_07_San_Francisco_Chinese_New_Years_ParadeNPR reported projections of 750,000 people going to San Francisco for the Chinese new years parade! That's the same size as the normal population of the city! I'd never gone to the parade before, but a friend had mentioned it at work on Friday and I figured it was worth at least one try. Supposedly this is the largest Chinese New Years parade outside of China itself. Lots of brightly lit floats and a number of beautifully decorated and lit dragons and lions. I spent most of the time at ISO 1600 on my digital rebel shooting with available light to avoid running out of power too early. Later in the parade I used flash occasionally at ISO 400. I was actually pleasantly surprised at the distance and coverage of the built in flash in these conditions, but it did drink a lot of power. View the full gallery! img:6054,6074,6075,6076,6077,6088,6090,6099,6102,6107,6113,6115,6116,6124,6126,6136,6137,6142,6155,6161,6165,6186,6188,6189,6190,6192,6194,6196,6199,6205,6213,6215,6216,6217,6218,6222,6224 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2004_01_21_Fisheye_lens_8mm_Peleng_on_Digital_Rebel_300d_I have a variety of unusual lenses for my various camera systems, but I'd never really played with an ultra wide angle fisheye before. As luck would have it I noticed one on eBay for a fairly reasonable price and shipped from inside the US. I don't mind buying these ex-soviet republic lenses from the factories in the Ukraine, Belarus, etc. but there's a huge gulf of time between when I order an item and when I receive it whenever I order anything internationally. This particular model of lens has a variety of odd limitations due to its design, but overall is quite a lot cheaper than any other fisheye option even from traditional non-OEM makers. Coverage is 180 degrees 'diagonal', and it's meant to be a circular fisheye. That means the lens should produce a complete circular image on 35mm film or sensor. In reality due to its design the top and bottoms of the circle are cut off on 35mm film. In my case I don't care too much since the 300d sensor is 1.6x smaller than 35mm film anyway. Thus the circular image is cropped on all four sides. Totally black vignetted corners are still there though. Another limitation of the lens is its odd tendency to have massive flare in the regions closer to the edge of the circle. People (myself included) believe this to be primarily due to this silvery looking band inside the lens. Light most likely reflects off of this band and bounces around inside the lens for a while before eventually making its way to the sensor. One might wonder why they don't paint that band black like the rest of the inside of the lens. I personally suspect that the silvery band is not in fact silver, but simply a result of the glue cementing one of the lens elements to the lens body! Thus it's reflective and silvery because it's functioning as a mirror! Anyway, taking the various limitations into account here are some pretty neat images from the lens. View the full gallery! img:5760,5688,5685,5682,5681,5677,5664,5654,5652,5647,5646,5590,5566,5455,5443 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_12_18_Maui_HawaiiOver Christmas, Hao and I traveled to Maui and wandered around all over the island. There are so many things to see and do on Maui that we didn't really quite finish exploring the island. Nevertheless we wandered across many warm sandy beaches, and walked through emerald groves of bamboo. We sat under crystal waterfalls, and drove through incredible verdant forestlands. We hiked down a color streaked volcanic crater and watched thousands of astonishing waves break close to shore. We snorkeled above a beautiful reef and gazed upon many an amazing sunrise or sunset. We even ate incredibly tasty meals in rather pricey restaurants... Yet we still weren't quite done when we left... View the full gallery! img:5210,5193,5189,5175,5169,5167,5156,5149,5124,5115,5102,5101,5091,5062,5060,5046,5041,5037,5017,5006,4997,4994,4980,4979,4962,4958,4956,4933,4929,4922,4914,4889,4878,4872,4858,4849,4846,4823,4807,4796,4795,4764,4744,4722,4673,4670,4665,4663,4652,4651,4633,4625,4616,4610,4608,4604,4599 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_12_16_Canon_Digital_Rebel_EOS_300DWell, I finally bit the bullet and bought a digital SLR. Originally I intended to buy the EOS 10D, but this close to christmas I was having trouble finding one in stock. So I spent quite a bit less money and bought a digital rebel / 300d instead. In the end I spent $794 shipped from the goodguys.com website (including a 2% rebate from ebates.com). I got the camera just in time to play with it this weekend, so I took quite a few pictures from various locations in this area. Here's a selection of some of the more interesting pictures. View the full gallery! img:4540,4537,4530,4528,4520,4514,4511,4508,4505,4503,4495,4491,4484,4483,4477,4472,4471,4469,4464,4452,4344,4343,4312,4311,4309,4308,4303,4301,4298,4291,4254,4240 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_11_13_Gallery_opened_to_other_users_My website is finally open for use by other users! I spent some time implementing user accounts, login sessions via a cookie, and file uploading. Amazing how difficult file uploading is to implement from scratch. I've found a few other people to try out my site during this alpha phase and I'll iron out any problems which come up prior to opening use of the site up to the general public! Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_09_28_California_Pebble_Beach_Bean_HollowOne of my favorite beaches... Beautiful sand formations and a beach all of pebbles... img:3480,3472,3462,3459,3458,3455 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_09_14_Half_Moon_Bay_Waves_Sand_and_RocksI've never been quite sure what shutter speeds to use for various degrees of misty waves, so this overcast day was a great time to experiment and see what effects I could achieve around this rock in the surf. img:3321,3318,3310,3282,3274,3268,3264,3261,3257 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_09_03_San_Mateo_Coyote_Point_Parkimg:3208,3205,3203,3197,3195,3191 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_09_03_San_Mateo_Light_TracesLong exposures can produce some pretty neat effects. These are all taken from a moving car at opportune moments. img:3155,3150,3148,3119,3115,3114 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_08_23_San_Francisco_Ocean_Beach_Pitfireimg:3096,3094,3088,3086,3083,3080,3077,3072,3064,3059,3056,3039 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_08_16_Near_San_Francisco_Sailing_on_a_Cal39img:3017,3016,3014,3010,3009,2992 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_07_12_California_Bicycling_on_Canada_Roadimg:2877,2875,2874,2867,2843,2838 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_07_05_Seattleimg:2784,2783,2776,2773 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_07_05_Seattle_Gas_Works_ParkGas works park seems to be a reclamation of an old industrial site. Easily accessible from UW and all of Seattle... It has beautiful gentle bulge of a hill atop which people love to fly kites... View the full gallery! img:2761,2758,2754,2753,2750,2741 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_07_04_Seattle_Fourth_of_July_Fireworks_Later that night the family launched sparklers and other fireworks as night fell. I took a tremendous number of photos, and those below capture some of the fire, movement and energy of that night. View the full gallery! img:2735,2727,2726,2725,2724,2722,2720,2719,2715,2695,2685,2676 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_07_04_Seattle_Fourth_of_July_on_Puget_SoundA friend of ours invited us to spend the fourth of july with her big extended family as they always spend it in a rustic cabin on the shore. The family was amazing and we really enjoyed hanging out with them! I took lots of pictures of the clouds and waves before the sunset. View the full gallery! img:2672,2671,2667,2665,2662,2660,2658,2651,2648,2645,2641,2638 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#2003_07_03_Seattle_Jazz_AlleyA pretty cool place... View the full gallery! img:2635,2633,2632,2624,2622,2613 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMThttp://stabilize.net/gallery/xilvar/index.html#More_journal_entries_link:index2 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:43:15 GMT