Black and White in Bernal

After playing around with black and white for a bit, and also with a tilt-shift lens, it was only a matter of time before I married the two. I just uploaded a set taken last month on a walk up Bernal Hill. It's a very photogenic few miles up and around and down the hill:

Mandolin Slicer

for all your mandolin-slicing needs:

Beetle Massager

for massaging beetles:

Monkey Peeler

for peeling monkeys:

Tilting and Shifting

Another thing I've been playing around with (as well as black and white) is a tilt-shift lens I have on loan. Such a joyous thing! Here are some recent shots with it:

Black and white

I've been playing around with black and white recently. Here's one of my favorites:

The Best-Laid Plans

I had these grand plans for my sabbatical. I imagined a reading odyssey, where I would chew voraciously through my book backlog. Imagine how much you could read if you had no job, right?

It didn't quite work out that way. Back in late October I listed 24 unread books waiting for my attention. In early November I'd read one but three more had been added to the pile. Turns out that this is my downfall: getting books faster than I can read them. And OK, yes the weather was much nicer during my sabbatical than I expected, meaning less time inside reading than I was imagining, but really the problem boils down to the fact that I tend to read the books I most recently acquired, and I tend to read books slower than I acquire them. I'm operating a LIFO queue with a mean arrival rate greater than the mean depletion rate.

So here I am, three months later, and how many of the 24 have I read? Actually, just the one. Here's what I've actually got through:

• Nonplussed!; fun and timeless exploration into Gardner-esque mathematical oddities. Very enjoyable.
• Group Theory in the Bedroom; more mathematical fun. Includes an interesting chapter on algorithmic determination of a continental divide
• Mindset; recommended by my boss, an OK read but not really my cup of tea
• Inside Steve's Brain; not any less interesting for the fact that it's basically a compendium of anecdotes
• The Goal; as previously asserted: despite the moronic and desperately tacky marketing and cover, actually a good book full of allegorically packaged business insights
• In a Father's Place; this is the second Tilghman bought for me by my mother. I liked both.
• The Black Swan; very disappointing. Others have called this book "superficial and self-aggrandizing". I would add "pompous".
• The Road Home; a present from my mother, herself an author, and very good. Sue has a gift for choosing fiction I enjoy. She's much better at it than I am.
• Marketing That Works; would probably be a great high-school textbook. Nuff said.
• The Light Of Day; another of my mother's picks, and another good one. Achingly slow, rich, touching, tantalizing and suspenseful.
• Grimble; if you know Grimble then you know. If not, I can't explain.
• Gang Leader for a Day; an autobiography in disguise. Interesting enough, but not what I'd hoped for.

This young lady I met the other day on Shotwell Street. It was her birthday.

Thanks, and have fun running the country

Listening to This American Life in the car the other day, I was enchanted by a story about a project to have kids across the country write letters greeting Barack Obama to office and giving him advice on how he should spend his time. The project was started round the corner from where I live, at 826 Valencia, and the collection has just been published as a book, Thanks, and Have Fun Running the Country.

On the radio they had a couple of the original authors (the kids) read their letters. I was utterly charmed. Here's one:

Dear Barack Obama, one thing you could fix is the economy. Something happened to me. I went out for lunch at Starbucks and I wanted to buy a cup of whipped cream. And normally it's 43¢ but now it's 74¢. The price raised 31¢ for no reason! So you should probably try to change things like that from happening. You should keep an eye out for things like that. I wish you good luck.

PS. I love whipped cream.

Love,

Alexis Feliciano, age 9, Brooklyn.

Here's another, which wasn't on the show but is in the book:

Dear President Obama, I have a great idea for you: you should set up a special phone, a special place just for kids to call the president if they find things that are dangerous and can affect people, like someone smoking. This would be a special place for kids to talk to Barack Obama and let him know what's going on.

Dhamaril Nunez, age 9, Boston.

Great, no? I think I'll buy the book. You should listen to the show. Alexis reads at 17 minutes, 20 seconds; worth hearing.

Here's an old one of Matt, taken in July 2000. He hasn't changed much.

Long Weekend

This weekend was a long weekend in the US, so we got to do twice as much as usual. Not only did I get a chance to take these shots of a day in Healdsburg (the place we got married in October 2007):

but I also got to take these shots of my walk through the Mission night-time that Sunday evening:

Grimble

For Christmas, Wendy bought me an original late-60s copy of Grimble. I read Grimble and Grimble at Christmas as a kid and I've been loving reacquainting myself with the stories.

The station was at the end of the street and Mr Wheeler was in charge of it. There were two little shops on the station, one of them selling newspapers, and the other things to eat — like old sausage rolls and sandwiches that were wrapped in bits of paper as if no one expected anyone to unwrap them. There was also a machine with a sign on it saying Platform tickets 2d. and the 2d. had been crossed out and 3d. put in its place.

Grimble wondered why it was now more expensive to stand on a platform, which is all you are allowed to do with a platform ticket, and Mr Wheeler had explained that it was probably because you now had to wait longer for trains.

I went on a walk yesterday with Wendy and Ros. Took these shots:

Feeling Lucky?

Well? Are you?

Bernal Sunset

I was walking on Bernal Hill today during a lovely sunset. I took a few photos:

New Year in Tahoe

I'm up in South Lake Tahoe with Wendy, Matt, Mary, Craig and Hannah to celebrate the New Year. These are some of my very favorite people in the world; it's great to be here.

What's more, I've been using the time productively on the laptop: not only have I firmed up my schedule for my first week back at work; (sabbatical ends this weekend) but I've finally put together and published a set of my Playa Del Carmen photos from 2006:

I also took a photo of Craig today which I liked:

Walking on water

It was three years ago that I first set foot on a frozen lake. A couple of days ago, up in Fort Collins with Wendy's family, I gave it another go.

lifesaving.org gives a handy ready-reference for what's considered safe on various thicknesses of ice:

• 3" or less STAY OFF
• 4" ice fishing, walking, cross country skiing
• 5" one snowmobile or ATV
• 8"–12" one car or small pickup truck
• 12"–15" one medium truck (pickup or van)

According to one knowledgeable local expert I met on my walk, the ice on Terry Lake was about 8", so good enough for a car. Underfoot, though, the creaks and deep resonating twangs made my lake-walk a pretty hair-raising experience, even if in theory completely safe.

From a vantage point off the ice, I took this one in the sunset:

Christmas Day in the Mission

Here it is:

She Said, He Said

She said:

Hello Isaac,

We recently received your King Bloom Lavender duvet cover and I am afraid we will not be able to replace the duvet cover for you.

Amenity is happy to accept any item that has not been used or washed and if the discrepancy had been found before use, we would certainly be able to help.

Upon review, the duvet cover appears to have been heavily used and washed. Given these circumstances it is company policy that the return cannot be accepted as a manufacturing flaw.

We are truly sorry for any disappointment this may cause. We are due to return your original purchase to you and as a good will gesture, we would like to offer you a choice of any amenity pillow.

Please let me know which pillow you would like to receive and we will make sure they arrive as soon as possible.

Regards,

Helen

He said:

Hi Helen, thanks for getting back to me.

I can assure you that the duvet cover has never been used and has been washed precisely once before it was returned to you---the defect became apparent when spreading the item out after washing, which is the first thing we did when we unpacked the thing. Never at any point has the duvet cover even been on a duvet, although it did sit folded on the floor for a couple of weeks while waiting to be returned to you.

To put it very mildly, I feel wholeheartedly let down by your response. The Amenity Home web site dares to mention "nature's flawless elegance" while our duvet cover, however elegant, was flawed at the moment we bought it. Your proposed good will gesture falls substantially short of Amenity Home's actual moral obligations here, and I will certainly not be salving Amenity's corporate conscience by taking you up on your offer of a compensatory pillow.

In fact you can keep the duvet cover too---please do not waste any resources returning to me a faulty product for which I have no desire. If ever I require a defective duvet cover with a hole in it I'm sure there is a wealth of cheap and cheerful options available to me at my local goodwill store. I was, though, rather hoping that spending significantly more (I paid $378.67, including tax, for this item) might get me a defect-free product from a company prepared to do the right thing and stand behind the quality of their products. I guess not.

I know this isn't your fault personally, Helen, but "disappointment" doesn't come even nearly close to capturing my mood. I am outraged. Please do me the favor of passing on my utter disgust to those in charge at Amenity. The mind boggles at how a "company policy" like this---generating such bad will in a first-time Amenity customer---could possibly make business sense. You can rest assured that for my own part I will be getting maximum value from the $380 cost of my education about Amenity Home by passing on my learnings to friends and colleagues.

I wish you, Helen, a Merry Christmas. Amenity Home, not so much.

Isaac

After that he uploaded a new old photo:

Amenity Home Suckage

So heads-up, people. Beware Amenity Home, who don't replace faulty products.

Short story: bought an Amenity duvet cover. Got it home, washed it, and found a small hole in it when spreading it out after washing. Sent it back to Amenity, who say that their policy is not to replace items which have been washed.

Huh?

This thing cost $380 including tax. Pardon me for thinking that for such a price one might expect better than this. Amenity FAIL.

I took this one way back in February 2000. The artist's impression turned out pretty well, but failed to anticipate the Gherkin:

Veggie Bake

Here's a great one for cold winter days. I present to you, Veggie Bake:

1 small green pepper
1 small red pepper
1 medium onion
12oz fresh mushrooms
3 celery sticks
8oz wholewheat breadcrumbs, divided 6/2
6oz mature cheddar, divided 4/2
1 large egg
3 tablespoons oil
salt and pepper

Roughly chop the peppers, the onion and the mushrooms while heating the oil in a large saucepan or frying pan. When the oil is hot, add the chopped peppers and onion to the pan, stirring gently. After five minutes add the mushrooms and celery, and continue to cook with the heat fairly low until all the vegetables are tender. In all it should take ten minutes or so.

Remove the pan form the heat and stir in 6oz of the breadcrumbs and 4oz of the cheese. Beat the egg with some salt and pepper and add that to the pan as well, stirring and mixing everything together thoroughly. Spoon the mixture into a pre-greased baking dish and level the surface with the back of a spoon. Mix the remaining cheese and breadcrumbs together and sprinkle this mixture over the top.

Place the dish in an oven pre-heated to 375ºF and bake for 25 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Serve hot or cold.

The is what San Francisco looks like on a cold winter day:

Fall and Winter

Talking of seasons, here's one from Terry Lake in fall

and in winter

Stop! Hammertime

Wendy met MC Hammer tonight. How cool is that?

A Sudden Chill

At the end of the calendar year, San Francisco seems to get cold out of nowhere and all of a sudden. Like, really cold... and really suddenly. It's strange: last week I was cycling in shorts and a t-shirt, and this week I'm urgently ordering a cord of wood for heating fuel during the winter. A couple of days ago I wore three layers out in the evening for the first time in months. Wendy brought handwarmers and wished for a scarf.

What's going on?

Turns out Wendy and I were brought up in symmetric climates, where the temperature varies in evenly spaced peaks and troughs. By way of illustration: here, courtesy of weather.com, are the monthly high and low temperatures in Denver, where Wendy spent her youth:

and here are monthly highs and lows in Sheffield, where I grew up:

You can see the similarities. Sure, Denver is more extreme on the high side as well as the low side, but the two exhibit basically the same pattern: it heats up for six months, it cools down for six months. Notice how this means that the warmest and the coldest months are a good while apart.

Then there's San Francisco.

It starts cold in January and gets warmer and warmer and warmer until about October and then boom---the temperature plummets. The second-warmest month is October and the second-coldest month is December!

Of course, it's all relative. But it's nice to know that there's at least some scientific basis to the perception that winter comes out of nowhere in San Francisco. Brrr.

In other news, the printer is back today and on top form. I'm going hardcopy crazy.

It shouldn't be this difficult

Back at the beginning of the year I bought a new printer. Because I'm a prima donna wannabe-photographer I bought a fancy one, a Canon PIXMA Pro9000:

It's a really good printer. A great printer, in fact.

Or rather it was a great printer until about March, when it pretty much just stopped working and started instead exhibiting "Error 5110". I'd printed probably about 50 sheets by then, and although those were superb prints I still didn't quite feel like I'd really had my money's worth.

"Error 5110" is a known issue with this printer but because the store I'd bought it from had gone out of business and I didn't have the receipt any more, I knew getting the thing working again would involve endless call center telephony and serious persuasiveness. I put it off again and again, the thing sitting there gathering dust, completely inoperable, for nine months. And it stared at me during each one of those nine months, and whispered its price tag.

Enter sabbatical.

And you know what? I was on the phone for 90 minutes today (1-800-OK-CANON). And I did have to lug a 30lb printer to my local Canon service center. But tomorrow, touch wood, I'll have a working Pro9000 again and I'm pretty happy about that.

An hour and a half on the phone, though! On a weekday, during business hours. Who has time for this kind of stuff?

Riddle

Wendy teaches 2nd grade. A student at her school brought the following joke to class the other day:

What has legs but can't walk; has eyes but can't see; and has wings but can't fly?

The answer: a dead bird.

I've uploaded quite a few new photos recently. Here's one from a while back round the corner from our house:

New York Day-After-Thanksgiving

The morning after Thanksgiving we went for a walk up Fifth and back down Madison, watching the crazy-people crazy-shopping in the Black Friday sales (yes, this is the retail occasion on which people get trampled to death). We competed to see who could spot the shopper carrying the most bags (Wendy won: a dude with five bulging carriers; I expected to see more but perhaps it's the recession). After brunch in Chelsea we headed to the airport and back home to San Francisco.

We got upgraded on the way back; a nice end to the trip.

I took this on, well, waddyaknow, Fifth Ave:

New York Thanksgiving

The idea was that going to New York at Thanksgiving would be an exciting and exotic getaway, giving us a chance to sample freezing temperatures at a festive time of year as well as the romance of a big city adventure with just the two of us. Part of the thrill was that we booked the flight just a few days in advance (we got a great deal on United) and we booked a hotel at which we'd never before stayed. I guess that to a middle-aged middle-class highly routinized couple like us, such a trip feels very daring.

The Bryant Park Hotel was great: chilled out, stylish, conveniently located, affordable (thanks Expedia), and with generously sized rooms given all those attributes. I've stayed at The Hudson the last couple of times I've been in New York and the equivalent room there is literally half the size: 150 square feet versus 300 square feet, which includes the bathroom. For reference, a queen size bed alone with a two-foot space around it is 96 square feet. The Hudson is tight in more than one way (and no, there isn't that two-foot space around the bed there).

The Bryant Park Hotel claims that its Cellar Bar is some kind of city hotspot, but even experiencing it only on the night before Thanksgiving one has to conclude that it's reaching a little bit. Jolly fun cocktails and interestingly dressed waitresses, for sure, but probably not where you'd bump into anyone who knew anything about where to be in Manhattan. (Anecdotally, I know nothing about where to be in Manhattan and I was there). Online sentiment, though a little bitchier, would seem broadly to agree.

Waking up Thursday, though, we could from our hotel room window see ice-skaters in Bryant Park---and how deliciously idyllic is that for a cold Thanksgiving morning? We got moving, checked out the parade (a mere two blocks away, thanks to the conveniently located hotel), then walked down to SoHo for brunch. We ended up at somewhere we'd been before, which on the one hand provided some welcome familiarity but on the other hand didn't quite provide enough familiarity for Wendy, who after decades of celebrating Thanksgiving at home with family was understandably struggling a little bit. We went for Thanksgiving dinner that night nonetheless, and found a very nice spot to hang out in West Midtown. We talked about family all night, in honor of the occasion.

The below is not New York. It was taken in Tiburon a couple of weeks ago.