July 2010 Archives

The Equation of why Seal Beach is really Mayberry-by-the-Seal & how next Thursday's Seal Beach Sun's Crime Log will be particularly good & juicy:

3 or 4 raccoons bigger than your average cocker spaniel treed in a eucalyptus in the alley making unholy screams while either fighting or mating or both

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2 drunk young men walking down the Electric Ave and the 16th St alleys tipping over trashcans all the while trying to get home to one of their grandfather's houses but turning into the neighbor's house instead

+

7-8 cop cars full of SBPD trying to determine if drunk teenagers or if crazy raccoons are the problem (who knew that Seal Beach even had 7-8 cop cars!)

+

1 really big firetruck

+

1 paramedics van

+

a bunch of neighbors and their dogs all out in nightgowns/attire watching the whole spectacle

=

A rockin' Saturday Night in Mayberry by the Sea.

********

The young man actually related to the homeowner on 16th ended up in the cop car and his drunk buddy was left to languish on the Greenbelt. The Raccoons have stopped screaming. Maybe they were agitated by the cop car bright beams being shone into Their Tree.

Who knows why the firetruck and paramedic van even showed up. We will rely on Charles M. Kelley to give us the straight scoop from the Police Log in Thursday's Sun.

Today on Twitter in the name of research for tomorrow's blog post, I asked iPhone and Android owners what their favorite camera or photo apps are? Now I will ask you all...

Do you have a favorite camera or photo app for your iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia or other camera phone? If so, please tell me what it is and why you like it in the comments.

If you don't have any special apps but like the native camera & photo apps that come with the camera, say so.

Yes, I know that my Facebook Connect is not working for comments, I am sorry but I have been unable to troubleshoot why. Will work on it later in the week.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N86.

Sun 07.25.10 - The biggest excitement in our section of Seal Beach on Sunday afternoon was the exploding Greenbelt water pipe after an unintentional Bocce Ball strike. The water spray was impressive and the amount of folks who came out to watch it shows you really how slow of an afternoon it was at Mayberry by the Sea.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nikon D70s at Dog Beach on Thursday afternoon.

Sun 07.25.10 - I have a ton of things to do tonight before the workday starts tomorrow, but none of it is going to get done as I am crazy tired from the last 5 days of dog sitting Oberon and all of the family activities of the last 5 days with my sister Allison's birthday & my cousin Kristin's baby shower plus all of the other attendant family to dos. Emails are not getting sent, the blog posts in my head are staying there, the photos to be downloaded are still on the cameras. Etc. etc. etc.

The big excitement of the weekend was the fact that last evening Oberon, aged 12 weeks, go so excited that his poor bladder decided to empty itself on my bed. Yes, a huge puddle of puppy pee discovered only after I sat down to read. Most of last night was taken up with laundry of my clothes & bedding.

After I started the first load of my comforter & sheets, I was laying on my living room floor trying to compose myself with the front door open when I heard my mom tell Oberon to drink water out of a bowl and not from the algae infested garden hose area.

Oberon then escaped my Mom's grip, and bounded in my apartment only to come plant his whole wet, algae encrusted muzzle on my mouth, as I gasped in astonishment, he then put his wet paw in my mouth and then proceeded to climb on top of me to reach Scruffy. I screamed, my mom caught him, I started laughing in reflexive hysterical waves all the while I was crying from being completely exhausted and overwhelmed.

Good thing for Listerine mouthwash and the fact that I drove Oberon back up to Culver City today at noon to be returned to his family. Oberon is a beautiful and amazing dog, but I was not really mentally prepared to dog sit such a young and active labrador retriever puppy with so much family & work obligations as well as having Scruffy around.

One of Oberon's people texted me this morning when we were trying to arrange the drop off, "I hope the wee beastie has not been too naughty."

No, just a wee naughty.

Now I am off to bed a couple of hours early. 'Night y'all.

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nikon D70s

Sat 07.24.10 - At Traci's sister Kristin's baby shower. More photos when I am less tired.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nikon D70s.

Fri 07.23.10 - This afternoon, my Mom and I took Oberon the Charcoal Lab Puppy and Scruffy McDoglet to Dog Beach in Huntington Beach so that Oberon could have his first experience at the beach and with the ocean.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N86.

07.20.10 - June gloom, aka the Marine Inversion Layer, returned on Sunday morning after a week of strong sun and heat. Today my favorite local sycamore tree looked particularly green and restful in the late afternoon diffused light due to the cloud cover.

To follow up on last week's post, 2,045 Days with a Camera Phone, I would like to write a bit more on why I have loved camera phone photography and mobile blogging so much in the last 5.5 years and that can be summed up in one word: constraints.

The old adage in design, photography, and many other arts is that it is not unlimited creative freedom that sparks the best in a designer or artist, but it is limits and constraints that the artist or designer has to push at, be challenged by, and get around that create great art and design or at least cause the artist in question to grow in their craft.

It has been very easy the last 8-10 years to hone one's craft with a DSLR camera almost to the point where too many photographers get obsessed with megapixels, lenses, and processing in Photoshop than the actual act of taking the photo becomes secondary or farther down the line.

By choosing to shoot more than 90% of my photos of the last half decade with a small camera phone and then choosing to send them directly from the phone to the internet with no stops at Photoshop, means that I purposefully chose to constrain myself to a small camera that in many cases had less megapixels and less of a lens & digital sensor system than the contemporary point & shoots, not even considering what the comparable time period of DSLRs could do.

But the magic of setting the self-imposed discipline of the constraints of a camera phone plus no or very little post-phone processing seriously, meant that I had to really hone my eye, my composition, my observation of the scene, and then just shoot and shoot and shoot. I have shot a lot of bad photos in the last 5+ years, but I have also shot a lot of good to wonderful photos with my camera phones.

And it is the discipline of the constraints of a camera phone that make the great photos all the more sweeter than when I shoot a good photo with a Nikon film SLR or DSLR.

All of that being said, I have some to quite a bit of trepidation about the next generation of camera phones, particularly the Nokia N8, as it really is better than the point & shoots out on the market right now. The photos from its big 12 megapixel digital sensor & Zeiss lens are extraordinarily good.

After 5.5 years of pushing, working around, thinking, changing the angle, doing whatever I could to capture the vision in my head with a camera phone, to have a camera phone that will be not just good enough, but great... ...that is why I said in the last article that I started to think seriously about film rangefinders or purchasing a high end Nikon. My thoughts were - if the Nokia N8 is so spectacular then I won't have much in the way of constraints, then whole rubric for why I have shot with camera phones since 2004 will be over.

Yes, as I said in 2,045 Days with a Camera Phone, the Nokia N8 is the arrival of the maturity of camera phones as a photographing instrument and the pioneering era is mostly over, particularly if one was shooting with camera phones from the perspective of constraints or enjoying the toy quality of some camera phone's imagery.

But I am not going to run away. Why? Because I trust Damian. I trust Mr. Dinning's vision that he has had the last 6 years to push the technology of camera phones to meet that of the highest quality levels. He and I had several interesting conversations over meals at the big adventure in May that gave me an insight to his desire to make the Nokia Nseries line of cameras cross from good to great. Damian and his team have not failed me in the Nokia N86 or any other Nseries camera phones that I have taken photos with since 2004.

So, I will let go of my imposed constraints and walk into a new era and see how good camera phones can really get for the photographer who wants a camera on one at all times, with the N8 I will just have to find a few new challenges to set for myself.

Here's to the future.

Recently, I blogged about Shabbat and wanting/needing to take a day completely off once a week. While I have not been completely successful at taking a full unplugged day off once a week, I have been moderately successful at not working every day of every week like I have done for the last 11 months.

For the last month on one of the weekend days, I have taken at least 1/2 - 2/3rds of one day completely unplugged and have done something wonderfully analogue like reading a paper book. And on the last two weekends, I have made a point that if I couldn't stay off my computer the whole day, then the other part of the rest day, I would use for a fun personal project rather than working on client work.

Trying to break a year plus long habit of working every single day on something for some client and/or trying to keep up on some work related learning or articles is hard. But the payoff of being relaxed and not always stressed out is worth the time & effort.

So, while a week or two weeks of actual real live vacation (or even 4-6 like some of my Nordic friends) is not in the cards this summer, I can take one day every week. Or try to at any rate.

;o)

On Dec. 9, 2004, I drove to Beverly Hills to pick up my first camera phone, a Nokia 7610 with a 1 megapixel camera. I was ecstatic.

In 2003, I first heard of mobile phone / camera phone photography and mobile blogging from Adam Greenfield & Mie Kennedy's blogs, as well as Joi Ito mentioning it at SXSW. I really really really wanted to start taking photos with my phone and upload the photos directly from my phone to the internet.

The last 2,045 days of mobile phone photography have been wonderful. I don't use the word wonderful lightly here. By wonderful, I mean a whole new world of wonder. A world of exploration, of pushing the boundaries of and of purposefully constricting the boundaries of photography.

In 2003-2004, most of my photographer friends were moving from their film SLRs to DSLRs and thought I was crazy for showing up at concerts and shows with a crazy little camera phone rather than my Nikon or my Sony Mavica digital camera. But as they watched me upload the photos directly from the phone to Flickr or Barflies.net or to this blog while I was still at the show, then their sense of wonder was activated.

In the nearly six years of taking photos and mobile blogging with a Nokia camera phone much has changed. In 2004, my Nokia 7610 was only 1 megapixel, but it was connected to the internet. I had a browser, email, and most importantly, I had Lifeblog - all the better to mobile blog with.

Today, I have a Nokia N86 8 megapixel camera phone which takes fantastic photos. It has a browser, email, GPS, and many more features, but unfortunately no Lifeblog so mobile blogging is more than a wee bit more difficult than it was 2004-2008. But I love the photos that the N86 takes, so I won't complain about the lack of direct phone to blog with no stops at 3rd party server mobile apps.

Having a camera on my phone in my hand, in my pocket, or in my purse has opened up many creative doors and worlds in my life the last 6 years - I wrote my masters degree thesis on how creative people use their mobile phones, I did a whole mobile geo-photo master's project by photo & video'ing while traveling around Ireland with a Nokia N80 and my brother's Garmin GPS (sorry, no GPS in phones in 2006). I have gotten to travel to India, Austria, Helsinki, and San Francisco as well as many other places in the name of mobile phone photography.

Lately, as I think about the upcoming Nokia N8, a 12 megapixel, HD video monster of a camera phone, I have been reflecting about how the camera phone has arrived. With the Nokia 5, 8 & 12 megapixel camera phones, the Samsungs & Sonys, and the just released iPhone 4, camera phones are now good enough that one does not need to carry a separate point & shoot and in many cases they can be better in crowds or public places than a bulky DSLR. And the camera phone in hand is always better than the DSLR that you left locked up at home or in the car.

The last few months, part of me has wondered if it is time to creatively move on, to purchase a high end Nikon DSLR, like the D700, with a few prime lenses or start exploring medium & large format film photography with a used Mamiya or pick up a rangefinder camera and explore that world.

As I researched other photography avenues, I kept asking myself if it is time to say goodbye to the now past frontiers of the camera phone photography world and move on? Is it time to say goodbye to the frustrations of sub-standard mobile blogging software and the further frustrations of trying to convince various industry folks that good software matters? Is it time to move away entirely and take back up with my paint brush, of which no software is necessary?

Then I met a Nokia N8 in the wild. What a beauty. I can't say more due to an NDA and complete respect for the owner of said device... but... Oh my, what a camera. Color, clarity, oh my.

Rather than get sappy at this point or descend into a drooling heap of gadget lust, I will refer y'all to the man behind the N8's camera, the man with 215 more days in camera phone world than I and more days in the Nikon world - Mr. Damian Dinning - who has penned a very thoughtful and thorough series of articles on camera phones, photography and the upcoming Nokia N8 for the Nokia Conversations blog:

Nokia N8 Camera - 2,260 days in the making Part 1/2

Nokia N8 Camera - 2,260 days in the making Part 2/2

Nokia N8 photography - all the FAQs

And yes, come release date in a couple of months, I will be purchasing a Nokia N8 and then tracking down a QT developer to help me flesh out the code of my mobile app idea. Here's to 2,045 more days of camera phone photography. ;o)

Follow up Post: Camera Phone Photography: Celebrating Constraints

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N86. Click for original sized image.

Wed 07.14.10 - This morning, as I woke up, I noticed a scarab beetle making out with my carpet, right on the edge of the area that I steam cleaned yesterday. The beetle was about 2cm (nearly 1 inch long) and when it had its head in the carpet, its butt was in the air. Very silly little creature.

Me being me, meant that I had to get up, walk past the beetle without disturbing it, grab my Nokia N86 8MP camera phone to take a photo or two. I put the camera settings on "Close Up" and zoomed in a bit to take two photos of which the one above was the one with the most clarity - click on the photo to see the original large size for details.

Oh what clarity the N86 captured! The hairs on the head of a 2cm beetle.

Of course the beetle got camera shy and lowered its butt by the time I got the camera to it, but the Nokia out performed my wishes. Not even my borrowed Nikon D70s could have taken the above photo.

Bravo!

Tues 07.13.10 - I woke up this morning to a terrible stench in my apartment and Belle, my brother's dog, sitting right next to me on the bed licking her nether regions. Smelly Belly. I didn't want to open my eyes, I didn't want to get up, or to even investigate the smell. But I did.

I found that Belle had an early morning Poopy Butt Blowout that covered at least 1/4 of the living room. Horrifying.

I borrowed the Bissell ProCleaner 2x carpet steamer from my landlord after returning Poopy McPooperbutt the Carpet Defacer to my brother's house. Then I spent about 3 hours this afternoon in a zen like trance slowly, ever so slowly, running the carpet cleaner/steamer over small patches of the living room and then re-steaming. It was far better than coding and much more satisfying.

In the end, my furniture sat outside gathering sunshine* with the exception of the bookcases and my drawing table, my carpet came out cleaner than when I moved in, and I got lots of exercise.

Did I mention that the carpet is now cleaner than when I moved in?

* p.s. The Sun, it is shining. The clouds, they have been vanquished.

Photo taken this afternoon by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N86.

p.s. The sun decided to show its face to us before 2pm today, old Sol decided to wake up nice and early by breaking through the clouds in the 8:30am time zone for the first time in over a month. Glory glory.

Sun 07.11.10 - Ever since I wrote my master's thesis on how Creative Professionals used their Mobile Phones, I remain very curious how folks are using their phones. The tech and mobile blogs and blogosphere very much reward bloggers for writing on either the newest/latest/greatest or on the most detailed, esoteric atomic bits about the latest and greatest, all the while most of the folks around us seem to be muddling along with the mobile or cell phone that they bought from their wireless carrier for cheap.

When folks in my daily life find out that I love to take photos with my mobile phone and then moblog them to this blog, I frequently find the person I am talking to puts themselves down, discounts their own technology skills and knowledge, then confesses that they don't know how to get the photos they take with their phone off the phone.

A year ago, I decided that it would be fun to start a video blog that would, magazine style, ask a wide variety of folks the same five questions about their phones, plus a few sub-questions are asked in each interview, plus whatever other bits folks want to talk about their mobile phones:

1) Who are you, what phone do you have, where did you get it, and do you have a data plan?
2) What do you like about your mobile / cell phone?
3) What have you taught yourself to do on your mobile?
4) What don't you like about your mobile?
5) Either What do you wish you knew how to do on your mobile or what do you wish your phone did differently?

This idea has evolved and as of this evening, I formally announce the launch of Mobilefor.Us: Cell Phones for the Rest of Us.

Mobilefor.Us will be an online space that will seek to inform, share, and disseminate knowledge and confidence in using one's mobile phone regardless if you have the free phone from your carrier with no data plan or if you have the latest & greatest mobile with unlimited data or somewhere in between.

Please come join us at Mobilefor.Us.

Photos by Ms. Jen taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N86.

Sat 07.10.10 - Okay, so Old Sol did attempt to shine through the clouds for about 3.5 minutes during the 2pm hour this afternoon. It was a very short lived attempt at parting the heavy post-June Gloom maritime cloud layer that looked dark enough to rain not shine.

The rain came down north of here LA and Ventura. Oh, July, where art thou?

Photos taken by Ms. Jen today with her Nokia N86 camera phone.

Tues 07.06.10 - Two sides to a coin, possible paradoxes, and sisters in arms: fragile | tough, hope | courage, brittle | tears, anger | yearning.

To my two friends who are going through much travail this week, I walk with you in mourning, tears, and anger. I give you a big hug across the country. I wish I could be there.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N86 this misty morning about 10:30am looking out from Seal Beach to Esther the Oil Platform.

Mon. 07.05.10 - Rarely does the Southern California's June Gloom last into July. Some years the marine layer of clouds will stubbornly persist in the mornings until the Fourth of July, but most years the Fourth of July dawns sunny and hot, not low, gray, looming clouds with a windy chill as yesterday's weather.

In the course of my living memory, there have only been two summers where the clouds stayed past noon and/or the clouds stayed all summer long, depressing many and causing tourists* to snark about "Sunny California".

The summer of 1983 had clouds that lasted well into July and it did not get good and sunny at the beaches until August. The winter of 1982/1983 was one of our biggest El Nino years in history and the following year was a La Nina year. The summer clouds created by the chillier than normal ocean & hot land foretold of the La Nina to come.

The summer of 1991 had clouds as far inland as Buena Park all summer long, while it was odd to be socked in with clouds 20 miles inland from the ocean in August, that was the year that Mt. Pinatubo blew it's top and created the 2nd biggest eruption in the 20th Century. But the early nineties were also a strong La Nina and California drought era.

In a year of drought, it can be a blessing to the parched hillsides to have clouds and a bit of mist over a hot, drying sun, even if it causes S.A.D. and cranky beach goers.

Scientists announced last month that this past year's El Nino had abated and that the Intertropical Convergence Zone in the Pacific has lower than normal temperatures and they declared 2010 to be a La Nina year. Or shall we also account Eyjafjallajökull's ashes to partially account for this year's extended June Gloom season in SoCal?

My bet to account for the longer than usual June Gloom this year is largely with La Nina with a possible sprinkling of volcano ashes. Regardless, this morning and yesterday morning had low lying clouds bordering on fog and the temperatures were in the 60s F / late teens C and not the 80s F.

Yesterday the sun finally burned the clouds off at 12:43pm and they did not return until after 5pm. Today we had a sprinkling rain most of the morning, the clouds didn't burn off until after 2pm and by 4:30pm the clouds had rolled back in.

Clouds most of the day with a fine misty morning? Who imported in a nice western Irish summer to Los Angeles?

;o)

* Dear tourists, please note that SoCal is at her *TRUE* glory from Jan 15 - March 15th. When your town is knee deep in with snow & cold, SoCal gets a storm or two that blows in, blows out, and leaves crystal clear, sunny days with snowy mountains. Our summer does not really start until July most years, and does not really heat up until August & September. Check Weather.com and book your holidays accordingly. kthnxbai.

It is 12:41pm here in Seal Beach, California, socked in with the dreaded 'June Gloom', aka the Marine Inversion Layer, and it is chilly for a mid-summer day at 66F/18C and there is a bit of wind. The Sun has made no effort to come out for a visit. Hopefully, old Sol will burn the clouds soon.

In the meantime, here a few nice links for your Fourth of July reading enjoyement...

How America got its name: The suprising story of an obscure scholar, an adventurer's letter, and a pun

When Ringmann read this news, he was thrilled. As a good classicist, he knew that the poet Virgil had prophesied the existence of a vast southern land across the ocean to the west, destined to be ruled by Rome. And he drew what he felt was the obvious conclusion: Vespucci had reached this legendary place. He had discovered the fourth part of the world. At last, Europe's Christians, the heirs of ancient Rome, could begin their long-prophesied imperial expansion to the west.

Nick Patrick on Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

Reading David McCullough's 1776, I found myself wondering: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? If so, when did American accents diverge from British accents?
The answer surprised me.
I'd always assumed that Americans used to have British accents, and that American accents diverged after the Revolutionary War, while British accents remained more or less the same.
Americans in 1776 did have British accents in that American accents and British accents hadn't yet diverged. That's not too surprising.
What is surprising, though, is that those accents were much closer to today's American accents than to today's British accents. While both have changed over time, it's actually British accents that have changed much more drastically since then.

The Tyburn Angling Society:

Nonetheless, in addition to a regular circuit of dinners, drinks, and fishing outings, the Tyburn Angling Society is committed to resurfacing the ancient stream -- still theirs to fish, they argue, by a never-repealed royal decree. "You could have people fishing by the river in the middle of Mayfair," Jim Bowdidge told the Evening Standard, "We would get the Wild Trout Trust to get the habitat right for small wild brown trout. Properly done, we could have salmon."

John Scalzi on Status Check, Re: USA:

The 234th birthday of the United States of America is a fine time to check in with one's self about how one feels about being a citizen of this country, so today's question: Am I proud to be an American?
I am. The United States, like so many things, is better as an idealized concept than it is as an actual entity, on account that the nation is made up of people, and while most people mean well, in a day-to-day sense they struggle with their ideals, which are often so inconvenient to their desires. And so, like a married family-values politician with a Craigslist personal ad, or a vegan Febreezing the apartment so no one will catch the smell of bacon, America often finds itself failing its own expectations for itself and others.

Last but not least, the quote of the day from Kevin Lawver:

Happy "Crap, We Lost Some Colonies" Day, Brits!

Update! 12:54pm on 07.04.10 - The Sun is doing his job & is burning through the clouds, Seal Beach now has some sun, some clouds, and is still chilly. Wahoo.

Happy Fourth of July!

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N86.

Sat 07.03.10 - I have broken a two and a half plus year daily blogging streak in the last four days by not posting. Mea culpa.

The first two days of my blogging sabbatical were taken up with finishing a lovely long term client website re-design and the second two days were taken up with a migraine and recovery thereof that included a lot of sleep & drinking of water.

Here are some photos from the last four days worth of dog walks around Seal Beach.

Happy Fourth of July weekend to you and yours.