Category: Menlo Park

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Books Food and Drink iPhone 4 Living Menlo Park Norway Photography

Friday Night Jazz at Cafe Borrone

We joined Chris and Linda Gulker last night for a wonderful Friday evening adventure – first some early evening munchies at Cafe Borrone, then the William Gibson event at Keplers (he was reading from his new book Zero History), and, finally, back to Borrone’s listening to Clint Baker’s Cafe Borrone AllStars perform some great jazz. Truly a wonderful evening!

Chris was able to meet Gibson – one of his favorite authors. Here’s a shot of the two of them chatting just before the book signing – and another one taken by Linda!

The photo below I took with my iPhone 4 while just sitting at our outside table at Cafe Borrone – I used the TiltShift Gen application on the iPhone to generate the particular look/blur. It looks a bit “other worldly” – perhaps a scene out of a William Gibson novel?

Friday night at Cafe Borrone by Scott Loftesness

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Menlo Park Photography Photography - Canon PowerShot S95

Canon PowerShot S95 – Some More Shots

I went out walking with Lily early this morning at Sharon Park – and took my new Canon PowerShot S95 along to see what I could capture using the various Scene modes (SCN on the mode dial) built into the camera.

On my S90, I almost never shot using these modes – thinking that I wanted to have better control over the camera. On the S90, most of my shooting has been in Aperture priority (both for HDR shots and for those great bokeh shots at f/2.0) or in Program AE (P on the mode dial).

I’ve posted my initial Canon S95 photos in this set on Flickr. In the description, I’ve noted the particular Scene mode that the photo was shot in. Note that these Sharon Park photos have NOT have any additional processing. They were imported into Lightroom 3.2 and uploaded directly to Flickr.

After Sharon Park, we went to the Menlo Park Farmers Market for veggies and stuff – that’s where the two flower photos were taken – including the one below.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to get out and try some HDR on this new jewel of a camera. Perhaps head over to Stanford mid-morning and see what we can get. Anyone want to join me for a Stanford Labor Day Photowalk? Let me know.

Beautiful Flowers

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Menlo Park Weblogs

InMenlo.com – Our Hyperlocal Blog about Menlo Park, California

For the last several months, we’ve been incubating InMenlo.com – a “hyperlocal” blog about Menlo Park, California. My partners in this endeavor are Linda and Chris Gulker – active bloggers in their own right.

We started InMenlo.com on a whim, after a chat about hyperlocal news blogs over coffee last summer. Since we started, Linda and Chris have really managed the near daily cadence of blog posts for InMenlo. It’s been great fun to watch it grow – and to learn more about the people and places of Menlo Park in the process!

Today, the Almanac – the local newspaper for Menlo Park, Atherton, Portola Valley and Woodside – ran a story by Sean Howell titled “Menlo Park blog captures local life, people, vignettes” about what we’ve been doing with InMenlo – noting that “InMenlo sketches the community, and the people in it.” Indeed – that’s what we try to do. Explore what’s interesting and fun about the people and the community that is Menlo Park.

If you have suggestions about things we should cover, please email them along to tips@inmenlo.com!

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Blogs/Weblogs Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Health Lily Living Menlo Park

Some Musings on 2009

Looking back at my late December 2008 blog posts, I made a wish about simple and beautiful HDR photography becoming super simple – unfortunately, it hasn’t yet. I’ll restate what I said last year: “But it still feels like we’re living in a 1995 world when it comes to HDR photography.”

On the other hand, on this day last year I wrote about Walking with Chris – Chris Gulker to be precise. In mid-2008, Chris, Lily and I began a twice weekly 1.5 mile walking regimen every Tuesday and Thursday morning when our mutual schedules permitted.

We had a great time continuing our twice-weekly walks throughout 2009 – solving the world’s primary technology and political problems along the way – and very much look forward to resuming them next week – on the first Tuesday in 2010!

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iPhone 3G Menlo Park Photography

A Very Pretty Afternoon in Sharon Park

See my post “A Last 2009 Sunday in Sharon Park” over on InMenlo.com, a “hyperlocal” blog about Menlo Park that we started about six months ago with a couple of very good friends.

Today was a mixed day weather wise – some drizzle and some spectacular sun. I took Lily for a late afternoon walk at Sharon Park and caught the low sun angle reflecting on the pond and fountain – taken with my iPhone 3GS using the BestCamera app.

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Menlo Park Photography Walking

Wirelessly Shooting

Chris and I had fun on our morning walk this morning. Here’s a shot of him taking a picture down low of one of our favorite Menlo ponds! Click here to see the photo he took!

Chris Gulker - Menlo Park Sunrise

I do agree that Linda’s photo taken on the Stanford Golf Course is the best of the bunch!

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Art and Artists Menlo Park Photography

Allied Arts

IMG_1543.jpg

Chris Gulker, Lily and I walked over to the Allied Arts Guild yesterday. Two events were being held – an “Ansel Adams Day” showing off some old and early photos taken of Allied Arts by Ansel and a photography exhibit by Alan McGee of his Rodin photos.

We got in a nice 2.5+ mile plus walk over and back – and some great shots of the grounds. See Chris’ write up here: Walk, Shoot, Think.

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Food and Drink Menlo Park

A Lovely Sunday Evening at Madera

Rosewood Sand Hill-19Apr2009.jpg

Last night, we had dinner along with our friends and Linda Gulker at the Madera restaurant at the Rosewood Sand Hill hotel. It was an unusually warm day Sunday – with a bright blue sky off to the west, cooling down a bit as the sun went down. The photo above – taken after dinner – shows the hotel lobby from the main entrance – looking northwest.

Just a stone’s throw from our home (we drove of course – very hot day!), this new hotel and restaurant – a big construction project over the last year plus – turned out beautifully.

Dinner was great – we got there a bit early and enjoyed a drink in the bar which has a seamless open wall to the deck outside. The photo below (taken flat on the smooth finish of the bar – with my iPhone) shows the view to the west of the Santa Cruz mountains.

Rosewood Sand Hill - Bar View - 19Apr2009.JPG
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Menlo Park

Rosewood Sand Hill – Support Your Local Hotel & Restaurant!

The Rosewood Sand Hill and accompanying Madera restaurant are soon to open (next week) about a mile away from us. I’m plugging their opening – hoping it helps them become wildly successful! Our local Menlo Park tax revenues need a kick!

Seriously, it’s a beautiful property, a great Silicon Valley location, etc. We’ll report back with a restaurant review on Madera in a few weeks once we’ve tried it.

For more articles about the Rosewood Sand Hill, see these articles on SearchMe.

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Business Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Cooking HDR Photography Lily Living Menlo Park Photography

Grey Saturday Musings

Taking it easy on this grey, overcast and sorta chilly Saturday in Menlo Park. Grocery run this morning (Trader Joe’s, Draeger’s), a nice 0.6 mile walk with Lily, catching up with the morning papers, and now enjoying the aroma of the short ribs simmering on the stove! More about those short ribs coming soon over on Scott’s Kitchen!

Chris Gulker‘s mentioned Anne Knudsen to me on our morning walks. She’s a great Silicon Valley photographer friend of Chris – see her latest photo of him!

Don Neff forwarded a link to this article on Gizmodo: How To: Create Stunningly Realistic High Dynamic Range Photographs. See some of my earlier posts about shooting HDR on my Canon 40D. It’s been way too long – I need to carve out some time for another HDR shoot day sometime soon!

AIG sucks again. This story in tomorrow’s New York Times says they’ve got to pay out $100 MM in bonuses “to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.” A chapter 11 filing would have forced a cram down on any “contractually obligated” bonuses. Who’s in charge of this circus, anyway?

Late tonight, the WSJ comes out with another story about AIG bonuses – it’s actually worse than it appears! This crap has to stop!