Category: Menlo Park

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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!

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Books Libraries Menlo Park Selling on Amazon.com

What Am I Selling on Amazon.com? And Why?

Every once in a while, I seem to get into a flurry of selling items on Amazon.com.

Typically, the flurry is a result of my taking a look around my home office and deciding that I’ve got stuff piled up that I really don’t need anymore. I like to try to move the stuff out of my hands and into better hands!

Last I checked, about a third of Amazon’s sales are actually fulfilled by third-party sellers – in other words, by folks like me. By the way, I’ve also got a whole store (!) on Amazon for my Scott’s Kitchen food/recipes blog – but that store is just reselling new items from Amazon – not the used items I sell in my storefront.

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Menlo Park Photography Photography - Canon 5D Mark II

Birdhouse #8 in Sharon Park

I went exploring yesterday with my new Canon EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR and Gitzo Monopod in-hand.

It was a pretty hazy day (we’ve had over a week of unusually warm weather and the pollutants are starting to be pretty obvious!) – so not great distant shots. But, I found some great light in the late afternoon in Sharon Park – here’s one example: Birdhouse #8.

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Menlo Park Photography Photography - Canon 5D Mark II

Riding the Rails with the Canon EOS 5D Mark II in Menlo Park

I had to walk over to Staples today from our office to pickup some office supplies and I took the new Canon 5D Mark II along – capturing this shot below as I crossed the Caltrain tracks in Menlo Park.

Shot down low looking south towards Palo Alto – in large JPEG on the 5D Mark II, lens at 24mm, shot at f/8 in P mode – with post-processing (mostly vignette) done in Lightroom 2.2.

Caltrain Menlo Park - Looking SouthCaltrain – Menlo Park – Looking South to Palo Alto

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Blogs/Weblogs Health Living Menlo Park

The Morning Constitutional Walk

As I mentioned over the holidays, Chris Gulker, Lily and I have been walking a 1.5 mile loop (Chris G’mapped it) around west Menlo Park every Tuesday and Thursday morning – before we sit down for a good cup of Peet’s coffee and discuss the solutions to the world’s problems. It’s sort of like The Capital Gang minus 1. Too bad more folks don’t agree with our solutions!

Seriously, though, it does seem like we always do learn something in the process!

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More HDR Photography – Allied Arts Guild in Menlo Park

It was another bright sunny January early afternoon today – following a clear, crisp night last night with temps early this morning in the mid-30’s and frost on the deck!

Getting Outside

Allied Arts Guild, Menlo Park, CA

HDR – Fully Processed

After (seemingly!) playing endlessly with Twitter and FriendFeed this morning, I decided to leave the computer behind and to head outdoors to do some more mid-day, bright sun, high dynamic range (HDR) photography. For me, HDR is perfect for mid-day, high contrast sun/shadow photography – just the opposite of that special early morning / early evening soft light that photographers otherwise learn to love.

This time, I wanted to stay close to home and minimize the travel time. Stanford University is always an option – it’s literally just around the corner and is where I started my HDR exploits in early September 2008. There’s a world of photo opportunities still waiting for me there at Stanford. But, been there, done that! I was looking for new adventures today!

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

Walking with Chris

At this time of year, even minor milestones seem especially relevant.

For the last six months or so when work schedules cooperate, Chris Gulker and I (and Lily too!) have been doing a twice a week, early morning, 1.5 mile walk (Tuesday and Thursday mornings) around Menlo Park – and really enjoying ourselves!

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