In the lion's eye

Panthera leo I
Originally uploaded by jeffwc00

I've been on vacation the past week. On one of those days, December 14, I decided to use my (fairly recent) member ship in the San Diego Zoological Society to roam about the San Diego Zoo Safari Park (formerly known as the Wild Animal Park.)

The highlight of the visit was the lion enclosure. I could see only the male, who was out in the middle of the area, reclining in the shade. He looked relaxed, but was also very much alert to what was happening around him, constantly looking around.

I was the only person at the enclosure for the entire time I took photos of him, so I was not surprised that more than once he looked directly at me. (We had unimpeded views of each other.) I was very happy I captured one of those moments in this photo.

License Plate Watch 48

Seen today on a Prius: LVE4NOW

Fall

Fall
Originally uploaded by jeffwc00

San Diego has had two days of rain sweeping through the area in a series of bands, with the rain generally falling at moderate intensity. But it came often enough to mostly keep me indoors.

So, when what seemed to be the last of it having passed through on Sunday afternoon, I wanted to get out for a good walk, and take my point-and-shoot camera in case I came upon anything interesting. I drove to one of my favorite areas for doing that, the relatively skinny portion of Balboa Park that is immediately west of State Route 163.

On a sunny Sunday finding parking there can be a challenge, but today there was no difficulty parking at all.

During the walk I came upon an absolute riot of changed sweetgum leaves laying on grass below several large sweetgum trees. But there was one curious matter: The trees appeared to be full of still green leaves, so I couldn't imagine what seemed to be a major amount of changed leaves on the ground had come from.

But I could only imagine before the rain the trees had been a mix of still green and changed leaves, and the rain had been enough to knock down all of the changed leaves.

So, I took several photos of the scene, and decided this was the best of them.

Not gone

No, I haven't given up on this blog. Must admit I really can't say why I haven't been writing anything here, because I have had time.

Anyway, I'm going to try to write more here, especially about my photography.

Doing that jury thing

Yesterday I received in my home mail a jury service summons for California state court.

And today I received a questionnaire from Federal court to determine my eligibility for Federal jury service.

Man, oh man.

Now, regarding state court jury service and me: I don't recall if I have written in this blog about it before, but I get summons for it an amazing rate. And I think I've realized why. I'm aware the state courts get names of persons to summon by using both DMV driver license records and voter registration records. My name is slightly different on those records: for the DMV, my middle name is spelled out; not so on my voter registration.

And I have never been put on a state court jury. Every time I'm sent to a court for the voir dire procedure, I'm always dismissed by one side or the other, usually pretty quickly. I can't imagine never being on a state court jury is a factor in how often I get summons, but who knows.

However - I have been on one Federal court jury. This was in the mid-1980s. I was an alternate through the length of the trial, so did not participate in deliberations.

So: regarding the current situation. Please note I have no objection to jury service whatsoever, but, I don't care for the possibility of being summoned to both courts in the same time frame! Looking at the questionnaire from the Federal court, I see nothing that would disqualify me.

But, a valid excuse for getting out of state jury service is that one was a potential juror for at least one day within the past 12 months. I am recalling such may be the case here, but having no memory for dates, will have to check with my employer's Payroll department on Monday.

Comic-Con 2010: Anticipation and Being

Image via Wikipedia

I usually take a full week of vacation around this time every July. (Last year was an exception for reasons I won't get into.)

This is in anticipation of attending San Diego Comic-Con, usually for multiple days. This year I had every intention of buying a 4-day membership. So, in early March I went to the web site for Comic-Con, and proceeded to learn all 4-day memberships for this year had sold out in November of last year, which truly blew my mind.

So, I decided to go for a 1-day membership, for July 22 (tomorrow), and find other ways to fill my time during the week of vacation.

One good innovation Comic-Con is doing this year is offering early distribution of membership badges on July 21at a place away from the San Diego Convention Center (the site of Comic-Con) for those with 4-day memberships and 1-day memberships for July 22. I'm back from going to that. It happened at the Town and Country hotel's convention facility. The announcement of this that was emailed said this distribution would be available starting at 3 PM. I decided to get there about 2 PM and wait in line after parking at Fashion Valley mall, which has free parking and is next door to the Town and Country hotel.

As I was pulling into Fashion Valley property, I saw people walking away from the Town and Country wearing Comic-Con badges. Huh. There must have been a major line of people waiting for the distribution to have been opened early!

So, tomorrow morning it will be very nice to go straight to Comic-Con programming areas without having to get in line first for the badge.

One complication tomorrow is that in the evening I have a meeting of a class I am currently taking at UCSD Extension. Can't afford to miss that, so I'll probably leave Comic-Con somewhat earlier than I would have otherwise.

Impatience

Earlier today I drove to UCSD to do some wandering for photo opportunities. I like going there for that purpose occasionally because it has many variations of architecture and other sources of inspiration.

As I was walking to get a view of the front of one building, a car pulled up to the curb by me. The passenger rolled down her window and asked me if I knew the way to Thurgood Marshall College (which is one of UCSD's several colleges.)

Now, as a frequent student at UCSD Extension, I am aware Thurgood Marshall College is basically a neighbor of Extension's on-campus complex. (Extension also has some off-campus facilities.) So, I had a pretty good idea how to describe getting there from the point we were at, as it wasn't too far a distance. I said "Well", turned myself towards the direction the car needed to go, and before I could say another word the car drove away. Excuse me? Hello?

I could only presume they were too impatient to wait for someone who didn't instantly spit out exact directions. I threw up my hands in disbelief, shook my head, and moved along.

Reception networking

My last post here was about one of my prints being accepted for the photography exhibit at this year's San Diego County Fair.

I have been aware that the organizers of the exhibit hold an artist's reception the evening before the Fair opens each year. (The Fair always starts on a Friday.) I have not gone to these receptions before because I have an ongoing commitment each Thursday evening.

But, this June, that commitment has been shifted to Wednesday evenings (it will go back to Thursdays in July.) So, I decided to go to this year's reception.

And it occurred to me last Saturday this will likely be a big opportunity for photography related networking. I decided to order business cards to point people to my photography site, and, obviously make it a rush delivery. Networking is not something that comes naturally for me, so I'm hoping having the cards to hand out will be a help. The site listed delivery for the order will be tomorrow, Wednesday. Which had better be that case, because the fee for the rush order nearly doubled what I would have been charged if I had gone with regular delivery.

One print in the Fair

I had previously posted (here) regarding submitting five prints to be considered for inclusion in the photography exhibit at this year's San Diego County Fair.

Earlier this week the results of what prints had been accepted for inclusion were released. One of my prints was selected; one of this photo.

Due to a few factors, I am feeling satisfied by this:

• This is an extremely competitive process; every year only (roughly) one-third of all submitted prints are selected for inclusion. And this year about 4000 prints from about 980 photographers were submitted.
• The judges change every year, so one can never make assumptions about what will or will not be found worthy of inclusion.

Next step is awaiting the list of prints that were awarded prizes (including honorable mentions). This is due out morning of the day the Fair opens, June 11.

Regarding one of my photos and Google searches

Evergreen pear tree (pyrus kawakamii) blooming
Originally uploaded by jeffwc00

One of the benefits of purchasing a Pro account on Flickr (as I have) is that good statistics are provided. For instance, it shows what referrers result in viewings of specific photos.

So, my statistics show that several days per week I get at least one viewing of this photo via a Google search of any combination of words from the title of the photo ("Evergreen pear tree (pyrus kawakamii) blooming").

This has resulted in it being (so far) overwhelmingly my most viewed photo on Flickr.

Which is great, but I'm curious: Why the frequent searches on Google for those words?

Any thoughts?

Never Again

Yesterday, as I was leaving Balboa Park after a session of taking photos (results of which are here and here) I decided to take what should be the quickest route to northbound highway 163 and the start of the drive home.

I should have known better.

That route starts at this ramp off of Park Boulevard. The problem is the ramp almost immediately becomes one of five lanes that in a very short stretch funnel into one lane which in turn takes you onto northbound 163. An illustration and discussion of the problem is at this link.

As the son of a civil engineer who spent his entire professional career with Caltrans, I find myself somewhat more forgiving of the planning that went into this design than the writer of the blog linked to above, but only somewhat. I can easily imagine at the time this lane design was created, nobody was thinking that traffic volume would increase to the degree seen these days, thus creating the mess now seen there very frequently.

So, yesterday afternoon for some reason I thought the traffic into the the lane funnel wouldn't be bad, and made the turn into it. I couldn't have been more wrong; it was among the worst I've seen to date. (Sigh)

I made the decision there and then to never make that turn again if I can possibly help it. The alternative is to continue on Park Blvd. a relatively short and normally very quick distance and turn right onto this street; taking the next right puts one on a lane that is usually entirely clear and is a clean shot onto northbound 163.

Never seen that before

Image by Billy V via Flickr

While driving home from work today, I was passed by something I do not recall ever seeing in person before: a motorcycle with a sidecar, complete with somebody in the sidecar.

That was neat, but it occurs to me that personally I'd be hesitant about riding a sidecar. The thought of being that low to the ground at freeway speeds does not appeal, even if I were wearing a helmet. Of course I've never found the idea of driving a motorcycle attractive either.

(Photo included just as an example of motorcycle with sidecar.)

The PDF from hell

A little earlier this evening I had the most bizarre computer experience I've had in years.

What with my chronic allergies & hay fever, I'm thinking about giving Breathe Right strips a try.

I went to their web site, and after poking around a few pages, went to print this PDF, which includes a template one is supposed to cut out to use for determining the proper size Breathe Right strip for oneself.

After displaying the PDF, I turned on my printer, then selected the print option in Adobe Reader. That is when the weirdness started:

• The printer did nothing.
• I went to cancel the print job. It would not leave the queue.
• The computer's air circulation fan came on; this normally happens when the CPU is under strain.
• Did a restart of the computer, then before doing anything else tried printing a small text file.
• The printer still would do nothing.
• I opened up the print queue, and the PDF was still there, and still would not cancel out of the queue.
• The air circulation fan again came on in the computer's case.
• Displayed the task manager, selected the Performance tab, and it showed the CPU was running at 100% of capacity. This while no applications were running. HUH?
• Did a complete power down of the system.
• Powered up again and tried printing the small text file again. It printed just fine, and the print queue now showed no sign of the PDF.

So, I have no idea if the PDF or something else was causing the problems, but relieved I seem to have corrected the situation.

Getting rosy

Discovered this morning that the Rose Garden in Balboa Park is mostly blooming nicely, so stopped to take photos, and ended up with three I liked, all macros, samples of which below:







While taking the photos, I was amused by the names of the varieties of roses being grown.

In addition to these three, I also saw name plates for the following varieties:

• Burgundy Iceberg
• Lovestruck
• Teeny Bopper
• Rock 'n' Roll
• About Face
• and, the Julia Child rose

Took photos of all of these, but was not happy with the results. There were more roses in the garden, however my camera started showing a low battery warning, so that was that.

License Plate Watch 47

Seen last week on a Prius: "4LES OIL"

Indeed.

Satisfaction

Referencing this previous post:

I did send in a complaint about the service I wrote about in that post via Pick Up Stix's web site. A few days later I had an email contact from the Regional Manager who handles the location I had the bad service at.

He was very apologetic and promising to correct the problems. After a couple email exchanges in that vein, he offered to send me some vouchers for free food at local Pick Up Stix locations. I certainly don't normally decline free food, so I said OK.

In today's mail I received coupons for a couple free combo meals.

So, I'm happy to put the whole matter behind me.

Bad side effects from sunblock: Who knew?

I think I have discovered sunblock can apparently have bad side effects for me. Or at least one brand of sunblock can apparently have bad side effects for me.

The story: Earlier this month while checking supplies I discovered a spray can of Neutrogena sunblock that I had set aside soon after purchasing it, for reasons I do not recall. I looked for an expiration date and saw that was set for April 2010. Not much time to use an almost full container!

So, I started using it each day on my (shaved) bald head. (Instead of a spray can of Bullfrog brand  sunblock I had been using and which has a later expiration date.) And soon after that I started developing some unusual symptoms:

• Intermittent major stiffness and aches in my legs, and...
• random incidents of minor mental fuzziness (more such incidents than normal!)

I had scheduled a physical exam for late this month, so I was planning on mentioning these symptoms to my doctor at that time. But, it occurred to me early this week that they started at about the same time I began using the Neutrogena sunblock. So, to see if there actually was a correlation the next morning I went back to using the Bullfrog sunblock for the daily application to my head.

And pretty much right away, the symptoms went away. Huh.

I'll try to remember to tell my doctor all this when I see him next week.

Flower finding on Fiesta Island

Lampranthus spectabilis flowers
Originally uploaded by jeffwc00

Earlier today I decided to make my first visit ever to Fiesta Island. (Which technically isn't an island.) It is part of San Diego's Mission Bay Park.

I went thinking there was a possibility of finding interesting flowers to photograph, even though I don't recall ever reading anything about flowers on Fiesta Island.

Access to the areas of Fiesta Island is via a one-way single land road that runs around the outer edge, between the beaches and the interior of the island. I cruised around the entire circumference once to verify there were in fact flowers growing within site of the road, then stopped a few times to walk around and take photos of them.

Among the flowers were a few patches of very bright red ones. When I approached the first of those patches, I found they were a variety of ice plant flower. And here they are.

What I'll be submitting to the S.D. County Fair photography exhibit

I'm taking a few vacation days this week, so decided today was the day to start process of getting the prints I will be submitting for inclusion in this year's San Diego County Fair photography exhibition.

I had ended up deciding to submit five photos. They are, in no particular order (as shown on Flickr):

• Stargazer in lily pond
• Keep back
• Waxflowers
• Spanish Village fountain
• Sunflower and bee

I've been happy the last two years with the quality of prints I've had made at a local lab, Chrome Digital, for submission to the Fair's photography exhibit, especially because each of those years a print has been selected for inclusion. (A different photo each of those years.) Also been happy with the lab's placement of the prints on the display boards that are required for each submission.

Having put the files on a CD during the weekend, this morning I drove to Chrome Digital with it and ordered the prints. Five prints and attaching them to five display boards makes for a fairly hefty fee, but I'm feeling ambitious, so decided to go ahead with all five.

This afternoon I got a call from the person at Chrome who had started processing the files. He said the resolution I had set up for each of the photos was plenty to allow for making larger prints than what I had ordered, at no extra charge, so I told him to go ahead and do so. I definitely appreciated that! And he thought they might be ready to pick up tomorrow, which would be early. All very nice!

License Plate Watch 46

Seen today on a Toyota Sequoia: "NUKL BAL"

Short for "nuclear balance"?

Pick Up Stix fail

Image via Wikipedia

I have been an enthusiastic customer of Pick Up Stix for years; I really enjoy their food.

That said, today I had my worst experience ever at a Pick Up Stix.

I normally don't order fried rice there, but they have a dish called House Fried Rice that I occasionally order (I figure having it at widely spaced intervals isn't too bad.) It's a meal sized serving of fried rice that includes beef, chicken, and shrimp.

Today's House Fried Rice was just bad. The beef was so severely overcooked it was hard; didn't try eating it. The shrimp were visibly burned but edible. And I think the rice itself was also overcooked.

An additional note. The assistant manager took my order. When I went to get the needed cash, he held out a hand palm up and just kept it there while I was obviously digging in a pocket for change. Maybe I'm being oversensitive, but that did not give me a good impression.

I chickened out and did not complain then and there. Instead I came home, pulled up the corporate web site, and sent in a complaint through the contact page.

I'll definitely assume today's bad House Fried Rice was an isolated incident and continue going to Pick Up Stix, but may skip today's location for a while.

License plate watch 45

Seen today on a Mercedes-Benz: "(heart)MY81MB"

At least exterior-wise, it was a very nice looking car.

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Chile quake

News of the magnitude 8.8 earthquake in south-central Chile is a shock to me because I visited the country several years ago.

My primary destination there was Iquique, a city in the north of the country, to visit family members who were living there at the time. Due to this my only experience of Santiago was the international airport there. (At least at that time, all international flights from outside of the region ended at that airport; persons going to other cities in the country then transferred to domestic flights. Likewise all international flights to destinations outside of the region originated at that airport.) I recall it being a very nice facility, and have seen in news reports it is now closed to all operations because of the quake.

While I was seeing my family members in Iquique, there was a moderate earthquake. The epicenter was well outside the city, so, as I recall, there was no damage in the city. But it occurred at night and was long enough to wake me up and still feel a sharp jolt.

Obviously this new quake will most likely have caused huge damages and much will be learned as the day develops. I just tried bringing up both the English and Spanish versions of the Santiago airport's web site; the browser failed to find either, obviously indicating telecommunications problems.

On the Trail

San Diego's Balboa Park has a rather unique trail. It is called the Bridle Trail, and the unique thing about it is that for almost all of it's one-mile length it is within sight of a very busy highway, State Route 163.

Getting to the Bridle Trail is not the easiest task as the three ways to it that I know of require quite steep downhill climbs to get to the level the highway and the trail are at (and of course steep climbs to get back to one's transportation.) So, the Trail is not heavily used, and I myself have gone to it only very sporadically, though it is a very nice walk.

I decided to use it last year for a photography class project, taking environmental portraits. (Or, as in my case, environmental self-portraits. The comments on those photos are from the class instructor and myself.)

Yesterday, January 30, 2010, was a very nice day, which helped me make up my mind to take my camera back to the Bridle Trail and look for new (outside of a class) photos.

Reviewing what I took, I've come with a couple photos so far that I'm happy with:

This view of a small part of the trail, emphasizing the trees lining both sides:

...and this view of another small section of the trail, but also illustrating just how closely State Route 163 (the southbound lanes) runs alongside most of the Trail.



(Clicking either photo will take you to larger versions on Flickr.)

That's an "ouch" moment

As an avid photographer (and aspiring seller of prints of my photos), I am a big fan of the web comic What the Duck for it's very funny and frequently very pointed observations about photographers and photography.

When I saw today's edition of the comic, my first thought was "Ouch!" Check it out.

Lantanas flowers among the rain

Purple lantana flowers (Lantana montevidensis)
Originally uploaded by jeffwc00

I had in December posted to Flickr a photo of a grouping of red, orange, and yellow Lantana flowers (http://flic.kr/p/7n9Pid).

As flowers of lantana plants can come in many colors, I've been hoping to find such examples to also photograph.

So: One of the routes I take to get the parking lot at my workplace passes a patch of what appeared to be lantana flowers. Earlier this month I walked to this patch of landscaping and found that is indeed what they are. I guessed they were somewhat immature, as they were not as cleanly structured as the flowers in the earlier photo.

I took some photos at the time, but wasn't happy with any of the results.

Earlier this week I reminded myself to try again. That took some time to do. The San Diego area (and much of California) has been experiencing this week extremely wild weather, one strong storm after another rolling in from offshore. Finally on Friday during my lunch break we were having a decent break between showers, so I took that opportunity to walk back to the patch of lantana plants and get more photos of the flowers.

Seen here is the best result, some purple flowers. There were also a number of white flowers; I'm still fiddling with a photo of those in post production, trying to get a result I'll be happy with.

In the meantime, I hope you like this example of purple lantana flowers.

High surf

High surf - Ocean Beach
Originally uploaded by jeffwc00

I drove to San Diego's Ocean Beach neighborhood on January 15, planning to walk on the pier that is there and look for photographic opportunities.

Upon arrival I found access to the pier had been closed because of exceptionally high (for San Diego) surf that was occurring. As it was a very cloudy and gray day, I realized this was likely a preferable situation photography-wise, and spent several minutes getting exposures of the surf breaking against the pier's pilings.

More photos from that visit coming today, and, probably, tomorrow; most likely including a couple triptychs.

Again with the coral tree flowers

Coral tree flower at Lake Murray
Originally uploaded by jeffwc00

I seem to be developing an unintended specialty in my landscape photography of photos of coral tree flowers. (Such as this new one.)

I'm on vacation this week, so today I decided to drive out to the City of San Diego's Lake Murray, a water reservoir and recreational area.

My first thought for the visit was to get in a good exercise walk while enjoying the sights of the lake, but I also brought along my point-and-shoot camera in case I came upon anything that attracted me for photo purposes. (Might post more of them later in the week.)

So, I found one coral tree, and it was blooming flowers like crazy in only one section of it's branches. I have no clue why flowers would be growing in that manner, but there they were, so I took several exposures

Also took several shots of the lake with intent to generate a panorama. (By using Hugin, but the result was unsatisfactory, due to my letting the camera drift up and down too much.)

Clouds through trees

Clouds through trees
Originally uploaded by jeffwc00

To start this post, I need to explain some logistics. The door to my condominium is reached by an open staircase. (The door for the condo of one my neighbors shares the staircase access.)

I've been noting for some time when I step outside and look straight ahead before descending the stairs, I see an interesting combination of two trees: a sweetgum, and directly on the other side of a neighboring building in the condo complex, a bottlebrush.

Seeing this, it has been occurring to me this could make an interesting photo, but I wasn't noticing good combinations of circumstances for that purpose until yesterday (July 12, 2010) when I saw some interesting cloud formations in the sky beyond the two trees.

So, I jumped back inside and grabbed the camera, and took several exposures. I thought this was the best of those.

Aquariums at Rubio's gone?

I noticed a couple weeks ago when I stopped at a local Rubio's for lunch that the place's aquarium was gone.

As long as I've been eating at Rubio's restaurants, each spot has had a moderately large aquarium with several varieties of fish. It's always been a pleasant feature, and of course children love to watch the fish swimming.

So, when I saw the aquarium was gone at the one Rubio's I visited a little while ago, I was surprised, but thought perhaps it was just being replaced.

But I stopped at a different Rubio's a little earlier today, and in that one also, no aquarium. Huh.

Just before typing up this post, I tried searching in Google and Google News to see if anything was being said about aquariums being removed from Rubio's restaurants. Despite using several combinations of phrases and words, I didn't come up with anything that seemed pertinent. I'm assuming I just wasn't finding the right combination of words, so I'm curious if anyone out there has seen anything online about this?

Very unusual flowers

Flowers of a firewheel tree (Stenocarpus sinuatus)
Originally uploaded by jeffwc00

During a visit to Balboa Park, a couple trees at the lawn bowling courts caught my attention. (This is in an area of the park known as West Mesa; it's a relatively thin strip of land immediately west of State Route 163; the large bulk of the park is to the east of that highway.)

Specifically, the bright red flowers on the trees caught my eye.

As I got close I realized I was looking at one of the more unusually structured flowers I've ever seen, as seen in this photo I took at the time.

I was unable at the time to determine what the tree is called, which frustrated me, because I vastly prefer to be able to ID a plant I have taken a photo of when I put it online.

This afternoon I visited the park's Botanical Building, and on the way out noticed some pamphlets that were available for the taking.Viola! One of them had details of many notable plants on the West Mesa, including these trees.

And so I am pleased to present these flowers of a firewheel tree. (Formal name: Stenocarpus sinuatus)