Dave Bullock / eecue

PhotographerEngineering LeaderNerd

Blog | page 7

Dopplr and Joost Invites

I just signed up for the Dopplr beta, so far it seems pretty cool. I think it will be ever more helpful when more of my friends sign up for it and we can coordinate our travels. I have a few more invites, so if you want one, shoot me an email.

I also have unlimited invites for the Joost beta. Right now it only works on Intel Macs and PCs. If you are interested in an invite, let me know. Over the past couple months that I've been using it, the amount of content has exploded. It still doesn't have everything I watch, but it definitely does have a bunch of interesting shows on there.

Thursday, May 31st, 2007 - Read more...

Downtown Diversion

I have ridden my bike and driven past Downtown Diversion [warning auto-play movie with sound] many times in the years that I have lived in Downtown Los Angeles, and after reading this article in the Downtown News, I knew I had to get a tour. I emailed the president, Mike Hammer and asked if and when I could come down and shoot some photos. He told me that they were about to celebrate their 3 year anniversary of incorporation and I could come down to that, take some photos and have a free lunch, all of which I did today. Thomas Blank, the Division Manager, was kind enough to give me a tour and answer some questions about the facility and their operation.

Downtown Diversion recycles construction and demolition (C&D) debris. Although the cost per ton of recycling this material is more expensive for contractors than taking it to the dump, the location in Downtown and doing the "right thing" brings roughly a million pounds of waste through their facility daily. Miraculously they are able to reclaim and sell 75% of this material for uses such as mulch, fuel, road base, and fertilizer.

The crux of their operation is a massive industrial waste sorting machine, known as a star screen, manufactured by Lubo. This giant, debris hungry beast devours freshly demolished building materiel on one end and excretes various useful grades of material out the other. Standing atop the scaffolding next to the waste sorting personnel and breathing through a dust mask, I was simultaneously thankful for my relatively boring desk job and their commitment to a hard job in a hazardous, and very loud, environment.

Enough banter, enjoy the photos:

Water sprayed to reduce airborne particu

Waste processors

Lubo : Single Stream Star Screen

The processed waste

Friday, May 11th, 2007 - Read more...

Binary Fun

01010110000011000101000001100011000001010110000010001000000000000000

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 - Read more...

Great American Boycott 2007 Photos

Protesters and Placards

Protest Crowd

Patriot

I just got back from the Great American Boycott of 2007, an immigrant rights protest in Downtown Los Angeles. The turnout wasn't as strong as La Gran Marcha last year but I estimate between 100,000 and 250,000 people are currently walking down Broadway. I just got word that they have just reached City Hall and when I left 6th and Broadway they were still coming down all the way back to Olympic.

I am currently uploading photos, please stand by. Protesters

Update According to the LA Times my numbers are way off, they say it was in the tens of thousands.

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 - Read more...

Amy Winehouse (posterior), Stephen Marley, and Bus Driver : Coachella Friday : Part 2

So I missed my chance to get shots of Amy Winehouse from the photo pit, and I only got this lousy photo from backstage. After that I shot this photo of Stephen Marley from a filming platform:

Stephen Marley and Crowd

I got a whole bunch of shots of Bus Driver, who put on a great show. I was really impressed. I haven't seen him on the mic in many years, and his passionate performance was enthralling. His DJ even threw in some drum'n'bass. Good stuff:

Bus Driver

[Bus Driver](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/475244949/ "Photo Sharing")

You can see the rest of today's Coachella photos here.

Friday, April 27th, 2007 - Read more...

Brother Ali, Toki Wright, Flostradamus and Kid Sister : Coachella Friday : Part 1

Here are some of the photos I have taken so far today:

Hotshot the Robot

I caught a few minutes of Flostradamus featuring Kid Sister:

Kid Sister and Flostradamus

I then had some water and headed back over to the main stage to watch Brother Ali and Toki Wright:

Toki Wright and Brother Ali

Brother Ali

I got a photo of the large bottles of CO2 on the main stage... I'm guessing for an effect during Bjork's set. My EVDO is getting a much better signal now so the photos are uploading faster. I'll be shooting photos of Stephen Marley and Amy Winehouse and uploading them in a few hours, probably around 8pm. Keep and eye out for updates here or blogging.la.

Here are my: Coachella Thursday Photos and Coachella Friday Photos.

Friday, April 27th, 2007 - Read more...

Route 66 Photo Essay

After an amazing trip with the Desert Explorers, Penelope and I headed home via historic Route 66. Here are a few photos from the trip:

Riverside Cement Plant

Route 66 House

Route 66 and Clouds

All photos are a combination of 3 bracketed exposures (0,+2,-2 EV) taken with a Canon EOS 5D through a Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8 L lens and combined into an HDR image and tonemapped in Photomatix.

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 - Read more...

Desert Explorers Rendezvous

I spend a good amount of time in the Mojave desert with my geeky computer friends. I've been meaning to attend a Desert Explorers trip for years. My father-in-law, James Proffitt, has said nothing but good things about the Desert Explorers and their fun and informative trips. Last weekend Penelope and I attended their annual Rendezvous in which they took over the quasi-ghost town of Amboy.

Saturday morning we joined the 20 vehicle caravan from our base camp at the abandoned Amboy motel. The trip to Kelso was led by CSU Fullerton botanists professors, Allan Schoenherr and Alan Romspert. Our first stop was a UC research center near the Kelso dunes. We were given a tour by David the steward, of their modern solar powered facility and an amazing collection of rock art in both petroglyph and pictograph forms.

The next stop on our trip was the Kelso Depot, which has recently been restored and converted into a museum about trains and the Mojave. We watched several trains go by and then entered the museum.

The museum is packed full of interesting exhibits which would take half a day to absorb. We spent an hour there and on our way out we bought a "Mojave Desert Wildflowers" Falcon Guide, which was very helpful, but I still wasn't able to identify all the wildflowers I photographed on the trip. We almost left my wife in the Kelso Jail... oops!

From the Kelso Depot we made our way via a "paved" road over to the Vulcan mine. When I say paved, I mean that it was paved many decades ago and is now basically a 4WD road. The Vulcan mine is an open pit iron mine that operated during the first few scores of the 20th century. The mine, being a large pit, has filled with water that is toned a radiant emerald color from algae:

Vulcan Mine

After exploring the mine and taking photos of it and insect covered flowers, in which I inadvertently held up the group (Sorry, folks) we headed up a poorly maintained gas-line road to the Kelso Dunes. Although this season is the driest ever since record keeping began over a hundred years ago, there were still a fairly large amount of wildflowers growing in the dunes. The dunes trap water about a foot under the sand which allows the plants to thrive even in drought conditions. I am still waiting to hear back from the Allan and Alan to help identify the flowers I photographed. This is one of my favorites, if you view the larger image you will see a tiny insect perched atop the flower:

After we left Kelso Dunes we headed back to Amboy for happy hour and an excellent rib and chicken dinner catered by one of our favorite desert restaurants, The Rib Co. The next morning we headed back to Los Angeles, but instead of taking the 40 we took Route 66 and stopping to photograph some abandoned buildings along the way. We stopped for breakfast at the Bagdad cafe and then continued along 66 all the way to the 15 in Victorville, where the I-15 and route 66 merge. You can see some photos we took on our Route 66 drive here.

We had a wonderful time on the trip and can't wait until the next one. Thanks to everyone in the Desert Explorers and James Proffitt for showing us a great time in the Mojave.

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 - Read more...

April Downtown Art Ride - NEW MAP!

I want to start this post off with a very special thank you to Eric Richardson and Cartifact for donating the excellent map for the Art Ride once again. Eric went out of his way to craft a great map for the ride and Cartifact very generously donated their wonderfully detailed Downtown map for use on the Downtown Art Ride.The Downtown Art Ride takes place every second Thursday to coincide with the Downtown Art Walk. The ride starts at Art Murmur gallery on 6th and Main and we try to make it to all of the other galleries in Downtown. If you're interested in joining us on the ride, just show up at 5:00pm at Art Murmur. Bring a bike, lock, and light and optionally, but highly recommended, a helmet.

I will be riding with my camera and photographing riders and artists, you can see some samples from the previous art rides here. There will also be a recent film school grad shooting a spec commercial to promote bicycling in Los Angeles for her director's reel. Shouldn't interfere with the ride much though. We had a really great turnout last month and I've already have a few people email me about this month, so it should be a fun ride. I'll see everyone tomorrow!

Map You can download the new map here: Downtown Art Ride April 2007 Map [244KB jpg].

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 - Read more...

Cemetery Blogging

My "Location"

I was randomly surfing the internet and I came across this website which gave me some information about my IP address. I zoomed in on the google map, and according to their data, I am blogging from a cemetery. I would have thought that the location shown would have been my ISP (Speakeasy), but I guess not. Maybe my loft was built atop an ancient burial ground and soon zombies will be rising from my pool, or lack thereof. OMG, are those Zombies‽

Update I missed the best part, according to their website, they are the "most accurate IP Address locator." I would hate to see the least accurate locator.

Saturday, April 7th, 2007 - Read more...

Home Automation with Insteon and Indigo

After many years of using X10 products to control various aspects of my house (apartment actually) I ended up stowing them all in a large box several years ago and eventually selling them all on eBay right before my wedding.

I decided some time ago to start over with Insteon products, I'm glad I waited a couple years for V2 stuff to come out, as from what I've read they fixed some annoying issues. So here is what I bought:

  • 2 x dimmer switches - $40 2876DB
  • 1 x control panel switch - $70 2486D
  • 1 x appliance module - $35 2456S3
  • 1 x usb control module - $70 2414U
  • 1 x tabletop control module - $35 2430
  • 1 x 3 prong dimmer module - $35 2456D3

As you can see I didn't buy any RF extenders, which was my bad, I figured they were only for large houses, and as I live in a fairly small loft I didn't think I would have any issues. For some reason I thought every module had an RF transmitter in it, obviously I was wrong, but luckily 90% of my loft is on one phase so most everything works. I will be ordering a few more lamp modules and a pair of the RF extenders on Monday.

Unfortunately the ICON on/off switch was DOA so I'll have to return that, hopefully it won't be a painful process.

The only issues I have so far is that the table top remote control, the Smartlinc puts out a really annoying high pitched whine. My wife couldn't hear it, but I can hear it quite clearly. It wouldn't be an issue, but I am using the control on my nightstand. I will talk to SmartHome about it on Monday when I call to return my faulty switch.

We are an Apple and FreeBSD based household, so currently I am using Indigo 2 in demo mode, I will probably buy it, although it is quite expensive at $180. When I had an X10 setup I controlled everything via my FreeBSD server using some custom scripts with a php frontend. I see that there are some linux drivers, but nothing for FreeBSD as of yet. Indigo is packed full of features, and is server / client based so it may work for me.

Obviously Insteon is leaps and bounds better than X10 and so far both my wife and I are very happy with it. She especially loves the romance mode I programmed.

Saturday, April 7th, 2007 - Read more...

Worst Conference Name Ever

NeoCon® Xpress L.A.. I seriously thought that this had something to do with the RNC and the Contract With On America. Seriously who thought this up? Do they live in a vacuum? To quote The IT Crowd: "Are you from the past?"

Thursday, April 5th, 2007 - Read more...

Norton Sales HDR Photo Essay

I have an undying love for junk. Growing up I spent countless hours digging through my fathers' collection of vacuum tubes and old radios. The junk box, filled with untold thousands of assorted screws, bolts, nails and other detritus, was my playground. When I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and my father started working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, he took me to what is arguably the world's greatest salvage yard, The Black Hole. I ended up working at Ed Grothus' amazing junkyard for 3 summers during my years in high school.

Recently I took a tour of APEX Electronics with the Dorkbot Socal group and shot some HDR photos of what I saw. Last week a saw an article in the LA Times about Norton Sales, and decided I had to go and shoot some HDR photos of their collection. I emailed the owner, Carlos, a link to my APEX photos and asked if I could come by and do a shoot. He was in to the idea, so on Sunday I drove up to North Hollywood and shot the following photos:

High Pressure Flex Hoses

Rocket Booster

More photos after the jump...

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 - Read more...

Overturned Truck off the 710

Overturned Truck

The lifting begins

Note the tow truck wheels

After shooting some HDR photos in Vernon, I was heading in to work when I saw an overturned truck. I stopped to take some photos of the truck being turned back over. Note the tow-truck's wheels on the last shot.

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 - Read more...

Dave Bullock, Comic Book Artist

I am looking to get in touch with the other Dave Bullock. He is a well known comic book artist. I am interested in a collaborative art project with him. If you know Dave Bullock, the comic book artist, please send him my way and have him email me. Thanks!

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 - Read more...

Small Turnout for Minutemen / CAB Protest

More Police Than Protesters

The notification on the DLANC mailing list said the CAB protest was expecting 200 protesters and 200,000 spectators. I laughed when I read that and responded that I figured it would be more like 200 of each. I walked down to Broadway to check it out and as it turns out, 200 was probably a bit of a high estimate. There were roughly 100 protesters, surrounded by close to 200 police officers. The spectators maybe numbered 100 people, who were shouting and laughing and the very serious and likely racist group of mostly minutemen, with a few CAB folks thrown in for good measure.

Ted Hayes started the CAB, which stands for Crispus Attucks Brigade and according to their website their mission is to:

move American Blacks peoples to take their rightful and dutiful role to stop illegal immigration into the United States of America

Despite the racist placards the protesters were carrying:

The Minute Man Project is not racist, even as American Blacks citizens and the Crispus Attucks Brigade is not racist against the Brown/Bronze Indio Indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America.

More photos can be found here.

Sunday, March 25th, 2007 - Read more...

Midnight Aerial Filming in Downtown Los Angeles

There is currently a large helicopter flying almost directly above my loft. It has been circling for nearly 2 hours. The helicopter is part of a film crew that is filming a block north of my loft. The crew is parked both in the parking lot next to my loft, and the lot across the street where I park.

We were not notified. My wife has to wake up at 4:30 AM tomorrow for nursing school. It is almost midnight. I do not know where to turn in this situation.

I started out by calling 311, they forwarded me to the non-emergency LAPD dispatch who forwarded me to the LAPD's Air Support Watch Commander. The Sergeant on watch was a nice fellow, and I could tell he felt bad that he couldn't do anything about the disturbance. The deal is that if there is a permit, they have every right to be in the air, no matter who they are. He said that if I had a complaint I would need to jot down the tail letters and call the company in charge of the bird.

UPDATE I currently don't see or hear the helicopter, so hopefully the crew has wrapped for the night. Either way my wife is wearing ear protection and seems to be fast asleep.

UPDATE Part 2 Oh joy the helicopter is back. So far I've been contacted by 4 other Downtown residents. Eric Richardson blogged about it. The adhoc DLACN Film Issues meeting tomorrow today should be quite interesting. I won't be able to make it, but my wife will be there to voice our opinions.

UPDATE Part 3It is now 5am, my wife is getting up for nursing school, normally I would be asleep, but the crew is banging poles on the ground as they disassemble the circus tents in the parking lot across the street from my loft. Time for me to don the ear protection. Nice.

Sunday, March 18th, 2007 - Read more...

Problems with FilmLA

Filming and the Entertainment Industry in general are both huge sources of revenue for both Angelenos and the City of Los Angeles. I thoroughly enjoy watching movies and I think it is cool that they are commonly filmed in my neighborhood. In no way do I want to see the industry move out of Los Angeles, or even Downtown, not that it would even if it could. Those points aside, there are some serious problems with they way shoots are planned and executed, especially in Downtown.

A bit over a month ago I wrote an emotionally charged piece about my run-in with an especially rude film crew member. The response that I received from fellow downtown dwellers was amazing. Last week, one of the people who first contacted me about the post, Bert Green, started a thread on a Downtown mailing list and posted the responses.

Over the weekend the DLANC powers that be added an addendum to the meeting that was to take place the following Monday, and were able to get a representative from FilmLA to come down and talk to the community and the council. I missed most of the meeting, but I came in time to hear the FilmLA guy talk about how there would be "too much information" if they were to post all the notifications on their website. He also said that trying to send "those union people" to courtesy training would be impossible.

One thing I found especially funny was that he said there were good Location Managers and bad ones, and the bad ones spoil it for everyone, he then went on to name the Location Manager for the recent Tranformers shoot as one of the good ones. The Transformers shoot where they blew up a truck at 7am on a Saturday after only giving notification to residents on the same block. The explosion could be heard for miles.

As I see it there are some issues with FilmLA, which I am sure we will be addressed in the near future, mostly because their contract is up in June: FilmLA's funding comes from the permit fees the collect, that right there is a huge conflict of interest. FilmLA has failed and continues to fail to properly notify residents of pending shoots. FilmLA has little or no government or citizen oversight of the approval process Production companies that continually break the rules are still issued permits and there are no consequences for their actions

The meeting was attended by nearly ever Downtown LA blogger, including: Ed (who wrote about the meeting), Jim, Celia, Don, Ben, and Ginny. If you are interested in being a part of the solution, DLANC has created a task force to deal with the problems and the first meeting is this coming Monday in the P.E. Lofts. More details along with Ginny-Marie's notes from the meeting after the jump.

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 - Read more...

LA Marathon <del>N</del>IMBY

My wife is a runner, but I am not. She ran cross country (not literally) in High School and went to college on a track scholarship. She has been quite busy as of late with nursing school and work and hasn't had much of a chance to get out and run as she would like. She has yet to run a marathon, but I know that is one of her unspoken goals in life.

This Sunday the LA Marathon is taking place, and due to a change in routes to allow easier access to churches for churchgoers, it is going right though my back yard. I am pretty excited that I will be able to perch atop my roof and take photos of the runners on their home stretch. Look forward to some photos of the Marathon posted up here sometime soon.

Monday, February 26th, 2007 - Read more...

Joost Beta for OS X

I just got an invite token for Joost now that they support OS X, (thanks for the invite xeni). So far it seems pretty cool, I watched a couple of national geographic episodes. The way in which Joost stops for commercial breaks is annoying, although it is only shows 1 short commercial, the timing of the breaks doesn't coincide with a stopping point in the actual media you're watching. The interface is really slick, and the social networking aspects seem pretty damn cool, although I didn't find anyone else watching what I was watching so some of the features weren't really useable, like chat for instance. There is also very little content in the system right now, but I'm guessing that will change rapidly. I searched for "monkey" and found nothing, while photography turned up only 2 hits. If Joost takes off I can see the big networks putting their content on it, and that would rock.

Monday, February 19th, 2007 - Read more...

CBS vs. LAPD on Immigration Rally

So I saw an email this morning on our mailing list about CBS reporting that a request for an immigration rights rally being denied by the LAPD. The next email I saw was an email from LAPD's E-Policing system in which they are telling me that there will be a large rally on February 24th:

  • 2/24/2007 Full Rights for Immigrants
  • TIME: 10:00 AM - 1:30 PM
  • ASSEMBLY: Washington and Broadway
  • ROUTE: Broadway heading South to Temple Street, Temple E to corner of LA St and Temple St.
  • CONTACT: Juan Jose Guiterrez (323) 269-6069

I am going to go ahead and take LAPD's word on this one and will be there with my camera to capture the event for posterity.

Update LAT has some coverage [bugmenot] on this as well, and it is possible that the LAPD email blast went out before they realized there was a problem.

Update 2 So I called the LAPD and they told me that the permit has been denied for the 24th, but then I called the event's contact and they told me the event will still be taking place on the 24th, they flyers are printed and that's what the date says. Discussing this with Eric Richardson he said, "basically it's a test of whether police departments have any right to grant permits for this sort of thing." This should be very interesting.

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 - Read more...

Consumerist Lack of Photo Credit

After a night of throwing up thanks to food poisoning, I see this comment on one of my flickr images:

... it's also on this website: The Consumerist

Note that the Editor of that site has stated:

"Credit is more [trouble] than its worth because then we would have to deal with people bitching all day that we didn't spell their name correctly, or they want their name and not their Flickr ID and so on and so forth... when my time is better spent looking for the next post to write. The next post that will save you time or money, or reveal some corporate skulduggery or whatnot. What is the greater good? To use the best photo possible to illustrate the post and move on!"

For more info, see this help topic

When I first went to the page on Consumerist the photo didn't link to anything at all. It now links to my flickr page, which is better, but not what I want. I have emailed several people over at Consumerist and have yet to hear back from them, hopefully they will just add the photo credit I am asking for: Photo by Dave Bullock.

From what their editor posted on some other flickr photos I am guessing that they are not going to do this. My CC license specifically states that you are free to share and remix my images with the following caveat: "You may not use this work for commercial purposes." The problem here is that Consumerist is most certainly a commercial entity and they have not asked me permission to use the photo, which I would give them for the low low cost of a photo credit and link to my website. You can read more about the situation on this flickr thread, where a flickr staff member has gotten involved.

You can also digg the actual flickr help topic here. LAist had a similar problem with another Gawker property yesterday.

Update Looks like they have posted a public apology and promised to credit photos properly. Cool deal.

Update 2 My properly formatted photo credit is now up.

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 - Read more...

Really Right Stuff B5D-L

The Really Right Stuff B5D-L bracket is my third bracket from RRS. RRS Makes custom brackets for cameras and lenses that fit into Arca-Swiss style clamps. I fell in love with their products when I bought my 20D bracket, due to the amazing quality of workmanship and the fit and finish. I have been very happy with my 5D bracket, except for one thing that I recently noticed. The bracket wasn't touching the the side of the camera and so in portrait shots it could flex or vibrate.

I called RRS today and talked to Joe who was very helpful, he told me I could loosen the screw and push the bracket over a tiny bit in order for it to touch the side. It worked, although it is only barely touching the side of the camera now. The 20D bracket made full contact along the side of the camera body and was much more solid. He noted that although their tolerances where very tight, within 5 thousands of an inch, the outside of a camera body may have larger variances. He said I could send it in and they would look at it, but because they are located in San Luis Obispo, asked if I could drop by some day and take a tour of their shop and have him fit it to my camera, which he said would be fine. He also said that they would be working on a fix for this in the next version. I'll let you know what happens when I go.

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 - Read more...

NewsFire

For years I have used NetNewsWire as my RSS feed reader and until it was bought by Newsgator, I had planned on buying the pro version. A few weeks ago I decided to buy an RSS reader, so I tried out NewsFire. I really like the interface and how snappy the application worked, even with my hundreds of RSS feeds. I bought a license and have been very happy with it so far except for a small problem that I have contacted the developer about. Flickr's photo tag feeds contain an enclosure that links to the full sized image files:

I feel the polite way for a newsreader to handle a binary enclosure, is to offer a button or link that would allow the user to download said item. Unfortunately, NewsFire only does this with MP3 files, so every time I try and view a flickr tag feed I have to scroll through a massive full sized image, which can be upwards of 7 or 8 megs in the extreme. The developer responded that NewsFire wasn't currently in a development cycle, so he didn't know when he would be addressing the issue. I hope it is soon, being able to comfortably view images from flick is one of the primary reasons I use a news reader.

Saturday, February 10th, 2007 - Read more...

Rude Film Production Crew

I pay a fairly hefty sum of money for parking on a monthly basis as my loft doesn't provide spaces for residents. Today as I was leaving my over-priced parking lot I noticed that the gate I normally exit onto 6th street from was being manned by a security guard for a production company. This production company has taken over most of the ground level parking lot for what appear to be food tents for the actors / extras.

As I pulled up to the gate to leave, I asked the guard if he could open the gate for me, which he told me he couldn't and to turn around and go out on to Main St., which would add about 4 blocks on to my commute as I would be forced to navigate around 4 one-way streets to get back on to 6th. I told him that I pay a good deal of money for parking at the lot and that it would be nice if he could let me out. He said he didn't give a damn how much I paid and if I wanted to get out I could open the gate my damn self. As I was opening the gate he called me an asshole and muttered something under his breath which sounded like a threat.

This is another example of how Downtown residents are treated as second class citizens by the movie industry. They should realize that they are guests in our neighborhood and treat us respectfully. Of course there were no filming notifications posted up in our parking garage, so I have no one to contact to report this incident to.

Update Oops, I accidentally left commenting turned off, but beopenguin emailed me to let me know the number for FilmLA which I called, and I also emailed them at &#105;&#x6e;&#x66;&#111;&#x40;&#102;&#105;&#108;&#x6d;&#x6c;&#97;&#x69;&#110;&#99;&#46;&#x63;&#111;&#109;. I know that I am not the only Downtown resident how has had issues with film crews in my neighborhood. It is time that the industry started respecting the residents of their city.

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 - Read more...

Fire on 4th and Broadway

Raging Fire

I was awoken this morning, not by my alarm clock, but by the building's fire alarm. We smelled smoke quite strongly, so after getting dressed feeling if my door was warm, I walked out into the hall and looked out the side window. I could see a massive plume of smoke several blocks down towards the Civic Center. Penelope and I walked downstairs and made our way outside, where we met up with our neighbor Shannon.

We arrived on scene at about 5:00am and the fire was raging up out of the roof of a two story building on the North East corner of 4th and Broadway. I started shooting photos and didn't stop until about 8:00am. The fire is mostly smoke now, and the 10 ladder trucks, 10 pump trucks and what must have been nearly 100 brave firefighters. At one point all 10 of the ladder trucks were spraying into the blaze, 800 gallons per minute each, that's a veritable tidal wave of water.

The building was tightly packed with junk, which means plenty of fuel and the fire just kept on going. Finally at about 7:30 the smoke turned white and started to dissipate. I am guessing that the fire should be out any time now.

Both Penelope and Eric Richardson totally scooped me on it, but I took 183 photos and I'm pulling them off the CF card now. Stand by for photos.

Update The photos are uploading, so far 5 are up out of the 33 that I'm posting all uploaded. You can check out the Major Fire on 4th and Broadway gallery here.

A few more photos after the fold.

Update 2 Eric Richardson got some photos, including this one of me taking a photo.

Monday, February 5th, 2007 - Read more...

La Folie

Last night was our final dining experience in San Francisco, and as it turns out we saved the best for last. On the drive up to SF we asked for recommendations via chowhound, and recommendations we received. For our French restaurant we ended up choosing La Folie and we were extremely satisfied.

Read the rest after the jump.

Thursday, January 18th, 2007 - Read more...

Point Bonita

There is something magical about abandoned buildings. When I was growing up in the East Bay, my father would often take my brother and I to Point Bonita to explore the old bunkers and gun emplacements. I have very fond memories of climbing through the bars and exploring the spooky cement structures that used to hold artillery and ammunition. I hadn't been to Point Bonita in probably close to 20 years, but somehow I remembered exactly how to get there.

Battery Wallace

Inside the Bunker

Bunker

The remainder of the Point Bonita photo set can be found here.

Thursday, January 18th, 2007 - Read more...

Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point

I was really hoping to get a tour of Fort Point, and I even read on the website that they were closed during the week for the Golden Gate Bridge retrofitting, but it didn't occur to me that they were actually doing the retrofit right now. Oh well, we still enjoyed watching surfers with death wishes riding waves that broke on crazy ugly rock outcroppings.Golden Gate Bridge

Thursday, January 18th, 2007 - Read more...

San Francisco City Hall

City Hall and Sun Behind Trees

In a way, San Francisco City Hall is partially responsible for me being alive today. Way back in the day, my parents were married there in a civil ceremony. The dome of city hall is really beautiful, it looks like it was restored recently. I took some HDR photos of the civic center yesterday, enjoy.

Train stop and City Hall

I love this sign on the playground:

No Adults Allowed

Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 - Read more...

Perbacco

There is nothing quite as satisfying as a delicious meal after a long drive. When you start your vacation with hand held nodules of culinary blasphemy known as McGriddles, your next dining experience can only go one way, up. While driving up the beautiful and inspiring Pacific Coast Highway I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I spent a good amount of time surfing the web looking for a good place to eat upon our arrival in San Francisco.

Read the rest after the jump.

Sunday, January 14th, 2007 - Read more...

Hotel Majestic

We just checked in to the newly remodeled Hotel Majestic. The first room we checked in to, one of the standard rooms, was a bit smaller than we remembered and had a flickering light, so we called down to front desk and the gracious and pleasant Nisi upgraded us to a junior suite. The suite is lovely, and although neither it nor the hotel smell like old books any more, and we are quite pleased with it. It has a very nice fireplace, which Francisco the bell hop / valet driver fired up for us, as well as a lovely 4 post bed. It also reminds us a bit of home as our windows are facing the street.

We have a reservation for 2 at Perbacco and boy are we hungry!

Saturday, January 13th, 2007 - Read more...

San Francisco Vacation

After taking a tour of Hearst Castle, the wife and I are almost to SF. I'm posting this from my new Macbook Pro through bluetooth to my Blackberry and out over the EDGE network. We're going to be in SF for 5 nights and are planning on having some good food. I've been saving up for this as it our Christmas present to each other and I'm really excited. I posted a thread on Chowhound SF seeking recommendations for good restaurants. I will potentially be guest blogging on Metroblogging SF. Vacation, yay!

Saturday, January 13th, 2007 - Read more...

Massive Production, No Notification

When I first moved in to the Santa Fe Lofts a few years ago, the management would always post the notification for filming in both the elevator and on the front door. Today is the third time in as many months when there has been large film crews invading our building and the residents were not notified. I feel this is totally unacceptable, it is the management's responsibility to notify the building's tenants about any kind of production.

Friday, January 12th, 2007 - Read more...

Macbook Pro

My work bought me a Macbook Pro yesterday. Actually they cut a check to Apple, Inc. and I brought it to the Brea Mall Apple Store. This is the fastest personal computer I have ever owned, and it totally rocks. It is amazing how much faster this laptop is than my Dual G5 desktop. I have also started using some new software, specifically iTerm and Newfire, before I was using Terminal and NetNewsWire. I really dig the interface on both iTerm and Newsfire. My only complaint about iTerm is that the bottom of the display butts up against the last line of text, I know this is very minor, but Terminal had a tiny bit of breathing room there.

Thursday, January 11th, 2007 - Read more...

Bell Comunications Around The Globe, by Anthony Heinsbergen

[52781 Sculpture](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/352237799/ "Photo Sharing")

Phone Parts

Untitled, or Bell Comunications Around The Globe is one of my favorite sculptures in Downtown Los Angeles. Created in 1961 by Anthony Heinsbergen and located at 420 S. Grand on what is now the AT&T building, the mural / mosiac is made of thousands of old telephone switching parts. There is nothing like junk to make a geek like me happy. You can read more about it here. [Full gallery here.]

Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 - Read more...

Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 L Service Journey Part Two

Ginseng

For the second time in as many months I have sent off my favorite lens (which is possibly going to lose that distinction thanks to my 24-70 f/2.8 L that I just picked up) to the Canon Factory Service Center. My first experience with Canon Factory Service was actually a really good one, as they hastily repaired my shutter mechanism and had the camera back to me within a few weeks.

A few months later I decided to send them my Speedlite 580EX which had a faulty motor in the zoom mechanism which allows the flash to automatically change the size of the flash that is thrown to suit your current lens, zoom level and sensor size. At the same time I sent them my 85 1.2, which was, and still is, having problems focusing.

When I focus on an object that is 10 feet away, I get the focus confirmation light, but then the resulting image is focused a few feet past where it should have been. With nearly any other lens, this would not be a problem at all, but thanks to the razor think depth of field at f/1.2, this problem makes my lens nearly useless at the aperture that it is designed for.

After holding my lens for nearly 2 months, Canon Factor Service returned it to me, with no changes whatsoever, saying that it was restored to factory quality. I am hoping for Canon that the problem was with their tech, and that factory quality does not mean that the focus is off by nearly 20%. I am eagerly awaiting the functional return of one of my favorite lenses.

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 - Read more...

Triforium Control Center

Eric Richardson and I have been trying for over a year to get in to the Triforium Control Center in the Los Angeles Underground Mall. Today Eric got us a tour thanks to help from Councilmember Jan Perry and Greg Fischer, who were both instrumental in the re-lighting of the divisive public work of art originally lit 1975.

Even now the Triforium has been drawing praise and scorn, most recently from the City Attorney's office which has been claiming that the music is disturbing them and has requested it only play from 11am to 1pm, which completely defeats the purpose of having the lights on, as you can hardly see them during the day. Although many art critics despise the sculpture I find it strangely charming and the primitive computer control system intrigues me.

When we looked through the control center today we found an old Teletype machine that was used to read and write punch tape which held the program the Triforium's computer used to synchronize with music. Our goal is to take those tapes, capture them and use them as a basis for the new computer control, which will most likely be a BASIC stamp or a PIC microcontroller. Once that works the next step, would ideally be to have some type of web interface to the system.

I brought my portable studio lighting setup along for the tour and took some photos, of which here is a sampling:

Triforium Control Circuitry and Punch Tapes

Teletype and Punch Tapes

You can flip through the whole Triforium Control Center gallery here.

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 - Read more...

5 Things You Didn't Know About Me

Well, I've been too busy to blog recently due to several large projects that I'm working on concurrently, but I figured I would respond to this 5 things meme, as Siel of Green LA Girl tagged me.

  1. I lived in South Africa for a year when I was 6 years old.
  2. I only drink coffee on ice (and some times it's not even fair trade!)
  3. I make my cats dance, but I think they like it.
  4. My first job out of High School was designing rave flyers.
  5. I want to retire in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I am tagging: Peneloper, Eric, Celia, Jim and Ed.

Sunday, December 17th, 2006 - Read more...

NetIQ Sold My Email Address To Spammers

The unique throwaway email address that I used only for NetIQ was eventually sold to a spam list. Shame on you NetIQ, I don't think you've adhered to your own privacy policy.

... we want you to know that NetIQ is not in the business of selling or renting individuals' personal data to other companies for marketing purposes.

Thursday, November 30th, 2006 - Read more...

Obligatory Wife Photos

Last weekend, the wife and I drove up to Angel's Gate and did a portrait session with the beautiful setting sun as our backdrop. I used two strobes, at roughly 45 degrees and 10 feet back from Penelope. The strobes were bounced off of white umbrellas raised up about 8 or 9 feet. The light ratio was 1:4 between key and fill. I triggered the flashes with my trusty set of PocketWizard Plus IIs and metered with my Sekonic L-558R. Shot with a Canon EOS 30D and an EF 85mm f/1.2 L. My wife is a beautiful and patient model.

Penelope and sunset

Penelope

The key flash was still recycling in the second shot, but I still love it.

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 - Read more...

APEX Electronics : Dorkbot Socal

After growing up in the Bay Area, I attended High School in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One day my father, who worked as a programmer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, brought me to, and later got me a job at, a nerd's paradise called The Black Hole. I ended up working there for 3 summers and I think it was probably my favorite job ever, although it only paid $5 an hour. Many of the hours I worked were directly exchanged for random bits of junk, much of which I still have, to my wife's elation, stored away in boxes in our storage closet.

When I saw heathervescent's post about the upcoming Dorkbot Socal trip to APEX Electronics, I knew I had to go. The night before the trip I shot an email out to an especially geeky list that I run and CHS responded that he wanted to come along. We arrived a bit late at Machine Project, and Tom Jennings was mostly finished talking about what to expect. I mentioned my previous employment at The Black Hole and he told me that he make a road trip there every year, saying that it was one of his favorite places in the world.

After a short drive to the highly industrial Sun Valley, we made our way in to the wonderfully techno-detritus rich warehouse known as APEX Electronics. I immediately pulled out my camera, set up my tripod and began photographing the narrow aisles packed high with everything from oscilloscopes to capacitors to vacuum tubes.

Shoe Tester

Colorful Wire

Safety First

Hoses and Valves

APEX reminded me of a 1/10th scale model of The Black Hole, with less nuclear research equipment and more audio recording, broadcast and aviation gear. The organization of APEX is at least an order of magnitude better than The Black Hole, but I guess that having one tenth the amount of junk makes that possible. I should be careful about calling the contents of APEX or TBS junk, as they say, "one man's trash...", and also the collectors of said equipment seem to develop an emotional attachment to their toys.

Most of the aisles held boxes full of components, with a single version taped to the front of the box. Some of the more valuable gear like the microwave wave guides, windows and transmitters were locked up behind glass, which the owner, Don, was nice enough to open for me so I could take a photo. Tom mentioned that one aisle had collapsed in an earthquake almost 2 decades ago, and had yet to be cleaned up.

Outside there were towering piles of scrap aluminum, kegs, airplane wings, cable, and junk. I especially enjoyed the pile of "Safety First" signs that were haphazardly piled together along with what appeared to be a bomb, but was probably an airplane fuel tank.

It is a good thing that I am short on physical space in my loft, otherwise I surely would have purchased more than the $1 clamp that I picked up. If you are building a robot or some other fun project, this would be a great place to pick up those hard to find parts you need. If you are a junk collector, but you don't want to blow all your hard earned money in one place, you should avoid this place at all costs.

Full gallery here.

Update Heathervescent's flickr photo set can be found here, Zoetica's can be found here (Thanks thedaniel).

Sunday, November 5th, 2006 - Read more...

My Field Lighting Setup

As I mentioned in the last few posts that I just posted in a spurt of posting activity, that I am building up a portable, battery powered lighting setup. I didn't feel like spending $3,000+ on a "real" head / pack lighting system as of yet, although some day I will end up buying one, most likely the Dyna-lite setup at first, but then eventually a Profoto rig. Portability is probably the biggest factor for me, as I don't have a studio to shoot in, so nearly all my work will be done on location. Many of the locations I plan on shooting will be either outdoors, or in places where lack of line voltage would be a limiting factor.

I already possessed a Quantum Turbo 2x2, which I've been very happy with in combination with my Canon Speedlite 580EX. I didn't want to buy another 580, because I didn't plan on using E-TTL for my portrait lighting, so after some research I decided to pick up the very moderately priced Sunkpak 120J Auto Pro, which is a bare bulb flash, that can be powered directly by an HV power pack, without needing any other batteries, unlike the 580EX.

Unfortunately Adorama sent me the TTL version of the 120J, which didn't come with the sync adapter, so I bought the standard shoe adapter that has the sync connector. This really isn't what I wanted as I will never actually be mounting it on a hot or cold flash shoe. I am trying to work it out with Adorama now, I need the flash for some work I have coming up, and they want me to buy the right one, even though it was their mistake in sending me the wrong one, and then send back the wrong unit when the new one comes. I feel like they should take the hit, send me the new one and I'll send them back the wrong when when I have received the correct model. I will see what happens, but I have a feeling that I am going to have to do it their way, which is too bad.

So as I wrote about earlier, I am using the 2 PocketWizard Plus II transceivers to trigger the flashes, which I am bouncing off or through a couple of convertible Photoflex umbrellas, that are sitting atop one Photoflex stand and one Avenger Stand. The third PW is on atop my camera in the hot shoe and I am using the Sekonic L-558R to meter the scenes. I also just picked up a couple of used C-Stands, and although they're heavy as hell, they're very sturdy and will be great to hold my convertible reflector and down the road flags, scrims, fingers, dots, etc. I also bought another Quantum battery, this one a Turbo Z. I have some sand bags and cases for the stands in the mail. In the future I will be buying some Chimera softboxes

My first results have come out quite well, but I still have a long way to go, and I am planning on taking some lighting classes, and maybe attending a workshop or two.

Thursday, October 26th, 2006 - Read more...

Sekonic L-558R Dualmaster

Now that I'm building up my studio / location lighting kit, I can no longer rely on my trusty Canon 580EX's built in E-TTL system to do the dirty work of exposure calculation for me on the fly. E-TTL is great, don't get me wrong, but it only works when the flash is either on camera, off camera with the off camera flash cord or triggered with Canon's IR remote, which only works if your flash is facing you and you were within a fairly distance from your flash and within a fairly narrow angle. I logically decided that I needed a flash meter.

There are plenty of flash meters out there, from the trusty analog flash meter to high end digital meters with built in radio slave transmitters. I thought of it, like many folks think of tripods, that you can start out with the cheapest you can get, but in the long run you'll most likely end up spending more on upgrades until you get to where you want to be, than if you just shell out the money for the good stuff up front. So I decided on the latter, and shelled out the roughly half grand on the Sekonic L-558R.

The Sekonic L-558R is an easy to use (once you've read the manual) and sturdy flash meter, that also functions as an incident and reflected spot meter. The meter will read your flash in both incident and reflective modes, I think it is pretty cool that you can take a spot meter flash reading, but I'm sure there are other units that can do the same thing. As I mentioned before, the meter has a PocketWizard module that is built into the L-558R which allows you to trigger your flashes directly from the meter without using a sync cord.

One of the features that I find most useful is the ability to meter you key light, and then meter your fill light, and the meter will give you the difference between the two in EVs. This is an easy way to figure out the ration between your key and fill. You can also fire a series of flashes, storing each one in memory, and then get either a cumulative or average reading.

The meter itself is very compact, fits nicely in your hand and feels solid and well built. I would prefer the device didn't require the expensive 3V lithium battery that could be tough to procure in a bind, but I guess they decided they could make it a tiny bit more compact if they used the 3V lithium as opposed to using 2 AAs or AAAs. The only other issue I have with the meter isn't actually related to the meter, but to an older spot meter that I've been borrowing from my mother to use with my Mamiya RB67 setup, which was "modified" by Zone VI to have a nice little movable zone scale on the side, which makes ensuring that my exposure contains the data I want much easier. I know that I can just take an EV reading and put that into either my mental Zone chart, or I can put it on my handy Zone worksheet, but the little paper ring on the manual scale was really nice.

Before I bought the L-558R I found out that Sekonic is coming out with a new meter, specifically tailored to digital cameras, called the L-758DR. The 758DR allows you to load 4 custom profiles into the meter via a USB cable so that the meter will "respond to light exactly like your digital camera or type of film." Another very cool and helpful feature is the ability of the meter to warn you if you are outside the dynamic range of your medium. The 758DR is also extremely sensitive, down to f-2.0! I may or may not upgrade when it comes out. The 558 has all the features I really need and many more.

Thursday, October 26th, 2006 - Read more...

The Joy of PocketWizards

After researching the ideal flash slave system for months I settled on the PocketWizard system. In reality, there wasn't much of a question in my head as to which system I was going to buy, this may seem a bit silly, but they had me at the ads. Their full page ads run every month in Shutterbug and many other photo mags, and their system is built in to several competing brands of lights including Profoot, Dyna-lite, Speedotron and Norman. There is fairly solid consensus in the professional photo industry that the PW system is the best you can get. The only other serious player for radio slaves is Quantum, but they just aren't as slick.

I just picked up a set of 2 Pocketwizard Plus II transceivers from Adorama and a third unit from Samy's Camera and they are nothing short of wonderful. Not only are they absolutely simple to operate, they just plain work. After about 500 shots fired, I've never had a single misfire. They are light-weight, compact, and as far as I can tell, very sturdy. They have a range of roughly 1500' and they will receive and rebroadcast signals so that range is really only limited by the amount of units you own. I recommend these units without reservation.

Thursday, October 26th, 2006 - Read more...

Photoflex Quality or Lack Thereof

I have recently begun putting together my portable studio lighting setup. I need portability and the ability to shoot in the field off the grid. I will expand more about this in a later post, but I am writing this to address the poor quality of Photoflex hardware. I ordered a Photoflex umbrella kit that included a reversible umbrella, stand and shoe mount flash clamp from Adorama. So far the umbrella and the stand have worked out, although were made in China and feel cheap as far as their fit and finish.

After the first kit arrived I made my way over to Samy's Camera on Fairfax and bought another umbrella and clamp, plus a stand, but not a Photoflex, I decided against buying another one of their stands and picked up a high quality Manfrotto Avenger Mini-Max. When I got home I set up everything and took a few shots and everything worked just fine. The next day I set it all back up and lo and behold I noticed that the screw that holds the umbrella into the clamp had stripped and would no longer hold the umbrella. The Photoflex umbrella clamp has metal threads for every screw except the one that hold the umbrella, which feeds directly into threaded plastic. It is not surprising that this stripped. I have vowed to never buy another piece of Photoflex equipment. I really shouldn't have bought any in the first place.

I took the clamp back to Samy's and although I didn't have the box or the receipt, the salesman looked me up in the system and gave me full credit for the item, after chiding me for throwing away my boxes. I normally never throw away boxes for anything that costs over $50, but I guess I should at least hold on to the boxes for the cheap stuff for a week or two. I used my credit towards a nice, high quality Manfrotto clamp, which is made out of aluminum, brass and steel. It looks and feels like a quality piece of equipment, and it is made in Italy.

Thursday, October 26th, 2006 - Read more...

When Sweet Shrimp Attack

Shrimp Leg

Last night after the Detour show, my friend Mike Rocchio and I went to Oomasa for sushi. I ate sweet shrimp, with the shrimp heads in soup form. Afterwards I felt a little tickle in my throat, but I was still fairly buzzed and it didn't really bother me until I was about to go to sleep. I had what I thought was a little bit of shrimp antenna lodged in my throat. I tried to wash it down with some cereal and copious amounts of water, but it stayed stuck in there. I went to bed hoping it would work its self loose by morning, but when I awoke it was still there.

I decided to call Kaiser and see what they recommended, but while I was on hold I decided to look in the mirror and see if I could see anything. Lo and behold, there it was, a big honkin' shrimp leg lodged in the back of my throat. Penelope, my wonderful wife / nurse in training offered to extract it with a pair of tweezers. After a few tries she skillfully snatched it and removed it. I took a few photos with a nickel for scale here.

Sunday, October 8th, 2006 - Read more...

Canon EOS 30D

As I mentioned earlier, my 20D's shutter is kaput after about 50,000 exposures over that last 2 years. Today I made my way down to Samy's Camera on Fairfax and picked up a Canon EOS 30D. One of the cool things about Samy's is that, although their website always has lower prices than they advertise in their store, they will always match their website pricing, plus shipping. The 30D ended up costing me $1216.97 plus tax, which is more than I would have paid if I had ordered it from B&H or Adorama, but I would have had to wait a week before it came, and I need it for a shoot I am doing on Friday. Another cool thing about Samy's, and any retail store front for that matter, is that they are willing to work with you on pricing and I got a good deal on a Stratos flash bracket, a Hoodman 2GB 150x CF card, a Stofen Omni Bounce, and an Off Camera Flash Cable.

One of the first things I noticed about the 30D is that the shutter mechanism, which is rated to 100,000 exposures, is much quieter than the one in my 20D. I am not sure if this is because my 20D's shutter mechanism was on its last legs and was starting to die, but it was at least twice as loud as the one in my 30D. Of course the 30D also has spot metering (finally!!!) as well as nice big 2.5" LCD. I am a little bummed that the body shape changed as my Really Right Stuff L Bracket will no longer fit, but that's ok, I really should have one on both of my rigs. I am already very happy with the test shots I took using the flash bracket, having it off camera really makes a big difference.

Monday, September 11th, 2006 - Read more...

My First Hoist Ride

hoisting

Last night I got an email from the commander of the Search and Rescue (SAR) team that I am a part of, about a mutual-aid callout on San Jacinto for a missing hiker. I got the call at about 2230 and quickly responded that I would be there. I got about 4 hours of sleep as I had to wake up at 0330 in order to be at the Sheriff's Office at 0500 to pick up one of the Sheriff's vehicles and drive to the base of the tram by 0600 hours. I am not normally one to be on time, but when it comes to searches it is important to be punctual as someone's life is on the line.

At the briefing my teammate Mark Kinsey and I got our mission which entailed us riding up to the San Jacinto peak on Los Angeles Sheriff's Department's gargantuan Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King known as Air Rescue 5 then riding the hoist down to the summit and then hiking cross country through the west side of San Jacinto and eventually coming to a trail that would take us to the tram. I was excited about riding in a helicopter, as the last time I had the pleasure of rotor based travel I was in Search and Rescue in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Zipping down from a hovering helicopter on a piece of aircraft cable attached to my seat harness whilst carrying my 24 hour pack was quite a rush. Once I was on the peak and I unclipped from the hoist I snapped a few photos of the bird and Mark and I made our way across the ridge.

The mission was supposed to be technical so we kept our harnesses on, but we never ended up needing them apart from the helicopter bit. It was really just bouldering for the first mile or so until we turned down towards the saddle between two peaks, at which point we had to walk on top of dense brush for about another 1/2 mile dropping several hundred vertical feet. After the brush it was fairly easy going for the next couple of miles until we hit more dense brush and it started raining. Despite the rain and the brush we made good time and soon enough we were on a real trail. We double-timed it back to the tram and made our way down to the command post for debriefing at around 1530.

We didn't find any tracks or signs of the missing subject, but hopefully other teams will find him tomorrow. [You can find the rest of the photos here]

Update They found him and he is ok!

Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 - Read more...

The Day My Camera Died

Yesterday Penelope and I made a trip down to the San Diego Zoo and about half way through our adventures my camera started taking photos on its own in rapid succession while flashing Error 99 on the LCD. I tried pulling the batteries and letting it sit for a while, but that didn't cut it. I looked through my photo archive and I've taken well over 50,000 photos with it since I bought it in February 2005. Looks like I will be without a digital SLR (still have a film SLR body) for a couple of weeks while I get it repaired.

Update After finding someone who had the exact same problem that I did and emailing said person, I found out that I needed to replace my shutter. Canon will do it for $196 which also includes a complete overhaul and cleaning of the camera. It takes 7-10 business days to complete. I am sending it off today.

Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 - Read more...

Subscribe

Tags (Alpha)

activation-functions  ai  ai-ml  album-names  alexnet  alphago  anomaly-detection  antennas  apple  apple-news  apple-photos  art-center-college-of-design  artificial-intelligence  attention-mechanisms  autoencoders  autonomous-vehicles  autonomous-weapons  backpropagation  bert  big-data  black-hat-2007  blog-series  blogging  books  california  california-academy-of-sciences  canon-r6-mark-ii  canon-rf-2470mm-f-2-8-l-is-usm-lens  caption-generation  caves  celebrity-detection  chatgpt  chemistry  cnn  cnns  communication-with-interplanetary-spacecrafts  computer-vision  convolutional-layers  convolutional-neural-networks  crowdrise  data-denoising  data-extraction  data-privacy  decision-trees  decoder  deep-learning  deep-space-network--dsn-  denoising-autoencoders  dimensionality-reduction  disneyland  drum--n--bass  eecue  embeddings  encoder  engineering-leader  ensemble-learning  ethical-dilemmas  ethics  face-detection  facial-recognition  family  family-trips  feature-extraction  feedforward-neural-networks  fireworks  fnns  food  fully-connected-layers  gans  geeks  general  generative-models  gofundme  golden-gate-park  goldstone-deep-space-communications-complex  gpt  gpt3  gpus  gradient-descent  gru  gtd  ham-radio  hardware-accelerators  health  healthcare  hidden-states  history  image-analysis  image-classification  image-generation  image-keywords  image-processing  image-recognition  imagenet  innovation  interplanetary-spacecrafts  ios  ipad  iphone  japan  koreatown  large-language-models  latent-space  layers  led  lemos-farm  links  llm  locations  los-angeles  loss-functions  lstm  machine-learning  messagepack  military  ml-keyword-detection  ml-photo-scores  mlps  multilayer-perceptrons  music  nasa-jet-propulsion-laboratory--jpl-  natural-language-processing  navwar  neural-networks  neurons  new-mexico  nuclear  object-detection  openai  osxphotos  outdoors  overfitting  parallel-computing  photo-management  photo-sharing  photography  photos  photos-app  pirates  politics  pooling-layers  pyrotechnics  python  radar-imaging  recurrent-neural-networks  reinforcement-learning  rekognition  reverse-engineering  rnn  rnns  robotics  robots  san-bernardino-cave-and-technical-rescue-team  san-francisco  sar  science  security  segmentation  selfsupervised-learning  sequential-data  snarl  space-communication  space-exploration  spawar  speech-recognition  sqlite  support-vector-machines  symbolic-ai  tags-labeling  technical-skills  technology  temporal-dependencies  tensorflow  the-vermont-on-wilshire  time-series-forecasting  tpus  ujet  vaes  variational-autoencoders  vision-transformers  wag  wired  writing  

Tags (Count)

photography  los-angeles  links  general  technology  eecue  politics  security  japan  apple  sar  food  music  science  black-hat-2007  california  outdoors  new-mexico  nuclear  caves  machine-learning  robots  deep-learning  drum--n--bass  geeks  neural-networks  snarl  ai  computer-vision  gpus  gtd  health  natural-language-processing  object-detection  artificial-intelligence  autoencoders  backpropagation  celebrity-detection  chatgpt  cnn  facial-recognition  feature-extraction  fnns  gradient-descent  ham-radio  imagenet  osxphotos  robotics  sequential-data  spawar  sqlite  tpus  writing  activation-functions  ai-ml  album-names  alexnet  alphago  anomaly-detection  antennas  apple-news  apple-photos  art-center-college-of-design  attention-mechanisms  autonomous-vehicles  autonomous-weapons  bert  big-data  blog-series  blogging  books  california-academy-of-sciences  canon-r6-mark-ii  canon-rf-2470mm-f-2-8-l-is-usm-lens  caption-generation  chemistry  cnns  communication-with-interplanetary-spacecrafts  convolutional-layers  convolutional-neural-networks  crowdrise  data-denoising  data-extraction  data-privacy  decision-trees  decoder  deep-space-network--dsn-  denoising-autoencoders  dimensionality-reduction  disneyland  embeddings  encoder  engineering-leader  ensemble-learning  ethical-dilemmas  ethics  face-detection  family  family-trips  feedforward-neural-networks  fireworks  fully-connected-layers  gans  generative-models  gofundme  golden-gate-park  goldstone-deep-space-communications-complex  gpt  gpt3  gru  hardware-accelerators  healthcare  hidden-states  history  image-analysis  image-classification  image-generation  image-keywords  image-processing  image-recognition  innovation  interplanetary-spacecrafts  ios  ipad  iphone  koreatown  large-language-models  latent-space  layers  led  lemos-farm  llm  locations  loss-functions  lstm  messagepack  military  ml-keyword-detection  ml-photo-scores  mlps  multilayer-perceptrons  nasa-jet-propulsion-laboratory--jpl-  navwar  neurons  openai  overfitting  parallel-computing  photo-management  photo-sharing  photos  photos-app  pirates  pooling-layers  pyrotechnics  python  radar-imaging  recurrent-neural-networks  reinforcement-learning  rekognition  reverse-engineering  rnn  rnns  san-bernardino-cave-and-technical-rescue-team  san-francisco  segmentation  selfsupervised-learning  space-communication  space-exploration  speech-recognition  support-vector-machines  symbolic-ai  tags-labeling  technical-skills  temporal-dependencies  tensorflow  the-vermont-on-wilshire  time-series-forecasting  ujet  vaes  variational-autoencoders  vision-transformers  wag  wired