Travel
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Oil + Water
Four years and one day ago, we took a trip aboard a sailboat captained by our friend John Pfarr (who a few days later would later sail the same vessel to Hawaii, the South Seas and back — the dude is a serious sailor). Our modest destination was the string of oil platforms that rise… Continue reading
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Where in the World?
Years ago, before Flickr came into my life and provided incentives for hyper-identifying everything about every photograph, I had a brief-lived series of photographic teases called Where in the World? — or something like that. (Can’t find the links right now. Maybe later.) So I thought I’d fire it up again for the shot above,… Continue reading
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Hospitality story
We tested Santa Barbara before moving there, by taking a small apartment near the beach. The apartment was at the uphill (northwest) end of Burton Circle, on Natoma (a paved tangent of Burton’s circle), on the second floor of the keystone-shaped building in the center of this map here. At the time we had no… Continue reading
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Passive Assistance
Four more of my aerial photos now illustrate their subjects in Wikipedia: Nebraska National Forest and the nearby town of Thedford, both in the Sand Hills region; and Morgan Hill and Dunaliella Salina (a micro algae that colors salt ponds, such as those on the left), both in the Bay Area. There are now 120… Continue reading
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Los Angeles vs. Nature
John McPhee is the best nonfiction writer alive. My opinion, of course. But I happen to be right. Nobody describes anything better. No writer does a better job of digging into subjects most would find dull (rocks, pine barrens, river levees, minor species of fish) and making them not only interesting but relevant. Sometimes extremely… Continue reading
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Wintry mixing
I grew up on our town’s best hill for sledding. After a good snowfall, the town would sometimes block the steet so kids from all over could ride down the hill. The top was steep, but there was a long flat straight-away at the bottom. We used to compete to see who went fastest, and… Continue reading
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Happy Early Year
It’s almost 3am in Zermatt, which turns into one huge party town for New Years. First we rode in from a nice day in Lausanne on a train packed with rowdy party-goers. Then we found Zermatt turned into one wild-ass place. Fireworks — big ones — were set off from everywhere all over the town,… Continue reading
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Matterhorn by Moonlight
There are mountains, and there is the Matterhorn. It’s all a matter of sculpture and presentation. Great art, great framing. The Matterhorn is ice sculpture. It was carved by ice out of rock pushed to the sky by a collision between Italy and Europe that’s still going on. The ice was as high as the… Continue reading
alps, blue, Cervino, Matterhorn, night, Pennine Alps, Photography, snow, switzerland, white, winter, Zermatt -
Skiing is believing
The shot above is a pano taken by The Kid with my iPhone, which isn’t good for much else here in Switzerland. (Click here or on the shot to see the original, including larger sizes.) On the left is the Matterhorn, which may be the most impressive mountain on Earth. It’s hard to imagine more… Continue reading
Cervino, Gornergrat, Matterhorn, snow, switzerland, vacation, Valais, Wallis, white, winter, Zermatt -
The Revolution Will Not Be Intermediated
So I just followed this tweet by Chris Messina to Mike Arrington‘s The End of Hand Crafted Content. The tweet-bite: “The rise of fast food content is upon us, and it’s going to get ugly.” Meaning that FFC “will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that hand craft their content today. It’s… Continue reading
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Season’s Leavings
So I’ve been out and about London the 2-3 days. Had a great time. Beautiful city in Christmas season, even (or perhaps especially) in the rain. Not much connectivity, or time to connect, actually. The above is one of the few pix I took, before breakfast with JP Rangaswami this (or yesterday, depending) morning. Shot… Continue reading
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Catching up
I’m back in Boston after a great few days in Utah at the Kynetx Impact conference, where VRM and related stuff was brought up and discussed at length. It was an inaugural effort by Kynetx, which has what I think is a novel and profound take on the future of the Web. The only bad… Continue reading
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Let me re-repeat
[Note: Jump to the bottom first, to see how this went… and may keep going.] So I called SuperShuttle to book a ride to the airport in Denver. The first thing the robot voice said was that I could also book this on the Web. So I thought, cool, I’ll do that. It’ll probably go… Continue reading
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Colors of salt
Before the salt in evaporating sea water turns white, it goes through stages of color that range from jade green to brick red, with variations of orange, yellow and other colors. From above the salt ponds around San Francisco Bay look like giant panes of stained glass. The shot above is from my latest set,… Continue reading
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Shootings up
Painted Cave. Lava Falls Trail. Uinkaret Volcanic Field. Nat Friedman. Denver International Airport. Sarah Lacy. Rainsford Island. Dorney Lake. David Boies. A peak above a glacier. Rim of the World Highway. Elena Kagan. Diablo Canyon Power Plant. Lake Havasu. Berneray, North Uist. Spectacle Island. San Gorgonio Mountain. River Nith. Paul Trevithick. Dumont Dunes. Tunitas Creek.… Continue reading
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Getting quakes straight
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has an excellent Earthquake Center for all the earthquakes in the world, which is very handy at a time when many are happening at once, followed in some cases by tsunamis that cross seas to strike coastlines minutes to hours later. For example, this list of earthquakes of magnitude… Continue reading
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It was a little tougher 214,000,000 years ago
Above is the best (or the widest) shot I could get of Lake Manicouagan, which is the largest visible impact crater on Earth. Only three (or maybe four) are larger and none are visible. The Manicouagan impact event happened about 214 million years ago, give or take. That was 14 million years before the end… Continue reading
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As in days of yore
I blog by grace of something I hardly expected to find: a free open wi-fi hot spot in London. Way back in (it says 1969, but it was actually) 2002, I had a ball discovering many free wi-fi hot spots in London, got to make many new friends, and enjoy, for a brief shining year… Continue reading