more tales
August 4th, 2009
Dudes! I saw a giant fucking robot!
So apparently this thing is about as tall as a 3-4 story building, it’s not enormous to be truly breathtaking, but it is still amazingly cool that they would build such a thing. It’s more or less a fancy statue to the cartoon robot Gundam, but the attention to detail and moving aspects of it have turned it into a giant “robot”.
Not certain on this, but seems plausible that the giant robot could be quite feasible with today’s manufacturing technology. I don’t think we, as a species, are as advanced with rocketry and fuel technologies to get the flight issues worked out, actually making a giant, functional robot is definitely possible. I don’t know about long term reliability or whatever, but Japan seems like a likely starting point if anyone could ever find a reason to actually build them large.
Signs also seemed to indicate it was the Gundam series’ 30th birthday, which means it really was a embedded in the mind of more or less an entire generation of Japanese kids, who are now the engineers working with top of the line technology today. It’s just a matter of time until someone connects a need for something with the powers that be to actually build it. Probably not in our life time, I know. I swear to god that I had a “what if” moment, when looking at directly in the eyes, when I could actually imagine it being real.
coco
August 3rd, 2009
One of the core reasons for visiting Japan was to meet this guy. His name is Keishin, but he is more commonly known as cocoip to the Flickr community. Over the past several years, he has become quite possibly my favorite photographer online. His shots are simple, clean, but always alarmingly gorgeous. His shots are typically of the Japanese night skylines, but even when he’s moved out of this comfort zone, the shots are still amazing.
We met up with him on the man-made island of Odaiba, which is about a 20-minute train ride away from Shibuya. Odaiba is also home to the giant Gundam, which provided some ample photographic scenery. Despite some language difficulties with some of the more complicated questions, it was great to pick his mind and figure out why and how he does what he does, and also get some perspective on Japanese culture and customs from a local.
Keishin’s day job is over at Capcom as a music producer, and he’s largely moving over to large-format film photography for future projects. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t do photography professionally, just as a side hobby for the pure purpose of producing great photos. He is an excessively nice individual and I’m thrilled that I got a chance to hang around him for an evening. Oh yes, and the name. Cocoip = Coco (a love for cocoa) + ip (first account was created for iPhone photography). I didn’t ask him about his user icon though.
Japanagain
August 2nd, 2009
When I travel, it’s somewhat rare that I’ll go to the same place twice. For the most part, it’s a weeklong dive into a country where you know virtually nothing, which means forced discovery of culture, sayings, transportation, and what to actually do when you’re there. This last week though, I opted against this and went somewhere I’ve been before, loved, and wanted to go back. So I did. Tokyo.
This trip showed me a few things and helped cement some opinions on the city and the people, and allowed me to go further away from the city center, more comfortable of the transit system. For the most part, the one big realization seems to be that Tokyo is without a doubt the most interesting city which I’ve been to on this planet yet. The technology, the art culture, the way people treat each other and behave, it’s all so wildly different compared to what I’m used to.
It is also so extremely photogenic. Ended up with 1200+ photos easily – and probably could have doubled that if I had the energy to really push myself. I could do a photo from Japan, every day, for the next three years. Both New Japan (neon/fast/colorful/loud) and Old Japan (wood/slow/subtle/simple) work well, and where they meet makes for really interesting photos. It seems like a city which bodes itself well for a 365-day photo project, since there is always so much going on in the center of the city.
I’ve put together my fifty favorite shots from Tokyo/Kyoto here – and I plan on uploading more as I clean them up and find different angles which work. This is the first trip where I’ve used light metering in any sort of serious way, which makes for longer shot setups but ultimately much better shots, and I think it showed through here. Of course, moving to significantly better camera bodies and lenses helps too. The city itself is a monster – and I still feel I’ve only explored about 1/100th of the available areas in Tokyo, but things definitely felt more comfortable this time around. Lots of stories to come soon, I’m sure.
one guess
July 27th, 2009
I am overseas. It’s probably pretty clear where I’m at.
Life at f/1.2
July 24th, 2009
is good. Taking tons of random shots just to see what this thing is capable of. Kind of a learning curve, but after one day, some pretty great shots already. The backgrounds just melt away, making foregrounds far more dynamic. Very sharp lens too.
training
July 22nd, 2009
This is at f1.4. I’m renting a f1.2 lens for the week, and it’s focal point is slimmer than that when fully opened up at 1.2. This is going to make for an interesting challenge over the coming week. However, look at this big, beautiful glass. Gorgeous. The lens looks like it wants to EAT LIGHT.
pipes
July 20th, 2009
When I woke up this morning, it wasn’t guessing that I would be driving a different car home. But that’s what life has delivered to me, in an accidental way. With its keys in my possession, I’m currently romping around Silicon Valley in a brand new BMW 328i. Woot! The 3-series is the larger model compared to the low-end model I have, and it’s just… nicer in most every way. Despite the fact that this costs more than mine, it actually has less horsepower, and you can feel that when you push it to accelerate. It’s not the car I would buy, but it’s good to fire up the cylinders of something new every once in a while.
It’s a loaner – as Butter gets a fuel component replaced. After driving around shite Chevys and Hyundai’s on recent trips for rentals, it’s nice to have something pretty great to play around with for a day or two.
renegade
July 19th, 2009
Renegade Craft Fair SF ‘09. An entire warehouse of oddball Etsy craft people obsessed with plushies, meats, guts, owls, trees, and moustaches. Definitely an interesting way to spend an afternoon supporting local artists and such. All of the artists are trying to find their own unique niche, but oddly, a lot of them end up producing stuff which is quite similar. There is a lot of idea swapping/stealing going on here, as they battle to make something more adorable than the next. I suppose the ultimate goal is to produce some plush item that is so adorable that the entire universe collapses on to itself. Thankfully, we are still years away from this happening.
Final purchases were a simple lapel pin which is shaped like a ham-bone (not surprising, I know) and a bizarre t-shirt of a beating heart happily pumping blood. Amazingly, I did not purchase this giant plush moustache, and looking back on this photo, I realize how many people had likely had their noses up against that plush material, and now I must go wash out my nostrils with bleach.
blonde
July 18th, 2009
As this happened during the data death week, I didn’t get to post about this show. Blonde Redhead at the Independent. Once again, the Independent and their “open camera” policy lets me down, as they wouldn’t let my pro camera indoors. So, my shots kind of sucked, since I just had to snap shots more or less as I was walking out with my bag during the encore.
But, you know, it actually lets me enjoy the show without thinking about shots, so maybe it’s a good thing? Amazingly, this was the first show in a long time where I wasn’t standing next to some one horribly annoying (screaming dude, makeout couple, stoner fratboy, fist-pumper, etc, etc), which you know, helped the show be far more enjoyable.
They mainly played tracks from their latest (and greatest) album “23″, and you know, they kind of kicked some ass. BR has a strange sound, but it comes through as a big rock band sound when played live, and it all kind of worked. In a bigger venue, I don’t think it would, but for a small place like the Indy, yes. Also impressive, they sold out two nights at this venue, and it was absolutely packed on the second night – full sell out with people jammed to every edge of the place. Since when did Blonde Redhead suddenly get popular? They could have easily played a Fillmore show and filled it.
Apparently they’re working on a new LP for 2009, but you know, that seems difficult if you’re touring around, but what do I know. Anyhow. Blonde Redhead. Recommended.
one week
July 18th, 2009
One week ago, a chain of events started. One the morning of my friend Vanessa’s wedding, one of the three hard drives which powered my server died. It dropped into a corrupted, but running state (as a RAID-5 array should), and continued to serve up information. Perhaps due to all the requests coming in for information on her wedding website (which I was hosting) from the newly corrupted hard drive, the system froze up. From that point, my array decided to split into two, each array trying to recover itself. RAID-5 arrays shouldn’t do this, ever. From this point on, my drives became more and more unstable and data started to corrupt. It was on borrowed time and was dying fast, and it was just a matter of time. I was able to save some of my critical data (tax records, etc) through low-level drive access, but the damage was more or less done. In the end, I lost over 1 TB of data due to this disk failure, and a significant chunk of my digital life.
Amazingly though, this has not affected me as much as I would have expected. It’s given me a chance to upgrade my server with more space and more memory, a new operating system and an upgraded copy of Wordpress. I’ve got to re-build my music collection, portfolio, and websites, but you know, all of these should have been re-built anyways. Data failures happen. Pouting about them doesn’t help anyone.
So, the swanktastic you’re looking at is built up again from scratch, but better and stronger. The last design worked out fairly well, so I’m keeping that around. However, I’ve updated some of the UI elements, and am releasing my first website with jQuery bits built in – which I believe will be the first of many. Instead of overlaying the first few sentences of a post on the image, you can expand and contract the details of the post by clicking on the image. So smoove. So, so smoove. The website should work better in IE7 and lower-resolution systems as well.
Oh yes, the wedding was impressively grand and everything went off quite smoothly.
