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Ah, isn’t it great when you get finished with a nice productive day of work and are rewarded with a few days to do whatever the heck you want? I love these long summer weekends.

Speaking of summer, it is, in fact, the first day of summer (woo!) – the summer solstice, and the longest day of the year. I actually almost woke up at 5:47am this morning just to watch the sunrise from the top of my building, but my awesome Ikea bed was way too comfortable. Sunset is at 8:34pm, making the day a good 14 hours and 47 minutes long. Sweet.

It’s also unnaturally hot here in the bay area – I can only imagine what it’s like further inland (sorry people from the central valley, I hope you have pools). It was 93 degrees here today, and it still feels like it. I went to the gym at lunch and worked up a sweat, and then stopped at the car wash just to feel the spray from the high pressure nozzle! Then after work I scrubbed my bathtub, cleaned my sink, and took a cold shower, just to cool down.

I’m not sure why I enjoy cleaning and organizing things, but I won’t question it too much, since I think it’s a good thing. It’s got to be something about being physically productive after spending all day being virtually productive. I mean, you can program all day and all you might have is something that goes a little bit faster than before, but scrub a grimy bathtub and man you can tell the difference! It feels good to get something real done in-between lines of code.

Aaaaand I’ll leave you with that thought. Besides cleaning bathtubs, what are y’all doing to beat the heat this summer?

A couple nights ago there was a total lunar eclipse visible to most of the world (did you see it?) so I took a few pictures. They came out pretty well:

Not too bad! You can see more in the full album. They were taken with my new Olympus E-510, 40-150mm f/4-5.6 telephoto lens, and a tripod.

I’ve also got pictures from my Yosemite trip up here, I’ll post some to the front page when I get a chance.

Also, if you reading happen to be in the Cal Band, I’ll be working to put up an an album of the 4000-odd photos I took last year of everyone so you can purchase prints. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

I was waiting for the UPS truck all day today, and it finally came at 6 PM with my new camera. I was jumping around like a little kid on Christmas, which was probably scary for my roommate and his girlfriend to watch, but I couldn’t help it.

My previous camera was an Olympus E-300, but it was sadly stolen from my (accidentally) unlocked car about a year and a half ago. I never saw it again. Since then I’ve used my dad’s Olympus E-500, and it’s served me very well.

After Olympus released their new model E-510, I was pretty convinced it was the next step for me. It has 10 MP of resolution (not that anyone ever needs that), Sensor-shift Image Stabilization (works with all lenses), and Live View. In addition, it pretty much does away with noise concerns at high ISO, which was a problem with the E-500 and below. In fact, noise at ISO 1600 (the highest sensitivity) looks an awful lot like nice film grain, as you can see in this shot.

It came with two lenses, and while you can get the camera with just the wide-angle 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6, it’d be dumb to pass up a 40-150mm f/4-5.6 (80-300mm in 35mm equivalent terms) telephoto for only $100 more. Both are excellent lenses, despite the fact that they’re a little more plastic than their previous models, and the telephoto is a slightly slower (the clean high-ISO and Image Stabilization makes up for it). They’re sharp, have surprisingly nice bokeh, and are darn small and light (hence the plastic). You’ve never seen a 300mm equivalent telephoto zoom that’s as small as this one. A very portable package all in all.

Other than all that technical stuff, it takes beautiful photos! You can see them above, and if you view the whole post, and in this zenphoto album here. I’m going to Yosemite next week for a family camping trip, and I plan to take lots more. I’ll be sure to post them afterward.

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One of my featured photographs on Wikipedia (English edition) has been selected as the Picture of the Day for Saturday, July 21st 2007 (two days away!). I’m going to be on the front page of Wikipedia! Woo!

Here’s the photo, click it to go to the template page and see what it’ll look like. And if it’s Saturday, head to Wikipedia’s front page to see the photo and my name next to it

Update: It’s past, but it was cool while it lasted. Here’s a screenshot:

Just a pictorial comparison; draw your own conclusions…

That Microsoft ad was in the Powell Street BART station, which Apple used to own completely. Now it’s plastered with “Wow” ads that don’t make me say wow. The Apple store above was a block away, jam-packed with people. If that’s not good marketing I don’t know what is.

No comment on these, it’s just an interesting case study. Why would a company like Microsoft choose to have such bad marketing? Could they possibly do better, or is it not in their nature? Why does apple just “get it” and how would another company achieve the same? Why don’t they?

My girlfriend discovered the most amazing thing last month in a tree right outside her apartment window — it was a hummingbird nest! Not something you get to see every day when you step out your door, but she did for over a month! It all started with the mommy hummingbird just sitting in her nest incubating eggs…

The mother hummingbird sitting in her nest. 2/1/07

Keep reading for over a dozen pictures, including one of a baby hummingbird learning how to fly. It’s priceless, don’t miss out on this one.

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Parakey is a upcoming “Web OS” by one of the original developers of Firefox (some teenage kid) that seamlessly integrates the local desktop with the remote server. It does this by using a small server running on the desktop along with the remote web application to keep everything synchronized; work offline, work online, and everything’s still up-to-date.

I just want to say I have a whole notebook of ideas about making an OS for the web, and three or four pages were dedicated to this very problem. I’m just glad someone had time to get around to implementing it!

Some of the ideas sound hokey (like the sharing “keys”) but this should be a sign of things to come, with most user data residing on servers, and thin web clients all over the place to access and manipulate it. All that’s needed past that are various levels of cache (possibly full mirroring) for when you’re not connected, which is always going to be a possibility. A web-centric, connectivity-aware computing environment. Not too far off I don’t think. Anyone want to get started? I’m game.

Finally, for the first time Ever (literally), I have a calendar system good enough to use.

Now the only thing left is integration with Gmail, but I’m sure they’ve got that up they’re sleeves.

Seriously though, Google Calendar is a very good application that’s just plain useful. I hate to admit it, but I’m one of the odd lots that’s getting suspicious of Google’s growth, and then great things like this come along and have to convince me again. Perfect use of Javascript, nice clean design, simple and good UI principles. Can’t get much better than this.