Only one goal this time. Hike mt Rainier. So far the climb team consists of Rob, Jon, Drew, Sean and myself. We will be departing on Saturday Aug 30th at roughly 6am. Team members are being urged to camp out at my parents house the night before.
This trip will be documented using a canon 30d with sigma 15mm fisheye and canon vixia hv30. That’s right, this will be the first trip fully documented in both photos and HD video. We will be documenting the trip starting the night before we leave for the expedition.
Recently I had the opportunity to rent two lenes from Lensrentals.com. A 35mm canon L, and 15mm sigma.
The short version, the 35mm shoots super sharp photos, but not very useful. The 15mm sigma. Awesome! Totally blew my expectations out of the water. I will be buying in the near future.
Below are some sample photos I took today with the 15mm.
Now for the story.
Christian said with fire in his eyes. Let’s skate board down to the bathroom! It’s a small hill, we can do it. I nervously responded with, uhhhh sure I guess. We haven’t learned downhill yet but why not…
Shortly after, boards in hand, we scout our path down the small hill. I say with a manipulative tone, Hey Chris you first. Eagerly, Chris smiles and heads down the hill. Not 5 seconds later his arbor board starts to wobble out of control. I ditch my board in fear of the inevitable crash and burn. Whoosh it nails a tree at near lightning speed. Then I look back up and Chris jumps off of his board. No words can properly describe what happened next.
He hits the ground running and just can’t seem to get a grip on the ground. He flies forward head first into the pavement. Flips heels over head, barrel rolls shoulder over shoulder and finally landing in an awakened butt in face ankles in the air position then stops. Silence rolls over the tourist as they watch in awe. He get’s up and says, “I’m good”. Jumps back on the board in an attempt to finish the hill. Not 5 seconds later his arbor boards starts to wobble. He ditches and lands perfectly on his feet. Pops a squat on the board and says I need a minute.
He survives with only scrapes, bruises and a new appreciation for hills and pavement.
Finally got touchlib setup and running on my apple. Tomorrow I plan on starting the build for the MTmini. Which should get me up and running for some basic multitouch dev by the end of next week. Hoping to eventually reach two goals with this research. The first being a way to manipulate and display complex data. Secondly, combining concepts from touchlib with clutter for linux multitouch desktop apps.
I dropped about 5 side projects for this so wish me luck!
It’s up. Check it out. It only displays one photo at a time and the forward and backwards buttons are on the bottom. There is also a rss feed so you can subscribe to that as well.
Today marks the the first time in 22-25 years that I have ever missed “our big camping trip”. Today sucks…
In light of this unfortunate side effect of moving to California, I have decided to redesign my site. Currently, as you can see, it only focuses on whatever jibberish I feel like writing about. This does not do me or you justice. So, I am going to create a way more exciting site. Some of my current thoughts include, photolog, videolog(sorta), and hrmm, well that is all I have for now.
“When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened.”
Let’s start with the setting. The battle took place high atop the Santa Monica Mountains. The rough temperature was near 110 degrees. Then there was myself, a lone hiker daring to take on the heat and insane elevation gain.
Now the battle. As I round the last corner of the hike I see my goal. A strange and bazar sandstone formation that overlooks the Pacific ocean and city of Malibu. All of a sudden I hear it. A sinister sound, rattle rattle rattle. I stop! Look down and see him. The 3 foot long beast of a rattle snake. We stare eye to eye for what seems like hours.
Whoosh a flash of light….
Then all of a sudden he perks up as if to prepare to strike… I do what any man would do. Take off my shoe and throw it at the beast. He dodges and hisses back at me. As if to mock my failed attack. I then jump back and grab my next weapon. A 4 foot long stick. I think to my self. He is 3 feet long and I have a 4 foot long stick. He still has the upper hand. At this point I really needed to assess my options. Fight the beast and reach my goal or run away and live to hike another day. I decided, fight the beat. So we went for it. I swung and he took a strike at me. Then again and again. A true battle of man vs animal. I am not sure why this happened but I decided that the stick was not the tool for the job. I threw the stick as hard as possible and charged the snake. The stick connects!!! And I tackle the snake in it’s confusion. I grab right behind his jaw and we roll around. He rattles and I roar. He wraps around me and squeezes tight as if to suck the life from me. I start to loose it. The battle is turning to his favor. Then I take one drastic move. We roll down the mountain. At some point during this 300 foot fall I manage to gain dominance of the snake and believe it or not tear his head from his snaky body with my teeth. I then stand a roar like a man..
Whoosh another flash of light, then I woke up….
Then all of a sudden he perks up as if to prepare to strike… I do what any sane man would do. Take two steps backwards then run as fast as I could down the hill. It took me around 10 min to run about 2 miles down the mountain. When I arrived back at my jeep I stared at the top in sadness as I was almost there. Shortly after my frown turned into a smirk and I decided next weekend your mine snake.
I started fasting yesterday. My decision to fast was not based on loosing weight as some consider doing but more of an experiment. A journey into how food effects my body and mind. So far there is little I can say about fasting. However, there are two things I became aware of today. Naturally, I am hungry! The second, and unexpected thing I noticed, was that I can now smell extremely well. I am able to now smell to the point where I think I couldn’t smell at all before today. Food, the road, some ones cologne, the ocean, and the list goes on. It almost feels like a whole new world to explore. Which in my book is a major positive. What will happen tomorrow on my last day? I do not know. I am expecting to be more hungry and a bit more healthy though.
My Fast in detail??
8am - Morning smoothie and shot of wheatgrass (yeah it tastes like it smells) and a water
10pm-7pm - 2 Random Nakeds during work and water
7pm - 1 Smoothie from work and a water
8-9 - 1 final Naked and a water
This has been consistent through the first 2 days.