Saturday Night

Went to a co-worker's party last night and decided to stake out the J trains on their way back to the yard.

A Favorite Place

Mayhem Tetsujin

Robot by Moonlight

Forlorned Candy Corned

More about the Forlorn Candy Corn on Mission Mission.

Giant Stuff

The Strand

I, for better or worse, ride on Market Street everyday. Sometimes when it rains, it can be dangerous. But if you go slow and use good judgment you'll be fine. Sometimes you'll learn a lesson (like the one learned a couple weeks ago). This is what it looks like to shave your legs with a fixed gear.

I ride by 1127 Market Street, formerly the Strand Theater, everyday and have become fascinated with it. The Strand was raided and shut-down by the DEA and SF vice cops in 2003 and was once hipster central in its many incarnations in addition to being a theater. I've become even more curious since I get only a few seconds to take a cursory look at it as I try not to become a smear on the way to work.

With the recent daylight savings change, I now get to commute in the dusk, rather than the dark on the way home. On the way home recently, I realized that the north-western-facing side of Market gets great light at dusk. The kind of light where you don't need the post-production step.

It's not that I do a lot of post-production, but I do like to get the shot to look the way I want it when I can. Still there are a bunch I'll post with nothing more than saving it as a jpeg in photo-chop. Sometimes when you're traveling you don't have time for the p'chop so you're forced to get it as right as you can in your camera. Only a few of these will be good, but it's worth getting them. Most of the time it's about getting lucky, but a lot of the time it's about acting on a moment.



It only takes a few minutes to shoot something and seeing something while not trying to eat sh*t is quite satisfying in the right light. Details emerge and wonderful things are found and the moment of discovery is fun and exciting.



71.2 °F
50.9 °F

A great spring day.

New Bike Day

I just picked up another pista to add to the collection (pista pile). This one is a 2001, black with celeste decals. This is the first model pista I remember seeing and have wanted one ever since.



Bikepedia has a pretty comprehensive list of bikes from 1993 forward. Bianchi started making the pista in 1999 as a 2000 model (before then it was made in celeste as a Reparto Corse track bike). It has several paint schemes over the years my favorite being the 2003 Battleship Grey.



In 2006 they changed to a white paneled decal with world champion rainbow stripes so the same decal could be used across models and colors. I'm not terribly fond of the new decal and sadly there have been great colors released lately like gang-green, that would have looked so much cleaner with the old type-only decal.

Blue

Dramatic Commuters

Keirin Ad found at Hipster Nascar

Friday Mission

Songbird Ninja Spotting in Italy

It looks like The Songbird Ninja has made his way to Italy! An fan in the #songbird IRC channel has taken the 'bird to the street. To say the least I'm flattered to see my work being graffiti-ed (you might say it was grattifying).



See the original art on the Songbird Blog and check out the latest 1.1.1 release, now with Watch Folders!

Update: on BB.

No Stopping Anytime

PIE FIGHT!

Pie fight at the Powell cablecar turn-around.

Radio Transmission

Brad, Dennis, and I rode up to the top of San Bruno Mountain on Saturday and I carried my camera to get some shots from the top of the climb. I was carrying my usual, Canon 5D with my 24mm - 70mm f/2.8. The last time we were up here I remember seeing these signs posted on the fences around the towers.



We didn't think much of it, but decided to spend as little time as possible dilly dallying up there. This time, I wanted to take shots of the view and the towers, except that getting too close to the towers was causing my camera to malfunction! It would error out 90% of the time and I managed only a few underexposed shots. I also noticed a lot of interference in my view finder causing things to look dark as if my depth of field preview was on.

Needless to say, after biking away from the towers my camera functioned normally. My hypothesis was the strong radio frequency was interfering with the ultrasonic focusing mechanism, but even after switching to manual focus the problems persisted. Anyone experience such a thing trying to shoot near radio towers?

Update: I looked up Error 01 for my camera and found that this error happens when the lens cannot communicate with the camera body. Typically caused by dirty contact points, this I've found can also happen when you're next to strong radio frequencies! I'll need to wear my lead underwear next time I go up there.

Thanks Pesco

I got bb'd!