Best new favorite album: Goldfrapp, Black Cherry Best new favorite band: Gnarls Barkley Best new favorite album by an old favorite band: Cornelius, Sensuous Best website: Netvibes Runners up: Tumblr, Facebook, Pandora Most overrated website: Second Life Best print magazine: Washington Monthly Best online magazine: Slate Best bay area hike with dogs: Phoenix Lake Trail, Mt. Tamalpais Watershed, Marin County, CA Worst natural disaster: SoCal Wildfires Best short-film compilation DVD series: Wolphin Best new favorite nonprofit organization: The Long Now Foundation Best new hobby: Skiing Best board game: Polarity Best major life change: getting engaged Best photo:
Photos from our Lake Tahoe trip in late December. We spent the entire time in downtown South Lake Tahoe, a fun, if over-touristed, place to visit. Christy and I took a few days to bum around town with our dogs before Boyne came in for a visit from San Jose, then he and I went skiing at Heavenly while Christy hung out at the Tahoe Marriott's day spa. We chose Heavenly as a matter of convenience, since the ski resort's gondola stretches right down into the middle of town, but I'm glad we did because it's also a great place to ski.
This is very near the highest summit at Heavenly ski resort. That's the lake there in the background (click pics for a larger version).
This is me roughly 10 seconds later, after falling over backwards down the hill.
Boyne stands at the edge of a steep drop. Heavenly is unique in that its ski terrain is divided almost equally across both California and Nevada. That's Nevada there in the background, with all the dirt.
At the state line between California and Nevada, elevation appx. 10,000 ft.
Christy and the dogs down by the lake. Christy's cringing here because the wind whipping off of the lake is incredibly goddamn cold. As soon as this photo was taken, all four of us were running to the far side of the nearest cabin for shelter.
A shot of Maya wearing the goofy booties Christy insisted I get for her at the dog boutique. The snow was unseasonably light during the entire trip, evident here. Amazingly, the entire time we were in Tahoe the daytime temperature never dropped below 38 degrees.
Sorry guys, I'm taking a hiatus from blogging to work on a portfolio and hopefully score some gainful employment. I'll be back soon.
Quick update on It's Something Special: Color correction is finished, and since I've decided to run with the sound mix I've already got this movie's not going to get any more ready for screening. To that end, I'm considering putting it online for download. I'll run a compression and see if I can get the film under 100 MB while hopefully keeping it from looking too shitty. I'll let everyone know once I get this all worked out.
Incidentally, I've been using my living room TV to do color correction, and just for the hell of it thought I'd run some web video on there to see what it looks like. I was impressed with the result – most web video, assuming it's of a halfway decent quality, looks pretty damn good on a plain old CRT television screen, even at full-screen resolution. I don't know if that says more about the ability of online video to compress and distribute a decent quality image, or about the ability of a standard-definition television to degrade that image enough to fool you into thinking it looks better than it really does. It's probably the latter. Nevertheless, I think it's neat.
Finally, I present your nauseatingly cute Dogblogging photos for the month of April. This month: special San Diego edition.
All right, no more blog deadlines. You think I would have learned by now, but...no. I've got a two-page love fest for Capote that I'll finish up sooner or later, but blogging about the Oscars is like, so three weeks ago. Besides, I don't really have much else to add to the discussion. But I will say this: Crash? Ok, I didn't comment about this back on March 6th, because – confession time again – I never even got around to watching the movie until just last night. Now that I've seen it, though, for the record...you've got to be kidding me. Munich wasn't great either, but at least it had some decent action scenes. Crash?!? Nice cinematography, fine editing. Also, piece of crap. Possibly the worst screenplay of any movie I've watched in the last year. That's my review. Barf.
Anyway, I've just gotten back from a week in San Diego, where I caught the semifinals and final of the first-ever World Baseball Classic. These pictures are just over a week old, but since I forgot my SD card reader I had to wait until I got back to SF before I could post them on the blog. So here we go, fashionably late as usual:
The Cuban team visits the mound in their semifinal game against the Dominican Republic. In this photo, those little people-shaped-dots show Dominicans Miguel Tejada on second, Albert Pujols at first, and David Ortiz at the plate, wating to bat. For those of you who don't follow baseball, just trust me that you're looking at something very, very cool. From several hundred feet away. (Click the photo for a slightly larger rendition.)
Later that evening, at Korea's semifnal game with Japan. This photo features me doing my passable impersonation of a Korean baseball fan (you can't see it here, but I've got a beer in my left hand). I think I was the only white guy in the stadium rooting for Korea. I did notice, however, several dozen whiteboy anime fans, apparently all taking a break from hanging out in comic book stores to show up and cheer for the Japanese. Incidentally, none of them were with girls.
Boyne patriotically waves his Korean flag, even as a series of Japanese homeruns literally causes the PETCO Park scoreboard to burst into flames.
After Japan wins the final 10-6 over Cuba, the Japanese contingent takes the field. I don't have anything to say about this photo except...see those little pieces of confetti-looking stuff all over the diamond? That's what's left of the Cubans. Seriously. These Japanese guys were out to win. Also, that's a big flag.
Her name is Maya, and we're not sure what she is. Some kind of hairy Yorkie-mix-thing. BUT SHE'S 100% CUTE.
We actually adopted her a few weeks ago, but I held off on posting about it because I was in the process of shutting down the old blog. As you can probably tell from the photo, this one is Christy's dog.
(Yes, that's a real mascot.)
Hope everybody had a great year.
