two more bird photos

I posted an Osprey and a Common Merganser at birdwalker, but I'm not crazy about the Osprey -- the light angle was not good. Had great luck with the new thistle feeder in our backyard. We had nearly a dozen goldfinches right away, and our first pine siskin!

Christmas Bird Count Photos

I posted our trip list and some photos from a very lovely day doing the San Jose Christmas Bird Count near Drawbridge. Especially exciting was the squabble between two golden eagles over a squirrel that took place directly in front of the car.

doing cool XML stuff with flickr

Hal pointed me at this cool article about using XSLT to transform the XML you get back from flickr.

Save Pale Male

For roughly ten years there have been Red-tailed hawks nesting on a fancy apartment building across the street from Central Park. Without warning or provocation, the apartment building management company recently destroyed the nest. Can they be persuaded to let the hawks rebuild? For the latest on this epic struggle between good-hearted and heartless New Yorkers, look here.

Visualizing the chord changes to "Giant Steps"

(link courtesy of Pat Smith)

Have you ever tried to learn John Coltrane's "Giant Steps"? It's gnarly. The chords sound right, but soloing over it is extremely confusing. Help is on the way -- Iain Houston has created a nifty animation for visualizing the chord changes of "Giant Steps". Truly, the internet is amazing.

birdwalker2 updated

I just updated birdwalker2. New features include the ability to see all the photos for a trip, location, or county. I am refactoring the PHP code to use objects, which is working very nicely. In the course of doing this I lost track of some of my first sighting calculations, which I need to integrate with the new PHP objects. Another new plan -- tag my cvs repository when I post changes to my server, so I can write better release notes next time.

Custom Wall Calendars Ordered

Well, after looking at the Ofoto calendars, I decided to order from Ofoto using mostly my JPEG's saved with sRGB. While the JPEG's saved with Adobe RGB color space were less red, they were also dark and dull. We decided that overly red was better than too dark.

Custom Wall Calendars, Part Five

Responding to my second email request for information about color management, Ofoto tech support has this to say:

"At this time, Ofoto does not have or support ICC or any other color
profiles. We will notify registered members when this option becomes
available. For best results, Ofoto recommends using Adobe Standard RGB
color spaces.

We suggest that you adjust your monitor so your onscreen image more
closely resembles your calendar from Ofoto. You will then have a more
accurate view of your file and can edit your images to produce the best
photograph possible."

So, there you have it. I have regenerated my images with Adobe RGB and uploaded them to Ofoto. Mary thinks I should do another test.

Bill discovers GrooveLily

Thursday, we presented ourselves at the time and place appointed on our TheatreWorks subscription tickets. As has been our recent custom, we arrived at the theatre knowing nothing about a show called "Striking 12".

What we experienced was a phenomenal performance by GrooveLily based very loosely around Hans Christian Andersen's story, the Little Match Girl.

GrooveLily is a trio featuring drums, keyboards, and electric violin. All three musicians sing. The result reminds me by turns of Shawn Colvin, Christine Lavin, Steely Dan, James Taylor, Laurie Andersen, and Genesis. The lyrics feature clever word play offset by startling imagery. Excellent funk grooves, tasty use of odd meters, fiercely optimistic uptempo anthems.

Afterwards I bought all six of their CD's. I have scarely listened to anything else since. You really should go see this show. The San Jose Mercury News says the same.

Custom Wall Calendars, Part Four

Well, I picked up the Kinko's calendar at my nearest Kinko's this morning. I give them high marks for customer service -- they not only responded to me email query in email but phoned me as well.

The calendar itself is spiral bound with large images, all good. But, the actual calendar pages are pretty ugly, and the quality of the photo printing is no better than the Ofoto and cafepress contestants.

Still leaning towards Ofoto. I wrote to them again about color management.

Custom Wall Calendars, Part Three

We showed the two calendars to various friends. Most seemed to prefer the Ofoto calendar with its professional binding and nice packaging.

On Sunday, Dan and I got around to looking at the color print quality in detail, examining the two calendars with a magnifying glass and comparing them to the original JPEG's as displayed on my color-calibrated powerbook display.

Both calendars overemphasized reds and yellows; I wonder if this is intended to make family snapshots look warmer? Also, both calendars exhibited vertical banding, especially evident in low-contrast backgrounds.

In the end we slightly preferred the Ofoto calendar, but really expected Ofoto to do a better job of color management.

I used each website's support section to write to customer support complaining about the red shift and asking for a copy of their printer's color profile. Cafepress never wrote back at all. Ofoto wrote back to say that my images weren't of sufficiently highly resolution, which is both wrong and irrelevant.

We decided to add a third entrant to the competition, Kinko's. After a bit of wrangling, we managed to get all the images uploaded to the Kinko's site. They have a nice GUI for cropping and laying out the images. I was eventually able to order and pay for the calendar at their website, and arrange to pick it up at my nearest Kinko's store, thus saving on shipping.

Custom Wall Calendars: Part Two

Both the Ofoto and cafepress calendars arrived today via FedEx and UPS, respectively. That's two days after placing the order -- pretty impressive! The Ofoto calendar was wrapped in a plastic envelope containing a silica gel dessicant inside a cardboard box mailer; the cafepress calendar was shrink-wrapped to a corregated cardboard sheet inside a sturdy brown mailer.

First impressions -- the Ofoto calendar with its spiral binding and nice packaging seems much more professional and impressive. The cafepress calendar is larger with large, borderless photos, but its inexact folding and stapling job made it seem much less polished and professional. Also, cafepress put the cover image on upside down.

Both websites did a good job providing order status information, email updates, and links to shipper tracking information.

Custom Wall Calendars: Part One

Inspired by some stuff that my wife Mary found on the web, I decided to try to make a custom wall calendar containing twelve of my photos. Since her original inspiration came from cafepress, and since their website was pretty slick, I definitely wanted to try them. However, some disquieting comments from dissatisfied cafepress customers made me want to try at least two vendors. After looking around, I settled on Ofoto as the second contender.

I downloaded the cafepress template for wall calendars (3,450 by 2,700 at 300dpi), built a set of high-quality JPEG's using Photoshop CS with embedded sRGB color profiles, and uploaded them to both the cafepress and Ofoto websites.

When I started to create the custom calendar at cafepress, I ran into my first problem. Since my first look at cafepress's "Create & Buy (tm)" section several days earlier, the Wall Calendar ($14.99) item had disappeared from the list of Products. Only by fiddling with the URL did I get to the page that allowed me to create the Wall Calendar. An email query to cafepress concerning this oversight produced no reply.

Eventually, I uploaded all the photos to both cafepress and Ofoto. I added captions for the Ofoto calendar; cafepress expects you to format your own captions as part of the image you upload, which is both more flexible and more work.

I ordered both calendars today at midday, November 22nd, to be delivered to my house via second day delivery. Within a few hours I received email acknowledgements from both companies.

Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing" at ACT

We went last night to see Tom Stoppard's play "The Real Thing" done by American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. I should mention up front that I'm a huge Stoppard fan, having been won over by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of "Rough Crossing" several years ago.

Like all his work, this play is self-referential and multi-layered. A play-within-a-play in the very first scene fits perfectly with the main theme of trying to work out when a relationship is The Real Thing. His use of symmetrical scenes in which lovers confront each other lends weight and rhythm to the interlocking stories of theatre people trying to make sense of their intertwingled professional and personal lives.

During the second half I was sure he was setting us up for another devastatingly sad ending as in his play "Arcadia", but instead he gives us a quiet, faintly optimistic one, hinting that Stoppard, like his playwright main character, is quite a romantic.

photo: ucsf vanpoo?

ucsf vanpoo?
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

I swear I did not manipulate this photo. That's what the side of the van said. Spotted in Belmont, CA turning from Old County Road onto Ralston Ave.

Photo: Cooper's Hawk Close Encounter

Cooper's Hawk 2
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Woah. So there I was walking along the sidewalk between the Charleston Slough pond and the windsurfing pond when I hear a rustle like ten feet ahead. I look up and this lovely creature lands just ahead at eye level in a little tree. I just had time to grab like 6 or 8 shots before he got wigged and flew off.

Report: Trip to Malheur NWR

Wow!

We're just back from an amazing weekend at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon with our favorite birding guide, Steve Shunk of Paradise Birding.

Despite unseasonably cold and snowy weather we really enjoyed ourselves and got to see almost all the birds we could reasonably expect at the Refuge. I really recommend a visit to the high desert of eastern Oregon. It has a kind of serenity you don't find anywhere else, due largely to the striking volcanic rock formations and fantastic cloud formations. The sunlight at dawn and dusk is warm and velvety, you could shoot landscape pictures all day and never get tired of it. (note: I'll post some of my landscapes soon, I promise).

For you birders out there, I've posted my trip lists for days one, two, three, and four, and you can also take a look at the weekend total species count.

I had a few good bird pictures over the weekend, especially this American Dipper.

Riders

Great America
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

While looking for a Plumbeous Vireo and a Clay-colored Robin in the parking lots around Great America, I had several chances to photograph folks riding the roller coasters; this is one of the best ones

About this whole accordion thing...

So, my wife and my guitarist have been hassling me for years to take up the accordion. Although I might grudgingly admit that certain applications of that instrument (for example, in Zydeco music) are pretty cool, I'll certainly never tell them that. The more they talk about it, the more I dig in my heels.

Until now.

RSS is actually Simple?!

Conventional wisdom around our office is that any specification or standard that begins with Simple or Lightwight is definitely neither (anyone care to make the case that LDAP is truly lightweight?). Imagine my surprise this morning when I managed to add an RSS feed to my birdWalker site in about 10 minutes. If only WSDL, XML Schema, and SOAP were this easy.

birding website now "bloggier"

On Saturday, I updated the look of my birding field notes website to make it less cluttered and more blog-like. I especially wanted the front page to show details of the most recent trips at the top, with as many photos as possible. Feedback appreciated.

Dowitchers and Plovers

Dowitchers and Plovers
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Dan and I combined his lovely new Canon 20D body with my 300mm f4/L lens at coffee break. I wanted to see how the AI Servo focus mode on the 20D, combined with its large shooting buffer, helps with taking shots of flying birds, a task which is very difficult even with all these amenities. I filled up 2GB (!) of Compact Flash in like 20 minutes. This is one of the better shots, slightly cropped. Here we see a flock of Dowitchers (smaller) with one Snowy Plover (larger) leading the flock. Note the black wing pits.

What's on the iPod: "COWBOYbebel"

The playlist-of-the-week on my iPod is the one I titled "COWBOYbebel". It's two parts "Cowboy Bebop" anime soundtrack per one part Bebel Gilberto's latest album.

Just in terms of story and visuals, Cowboy Bebop stands apart from every other piece of Anime I've watched. What really makes it special is its pairing of techno/film noir visuals with retro big band music. It's a combination that really seperates Cowboy Bebop from the rest of the pack, just as Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack lifted the Charlie Brown animated specials into the realm of classics.

Bebel Gilberto's latest (self-titled) album is more mainstream, less techno than her previous offering ("Tanto Tempo", also excellent). She mixes up singing in English and Portuguese this time, and the results are infectious, light, airy.

I couldn't say why these two seem to fit together; I guess it says something about my appetite for eclectic juxtaposition. Anyway, give 'em a listen and lemme know what you think.

Where's that confounded bridge?

Natural Bridges State Beach, Santa Cruz
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Here's a look at half the bridge from the beach in Santa Cruz. Pelicans really dig it, as you can see. (hint: those rocks aren't naturally white and streaky like that)

Another friendly bird

Red-necked Phalarope
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

I noticed someone digiscoping with their Swarovski spotting scope, and headed over to see if he had found something interesting. He had evidently been looking at some Phalaropes. Although they flew off as I first approached, they later returned to a much sunnier spot.

Black Turnstone

Black Turnstone
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

We got to Natural Bridges toward sunset, and the Turnstones and Sanderlings were feeding in the surf, seemingly oblivious to nearby people and pets. I've never gotten so close to a Turnstone before, it was really magical. I shot nearly 80 pictures in about 20 minutes

Willow Flycatcher

Willow Flycatcher
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Here I am testing Blogger's integration with flickr. This photo is allegedly of a Willow Flycatcher we saw with the Audubons at Point Reyes National Seashore. I'm not sure there are enough field marks here to really be sure of the diagnosis. Any opinions?

Gear lust

I wonder if I can explain to you with a straight face why I really, really need a Canon EOS 20d camera body. My buddy Dan just got one, I played with it at lunch today, and WOW it's nice.

Compared to the Canon EOS 300D I already have, what has this new camera got? Glad you asked. Mostly, it's just faster -- it starts up faster, writes pictures to the memory card faster, lets you change your settings faster. It does that really cool AI Servo autofocus mode whenever you want, the one that lets you track flying birds (the 300D only does it in dorky Sports mode). And it's a lot less likely to tell me BUSY while I'm trying to capture that hawk flying right overhead.

And, it's black. Need I say more?

We ROCKED the CFC

We did the SFBBO CFC and WE ROCKED. More news later, very sleep now.

SFBBO CFC Madness

Every year the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory sponsors a Big Day competition called the California Fall Challenge, in which teams attempt to raise the most money while seeing the highest possible percentage of the known birds in a particular California county during a single 24 period. We did San Mateo county last year, and had a great time. We've only today signed up to do San Benito county with R. J. Adams tomorrow! And when I say tomorrow, I mean starting about 12 hours from now. Wahoo!

an evening with the Santa Clara Valley Audubons

Last night at the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society general meeting, I saw a very cool lecture by Doug Cheeseman about Antarctica. He's a very engaging speaker, and has accumulated some 20 years worth of excellent photos of penguins, seals, glaciers, sea lions, and albatross. Someday, Mary and I hope to go on one of his Africa trips.

After the lecture I had a chance to chat with birder and photographer Mike Danzenbaker. I met him over Labor Day while we were both out shooting, and was amazed to see that he handholds an eleven pound 500mm lens using a shoulder stock (like a rifle). The results are incredible. I don't think I've ever seen so many crisp flight shots of passerines know for their erratic flight (i. e., Chimmney Swift) as you'll find on his site. An inspiration to us all, and a very helpful and friendly guy.

you know you're a birder when...

...you spend time at work solving other people's Eagle identification problems over the internet using google and instant messenger to your spouse. It was fun.

is Diebold going to count your vote? is it really?

Please read this blackboxvoting.org article about Diebold voting equipment. It is very worrying.

hey web people, lend me your ears

I have just posted some new viewing capabilities for birdWalker, my field notes and bird photos database. I would love to get some reactions to the information design and navigation controls. Basically, from most pages you should have several options:

* breadcrumb trail -- leads you from the specific page you're on back up to the title page

* browse buttons -- lets you move to the next, first, last, previous item to the one you're viewing

* view buttons -- view the current item in different ways (by year, by month, as list)

* global menu -- get back to the main indices for trips, locations, birds

Does it make any sense?

The Big Lens Weekend

I hope everybody had a nice holiday weekend. Thanks to a lot of legwork by Mary, we got to spend Saturday up at Point Reyes National Seashore. We spent the morning birding with the Santa Clara Valley Audubon society folks, the afternoon on our own. Here's our trip list, click on the little camera icons to see the photos.

These photos were taken with the Canon 500mm f4.5/L that we rented from Keeble and Shuchat for the weekend. It is a very nice and very heavy piece of glass. I wanted to find out whether I'd be willing to lug this monster around on a birding trip and actually keep up with other birders. The answer is a qualified "yes". I carried it around the Drake's beach visitor center, and from the parking lot out to the Point Reyes Lighthouse. Some kind of carrying strap would be nice, but in the meantime the tripod ring serves as a pretty well-balanced handle.

I got roughly the same proportion of good photos that I always get (i. e., fancy equipment does not make you a better photographer, dang it). When I was able to hold the lens still with good light, the results were pretty amazing, this thing is very sharp.

I took it to Picchetti Winery on Sunday, and photographed some common birds (particularly the Dark-eyed Junco). I also took it to the Coyote Creek Field Station and to the Don Edwards NWR on Monday. While at Don Edwards, I met a fellow who uses the newer 500mm f4/L IS with a shoulder stock and no tripod. Amazing.

must read: Mark Pilgrim on "Why Specs Matter"

Mark Pilgrim has written a brilliant essay called "Why Specs Matter". If, like me, you've struggled to implement and explain systems that import, use, or generate WSDL, XSD, or XSLT, you gotta read this.

the entropy pool is closed for cleaning!

Did you know that your Linux computer can run out of entropy? And that "When the entropy pool is empty, reads to /dev/random will block until additional environmental noise is gathered." Guess whether that has a salutary effect on the Java virtual machine!

wedding bells!

My brother-in-law has announced his engagement to a wonderful woman. We had a monsterous fondue blow out to celebrate our anniverary, his birthday, and his engagement announcement. Life is GOOD.

have you listened to Jimmy Smith today?

well, have you? Although I've had Jimmy Smith CD's in my collection for quite some time, I only recently heard about his very first album, entitled "A New Sound, A New Star." (see Amazon). Many will tell you that jazz B3 Hammond organ is an acquired taste, and perhaps they are right. For some, this music will at first evoke calliopes or soap operas or melodramatic silent movie soundtracks. But listen again and you'll discover that Mr. Smith is swinging just about as hard as any keyboard player you can think of, and putting out a sound that's much more like a big band than like a trio.

another of my blog heroes is Rich

I forgot to mention that another of my blogging heroes is the very articulate Rich Berlin, a former housemate and gifted musician.

serious anniversary loot

I would like to state for the record that I am a very lucky fellow. My wife treated me to a serious pile of photography gear yesterday for our anniversary, including my dream tripod setup (Gitzo 1227 and Acratech Ultimate Ballhead), new Canon EF 70-200mm f4/L zoom lens, and a new Canon 1.4X tele-converter. The carbon fiber tripod legs are a total revelation, especially compared to the hefty Manfrotto tripod we've been carrying in the field all these years for birding. I forsee a new birding tripod in the not-too-distant future.

hi!

Hi there. I started this blog mostly because I want to be as cool as my friend Grant and my wife Mary, the wonderful woman with whom I today celebrate my twelfth anniversary.