100k Miles!

I declare today Random Picture Day! Victoria really loved this moment when her (just recently 100% paid off!) car passed the magic 100k mark. How often do you get to witness that in your life, after all?

NASCAR Is Coming!

Yes it is true, since meeting Victoria I have turned into a major NASCAR fan. No, we do not own any shotguns, RVs or vote Republican yet. We just like it, as do more and more “liberal” people from the blue states. Of course I pass Infineon Raceway every day on my way to work, where next week’s race will be held. 100,000 people will flock to the raceway, backing up streets for miles and miles (they got shuttle service from 17 counties this year, we’ll see how much that helps). Over the last week, the raceway has slowly been transforming – tents have gone up, advertisement panels been installed and portable toilets have been placed everywhere. Here’s a picture of the raceway as it looked today. The full picture is much bigger, but beware the file size: 1.3mb or so.

Finch Feeders…

…attract finches. Funny how that works.

Poseidon

Unapologetically ludicrous. That’s the only way I can describe this movie. It was easy to stop empathizing with the characters because you know what, the movie wasn’t playing by any rules, anyway. “Here’s a group of movie clichees in ridiculous situations, and some of them will die along the way.” – “Okay… just get it over with for Christ’s sake!”
Still, if you’re making FPS levels you’ll have to rent this movie. It’s the ultimate Half-Life level. The environments, the situations could all come straight out of a shooter. Great visual FX too (I can only guess how many invisible effects I missed).

“It’s Alive!” – Animatronics Exhibit

Before we left Los Angeles to embark on our 7 hour drive home from E3, Victoria and I stopped by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the same guys that award the Oscars) for the animatronics exhibition that had opened just that day. There’s some real movie history on display there – from original King Kong illustrations to some of the D.I.D. devices used to animate Jurassic Park to recent endeavors like the Vogons from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Here’s a few images from the exhibition!
“It’s Alive!” runs until August 20 at the A.M.P.A.S. in Beverly Hills. Here’s the official webpage with more pictures and information.

“It’s Alive!” runs until August 20 at the A.M.P.A.S. in Beverly Hills. Here’s the official webpage with more pictures and information. I’ll try to post some more pictures later.

The Fog

I have often struggled to accurately convey the density of the smog that constantly conceils Los Angeles from the outside world. “You feel like you’re in a bubble”, “You can’t see hills that are two miles away” are graphic, but don’t quite seem to make the same impression as experiencing it first-hand. I think after this year’s E3 trip I finally got it:

The smog in Los Angeles is so bad that you can look almost directly into the sun without going blind.

People will accuse me of exaggerating. I don’t think I am Speaking of Los Angeles and E3, pictures to follow shortly!

E3 Pictures

Some personal pictures taken at E3. I only took my camera on the last day to sample the surroundings. Here’s us with a Powerpuff Girl and Victoria playing the Cars demo.

E3 2006

E3 2006. People, games and excitement in the LA heat. And Lair, on the big screen in the Sony Playstation 3 area. More pictures of the conference soon (Sunday). Online version of the trailer here.

R.I.P. Terry

R.I.P. Terry. 1991 – 2006.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

I have this trail to the next deli that I often walk during lunch hour. It’s a bit of street and a lot of hills and trees. So about 10 weeks ago I noticed a flurry of movement in one of the puddles on the side of the trail. Tadpoles, and a lot of them. 2 weeks later the sun had evaporated a lot of the water (the puddle would dry out later before most tadpoles had turned into frogs). So I figured why not take a few tadpoles to the office, feed them and see what happens. We did this kinda stuff all the time when we were kids, after all. 8 weeks later I have about 15 frogs in my little watertank, pictured below. They’re fun to watch, even though coworkers find the occasional escaped cricket on their desks