New Camera, New Homepage
September 11, 2009 / Tags: 5D Mark II, Jon, Kathy, OCPAC, Photo Outing, The District
Unlike some people, I'm not much of a writer, at least when it comes to personal blogging. For some time now, I have wanted to change my homepage to more of a photo blog, but I never could find the time to write the software. I tried evaluating Wordpress and other open source projects, but nothing was exactly what I wanted (duh). I did find some inspiration though, and with the arrival of my 5D Mark II, I figured now was the time to make it the switch. So a sleepless week later, I present to you ::drumroll:: my new home page.
The main features are a cleaner layout with nicer inline display of images
and better large image display. Instead of going to a separate page, large image display is done using a lightbox. (Click on the image above to test it out.) I wrote all the lightbox code myself -- it's based on the lightbox code I wrote for Arcadia Music, except instead of fixed display sizes, it sends the size of your window to the server and the server determines the optimal size image to send back. Oh, and it's written in JQuery instead of Prototype. I still like Prototype better, but JQuery appears to run faster, and it downloads a lot faster than Prototype + script.aculo.us. The HTML is also super-clean because so much of the heavy lifting is done by the javascript. The new software also supports pretty permalinks and tags. RSS support is planned, as is an open source release.
I'll leave you with a few test shots from the new Mark II. Some of these were taken at the park near my condo, some were taken at The District, and rest were taken at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.
This one is my favorite from the group.
P.S. I'll try to find time to back-fill the galleries from my old homepage.
August Birthdays
August 29, 2009 / Tags: Amanda, Bailey, Beer, Birthday, Brad, Bryan, César, Cuban Bistro, Food, Heather, Jon, Kathy, Michael, Moles la Tía, Pete
For my birthday, Kathy arranged for a bunch of us to have dinner at Cuban Bistro in Alhambra. At first, I was thinking: Alhambra isn't really known for lively nightlife, is it? I hadn't been there in years, but I was pleasantly surprised. And the food was really good -- we need to go back soon.
They're apparently known for their mojitos, so of course we had to try them. ;-)
For Pete's birthday, we went to the Stone Brewery Beer Festival. And bonus -- Brad was in town!
Despite beer not really being my thing, I had a great time. Even Kathy had fun, and she really doesn't like beer! ;-)
For Bailey's birthday, Ambassador César took Bailey, his friend Isako, Kathy, and me to his favorite Mole restaurant in LA, Moles la Tía. And if César likes the food, it would be an exercise in redundancy for me to try and describe how good it was.
Jon's Birthday
Pete's Birthday
Bailey's Birthday
Observation Balloon at the Great Park
July 3, 2009 / Tags: Birthday, Great Park, Jon, Kathy
For Kathy's birthday we drove down to Irvine to ride the big orange balloon in the Great Park. Only a few people can go up at a time, and the conditions were kind of windy (further limiting the number of people who can ride at once), so we were lucky to get a spot. We had to wait a while, but as you can see, we found ways to amuse ourselves.
The view from the air was worth the wait.
Kathy and I went up to Malibu to check out a potential wedding site one weekend. We're glad we did, because it was a lot smaller than it looked in the pictures. Not wanting to waste the trip, we headed down to the beach to take some pictures by the pier.
As I was figuring out poses and lighting this guy came up to us and offered to take our picture. I refused at first, but as he started talking it became apparent that he was a professional photographer.
So I gave him my camera and let him pose us. The pictures turned out great!
Afterward, I took a few more of Kathy on the other side of the pier. I'm pretty happy with how those turned out, too.
For Heather's birthday we went to K1 Speed in Carlsbad. I was racing, but Pi'ilani took some awesome pictures.
Towards the end of the race, I got a lucky break -- Heather (whom I had been trailing for ten laps) got stuck behind someone who had spun out, so I ended up taking first.
It's a puzzle!
