papaya tree

A papaya tree at the Honolulu Zoo. It's a rather odd-looking plant that is apparently not a real tree, technically speaking, and has a whole genus ( Carica ) all to itself.

night, las vegas strip

old motel, las vegas strip

The abandoned White Sands Motel, across the street from the Luxor. This page about old Vegas motels has a vintage photo for comparison. More info on the White Sands and other vintage Vegas motels here.

TR, October 2010

red crested cardinal, kapiolani park

A red-crested cardinal in Honolulu's Kapiolani Park. They're native to South America and were introduced to the Hawaiian islands around 1930. I haven't found any info on why they were imported originally. As far as I know they're strictly decorative; they aren't edible and they don't control agricultural pests. So maybe they escaped someone's aviary or something along those lines. In any case, they're kind of cute and they seem to be everywhere.

waikiki jellies

Jellyfish at the Waikiki Aquarium. As always, I forgot to note the exact species shown in either video clip, which sort of limits the educational value here. And I could probably have gotten better clips if I'd filmed them with something other than a Blackberry, for instance if my DSLR took video, which it doesn't. And I'm sure they'd be much more relaxing if I added a gentle New-Agey piano soundtrack or something, if I knew anyone who made that sort of music, which I don't. But hey.

twilight, waikiki

catamaran, waikiki

aria at night

evening fog, lincoln city

chinatown cats, honolulu

mindanao gum

A colorful Mindanao gum tree (a species of eucalyptus) at the Honolulu Zoo.

Octopus cyanea

A day octopus (Octopus cyanea) at the Waikiki Aquarium.

waikiki sunset, christmas 2010

waikiki, infrared

waikiki afternoon

Just got back to Portland, thought I'd pass along a typical hotel balcony photo. I was probably sipping on a nice cold beer and listening to the hotel tiki bar's cover band when I took this. Meanwhile, I understand it was snowing or sleeting or raining buckets or something similarly awful here in PDX. Could somebody please remind me why the hell I live here again? Because I've completely forgotten.

Why I'm getting on a plane for the holidays

Here's a video I took around this time last year, trudging through ice and snow and slush in downtown Portland, wielding an iPod nano and trying not to fall over. It really wasn't all that much snow, but it was quite slippery and hard to walk in, hence the heavy breathing towards the end of the video, for which I'd like to apologize in advance. I'm sure it didn't help that I'd spent the entire day in meetings, leveraging proactive synergies outside the box on a go-forward basis. Also, it was uphill the whole way. Also, it was my birthday and dinner plans were cancelled due to the snow. A supremely crappy day all around.

So this year the plans are a little different, and involve vacation and a plane to somewhere a bit more tropical. Stay tuned.

5

So this humble blog turned 5 years old yesterday. I suppose I ought to have some remarks prepared about what I've learned so far, or a list of favorite posts from over the years, but I haven't gotten around to that. I kind of meant to do something like that for the 1000th post, and failing that the 1024th, but I was busy and just didn't get around to it. In part I think it's that anniversaries like this are of no possible interest to anyone but me, and they're of only passing interest to me. On top of that, I also have a birthday in a few days that I'm kind of dreading, so looking backwards over all the many years that have passed just doesn't feel very compelling.

I have been tinkering around with the blog, though. I thought it was looking a bit dated so I've been doing a bit of template tweaking. What's changed so far:

• I thought the sidebar was getting kind of cluttered & junky, so I moved a bunch of stuff off to static pages instead, like the ginormous Link Tree and my paltry About info.
  
• Speaking of static pages, this humble blog now has a navigation bar up top, including links off the site to Flickr & Twitter (instead of the sidebar Flash widgets I used to have for them).
  
• The post area has been widened so Flickr's new 640x427 image size fits. I've been going back and updating old posts to use larger images, starting with the ones listed in the Popular Posts widget, and continuing with others as they get hits. Speaking of the Popular Posts widget, would anyone be too upset if it went away? I'm of two minds about it right now.
  
• Reduced the number of colors used, and toned down the remaining ones. The post background is just white now instead of yellow/cream/whatever. I tried to find a more subdued version of that color first but didn't see anything I liked. I think the thing's a lot more readable now.
  

I admit the new static pages aren't too fabulous yet. That's still on the TODO list. Lots of things are still on the TODO list.

column detail

Actually the main reason behind this post was to help tweak the humble blog template a bit more so that larger-sized Flickr photos will fit.

Of course now I'll probably feel obligated to go back and update old posts to use larger photos. Oh, the fun just never stops here in the blog industry.

template tweakage

Tinkering with the humble blog template again, and I'm not done just yet. Comments are welcome if you have strong feelings about it either way.