On a recent tromp through the brush, I stopped to see the flowers.

• Poppies
• Camera: iPhone 4
• Aperture: f/2.8
• Shutter: 1/3352 sec
• ISO: 80
• Focal Length:

Not too long ago I was out in the middle of a field (looking for a lost rocket if you must know) when I remembered to remember what’s important, that is look around.

I grabbed my camera (yes, my iPhone) and snapped a shot of the flowers at my feet.

So I drafted a somewhat flippant response:

I like the book “Making Fire Happen” by, me.

It’s a small book, one page, one sentence: “Get out and make fire happen.”

But in re-reading it, it still sounds pretty good.

I chose “fire” because of the reference to rocketry of course, but it’s implications work almost anywhere you’re looking to create heat, light or intensity (with perhaps some risks attached).

• Top Banana sunset
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/5.6
• Shutter: 1/8000 sec
• ISO: 400
• Focal Length: 200 mm

If you’re a fan of the old warbirds, living near an airport has it’s perks. I shot this of Julie Clark as she passed overhead. I deliberately panned on her hoping she’d pass directly across the sun, but she didn’t quite. Lots of flare in in the 80-200, but not so much as to ruin the shot.

• Exhaust vents
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/4.0
• Shutter: 1/3200 sec
• ISO: 400
• Focal Length: 12 mm

Like my foray’s to the old bunkers at what used to be Mather AFB, I finally got access to the old Titan 1 missile base outside of Lincoln, Ca.

I got to accompany a reporter from The Sacramento Bee on a tour of the abandoned base for a story and while the base is completely flooded due to ground water, wandering around in the weeds has become something of a norm on trips like these and to me is still kinda fun.

The doors of launcher #2, top view. The metal plate in the near view covers the huge hinge mechanism, which is basically a giant metal pipe or rod. Simple and effective. And did I mention huge?

• Silo doors, launcher #2
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/8.0
• Shutter: 0.002 sec (1/640)
• ISO: 400
• Focal Length: 12 mm

We met two representatives from Placer County — the property the base is on is owned by the county — and it became quickly evident that among the four of us I was the subject matter expert, brandishing my own printout of a base layout I’d printed from a 21M-HGM25A manual off Silo World.

We wandered around and I pointed out what I thought things were while reciting the specs of the Titan 1 missile. The idea of thermonuclear ICBMs streaking across the Sacramento skyline on their way to, oh I don’t know, Cuba maybe? was a weird thought.

Looking down the LOX vent shaft next to launcher #2. You can see how much water is in there. Unfortunatly the entire complex is under water.

• LOX vent shaft, launcher #2
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/8.0
• Shutter: 0.1 sec (1/10)
• ISO: 400
• Focal Length: 12 mm

As I mentioned, the base is flooded and impossible to enter so we were limited to tromping around on top of it. I chuckled to myself as I was the only one wearing boots and blue jeans. Growing up in the foothills and this not being the first Cold War site I’ve visited, I was prepared. My Dockers sporting friends probably got enough star thistles to last them a while.

Other than being flooded, the base is in decent condition. There was some physical damage in places — I’m guessing someone tried to pry open the cargo hatch with something like a fork-lift or loader, they failed — but generally speaking it’s hard to mess up concrete blast doors.

The metal lip on the launcher doors. The little balls are shot, apparently this was a popular placve to shoot trap at one point.

• Silo door "molding"
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/8.0
• Shutter: 0.002 sec (1/500)
• ISO: 400
• Focal Length: 24 mm

I could have spent more time there, tromping through the weeds and wondering what this railing was or where that concrete hatch went, but stickers bushes and history don’t quite have the appeal to everyone that they do for me so we packed it up and split.

There’s some question as to the need to pump the water out of the complex as there is some ground water contamination in the area. I have no idea what the situation is around that (hint: read the Bee) but if they do pump the complex out, I’ll definitely be back.

• Ducks and snow
• Camera: LS-50
• Aperture: n/a
• Shutter: n/a
• ISO: n/a
• Focal Length: n/a

Winter has always been my favorite season and even though this summer has been a relatively cool one, I like to think we’ll have some relief soon…

• Standing out even in bright light
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/4.0
• Shutter: 0.05 sec (1/20)
• ISO: 800
• Focal Length: 22 mm

Last week I went to the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco and as usual (I’ve only missed one I/O, you see) I came back excited about the future and all hot on new technology.

Of course the stark contrast to all this cool innovation is the current state of the newspaper cum online news industry, which left a very small tinge of sadness around things — but that’s a post for another time.

Android was, naturally, the big focus but Google is a lot more than a one trick pony (again, there’s that tinge) so there was plenty of developer love for the non-Android types. There were tracks on Geo, App Engine, Google Apps, and handful of others as well. Some of the things that caught my eye were:

Fusion Tables.

• Silhouette on escalator
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/4.0
• Shutter: 1/2500 sec
• ISO: 400
• Focal Length: 16 mm

Man, Fusion Tables rock. I’ve known about them for some time but never really used them. Basically they’re database tables “in the cloud” and you can do all kinds of stuff with them — like SELECT and such — via a RESTful requests.

I was unaware how powerful they can be, especially for mapping — and I loves da mapping. I fully expect to use Fusion Tables in my next project.

Google App Engine

I’m a huge fan of Google App Engine (SacTraffic runs on App Engine, you know) and there were a host of updates announced at I/O.

I spent some quality time talking to some guys from guardian.co.uk about how they use App Engine for their news publishing.

Chromebooks

Note everyone checking out their new tablets.

• Color free zone
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/4.0
• Shutter: 0.006 sec (1/160)
• ISO: 400
• Focal Length: 24 mm

I’ve been intrigued by Chrome OS for some time. I know a lot of people don’t get it, not seeing how a Chrome OS powered device (aka a Chromebook) fits in with a tablet, but I see a distinct difference in the two and am really looking forward to getting my hands on a Chromebook — to both play with and develop for.

Included as part of the famed I/O swag this year was a new Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet and the opportunity to pick up a Chromebook when they ship in June. So far I’m been underwhelmed by the tablet — so far it’s just a big iPod — but I have high hopes for the Chromebook.

Chrome Developer Tools

As a web developer, Firebug has been a staple but Chrome’s developer tools have really come of age and I was really excited to see some of the things they can do. Setting breakpoints on DOM element changes was pretty freakin’ cool.

So all in all it was two days of uber-geeking and I enjoyed myself immensely. Now I need to go build something.

Just before the opening Keynote in the crush of attendees...

• Yours truely, keynote mob
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/4.5
• Shutter: 0.02 sec (1/50)
• ISO: 400
• Focal Length: 12 mm

• First warm Spring day
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/8.0
• Shutter: 1/4000 sec
• ISO: 400
• Focal Length: 12 mm

Spring has sprung, finally.

• Empty swing
• Camera: LS-50
• Aperture: n/a
• Shutter: n/a
• ISO: n/a
• Focal Length: n/a

Well, this is the longest dry-spell ever on this blog. Don’t feel bad, I rarely update Twitter these days either.

Fear not, I’m not dead.

I do get out an shoot on occasion, often throwing back to actual film with my trusty Leica M3, so I’ll try to post more photos and their stories here.

Oh and maybe a few rants on the state of the newspaper industry….

Google App Engine

The first major change is the use of Google App Engine to power SacTraffic.org. Heretofore SacTraffic had a backend powered by Perl on a LAMP-based system and relied on pretty much whatever hosting I could scrounge off friends for its home on the web.

Now, sitting on the shoulders of App Engine, with the firepower of Google behind it, I don’t have to worry so much where it’s hosted or how much traffic it can handle before it melts down. I know it can handle whatever gets thrown at it.

Also by using App Engine there’s an honest to goodness data store underneath it so this allows for more flexible and detailed queries on the CHP data. Data is now available via arbitrary queries, down to the CHP “Area” level, like ‘Placerville’ or ‘North Sacramento’.

Maps API v3

On the client end, the map engine behind SacTraffic has been updated to the Google Maps API version 3. This means, among other things, that it’s a lot faster to load.

I’ve also tweaked the look of the map a bit, but mostly because I could.

Atom Feeds instead of RSS

Because the CHP incidents are more data than content, I found that Atom feeds are better suited to syndicating them that RSS was. Along with the PubSubHubbub support that’s part of the new setup, the new Atom feeds are ideally suited to be the foundation for other systems (like the @sactraffic Twitter feed, which they do in-fact power).

More Live Cameras

The CA Department of Transportation has added quite a few cameras — like 25 more — since I last checked so I added them this time around. Sadly, they still use that nasty Microsoft ASF format so they still play like crap on non-MS systems, but when they do play they’re still pretty neat.

Optimized code

Along with the update to Google Maps API v3, I’ve gone through the other JavaScript, CSS and even HTML files to make the site better, stronger, faster. From using CSS sprites for the graphics to obscure JavaScript optimizations, I’ve probably tweaked on it.

More to come

I’ve got other tricks up my sleeve, like more mobile development and faster data updates, all just waiting on the time to implement them, so check back often.

• St. Francis at night
• Camera: LS-50
• Aperture: n/a
• Shutter: n/a
• ISO: n/a
• Focal Length: n/a

The wife and I hit San Francisco earlier this week and, you know it, I brought along a few cameras.

Forgetting the lessons learned from a few vacations ago I figured my D300 and a few lenses would be a good thing to shlep around and photograph with but I soon remembered that, oh yeah, it’s heavy.

Sure, my new love, the Nikon AF Zoom-NIKKOR
80-200mm f/2.8D ED (one of Nikon’s best kept secrets by the way) is unbeatable and didn’t fail to impress, but after a few miles on foot, nothing says “superfluous” like a 120-300mm equivalent lens taking up room in a sholder bag.

Ultimately I fell back on, and had the most fun with, just my trusty Panasonic LX-3 and of course the Leica M3.

This guy was like a block away but was belting out the opera tunes while we ate in a little outdoor bistro. It lent a perfect ambiance.

• Opera guy
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/2.8
• Shutter: 0.001 sec (1/2000)
• ISO: 200
• Focal Length: 200 mm

I also found that the iPhone was a great fallback when you just wanted to record something silly — and San Francisco has its fair share of silly — and tweet it.

I’ve never been much of a street photography shooter, but the Leica kind of lends itself to it and the touristy nature of a lot of SF makes cameras just part of the landscape so it’s very easy to just blend in. After a while I got pretty good at gauging focus and guessing exposure (f/8 and be there) and really had a lot of fun with it.

• Waiting on the steps
• Camera: LS-50
• Aperture: n/a
• Shutter: n/a
• ISO: n/a
• Focal Length: n/a

So we wandered all over SF by foot, strolling through Chinatown and riding the cable cars and whatnot — in short doing all the touristy things. We toured the USS Pampanito and the old Presidio and finally hopped on one of those open-top busses, because frankly we weren’t cold enough walking around on foot.

All in all a good time.