A belated Merry Christmas!

Unexpected consequences

When I voted for the Seattle smoking ban, I guess I didn't quite realize that would mean my walk home from the bus stop would involve walking through a cloud of smoke outside the Little Red Hen. I guess I'll have to cross the street if I want to avoid the two breaths of perilous second-hand smoke that I take while walking past - or just get over it.

640x480, baby!

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Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

Took this shot of downtown Seattle last night from Kerry Park (in frigid temperatures, I might add). Hooray for the camera phone!

New Phone

Finally bit the bullet and got a new phone! It was made much more palatable by UW's discount with Cingular, which is nice. As soon as it's charged for 8 hours (though it's already telling me it's fully charged) I'll get to play with it and see what it can do!

Boat

OK, so apparently my readership wanted to see a picture with a moving boat in the scene. As you can see, the foreground has some streaks of light - evidence of the moving boat, even if you can't see the boat itself due to the low light.

Seattle at Night

 
I stopped by Gasworks Park tonight to take some night photos of the Seattle skyline. With the weather being so clear lately, I figured this was a good opportunity. Many of my shots, however, were marred by the passage of decorated boats on Lake Union - they're pretty on their own, but during a 15-second exposure, they just end up putting a big light smear in the picture. In this boat-free shot you can see Seattle's newest high-rise going up - just to the right of the Washington Mutual building. 

Snow day in Seattle

It snowed today in Seattle, the entire duration of which I enjoyed from inside the Blue Flame building. The snow was in big, fat flakes, likely because it was still pretty warm. It didn't stick in downtown, but up on the hill in Tangletown it stuck a little to the grass and cars. Walking home from the bus stop I also saw that someone had made a tiny snowman - people always make snowmen, no matter how little snow there is... I guess it's just too tempting :)

Mountain photography

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Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

Every time I fly between the Bay Area and Seattle (provided there's daylight) I get obsessed with watching every mountain as it goes by from the plane window. Baker, Glacier, Rainier, Adams, St. Helens, Hood, Jefferson, Three Sisters, (Crater Lake), Shasta, and finally, Diablo. Last week when I headed home for turkey-day, we had to fly even farther west than usual due to an ash plume that St. Helens sent up earlier that day. Made for a nice shot with Hood to the left though!

Are you kidding me?

 
The people in my neighborhood sometimes go a little crazy with their Christmas lights... walking home from the bus stop today I saw that they had already started! Granted, it's just a few white icicle lights, but come on! Can't you wait till after Thanksgiving?  

Trip to Philadelphia

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Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

I just got back from a nice trip to the East Coast. I was officially there for Kelli's wedding, but I also took the opportunity to visit Steph in Pennsylvania, as well as tool around in NYC for a few days with Peter.

Fall sky

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Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

I do love fall - it's not just the pretty leaves all around (though I like those, too - click the photo for a few shots I've taken) - it's that there's something a little different about the sky itself. Clouds are interesting, sunsets are amazing (when it's not overcast), and the light coming through the trees is just cool.

What a Koolhaas!

I finally made it to the new Seattle Public Library - I've been meaning to go since it opened a year and a half ago... how's that for procrastination? Anyway, it was just as cool as I thought it would be - and hurray for making a library such a neat place to go. 

Old iPod, new iPod

A labmate of mine recently bought the 4GB black iPod nano (right). Very sleek! For fun, I put it next to the 5GB 1st generation iPod (left, as if it wasn't obvious) that I've been borrowing from Peter. It may not be as chic, but at least it still works! Someday I'll get my own - but for now the clunker will have to do. Thanks, Peter!

Sunset

Sunset at Tom and Susan's wedding last weekend... beautiful wedding, and lots of fun! 

Check-in on Southwest

Southwest now lets you check-in online 24 hours before the flight, rather than at midnight the day of departure! Hooray!

Wildflowers

Fireweed near Lake Serene, off Hwy 2 in Washington.  

New River Gorge

Boats floating down a calm portion of the New River - the day before we did the same trip! 

Silly shot

This was our "silly" group shot after several rounds of serious pictures at the whitewater rafting/camping trip last weekend - sometimes you never really grow up!
 

Nature

Saw this spider devouring a fly in its web this past weekend while at Eno River State Park in North Carolina. Other highlights of the trip included camping and whitewater rafting in West Virginia, tooling around the Duke campus, including the Duke gardens, with my cousins, and spending a lot of time with my good friends and seeing their new house.  

Construction near Whistler

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Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

Went to Whistler in British Columbia a few weeks ago and noticed that there was quite a bit of construction going on everywhere. Could this be related to the coming 2010 Vancouver Olympics? The road from Vancouver to Whistler has always been 2-lane, and now it's being widened. Other buildings seemed to be going up everywhere as well. It could just be summer construction, but I think at least part of it is motivated by the upcoming international sporting event.

Kerry Park

I stopped by Kerry Park in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle last night for a peek at the amazing view of Seattle at sunset. No wonder there were at least 10 people with DSLRs on tripods there! Click on the picture for a few more shots...

Excuses, Excuses

OK, so it's been a little while. Sorry! My previously free wireless that I got at home dried up, and though we did bite the bullet and finally join the world of (legit) broadband, it took till today to get it all set up. Soo anyways (ugh) I'll be able to post from home now (well, I could always dial-up before, but MAN is that slow!) so maybe I'll be a little better about posting regularly.

Had some help figuring out how to turn the little movies from my old digicam (.avi) into animated GIFs - so the movie I took of the finale of the fireworks show over Lake Union this year is now postable! I'd worry about it taking a long time to load, but since everyone who would ever want to look at this site has a high-speed connection, I guess I won't worry after all.

Blue Angels practicing

In preparation for Seafair, the Blue Angels were practicing today around Seattle - and buzzed our building more than once! The second time I had my camera ready to go and snapped this shot. According to my labmates, they are #5 and #6, so you can look up the pilots on the Navy website. They'll practice again tomorrow and then Seafair is this weekend. I will be heading out of town to avoid the madness!

Harry Potter

A teaser trailer for the fourth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, is out - though fairly uninformative and using a number of scenes from previous movies. I have to say that I don't approve of Ron's new 'do though. Harry, on the other hand, still looks similar to how I would imagine him from reading the books. The third movie was directed by Alfonso Cuaron, and I thought that was the best of the three so far. This one is directed by Mike Newell, who directed Four Weddings and a Funeral. It comes out in November, most likely around Thanksgiving. Blimey!

Mmm, steroids.

Apparently Rafael Palmeiro has been using steroids, despite his denial - I guess it's lucky I got a shot of him and Ichiro at the Mariners game I went to last month ("Fun with the Ultra-zoom," July 20, 2005 below), because he's been suspended for 10 days.

Psychedelic Blimp explained

This blimp has made several appearances at South Lake Union in the past few weeks, leading me to dub it the psychedelic blimp. Apparently the King 5 helicopter was sent to investigate too. After perusing the Seattle Metblogs site, however, I finally learned what its purpose is... to inspire children? Oh well, at least it's fun to look at. 

Balcony sunset

We've been having some beautiful sunsets lately, prompting me to take some shots of the colorful sky last week. Standing on my balcony I took a series of shots (helped with the stitch assist function on my camera), then stitched them together in Photoshop Elements.

Sunny Seattle Summer

Well it's the end of July and Seattle sure has been having a nice summer! Temps in the 80s, clear blue skies, long daylight hours - this is what makes the rainy months all worth it. :) Oh, and check out this shot I took of the waxing moon with my Canon PowerShot S2:

Big science

A few weeks ago my advisor spoke on NPR's Science Friday about our lab's research and its implications for clinical heart repair. Follow the link if you want to listen to it or read the transcript!

MSN Virtual Earth

MSN Virtual Earth - Yet another scarily detailed program for viewing satellite images of any location you choose - I just spent half an hour revisiting childhood haunts. It's a fun way to procrastinate!

Fun with the Ultra-zoom

At a Mariners game on Saturday, I had some fun with my new camera. I enjoyed having the long zoom (12x optical), as well as the high-speed continuous shooting mode for action shots like this one of Ichiro getting thrown out at first base. The ball has almost reached Rafael Palmeiro's glove.

Canoe commute?

Only in the Pacific Northwest would someone think, hey, let's get to that seminar this afternoon via canoe! Portaging the canoe across Mercer St. was probably the hardest part of the adventure. I sure have some unique labmates!

Offspring

About a year and a half ago, my friend gave me a plant called a pregnant onion. It's an onion that grows half-in and half-out of the soil. As it grows, it forms bulges in the bulb, which eventually bleb off to become their own little plants. The first "baby" of my original plant has finally started to get its own leaves! I think it's really cool.

Lilies in bloom

Checked my balcony this morning to discover that my lilies have finally started to bloom! I planted them last year, enjoyed them, then neglected them royally. They don't seem to care, though, because here they are again!

Ka-boom

A bit belated, here are some shots I took of the 4th of July fireworks over Lake Union last weekend. All taken with my little 2MP point-and-shoot Fuji digital camera, with no tripod! The show was great. I'll have to wait till next year to try out my new camera...

Mt. Rainier

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Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

Hiked to First and Second Burroughs mountains, from Sunrise at Mt. Rainier. Weather was gorgeous! The Mountain was spectacular. I did begin to regret carrying both my dinky digital camera (with which this picture was taken) AND my big, old, metal, manual SLR, with a second lens, about halfway up the trail. Other than that, had a great time.

Exciting!

FedEx
Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

I just checked the status of my Canon PowerShot S2 IS order, and it was shipped today! Estimated arrival is Thursday afternoon, much faster than I'd anticipated. I'm getting very excited about my new camera! Sometime soon I'll post some shots I took with my old camera this weekend at Sunrise, Mt. Rainier.

Hi blog-world

Everyone's telling me I should have a blog, so here we go...