Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

Photos

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Blog Posts

Jaiku

I just signed up for an interesting social aggregator website called Jaiku. It has the same functionality as twitter, but it can subscribe to and display your RSS feeds. I'm not sure I'll use it as much as twitter, but it seems like a useful application. You can check out my Jaiku page here. I heard about it via a twitter from Jason DeFillippo, who was waiting to get in to the Jaiku launch party in SF, but apparently ended up leaving with Scott Beale due to the long, motionless line.

Update: As it turns out, but Scott and Jason made ended up going to the Jaiku party, as evidenced in this laughing squid blog post.

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Monday, June 18th, 2007

Blog Posts

Blackberry Pearl Trackball Failure, Part Two

My Blackberry Pearl's trackball just stopped working again. This is my second Pearl that failed for the same reason. The trackball scrolls, but does not click. According to T-Mobile, this is a known issue with the Pearl. They are sending me a replacement... again.

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Thursday, June 14th, 2007

Blog Posts

Downtown Los Angeles Filming Maps

april through june filming in downtown

Several months ago a progression of disturbing Downtown filming events culminated with a low flying helicopter buzzing our rooftops at midnight on a Sunday. Residents and business owners in Downtown voiced their opinions against the way they were being treated by film crews. In response the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC) formed and ad-hoc committee on filming issues. I have attended many of their meetings over the past months.

FilmLA gives us the notifications as Microsoft Word documents. There is an open source application that converts MS Word files into text called wvWare, which I had previously used for another project. I set up an special email address that I (or at some point FilmLA) can email the notifications to at which point qmail hands off the email to a php script that I wrote, which pulls out all the attachments, feeds them to wv and then parses the text wv produces. Currently I am able to parse about 90% of the notifications, but some of them are now being sent in PDF and RTF formats. In the near future I am going to enhance the parse to handle those formats as well.

After the raw data is parsed it is sent to a Ruby on Rails application that I wrote that uses YM4R to integrate with Google Maps. Using the Downtown Filming Maps application I wrote you can now search by date range and keyword to see what is going in, filming-wise, in Downtown. You can also subscribe your iCalendar compatible calendar application to see what is going on. The application is still in beta, and doesn't have 100% of the filming locations on it, nor does it show any parking or road closures from filming.

In the near future I plan to add:

  • More parsing ability
  • Different colored icons to designate upcoming, current and past productions
  • Ability to comment and upload photos for each production
  • Ability to get email notification when productions are scheduled within a user defined radius of an address

Check out the Downtown LA Filming Notification Map and tell me what you think. The screengrab above shows all the notifications in the system which goes back to the beginning of April. The map shows a week in the past and a week in the future by default.

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Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

Blog Posts

Photos

Friday, June 8th, 2007

Blog Posts

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007

Blog Posts

Friday, June 1st, 2007

Blog Posts

Photos

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

Blog Posts

blogdowntown Historical Fun

I totally failed to mention that I am now writing for blogdowntown. This is in addition to writing for blogging.la. I am going to continue posting content relevant to LA on blogging.la and I am going to be posting Downtown history related tidbits to blogdowntown. I will also be linking to my posts on those to blogs from here and if the content is relevant to multiple outlets I will post unique versions of the content on each site.

My first post on blogdowntown was of a spoon that I bought on ebay. I posed a few questions to the readers and they were answered quickly. I am planning on doing a series where I scan historical public domain photos of Downtown from my collection of old books and post them along with a modern version of the photo's subject. I am now going to try find a way to take a photo down 3rd street from Bunker Hill, if that is even possible.

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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

Photos

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Blog Posts

Friday, May 18th, 2007

Blog Posts

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

Blog Posts

Monday, May 14th, 2007

Saturday, May 12th, 2007

Photos

Friday, May 11th, 2007

Blog Posts

Downtown Diversion

I have ridden my bike and driven past Downtown Diversion [warning auto-play movie with sound] many times in the years that I have lived in Downtown Los Angeles, and after reading this article in the Downtown News, I knew I had to get a tour. I emailed the president, Mike Hammer and asked if and when I could come down and shoot some photos. He told me that they were about to celebrate their 3 year anniversary of incorporation and I could come down to that, take some photos and have a free lunch, all of which I did today. Thomas Blank, the Division Manager, was kind enough to give me a tour and answer some questions about the facility and their operation.

Downtown Diversion recycles construction and demolition (C&D) debris. Although the cost per ton of recycling this material is more expensive for contractors than taking it to the dump, the location in Downtown and doing the "right thing" brings roughly a million pounds of waste through their facility daily. Miraculously they are able to reclaim and sell 75% of this material for uses such as mulch, fuel, road base, and fertilizer.

The crux of their operation is a massive industrial waste sorting machine, known as a star screen, manufactured by Lubo. This giant, debris hungry beast devours freshly demolished building materiel on one end and excretes various useful grades of material out the other. Standing atop the scaffolding next to the waste sorting personnel and breathing through a dust mask, I was simultaneously thankful for my relatively boring desk job and their commitment to a hard job in a hazardous, and very loud, environment.

Enough banter, enjoy the photos:

Water sprayed to reduce airborne particu

Waste processors

Lubo : Single Stream Star Screen

The processed waste

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Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

Blog Posts

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007

Blog Posts

Photos

Saturday, May 5th, 2007

Blog Posts

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

Friday, April 27th, 2007

Blog Posts

Amy Winehouse (posterior), Stephen Marley, and Bus Driver : Coachella Friday : Part 2

So I missed my chance to get shots of Amy Winehouse from the photo pit, and I only got this lousy photo from backstage. After that I shot this photo of Stephen Marley from a filming platform:

Stephen Marley and Crowd

I got a whole bunch of shots of Bus Driver, who put on a great show. I was really impressed. I haven't seen him on the mic in many years, and his passionate performance was enthralling. His DJ even threw in some drum'n'bass. Good stuff:

Bus Driver

[Bus Driver](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/475244949/ "Photo Sharing")

You can see the rest of today's Coachella photos here.

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Monday, April 23rd, 2007

Blog Posts

Friday, April 20th, 2007

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

Blog Posts

Route 66 Photo Essay

After an amazing trip with the Desert Explorers, Penelope and I headed home via historic Route 66. Here are a few photos from the trip:

Riverside Cement Plant

Route 66 House

Route 66 and Clouds

All photos are a combination of 3 bracketed exposures (0,+2,-2 EV) taken with a Canon EOS 5D through a Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8 L lens and combined into an HDR image and tonemapped in Photomatix.

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Photos

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007

Blog Posts

April Downtown Art Ride - NEW MAP!

I want to start this post off with a very special thank you to Eric Richardson and Cartifact for donating the excellent map for the Art Ride once again. Eric went out of his way to craft a great map for the ride and Cartifact very generously donated their wonderfully detailed Downtown map for use on the Downtown Art Ride.The Downtown Art Ride takes place every second Thursday to coincide with the Downtown Art Walk. The ride starts at Art Murmur gallery on 6th and Main and we try to make it to all of the other galleries in Downtown. If you're interested in joining us on the ride, just show up at 5:00pm at Art Murmur. Bring a bike, lock, and light and optionally, but highly recommended, a helmet.

I will be riding with my camera and photographing riders and artists, you can see some samples from the previous art rides here. There will also be a recent film school grad shooting a spec commercial to promote bicycling in Los Angeles for her director's reel. Shouldn't interfere with the ride much though. We had a really great turnout last month and I've already have a few people email me about this month, so it should be a fun ride. I'll see everyone tomorrow!

Map You can download the new map here: Downtown Art Ride April 2007 Map [244KB jpg].

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Sunday, April 8th, 2007

Blog Posts

Saturday, April 7th, 2007

Blog Posts

Cemetery Blogging

My "Location"

I was randomly surfing the internet and I came across this website which gave me some information about my IP address. I zoomed in on the google map, and according to their data, I am blogging from a cemetery. I would have thought that the location shown would have been my ISP (Speakeasy), but I guess not. Maybe my loft was built atop an ancient burial ground and soon zombies will be rising from my pool, or lack thereof. OMG, are those Zombies‽

Update I missed the best part, according to their website, they are the "most accurate IP Address locator." I would hate to see the least accurate locator.

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Photos

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

Blog Posts

accessories
accessories
urban
urban
outdoor
outdoor
crowd
crowd
outdoors
outdoors
sky
sky
building
building
electronics
electronics
hat
hat
part
part
architecture
architecture
lighting
lighting
art
art
nature
nature
concert
concert
night
night
plant
plant
coachella
coachella
glasses
glasses
recreation
recreation
land
land
footwear
footwear
shoe
shoe
jewelry
jewelry
photography
photography
indoors
indoors
furniture
furniture
performance
performance
light
light
vehicle
vehicle
transportation
transportation
machine
machine
city
city
device
device
portrait
portrait
club
club
electrical
electrical
blue
blue
room
room
stage
stage
rekognition c
rekognition c
bag
bag
animal
animal
life
life
microphone
microphone
interior
interior
audience
audience
handbag
handbag
rock
rock
cap
cap
car
car
computer
computer
music
music
metropolis
metropolis
musical
musical
road
road
performer
performer
instrument
instrument
headgear
headgear
activities
activities
leisure
leisure
baseball
baseball
tree
tree
shirt
shirt
hardware
hardware
necklace
necklace
wood
wood
entertainer
entertainer
water
water
pants
pants
cloudy
cloudy
wristwatch
wristwatch
table
table
screen
screen
chair
chair
coat
coat
fun
fun
grass
grass
monitor
monitor
musician
musician
bracelet
bracelet
mammal
mammal
floor
floor
party
party
arts
arts
speaker
speaker
performing
performing
flooring
flooring
baby
baby
flare
flare
pub
pub
cup
cup
pet
pet
scenery
scenery
food
food
wheel
wheel
path
path
jeans
jeans
spotlight
spotlight
housing
housing
junglescene
junglescene
beverage
beverage
couch
couch
weekend
weekend
design
design
jacket
jacket
plywood
plywood
alcohol
alcohol
office
office
nightclub
nightclub
container
container
flower
flower
canine
canine
child
child
hill
hill
dog
dog
cord
cord
darkness
darkness
summer
summer
pc
pc
boy
boy
area
area
laptop
laptop
street
street
park
park
happy
happy
glove
glove
equipment
equipment
desk
desk
cityscape
cityscape
landscape
landscape
singer
singer
sport
sport
shelter
shelter
wear
wear
formal
formal
phone
phone
smile
smile
sea
sea
guitar
guitar