City lights on the inside of my eyelids

I miss living in a city. I haven't very often or for very long. Barcelona for 2 months, Seattle for 5 months, I guess you can count Richmond for 2 years. A corner stone of any city that I'd like to live in is public transportation.

Seattle had an amazing public transit system that would take me from Bellevue into downtown in about 45 minutes. This is me time, time to read and listen to music. NOT talk on the phone, because that's just rude. But I really enjoy the sway of the bus, the other travelers; I feel connected with them in a way that I don't when we drive next to each other. The driving is left to someone else and I can watch the scenery. I can focus on the birds and sunset, I don't have to worry.

Around Seattle also had ferries, these are at least 12 kinds of awesome. They also provide a time for picture taking, down time, time to talk and provide a good adventure, even if only for 30
minutes.


I enjoy much more riding the subway. The dirty tiled floor of the station, swiping cards or giving tokens has a sense of time to it that cannot be matched anywhere else. Again, I enjoy connecting with the other passengers by their presence only. Talking to strangers in that kind of setting has never appealed, but the clutch of the train as it pulls away and the G forces as it slows down. The flickering of lights, well it just appeals to me.

I miss living in a place where I can travel without being the driver. Here either I bike or I drive. There is a bus, sure, but it runs only a few times a day and isn't really designed for around town commuting, more for cross island destinations.


I enjoy walking on stone. The hard surface beneath me makes me feel small against the age of this stone. It's been around longer than I have and will continue to be long after I'm not.

It's not just the reduced carbon footprint, or the lower cost, the absence of anxiety from not driving. It's also the culture. These things were built during a time when city planners put an enormous effort into moving a large amount of people. This technology comes form a time when society wasn't centered around the individual. You can blame it on whatever you want, video games or media, it doesn't really matter at this point. Pretty much everyone is on this path to manifest destiny.

$4.50 at the pumps yesterday and I still filled up.





To revive my old meme:
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be.
If you had your choice of method of transportation there, what would you choose?

Strong Finish

A couple of months ago, shortly before thanksgiving, we bought a Nikon D40x DSLR. We researched as much as we could before choosing, we just didn't know what we'd want or need. I chose the d40x over the d40 because of the higher megapixels. We got the body and a kit lens for about $650 (quitting smoking money) from Amazon. Shortly after we bought a camera case and a tripod for $40 also on Amazon.

I took a photography class in highschool and that's the extent of my formal training. I had a great teacher who loved Macs and really pushed us to create art however we saw it, either with SLR cameras or digital videos. For some reason I felt that all those lessons I learned JR year would carry across a decade.Getting this camera has been a blast for me, it's allowed me to take some really nice shots of the island we live on.

The d40x allows a shutter time up to 30 seconds which is usually more than I need. Playing with the shutter speed for night shots and aperture settings for day shots has been so much fun for me. I'm only recently starting to bump up against some of it's short comings.
1. No time lapse settings: no way to create a gif automatically. It has to be done manually, and I have, it's just not as pretty and a big PITA.
2. No bracketing. This would allow me to take the same picture x number of times with different exposures to make some HDR pictures.

This is a great beginner camera. It's taken almost 6 months for me find things I want it to do that it can't. Also means I can get another camera someday and leave this one for J or our kids one day :)

One of the best things about this camera is that it encourages me to adventure. My dad gave up photograpy because he feels it takes away from the experience of the event. I agree, but I also find that I wouldn't even be at the event if it weren't to take pictures. Now I also get a chance to share some of that experience with you.

the only way to fix it is to flush it all away

Flooding is another one of nature's recitals that can be added to the list. Hilo is getting a lot of rain right now. This makes for excellent pictures! It's very difficult to shoot in the rain without getting the equipment wet. I missed an amazing photo opportunity at rainbow falls but I just couldnt' bring myself to expose my camera to that kind of rain.

Today we went out again to try and grab a shot of rainbow falls, and while it's still an awesome shot, the falls aren't nearly as big as they were last night. Here's the shot of the day, a drainage canal with a 10" exposure time:



For context of the amount of rain that's been showing up, Rainbow Falls before and after