Blog - Page 53

I love the metro stations. I got hassled taking these photos, according to the engineer tripods are not allowed in metro stations.

When I first moved in to the Santa Fe Lofts a few years ago, the management would always post the notification for filming in both the elevator and on the front door. Today is the third time in as many months when there has been large film crews invading our building and the residents were not notified. I feel this is totally unacceptable, it is the management's responsibility to notify the building's tenants about any kind of production.

My work bought me a Macbook Pro yesterday. Actually they cut a check to Apple, Inc. and I brought it to the Brea Mall Apple Store. This is the fastest personal computer I have ever owned, and it totally rocks. It is amazing how much faster this laptop is than my Dual G5 desktop. I have also started using some new software, specifically iTerm and Newfire, before I was using Terminal and NetNewsWire. I really dig the interface on both iTerm and Newsfire. My only complaint about iTerm is that the bottom of the display butts up against the last line of text, I know this is very minor, but Terminal had a tiny bit of breathing room there.

[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/352237799/ "Photo Sharing")

Untitled, or Bell Comunications Around The Globe is one of my favorite sculptures in Downtown Los Angeles. Created in 1961 by Anthony Heinsbergen and located at 420 S. Grand on what is now the AT&T building, the mural / mosiac is made of thousands of old telephone switching parts. There is nothing like junk to make a geek like me happy. You can read more about it here. [Full gallery here.]

A few days ago I took a walk around my neighborhood and took some HDR photos of various interesting buildings, fountains and sculptures. I especially enjoyed this shot of the camera that is perched atop Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall. I wonder if that was part of the original plan?

Either way I still dig the way that building looks

You can check the rest of the HDR Disney Concert Hall shots that I took here.

You can check out the rest of the set here. Previously someone had emailed and asked me how I create these images, they are just 3 shots put together using Photomatix. You can read a great tutorial on Photomatix here.

You can check out the rest of the short series I shot today here. I am processing the HDR versions and will post them soon.

For the second time in as many months I have sent off my favorite lens (which is possibly going to lose that distinction thanks to my 24-70 f/2.8 L that I just picked up) to the Canon Factory Service Center. My first experience with Canon Factory Service was actually a really good one, as they hastily repaired my shutter mechanism and had the camera back to me within a few weeks.

A few months later I decided to send them my Speedlite 580EX which had a faulty motor in the zoom mechanism which allows the flash to automatically change the size of the flash that is thrown to suit your current lens, zoom level and sensor size. At the same time I sent them my 85 1.2, which was, and still is, having problems focusing.

When I focus on an object that is 10 feet away, I get the focus confirmation light, but then the resulting image is focused a few feet past where it should have been. With nearly any other lens, this would not be a problem at all, but thanks to the razor think depth of field at f/1.2, this problem makes my lens nearly useless at the aperture that it is designed for.

After holding my lens for nearly 2 months, Canon Factor Service returned it to me, with no changes whatsoever, saying that it was restored to factory quality. I am hoping for Canon that the problem was with their tech, and that factory quality does not mean that the focus is off by nearly 20%. I am eagerly awaiting the functional return of one of my favorite lenses.

Eric Richardson and I have been trying for over a year to get in to the Triforium Control Center in the Los Angeles ~~Underground~~ Mall. Today Eric got us a tour thanks to help from Councilmember Jan Perry and Greg Fischer, who were both instrumental in the re-lighting of the divisive public work of art originally lit 1975.

Even now the Triforium has been drawing praise and scorn, most recently from the City Attorney's office which has been claiming that the music is disturbing them and has requested it only play from 11am to 1pm, which completely defeats the purpose of having the lights on, as you can hardly see them during the day. Although many art critics despise the sculpture I find it strangely charming and the primitive computer control system intrigues me.

When we looked through the control center today we found an old Teletype machine that was used to read and write punch tape which held the program the Triforium's computer used to synchronize with music. Our goal is to take those tapes, capture them and use them as a basis for the new computer control, which will most likely be a BASIC stamp or a PIC microcontroller. Once that works the next step, would ideally be to have some type of web interface to the system.

I brought my portable studio lighting setup along for the tour and took some photos, of which here is a sampling:

You can flip through the whole Triforium Control Center gallery here.