More photos from Hawai'i.

Still unloading photos. Learned some things along the way: Extension tubes for macro, even when you've gone minimum aperture (f/32), means that your range of focus is extremely narrow. I split my use between a macro lens and the extension tubes.

A quick word about Russia.

For some strange reason, there's been a massive boost in page views from Russia, and by massive, I'm talking hundreds of views over normal. So I thought I'd take a bit of time to talk about Russia-US.

Russia-US relations are truly weird

There is ongoing cooperation in various things, whether NASA-Roscosmos, or on easing Iran's nuclear program, while at the same time there are Ukrainian-related economic and targeted sanctions.

As the US restarts relations with Cuba, a continued ally of Russia, the US is cranking up sanctions against Argentina, a Russian ally.

We went at one point hearing US conservatives rant about rapprochement between Obama and Medvedev, to US conservatives cheering Putin's masculinity when he confronted Obama on a series of issues, despite these same conservatives demanding that Obama ramp up the confrontation with Putin.

The conservatives are all the same

Conservatives in both countries are totally against cooperation of any kind. They would rather crank up military might and speed up their military infrastructure buildups along the periphery, to create opportunities for direct confrontation and an expansion of influence.

In Russia you have old KGB members and former Soviet military who seem to find comfort in knowing that the US is an enemy. In the US we have old white men who continually push to spread US bases around the world and boost military spending (first by eliminating only that portion of the sequester cuts that affect the military budgets).

Conservatives in the US have to disguise their racism directed at Obama, while Russian conservatives have no social norms holding them back from attacking the skin color of Obama. This dichotomy is perfectly illustrated, here. In it, you'll note that the Russian MP clearly states that the image came from American friends -- I've noted before, if you're in the conservative email circle, you get all sorts of outrageously racist stuff.

Our nations have commonalities

Yeah, we all know about crony capitalism in Russia, but we have crony politics in the US. Koch money buying political influence is no different than Putin shakedown -- they're opposite sides of the coin.

Both countries continue to invest heavily in war machines that, unleashed, would destroy the Earth 10x over, even as both countries have mutually reduced their nuclear stockpiles over the last 30 years.

You think that Russia is hard on the press? The Obama Administration has gone after more than a few journalists, in search of leakers who've tried to shed light on US policies. It seems ironic that Russia is a refuge for Snowden, a guy who exposed a massive lie being propagated by some members of the US government, on domestic spying, and yet here we are.

These are, of course, all the wrong commonalities you'd want to share, but that's life.

Some photos from Hawai'i.

Just a handful of photos, for now. It takes time to convert to DNG, then import, make some color corrections, etc., and save them in the proper sizes. A couple of hibiscus, three plumeria and one palm photos.

5 Thoughts for April 26, 2015

1. Someone really needs to do something about Trimet's Max schedule. Coming back from Hawaii, I took the Red Line into town. At the Gateway Transit Center, the line suddenly changed to a Blue Line. I reached the Rose Quarter Transit Center and got off to transfer to the Green Line -- as the announcement over the PA system on the train said. I got out, and damn, after 10 minutes of trying to figure out when the next Green Line is coming -- and mind you this is before midnight -- I suddenly realized that the reason why there was no listing for the Green Line, is because there were no more Green Lines coming. Having an automated PA announcement telling you to get off to transfer onto another Max train that isn't actually available, is dumb. I walked about 20 minutes home, in light rain, past midnight. Gee, thanks Trimet.
2. A long time ago, I used to wear a variety of Swatch watches (I'm so late-80's / early-90's). Before then, I'd worn a stainless steel, self-powered watch, and Casio stainless steel digital watches. The thing most people who buy smart watches -- including the iWatch -- seem to be clueless about, is that stuff on your arms will get dinged around like crazy. By the time I'd stopped wearing my Swatch watches, the faces and edges were all scratched up, and in once case, cracked. The glass on my stainless steel watches had been scratched, too. If you're going to wear a watch, it's going to get damaged over time. 
3. Life is like jazz -- you can either improvise and go with the flow, or keep playing the same old tune, the same way, while some who enjoy playing the same tune over and over again, will find a desire to mix it up just a little, and then start using this new tune to play over and over again. Not knowing what comes next, can be scary for most people; stability is highly coveted. People will say that they love unexpected surprises, but what they really mean to say is that they love the predictable, pleasant surprises, only.
4. So, the parents have this oldish Mac which needed a new mouse. I can positively report, that using a Logitech wireless mouse with the two buttons and scroll, makes your experience a little bit closer to that of Windows, with the right-click. And it cost half the price of an Apple wired mouse, too. The problem with the oldish Mac, is that it has just 1GB of RAM, so you pretty much can't use most modern browsers with multiple tabs open. I saw the "spinning pinwheel of death" about once every five minutes, making it about as laggy as my old netbook from 2009. I'm going to place more effort into securing a Chromebook for them, for this year.
5. Got a FedEx package coming, but you're going to be out of town? When you're tracking the package on FedEx's website, you can do what I did, and have the delivery changed to the closest FedEx location, and then call that location to request that they hold onto your package until you get back. This way, your package won't be stolen by unscrupulous folks in your apartment / condo.

A really good cup of coffee.

Okay, so I'll give up the name of the coffee I bought at the Farmer's Market at Blaisdell, earlier this week. It's from the Aikane Plantation in Ka'u, on the Big Island. (Don't get put off by their poorly-made website, or the lack of matching colors between their wares and their website -- I guess Pantone is not in their lexicon.) This coffee is as smooth if not smoother than Kona, which is to say that I haven't ever had Kona coffee this smooth, but there are a lot of Kona coffee producers with very expensive beans that I haven't tried.

Ka'u is not the same place I remember it to be when I visited, decades ago. Sugar used to dominate the state, and the Big Island in particular -- my mother's family grew up working in a sugar plantation and had in fact tried to grow coffee, but failed during the Depression, in Kona -- you can read about the changes from sugar to coffee, here and here. On Google Earth you can see massive agricultural plots, most of which seems dedicated to coffee growing.

A lot of credit to the Aikane Plantation for getting their stuff out there, and don't be surprised if Ka'u coffee is the next big thing in coffee. This stuff is really good.

Leaving Hawaii.

I suppose I could have stayed a few more days, but I just can't get decent sleep at my parent's place... I'm looking forward to my bed and central air. It's nice to see the family, but it would have been nicer if they were in better condition.

I initially planned to leave 2 1/2 hours before my flight, then squeezed it down by 20 minutes. Despite having to turn around once, then missing the correct terminal, and what looked like a crazy long security check line, I'm sitting in the date with 1 1/4 hours before departure. That's too much time for me.

The gate was half empty, so I definitely got here too early. Oh well.

5 Thoughts for April 22, 2015

1. Google announced Project Fi, which charges a flat $20 for unlimited domestic / international texts and unlimited domestic calls, while adding $10 / GB of data, but rebated back to you at the end of the billing cycle for unused data. If you only use 3.5GB of data but signed up for 5GB of data, you get back $15, while only paying $20+$35 = $55. It's very similar to how MetroMile vehicle insurance works. It all comes down to incentives to using less data, which works extremely well. Except, it's limited to the Nexus 6, which is not cheap...making the discounted smart phone service a moot point, don't you think? It's like telling someone that you've got this great, premium car, and oh by the way, the cost to service it is super cheap.
2. Spent about 2 hours with a dealer today, trying to get a test drive then a price from them. I nearly called out the middle guy (in auto sales there is a 3-person strategy that they all employ: the front sales guy, the middle man, and the manager) for lying straight to my face about his own product. (My father's got a 23 year old car that constantly has one thing or another broken. The last straw was the AC compressor and fan, and it was time to replace the vehicle.) Anyway, I walked away after 2 hours, which is not the longest I've negotiated and walked. I went online and checked out Portland prices, and after adding up the cost of shipping a vehicle via Matson, to Honolulu (via Seattle), it would have resulted in at least $500 in savings, just on the dealer's "best price". Deduct the cost of the taxes in Hawaii, and the total price difference is roughly $1300, again, even when accounting for the shipping costs.
3. Sur La Table has the Bonavita 5-cup coffee maker for a lot less than MSRP, and has had it at that low price for several weeks, now. When I get back to Portland, I'm going to go in and check it out.
4. Went to the farmer's market at the Blaisdell, and found an exceptionally smooth, medium-dark roast coffee that was better than traditional Kona. It was 4x more than what I would normally pay for coffee beans, but this was just too good to pass by. Not telling you where it came from. :D
5. On Kickstarter, it seems to me that being the first to get something may not always be a good plan. There are bugs and kinks to work out, and I'm still waiting for improvements on the 1st generation software that was pushed out way too soon, for a hand-held scanner I pledged for.

Sneaking in some fun.

It's not a vacation, as I've spent most of my time tending to family matters, including straightening up things that should have been done months ago.

But I still manage to slip in some time to do stuff. Today, I got in 15 minutes of swimming at Ala Moana, and visiting the farmer's market at Blaisdell Center.

5 Thoughts for April 21, 2015

1. One of the things I am doing between chores, is going out to take photos (mostly macro) of local flowers. I can't share any of them right now as they're locked inside of an SD card and I have no way of unloading and editing them. I'm glad that I brought the 55mm lens and extension tubes with me.
2. The sun's hot down here (atsui!). And of course, wouldn't you know it, ojisan's car's AC compressor broke down. It would cost more than the car's worth, to fix it -- and that's not the only thing wrong with the old car. :P
3. There's so little time to spare, I've drastically reduced my game playing on my tablet and barely read any news / stories online, right now. Oddly enough, my parents don't watch the local news, so I was more informed about Hawaii-related events when I was in Portland, than when I'm here.
4. Parents are wishy-washy when they get old, on every little thing. Their solution is to put off decisions until something happens that force them to act. I hope I'm not getting more wishy-washy as I get older.
5. I'm certain that a touchscreen Chromebook would be the most ideal means of getting the old parents to use technology. Now if only there was a brick and mortar that I could demonstrate to them, the ease of use of the touchscreen Chromebook.

Enjoy.

At least, I am enjoying the moment. On the beach, away from the tourists but just outside Waikiki.

---

Added: Across the street from where I swim, is Kapiolani Park and the majestic Diamond Head.

A brief respite between doing chores and things for my elderly parents in the short time that I'm here.

The contradictions of Margrethe Vestager

A quick post here. Margrethe Vestager, in charge of EU's competition commission, has gone on a public dog and pony show to make her case in support of her antitrust allegations against Google.

On PBS News Hour, Gwen Ifill asked Vestager, why, if other companies are favoring their own services over others, does Google have to stop? Vestager responded that the issue hinged on the fact that Google held a 90% market share in the EU.

Four questions later, Vestager admitted openly that this market dominance was driven by consumer choice, as she tried to explain that a company must not abuse its dominance.

In essence, Vestager has created the contorted logic that a company may do whatever it wants to, until it becomes a dominant player by the actions of consumers exercising their free will. At that point, the same actions once deemed acceptable, is now looked upon as abuse.

Unless the EU is deeply corrupted by nationalistic demagoguery -- which many argue, exists -- there is no way Vestager prevails with such weak sauce.

This war on American companies has to stop, or else we'll end up with a serious trade war, to which end, the winners will be China and Russia.

A word about Chromebooks.

I've called everywhere, and no one stocks touch-screen models of the Chromebook -- that's just ridiculous. In fact, the Staples I called carries just a single Chromebook model.

If you're going to sell Chromebooks, you have to place them front and center, not on a website that only tech nerds, who don't really use Chromebooks, can find. This wasn't always the case -- Best Buy used to display the touch screen Acer C720P a few years ago.

I'm left scratching my head, as to what the strategy is, here.

A quick commentary about taxes on the eve of Tax Day.

Two things, as I've just completed my tax returns:

1. I totally forgot that, even if you can get your taxable income down to zero, so long as you're self-employed you still owe SE taxes, for Medicare, SS and such. :P So it turns out, instead of prepaying state, I should have prepaid federal, last year, which, I'm not sure what I was thinking, except that I rushed to get my forms in, just a few minutes before midnight, April 15th, and that might have caused me to stop thinking critically. This year, of course, I'm getting it done a day early, because I'm going to be on an airplane, tomorrow.
2. The Portland Arts Tax form asks if you have under $1,000 in taxable income, but it's not the same as State and Federal taxable income. Apparently what the City of Portland is saying, is that even if you have zero federal or state taxable income, surely you must have money saved away to pay for the Arts Tax. Yes, $35 is peanuts, but it violates the spirit of progressive tax policies, to be charging people money that they didn't actually have left over from the prior year.

And now I'm off to do other, fruitful things.

Limited time.

We all have expiration dates, but we can't see the date that's encoded into our life stream. As such, as one gets older one tends to see life passing by at a faster pace, cognizant that we're approaching that expiration date.

I just finished the biggest portion of the repainting job I'd first began, about a month ago. I'm rushing before I go back to Hawaii to tend to my parents, also an emergency. It appears, when one does not drive, one tends to delay and atrophy.

The paint changes, are truly symbolic of changes in my life and outlook, as the colors have gone from greys to an espresso and tan scheme, with a chocolate accent, with lots of purple, red and green highlights (in the form is furnishings).

At the same time, I'm simplifying as much stuff -- no mere spring cleaning, but a major overhaul. It's all part of the change in outlook.

Anyway, lots of things to get squared away before I can get on that flight, so toodles.

Spring cleaning

I'm doing spring cleaning while rearranging furniture to optimize my space. In doing so, I've temporarily disconnected my TV, AV, and network, for nearly 24 hours, and will probably continue to keep the TV and AV offline for another day.

Some observations while doing spring cleaning:

-- I still have too much shit. I'm starting to realize that I really don't like having too much stuff. So I've decided to adopt a rule: buying requires getting rid of something.

-- Going through my books, I was reminded that my education was far greater than most, on issues that'll never grow old. I have a book on the history of american urbanization, conservation and the gospel of efficiency, american environmental history, and Julian Simon's The Ultimate Resource. These are books that I'm getting rid of. The ones I'm keeping, include Jane Jacobs, and a bunch of philosophical books, as well as dozens of architectural, graphics, industrial design eye candy.

-- So many books are rather useless, once you read them. In the case of poetry and classics, I think going digital is much more useful. Other books are nearly instantaneously rendered dated, such as guide books. The most up to date info is always going to be online, making most of these guide books worthless.

-- I can live without my network online, so long as I'm not doing work. News, emails, blogs can all be accessed from my phone. The downside from keeping my network offline, is that I can't access all my digital content on my network RAID drive.

-- I really need to get rid of my massive drafting table... It makes my place feel smaller as it sucks space up all around it.

-- Truly, digital magazines are the way to go, as you can download it and read them while offline. They don't take you much space either, so it frees up bookcase space.

-- Holy cow, there is so much dust! I can't wait to get rid of my carpet, so as to make dusting a really easy chore rather than vacuuming and then carpet cleaning -- that'll help me get rid of another item taking up space, the carpet cleaner machine. It'll also make doggie accidents a lot easier to clean up.

-- I have too many chairs. I dunno how this happened, but I have far too much seating for my tiny space, and they can't be folded up and put away, either.

-- Without TV and my network up and running, I focus much better on the things I need to do, and get more things done.

ESPN goes retro.

Missed this April Fools Day joke. ESPN went retro, and the style elements were saved in my browser's cache.

April Fools 2015, Pranking it more.

April Fools has gone mainstream like never before...which I dunno, seems to have watered down AFD.

So, Strong Bad has decided to make it real. Physical.



So widespread is AFD, John Oliver offers advice to abstain.



No? You don't want to heed Oliver's advice?

Well then, here's a list of pranks from around the internet.

• SketchUp now has an "Adventure Mode"...because 8-bit.
• NewEgg introduces the lastest cryptocurrency, the eggCoin. It just might work -- it's pegged to the price of a dozen eggs.
• Google now has Actual Cloud Platform.  QoS check, done by sticking your head outside and looking up into the sky.
• com.Google. ?sdrawkcab daer uoy naC
• Google Fiber, being too fast, has gone retro with Dial-Up Mode. Toilet breaks are back in fashion.
• Chromebooks can now utilize self-browsing. Self-loathing, self-amusement and selfie to follow.
• Microsoft launched MS-DOS Mobile. Hey, it can't be worse than Windows Phone.
• Samsung has a Galaxy Blade Edge, Chef Edition. Knox security means never accidentally cutting yourself, again. I suggest waiting for the Ginsu Edition.
• T-Mobile unleashes your pet. The video is hilarious!
• Gmail has the mailbox of tomorrow, today. Tomorrow it'll probably be gone.
• And many, many more.

Oh and by the way, my latest package was delivered days ahead of time!