Half outta my mind.

Loved this sculpture. It represents how I feel sometimes.

Sandcastles in the mall

There was a sandcastle competition in downtown Seattle. It was a hot day, and i got there in the afternoon. The most amazing sculpture "Sweet Dreams" was starting to dry out, but was quite impressive.

Slideshow after the break:

It's MY toy.

Portland Japanese Garden

This place was amazing. Its 5 acres and spectacular.

Portland Zoo

Heres our trip to the Washington Park, The Portland Zoo

SkyFire

Sometimes the sunset is just amazing.
This photo doesn't do it justice.

Unusual sculpture at milepost 63

Pic to follow when we get back home

Via iPhone

Http://lancehirakawa.blogspot.com
Http://www.friendfeed.com/lancehirakawa

On iPhone

In response to my friends post on his blog.

I must agree the hype about the iPhone has been getting tiresome. There will be and are a large number of alternatives that do a great job. The 3G phone only adds a marginal amount of functionality, there is STILL no cut/copy/paste, and the camera is only 2mp.

My coworker John just got a new phone from Verizon that does many of the things, and even he admits he wont be using his web browser, he doesn't want to pay for the data plan.

Having said all that, i really to use mine a lot. Please don't ask my wife, i think she wants to flush it down the toilet. I have been waiting for a device that is a small form factor computer, email, communication device for over 25 years. When I got my hands on the first Apple Macintosh SE, i commented to friends, i love this thing, and i even have a 300 baud modem and had a connection to DarpaNet (the precursor to the internet). My comment was, that this would be even better if it was more portable.

I do agree that the android platform that Google will use to run their rumored phone might be very kewl, when it comes out "next year?" 'Nuff said.

What I like about the iPhone, especially now that 2.0 software is out, is the ability to add programs. I have downloaded (free) applications that range from a cowbell and light sabre (and a few other games) to a network subnet calculator and a streaming radio program (Pandora).

The coolest intergration from Apple is the remote control that allows me to run my iTunes or my wifes from anywhere i can get on my wifi network.

All in all, the a real mobile browser and live maps, a decent phone, an ok camera, all very tightly integrated is really the complete package. My work blackberry does almost everything (no camera) my iPhone does, just poorly. It did do email via exchange-push better before the upgrade. If I could skip it across the lake (I don't pay for it) I would.

There are alternatives, and they are good. What you choose really does depend on what you need. John has his phone and a GPS, for him, thats a good combo. I feel no need to upgrade to 3G yet, but I will probably very strongly consider getting the next iPhone.

DragonFly

IMG_4001
Originally uploaded by lancehirakawa

Photo safari today.
Subject, fauna.
Hoped to get some horses. The would not cooperate.
Stoopid horses!

Only 3 pics in the set that I'm happy with.

They're on Flickr HERE

Traveling Roses

Today is farmers market day. The rose guy is here with lots of
choices. I got these 2 for my wife's birthday tomorrow. Shhhhh don't
tell her.

2nd set of July 4th pics, by request.

I got a request from Sarah to post more pics of fireworks. Here they are!

Hi Jim!

July 4th Slideshow

Fireworks post

IMG_3880
Originally uploaded by lancehirakawa

Took me a while to get them edited down to a manageable number to post.

The best ones were of everyone at Johns party with Sparklers.

The set is here:

http://flickr.com/photos/lancehirakawa/sets/72157606015179374/show/

Comments and criticisms are highly appreciated.

How to spot a wing-nut or Methinks thou doth protest too much

I admit it. I was looking for Wall*E swag. Curious which burger chain was going to be pushing toys that I could put on my dashboard. Childish, yes, i admit that.

Now I realize movies with a moral can generate invective. So I wasn't totally surprised to find some people complaining about it in the movie review comments. What did surprise me was seeing so much of this drivel.

It’s a leftist anti-Wal-Mart piece of propaganda. Consumption isn’t bad. Buying into the global warming hoax is just so sad.

I realized 2 things at nearly the same time

1. I may not find "throw-away" toy promotions for this movie (at least I hope I do not) since, isn't that really the point of the movie.
2. The wing-nuts seem to complain most vehemently when they are threatened.

What disappoints me a little, is that I can't get a small Wall*e toy for my dash. I'll live.

Our economy is based on consumerism. Of that there is no doubt. New products are what drives it. I'm not against capitalism, but perhaps i will buy more products with less disposable packaging and in a small way trash the planet more slowly.


NOTE: This post was edited to remove attribution to that quote. The author tells me she did not make that post. Appologies to her.

It begins

Security blanket

Post by my cat

What is this thing. It on my nap spot.
HOW DARE IT!

I will now show displeasure by kneading
security blanket!

You are NOT paranoid

If they park a government vehicle in front

of your office, maybe they are out to get you.

In all seriousness, my office is on the Tacoma
Campus of U of Washington. You don't often
see CIA vehicles roaming around Tacoma Wa.
It's about as common as bugatti veyron.

Zap

It was so freaking hot out today.
Well, for the Seattle area, anyway.
92 is hot for this area. Because of the heat,
we got a rare lightning storm.

Man! That stuff
is hard to capture. I just don't have
the reflexes needed.

This was the largest one i could get.

I hope it rains tonite. I tried to water
the yard.. I just evaporated.

Wall-e Review No Spoiler

We went to see the opening show at midnight, ostensibly to miss the kid crowd. This i Highly recommend. There were a few little kids, but not very many. I predict this is going to be the kid folk summer blockbuster. Yah.. going way out on a limb there!

Very cute movie.. I think i may need insulin.
Very enjoyable. The underlying ecological message doesn't bash you over the head, though you are aware of it.

Definitely a go and see recommendation.

Ok, maybe more later.. its 2 am.

Wired Magazine

I read my news via Google News reader. I subscribed to Wired Top Stories, because i work in IT. I have received the SAME article 30 times over the last 2 days. With over 200 articles a day to glance at, seeing the same one (2 lines long) 30 times is more than a bit annoying.

Wired is a tech publication, wouldn't you think that someone would have noticed that they are sending out the same article that many times?

Review: Get Smart

No spoilers here.

If you remember the original show with Don Adams , Steve Carrell does it justice. If your your taste in comedy run to Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, you'll like this one. Its not derivative of the original its an homage.

The Cameo by Bernie Kopell (Doc from the Love Boat) was great.

I didn't go out and see 40 yr old Virgin, its not my kind of humor, but I really loved this one, probably due to the nostalgia factor. I would have thought it was written by Mel Brooks.

Based on the ending, I would imagine they will go for a sequel.

I rate it 8/10, Good action, comedy without much toilet humor, and reasonably well constructed.

Whoops time for dinner and i have my priorities.

Prince Ruperts Drops

Popular Science Article

Geeky post alert!

Prince Rupert Drops are glass cooled quickly in cold water. The outside cools first and builds up stress in the glass due to the inside cooling after the outside.

Whats cool? Break the tail of the glass drop, and the whole thing EXPLODES!

Follow the link for 90 sec. video.

Sexy Sumantran

Back to photograph my favorite model, Jaya.

Beautiful day, and a cooperative model.

Shorten URLs to a few characters.

I just got twirl to access my twitter account. I have heard of TinyUrl.com and a few others. The twirl client comes with a button to id.gd . Yep, thats it. My blog address shortens to http://is.gd/BHu . Thats even easier than getting my own domain name, and worth sharing. Hope someone finds this useful.

My wife's roses

They are blooming again.
Wild colors!

Woman Who Died While Watching TV Sat Unfound for 42 Years

Ok, now this is just plain weird. How could someone die in an apartment and remain there for 42 years?

Was the manager not collecting rent? REALLY?! for 42 YEARS?!?!

Link to article.

C'mon.. that can't be for real.. Then again, i guess they musn't have a housing crisis in Croatia.

Now dear reader, please comment. Do you buy it?

Tiger Egg

I was going thru google reader and saw an article on Dumpr.net photo tools. I like the easter egg effect, circles and Rubic's Cube.

Ok.. i like this one better..

Cougar Mountain Zoo 6.15.2008

Visited Cougar Mountain Zoo today.

The Curator Robyn Barfoot is very cool and nice enough to remind me that there are more than tigers there. Who knew?

I had been meaning to see the whole facility after getting a membership and did get to see most of it today.

Rumor has it, baby tigers may be in the future for the Zoo!

It really is in a picturesque location, and the local bald eagles even showed up for fathers day!

For those residents of Seattle who have been to Woodland park, TAKE A TRIP TO ISSAQUAH!!

Nothing against Woodland park, but you've already seen it, go see Cougar Mountain Zoo.

Fathers day

Called my dad and wished him "happy fathers day".

Called my sis, who JUST learned how to text/SMS. She was pretty
excited about it. Her daughter learned before her LOL.

Went to Cougar Mountain Zoo and took pictures again. This time I saw
the rest of the animals. Thanks Robin!!!!

More pics to follow.

Congress info website/iPhone app

I saw this app on the Apple website the other day. Having access to info for my House and Senate at my iPhone is useful for feed back on such items as Net Neutrality.

I had some requests so I emailed the developer Michael D. Cohen, Ph.D.
I was very pleasantly surprised that he replied very quickly and was receptive to my change requests, even putting some up almost immediately.

Hell of a cool app for us political junkies.

If you have any reason to call or get some info on your house or senate member, check out http://www.cohenresearchgroup.com/congress/directory/#_home

June Goslings

The new goslings were nice enough to pose on their daily walk.

NOTE: the purple flowers in the slide show were because my wife likes purple.

Farmers market

Ok. Its officially summer. Saturday at the market.

Birthday Party

Yes, I must be obsessed. I spent almost 3 hours at Cougar Mtn. Zoo and took almost 1,700 pictures, of a tiger birthday party. OMG, that DOES sound crazy.



At 1 year old, they tigers are still playful. There are still signs they are cubs.

The short list of the pictures are on my TigersClaw Picasa web album.

Almos, the white tiger, was the "birthday cub". His friend Taj is the golden (read: Rare, no black stripes, orange on gold) colored one.

Here is Almos eating his hamburger birthday cake:


The blue stuff if the "icing" made from egg whites. So if you see blue on their faces, that is the cause.

Catchup post.

Ok.. catching up..

Jeremy:
sorry to hear about the breakup.
Red couch? NO!
But then again, I had black and white furniture when i was single. My wife laughed and said "figures, typical guy".

Iron Man:
The only review I saw was "Gadget Porn"
I have to agree, in a good way..
Not great drama, but pretty good action adventure.
After I got home, i saw there was something to see after the credit roll, anyone see that? Robert Downey Jr. was pretty good. Not the first guy i would think of in action/adventure or in the character of Tony Stark (i was never an Iron Man comic book fan as a kid) but he pulled it off.

Internet speed

Well I finially broke down and got a new router. A netgear with
wireless N. Even though my laptops are both G , I figure I might as
well have the capability for the future.

I speed tested it because I helped my friend Andy set his up. His
speed test was over 12,000 Kbps. I was a little surprised when mine
came in at about 21,000..

Best surprise was that it stopped dropping my connection. Now all I
have to do is finish setting up all the wireless devices like the 3
laptops, wii, iphone and tivo.

I'll get to that after I finish editing down the 1600 pictures of Taj
and Almos and posting the decent ones.

See next blog entry.

Sent from my iPhone

Http://lancehirakawa.blogspot.com
Http://www.picasaweb.com/tigersclaw

Another Taj & Almos

Cougar Mtn Zoo (yes, MORE tigers)

I went to Cougar Mountain Zoo in Issaquah and took a few pics (700+). Damn it takes a while to go through that many images. The picture here is of Taj. He and his brother Almos will hopefully getting a larger outdoor enclosure late this summer. Any body have any spare change? Only $900,000 needed to complete the project.

Both of these guys are Bengals, the coloring on Taj is known as "Golden" (no black stripes) and there are only 250 left on Earth. To see the full album go to: My Picasaweb album

To see Taj and Almos go to Cougar Mountain Zoo

There are more animals than tigers, but hey, I only had time to take 700+ pictures of the tigers..

Almost forgot: Next week they are having Taj's first birthday party.. May 3rd.

Yes.. at over 100 Kilo's they are only HALF grown..

Later!

Author Scott Sigler

Reading his award winning book "Infected" in Seattle at Barnes & Nobel.

Spring Snow

Spring snow storm in Puyallup.
I think i'll fill up my wine glass
and flick on the fire place.

Spring snow

At least its not sticking yet.
Its hard to phograph snow,
That's what those white streaks are.

Cute female

Jaya is my favorite model.

Tiger and Dragon

I CAN HAS DRAGON

requisite stuff on cat pic.

They have returned

But its too early
This pic was taken days ago

Geeky?

What's more geeky than Dr. Who's sonic screwdriver.

I revel in the geekyness. Muahahahaha

Did i mention it comes with psychic paper?
What's kinda cool is that the iPhone camera sees the UV
LED in the dark. Yes, that is trully uber-geeky.

iPhone Links

Live and Direct from my iPhone!

ok.. so its not that big a deal. Here are links I have found useful on my iPhone.

My future job description

IF, as promised, Scott Sigler becomes our future Dark Overlord and ruler of the planet I am hereby publicly demanding the following Official Title:

Supreme Ninja Hacker, Mage Lord
of mobile global
tele-iphoto-communications.

(thanks to Neal Stephanson).

Narrows Bridge

This is not exactly sculpture, but the lines are interesting.
Click the title "Narrows Bridge" to see the images on Picasa.

You Otter be in pictures

From Aquarium

This little guy (gal?) was so content playing all day with the toys in the enclosure.
I caught this pose as he got tuckered out.

Spring

The season shift is is near.
These cherry blossoms are from last year.
As spring approaches,
I find myself anticipating their return.

Still curious

I am still curious if anyone wants to see my photography..

If so, here is my sculpture page

Here's Another.

After taking a few pictures last night, I got inspired and took a few more.

Risqué sculpture in Puyallup

"La Ria" in downtown puyallup.

I will be heading down with my Eos to get more picture by daylight.

I wonder if anyone is interested in seeing them.

Please comment or answer the poll on the right -->

Naked lady

She has brass ones.

Outdoor sculpture?

Its really hard to be sure.

My wife said this prove that the South does not have a corner on
rednecks.

Jeremy mentions cars on his blog and I realized this was fairly
representative of automotive status in this area ;-)

Lunar Eclipse

There is something
so very Japanese
about watching a lunar eclipse.

And more so the fact
I am taking pictures of the event.

Of course, its very American to blog about it.

WikiLeaks not dead yet

Swiss Bank Julius Baer (BJB) and their lawyers LAVELY & SINGER PROFESSIONAL CORPORATION have filed an injuction against WikiLeaks.

The injunction prevents the URL from being used, it doesn't however prevent anyone accessing the site via ip address 8.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks .

The information detailing the alleged money laundering by BJB as well as the rest of the site is still available.

More outdoor sculpture.

This is one of my favorite outdoor pieces.

Unfortunately, its at the drivethru at the local macdonalds.

Ironic or just disappointing? Discuss amonst yourselves. I'm
verklempt.

Happy Valentines day

The sky was on fire this morning..

All of the passion of Valentines day

smouldering in the sky...?

Yes, Politics... I'm sorry.

The mind boggles.

It looks like the telecoms will get immunity for wiretapping (link to Wired article).
Blue Cross gets to ask doctors on Calif. to look at patient medical records to deny claims based on "prior medial conditions".
A British bank gets bailed out by the Bank of England (sorry no link) for reasons of "National Financial Stability".

What is up with that?

So, as long as you are a large / multinational corporation, you don't have to follow the rules or take any responsibility for your actions? How do I get to take advantage of that new rule.

Or is it that competition is to create the most egregious and flamboyant mechanism for lying, cheating AND stealing. The prize for which, is a pass if you get caught.

Grr, I think I am having a Louis Black moment..

We now return you to your regularly scheduled pretty pictures....

Picture from my commute home.

I love where i live. Mt Ranier just
pops up and i want to take a pic.

Democratic caucus

The caucus was at a union hall, and this is their logo. I thought it
looked interesting.

Speaches and delegate shift

There is a lot of passion on both sides. Final count is 7:4
Obama:Clinton for our precinct. My wife is now caucasing to be a
delegate.

UPDATE:

Its official, Raine is an official Hillary Clinton voting delegate for our precinct.

Caucus II

Wow. Lots of people. Noisy. And soon delegate elections. A little
piece of democratic pandemonium. Very cool to be a part of the
process. Everyone seems happy to be here.

Favorite podcasts

I really enjoy sci-fi podcast fiction.

There are a large number of realy high quality sci-fi podcasts but I want to mention 2:

Scott Siglers http://scottsigler.com/

Steve Eley's http://escapepod.org/

These two people have been consistantly putting out weekly serialized stories and short fiction.

Check them out.

A sunset

Another Eos pic from my front yard.

I miss summer.

Inteligence??

Der Be Dragons

I was browsing and came across this.

There is a dragon in Canada.

It doesn't look like an optical illusion.

Let there be light.

A lamp from Willows lodge
where Raine and I were
married.