Thomas Locke Hobbs
| Currently: Buenos Aires |
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| Clementis in my mom's yard. Trying out the macro focus on my new Casio. Random links: 16 great public squares of the world. 12 best public squares in the US. |
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| Gayle's Bakery in Capitola, CA. My new favorite blog: Tricks of the Trade. Concise. Useful. For example: Cake Decorator: |
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| Graffiti on palm trees on the beach in Santa Monica. The gray sky is the result of an ever present marine layer this time of year along the coast. European tourists wondered where CA's sunny reputation came from. BLDGBLOG, which has fast become one of my favorite blogs about all things urbanistic and architecture-related interviews Mike Davis about his recent book, Planet of Slums. The Interview is in two parts: Part One, Part Two. Davis' writing often dwells in dire and apocalyptic scenarios of the future. It can be thrilling to read in the same way as a horror flick. A paragraph I particularly liked from part 2: The one thing I’m firmly convinced of is that the larger, affluent middle classes in this country will never surrender their lifestyle and its privileges. If suddenly faced with a threat in which they may be made homeless by disaster, or killed by plagues, I think you can expect very, very irrational reactions – which of course will inscribe themselves in a spatial order, and probably in spectacular ways. |
LA Burgers
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| Fat Burger |
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| Tommy's |
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| In-n-Out Inspired by this article on LA Burgers, I decided to check out a few of these places. Astute observers will have noticed that I'm not a big fan of condiments. |
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| Dad's stereo |
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| Dad's coffee mug When in LA, I usually stay at my dad's place in Marina del Rey. I'm always coming across these relics of my childhood--objects I'd long considered lost, only to discover they exist and are still used. See also the melmac bowl from last October's visit. |
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| My brother Will in Los Angeles The next several days will have more pictures from a weeklong trip to LA that I finished today. The picture above was taken with my Canon Digital Rebel and not the Casio I just purchased. The blurred background, photographers call it "bokeh", you can only get with a larger camera (film or digital) and a lens with a wide aperture. All normal sized digital cameras have lenses that are too small and too narrow to get this kind of visual effect. |
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| I have a new digital camera; a Casio Exilim EX-Z120. I used to have a slim Minolta XG but I sold it in Brazil, where import tariffs inflate prices. Since then I've been annoyed at having to lug around my dSLR for snapshots, hence the Casio.
I'd never considered Casio's cameras but this model reviewed well on Amazon. It's 7 megapixels and 30% cheaper than Canon's model. Start-up, shutter-lag and picture review are very fast. The pictures are great and there's lots of manual options. On the downside, the camera's a shade too thick and the construction feels plasticky. We'll see how long it lasts. Soon, I'll start slipping in shots from this camera onto the blog... |
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| With the winter snows melting, the waterfall faucets in Yosemite were turned to high. Every cliff & rock face seemed to contain some cascading trickle. Mom and I had driven up just for the day from Dinuba. |
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| Illiloutte Falls |
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| Thumbs up for Yosemite! |
Sequoia National Park
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| General Sherman Tree, the biggest in the world [by mass] |
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| The General Sherman tree is a little less bulky after this branch, almost 5 feet, in diameter broke off and shattered the guard railing. |
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| Mom & Trees |
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| Burn Scar. The spongy bark and great height insulates the trees from fire. In fact their [tiny] seeds only germinate after a fire when the competing underbrush has been cleared away. |
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| A crumbling Victorian farm house between Reedley & Selma. Mom wanted to check this place out because she has a painting of it and wanted to take some pictures. The new owner gave us a tour and talked about her problems with infestations (rats, rabbits, bees, wasps, woodpeckers, etc.) and the huge deferred maintenance. Here's the painting: |
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| The painting is by Paul Buxman, a painter based in Kingsburg who does impressionist scenes of Old San Joaquin Valley. Mom owns six of his paintings. I took pics of the six and uploaded them to flickr. I would've put them in their own set but they limit me to three sets, but as of this posting the six paintings are at the top of my photostream. |
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| An old row of palms at the corner of Avenue 392 and Road 128 in Tulare County |
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| Deteriorating grape trays. Correction: these are sweat boxes for table or wine grapes. |
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| Blossoming sweet peas at Reedley Community College I took off for five days to my mom's hometown of Dinuba, a small agricultural city just south of Fresno. Our stated purpose was to make daytrips to Yosemite & Sequoia National Parks but we also had a lot of time to indulge in what my mom calls [San Joaquin] Valley Nostalgia. |
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| Red Buds at 3000 feet in the Sierra foothills |
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| Lupen |
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| Steve |
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| Sam On a perfect day (no fog) in San Francisco. See also 2004.09.22 when I had my digital SLR but was still sticking with the 'little squares' on my blog. |
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| Back in California all the poppies are in bloom. This spectacular patch is on an utterly banal median strip alongside an expressway a few blocks from my mother's house. |
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 | For more about me, please go visit my old geocities page. |