The 3 and 6 second exposures in shutter priority mode were best, but the problem with fireworks is they end so fast you don’t get to try everything in one sitting. Next time I’ll try manual mode, manual focus with varying shutter speeds. Tip: it’s key to turn off auto-ISO and stick it at 100, I’d say.
Alright, here we go. Day 0 of project 365.
Rio is my oldest cat, known for:
Part of my experiments with pav’s macro 105mm lens.
Fun with the fisheye lens mostly, but it was great to be in Portland again. Also, I haven’t blogged in a long time… until now.
On Tuesday I was a pallbearer at my grandfather’s funeral. It’s the first time since eighth grade that I had lost someone so close to me.
You forget that empty feeling after a while. A week earlier, as I watched him take his last breath, it fell over me like an old and familiar blanket. He’s gone.
For a while I felt regretful about not prying more stories out of him, or I’d wish other people in my family could have treated him better. That lasted a day or two.
Faced with having to prepare for the funeral, I sifted through hundreds of pictures. Some black and white photos from the 30s, war pictures from World War II and some very 1970s shots of a grown man with his children. I flipped to the 80s and 90s where he was at every one of my birthday parties, holding me and smiling.
I made a gallery of the better pictures, and put this up on a screen during visitation. I also sent these scanned photos to Costco for reprints and my aunties and uncles used those to create two amazing poster boards that made people stop and shake their heads in wonder.
Near the end of this process, emptiness was replaced with tremendous pride and newfound perspective. To have lived through so much, to have worked so hard and still accomplish what he did was simply amazing to me.
And through it all he was humble. Proud but not vain. Strong but not loud. I realized how honored I was to be his grandson. I want to work harder in my life to make him proud. I want my grandchildren to feel what I feel now when I pass.
When I found out I could write and speak as a part of his eulogy I was excited. On the drive home my sister and I scrambled for ideas. She mentioned a MacArthur quote and I looked it up. It was perfect. So I mentally wrote the outline in my head: Duty, Honor, Country. I slept.
The next morning, the day of his funeral, I woke up at 5:30 AM. I wrote what I felt was the best way to explain what I thought about him. I figure it’s best to just share it with you.
Here it goes…
Thank you all for coming here today to celebrate my grandfather’s life. My name is Michael, and I’m the oldest of Ted’s grandsons. I’m honored to speak on behalf of a younger generation, and hopefully I can help describe what our grandfather meant to us.
Over the past week or so my family and I have seen a lot of pictures. One of these pictures was of General Douglas MacArthur and his wife getting off a plane in the Philippines. I don’t know why grandpa kept this picture, but I assume it meant something to him. And because of this, I wanted to open today with a quote from the late general taken from a speech given in 1962 at West Point:
Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Our grandfather took these three principles very seriously. He spent a lifetime building on them.
Grandpa understood duty. He fulfilled many duties in his time. That of a son, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a soldier and employee. When he turned 18, he served his country in World War II without hesitation. He continued to serve at Pearl Harbor in the shipyard for decades more. He helped build Outrigger hotels with more than 40 years of service. But despite all the things he had to do, he always had time for me. When I was a kid, I remember him taking time between his two jobs to cook me saimin after school. He always fulfilled his duty as a grandfather.
Grandpa was an honorable man. Honor means a lot of things. It includes honesty, fairness and integrity. I also believe it includes humility and modesty. If you ask anybody in this room, it’ll become very obvious that grandpa was all of these things. He didn’t boast about what he had, and didn’t whine about what he didn’t have.
Grandpa loved his country. He was willing to die for us in World War II. He helped rebuild Hawaii after the war. He fixed countless ships at the shipyard. He always bought American cars and loved his Cadillacs. During his lifetime he proved that if you’re willing to work hard, you can achieve your dreams – in that way he showed us what it means to be an American.
Duty, Honor, Country. To be honest, I don’t think my generation understands these principles as well as grandpa did. The challenges grandpa faced were much more daunting than what I’ve had to face in my lifetime.
Today we worry about what cell phone to buy, what laptop to order or what’s happening on facebook or twitter. Grandpa saw the great depression, world war 2, women’s suffrage, racial segregation, vietnam. He lived in a different time. A more challenging time. And that’s what makes his accomplishments even more amazing to me.
It’s our responsibility to recognize what grandpa did and live our lives in a way that honors him. So that when it’s our time to go, our families will be gathered as we are today and speak fondly of what we did in our lives.
I’ll leave you with a quote from a comedian. Conan O’Brien said this on his last Tonight Show episode. You may like him, you may not. But what he said really stuck with me.
All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people that watch: Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.
Grandpa was a lot of things, but he was never cynical. He was an honest, hard working man who saw the good in people. He was kind and worked hard his entire life and I think we can all agree that some amazing things happened for him.
…and that was the end of it.
I’m not sure where grandpa went, or if I’ll see him again — but I’m glad I knew him, and I’m grateful for the inspiration he’s given me. I think the most important thing he did for me and all of my cousins was set the bar high. We’ve got a lot of work to do to reach his level. But we can do it if we follow his example — don’t whine, be kind, work hard, and get the job done.
Thanks, Grandpa. Rest in peace.
The Rally Fighter is an open source car with a huge community behind it. Jay Rogers, CEO of Local Motors, took time out of his busy schedule to come talk about his experience with the Rally Fighter during lunchtime today.
He gave Mozilla a shout out and said we’re an inspiration for other companies trying to do things the right way and focus heavily on what people want and need. He also mentioned he’s an avid Firefox user and tries to install it on every machine he can get his hands on!
Another thing worth noting was his comments on crowdsourcing — that’s it’s not at all about getting a group to do a bunch of work for you. In many ways the textbook definition of crowdsourcing betrays the real value in it.
He said it should really be called co-creation because their community as well as potential customers for this car are a huge part of what the car will actually be and how it will evolve over time. It is a good way to look at things, and not very different from what Mozilla strives to do from day to day.
Overall, it was a great experience and the car is damn cool. Thanks to Jay and his team for visiting us. See more pictures here.
Before singing Free Bird with Beck, Ben Harper, ZZ Top and Wil Ferrel Conan said something pretty profound. For one, he thanked all his fans for turning an otherwise sad moment in his life into a joyous and inspirational one while choking back tears. But in a sobering moment, he pleaded to his young viewers and shared some words of wisdom:
“All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people that watch: Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.”
If you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. Not too bad as far as advice goes and not too surprising from a guy who, at a low point in his career, still has a sense of awe and appreciation for how he got there.
It reminds me of his commencement speech to the Harvard class of 2000:
I left the cocoon of Harvard, I left the cocoon of Saturday Night Live, I left the cocoon of The Simpsons. And each time it was bruising and tumultuous. And yet, every failure was freeing, and today I’m as nostalgic for the bad as I am for the good.
So, that’s what I wish for all of you: the bad as well as the good. Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally. And remember that the story is never over. If it’s all right, I’d like to read a little something from just this year: “Somehow, Conan O’Brien has transformed himself into the brightest star in the Late Night firmament. His comedy is the gold standard and Conan himself is not only the quickest and most inventive wit of his generation, but quite possible the greatest host ever.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, Class of 2000, I wrote that this morning, as proof that, when all else fails, there’s always delusion.
I’ll go now, to make bigger mistakes and to embarrass this fine institution even more. But let me leave you with one last thought: If you can laugh at yourself loud and hard every time you fall, people will think you’re drunk.
Right now Conan is falling down and leaving the cocoon of NBC. It will suck for a while, and it’s been quite a mess. But I won’t be surprised when he rises again and carves out another little place in our lives where he can do what he does best: make us laugh. Good luck, Conan!
So I got this Garmin device that does GPS in hopes that it’d make me run more. So far it’s been successful. The GPS and Google maps mashups on their activity summary web app are super cool (see full example):
Over time, if you keep up with it you can see improvements in different categories:
Since I’m not a running super-beast and I’m not very fast, I have been pretty interested in the heart rate! I’m also interested in it because the first few runs were pretty tough because I’d run for a bit (at the speed I remember running at) and my heart would go nuts and I’d have to walk for a bit. For a while I’d have to keep doing that, and my heart rate chart showed why.
On my first run in about 2 years, I was getting owned:
After waking up this morning at 430am and going for a crazy morning run (which, if you knew me, is something I never do), I was happy to see this:
I still have to walk a bit in the middle of a 3 mile jog, but while I’m running my heart rate remains constant and it never felt like it was going to explode. I’m now able to sustain for longer and I also have less movement between 180 and 200 bpm (Note that the top graph was 1.5 miles and the bottom one was 3 miles).
As I was writing a blog about browsing statistics and how they can improve how we use the web, it made me think of this little Garmin watch and how knowing more about my own body can help me improve my life.
Data is good, knowledge is good. By itself, not so much — but if you use it right it can make all the difference.
Firefox users: Did you know that you have private database that contains all your browsing information?
Well, you do. And here’s the thing:
Browsing could be better. There’s no question about that. We have set conventions and preconceived notions about how browsing should be. That is, until the next big thing comes along and rocks our world.
It feels like using data to improve browsing is a no-brainer, and data-driven browsing is already the next big thing. You see this in search suggests, amazon suggested items, the iTunes store, and other sites. And that’s just all site-specific. Imagine if we used data the right way and made things just click?
On a limited scale, it’s all more than possible today. You have complete control over your own browsing history:
Simple fact is that you’re not using as much as you could.
The Firefox awesome bar was heralded as a great step in browsing innovation. And it’s true, it really was. And that’s because a lot of browsing is really repeat browsing. How many times do you go back and view what you just looked at the other day?
But that’s the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of things we can learn about the web and about how we use the web to make it better. And don’t think about person -> corporation -> other corporations. For starters, think about what you could do with just your own browsing data, or your family’s browsing data:
The awesome bar in Firefox already uses this, and it’s great to see some Firefox extensions are already tapping into the possibilities:
Those are just two examples of what we can do and where we can go. I’m pretty excited to see what happens next. Maybe you have the next great idea — go forth!
I remember the jungle gym of childhood
Crusted yellow paint and the smell of dirt
Grasping the air, I missed a bar
Complete chaos for seconds
Now my hair is wet, warm and thick
Tears well up, but nobody sees them
The nearest person is too far to hear
When you were close enough, I cried
You carried me to the car
I felt vinyl and rumbling
The light of the ER was hot,
like the needle that numbed me
Six stitches fixed me
Ice cream felt good on my lips
You ate it with me,
but you’re lactose intolerant
I’ve been testing out Thunderbird again lately. While composing an email on shredder (Thunderbird nightly) today it reminded me that I needed to add an attachment. Pretty cool idea.
morgamic 