When we moved to Beacon Hill in 2000, we were totally dumbfounded by the number of kids who came trick-or-treating to our door. In the prior two years, we had been renting a house in Wallingford, and we had only had one set of kids each year.

We had about 100 kids that first year. We were not expecting the onslaught and ran out of candy, which led to Emma being berated by some presumptuous mother. We live in a relatively affluent block and kids are brought quite a distance to partake of the goodies. One small boy peered up at Emma once and asked her, “Are you rich?”

And so it's been ever since: Hordes of kids. Even on cold, wet nights, it's never dipped below 60 kids.

This year, we had 150 kids. (Actually 149 kids and one dog in costume.) The doorbell rang every few minutes from not long after 6pm until 9 o'clock.

A few years ago, I started taking photos of them. The price of the candy is that they have to stand in the doorway for a photo.

I set the camera up on a tripod with a remote control and clicked away. You can see this year's set at Emma's Flickr account. Photos from previous years are there too.

Two months after our memorial for Frank Maloney, we took the ferry over to Vashon Island to scatter his ashes. It was a beautiful September day, sunny but not too hot, and a 20-minute ferry ride was most pleasant.

Kim and Holly fed us lunch at their place and we all fell in love with their six rescue kittens. We drove to a secluded beach and each of us scattered a teaspoon of Frank's ashes upon the waters. We sat there for a while and talked and wandered. Then, back to Holly and Kim's for cake and coffee.

I know that Frank would have thoroughly enjoyed the day: the fine weather, the ferry ride, the beach, and the food. He would have reveled in the kittens and shone in the company of his friends, who continue to miss him.

I took a large number of photos. The best, somewhat edited, are up at Flickr: ferry, kittens, and ashes.

Chuckanut Drive is one of Washington State's best yet least-known scenic drives. Take I-5 north from Seattle for 70 miles. Just past Burlington, exit on to state route 11. The highway heads northwest towards the coast across the fertile floodplain of the Skagit valley. For nine miles, you drive past farms and fields. Then the road rises at the coast, changing character instantly.

Now you're driving along the rocky, forested shoulder of the Chuckanut mountains. One hundred feet below as you drive along the twisty, shady road, you can catch glimpses of the waters of Samish Bay through the trees. If you look closely, you may see the train tracks, practically at water's edge. Look out across the bay and you can see the San Juan islands and, behind them, Vancouver Island.

There are a handful of viewpoints. Stop, get out, look around. There are oyster beds below, though it's hard to tell.

When you get to Larrabee State Park, turn down into it. Walk under the train tracks and go down to the rocky promontories and along the beach. Stop at Cove Road and go down to the boat slip and watch the kayakers.

A few miles further along Chuckanut Drive and you'll reach Fairhaven, a small brick town built in the 1880s. Once a fishing village, it now has retirees and restaurants and stores. Fairhaven has been absorbed into the nearby city of Bellingham, but it retains its own character.

South of Bellingham, I-5 runs through the rocky forest along Lake Samish, on the east side of the Chuckanut mountains. It's the most scenic part of I-5 in all of Washington state.

We made the trip just that this afternoon. The photos are at Flickr.

I had about 60 apparently corrupted photos on a CompactFlash card this evening. It might have been due to Lightroom going berserk, but it was more likely from my pulling the card reader out of the computer without ejecting it first.

The photos wouldn't show up under Mac, Linux, or Windows. I tried to chkdsk the card under Windows, which complained about a “raw” disk. That led me to ZAR, the Zero Assumption Recovery toolkit. The evaluation copy retrieved the photos very nicely. Whew!

Before we left on our trip, I picked up a pair of 4GB SD cards for my point-and-shoot Canon Elph. I brought my Linux netbook along, which has a built-in SD card reader, and the cards worked fine with that.

But they didn't work at all in any of the external card readers that I have, and I had to resort to a USB cable to transfer photos from the camera to my other computers.

Wikipedia discusses compatibility issues with 2GB and larger SD cards, which is initially what I thought the problem was. On looking more closely at the cards, I see that they're the newer SDHC cards. The card readers were all a few years old and must have preceded the SDHC standard.

I spent $7.99 on a new card reader this evening, which supports SDHC and most of the other small card formats.

When using Lightroom before, I was never able to figure out how to move photos from one folder to another. You'd think that you could just click on a photo and drag it. I just spent twenty minutes figuring out what I've been doing wrong. After you've selected multiple photos, click on the photo thumbnail and not the surrounding gray frame, and then you can drag the photos to the target folder.

I had become accustomed to clicking on the frames to multi-select photos, so naturally I assumed that was also how you dragged a set of photos. But clicking on a frame of a selected photo merely deselects all the other photos.

I mentioned three weeks ago that I was putting together a group of people to see Greenstage's production of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors at the Seward Park Amphitheater. Six of us braved the rain last night, ate our picnic, and enjoyed an hour and a half of ribald slapstick.

Almost all of the cast cross-dressed. The main male parts, the two sets of identical twin brothers, were played by women, The wife, her sister, and the courtesan were played by ugly men in the best panto dame tradition.

The play, like so many of Shakespeare's comedies, requires an endless series of confused identities, which could be cleared up in moments if only someone paused and said, “Wait a minute!”

Much running around, no subtlety, fun.

Lots of photos at Flickr.

Seattle Shakespeare are also putting on free, outdoor productions of Shakespearean plays, Taming of the Shrew and Richard III. Both end on August 2nd, before we get back from Europe. Cathy saw their white trash production Taming yesterday and raved about it today.

We held our rally for healthcare and the public option at lunchtime, outside the Jackson Federal Building where both Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have their Seattle offices.

Turnout was good: about 100 people, I'd say. We had about half-a-dozen speakers over 45 minutes. A cameraman from King–5 covered it, but I can't find anything on their website. A handful of people went upstairs to the senators' offices and delivered 291 pages of petitions.

One concrete suggestion that I came away with is to write a handwritten letter to the senators advocating for healthcare reform. Handwritten letters carry more weight than printed letters or calls and much more weight than emails.

Do it soon. If July slips away without significant progress on legislation, it will get watered down.

The news came halfway through the rally that Regence BlueShield are raising premiums by 17%. It was not well received.

I took a pile of photos. The best ones are at Picasa.

Mira and Will addressing the rally.

I can't believe that I've never taken the train down to Portland before. It's easy, it's inexpensive, and it's about as quick as driving without the hassle.

The photo is from the set of photos that I posted to Flickr for motsscon XXII, on which more later.

Kubota Garden is a little-known gem in the Rainier Beach area of south Seattle. Twenty acres of hills and valleys in a Japanese style.

Emma and I met Lyndol down there this morning and rambled through the garden for two hours. It was a fine, overcast day, with temperatures in the low 60s and occasional drizzle—and a pleasant relief from the record heat of earlier this week. I had visited there before: it's at the far end of the Chief Sealth bicycle trail. Lyn had too, but it was Emma's first visit.

The gate was locked when we arrived at 10:30, though the sign proclaimed that it was open from 6am until sunset. We walked in anyway. It was still locked when we left, but a few others also found their way in.

We climbed up the “Mountainside” to the top of the turned-off waterfall, we crossed all the bridges, we found Mapes Creek. Fujitaro Kubota bought swampland in 1927, but most of it has been drained since.

I resisted the urge to take photos for about half an hour, but a grove of twisted trees compelled me to whip my point-and-shoot off my belt. The best photos can be found at Flickr.

For many years, I ignored the freeway sign for the Rhododendron Garden at exit 143 on I-5. Five or six years ago, I visited the Rhody Garden and I've gone back every spring since.

It's worth visiting at any time of year, but from March to May or June, it's in bloom. Twenty-two acres of rhododendrons, azaleas, ferns, and other flowers, near the Weyerhauser headquarters in Federal Way, Washington. There's a bonsai garden next door—unfortunately now closed to the public. As you stroll along the shaded hilly paths, you can almost make believe that the constant traffic noise from the nearby freeway is running water.

Rhodies come in all shapes, colors, and sizes, from low bushes to 30-foot trees. They are native to North America, Europe, and Asia, and thrive in the Pacific Northwest.

Emma and I brought Lyn there last Saturday. It was surprisingly empty for such a fine day, though they said they had been overrun the previous weekend for Mother's Day.

I put the best photos up at Flickr. Enjoy!

I took today off and headed north to the Skagit Valley with Emma and Lyndol to see the tulips. It was a glorious spring day, sunny, not too warm, a light breeze. The tulip fields were busy for a weekday; they're completely overrun at the weekends.

We wandered around Tulip Town for an hour, had lunch in La Conner, and headed back to Seattle via Camano Island.

We had intended to take Chuckanut Drive up to Fairhaven, but Emma wasn't feeling well. Some other time. Chuckanut Drive is pretty year round; the tulips are good only for another couple of weeks.

More photos at Flickr.

It's been too long since I last posted an Odds & Ends.

Henri is a very amusing short spoof of French ennui.

Back in January, Emma and I were being repeatedly shocked by static electricity. We would inadvertently discharge by kissing or otherwise touching each other, or by touching laptops or faucets. Eventually, I realised that it was due to a combination of the microfiber upholstery on our new couch and the dry, unhumid air. We solved it by a combination of rubbing an anti-static dryer sheet (Bounce) on the couch and buying a humidifier. That led to a spate of jokes about the spark being gone.

It's started coming back again. I think it's time to fondle the couch with more Bounce.

The Bad Sex Awards are, perhaps, Britain's "most dreaded literary prize". Read about the 2007 Bad Sex nominees in the Guardian, with excerpts. The late Norman Mailer won posthumously

Ian Welsh makes a case that it's not your money, in rebuttal to anti-tax libertarians.

A few weeks ago I read that the last German veteran of World War I had died. Yesterday, I read that the last French veteran had just died.

Regarding the Spitzer prostitution scandal: normally, I would have given a Democratic politician the benefit of the doubt for a sex scandal. After all, unlike the Republicans—see Larry ‘wide stance’ Craig; David ‘Diaper’ Vitter (brother of my former professor at Brown, Jeff); Mark Foley, et al—Democratic politicians generally don't make a big deal of “family values”. Spitzer had done a good job of fighting corruption, but breaking up prostitution rings had also been one of his signature issues, as had prosecuting johns. The whole thing bespeaks such massive stupidity and hypocrisy that I say good riddance to him.

Several of us went to see Barack Obama at Key Arena last month (photos here), the day before the Washington state primary. The crowd more than filled Key Arena, with at least 20,000 in attendance. We ended up outside, as you can see from the photos, which actually served us well, as Obama stood outside and talked to the crowd for a few minutes before heading into the stadium. We got closer to him than we would have inside.

Anyway, John McCain spoke at the Westin Hotel that evening and only managed to half-fill the ballroom, which accommodates 800 people. In other words, the then-presumptive Republican nominee could only pull as many people as attended my caucus the next day. There are hundreds of thousands of Republicans within an hour's drive of Seattle, but only a few hundred of them could summon the enthusiasm to see their guy in person.

I thought our caucus went well. I helped the convener organize the whole event for eight precincts. As the Precinct Committee Officer (PCO) for SEA 11-1945, I chaired our precinct's caucus and was elected as a delegate for Obama, which means that I will be attending the 11th Legislative District and the King County conventions next month. I have no intention of trying to proceed further. I don't want to go to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August.

I recently learned about string pods and chain pods. In essence, they are pocket-sized monopods. You screw a six-foot string into the tripod socket of your camera, step on the other end of the string, and pull it taut. The tension on the string reduces camera shake.

My string pod tutorial shows how I made the string pod, as well as some before and after shots.

Before now, I used to try to find a handy surface or wall to brace the camera, when taking photos without flash. Often there isn't such a surface. I have a little 3-inch pocket tripod that I carry with me all the time, but I haven't used it much.

A Flick thread on low-light, no flash, hand-held photography makes several good suggestions. The best is to set the 2-second timer, which gives the camera a chance to stabilize after pressing the trigger.

Title: Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking
Author: Julieanne Kost
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Publisher: O'Reilly
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0596100833
Pages: 148
Keywords: photography, photoshop, creativity
Reading period: 30 December, 2006

Julieanne Kost, a Photoshop evangelist for Adobe, flies 200 days a year. For the last five years, she's been taking photos out of airplane windows.

This book is part pretty pictures, part a meditation on creativity, and part a Photoshop tutorial.

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. That must be why the word count is so low. In the first 120 pages, there are eight pages of text on creativity, and one page of text for each of the following seven chapters. The book concludes with twelve pages of text in an appendix on Imaging Techniques, a high-speed introduction to photo manipulation in Photoshop.

The rest of the book is pictures. Pictures of clouds, pictures of fields, of mountains, of the sea, pictures of sunrises and sunsets. Great photos, even if the subject matter is a little repetitive.

The appendix shows several examples of before-and-after shots, and she's worked some wonders, though you'd expect no less from a Photoshop Evangelist.

Ultimately, the book is unsatisfying. Both the creativity and the Photoshop sections are too cursory to be of much value. It is more successful as a book of photographs, but I would have appreciated more commentary on the photos themselves. Why choose this one? What caught her eye in the first place? The choices of composition and cropping. What worked, what didn't.

Too bad.

10/29. In mid-October, I shaved off the goatee that I had sported since March, leaving me clean-shaven for the first time in a decade. I quickly got over that urge and let the beard start growing back.

This is me at the two-week stage: a self-portrait taken while experimenting with the new camera. It looks a little odd to me. I'm using this as the startup photo on the camera.

10/30. I go back and forth between Atlas's offices at Pioneer Square and the International District, and Smith Tower is a major landmark.

10/31. Once again, we got dozens and dozens of young callers at Halloween. I have a set of Halloween photos at Flickr.

11/01. This is taken from the roof of Atlas's office Occidental Square, looking at the building on the other side of the street.

11/02. Tres works in the group that I'm loaned out to, Atlas Publisher. He has a certain sartorial flair. He also turns out to be a friend of Sparky.

11/03. Occidental Square at dusk.

About six weeks ago, I read about Sparky's A Picture a Day project on his blog. He in turn had been inspired by Photojojo's Project 365.

Here's how it works, for me. I take at least one photo a day, every single day for a year. Every so often, I upload the photos to my Flickr site. If I get more than one worthwhile photo in a day, great, but one and only gets tagged potd (picture of the day).

Why? Apart from the reasons enumerated by Photojojo, here's what I get out of it.

First of all, fun. It adds a little spark to my day, to be always looking for photo ops.

Second, the constant practice makes me a better photographer.

Third, more photo editing and photo organization. Historically, I have been much better about taking photos than I have about organizing them and editing them. This should get me off my duff about going through the thousands of photos I've taken since I went digital in 2001, and posting the best of them.

Before I was inspired to start this project, I had been thinking about getting a small point-and-shoot, like the Casio Exilim. When my parents stayed with us and went to Hawaii with us a month before, I had played with my mother's Exilim and liked it. My father had also had me order another Exilim as a present for Michelle, and I had carried that around for a week.

I bought myself a Casio Exilim EX-Z1000 at CostCo. It's 10 megapixels, which I think is overkill, but even so, I can get more than 700 photos on to a 2GB card. It came with a leather carrying case, now a fulltime resident on my belt. I'm fairly happy with it, and I think I've got some good results from it. But judge for yourself.

I love my other camera, a Nikon D70 digital SLR, but it's far too bulky and heavy to carry with me all the time.

I finally uploaded the first 36 pictures to Flickr last night, after working on them for most of the weekend. It would have been sooner, but we spent 2.5 weeks in Ireland with wholly inadequate Internet access, and I was quite busy before then.

From now on, I hope to post new POTD pictures two or three times a week.

The next few posts will talk about those first 36 photos in more detail. I also intend to write up the workflow that I'm developing.

I noted at the beginning of July that my sister Michelle was to be married to David Bowles in Dublin in early November.

The wedding took place on Friday, November 10th. Emma and I arrived the afternoon before, half stumbling with tiredness. My brother, Mark, and his wife, Lizzy, had arrived from New York only hours earlier.

The ceremony took place at 1pm at St. Brigid's, a small, old Anglican church, on the outskirts of Stillorgan village, long since absorbed into the Dublin metropolitan area. It was very Ascendancy, with 19th century plaques about Fellow of the Royal College this and Brevet Colonel (Boer War) that.

The bride looked lovely, and I have the photos to prove it.

After the wedding, we all repaired to Barberstown Castle for the reception. There were, I think, 160 guests who partied late into the night. Emma and I gave up around 1:30, exhausted from the jet lag. My mother didn't get to bed until after 4am. Philip Bowles, David's father, who had been undergoing chemotherapy, was in fine form and stayed up nearly as late.

Emma and I had arranged to stay a second night at Barberstown Castle, and I ended up sleeping until 4pm on the Saturday, trying to sleep off the drink and the jetlag.

The following week, my mother and I went through the nearly 400 photos that she, Emma, David Reilly, and I had taken, and whittled it down to 74 representative ones. She badly wanted to send the photos to her friends around the world, so I set up a Picasa web album for her and uploaded them.

Mark set up a site for Michelle and David before the wedding, but it doesn't yet link to the photos.

For the last few months, every blog post that I've made has been accompanied by at least one image. Sometimes I already have an appropriate image. The rest of the time, I use whatever I could find after searching Google Images.

Earlier today, I came across 10 Tips for Google Image Search. I particularly like the Greasemonkey script which allows you to view the original image by clicking on the thumbnail.

I've up loaded my Halloween pictures to Flickr.