2008 in 40 seconds

2008 was a difficult, contentious, exciting, and ultimately momentous year, but while the affairs of men boil away, life and nature serenely continue on. This beautiful time lapse movie from Erik Sondheim really captures the eternal heartbeat of life. It's worth the trip to Erik's site to see how he did it and watch the full two minute HD version. Good news: he just got a 5D Mark II so next year's video should be even more mind boggling. Here's to a happy, peaceful, and prosperous 2009 for all of us all over the world.

ChannelFlip Treatment

Wil Harris was out at the cottage a couple of weeks ago and taped this interview for Channelflip.

KGO Live

I'll be speaking at a free event in San Francisco: Saturday, May 3 at 3p, at the Concourse Exhibition Center, 8th & Brannan. My San Francisco radio affiliate, KGO Newstalk 810, does this every year. KGO Live is an all day event, 11a-4p, featuring Dr. Dean Edell, Ronn Owens, Gil Gross, Len Tillem, Joanie Greggains, Gene Burns, Michael Finney, Rosie Allen, Ed Baxter, Lynn Jimenez, Karel, Bill Wattenburg, and me. They tell me they've set out 400 chairs for Dean Edell and around 40 for me. I'd really love to show them that there are more than 40 geeks in San Francisco, so please come out and say hi. There are more details, including information about the wine tasting that will also be going on, at KGO's web site.

Speak Softly And Carry A Big Camera Bag

I'm leaving tonight for Australia on the Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop Adventure 2008: Tasmania! My good friend Mikkel Aaland, author of O'Reilly's Lightroom Adventure is leading another photo expedition; this time it's to Tasmania with a bunch of the world's top photographers for the next edition of his book and he invited me to come. I couldn't resist even though I'm no photo pro. (They're billing me as a "special media guest.") I do apologize to my friends on the mainland - the itinerary is limited to Tassie: A week in Hobart and a week in the wild. Our Qantas flight does stopover for seven hours in Sydney, so thanks to Aussie Mike, we'll do an impromptu meetup at the Starbucks at Terminal 3, Sydney Airport, 11a-1p on Tuesday. (It's a 12-hour flight and we cross the International Date Line so even though I'm leaving Sunday night I won't arrive in Sydney until Tuesday morning!) If there are any fans in Hobart who want to set up a meet up on Thursday or Friday let me know. I'll be doing my radio show from Sea FM/Heart 107.3 Hobart Sunday and Monday morning 4-7a local time (Tasmania is UTC +11 but it'll be live in the States). The following week I won't have access to a studio so we'll air two shows I've recorded ahead of time with all new material. I'm bringing enough gear to equip a multimedia army.

• Canon 5D digital SLR with 24-105mm, 50mm f1.2, 70-200 f4, 180mm Macro, and Lensbaby 3G lenses
• Pentax K20D DSLR (my backup camera, on loan from Pentax) with 50mm Macro and16-200 Zoom lenses
• The new Canon HV30 Vixia Hi-Def Video Camera with wide angle converter and Canon shotgun mic
• HHB FlashMic flash audio recorder
• Marantz PMD-660 flash audio recorder with Shure SM-58 mic (as backup)
• Apple MacBook with 250GB internal and a 160GB external backup drive, equipped with Final Cut Express 4, Amadeus Pro, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and Lightroom

All this fits into my Lowepro CompuTrekker Plus AW backpack (it's huge) but I'm also bringing a Lowepro Slingshot 200 AW to carry into the field. And a change of underwear. Thank goodness I'm not going by ship. I think I'd sink it. There's a reason for all this gear. I'll be blogging the whole time I'm Down Under, including photos (on Smugmug and Flickr), audio (here), and video (on Smugmug and Viddler) so watch this space. Many of the other photographers will be blogging as well on the O'Reilly blog site.

Funny and Cranky Geeks

I'll be a guest on Dvorak's Cranky Geeks Wednesday. Watch it live at 12:30p Pacific at crankygeeks.com or download it later. Thursday I'm going to be on the syndicated Bob and Tom radio show from 9a until they toss me off. I'll post notes, if there are any, here.