Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

For the last week or so, Portland has been in the icy grip of winter come early. It's been snowing pretty much every day: everything from a light sprinkle to a full blizzard with howling 50mph winds over at Troutdale, where cold wind has been roaring down the Columbia River Gorge. When the snow first started, the weather teams on the news were fairly unconcerned. They expected less than an inch of snow in Portland itself and told us that the system would move on soon. Here's Christine out in the light snow of the first day, when it was a fun novelty (as an Australian, I'm easily impressed by snow and still find it fascinating!).

However, it soon became apparent that the cold, snowy weather was going to set in for a longer period of time, and basically, all hell broke loose. As I may have mentioned before, Portland TV news is obsessed with the weather, and any sort of snow storm at all was an excuse for that obsession to become full-blown scare-mongering. You'd think it was the end of the world based on the coverage that a couple of inches of snow is getting. Entire news bulletins have been given over to the weather (Seriously! There was no other news at all, nothing local, national or international!), filled with radar and satellite images, ODOT highway camera shots and a veritable horde of reporters stationed at every potential motoring trouble spot around town. They went to tire shops to report that snow chains had sold out, we were warned to stock up on food in case we couldn't leave the house, they told us that roads were icy and impassable and that we shouldn't leave the house unless our needs were imperative and urgent. In short, a media-hyped "Snowpocalypse" was upon us, and yea verily, Portland trembled in fear.

Christine, having grown up in Idaho Falls – where they can get huge amounts of snow each winter – was incredulous. People interviewed on the news who were from Spokane and Montana were similarly dismissive of Portland's hysterical attitude to a tiny bit of snow. Because faced with the terrifying prospect of 2 to 3 inches of snow, the city basically shut down. Schools closed for the entire week. Businesses told their staff not to come in to work. Churches cancelled services. The roads are almost entirely devoid of traffic.

In a way, the hysteria is somewhat justified, purely because Portland just isn't used to snow. It rarely snows on the floor of the Willamette Valley, and sticking snow is rarer still. Until this last week, I had only seen tiny flurries of sad, wet snow that lasted for 20 minutes or so in Portland, melting almost as soon as it hit the ground. Sustained snow like this is a rare occurence and Portlanders don't know how to deal with it. Multnomah County only has a handful of snow plows and de-icing trucks. Even working around the clock, they can't keep all of Portland's roads clear. People aren't used to driving on snowy or icy streets - many people interviewed on the news have admitted to not knowing how to fit snow chains at all - and accidents then ensue. I've seen something very similar to this when I was in England in January 2004. A light dusting of snow across the south-east of the country basically brought everything to a complete standstill for three days for exactly the same reasons - little or no infrastrucure to deal with it, and a lack of knowledge amongst drivers.

The weather only really got nasty last night, as the snow turned into what is known as freezing rain. This rain freezes instantly upon landing, and covers every surface with thick, crunchy ice. The snow, which had been fresh and fluffy up until then, suddenly had a creme brulee-like crust of ice on top, which broke as you walked upon it. Cars were rimed with thick ice, which has to be broken off before going anywhere.

Here, Christine inspects our car as we attempted to thaw it out this morning. The engine is on with the heater at full blast to defrost the window from the inside - you can see a lighter patch of ice where it is beginning to detach from the windscreen. Then it's a matter of scraping and tapping the ice off the windows until they are clear. The process took us over half an hour; some of the ice on the window was a good 5mm thick!

This is the view as we drove down Interstate Avenue after freeing our car. A good few inches of snow mask the lane markings and the curb, but the All Wheel Drive of the Subaru does an admirable job of making driving in these conditions relatively easy. Certainly not anywhere near as bad as the news would have you believe. One thing to note is that the MAX light rail (the tracks are in the middle of the road above) was not running along the Yellow Line through our neighbourhood today. The points down at the Rose Quarter have frozen solid, making it impossible for trains to come our way! Trains are also not running to the airport for the same reason - not that it matters, as most flights out of PDX have been cancelled. I-84 through the Columbia River Gorge has also been closed due to the blizzard through there last night. This turn of events certainly merits the media's attention, but after having been told that the End of Days is upon us for over a week now, it kind of feels like the boy who cried "wolf!" to me now - if you sensationalise everything, then what do you do when things actually get bad?

Posted in: chaosboy, portland, weather on December 21, 2008 at at 3:36:00 PM 1 comments    

The ad shown above is possibly the most reprehensible piece of television advertising I have ever seen. Whoever thought this concept up should be taken out and force-fed the advertiser's product until they throw up or something.

It looks to me like the ad is trying to play off the success of Borat – simple people from a strange foreign country who are all craving the taste of America. And therein lies the problem - surely there should be places in the world where people just don't eat burgers. It's not part of their culture or their way of life. What right does an American burger conglomerate have to come in and feed them this stuff, even for just an ad? It smacks of arrogant cultural imperialism to me and makes this ad extremely unpalatable.

Note the way that the ad actually says very little that actually backs their claim that "the Whopper Virgins have spoken". There's no "9 out of 10 Inuits tested prefer our burger to the competitors", the ad just says "these individuals prefer the Whopper". So maybe only the three or four people we see actually prefer the Whopper. What if they fed burgers to 400 Thai tribesmen and only one liked it? Ah, weasel words at their very finest.

Finally, the look on some of their faces as they point out the Whopper seems to suggest they'd rather be eating anything else than a burger (Check out the Romanian lady at 19 seconds). However, they're only given the choice between the two burgers in front of them. It's almost like they're being asked "which pile of mud tastes better?" and a victory seems damning with faint praise.

Really, the only way this ad could be worse, be more cultually insensitive, is if they'd decided to take their beef-filled sandwiches to a small village in India and ask them what they thought of it.

Posted in: advertising, chaosboy, united states, weirdness on December 15, 2008 at at 10:24:00 AM 1 comments    

We have wheels!

Although Portland is a great city for biking around and has great public transport options, there are times when you just need a car. Whether it's for a shopping trip, a party in the far reaches of south-east PDX or – most importantly for me – for getting the heck out of of town on weekends. Up until now, we've got by with using Zip/Flex cars for shorter trips and hiring cars/hitching rides for those longer journeys, but these do require some degree of planning and aren't exactly spontaneous methods of transport.

So we started looking around at options for a car of our own. By the strangest of coincidences (or not), Christine's mom was looking to get herself a new car and was more than willing to cut us a good deal on her old Subaru Forester. We just had to come up with the cash in a lump sum, as she rightly said that monthly payments to her would put an unnecessary strain of family friendships. We had around half of the money already, so set out to obtain a loan for the other half.

To cut a long story short, it was an adventure in itself. We found out that while I am on my "interim" 2-year Green Card, I actually don't exist in terms of a credit rating. My rating is ZERO and will not move until I qualify for my full 10-year Green Card. This meant that Christine had to qualify for and take on the responsibility for the loan all by herself - my income could not be added to hers as proof of ability to repay the loan! In the end, we had to take a secured loan where the car itself stands as equity and the interest rate is somewhat horrific. The good news is that Christine will have an awesome credit rating when we finish paying the loan off!

Once the money was secured, we just had to get ourselves to Idaho Falls to pick up our new car. Plane fares the day after Thanksgiving are possibly the cheapest fares of the holiday season, and the planes themselves amongst the emptiest I have travelled on in the US. We spent a couple of happy, lazy days with Keener and Karen (gotta love having a beer in the hot tub out on the deck!) before taking possession of our new wheels and driving back to Portland.

I had made sure to get an Instructional Driving Permit from the DMV before we left, meaning that I can drive so long as a licensed driver is sitting next to me. It's kind of embarrassing to be treated like an "L" driver when I've driven for over 10 years in Australia without a single accident, but them's the rules! This meant we could share the driving on the way home, some 760 miles (1,200km) away. We took two days to drive home, taking the (slightly longer) scenic route rather than racing home along the (very dull) Interstate. Along the way, we stopped off at two of the most amazing places I have ever seen – Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho and the Painted Hills in Central Oregon.

Craters of the Moon is a giant lava field spreading across the Snake River plain, a huge black scar that suddenly appears as you drive along the highway. Within the park, giant cinder cones rise up above the twisted black lava, while underneath your feet lie huge lava tubes – caves left behind as rivers of lava cooled over, forming long tubes. We spent a long time exploring the park, going down into one of the lava tubes, Indian Tunnel. This tube is the only one you can explore without a helmet and a light source, as regular roof collapses have left many "skylights" along the tunnel's 800 foot length. The tube is over 50 feet wide and 30 feet high and is an amazing sight. One day, we will return properly equipped and explore the other tubes, some of which have permanent ice on the cave floor!

The Painted Hills – which we saw on the second day – are part of the John Day Fossil Beds, one of the most important sources of prehistoric mammalian fossils (and their entire ecosystem) in the world. The hills themselves are an ancient riverbed, with layer upon layer of different coloured alluvial soils – and their attendant fossils – now compressed into beautiful folded hills. Much like Uluru in Australia, the hills can change colour completely depending on the light and the forms created by light and shadow are nothing short of amazing.

We were treated with more spectacular sights as we reached the home stretch – the Cascades mountain range spread out before us, high volcanic peaks dotting the horizon from north to south, with Mount Jefferson (below) and Mount Hood being particularly view-worthy as sunset approached.
Finally, we reached home and began our new life with our own transport. Now we just have to get enough cash together to register the car in Oregon, and I have to get around to getting a real driver's license!

Posted in: chaosboy, idaho falls, oregon, photography, travel on at at 8:57:00 AM 0 comments    

The end of year holiday season lasts much longer in America than it does in Australia - it starts at Halloween and continues unabated until New Years. Between candies in October, turkey dinners in November and the festivities of Christmas still to come, I have come to a horrible realisation – I'm gaining weight in an appalling way.

I hadn't weighed myself since I arrived in America, but I knew that when I arrived I was around 80kg (176 pounds). Well, someone thought it would be a good idea – believe it or not – to have a set of scales at a Thanksgiving dinner (why, God, why?). Weighing in for a laugh, I was shocked to discover that I was weighing in at 190 pounds (86kg), which is as big as I have ever been. Last time, I had the benefit of backpacking around Europe, walking 10-20km a day and living on a diet of bread and sausage for six months to help me get back down to a svelte 70kg (154 pounds). This time, however, I'm going to have to do this the hard way.

Even though I ride my bike all over town, it hardly seems to count as exercise anymore. My body has got so used to riding that I barely get puffed even going up the big hill along Interstate Avenue on the way home. With a gym membership out of our price bracket at the moment (not that gyms have ever really worked for me before!), I decided that I would have to start jogging to get a better all-over workout. Christine got me an iPod Nike+ kit cheap through her store, and I set out for my first run. For my first run, I thought I'd start easy and do a 4-mile loop along a cliff-top road near our house. Boy, was I in for a shock.

I could barely run for three minutes at a time without being completely out of breath and getting a really sore back. Walking at a moderately fast pace was okay, but I'm going to need to do more than that to burn some calories. Fortunately, the Nike+ website that links to the device you put in your shoe has a training program that builds you up from a walk to running over a 12 week period. I've been doing it for just over a week now and I'm already feeling a little more capable, although there's still a way to go! I find that the training program is all the incentive I need to get out and do my half-an-hour a day, although the incredible cold snap (temperatures well below freezing from Tuesday through Friday, with a big chance of snow sticking in Portland itself) that Portland is about to go through may tax my resolve over the next few days! Here's to continued exercise and weight loss... kind of like a New Year's Resolution a few weeks early!

Posted in: chaosboy, exercise on December 13, 2008 at at 7:41:00 PM 0 comments    

Let's get one thing straight: Portland – or more specifically, Portland TV news – is obsessed with the weather. Maybe it's because the four local stations, KATU 2, KOIN 6, KGW 8 and FOX 12 all seem to have four news shows running directly after each other and they need to fill them with something. And I'm not kidding here... the evening schedule on KATU looks something like this.

• The 4 o'clock news (FIRST AT FOUR!)
• The 5 o'clock news
• The 6 o'oclock (national) news
• The 6.30 news
• Some other TV programs getting in the way of more news
• The 11 o'clock news

Geez! Really? Portland ain't that big of a town and, when it comes down to it, not a lot happens here. So for one network to give us more than four hours of local news a day (there's also the morning news to consider!) is kinda ludicrous.

So it ain't surprising that they fill a lot of this time with inane banter between the anchors and that great time-filler, the weather. On a really slow news day, the weather can be the big top story of the day. "And in breaking news, we cross to Rod, our chief meteorologist, for more news on that rain that could be coming our way on Veterans' Day." I made that story up, but it's not too far from the truth.

Each channel prides itself on its extensive weather coverage: "Your Storm Watch Team!" intones the Voice Over Man™ solemnly, or, "your trained local meteorologists!" followed by, "Doppler 8000 radar!!!" (whatever that actually is!) and every channel has a veritable arsenal of weather cameras dotted around northern Oregon. Out at the coast, along the Columbia River, on every tall building in Portland – just waiting to show you what it currently looks like outside. I dunno, if I wanted to know what it was like outside right now, I could just... go outside.

Look, we all like to know what the weather's going to be like (although at this time of year in Portland, "rainy and cold" is probably the answer pretty much every day), but do we really need vast tracts of time every night given over to the subject? I really bet the forecast hasn't changed that much in the five minutes since they last gave it to us...

Posted in: chaosboy, general musings, portland, weather on November 9, 2008 at at 6:32:00 PM 0 comments    

It's almost 7:30pm Pacific Time here in the United States, and the race for the Presidency - the most powerful job in the world, as they say - is almost over. At the moment, Barack Obama holds 207 Electoral College votes to John McCain's 135. Under the US's remarkably obtuse voting system, once a candidate reaches 270 votes, they have a majority and are declared the victor.

More importantly, Obama has just (and I mean minutes ago!) been declared the winner of the state of Ohio. Much like the Federal electorate of Eden-Monaro back home in Australia, it is the bellwether state - you just don't win the Presidency without winning Ohio.

I haven't commented on the election yet on this blog, basically because the one thing everyone hates is a know-it-all foreigner telling them how things should be done and who you should vote for. But, on the actual night, and with America on the verge of history, I feel that I can offer a few observations.

The electoral process in this country takes far, far, far too long. The initial primaries and caucuses to select the Presidential candidates begin in January, the election itself is in November! The period inbetween is filled with campaigning, saturation of television with increasingly negative and vitriolic ads, followed by more campaigning. It's draining, annoying and ever present. The amount of money raised and spent by the campaigns over this period is staggering, ridiculous and even slightly obscene. At least electoral campaigns only last six weeks or so in Australia - a blessed relief!

Sarah Palin. I'm not even going to dignify her with a comment.

The Obama campaign has done a remarkable job encouraging young people and minorities to get out and vote.

The financial crisis couldn't have come at a worse time for the Republican party - if you preside over a meltdown like that, it's always going to be difficult to win an election, even with a new President at the helm.

The Senatorial battle in Oregon between Jeff Merkley (D) and Gordon Smith (R) has to be one of the dirtiest, nastiest no-holds barred fights I have ever seen.

Finally, I feel that Barack Obama is the right choice for this country. He's not perfect - no politician is - but he is a statesman, something America desperately needs after eight years of President Stupid. At this point in time, change is needed and that's what Obama offers.

Posted in: chaosboy, politics, united states on November 4, 2008 at at 7:27:00 PM 0 comments    

A couple of weekends ago, our good friend Leah called me up in a bit of a tizzy. Leah works in the campaign office for Jeff Merkley, the Democrat's Oregon candidate for the US Senate, and needed my help in a hurry. Her usual graphic designer had gone AWOL and they needed some posters and postcards for a huge campaign event – Al Gore was coming to town to talk and endorse Jeff – and they were needed yesterday. Could I help? Never one to let a friend down, I stepped up to the plate and produced the material n record time. The front of the postcard is above... not ground-breaking work, but it does the job and was commented on favourably by all parties.

Leah, recognising my hard work, went to her boss and asked that he pay me for my work. However, asking a campaign manager for money for what they consider to be "volunteer work" a few weeks out from election day tends to be a fruitless exercise – how can you pay for all those interminable TV spots if you're handing cash over to some graphic designer? Leah stuck to her guns, saying that I had have earned something for my work, and in the end managed to score Christine and I free tickets to the event. And not just any tickets, these were "have your photo taken with Al Gore before the show" tickets, which were being offered to the public for the tidy sum of $1000 a head.

I'll admit that initially I was quite bemused by the offer of the tickets: while I admire Al Gore, especially for what he's done outside of politics regarding climate change, I felt a little distanced from him, like I didn't know enough about him to deserve the chance to meet him. However, by the morning of the event, I was pretty excited.

We both dressed up for the event – it's not often you meet ex-Vice Presidents and you'd like to look your best – and headed down to the Convention Center after work. We found Leah soon after arriving and she made sure that we got what she had promised us. Another volunteer only wanted to give us general admission tickets – Leah was having none of that! Pretty soon, we were lining up with all the others to meet Mr. Gore, but we were waiting for almost an hour. Christine's (very cute) shoes weren't designed for standing around in for so long and the small waiting room got hot very quickly. Surprisingly, for a $1000 price tag, there was no food and drink available for the people waiting, but everyone was extremely happy and patient.

Finally, we were told that Al Gore was on his way down and to form a queue. As the event was starting soon, we would only have time to greet him, shake his hand and have our photo taken - no time for chit chat or political discourse! We gradually made our way into the room where the photos were being taken, and we were both struck by his immediate presence: he's a tall, barrel-chested man with an extremely calm demeanour, which seemed to affect everyone in the room. When it was our turn, he somehow managed to make us both feel very welcome with just a few words and a confident handshake. I wasn't starstruck by him, but he definitely has an aura. Photo taken (it's going to be emailed to us soon!), we headed into the auditorium to hear people speak.

The first few speakers were other Democrat candidates for all sorts of public offices (Americans vote for everything all at once on Election Day), who all exhorted us to vote Democrat all the way down the ballot. Some of them tried a bit of cheerleading... "Who are you going to vote for??!!" and expecting everyone to chant "Merkley!!!" back at them, which frankly, was a little embarrassing. That kind of stuff is best left to high schools, football games or rallies with around 50,000 people.

Jeff's speech was somewhat better, but everyone else's words were forgotten the moment Al Gore came to the stage. His speech was amazing, there's no other way to describe it. Powerful, thought-provoking, funny... tying together the economic crisis, alternative energy, the war in Iraq and more into a tangible and spell-binding narrative, all of them giving reasons to vote for Jeff Merkley. Easily one of the best political speeches I have ever heard and totally inspiring. Listening to him speak like that, one can't help but wonder how different a place the world might be now if he had won that election eight years ago... I certainly can't imagine that he would have reacted to world events in the same way that the Bush administration has...

Posted in: chaosboy, politics, portland, united states on October 25, 2008 at at 8:28:00 AM 0 comments    

Flickr is awesome. Not only does it enable me to share my photos with family, friends and like-minded photographers from around the world, but it also acts as my agent. Companies of all sorts need photography, and it seems to me that they are increasingly turning to sites like Flickr instead of traditional (and highly expensive) photo libraries like Getty Images.

The image above is an initial cover concept for a novel that is being produced by a Dutch publishing house - and that's my photo on the cover! They found it on Flickr and asked me whether they could use it for a fee. After some negotiation, we came to an agreement and the result is above: I think it looks great!

This is the third image I've sold through Flickr in the last year, the other two being this and this. I've also donated this image to the Bath Abbey Trust, and a whole heap of images to the Crater Lake Trust – I'm always open to helping non-profits out with my photos, especially ones where I feel a connection.

Posted in: chaosboy, photography on October 11, 2008 at at 5:52:00 PM 2 comments    

When it comes to a declining economy and everyone, including the media, always reminding you so, begins to sink into your mind. You begin to think, that your calm little world is about to explode into a chaos of havoc and crime and will to sink into a demise similar to Gotham. That's kinda how I feel this week.

At work, people every other day come into report that their computer/ iPod/ hard drive, etc. was stolen and we are meant to do something about it. These people, I do take seriously and we send out emails to staff reminding them to keep an eye out for so forementioned stolen object. That gets 10X more serious when your own sister experiences her first break in by some desperate meth head/kid who saw her shiny white laptop and made a run for it. The guy (we'll assume its a guy) busted in through her bedroom by pushing in the air con and the continued to scavenge his way through the small apartment, nabbing a backpack in order to throw the laptop and a digital camera into. On his way through, he spots Kim's vintage cookie jar with "Munchies" painted on the side in old 70's style. He snags a chocolate bar and takes a bite of it. Upon realizing its baker's chocolate, he abandons the unsweetened bar and proceeds to grab Kevin's screwdriver in order to hit up the next door neighbors' apartment. (They had fortunately moved out the week before). The police made their stop at the apartment and went through the protocols but the forsenic inspector found the best fingerprints, nonetheless, on the abandoned candy bar in the kitchen. If this guy has every had his prints logged before, an arrest can be made on account of a CANDY BAR.

Meanwhile in other news, that same night, the lights were stolen off my bike. This is very unfortunate for me because if I get anywhere, its on bike. However, the situation is almost laughable.

Meanwhile today, two more people reported stolen laptops. What kind of country are we living in?

The best part about living in economic decline is seeing your friends on the daily news – alone sitting at a bar, as was the case with a co-worker friend of mine. The story was about how not as many people are going out to eat or drink in this past few weeks. I'm going to vote that drinking has not been affected.

But there's hope!
Get out and vote!

Posted in: chaosgurl, portland, technology, united states on September 28, 2008 at at 9:47:00 PM 0 comments    

I saw on the news the other day that the US Mint is planning to introduce new designs for the penny in 2009 to celebrate the bicentenary of President Lincoln's birth. I have a better idea - get rid of the useless things.

Coming from a country that discontinued use of its one cent coin in 1991 (the year after I left high school!), the use of the penny here shocks and astounds me. If I get one in change, I just don't take it. I see no reason to clog my wallet/pocket/house up with a coin that I'll never actually be able to use as a meaningful piece of money. The sooner the Australian system of rounding purchases to the nearest five cents happens, the better!

On a side note, one bank here does do rounding up to the nearest five cents - but on electronic purchases. Let's say, you spend $24.43 on something and pay for it with your debit card. The bank extracts $24.45 from your checking account, but puts the extra two cents into your linked savings account! Clever! One could imagine that all your transactions over a given period of time might add up to a considerable boost to your savings.

On a further note, when the designs for the new penny were unveiled, certain conservative members of the community worked themselves into a lather. According to them, the words "In God We Trust" had been removed from the penny – a sure sign that atheists and communists were running the country and the end of the world wasn't far away.

What they were (conveniently?) forgetting was that all the images of the new coin designs are only showing the obverse of the coin. The reverse of the coin is remaining the same, and on that side of the coin is Lincoln's head... and the words "In God We Trust".

Posted in: chaosboy, united states on September 25, 2008 at at 8:25:00 AM 0 comments    

I was a little surprised the other day when Christine brought home a new computer game for us to play. Christine's not much of a gamer, thinking that everything since Super Mario Bros 3 has been unworthy of her efforts. However, the concept and potential of this new game had her itching to try it out. The game? Spore.

The only way you couldn't have heard of Spore is if you've been hiding under a rock or have negative interest in games, your brain actively repelling all the hype that's been thrown at you about it. Basically, it's the ultimate God game - in the vein of, but far surpassing, all the "Sim"-type games that have been around since Populous and the original Sim City. You start the game with a single celled creature and evolve it all the way into a space-conquering civilisation.

The game isn't perfect by any means - it's more like five completely separate yet increasingly complex mini-games than a continuous narrative, and a lot of the gameplay is either far too simple or repetitive. I'm not even going to get into the whole storm about copy-protection that's blown up around the game's release, as it hasn't affected me at all. Where the game really shines is in its total customisation abilities. You get to shape pretty much everything about your creature (and later on, their cities, vehicles, planes, ships and spaceships). Think your creature would look good with five heads? Maybe eyes on its knees? Eight legs? Whatever you can think of, it's possible. There's something strangely addictive about creating your own monsters and then watching them interact with other strange beasts, all of which have been created by other people around the world.

So while Spore isn't a multi-player game as such (there's no direct head-to-head competition with other human players), the game is a veritable menagerie of creatures, constantly changing as new creations are uploaded by players around the world. That's what keeps it interesting and fresh - getting to see what other people are doing with the amazing God-like tools contained within the game.

Here's a couple of our creatures as a sample. We've only been playing for a week or so and still have so much to learn about how to make truly unique creatures, but at least we've gotten past our initial, "oh look, I've made a dinosaur!" phase.

Posted in: chaosboy, computers, games on September 24, 2008 at at 8:41:00 PM 0 comments    

Tired of being stuck here in Portland all the dang time (one of the few disadvantages of not owning our own car!), Christine and I resolved to take advantage of a small gap in my work schedule and get the heck out of town for a few days.

So we rented a car and drove on down to Crater Lake, an enormous clear blue lake that is entirely within the enormous (6 miles by 4 miles) caldera of a volcano that blew itself apart a mere 7,700 years ago - a mere blip in time geologically speaking. In a few weeks' time, the area around the lake will be covered in snow that will last until June next year, so this was probably our last chance to see it for a while. The drive down was fairly uneventful and quick - the I-5 corridor may be dull, but it does get you places quickly!

We entered the National Park from the north and soon achieved our first view of the lake. It certainly didn't disappoint!

No photograph can possibly do justice to the scale and majestic grandeur of this remarkable place (although that didn't stop me taking almost 200 shots over the next couple of days!), with sheer, soaring cliffs over 700 feet tall surrounding the bluest of blue waters that you have ever seen.

After soaking in the view from this initial view point, we quickly headed down to the campground, 7 miles south of the rim and set up our tent for the night. We were warned that bears frequented the campground and took all necessary precautions to secure our food in the provided bear-proof lockers before heading back to the Rim Village to view a beautiful clear sunset over the lake.

The small island is known as Wizard's Island, supposedly because of it's resemblance to a wizard's hat. It is a small volcanic cinder cone that rises from the lake's floor, and has a small crater of its own on top - a crater within a crater!

The next day, we drove a complete loop around the crater rim, stopping often for photographs. Our main goal was to walk to the top of Mount Scott, the highest point within the National Park at 8,929 feet (2,721 metres). The trail itself rises 1,200 feet over its 2.5 mile length, making it a pretty strenuous climb, especially for those unaccustomed to exercising at higher altitudes (i.e., me!). However, we made it to the top in just over an hour and were rewarded with absolutely spectacular 360 degree views, including the whole enormous lake laid out before us. Totally worth the effort!

(Our car is parked on the road at the absolute bottom right of the picture, just to give you some idea of where the trail has come from!)

In the evening, we climbed to the top of Watchman Peak on the exact opposite side of the lake (it's just to the right of my hat) to view another sunset - this one completely different to the previous night. Forest fires were raging to the south and the north of the park and had covered large parts of the sky with a thick pall of smoke. So where there had been crystal clear blue skies, there was haze and smoke, which was spectacular in its own (slightly eerie) way.


After the sun sank under the horizon in a blood-red blaze, we descended the mountain ( much easier path than Mount Scott) and retired to our campsite for a very well-earned beverage and meal. We left pretty early the next morning, as we were unable to secure seats for the boat cruises around the lake itself (curse you, large tour groups, for booking out all the early cruises!).

Posted in: chaosboy, oregon, photography, travel on September 9, 2008 at at 9:52:00 PM 0 comments    

Last Sunday night, Colin Lake and Wellbottom played their first gig at one of Portland's main music venues, the Crystal Ballroom, as a support act to the Bodeans.

What made this show different from the usual old Colin gig was that he asked Christine to bring our video camera along to see if we could get some footage for a demo reel. Colin had been in contact with some people who are trying to organise bands for the 2010 World Expo – in Shanghai! Needless to say, Colin jumped at the opportunity to apply, but it meant that he had to get a press kit – complete with a live performance DVD – together in less than a week! And while he could rely on me for all his graphic design needs, he was getting a little desperate regarding the video. Christine had done a great job just the other week with an impromptu video for Kevin's benefit shows, so Colin turned to her in his hour of need.

We turned up at the show early and got some footage at the soundcheck, then hung out in the green room with the band - playing at being groupies - until it was time for the band to go on stage. It was Kevin's first gig back with the band after his recent illness and everyone was raring to go. Christine spent the entire show getting footage from every angle, climbing all over the stage, yet aiming to be unobtrusive for the appreciative crowd. Because, quite unusually, the crowd responded very warmly to the mere support act and gave them their full attention. I tried to help out by shooting some video on Christine's new little Olympus camera, but the format ended up being tiny and pretty much useless.

Christine worked hard in tandem with Colin over the next couple of days to produce the demo DVD, or - in essence - a music video for one of their songs. The audio captured by our little camera was pretty sketchy, so Christine ended up having to meld audio from a live track recorded on Wellbottom's Spring tour with the video from the show, and she did a pretty good job of matching elements up to give the illusion that they came from the one and same event.

In the end, Colin met his deadline and everyone loved the finished product - I think it's amazing, especially considering the timeframe it was produced in. I'm in awe of Christine's ability to work with time, something that this little print designer still has trouble wrapping his head around. So without further ado, I present Colin Lake and Wellbottom, through the lens of Christine:

Posted in: chaosboy, music, portland on August 21, 2008 at at 8:39:00 PM 2 comments    

Adobe has just released version 2 of Lightroom, their photography management/development application, and all I can say is that it is amazing. There are so many enhancements and upgrades that it's hard to know where to start. It's probably best to say that unless I actually want to do a whole heap of tricky retouching, I'm hardly going to fire up Photoshop at all anymore.

It's not perfect, however: a rather nasty bug in v2.0 stops all your old keywords from v1.4 from exporting with your photos, although a very simple SQL command (so simple, even I could do it!) fixes that problem. There have also been reports of Lightroom being everything from somewhat sluggish to completely glacial in performance, although my Mac Pro makes light work of just about anything, so I can't really comment on this!

Of all the tools, the selective adjustment brush was the most touted. With it, you can now mask areas and apply exposure, sharpness, colour, clariry (and more!) edits to specific areas of your photos without having to hand the image over to Photoshop. All your edits are non-destructive - just as in the previous version of Lightroom, all your edits are simply saved as instructions that are applied in real time to your image. The interface takes a little getting used to, especially for us Photoshop mavens, but once you've got the hang of it, it really is intuitive and extremely powerful.

However, my favourite tool is the adjustment brush's poorer, less glitzy cousin, the graduated filter. As its name suggests, this tool emulates the coloured or neutral density filters that you can physically place in front of your camera lens to achieve certain effects. My use for this tool so far is extremely prosaic - I use it to fix overexposed areas of sky.

We've all taken photos like this. While the foreground is fairly well exposed and detailed, the sky is completely blown out. If I had shot this picture in JPG, that would be pretty much the end of things - an 8-bit image simply wouldn't contain enough information for me to be able to regain all that lost detail in the sky. White is white, and would always remain so.

But when you shoot RAW, there is a ridiculous amount of information contained in the file (4,096 levels as opposed to JPG's 256 levels). And the important thing to realise is that most of this information is in the lighter areas of any image. As explained in this excellent article at Luminous Landscape, exactly half of the 4,096 levels of information are contained in the brightest fifth of the image, while there's a mere 128 levels of information in the darkest areas, the shadows.

What this means is that it's very possible to restore missing detail from overexposed areas when you shoot RAW. However, this was kind of a painful process before the new tools in Lightroom. To retain the properly exposed foreground but also get the corrected sky, I would have to export two versions of the file to Photoshop (one exposed for the foreground, the other for the backgroun) and then use layer masks to blend the two versions together. It's not something I'd do except for a photo I really thought was worth it.

With the new graduated filter tool, all I have to do is specify my exposure adjustment for the sky (around -2.0 to -3.0 stops, depending on how blown out things are) and drag out my gradient from top to bottom. The gradient is fully adjustable to taste after it's been applied, both in location and intensity. The results are nearly instantaneous and it's ridiculously easy to apply. Here's a before and after of the shot above, just so you can see how much detail can be regained using this technique.

This is an extreme example, requiring a full -3.0 stops to regain the detail in the clouds - probably about the absolute limit of this technique. But just think - there is that amount of information and detail just hiding in that brightest part of your image, and you have to shoot RAW if you want to be able to release it.

Posted in: adobe lightroom, chaosboy, photography on August 8, 2008 at at 9:42:00 AM 0 comments    

Last weekend, Portland played host to one of the craziest days of entertainment that I have ever witnessed - the Red Bull Flugtag. Flugtag means "flight day" in German (Red Bull being an Austrian company), and it certainly lived up to its name.

A crowd that has been estimated at being in the vicinity of 80,000 people crammed into Tom McCall Riverside Park, the Hawthorne Bridge's entire southern sidewalk and one east-bound lane, and even the Eastbank Esplanade on the other side of the Willamette River (which was jam-packed with boats both big and small) for this event, which is interesting in itself.

You see, ol' PDX generally prides itself on being staunchly anti-corporation, looking somewhat down its nose at coffee and fast food chains because we're better than that here in Portland, don't you know? Except when afore-said corporation is promising a day chock full of idiots throwing themselves and their home-made magnificent flying machines off a 30-foot high runway into the drink. Then we'll drop everything and turn out in droves.

And we did. I've never seen the riverfront so full, not for the Blues Festival, the Brew Fest, Barack Obama or anything. I arrived a little late and tried to force my way through the seething masses to take some pictures from down the front - it was impossible. I eventually found a few good locations on the periphery of the park, but things were hectic the whole time.

As for the flugtag itself, it was all about showmanship and spectacular crashes and the crowd loved it. We had a giant plane made out of "Lego", complete with "Lego Men" pilots, the Winnebago from Spaceballs (crowd favourite), pots of gold, sporting mascots, hot dogs and more. Some of the "planes" didn't even have wings! The winner flew some 60-odd feet, but no one really cared. Distance was irrelevant; the crowd only cheered for suicidal death plunges into the murky water below and everyone went home happy.

Posted in: chaosboy, photography, portland, sport, weirdness on August 6, 2008 at at 8:49:00 PM 0 comments    

Well, we've actually got a few seconds to spare and can finally post an article about our big Late Wedding/First Anniversary bash that we recently held in Boston, MA. Certain persons have been clamouring for a review of events, and we just love to share, so here we are!

Ever since our humble little space wedding atop Rocky Butte just over a year ago, we had wanted to throw a bigger and better party for all our extended families (Booth, Moore and Garcia!) to attend. As things turned out (mainly because of my parents' travel itinerary), Boston presented itself as the perfect venue and plans were set in motion. Our spies in the area (Ann Elise) searched high and low for the ideal party spot, accommodations were found, airline tickets were booked and we soon found ourselves on the Atlantic side of the USA (via Minneapolis and New York airports!).

After settling in at our comfy hotel, we ventured out into Boston in search of a restaurant to celebrate Christine's birthday. With the help of her swanky new iPhone, we located a wonderful restaurant in the North End, just off the main drag, Hanover Street. The difference this 100 feet or so made was incredible: every trattoria, ristorante and cafe on Hanover Street was spilling out onto the sidewalk, while our restaurant was only about two-thirds full and quite relaxed and romantic. The food was exceptional, and the wait staff knowledgeable and friendly. Here's a pic of us about to enjoy some delicious desserts:

Early the next day, Keener picked us up at our hotel and whizzed us off to catch the ferry from Wood's Hole to Martha's Vineyard, a small and somewhat exclusive island just off the coast of southern Massachusetts (next to Nantucket, if that helps any). Christine's Aunt Alison and Uncle Peter were to be our hosts for the this day and the next, and they made sure to show us all the sights of their island. Peter took us out on his boat and we took full advantage:

After enjoying the warm sun and water for a while, we tried our hands at waterskiing. Keener, as you can see, is obviously a salty seadog and had no problems whatsoever.

... while the less said about my attempts the better. Needless to say, I never actually stood up. All too soon, it was time to return to Boston, where we met up with my friend John who had flown in all the way from Sydney via Yosemite and San Fran for the party. As my "guest of honour", we spent as much time as we could with him and even managed to walk the entire length of Boston's famed Freedom Trail... on a day where the temperatures climbed into the 90s!

Finally, the night of the party rolled around and all our hard work and planning finally came to fruition. After some early doubts about the size and suitability of the area that he hotel had set aside for us, everything turned out perfectly and a fantastic time was has by all. In honour of our first anniversary, the theme was paper and everyone turned up wearing paper hats of all shapes and size. Some people even commissioned artists to make a hat for them! Here's a rogues' gallery for posterity's sake:

The happy couple: me in my Aussie cork hat and Christine in her amazing papier mache chicken creation.

The two mothers. Karen and Keener made hats for my parents, as they probably wouldn't have had time to do it themselves, having just flown in from France.

King Nick. Or is it a court jester? He seems to have a mischievous grin either way...

And finally, here's Peter proving that a hat doesn't have to be an enormous production number to be a winner... the happiest dang pirate I ever did see!

We finally rolled out of the hotel at around 12:30am, quite a bit later than our original booking was for! Quite a few people had been incredibly sensible and had booked rooms in the same hotel the party was in, smart thinking! The party was an incredible success and it was wonderful to see so many members of our extended family. A big thank you to all who attended and to all those who couldn't make it but passed on their best wishes - it means a lot!

Posted in: boston, chaosboy, party time, travel on August 5, 2008 at at 8:49:00 PM 2 comments    

It's true! The work front has been good recently and has just got a whole lot better.

I've been working at a fantastic design studio called Downstream for the last few weeks and it's been a lot of fun. They mainly do large scale environmental design for universities and financial institutions, which is something I haven't done a lot of to this point in my career. I came in to help out on one specific job, a series of big informational screens for an enormous financial advisor. The screens show a ridiculous amount of stock exchange, commodities and currency information, all in real time and I had to take the general design and apply it across every screen, while still making sure that it was technically possible to produce! I spent the entire first full day researching actual stock market data to use in the mock ups to present to the client... my brain still hurts three weeks later.

While I was working there, 52 Ltd let me know that Wacom were interested in getting me back for a couple of weeks, but that there was also a long-term contract job designing and producing a huge Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for a multi-national infrastructure development company downtown. This is the first time I've actually had to choose between two jobs since I've been in the US. While I loved working at Wacom the first time around, the lure of long term employment meant I had to at least enquire about it.

I interviewed for the position on Tuesday and was accepted by Thursday. The job will see me gainfully employed all the way through until January, although the hours will vary quite dramatically from month to month as the EIS goes through approval and revision cycles. During August, I'll probably be working 50-60 hour weeks, while September may drop down to less than 20 hours a week. We'll see! I just love getting my teeth stuck into large projects; I see them as huge puzzles that have to be solved... and they don't come much bigger than this! Multiple authors, huge rounds of internal and client changes, diagrams, charts, maps... and I have to make it look attractive and easy to read! I start July 21st – wish me luck!

Posted in: chaosboy, employment, portland on July 11, 2008 at at 10:53:00 PM 0 comments    

Today was day that embedded itself into history. July 11th marks the worldwide day known as the release of the new iPhone just in case you didn't notice. Crazy geeks and hipsters gathered at Apple stores and AT&T outlets in order to claim the ultimate prize: a phone.

But wait, you say, who took all these pictures? Uh, that was me of course; in line to get my phone, because I am neither above or below everyone else. I am a whore to new shiny gadgets. It is all Sam's fault really. He is my capitalist consultant. It was Sam who got me to sit in front of Toys R Us to get a Wii at 3am in order to buy my $299 Wii in order to sell it on Craigslist before Christmas for $500 and now it is Sam who convinced me to sell my old iPhone for $400 and buy the new one for $199. Sam is going places in life.

Anyway, back to the Opening! Sam and I arrived at the Apple store at 6:30 in the morning. The line was pretty timid. Maybe 75 people back after some of these folks had been CAMPING outside the mall since midnight. Their determination makes them much more worthy than us to receive the coveted iPhone. Sam and I had to work sometime that morning but we were pretty confident that the line would scoot along pretty speedily. I began to feel like we were in an airport after awhile wainting to check into our flight as stood between our rope barriers. But the Apple staff were very genial and passed out bottles of water and even cups of coffee as people piled up behind us. We half expected a breakfast cart to come out next stacked with hotcakes.

We did find a fellow coworker at the beginning of the line - excuse me, not the beginning but NUMBER ONE in the line. He had been there since 12:30am. The store opened at 8. Sam and I waited another 1.5 hours before we got in the store. We were so relieved to get out of the halls of the mall as it has become very claustrophobic.
Getting in the store was a breath of fresh air. The staff was overly friendly and helpful and my iPhone was purchased, activated, and in the bag in under 10 minutes. We met up with our coworker who had nothing but trouble buying his iPhone as activating it with AT&T is mandatory and the network kept failing. So although he waited nearly 10 hours for his phone we ended up walking out around the same time. Poor Sam on the other hand was not granted the miracle of the phone as he was not the sole account holder for his AT&T account. He took it well enough, although I'm sure he would have killed someone given the chance. He had to go to and AT&T store to get his iPhone. But by the time he got there, the phones had sold out.

This whole AT&T shenanigans is the whole reason why Cam could not participate in the good times of waiting in line to pay money.

Afterwards, Sam and I went back to work 2 hours late and had to apologize to customers that although we were an Apple Reseller, we didn't have iPhones to sell them . *insert evil laugh here*

If you are wondering what is so great about an iPhone but don't want me to write 5 more pages of blogginess then you can check it out here!

Posted in: apple, chaosgurl on at at 9:42:00 PM 0 comments    

I really wanted Cam to do this post. But since I am the one home today and HE is at WORK, well I guess we know who's in who's place!

Last weekend we went to the Ditch! which should always be spelled with an exclamation point on the end. A friend through Kim whose family owns a large plot of land in Idaho, has a tradition of throwing a party on their property every year which is dubbed "Water in the Ditch" due to the ditch in the back of the house which has water in it. This tradition has been celebrated for 25 years and the generations that have attended keep coming back and bring their next generation with them. I would love to go into great depth of the great times we had but first.. here are some pictures so you can get the main idea :)

First of all, Kevin shaved his beard off which no one, including Kim, had ever witnessed before. He sported instead a giant walrus mustache.
Some people arrived days ahead of us to set up and when we arrived Friday night after midnight, lawn real estate was hard to come by. It was a very cozy community with plenty of utilities and easy to meet your neighbors.

Yay for sunshine! We had a lot of it!
Overlooking the fire pit to the stage.
Among just camping, we tried many new fun things... like acupuncture! Beth Hazzard, a girl I met through Kim, has been studying Chinese medicine for the last 5 years or so. She is skilled in the philosophy of Chinese medicine as well as the science of the practices in the Western world. She had brought on the trip a few needles which she then proceeded to poke into me in stragic places in my legs, wrists and my head! I had told her that I had told her I had specific pains in my back and my dreams had been been very vivid lately. This was enough for her to find the exact spots on me to plant her pins. I can't say I'm completely sold on the idea of acupuncture although I'm sure it can be helpful in certain circumstances. Being pinned down in a chair listening to loud rock right next to me from the stage certainly had a certain calming effect on me.
Looking a bit ramshackle, Kim and I both get visions of grandeur of owning something just like it someday.

The band list for the evening. I regret not being able to get a picture of its creation. Damon created the type with nothing but a magnifying glass in which he burned the titles in.. even in cursive!!
Cam succumbing to the joys of the pool. I had sadly forgotten my suit.
The main house and everyone clear of the area in order not to get too sunburned!

Saturday afternoon brought hot clear blue skies and then suddenly with his Aussie sixth sense, Cam sensed a storm coming in and in an hour and half the sky was gone. Dust rose over the horizon and wind pumped up to a near 40mph. Everyone ran to rescue their poor tents which the wind picking up fron the ground. The bands continued to rock out on the stage and everyone was in a frenzied chaotic state. Cam took a cute picture of me protecting my eyes with my bonnet from the flying dust. I for the most part went and laid in the tent and watched the tent violently shake and shift. It was so soothing to me I was able to take a sound nap.
The storm evaporated as quickly as it had formed about 2 hours later and everything was back to normal.






Nothing like a weekend of crazy people, crazy rock, crazy wind out in the middle of nowhere to regain your senses!!

Posted in: chaosgurl, party time, photography on June 25, 2008 at at 2:13:00 PM 0 comments