Max Pictures’ Blather

…& Space (& Star Trek) Museum.
Miss T and I routinely visit Southern California (we have family there, after all) and are well acquainted with the weather, and the beaches, and the Mexican food. One thing that we don’t associate with SoCal, though, is Star Trek. Being set primarily in space, I can’t think of any [...]

…on a low-70s winter day.
I like the beach. Even better, I like it when there’s no one there. If you don’t mind near-total darkness, the hours between 2:30 and 5:30 a.m. are good candidates for having the beach to yourself. If you like sunlight with your surf and sand, however, pre-dawn is not such an [...]

…Christmas Fair.
It’s become a Max Pictures winter holiday tradition to visit The Great Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco. So, this year, like so many years before, Miss T and I met up with Programmer Girl (our friend and Dickens Fair denizen) at the Cow Palace for a day of Dickensian fun.
From the day after [...]

…ramento (for you non-Central Valley types).
I’ve lived around Sacramento for at least ten years and visited Old Sacramento maybe three or four times. There’s probably a lot of history there, but all I’ve ever noticed are bars, restaurants, and candy shops—an inordinately high number of candy shops.
Undaunted by the threat of history and old-timey candy, [...]

…of people. (Well, very few with people, actually.)
One of my coworkers recently complained about photos of scenery in general and my photos of scenery in particular. “I’m so tired of seeing photo after photo of still lifes. What are you? Antisocial?”* asked WhittGirl.
As anyone who has seen me running from a crowd can attest, I’m [...]

…but Picasa is cheaper.
Max Pictures has photos posted all over the place. Well, a couple of places. Okay, four places*, I think.
We started out with a self-hosted online gallery (using the open source program Gallery, of all things), but when Flickr came on the scene we quickly jumped (our own) ship and maxpixpix on Flickr [...]

…at the library.
When I was in school I rarely went to the library. As an adult I’ve continued not going to the library. (Miss T is a regular library user and sometimes she checks out books for me to read—inexplicably they’re always weight-loss books.) I’m not against libraries, mind you, just my going to libraries.

Last [...]

…it’s pouring, the old man is snoring.
It’s raining cats and dogs in the Bay Area—looks like we’re having a normal (read: wet) fall/winter this year.
Despite the drenched conditions, Miss T and I ventured out to San Francisco on Saturday. Our ultimate destination? The Ferry Building Marketplace.

The outdoor farmers market seemed to have been washed out, [...]

…one solution (and one additional problem).
As I’ve kvetched about before, there are challenges to taking photos on the train. There’s motion: swaying like a ship in 15-foot seas; vibration like a hideously unbalanced clothes dryer. Lighting: cars with zero interior lighting; cars with bland fluorescent lighting. People: passengers thinking anyone with a camera is a [...]

…and their parents at the California Academy of Sciences (CAS).
I’ve weeded through the 500 or so photos Miss T and I shot at CAS last weekend. The results of that editing process—where I filter by such factors as “whoops, my thumb was in front of the lens” and “it’s so blurry I can’t tell if [...]