Day 213 - Copying

Time to migrate the missus' computer to a Mac! Of course, one first has to suffer through a big dose of Windows Vista being, well, Windows Vista, but no pain, no gain.

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Day 212 - Orchids

A bunch of orchids I saw at a flower stand today. Pretty!

If I can believe my camera's file naming, this also happens to be the 8000th photo I've ever taken with this camera. Woah.

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Day 211 - Gilroy Garlic Festival

The Gilroy Garlic Festival (in the self-proclaimed "garlic capital of the world") is the destination an annual pilgrimage of garlic lovers from near and far. Some would say, eating (almost) exclusively garlicky food in the glaring summer sun is a bad idea, but obviously those would just be disbelievers. Plus, they had garlic ice cream, too ;)

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Day 210 - Dancers

Some people ballroom dancing at a Friday night dance in Palo Alto.

I hope I struck the fine balance between "too blurry" and "just the right amount of motion blur to convey the speed of the moment" well.

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Day 209 - Flatscreens are for wimps

Oh, nostalgia. This is a 27 inch iMac pretending to run an ancient CRT display terminal complete with flickering, slow display times, 25 lines and all the other goodness that we used to mean when we were talking about computers a little more than 20 years ago.

The epic emulator software is appropriately called Cathode.

And this, my friends, is why PEP 8 asks you to line-break at 78 characters.

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Day 208 - Party like it's 1988

I know. Photographically there's so much wrong with this (for example, can my cell phone get a polarizing filter, please?) but the subject is pretty awesome.

In a place where there are usually advertisements for boring present-day products, today I saw this vintage poster advertising reduced transfer rates during the holiday season 1988 for the Santa Clara County Transportation Agency, as the predecessor of the VTA was called back then.

Epic, epic. As the poster was not explained at all but looked like an original (faded ink, yellowed paper), I am wondering how it got there. Not sure if I'd be bold enough to take an original out of the archives and stick it into a showcase by a train stop, hoping no-one will steal it. Well, let's hope everyone just enjoys it from a distance.

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Day 207 - Wifi on Board

Most recently, all VTA light rails that I've ridden had free Wifi on board. It's hooked up to a 4G connection, which seems to be pretty stable and snappy, I like it! Along with the improved schedule (read: I now have to wait less than the previous 15 minutes for my connecting train), this is making my commute almost a breeze!

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Day 206 - Blueness

I know what you're thinking -- what drugs is he on now, posting a picture with almost no subject, just traffic lights and the sky? Well yeah, fair point. But just look at how blue and cloudless the Californian sky is today. Woooah. Reminds me of Provence, where the Mistral makes short work of the clouds, leaving behind nothing but a beautifully clear, blue sky just like this.

Also, for the record, I did not crank up the saturation on this photo. It is how it is.

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Day 205 - Microbrews

Other people might browse the mall for clothes on a Sunday, I check out the craft brews section of my friendly neighborhood beverage store for previously undiscovered gems of the microbrew world.

I really love the American microbrewery scene. Given that this country saw general prohibition less than a century ago and even today has a tendency to be outright hostile towards the responsible consumption of alcoholic beverages, I am deeply impressed how a culture of fine craft brewing as well as home brewing (a ban which was lifted much more recently) could develop here.

This culture leads to such fabulous creations as American IPA, which is a type of beer I absolutely adore. Sadly though, every brewer tries to outdo everybody else, and thus it can be hard to find good European standard brews over here (except, obviously, in the import section). The only authentic Bavarian-style Hefeweizen brewed in the US that I have ever found, for example, was Penn Weizen from Penn Brewery in Pittsburgh. It's not available on the West Coast, so if anyone has wheat beer recommendations, I am all ears.

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Day 204 - German Candy

What a great day to have my favorite German candy: Gummi bears. Not sure if it's only a German thing or if Americans like them too...

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