Chris Gulker: Photo

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 15:53:50 GMT

The 5,000 MPH X43: NASA's scramjet, flew successfully yesterday afternoon for the first time. How it works. Whoaa...

Sat, 27 Mar 2004 07:20:16 GMT

Media types: pictured above are the Rosetta Stone (left), a text document; a page from a Gutenberg Bible, a rich text document with illustration; and a front page from the L.A. Times, a rich text document with illustrations, on a tablet PC displayed in the Kent Format, a PDF standard for news delivery.

Allow me to advance the case that the big jump, from a content standpoint, is from Rosetta to Gutenberg. The tablet PC, indeed, all of our monster-power, high-bandwidth-connection PCs basically display the same thing - rich text - that was available in the 15th century. We use a browser, they used paper, but otherwise, the big difference is the potential for speedier delivery.

So, when are we going to take advantage of fast processors and ubiquitous connectivity to present new, more compelling media types? Sure, we're swapping mp3s (quite legally, of course) but what about a new media type where all the pieces - 3D, interactive, video, audio, rich text et al. - are packaged to make something that is greater as a whole than the individual pieces? Stay tuned....

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 05:09:16 GMT

Work, tonight: I had to scramble to yank the Leica out of its bag to snap this as I walked to my car. The gray clouds, the rainbow, the incoming airplane, the flag waving in front of San Jose Civic, the low sun glinting from windows angled just so ... It was a bit more magical standing there... the jet was loud, the rain was pounding down...

Thu, 25 Mar 2004 17:40:07 GMT

The Moon and Venus were pretty as I left work last night...

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 00:44:09 GMT

The Allen Array, 350 radio telescopes to be sited at Hat Creek in Lassen National Forest received a $13.5 million grant from Paul Allen. Run under the auspices of the SETI Institute, with additional funding from Nathan Myhrvold, the array will permit simultaneous use both by SETI researchers and radio astronomers. The whole budget - about $50 million - will be much less than other 'big science' projects...

Sat, 20 Mar 2004 20:23:03 GMT

Glorious day in Menlo Park. Snapped this oak on Stanford campus as Cassie and I went on our walk this AM. Spouse is out of town this weekend... planning essential activities like a visit to Fry's, Keeble & Shucat Photo...

Thu, 18 Mar 2004 06:16:26 GMT

Pretty again, tonight, as I left work around 7:00. Shot this photo in RAW format (a 9 MB file) on the Leica... had to DL a Photoshop CS updated Camera RAW (2.1) plugin to read it in Photoshop CS. Curiously, the software Leica offers with the camera doesn't read the RAW format the camera produces (Ouch... for this I paid extra?). Level 3 of the Adobe parking garage has a great view...

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 06:32:04 GMT

Teresa 2.1.2 OS will be running the NS-5 domestic assistant that I ordered today. Comes standard with a terabyte of RAM: I ordered mine with the Shop for Groceries, Mow the Lawn and Manage Finances option. Gave it a nice paint job, too...

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 05:48:56 GMT

Adobe sunset: the view as I left work this evening. The building is HP Pavilion in downtown San Jose...

Mon, 15 Mar 2004 15:59:56 GMT

Fannie Lou Hamer was the civil rights worker who famously said "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." The daughter of sharecroppers, her eloquence and courage made her a leading voice for racial equality in the 1960s. We were reading an account of her life in Robert Ellsberg's All Saints last night, and came across this quote:

"Christianity is being concerned about your fellow man, not building a million-dollar church while people are starving around the corner. Christ was a revolutionary person, out there where it was happening. That's what God is all about, and that's where I get my strength"

A good example for our own times...

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 21:57:18 GMT

Spring is early, and maybe summer, too, in the Bay Area. It's another 80-degree day, and our Sunday Portola Valley hike revealed a riot of wildflowers blossoming everywhere. Linda's listening to a Giants game on the radio (Cactus League): it feels like a summer day...

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 00:02:17 GMT

Spring weather: it's in the 70s in Menlo Park again today. Some very nice weather, and tulips were waiting upon my return from New York...

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 16:21:14 GMT

Toyota robot can play the trumpet with human-like lips. Like Honda's Asimo, it's about 4 feet tall. Toyota hopes to debut a robot band in 2005... Sony's QRIO recently conducted the Tokyo Philharmonic...

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 04:20:12 GMT

Fast web site: my Comcast subscription gives me a 26MB site on a Comcast server with a lot more bandwidth than gulker.com's 144K XO IDSL link. So I put the 2MB hi-res version of the pic below here. I used the 400 ASA setting on the Leica: you can see lots of noise at 1:1... about what you saw in a TRi-X negative circa 1970 blown up to 16x20...

Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:00:50 GMT

Times Square on Tuesday evening. FTP was behaving oddly from the command line of my Windows machine (may have been an issue with the hotel's broadband connection) so I had to wait to come home to post.

Picture was taken with my brand new birthday present (thank you, dear!) a Leica Digilux 2, which appears to be an amazing digital camera. The lens, a 7 to 22.5mm f/2.0-2.4 Summicron (equivalent to 28-90mm on 35mm gear) is both fast and very sharp. The 5 megapixel (2560 x 1920) images can be blown way up and still hold their quality. I worked with film Leicas when I was still a newspaper shooter and loved them. This camera is a very good cross of analog and digital features, IMHO...

Sun, 07 Mar 2004 07:04:32 GMT

Bandwidth tales: gulker.com sits at the end of a telephone line that is just a bit too far for reliable DSL. The history is that we started off in '95 as ISDN customers with GeoNET (thanks, John!), which was sold to Level 3, who dumped ISDN. So we signed up with Concentric as one of their first Menlo Park DSL customers. We're so far from the telco switch that it took a technician most of a long day to get us up, and then on an IDSL connection at a roaring 144K.

XO acquired Concentric, but DSL still isn't stable at our distance from the switch. Our 144K connection costs $153 a month, which seemed a bit steep by current standards (XO offers 400K SDSL for that price elsewhere).

So today, Comcast dropped off a cable modem, and now the desktop machines at gulker.com are running on a 3 mbps/256 kbps ADSL connection - for $45 a month (with a 4-month enticement of $25/mo.). The gulker.com wireless node is also on that line... amazing... more than 15x real-world performance increase. The 3 mbps makes quite a difference over 144K ... we'll be migrating the servers eventually (the 256K is still better - and much cheaper - than XO's 144K)... Comcast offers static IPs for $20 a month...

Sat, 06 Mar 2004 05:58:23 GMT

Hubble's latest view shows an expanding halo of dust around a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis. NASA/ESA photo. Gotta say, our robots in space are producing a lot more exciting results than the manned space program...

Sat, 06 Mar 2004 05:58:01 GMT

Van Gogh's Starry Night has been mentioned by a number of observers after viewing the Hubble image above. That swirl thing... but the palettes are way different...

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 05:44:05 GMT

Mars fossil? Space.com offers, as a sidebar, this Opportunity Rover micrograph. There is clearly a spiral shaped object in one of the crevices of this rock, called McKittrick, which was ground and photographed on Sol 30 (January 25 - today is Sol 38). Scientists announced today that there is strong evidence that this rock and others near Opportunity were once submerged in water. Surprising that there's been so little media attention...

Tue, 02 Mar 2004 16:32:16 GMT

I voted... you should, too. Let's keep one Democracy alive in the 21st century, OK?

Sun, 29 Feb 2004 05:46:33 GMT

Oh my god... was digging through old pictures looking for shots of friend Joe Ferris, who died recently, and stumbled across this shot of moi, circa 1980. Hehe.. seems to be a trend: bloggers publishing bad photos of themselves...

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 16:07:54 GMT

The evening sky from my driveway last night.

Glorious Bay Area morning, after a wild night of thunderstorms and hail. As we jogged across Stanford campus, a blue heron greeted us on a sidewalk, and then amused us by flying to a limb in a nearby redwood. As big and ungainly as the heron is, it alighted gracefully. As we ran on the levee above Lake Lagunita, 2 huge geese flew in and splashed down, honking loudly and causing a minor riot among the duck 'regulars'. Looking back as we were about to leave the lake, we saw the sunrise break through an opening in the clouds, a splash of color in the gray. Linda said "It's a God moment." Those who wonder why I rise at 5:30.. this is why...

Tue, 24 Feb 2004 16:11:32 GMT

Sorry day for America. Question to President Bush: how does denying marriage to 7% of Americans strengthen marriage? Was marriage stronger when laws restricted members of different races from marrying? How does the happiness of others 'weaken' marriage? The really sad thing here is that, as analysts at NBC and (I think) elsewhere are noting, the President's real goal is to get conservative, right-wing Christians to support his re-election bid. The rights of Americans, real flesh-and-blood Americans who work, raise families and pay their taxes are pretty clearly in 2nd place as far as this President is concerned...

Sun, 22 Feb 2004 21:56:28 GMT

Chuck Taggart's Gumbo du Monde recipe is excellent, IMHO. I cheated by using stock on hand (rather than make from scratch,as Chuck suggests), but otherwise followed the recipe. I'd never made Roux before (made by stirring flower into oil over a high heat) and managed not to burn it. I tasted frequently over the almost 3 hours of simmering and was amazed at how the flavors developed. Early on, the Roux's bland mealy taste was quite evident, but by the end a whole range of tastes and fragrances had blossomed. Recommended treat if you love gumbo... we liked it so much we kicked in a Paypal contribution...

Sat, 21 Feb 2004 23:47:29 GMT

Gov. Schwarzenegger demands end to gay marriages: this is why I can't vote for Republicans. Ultimately they play to the extreme right, and the Republican right has become steadily more bizarre in the past 20 years. At the least, they represent a bastion of prejudice: as Mayor Dailey said so eleoquently, the threat to marriage is divorce, not gay people. And divorce, so far in this country, has been a 100% heterosexual (and largely Christian) affair. (AP photo) I don't buy the argument "it's a law" - slavery was once a law. I don't buy the argument "half of America is against gay marriage": half of America was once against civil rights for black people, too. Neither made racial discrimination right, any more than discrimination based on sexual preference is right...