Words and pictures from Silicon Valley by Chris Gulker
From the monthly archives:
So, yesterday was so full that neither Linda nor I blogged. The big occasion was the installation of our new Rector, but we had lots of InMenlo catchup to do, as well as dealing with the foot of water that has pooled, increasingly fragrantly, under the house after last week’s torrents. But, wait, what’s this…? It’s blog: Sleep, now. No more, dog-ate-my-blog stuff… just go to bed…
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After we were fortunate enough to catch the assignment to shoot Tuck and Patti for InMenlo, we began hankering for a portable lighting setup, like the one we rented to shoot monsieur and madame.
The usual traveling one-light setup consists of a monobloc (an integrated power supply and strobe/modeling light), an umbrella or softbox, a light stand sufficiently robust to support the usual, ruggedly-built 200 or 400 watt-second device and all the small stuff – cords, flash meter, sand bags, gobos, grip gear, cameras et al. etc.
Needless to say, it took me about a half hour to set up, and bless ‘em, Tuck and Patti were completely understanding, but that’s not going to often work for me or most of the time-pressed people I’m likely to shoot these days. I’m slow enough getting in to their office, as it is.
So I’ve been trying to think of a very lightweight, easy to set light that I could handily take along to assignments. One of the (nice) dirty secrets of the latest-gen digital cameras is that their noise (aka ‘grain’) figures are very low. One needed to tote serious power in order to reliably get a decent f-stop on Ektachrome 100 – not so, these days. Modern DSLRS have image quality at ISO 400 (DX-format) and even ISO 1600 (full 35mm frame format) that one was reserved for fine-grain transparency film.
Indeed, AA-battery powered strobes will provide sufficient light for many applications, particularly when a 460-pixel-wide image is the target medium. So we’ve been web-surfing, cruising the product offerings, and come to see I’m about the last photographer to notice this datum. There are a ton of relatively inexpensive products available to make a cheap, portable light source, a number of which I snapped up at Keeble & Shucat this morning.
Anyway, we’ve come away with a very light, relatively easy-to-set-up thing we call the ‘light stick,’ basically a modern version of the light 1930’s photogs christened the ‘bare bulb.’ We used it today, but I’ve promised InMenlo not to publish the photo before they do. Short take… I like it…
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Probably not many life partners were discussing a gibbous moon this evening, but Linda and I were. As we headed out for dinner I motioned to a cloud-veiled moon hanging low over the Stanford campus and intoned, with some authority,” That, dear, is a gibbous moon.”
Only problem is, it wasn’t. For some reason, I’ve had it stuck in my mind, probably for decades, that gibbous referred to “hazy” or “obscured.” Linda replied that she thought that gibbous referred to the shape or phase of the moon, which, indeed, proves to be correct (less than full, more than half).
Later in the evening, as we departed the Mayfield Café, I observed that the moon was “less gibbous,” given a clearing sky. Wrong on both occasions, it would seem…
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We’re trying to stay current, but blog has abandoned ship – hasn’t been seen for going on two weeks, now, and, with no backup, I’ve got my hands full. Rehab, domestic stuff (so far this week we’ve had pork chops, grilled, with baby Brussels sprouts that were seared then baked in apple juice, rack of lamb with braised baby carrots and greens and, tonight, Dover sole with artichokes) income taxes and trying to carefully transition from COBRA to Medicare, a confusing process to say the least – all are keeping me plenty busy.
Thus gulker.com misses posts, and I’m not even conscious of it – the days are full and rush by in such a blur. I only just noticed there was no post yesterday.
Today was a ‘down’ cancer day physically, and my 40 minutes on the treadmill and hour on the weight machines did not come easily this morning… a couple times I almost through in the towel, but in the end I didn’t, and finished everything – I felt good about that when I hobbled out of the Y. After that, we made a Peet’s stop where I scanned for news of the iPad ($499? Way to go, Apple…), followed by an appointment with Guy’s Plumbing, followed by an InMenlo assignment, followed by two hours with the Medicare web sit up on one monitor and my COBRA site on the other, then quick shower before starting dinner, which was a mini-disaster. Dover sole became Broken sole because of a defrosting incident, but the artichokes were OK. Anyway…
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We finally ginned up the courage, after last summer’s setback, to return to writing our (newly expanded) insider’s view of Hemiplegia, the condition which affects my left side. As we’ve made our way back from that warm season disappointment, at first timidly, despite the admonitions of our rehab therapist Heidi Engel, and, lately, more aggressively, we feel the confidence return that we exhibited when we made our way to southern Burgundy last May, and daily walked the steep ridge upon which the village of Ameugny is situated.
We realize that, while, indeed our body suffered from the brain swelling episode, the real problem has been a loss of confidence. There are lots of daily actions – able-bodied me never even thought about them – that are daunting to the hemiplegic. Stepping off curbs is one – it took 18 months of carefully planned and heavily repeated rehab exercises before I could confidently, and reliably, step off a curb without risking a fall.
In any case, we returned two weeks ago to the aggressive strength-building program that Heidi had started us on last April (and which she’d been pushing us to resume), a little fearful – we had been lifting some, for us, serious weights before departing for France. Upon our return, some 12 pounds lighter from muscle atrophy, and, with a left arm that would barely move, we could lift only a fraction of our previously-set goals. Six months of near-daily exercises later, we have managed to surpass, by a small amount, our previous sets.
Confidence, however, lags strength – we’re still gun shy. So much so that, two weeks ago, we not only managed to fall, but knocked down a dear friend who was trying to help me navigate a curb late in the day. I am lately realizing that my left side will do more than I’m asking of it and I need to seize the opportunity to counter the brain’s natural tendency to work around the damage. We are so trying to get back to April, strength and mobility-wise…
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The boss over at InMenlo decided there would be no respite this weekend, and we found ourselves slaving over a hot Nikon again today, shooting an artist, a neighborhood, an old truck and a rainbow, which, added to Friday’s jazz musician and café and ongoing weather coverage made for 7 assignments in 48 hours. We even had to write some of these things.
We start early and we finish late – no wonder my poor blog has suffered neglect this past week, with either no posts, or thin prose mostly complaining about how tired we are, or, worse, yet another fruit shot. It is written: “No man can serve two blogs”…
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Sweet spouse Linda agreed to fill in for usual morning walking partner Scott, whose work schedule precluded our usual circumnavigation of West Menlo this week.
Linda and I decided to head over toward Stanford at first light, the better to see how San Francisquito Creek was faring under the recent rains. It was muddy and turbulent, but well below flood level. It was fun to be out in the morning light and light rain with Linda. Reminded me of old times…
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After spending the morning getting back to my press photographer roots (yes, Virginia, we do have hemiplegic press photographers, if only me), I came home to start work on the 2010 income taxes, which I’m determined to ship the moment the last W2, or 1099, or 5498 or 09876t54321 arrives. Fortunately, our very good tax man, Ed Sallee is cool with me shipping what I have on hand – he can prepare the e-file and wait for the hard copy to punch the ’submit’ button.
Long time readers know I scan everything, including the waterfall of paper merde that daily fills our mailbox, to PDF files on my computer. After OCR works its magic, I can (often) find nearly everything germaine to the IRS using Apple’s Spotlight search or, even better, a PDF browser built on Spotlight called Yep. Yep has some AI which learns, so it does things like attach a “business expense” tag to Fry’s and other often-expensed receipts, which makes it easy to flip through them for the legit biz expenses, versus the personal stuff.
Yep finds every PDF on the hard drive, a good thing, since I always have to search for the oddbal stuff (though I’m still way ahead of digging through shoe boxes), so serendipitous results sometimes appear. Today, for whatever reason, a scan turned up amidst the receipts and forms, of a film envelope, the kind I used to employ to file negatives at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner back in paleolithic times. I’d used this particular specimen 31 years ago, to list all the pictures I’d taken in 1978 that I felt were noteworthy.
Some of these negatives may be lurking in my garage, where a massive project is (kinda) underway. Much more fun than dealing with the taxes…
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Today we huddled in our den, over glowing computer screens as thunderstorms and high winds rattled through, replete with horizontal rain that pounded our windows – something I’v not heard since leaving the T-storm prone Great Lakes region, lo, more than 40 years ago.
We mostly were writing, processing photos and setting up assignments (a Bell Haven poet, the mixologist at a tony watering hole, a couple of startups) for a certain community blog – which now has all the trappings of a legit startup. I don’t get paid is all I know. I do get to work, though, which has its own issues.
I also get to shop, do the wash, and deal with this year’s taxes, insurance forms, a backed-up sewer requiring negotiating with the City and Roto Rooter, dishes and all the other domestic stuff. Even our Mac is cranky, flashing a dialog informing “error code 7: Can’t find a sub-table named “E:\Program Files\OPML\Guest Databases\apps\Tools\rpcFlickrFan.root” every 7 seconds or so.
We didn’t get to walk this morning – Scott was teaching, and anyway, the rain was just too fierce at 7:00 when I normally set out. Even the intrepid, all-weather Linda curtailed her jog this morning. Anyway, we’re wacked… can’t think of a thing to blog that anyone would care about. Yeah, yeah, you say, so what’s different tonight? V. funny… tomorrow may be better…
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My ‘office’ at the new Peet’s was mobbed this morning, as was the ‘Y’ earlier when we did the strength and cardio rehab that occupies our early morning three times a week. The holiday, and, rain produced a larger than usual crowd, and the regulars – startups and investors, Stanford students and a certain staffer from InMenlo, had to compete for seating with the drop-ins. I wound up sharing a table with a tall, blond, netbook-toting co-ed.
As is the case when our coffee bar is crowded, it was hard not to overhear nearby conversations. One conversation, between two men who’d both left the Catholic priesthood for secular pursuits, was particularly fascinating: they were talking about local congregations and priests and the struggles of others – many others – who, like them, had left seminary or the priesthood. We nevertheless managed to set up some content-gathering appointments for InMenlo.
Earlier, we had bumped into friend Daniel Clendenin, a theologian whose name had come up in conversation with the Reverend Matthew Dutton-Gillett last Friday as he and I sat at the Madera bar. So it’s only natural to get Matthew and Dan together, perhaps over a drink. Hmmm. I sense a new spiritual enterprise forming… Matthew earlier mentioned that he was working on the “water into wine” thing…
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