Some nice colors in the sky. Taken from our backyard.

My friend and I were talking about eBooks, and he tipped me off to Project Gutenberg. You can find many free copyright-expired eBooks to download. Most are pre-1923, so you won't find the latest, but you can get lots of Shakespeare, Poe, etc. I found Lafcadio Hearn, which I always wanted to read.

[via Rich]

Here's a nice song for you all: "When I'm With You [Moonlight Mix]" by Monday Michiru. I started listening to her in '95 and really liked her stuff. I never got to see her in person, but maybe someday. Anyways, I really like the bassline in this remixed version. And here's a link to her official website. Enjoy!

The phone cord that is! Goodbye SBC! and good riddance. Tired of paying all that money for a phone we hardly use. We are changing our "home" phone # to be one of our cell #'s.

Don't you hate DVD's that have previews of other movies at the start (before you get to the menu)? I bought two DVD's recently, Lost In Translation and The Gods Must Be Crazy. The latter is done right: after the obligatory copy warnings, the DVD takes you immediately to the menu screens. Lost In Translation was the opposite. And that sucks. Preview upon preview. I think I would pay extra in order to get a "preview-free" version of a DVD.

And why do they put that loud THX part on the kids movies? It scares the bejeezus out of them! I have to think that the Pixar DVD's are best, because after the Disney and Pixar logos, the menu sequence starts right up. Just one more reason to love Pixar.

Mariko gave me a deadline of today to decide on at least five names for the new baby. Right now I have a group of ten, which I am adding to, then going to narrow it down a bit. After that, Mariko is going to see if they are ok for a Japanese person to pronounce, and also she will be deciding on a Japanese name. This is tough!!!

Mariko and I have been cleaning up the house, getting rid of lots of junk, and organizing Bay's old clothes in preparation for the new baby. We still haven't decided on a name. In fact, I have until tomorrow night to have five names picked out... In addition to getting the house ready, I am getting this site ready to put in multiple different blogs. And even a new photo site for the kids. It should be ready in a couple days. I installed pMachine 2.3, and it is working nicely.

Bay's site hasn't been working consistently for the past few months. I am going to try to recreate it on this main takoyaki.org site, but the old URL bay.takoyaki.org should still work. It'll just point to the new page. I might have to recreate the old posts from scratch, unless I can figure out a way to export the old mySQL database... Aw, forget it. I'll just do it by hand. :)

Above is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LC1, which was shown at PMA 2004. It's digital, but has manual-style controls in a rangefinder-type body. It's pretty awesome, and I think it looks so cool!



Above is my Minolta Hi-matic G, which I use once in a while. Although it is not a true rangefinder camera, it takes great photos due to its fine lens, and I think it looks cool too! I can't remember how much I paid for it, or even where I bought it, but I am glad I did. I have seen some sell on ebay for around $20US. To learn more about Minolta Hi-matic cameras, visit the Minolta Users Group Hi-matic page.

Last night we got a couple inches of snow! When I went to bed last night, I looked out our bedroom window and saw everything blanketed in white powder. It was about 2am, but it was so bright outside! This morning, the neighborhood kids were busy making snowmen and having snowball fights. By about noon, the snow had all melted away, but it's still really cold outside! The picture above is looking down at our driveway and my car from Bay's room.

It's finally been announced!

Read a preview report and view photos of the new camera here.

This looks like it is going to be a very nice camera! The one thing that may make it really attractive to new buyers is that it has an anti-shake system built into the camera body, not in the lens like Canon's system. That means that you will be able to enjoy the benefits of anti-shake with all the Minolta AF lenses. This system is already in Minolta's Dimage A1 camera.

Mariko, onegaishimasu! It should be available around my birthday. :)

One of my favorite hobbies is photography. I posted a while ago about all my camera gear, and my preference for Minolta cameras. I, like many other Minolta-philes, have been dreaming about a Minolta DSLR for a long time, but Minolta doesn't currently offer one, and has never said anything about producing one. Their current digital camera line-up consists of point-and-shoot models and their fixed lens Dimage 7, Z, and A series models. The other major camera manufacturers Nikon and Canon have a nice range of DSLR models, with their newest bodies coming in at around $1,000. Many Minolta users have jumped ship, tired of waiting for a true DSLR from Minolta, and switched to Canon or Nikon. But wait...

The rumor that is going around Minolta circles is that at long last, Minolta will be announcing their first true DSLR body this week at the PMA 2004 show. While many would see this development as too little too late, it would still be welcome to those of us who have not already sold our Minolta lenses to switch to a Canon or Nikon system. I have three Minolta AF lenses, and would love to be able to have a Minolta DSLR body to use them with. I am crossing my fingers, hoping that the rumors are true!

Today Mariko surprised me by making us takoyaki for breakfast! We didn't have any tako, but we substituted with cheese and sausage. It was so good!

As I was driving to work today, I saw a car with California plates, and noticed the registration stickers on it. Here in Texas, our registration stickers go in the corner of the windshield. I looked at mine and noticed that they still said "03". October '03. Hmmm. I could have sworn I put the new sticker on. I am usually pretty good about that. Then I remembered putting the sticker in my glove compartment in September, thinking I would stick it on on the weekend. Then I forgot about it. I guess I will do it tonight. Four months is not that late, is it?

I first stumbled across Mark Skorji's photos while searching for supercub pictures. I followed a link from his website to the photos he has on TrekEarth and was blown away. I like to look at them every now and again. They are really inspiring!

Bay has a cold. Now I have a cold. Mariko has a sore throat. Ugh.

My excuse for not posting in a whole week is: I have been very busy. The truth is that I have been lazy as well. Anyways, work has been crazy. I got four projects that I am working on, two of them are pretty fun, the other two are just normal work. No opinion on those two. The interesting one is some design work which is always good to do. At home Mariko and I have been busy getting our finances in order, and they are looking good. :) We are also preparing for the arrival of our baby, which is due on April 3. Mariko thinks he will arrive early, though.

Yesterday (Superbowl day) I spent the morning in the backyard pulling up weeds and laying down mulch. It is starting to look good again. We have five main areas in our backyard (not including the lawn) and I have finished fixing up two of them. We have this strip along the back fence that always loses dirt and mulch when it rains. I think I am going to buy a few bags of rocks to lay down there instead of dirt. It will actually look pretty nice. I finished my yard work at about noon, then relaxed the rest of the day. For dinner, we had a nice Superbowl meal of Hot Wings and soup. I had fifteen wings. Heh. The funny thing is, we don't have local tv channels with our satellite dish, so I didn't even watch the game. I'm not much of a football fan anyways. I can't wait for baseball season to start...