I dream of rain

To friends, to family, to food.

The meal was a gut-busting success (How can you go wrong with 2.5lbs of butter and lard?) though I overcooked the pecan pie.. again. As usual, I cooked five times as much food as my few guests could eat -- One can't accuse me of lacking ambition.

Perhaps one day I will succeed in gathering all those I care for around a great table. You are always welcome, and sorely missed.

When I left the house this morning, the rest of the lens assembly was still attached. If you look closely, the break is even more bizarre -- It clearly sheared itself off as opposed to some sort of impact.

It's just another sign that, at nearly 10 years and 118,000 miles, this car is near the end of its design lifetime.

...I guess I should expect the other side to fall off soon.

This Panorama was shot at the tip of the Cabo Rojo peninsula, on the extreme southwestern point of Puerto Rico.

It only took me eight months to order the print, and another three to actually mount it, but it's finally up, literally and figuratively.

Lessons learned: It's a real PITA to deal with prints more than eight feet wide, get someone to help, and make absolutely sure the surface is free of any sort of debris BEFORE you apply the glue.

The other lesson is that one should always use a leveled tripod; I'd have been able to make this thing nearly 50% taller if I'd been more prepared.

Next up I'll probably try something on canvas. I have a lot of bare walls to fill..

Recently Mitsubishi announced their CP-K60DW-S photo printer. Outwardly it is identical to their existing CP-D70DW, except for the use of red labels instead of grey. Beyond that, it appears to be functionally equivalent (even uses the same media) to the CP-D70 series, although not as fast.

This morning I dug into the spool file format the CP-K60DW uses. It's almost identical, though different enough to be annoying. Most of the changes had to do with print sizes; they're all slightly different, and there's support for 6x6 prints (but not the 6x9 the CP-D70x supports)

Some judicious decoding later, and Gutenprint now theoretically supports the CP-K60DW-S. Of course, lacking access to one of these printers I have no way of testing this, and can only hope its command stream is identical.

In the process I discovered and fixed a couple of bugs relating to command padding on the the CP-D70 series. Anyone out there with access to any of these printers (Mitsubishi CP-D70DW, CP-D707DW, CP-K60DW-S) that's willing to help me out?

The Kodak 605 Photo Printer is their replacement for their earlier 68x0 series. And, true to form, it's incompatible with everything that came before.

Last night, I commited a backend for the Kodak 605 photo printer. Tonight, the last of the known bugs were fixed, and it appears to work!

Yay, that just leaves most of the Mitsubishi models (CP3020D/DA, CP-D70/707, CP-D9550/9600) that need testing/validating, plus whatever else comes along in the mean time.

"If you cook it, they will come."

...

I had to shed my sandals to make it up a tree; one landed in a light island.

Last night Orchestra Miami put on Viva Verdi, billed as "A celebration of [Giuseppe] Verdi's live and works."
The program included more than a dozen pieces; Solo, choral, exerpts from his many operas, and Verdi's only purely instrumental piece (a string quartet).

Naturally, this concert included an except from of Il Trovatore and ended on the (very) high note of the drinking song from La Traviata, earning a standing ovation.

This concert was held at Pinecrest Gardens' beautiful covered outdoor ampitheatre, surrounded by ancient Banyan trees. The botanical gardens are quite beautiful even at night, and I would love to see them during the day.

As an aside, I couldn't help but notice just how closely professional wrestling and daytime television still use classical operatic techniques. I guess showmanship is eternal, eh?

This afternoon, I played along with a bunch of hippies at a drum circle at an awesome nature preserve then went straight to a gun store/range for a look-n-feel session with a couple of lever-action rifles. (In short, I really like how they handle!)

Oddly enough, both times I've been to that park there's been a wedding going on. And nobody has any .22LR ammunition in stock. Sigh.

I love how this turned out.

Taken at Holmes Park in Melbourne at the beginning of Magic Light.

It was the kind of day that makes me wish I wasn't a desk jockey.

A ten-second exposure of the night sky. None of this series came out as I'd hoped, but this one's still cool.

Back in Melbourne, there was an excellent Phở restaurant about a mile from my house. Since moving to Delray, I've been on the lookout for a proper Vietnamese joint (as opposed to a HipAsianBistro(tm)).

Tonight, I finally had a chance to eat at Cây Đa, located along US1 on the North end of Boca Raton.

It is a simple, unassuming place, tucked away in a strip mall, and its humble feel is a welcome change from the slick-but-shallow shininess of your typical Boca eatery.

As for the food, I left with that happy glowy warm feeling that only a large bowl of Phở can give. And what better endorsement can I give than that?

I will definitely return.

"Yes, I love seafood -- See food, eat food."

It's been said that a good cook is like a witch that dispenses happiness. I don't know if either part of that applies to me, but I live for those moments. It's why I bring random baked goods into the office; it's why I'm going to cook another massive Thanksgiving bash with an "if you cook it, they will come" outlook.

So I'm finally promoting Food into its own category -- whether or not it comes out of my kitchen. I'll include short restaurant reviews here too, starting with the place I ate at earlier this evening.

The bag of groceries I just put away included two pounds of dark brown sugar, five pounds of granulated sugar, and a pair of "no sugar added" apple pastries.

This is one of the two pineapple upside-down rum cakes that just came out of the oven. The top half inch is a gooey mass of buttery-brown-sugary-rummy-pineappley--awesomeness.

I'm going to need to transport these with the windows open!

I still have enough rum-marinated pineapple for a third cake, but I ran out of some of the other ingredients -- If I make another one this weekend, I'll spike it with a liberal dose of chopped pecans rather than the few I used as a garnish for these two.

Clint and his wife Sharee are the driving force behind the Paralounge Drum Gathering. This is a rare moment of him taking it easy during a facilitated drum circle.

As an aside, about a year ago Clint opened up Inkinyu Tattoo in his home turf of Live Oak, Florida.

I'm in a good mood. Not the sort of "good" you say when random folks ask you how you are, but rather, a comfortable centered warmth. You know, good.

There isn't any one dominant reason for this; it is sort of an accumulation of a thousand paper cuts over an extended period of time, but this past weekend seemed to be the tipping point.

I actually relaxed, had fun, and genuinely socialized. Helped instigate two doumbek circles, and shared the sort of intimate moments that only very late night conversations can bring about.

I watched sunsets and sunrises, punctuated by peaceful sleep in my bright yellow banana hammock, suspended beneath a pair of century-old live oak trees. Listened to late-summer cicadas serenading above the babble of children playing. And shooed a wolf spider out of my clean clothes.

I returned home to a subtly different world, with a lighter, centered ease I haven't felt in a long, long while.

Life is good.