Matt's Blog

My Review of Fox River Wool Glomitt - Unisex

2010-03-30T19:50:00.001-07:00

The best of both worlds! Mitt folds back, revealing a fingerless glove to allow maximum dexterity while keeping hands and wrists cozy.

Cozy,comfy,dexterous, darn that velcro

By Mattaphore from Berkeley, CA on 3/30/2010

Gift: No

Sizing: Feels true to size

Pros: Dries Quickly, Warm, Stylish

Cons: Annoying Velcro

Best Uses: Working Outdoors, Casual Wear

Describe Yourself: Casual/ Recreational

Gear Usage: Cold Weather Living, Winter Sports

I'm wearing them as I type this review; they're very comfy and seem quite cozy The picture doesn't reveal that the fingers are webbed/stitched together, so your fingers don't have the same dexterity as the Fox River Fingerless Ragg Gloves or the Fox River Gripper Gloves. You can still text on your phone and type on your laptop just fine.

Also, the picture doesn't show that there is a black square of velcro on the back of the wrists and the back part of the mitten (at the fingertips). Even worse, the fuzzy-half of the velcro is on the back of your wrist and the scratcy/grabby-half is on the back of your mitten, so when you're using mitten-mode it's easy to snag on other clothing or objects. I removed the velcro by unpicking the stiches because the mittens seem to stay folded back well-enough by themselves. More often than not, I would like to use these as Mittens. Without the velcro, these are "Ace!"

After removing the velcro, I am quite happy with these mitts. They do keep my hands warm, they are comfy, and they are breathable. If there's a lot of wind-chill, it would be wise to consider a mitten shell.

(legalese)

Been almost a year!

2010-03-28T00:32:00.000-07:00

Holy cow, it's almost been a year since I've added pictures!?!

What's happened since last year? A lot.

Where have I gone since... hrm... Since that trip to Monterey with my parents, I've gone to a Gravenstein Apple fair, I've been Eel Fishing, I went on a camping trip to Cow Mountain with Krissy & her CRM buddies, I went to a Kite Festival in Berkeley, took some night shots of the SF Bay with Tim, I shot pics from field-level at a bunch of Cal Football games, I hung out with relatives from overseas and played tourist (taking pictures of San Francisco), I went to Malaysia for 3 weeks, I went to Dillon Beach with Krissy, and went to a Rock show put on by the Castro Valley Mineral and Gem Society.

Phew...
I gotta upload all those pics to picasa and then I'll include them here. :)

YAY!

Monterey for Memorial Day Weekend

2009-06-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted, but I went to Monterey and the surrounding area with my parents this past Memorial Day. It's been a while since my parents went, and the aquarium has come up with a Secret Life of Seahorses exhibit.

We stayed at the Asilomar Conference Grounds hotel which is really nice. It's a very short walk to the beach from the hotel and there's a bunch of tide pools to explore. I really enjoyed the trip because I got to spend time with my folks.

Growing up, I'm noticing, more and more, how time flies... Gotta live in the moment and make the most of it...

Here are some photographic highlights from the trip :)

Check out http://picasaweb.google.com/mattaphore/MontereyMemorialDay2009# for more shots :)

Clouds over Alberta

2009-05-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

Quick study break...
I dug up these pictures from the family trip to Calgary to visit Grandma, back in Feb '09.
I took these with my point & shoot camera because I didn't bring along my DSLR.

This was the view from the plane, as we flew over the Canadian Rockies/Banff, headed back to San Francisco. The view was simply stunning. (Click for full size)

Another shot:

Again, with a little more noise reduction in Photoshop.

California Academy of Sciences part Deux

2009-05-02T00:41:00.000-07:00

April 30th, 2009
I planned to have a Pisano Lab outing to the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, SF. Sheppy, Fabian, and I bought our tickets in advance, and the rest of our lab mates waited too long, so it sold out.

This was my second time going to the Academy and I enjoyed it a ton. I saw quite a few things I didn't see the first time around, and I'm sure if I go again, I won't be disappointed.

The building itself is really cool, and the next time I go, I'll have to take some nice wide-angle pictures so you get the idea of just how cool it is. Designed by the architect, Renzo Piano, the building aims to be Green and Sustainable. The "living roof" is covered in plants & vegetation that stimulates a micro-ecosystem for little critters. It also has a ton of sun-lights that are used for lighting the inside, to reduce the need for electricity.

I think it's a noble effort and it looks pretty cool.

Anyhow... about the exhibits. Inside the Rain Forest bio-dome, they have a lil reptile exhibit with pit vipers. I think these are the same kind of viper at the Snake Temple in Penang. Man... I'd love to go back to Malaysia now with my camera :)

You go through the Bio-dome and you get to see little exhibits with Geckos and Chameleons and all sorts of little critters:

This is my favorite picture from the event, Click on it for a larger view:

It kinda makes me want to get a Gecko as a pet... but my better judgment is telling me "No."

After you make your way through to the top of the Biodome, you take an elevator which brings you down ~4-5 stories to the aquarium in the basement. There you can see stuff like Piranhas and learn about the Amazon Rain Forest can flood by about ~40 feet, so that just the tops of short rain-forest trees are all that stick out. It's an interesting exhibit and it really gives you some height perspective:

The rest of the Steinhart Aquarium is located down there and you can walk around and see cool fish:

Making your way back to the "surface" you get to pass by cute little frogs and stuch:

... and more interesting fish. This fella is an Angler Fish that camouflages itself and waits for prey.

There's also a bunch of fancy looking shrimp:

One of the more interesting frogs was this little Mossy Frog. The colors are amazing :)

Nature is truly awesome.

One exhibit that I missed the first time I went was this rattlesnake display, next to some climate change exhibit.

I'm really starting to like taking pictures of reptiles... They have such cool textures. I enjoy fish pictures a lot too, but when they're really fast moving, I have a hard time taking good shots of them... It also doesn't help that I get a lot of high ISO noise... one slight drawback of having a small sensor... but then again, I really enjoy the benefits of the four-thirds systems... I really like the crop-factor and the compact lenses. I really love my 50mm macro, and I'm not planning on purchasing anything else for quite some time.

I have a long way to go before I push this camera to it's limit, so in the meantime, I'll keep on practicing with lots more pictures :)

Easter Weekend in Yosemite

2009-04-14T17:13:00.001-07:00

For Easter weekend, I took a trip to Yosemite with Krissy and friends from my undergraduate years. We left Berkeley on Friday at around noon or 12:30pm and started driving out to the park.

Yosemite is about 3.5 hours away... past Livermore, past Modesto, past Merced... We just made one quick pit-stop on the way down and we didn't get caught in any crazy Easter weekend traffic.

When we got to our campsite at Lower Pines, it was a little chilly, but the sun was still up. We got our tents pitched and I snapped a picture of Half Dome.

It was pretty overcast and it but at least we could see Half Dome :) Last time I was in Yosemite, the weather wasn't so cooperative.

The next morning, the weather cleared up quite a bit and we were able to see Half Dome from our tent:

On Saturday morning, after eating breakfast, we headed up to the Upper Yosemite Falls trailhead and began making our way up to the top:

We had some time to goof off along the way too:

Halfway up the trail you can see the Upper Waterfall pretty clearly:
The mist from the waterfall freezes overnight and deposits on the sides... The bus driver that drove us from our camp to the start of the trail told us that the technical name for it is "Frazil Ice".

A couple hours and a few miles later, we were at the top:

Along the way down, I got some pictures of Half Dome. You couldn't see it from the very top of the falls, but this is what we saw:

At night we had a good meal and we ate lots of marshmallows :) I tried to sit still for 20 seconds at the campfire while everyone else was moving around:

The next day we took a much shorter walk to the Lower Falls view spot before leaving the valley:

The hike from the valley floor to the top of the Upper Yosemite Falls is 3.5 miles long and it has an elevation change of 2500 feet. The hike took us about 6.5 hours round trip with breaks. The Lower Falls trail, in contrast, is only about a 5-10 minute walk.

On our way out, we stopped by the Tunnel View Vista and I snapped this shot of the valley:

Overall the trip was excellent and I'd love to go back and get more shots of Yosemite.
My little Jetta managed to squeeze out 31.6 miles per gallon :) Which was super good considering it was fully loaded and had a full camper shell on top of it.

Over the summer, I'm going to try to build a telescope, and hopefully take it somewhere cool so that I can take some cool astrophotography shots.

Tilden Hike with Pascal (posting a little late)

2009-04-03T23:03:00.000-07:00

Pascal and I went on a hike through Tilden Park last weekend to look for critters. We were looking for newts, salamanders and snakes and bugs and whatnot.

The first critter we came across was a banana slug:

We romped around a bunch of poison oak:

Lifting up logs and rocks, we found a couple skinny salamanders:

We also saw some lizards running around:

and some gnarly bark:

And most cute of all, a little turtle!

There was a turkey, some pigs, goats, and other random animals at the Tilden Petting zoo.

It was a great hike/walk and I think I'll have to explore more places for more new critters!

California Academy of Sciences -- Nightlife

2009-03-28T15:46:00.001-07:00

Thursday Night Nightlife at the Academy of Sciences (www.calacademy.org).
It's a wonderful event for the 21 & Over... for $10 you get to run around the academy of sciences while consuming alcohol... and the best part, there aren't any little kids!

I'll be going again for sure... Most important lens to bring = Macro. (Unless you're also interested in taking pics of the architecture...) I was just focusing in on the little guys when I went.

Here's what I got...
A frog hiding from the 21&over crowd:
A pretty pair of butterflies:
A butterfly working off the extra nectar that it ate:
A frog that you shouldn't lick:
A butterfly and its potential meal:
Rockfish!
Lizzard
Cockroaches!
Albino Alligator
And last but not least, and Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake

The 'new' California Academy of Sciences is awesome. For only $10 on Thursday nights (and, I believe, $8 if you already have membership), it's definitely worth it.

Walking Around Campus

2009-03-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

I walked around with Sheppy today. He has a sprained ankle but he was up for an adventure.
We started making our way to Telegraph to see if there was anything interesting going on...but with it being spring break, everything was pretty quiet. Today I paid more attention to graffiti and I came to realize that there's a ton of random crap everywhere you turn...

From the not-so-artistic scribbles:

to some wanna-be Banksy stuff:

We decided to go to the top of the Unit 3 parking structure to see if we could look down on any interesting scenes... I think there's a lot of potential for some cool tilt-shift style photos from the top of the parking structure... we'll have to wait till more students return...

Then we made our way to campus:

Sather gate is almost completely back:

I asked some people if I could take their portraits.

^You should see the full size of this one at http://picasaweb.google.com/mattaphore/AroundCampus#

All in all it was fun. We went to a Jamaican Restaurant for dinner...
Go Bears!

Skating Berkeley

2009-03-24T22:57:00.000-07:00

Today was a beautiful day, perfect spring break weather. I'm bummed that my spring break doesn't coincide with Krissy's but I'm trying to make the best of it.

I brought my Oly to lab with my 50mm macro, juts for kicks. I got some labwork done, and took a quick coffee break with some labmates. At Brewed Awakening, I decided to shoot the condensation on a pepsi can:

After coffee, I decided to go study with McCoy & his friend Stacie. I managed to do a minimal amount of work, but McCoy and I came up with a great idea for the sunny day: "Go Skate & Take Pictures"

Here are the highlights:

I got some pretty decent use out of my fisheye adapter. This is originally why I wanted it.

McCoy throwing down his mad skillz:

All Done :-)

Look out, Transworld Skateboarding!

San Francisco Bike Safari

2009-03-14T22:25:00.000-07:00

aka. Hipster photo-hunting. aka The quest for the Chrome Bag Store.

Today Sheppy and I took a bike trip to SF to take pictures of all things hip (including hipsters).

We began our ride at the Embarcadero BART station and rode to the Ferry Building to check out the Farmer's Market. Along the way Sheppy was doing his impersonations of Hipsters and Fixie Culture with his nice road bike.

When we got to the Ferry Building market thing, I came across some pretty chard. There's a lot of potential at the market for pretty pictures... I think one of these days I must check out the Berkeley Farmer's Market (both the Shattuck one and the other one next to the BART Station/Post Office)

A girl who was with her boyfriend saw my hand-painted shoes and told me she liked em... I think he was jealous and he wanted a pair too:

I also decided to take a shot of my bike, since it's completely assembled now. It's a Nishiki Custom Sport, circa 70's/80's

We rode on to Pier 39 to see if there were any Sea Lions around. There were many more out on the docks, compared to Valentines Day when Krissy & I went.

Smelly little sausages:

We rode on up to Lombard Street to ride down the crookedest street, as well as to tackle the hill that leads up to it.

We were already in the right neighborhood for Coit Tower, so we rode up to the top of Coit Tower:

I saw a datum thingy, so I took a picture of it. Krissy & friends like datum points for surveys. This one didn't say USGS, but I'm assuming that U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey markers have lots of data recorded too...

We then made it down to Broadway, where the kinky stuff happens:

Passing by the Transamerica Pyramid, I took my last picture of the day:

We wanted to find the Chrome Messenger Bag store, but we couldn't find it.
We tried calling 1-800-GOOG-411 for Google's 411... It told us that the Chrome store was on 580 Fourth Street... But we rode past this stupid place at least 3 times, and we didn't even see it... I distinctly remember passing by the Bamboo Reef Dive shop, but wtf... Where's Chrome? Where are the Hipsters?

View Larger Map

*sigh*... Their store page even says 580 4th street... Maybe that Dark Building with Red Trim was the store :( The Paper was still covering up the window and it looked empty...

What to do? Next time we can try again...

For more pictures and full-size versions, see My Picasa.

Woah! 50mm f/2 Macro!!!

2009-03-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

Today I received my 50mm f/2 macro lens. Right now, I am blown away. I look forward to our future together... We will explore the world and see awesome sights. For those of you tech enthusiasts, dpreview.com did an awesome review of this lens and the numbers are awesome!

Sunny day in Berkeley, 30 minutes between a meeting and class... that means go take photos for a lil bit!

I found this pretty plant near the Band House... at the corner of Ridge & LeRoy.

I found this telephone post @ LeRoy & LeConte, across from Tellefsen Hall.

Pine cone near the City Car Share/FlexCar spot (behind Etcheverry)

I fiddled around with the aperture to see what this bad-ass lens could do

Macro draws me towards texture.

Gabriele's watch & arm hair...

Sheppy's watch at f/2.0

Sheppy's watch again, this time at f/8

Tennis Ball! Look closely to see the fuzz!
All I can say is Wow. That was totally Awesome.
I don't have a ton of time right now to play more with this lens, but I promise I will come up with a lot of new pictures soon!

Pacific Coast Air Museum

2009-02-28T23:30:00.000-08:00

For $5 you can hang out at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa :) It's right next to the Charles Schultz Airport (airport code STS, You can fly to Portland, Seattle, or LA). Also, they do air shows there every year in August :)

You can see an actual F-14 from the movie Top Gun. They said the serial number checks out so I'll take their word for it:

I didn't know that the F-5 was actually used to simulate MIGs at Top Gun... Now it makes more sense that they used em in the movie as "MIGs"

They have old planes... lots of old planes:

F-4's:

Intruders:

Even a Harrier!

I think it's pretty cool that all these Jets are just sitting around in a field in Santa Rosa... Of course, no Santa Rosa attraction is complete without Snoopy stuff:

Valentine's Day on The Rock

2009-02-24T00:20:00.000-08:00

For Valentine's day, I went to Alcatraz with Krissy and we ran around the island. We took BART from Berkeley and arrived at Embarcadero around 10:15. The walk from Embarcadero to the Ferry building/Pier 33 was pretty scenic. There was a farmers market getting set up, but I didn't manage to get any spontaneous/impressive pictures from that, unfortunately... Along the way to Pier 33 (where the Alcatraz tour departs), we came across this big wooden door.

After converting to B&W in photoshop, I think it turned out pretty cool. (Thanks Krissy for being persistent, and getting me to take a couple pictures of the door).

On the ferry ride from Pier 33 to Alcatraz, a ton of seagulls were following the boat. This one in particular was looking at me wondering where I was going:

As we got nearer to Alcatraz, I started snapping away at the island. Even though it was drizzly on and off, the lighting was pretty nice:

On the island, we ran around and followed the audio tour. We paused here and there to snap more shots. For the majority of the day I had my 40-150mm lens on, but I decided to switch over to my 14-42mm to take some wider shots:

I feel like I often find it easier to just zoom around and snap narrow photos, but I want to train my eye to see wider pictures... I'll run around with the 14-42mm and force myself to get some practice with wide-angle shots.

but... speaking of wide angles, I got lucky with this one... I didn't have a tripod or monopod with me, but I did manage to find a little flat surface on top of a handrail. I switched my camera to complete manual settings (manual focus, aperture, and shutter speed) and started snapping a series of 10 photos. I stiched them together in Photoshop and cropped out the unnecessary bits, and voila:

For all the pictures, you can click on them to get larger sizes... else, you can always go to http://mattaphore.deviantart.com and download my full-size images. (After you click on a picture, there's a link bar on the left-hand side that lets you 'download')

If you're lazy, but want to see the full size large panorama picture, the link is:
http://fc46.deviantart.com/fs40/f/2009/053/e/b/SF_Panorama_from_Alcatraz_by_mattaphore.jpg

All in all, Valentine's day was awesome. We topped it off with a clam chowder sour dough bread bowl and then hopped BART back to Berkeley :)

All the cool kids were trying it...

2009-02-11T23:56:00.000-08:00

I had to give HDR a shot... After having "qtpfsgui" installed on my machine... I decided to take some shots at different EV's to see what would come out... I must say, that qtpfsgui is a pretty neat program...

Here's what I took from Fabian's front yard (click for larger size)

Full Moon

2009-02-10T00:14:00.001-08:00

Today I looked up in the sky and the moon was full.
I decided to try out the Sunny 16 rule... you know... f/16, ISO100, 1/100...

I think it turned out pretty decent... I tweaked with the levels a little bit with photoshop... raised the blacks... lowered the whites...

I also shot a copy of it in RAW, but fiddling around with the RAW version doesn't do too much for this picture... I think it can add a little more power to other shots, cuz you can 'develop' the shot the way you want... but for this picture, I just fiddled with the jpg version.

Cotati and SSU

2009-02-01T22:35:00.000-08:00

So yeah, I bought a Hoya Single Coated Polarizer (one of the cheapest at Looking Glass) for my trip to Yosemite... thinking that the snow would be nice and crisp and the skies would be clear and blue... but that didn't work out... so this past weekend, I had my first real chance to make use of the polarizer...

I went up to Cotati and visited Krissy... she showed me around SSU's picturesque areas, and I snapped away.

First, testing out the polarizer:

Here's what I came up with: (Click for Full Size)

details:
150mm, f/8, 1/200 sec, 400 ISO

Winter Trip to Yosemite

2009-01-27T16:39:00.001-08:00

This past weekend, I went to Yosemite National Park and had a blast trying to be an Ansel Adams :)

The weather was mostly overcast with a touch of snow... It made for interesting shots.
Here are some pics I took:

Playing around with the 40-150mm

2009-01-19T22:01:00.001-08:00

This past weekend was really hot and sunny. Pretty unusual for Northern California’s Mid-January… Compared to years ago, I feel like it should be pouring rain right now. Anyhow, with a lot of sunlight and with some flys and bees buzzing around, I thought it would be a good opportunity to snap some shots in the front yard.

Taken with the 40-150mm lens, about 1m away

Fisheye Frenzy

2009-01-09T21:36:00.000-08:00

I just got my new Fisheye Lens:
Opteka 0.20x AF Fisheye

I'm pretty busy right now and I'll shoot more pictures when I have more time... For now, here are three quick shots that I've taken to try out the lens:

First Panorama Attempt

2008-12-28T16:02:00.000-08:00

I went for a Boxing Day walk along the Rush Creek Trail in Novato.

I brought along a tripod to take a panorama picture... stiched in photoshop...

I was using my 14-42 f/3.5-5.6. Click for a bigger picture :)

New Lens!

2008-12-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

Many special thanks to Tristan for his generous gift of a 40-150mm f/4.0-5.6 Olympus Zuiko Digital Lens.

Dec 24th, 2008 was kinda rainy, but I decided to still take some test shots around the house. Today is much sunnier so I might go out for a bit with the new lens :)

Here are my test shots:

Water drops on our little kaffir lime tree:

The little poinsettia:

and My Family's Sugar Container:

The Albany Bulb

2008-12-23T19:34:00.000-08:00

Located next to the Golden Gate Fields horse racetrack is a hidden gem called the Albany Bulb... a 'trash-heap' with scattered artwork all over.
This is where you can find it:

View Larger Map

And here are some pictures of what you can find there, taken with my Olympus E-520 with the kit 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 lens :)

Make Love, Not War:

A Window to the City (SF):

You can find more of these pics, and their full size images at Mattaphore.Deviantart.com

School and Photography

2008-12-17T00:23:00.000-08:00

I was finally able to get some decent results for research... It's been a crazy past two weeks, and I still have another research project that I'm working on... iono... hardcore.

This last weekend I went on a photo safari with my new camera and my buddies. Here are some results:

Taken at the Berkeley Marina:

Taken near my apartment:

New D-SLR

2008-12-10T22:15:00.000-08:00

I got a new Olympus E520... purchased on Black Friday from Amazon... I don't think it was a "Black Friday Deal" but it only cost $460. I know $460 is still a decent chunk of change, but it's a lot cheaper than it's costing right now on Amazon (~$550ish).

I haven't had a ton of time to play with it cuz research has been killer... I have 1 week to finish a lot of work and have results...

We'll see what happens... Go Bears!

Expect a ton of photos in about.... 2 weeks time :)

The Blog-o-sphere

2008-11-25T19:13:00.000-08:00

Random thought... I wonder how much people make off viral videos... (in theoretical dollars)

Like Numa Numa guy doesn't get paid for his video, but sometimes he gets invited to go places... and maybe he gets paid for that...

I should come up with the next "what what in the butt"... then I could make theoretical dollars too

Big Game

2008-11-23T22:11:00.000-08:00

Cal and Stanford battled it out at the Eleventy-First Big Game this past Saturday.

Being on the Cal Band's camera crew, I had a field pass and an awesome opportunity to snap some shots...

I took a bunch of pictures, but they were on flim... so I have to finish my roll and develop the photos first.

I'll post the results in a few days

Prelim Results?

2008-08-29T07:34:00.001-07:00

Hopefully, we can get our Prelim Results today...
Hopefully I passed and hopefully all my labmates passed...

If I do pass all 3, I'll go look for an olympus e-520 :)

2008-08-26T15:37:00.001-07:00

test

First Post

2008-08-14T23:34:00.001-07:00

Hi, this is my first post...

check out my awesome picture of a Rockfish... taken at Monterey Bay Aquarium...