Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Google comes to my neighborhood

Golden Hill Street View Map
From Google's Earth and Maps blog comes this bit of news:

We're excited to announce that Street View is now available in San Diego.... Like the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego features high-resolution imagery.
I checked it out and, while they have coverage from downtown to the East Village all the way to I-5, they just barely skirt the Western and Northern edges of Golden Hill with a few views of B St. They also have some views of the Western-most streets in South Park with a little peek at Grape Street Dog Park.

The stop short of my house by four and a half blocks or, roughly, 0.2 miles.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Steve's Rant: The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs

Pointed out by my friend Steve (different Steve): Steve's Rant: The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs

I survived (yet) another Comic-Com


Carmen Mirandarth (P1000120)
Originally uploaded by orayzio
My Comic-Con 2007 photoset can be perused here or viewed as a slideshow.

For the first time in Comic-Con history, all tickets for all 4 days were completely sold-out... and you could tell this by trying to navigate the exhibit hall. Preview Night is supposed to be the slow night, but I swear it was at least as crowded as Saturday last year. And actually, Saturday this year seemed to be the least crowded day of all the days that I attended. I was there on Wednesday night through Saturday night, but I skipped out on Sunday.

The highlights for me were:
  • Kevin Smith in front of 6,000 fans in Hall H. This was the 2nd year that I've seen Kevin Smith in this hall and although he recycles a lot of his "stand-up" material, he was still a lot of fun to watch.
  • The Sarah Silverman Program panel. OMFG, these guys and gals were absolutely hilarious.
  • Watching Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. unveil the Iron Man suit at the Marvel booth on the exhibit floor, working my way through the huge crowd around them to get close for a picture and being rewarded for my efforts when, out of nowhere, Rosario Dawson pops in to say hello to Jon and Robert!
  • Seeing early footage of Iron Man (you can probably find it on YouTube)


Oh, and all of the pictures were taken with my new camera. It took me awhile to figure out the best setting for pictures at the various sessions (I settled on the "High Sensitivity" scene mode with the higher level of jitter reduction) and when you add in the 10x optical zoom, I'm pretty happy with those photos. But, I didn't like the fuzziness and out-of-focus shots on some of the more up-close photos. But, I would recommend the camera as a very handy and capable, slip-it-in-your-pocket-and-go camera.