video added (view in HD if you can)
today was bike to work day. here are some shots from the bike away from work afterparty put on by the east bay bike coalition:
all photos shot with the panasonic gf1 and the 20mm f/1.7 lens
Wow, my first chipotle burrito in quite some time. Super long lines today at the chipotle on gilman in Berkeley because the bike to work day crowd was cashing in on their buy one get one free coupons.
I used the excellent hugin to stitch together a few panoramas of Oakland, looking east and west. I tried the automate/photomerge option in photoshop CS2 but wasn’t satisfied with the results. photoshop was much faster. hugin can be pretty fast once you get the hang of clicking on the control points.
Oakland, looking west:
Click on the image for a larger version.
Oakland, looking east:
Once again, click on the image for a larger version. I took the photos with the GF1 and the 20mm f/1.7 lens.
While looking up information for a friend who just had his bike stolen, I found a link to this story in the LA times:
The shooting occurred about 3 a.m. April 4 when the two cyclists stopped at a catering truck at Pico Boulevard and Westmoreland Avenue and left their bicycles nearby. Two young men in their late teens walked up and grabbed the bicycles.
The two cyclists gave chase, and a struggle for the bikes ensued. Bopp said one of the robbers pulled out a handgun and shot one of the victims. The second robber managed to fight off the other cyclist.
As the two thieves rode off, the one with the gun turned and shot the second cyclist in the shoulder, Bopp said. “He shot even though he’d already got away,” Bopp said.
holy crap is right!
seeing a hillside crowded with goats was an unexpected part of yesterday’s bike ride. I didn’t realize until it was pointed out to me later that they were being used to remove grass and weeds for fire control purposes.
you can see a clear line between chomped and unchomped areas. wow!
apparently there can be problems with the goats being too effective – they can cause soil erosion and can decimate the population of native plants if the goats are uncontrolled.
Other interesting things I found while searching the interwebs:
these people rent out goats for clearing brush: http://www.goatsrus.com/
the ups and downs of using goats to control fires: http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4663
…
after this, we continued up tunnel road and made a quick descent down claremont ave:
There’s a whole bike storage area at the Westfield mall in San Francisco! I didn’t know that. Awesome.
A friend of mine recently came across some M42 lenses that were being tossed out. He passed them along to me, thinking they might be of use. (Thanks Jesse!) In the box were a pentax takumar 35mm f/3.5 and a 135mm f/3.5. I’ve spoiled myself with fast primes for my cameras, so this is a bit of a departure from what I’d normally use. It’s a 70mm focal length equivalent with the 2x m4/3 multiplier.
I used my M42/C-mount to micro four-thirds adapter with a 9mm and 16mm extension tube to get the flange back distance to match that of a 35mm lens.
The lens works alright on the camera. It’s not nearly as bulky as the 8mm peleng fisheye. Focusing worked fine and the manual focus magnification helps a lot. With longer lenses (I tried the 135mm f/3.5 for a bit), I’ve noticed that the magnification isn’t very useful because of camera shake.
Photos with the 35mm lens look fine. The effective focal length worked pretty decently. Here are some samples:
a shot from grizzly peak road from a post-work ride on thursday
we decided to try the kfc doubledown today.
We went to the KFC on 45th and San Pablo in Oakland:
We ordered our sandwiches and inspected them. Mine didn’t look as “disgusting” to me as some reviewers (also check out a little side story here) have described:
but it didn’t look too good either. It tasted super salty, and the flavoring on the chicken totally overwhelmed everything else in the “sandwich” (rox informs me that according to MW, it’s not a sandwich, but a “sandwich” because there is no bread to be found). you could make out a little bit of the cheese via texture and if you tried, you could taste the “colonel’s sauce”. It didn’t taste horrible though. The bacon probably wasn’t necessary – I could hardly tell it was there. I was scared that I’d get sick. but I didn’t.
My friend Israel didn’t have much to say. He just shook his head.
We also got 2 biscuits for 99 cents. Israel got honey and butter to put on the biscuits, but it was actually “buttery spread” and “honey sauce”. 11% real honey!
I saw these three guys walk in.
(note: Israel made the astute observation that their menu is basically only combos – no individual sandwiches. Perhaps the margins are just that much higher on the combo meals?)
They were definitely getting double downs – you could tell by their pants and their fixed gear bikes.
and they did. I can’t blame them though because they were there for the same reason that we were.