Thoughts Over Coffee

Hello everyone. Your good friend Cameron here again, with more random
thoughts to share.

First of all, I hope you had a great Halloween. Especially with the
extra hour (for most of you). Although technically that additional
hour is for today, All Saints Day. And given that all of the bars
close before two, and that the "underwear only" party I was invited to
(yes, really; no, I didn't go; yes, really) ended at 1:00, even though
we don't observe Daylight Savings here, I suppose that all anyone can
really do with the extra hour is spend some time contemplating their
favorite saint (mine's St. Hubbins, patron saint of shoe repair). At
any rate, I'm digressing (you know that's happening when I start using
more parentheses than words).

The point is that there is now only a three hour time difference
between here and my friends and family in Colorado, which is a mighty
sight better than that ungodly four hours of difference. Heck, now
we're practically in the same time zone!

The other point was about Halloween. I spent a little time on
Freakbook yesterday (I was told my RSS plans might be back on track,
but alas, Facebook is still thwarting my best intentions). Anyway,
reading friends' posts there got me to wondering exactly how, but more
importantly when, we stopped complaining about not getting enough
candy and started complaining about having too much candy left over
afterwards. I mean, that's quite a swing from one end of the spectrum
to the other. So, inspecting my own life, trying to find a reason for
this change, I find that whole area to be hazy and a little
disjointed, leading me to believe that alcohol is probably to blame
for not wanting more candy. That makes sense to me. Given the choice
between a beer and a small (smaller every year) package of Skittles,
I'll take the beer almost every time.
Reading this now tha it's typed out, I see it really doesn't make any
sense at all, but it took a long time to type it out on this little
gnome-sized iPod keyboard, so there's no way I'm deleting it.

As a final note, check out the URL below, and be sure to take a gander
at Thursday and Friday.

http://www.surf-forecast.com/breaks/HonoliiBeachPark/forecasts/latest/six_day

Waves between ten and thirteen feet tall! I have a feeling that
Friday I'll be up very early in hopes of beating the crowds.

Well, that's it from the porch this morning. My coffee's nearly gone,
and I've got a lot to do today (like remembering St. Hubbins). I hope
you all have a great day.

Sent from my iPod

Good Morning

Dark coffee + bright sunrise = an enjoyable quiet morning. There's a
brisk breeze coming down off of the volcano (great for the surfers
down at the beach) and this cool air feels great, considering it looks
like it's going to be sunny, hot, and humid today. This is an
unexpected stark contrast to last night, which was full of rain
(imagine that). At one point we got almost an inch and a half of rain
in less than an hour. Of course, at the time, I was trying to record
vocals for a new song I've written. You know how loud rain is when
you're in a tent? Well, it's not quite that bad in the yurt, but it
was certainly loud enough to find its way on to the recordings. I
tried using a gate to remove the background noise, but it didn't
really work. It's nice and clean when I'm not singing, but as soon as
I open my mouth, it sounds like my teeth are all rolling around loose
in my head. Further motivation to get that vocal isolation booth built
this winter, I suppose.

Beyond that, all is great here. Market days are going great. We nearly
always sell out, and we have many regulars who buy once or twice a
week. I hope to put a whole blog up about that soon.

Batches 2 & 3 of my pineapple swipe look to be ready for bottling.
That's always exciting (free booze). Our neighbor Jesse brought down a
large bag of yellow lilikoi (passion fruit) the other day. I'm
thinking of blending it with some of the purple lilikoi growing wild
on the property, and trying to make some lilikoi swipe. The neighbors
aren't convinced that it'll turn out well, but I think it'll be just
fine (read: free booze).

Last update: I've acquired a webcam, and have been using Skype a fair
bit lately. While I haven't found any women willing to take off their
clothes and dance around for me, I also haven't been asked to strip
down and dance around either, so I'm considering that to be breaking
even. But what it has been is a very nice way to stay in touch with
friends and family, including some quality screen-to-screen time with
my young nephew. So if you'd like to chat, look me up on Skype. If
you want to see me dance around naked, get your credit card ready and
go to www.theworstthingever.a.k.a.camerongonewild.com

Sent from my iPod

Earthquake!!! (not actually worthy of three exclamation points)

Last night, around 11:15, there was a 4.1 earthquake in the ocean about 60 miles south of here. It was one of those cool and interesting (and, assumingly, devestating, given enough force) quakes where everything simply moves sideways for a moment.  Here, it was weak enough for me to not immediately realize it was a quake, but strong enough for me to think something might be seriously wrong with the yurt. After a moment to consider the situation, I decided to check the USGS website, and sure enough, 4.1.

Long story short: the yurt was a-rockin', but no one was knockin'.

Labor Day Photos

On Monday I basically took the day off, and I took a TON of photos.  Most weren't anything to write home about, but a select few turned out pretty well.  There were several of flowers that I liked, but I'm really starting to think that anyone can take nice photos of flowers, so I'm going to lay off posting them here for a while.  Here are four that are not flowers at all.

Of them all, I'm most proud of the last one, as it was a moving target, and I had to use the manual focus to get it.  I'm sure I looked like quite the idiot there at the park, spinning around, looking up and down, all with a camera attached to my face.  But I think it was worth it.

Anthology of Interest: Part 1

So here's the bit where I've stumbled across things that I think are interesting, or funny, or weird, or all three (as in the case of the Crazy Food Replicator Guy).
I want to share them with people, but perhaps they aren't worth a whole entry of their own.  So I've decided to just lump them all together here.

• I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.  Too bad that a) this isn't very scientific and b) it had to involve a taxidermist at all.  Just remember: 7 years bad luck for breaking a mirror, but 248 years bad luck for killing a chupacabra.  Obviously the town of Blanco, TX is due for some sudden and swift justice to be doled out by a wild pack of angry goat-suckers.
• I've tried Twitter, and I'm just not a fan.  I just like to talk too much.  Now HERE'S a site more inclined to my tastes.  Too bad that it was created as a joke.  And too bad most of the people who used it cheated by copying in other existing texts.  Jerkwads.
• On the other hand, if you've got to use Twitter, this guy's doing it right!! *notice: foul language* And here's an interview with the ....  author?  tweeter? twit?...whatever. 
• And, if you're still cool with the foul language, and would also like to tack on even more tasteless humor, and then mix it all up against a setting of movie review and news, then filmdrunk.com is a blog you want to follow.
• Just in case you're not into the whole "foul language" thing, and prefer to remember the good old days when no one swore when writing movie reviews, then perhaps Mr. Von Copperpot's the guy for you.  At any rate, it's entertaining.
• And, just in case the whole "foul language" thing is exactly what you're looking for, this is pretty hilarious, made even more funny by the brief couple of moments that are not filled with f-bombs.

Now here's an unrelated photo:

Kaiwiki Farms Blog

Just in case the four of you who read this (and that one mystery person in San Francisco who apparently loves me* ) need even more to read about what's going on in my daily life, it's your lucky day!  Fire up the google reader, and be sure to add the brand new, so-new-it's-not-even-finished-yet, so-new-it-still-has-that-new-blog-smell, really really really new Kaiwiki Farms Blog.


You can rock it with a socket right here. Or, if you're not into the whole brevity thing: http://kaiwikifarms.blogspot.com/

On said new blog, you'll find exciting things, like:

• plans for the farm
• plants on the farm
• farm related planning and planting
• buying things, selling things, and processing things which may or may not have been bought, sold, or processed
• hiding the keys to the firebird
• stories about old people going up into space (I hope I'm not giving away too much here)
• Kickboxing: sport of the future
• Going to a kegger, Lloyd
• First dates at malls
• This rain is a baptism
• Dissed in the malibu
• By CHOICE, man! (yeah, man, we choose to be here)

Wow.....
Um.... I guess I got a little carried away there, and kinda off of the point.  But you should have seen it!  I had no idea I could type that fast.

Anyway, go check it out if you wanna.  I'm off to find a Clash t-shirt and a trench coat.





*thanks Google Analytics and whoever you are in the bay area

Fun With Gradients

So the other day, Kaleo approached me and told me that while my photos are pretty ok, she was thinking that if I did something more "artsy" with them, I might have a better chance of selling them sometime down the line when I've got more of a portfolio together.  I dunno about all of that, but I do know that I do enjoy me some photo editing.

I think I've mentioned it before, but I'll bring it up again.  Typically for photo editing, I use GIMP (gimp.org).  It's free, it's mostly functional, it's easy to get around in if you've used Photoshop, and it's free.  So it's perfect for what I do.  And did I mention it's free?  :)

So I took three of my photos and started playing with them.  Today I basically just used the gradient tool (transition gradually from one thing to another), layers, and layer masks.  I also used a few "artistic" filters to, you know...make it more artsy or whatever.

So here are the three, in the order that I made them.   You should be able to click on them to see a larger view.  Lemme know what you think so I can improve.

Gracias.