celebrity

My fellow racing and track-day cohort turned car builder Hong Quan has finally made it big time, getting some national exposure by having famed comedian, Tonight-show-host and car guy extraordinaire Jay Leno feature his custom-built 3-wheeler (some call them trikes) on his automotive website, Jay Leno's Garage! Congratulations to Hong and hope the build orders start flowing in.



Link to Jay Leno's Garage for more info and photos.

Looks like Autoblog has finally seen the light and posted up an article about the Prong 3 there as well... mainly riding on Leno's coattails.

Hong also made the local news on NBC... hope you remember the little people when you're rich and famous pal!

fame

If you haven't already, check out the latest overnight internet sensation that is sweeping Youtube and Facebook - meet Antoine Dodson. Some quick background: a young woman in Alabama wakes up to find an intruder in her bed, trying to rape her - she screams and her brother Antoine comes in and helps her fight off the would-be rapist; he manages to flee out the window he climbed into the room from. Police come, tv news crew comes, and it's all a very normal if unfortunate story for the six o'clock news... until they interview an angry and emotional Antoine, who has some things to say to his sister's attacker. After the story aired on tv, the video on the local news stations' website became their number one watched video, and Antoine becomes an unsuspecting internet star. As often happens these days, some creative types took the video and remixed it into what could become the next big internet viral meme -- and so I give you, the Bed Intruder Song!



The song and Antoine's diatribe are both incredibly funny, although the subject matter and his sister's ordeal are a serious matter. But the song is just so damn catchy, I can't stop listening to it over and over. I think it can be viewed as a powerfully sincere and angry anthem for Antoine and his sister Kelly, who want nothing more than safety and justice, and express their frustration at the environment and circumstances that they found themselves in.

You dont have to come and confess, we lookin for you, we gon' find you!
So you can run and tell that, homeboy!

Update: here are a few more covers that i found that I enjoyed.
http://youtu.be/HKraf32VU6M

http://youtu.be/Wid6V_f09rA

http://youtu.be/7wucEzYqTXk

http://youtu.be/Aud_wgLdrQI

visions

This post will just be a quick photo update...

Some fireworks photos from July 4th:


Also because I've been taking the Bay Bridge home after work now, I have had a few opportunities to stop by Treasure Island and take some nighttime skyline shots of San Francisco:

From City by the Bay

this one's kind of massive, and features a 3-image stitch I made with Autostitch, Photoshop and Picasa (click to enlarge):


the vista point on Treasure Island is super windy and cold at night so it's a bit of a challenge to capture some of these images; they're still not as sharp as I would like even with a tripod and various photog tricks people have suggested to me. I'll keep trying though, hopefully I will come up with some really nice shots that I would be proud to hang on a wall in our new place.

relocation

Happy Birthday, America! Happy Fourth of July! A lot has happened in the past few months... but in short we've sold our home, paid off our debts, put our stuff into storage and moved to Richmond! We found a buyer and after some negotiations with him signed a purchase agreement. We finished packing up our things and moved out last weekend, putting most of our stuff into a storage unit that's near our future home. We closed escrow last week and have moved up to Richmond to stay with family until our new house is complete. We had looked at renting an apartment but it seemed like a hassle and for the short term (four months) that we needed it, it wouldn't have been so cheap. So now we have a bit of a lengthy commute for the next few months but we're saving a lot more money by not renting. It's kind of a weird feeling not having a mortgage or any substantial debt to our names. Though that will certainly change again very soon when we move into the new house.

In the meantime, work continues as busy as ever... I had one trial that was scheduled to take place in Boston right about now but it was dismissed just before we were set to leave. I was a little disappointed we didn't get to go to Boston again but I guess I'd probably be working right now (on July 4th) if it had gone forward. But now my other case has been extremely busy and we're gearing up for the next trial in DC that starts in September.

I took some photos recently of an airshow - I didn't actually go to the airshow but it was going on outside of my office building one Saturday while I was working. It's kind of hard to keep focused when there's Harrier jets flying around outside your window. So I took a break and with the power of my 70-300mm lens was able to capture some of the cool aircraft flying around.

riparian

We've just come back from a 2-day trip to Yosemite Valley. The landscapes and scenery were pretty awe-inspiring. Here are some of the photos. I probably took over 700 photos in all but many of them didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. That's the great thing about a DSLR like the Nikon D5000, you can just keep clicking away and not worry about wasting film, and then go back and pick the best shots. Anyways we had a good time enjoying the natural beauty of Yosemite, and I had fun trying to capture some of that beauty with my camera. Oh and by the way the wide angle shots were done with a Nikkor 10-24mm lens I rented from http://www.borrowlenses.com/. It's a great way to get access to otherwise expensive equipment like this lens, which retails for like $1000.