neonleonb

Last Thursday there was a beautiful sunset, and as I admired it from my tall building in downtown Berkeley, I noticed there was a light drizzle in the sun's glow. I dashed to the roof, and indeed I was correct to expect something pretty. I didn't, however, expect anything quite so good as this:



A perfect double rainbow, the first rainbow I've ever seen in Berkeley. And just inside the inner rainbow, without any space, there was the hint of a third rainbow. I'm not sure what would cause that, but I'm pretty sure it was really there.

Glorious.

Task: fake navy tattoos for Shades of Blues Navy Night
Difficulty: drawing them upside-down on my own arm, one of them left-handed

I think they turned out all right.

Left-handed:


I dared not draw a human form left-handed:

I want to say something witty, but that'd just take away from the sign.

I went to Ocean Beach with Moorea and Elena this weekend, and I got some good pictures.



We saw dead things.

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I visited my sister and her husband in Irvine this past weekend. Of course, I only took pictures on the day we went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, but I still got some good pictures.


Ruth


Todd

Of course, when I was most excited, I forgot entirely to take pictures. At the park, they did a little presentation where they brought out some animals to interact with select members of the crowd, and some dude got to have a hyrax jump around on his shoulders! I was intensely jealous. For those of you who don't know, a hyrax is an adorable little rodent-like rock-jumping critter. I saw some in Israel last summer, and I took as many pictures of them as I did the whole rest of the trip. For instance:


(from Israel)

I also got this video of a young hyrax making a clumsy mistake. Damn, they're cute.


(from Israel)

I was in Tennessee with my family (save for my sister) for two weeks. I didn't take as many pictures as I probably should have, but I'll share what I've got.

I went on a few hikes with these folks


including around a green Tennessee valley
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And, while in Chattanooga, I went flying. But that's another set of pictures.

The weather has been gorgeous in Berkeley, so I thought I'd go outside to work. Predictably, I didn't get too much work done, but I saw a number of interesting things at the Marina.

For starters, at the Berkeley Marina, the main entertainment is flight. The wind wasn't good at first for kites, and I saw many people fail at getting their kites to fly. But I looked up at just the right moment, and I saw a spider drift by. I ran after it--it was clearly "ballooning" on strands of its own silk! I'd heard of such things, but never seen them. It didn't seem to be using just one strand of silk--it looked more like some sort of structure, but it was hard to make out any details. I didn't see any others, but that alone was amazing enough. I was particularly amused that the nearly-brainless spider was succeeding where all the humans couldn't get their kites to stay up.

The low winds were good for more than just spiders, though. I saw a remote-controlled helicopter! It didn't do the fancy tricks you'd expect from, say, Pieter Abbeel's AI-controlled helicopter, but it was cool to see anyway. I also saw a remote-controlled glider, but it wasn't able to soar until the wind picked up and the kites started flying. (The wind came from the east! At the Marina! If you're a Berkeley resident, you know how weird that is--usually in the afternoon at the Marina there's a strong sea breeze.)

In addition to the spider, I saw a little more good wildlife. By being very still, I was able to get some nice close-up pictures, so here's a little sequence:

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There, that covers almost a week. It's a start.

Megan and I went on an all-day bicycle-based exploration of San Francisco.

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Last night, a misty city was swallowed up by fog. You can practically see the wave of fog crashing down on San Francisco:

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I have obtained some pictures lately during my adventures, and it's time to share.

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And that's my life in pictures.

Oh, by the way, I took a picture of Megan in the sunset. Cute, no?

I've gotten a lot of hang gliding pictures lately. There are a few very good pictures of me, and I'm glad. You can see more on Flickr.

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I got in late at night, and we didn't do anything that night. The next day we walked to Prague's Josefov district, which is the home of its historic Jewish community. It includes some synagogues and such from centuries ago. They didn't let us take pictures inside (though that didn't stop the annoying American NFTY kids), but here's a picture of Kate near the New-Old Synagogue.

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And that's it! Frankly, I think Prague is just about my ideal city. It's dense, which makes possible city luxuries like corner markets and cheap, frequent public transit. It's got plenty of greenery, and the architecture makes American buildings seem cheap. You can even get around a bit speaking only English. It was a lot of fun, and I can say I would like to live there for a summer or longer, someday. Except for the language thing. I'm pretty happy being monolingual.