January 31, 2012

Community Garden at Fort Mason


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photo by Donald Kinney

One of San Francisco's best kept secrets is the community garden at Fort Mason.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Tourists will come very close to the garden, however, when they take the popular scenic trail along the bluffs between Aquatic Park and the Marina Green. The Community Garden is located in the center of Fort Mason, behind the Administration Building.



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photo by Donald Kinney

I wasn't quite sure what I would find going on at the garden "in the dead of our California Winter", but there's still lots to look at, and of course for a guy like me, still lots of photo opportunities.



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photo by Donald Kinney

...TECHNICAL PROBLEMS -- Well, darn-it, I hit one wrong button this morning and somehow completely lost yesterday's edition of APAD... But if you missed yesterday's "issue", here's the photos, minus my commentary:

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photo by Donald Kinney

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photo by Donald Kinney

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photo by Donald Kinney

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photo by Donald Kinney


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January 30, 2012

Water -- it's a three ring circus!


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photo by Donald Kinney

Thanks to J. Edgar Hoover, former head of the F.B.I., we've always known that no two fingerprints are exactly alike. Fingerprints cannot be changed--but little did we know that the surface of the water at Alpine Dam knows a few tricks.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And I've got to tell you that not all the stars are in the Heavens. Again, the surface of the water at Alpine Dam can put on a star-show of it's own.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And in this ring, ladies and gentlemen, we have peace and tranquility. A small lake in the countryside. I recommend it highly. Approved by birds and cows, and the occasional
.


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January 29, 2012

China Camp -- bright and early


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photo by Donald Kinney

My usual sunrise viewing spot was socked in with fog on Friday morning. I thought I would have better chances farther up San Pablo Bay at China Camp.



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photo by Donald Kinney

At this point it's still unknown what's going to happen with China Camp's last remaining resident, Frank Quan. About 200 parks will remain open, but this and 70 other California State Parks will most likely be closed on July 1. California is flat broke, yet our Governor still has his sights on spending billions on a high-speed rail system that will turn out to be neither high-speed, where people want to go, or within cost estimates.



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photo by Donald Kinney

But San Pablo Bay isn't going anywhere, although salt intrusion has altered the ecology of this bay. Fresh water from the Sierra that would normally flush San Pablo Bay of salt has diminished due to diversion of fresh water for agricultural uses in the Central Valley.



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photo by Donald Kinney

With dilapidated docks and traces of structures along it's 7 miles of shoreline, it's obvious that China Camp was once a busy place. And after reading about the lives of the Chinese immigrants who worked hard netting and drying Bay Shrimp here, it most certainly was a bustling village. There is a splendid little museum at China Camp telling the history of Chinese who settled here and how they were blatantly discriminated against by the "white man".

Today, China Camp's hilly trails are mostly enjoyed by mountain-bikers and joggers. And more often than not, there's going to be some joker with a camera poking around, trying to snag just one more shot.


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January 28, 2012

Mount Tamalpais -- in a foggy kind of mood


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photo by Donald Kinney

Just to the west of where I live is probably one of the most beautiful roads in the world--the Fairfax-to-Bolinas Road--with more than it's share of twists and turns and ups and downs.

Sharing the honors, way up there in the clouds is Ridgecrest Bouleverd. A plethora of auto commercials have been filmed here--there's a great Ford Escape ad currently running on the "one-eyed-monster".



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photo by Donald Kinney

"Tam - al - pie' - us".   If you use your imagination you can see "the sleeping lady" in the contour of her slopes.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Well, there's three versions of how "Mt. Tam" got her name:
The name Tamalpais was first recorded in 1845. The meaning of the name is not well-established and there are several versions of the etymology of the name. One version holds that the name comes from ostensibly Coast Miwok words for "coast mountain" (tamal pais). Another holds that it comes from the Spanish Tamal pais, meaning "Tamal country," Tamal being the name that the Spanish missionaries gave to the Coast Miwok peoples. Yet another version holds that the name is the Coast Miwok word for "sleeping maiden" and is taken from a "Legend of the Sleeping Maiden." (((source:  Wikipedia)))
I tend to favor that third explanation, however some say it has no basis in Coast Miwok myth.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Mount Tamalpais fog. It was quite a show. A command performance. The lifting of the veil. Secrets revealed.


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January 27, 2012

Watch Out! -- Cable-Car coming


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photo by Donald Kinney

Yeah, I can just see the headlines; "Local photog gets creamed on cable-car tracks". Well, the shutter was still open when I realized I had to get out of the way.



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photo by Donald Kinney

So anyway, I lugged my tripod along with me last Sunday on a steep walk up Mason starting near Columbus. Cable-cars have pretty wimpy warning bells--I suppose out of consideration for the residents at such an early hour.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Surviving Mason Street, I moved several blocks south, to the curved tracks at the corner of Powell & Jackson.



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photo by Donald Kinney

So did you know, cable-cars can't turn corners without letting go of the cable or "rope", coasting around the corner, and then re-gripping the rope? They are called "let-go" curves, where the car drops the cable and coasts around the curve on its own momentum.


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January 26, 2012

more waterfalls - the "Kinney" and "Cataract"


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photo by Donald Kinney

Winter arrived late, but we're off to a good start with two storms that have the creeks up and flowing. For eight months of the year this creek is dry as a bone. As far as I know this one has no formal name so I've given it mine! "Kinney Creek", on the northern watershed of my beloved Mount Tamalpais.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And for sheer might and power--this is part of Cataract Falls. After passing through two reservoirs this water will join up with San Geronimo Creek to form the mighty Lagunitas. The water's journey is completed 15 miles northwest where the Lagunitas flows into Tomales Bay, and the Pacific Ocean beyond.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And back to the tour--this is the prettiest spot, I'm pretty sure, on "Kinney Creek". So pretty, perhaps, I've often thought about selling tickets. Pretty tickets, perhaps, for a pretty price. Of course I'd let YOU see it for free.


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January 25, 2012

it rained so I visited Cataract Falls


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photo by Donald Kinney

Pinch me. See if I'm dreaming. What a job. What a place. Cataract Falls--I usually call it "Cardiac" Falls because the trail is so steep.



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photo by Donald Kinney

As close to Zen as I ever get, sometimes I start wondering if the log has consciousness of it's predicament.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Water willing to flow. It's a gravitational thing, I guess. And there seems to be a great sense of urgency.

Gotta go... Hasta la Vista...


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January 24, 2012

Memory -- Computer History Museum, part 2 of 2


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photo by Donald Kinney

As one might expect, the first exhibit at Computer History Museum is about recorded memory. Every thing from ancient incised clay tablets to the modern miniature flash memory that I use in my camera.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Building short and long-term memory with more capacity and speed, yet physically smaller, has always been the challenge. Transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors, and resonant coils have shrunk in size, while power requirements have diminished as well.



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photo by Donald Kinney

A book of functions for calculating, perhaps, the variables of a curve. Or the change in velocity of an object. Or maybe calculations on the rising and setting of the sun. Working it all out by hand was a very arduous task.



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photo by Donald Kinney

The Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801. The loom is controlled by punched cards with punched holes, each row of which corresponds to one row of the design. Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card and the many cards that compose the design of the textile are strung together in order.
(((source:  Wikipedia)))



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photo by Donald Kinney

And now, back home from Computer History Museum... That's the spinning memory I use for backup. It sits on top of my 4-3/4 year old MacPro. They're MercuryElite 1-TB external hard-drives in a mirrored RAID configuration.

The calendar is by one of my favorite photographers--Marty Knapp of Point Reyes Station. And yes, I probably should get his new calendar because I seem to be stuck on October of last year. (I've shown the calendar out of focus to avoid copyright issues)


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January 23, 2012

Computer History Museum -- part 1 of 2


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photo by Donald Kinney

UNIVAC console at Computer History Museum.

UNIVAC-1 was the first commercial computer made in the United States. The main memory consisted of tanks of liquid mercury implementing delay line memory, arranged in 1000 words of 12 alphanumeric characters each. The first machine was delivered on 31 March 1951.

UNIVAC is the name of a business unit and division of the Remington Rand company formed in 1950. In 1955 Remington Rand merged with Sperry Corporation. UNIVAC is an acronym for UNIVersal Automatic Computer.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Machines need our input as variables, and we need a method to decipher their calculations and logic. And what could be more fun than reading rows and rows of counters that look like clocks, day after day...



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photo by Donald Kinney

Tape. Yes I remember tape. My Spanish lessons in high-school were tangled in Scotch magnetic tape. Didn't make my life much easier. I still don't speak much Spanish--not to imply that tape was the culprit.



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photo by Donald Kinney

The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. The designers hoped to sell only a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, and were surprised when they sold thousands in the first month.

The Altair also appealed to individuals and businesses who just wanted a computer and purchased the assembled version. Today the Altair is widely recognized as the spark that led to the microcomputer revolution of the next few years: The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC.
(((source:  Wikipedia)))



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photo by Donald Kinney

In the 1970s Commodore was one of many electronics companies selling calculators designed around Dallas-based Texas Instruments (TI) CPU chips. However, in 1975 TI increased the price of these components to the point where the chip set cost more than an entire TI calculator, and the industry that had built up around it was frozen out of the market.

Commodore responded to this by searching for a chip set they could purchase outright. They quickly found MOS Technology, who were in the process of bringing their 6502 microprocessor design to market, and with whom came Chuck Peddle's KIM-1 design, a small computer kit based on the 6502. At Commodore, Peddle convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were a dead-end. In September 1976 Peddle got a demonstration of Jobs and Wozniak's Apple II prototype, when Jobs was offering to sell it to Commodore, but Commodore considered Job's offer too expensive. Tramiel demanded that Peddle, Bill Seiler, and John Feagans create a computer in time for the June 1977 Consumer Electronics Show, and gave them six months to do it. Tramiel's son, Leonard, helped design the PETSCII graphic characters and acted as quality control. The result was the first all-in-one home computer, the PET, the first model of which was the PET 2001. Its 6502 processor controlled the screen, keyboard, cassette tape recorders and any peripherals connected to one of the computer's several expansion ports. The PET 2001 included either 4 KB (2001-4) or 8 KB (2001-8) of 8-bit RAM, and was essentially a single-board computer with discrete logic, driving a small built-in monochrome monitor with 40×25 character graphics. Designed on an appliance computer philosophy similar to the original Macintosh the machine also included a built-in Datassette for data storage located on the front of the case, which left little room for the keyboard. The data transfer rate to cassette tape was 1500 baud, duplicated for safety, giving an effective rate of 750 baud. The computer's main board carried four expansion ports: extra memory, a second cassette tape recorder interface, a parallel port and an IEEE-488 port.

The PET 2001 was announced at the Winter CES in January 1977 and the first 100 units were shipped later that year in October. However, the PET was back-ordered for months and to ease deliveries, early in 1978 Commodore decided to cancel the 4 kB version.

Although the machine was fairly successful, there were frequent complaints about the tiny calculator-like keyboard, often referred to as a "chiclet keyboard" because the keys resembled the gum candy. This was addressed in upgraded "dash N" and "dash B" versions of the 2001, which put the cassette tape recorder outside the case, and included a much larger keyboard with a full stroke motion. Internally a newer motherboard was used, along with an upgrade from static RAM to dynamic RAM and 8, 16, or 32 KB, known as the 2001-N-8, 2001-N-16 or 2001-N-32, respectively.

Sales of the newer machines were strong, and Commodore then introduced the models to Europe. The result was the CBM 3000 series ('CBM' standing for Commodore Business Machines), which included the 3008, 3016 and 3032 models. Like the 2001-N-8, the 3008 was quickly dropped.
(((source:  Wikipedia)))


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January 22, 2012

Bemont, California -- along El Camino Real


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photo by Donald Kinney

I was headed to the ComputerHistoryMuseum but I had a whole lot of time to kill before it opened. I had more than enough time to take my camera for a walk along the El Camino Real. A rather funky stretch of this long, long thoroughfare runs through Belmont, California, several miles south of San Francisco.



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photo by Donald Kinney

A Friday morning but not much was going on down at the former filling station. And not a mechanic in sight.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Lord knows, what might go on behind those doors. Tsk, tsk. Wink, wink.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Some joker messing with the sign again. I'm betting alcohol was somehow involved in this bit of creative word-play.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Oh yeah, God bless America.


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January 21, 2012

let it rain


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photo by Donald Kinney

Oh wouldn't you know you'd find me out at my beloved China Camp on a rainy day. Those are my finely feathered friends in the background.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And if I've shot this scene once, I've shot it a million times. It has a variety of moods. The structure is a hunter's blind--beware, duckies!



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photo by Donald Kinney

So, here's the reverse of the first image, looking northwest. This is China Camp on San Pablo Bay (the northern "thumb" of San Francisco Bay).

We're just over the hill from busy San Rafael, CA. In my mind it's a million miles away. A great escape for a slacker like me.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Nothing prettier than a wet Madrone. A breed of tree with a lot of character.


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January 20, 2012

Sunrise -- it's a different animal


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photo by Donald Kinney

Yesterday it was a sunset but today I have the sunrise. A vast difference in the quality of light in my opinion. Sunrise comes blaring and bright, while sunset is such a sad event.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Some of the best colors of a sunrise are before the blazing ball arrives.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Us ducks LOVE it.


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