guapacha.com

google map of fires

I left home this morning for my regular Monday morning commute to San Diego not sure what I would find. I knew that I-8 was closed to high profile vehicles and they weren’t joking. At Ocotillo the freeway was closed and we had to take the off-ramp – trucks were made to park nearby (I estimated 40-50 already parked), cars were allowed to re-enter the freeway. Just in case someone didn’t want to obey, a snow plough had been parked across both lanes of the freeway.

The winds were fierce going over the Tecate divide and all the way into Alpine. There were numerous roadsigns that had been blown over, including many emergency roadside assistance phones. I had to dodge several large tumbleweeds crossing the freeway and there were times when the dirt and sand blowing in the wind had me worried for my paintwork.

To the south I could see a lot of smoke from the Harris Fire, coming down the hill into the greater San Diego area I could see a dark haze from the smoke and ash falling from the Witch Fire to the north. I got to work to find the car park empty, a note on the door said that the office was closed today so I came back to the apartment and watched the events unfold.

A crazy amount of people have been evacuated from all points north, south and east of San Diego. The strong Santa Ana winds aren’t expected to die down until Wednesday, the CDF planes can’t fly to super-douse the fire, and I can’t even begin to imagine how bad it will get before it gets any better. Looking at the fires it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine them combining at some point, I don’t think there are many more scary things out there.

Coming home from work I passed a high school which is acting as a shelter. Lots of people sat by their cars, trying to keep their pets and children occupied no doubt worried about their homes. Pretty crappy stuff.

I’ve decided to while away my boring weeknights by learning to play an instrument. In school I played the cornet for a short while, I think I could play Oh When The Saints by the end of it, but that’s about it for my musical career. So, the question is – what to play? So far I have it narrowed down to the following:

1. flamenco guitar – I love flamenco music so it would be cool to be able to play it
2. banjo – there is some great banjo music and today I heard jazz banjo which was uncanningly awesome, and there is something about the banjo that appeals to my sense of wanting to do something a little different
3. mandolin – they’re small, sound good and are supposed to be amongst the easiest of the stringed instruments, and my wife really likes it
4. saxophone – I really wanted a sax when I was a kid and I still do, but the type I want to play is very expensive, tough to learn and just seems impractical.

So I’m going to think about it for a while, but not too long or I will end up doing nothing: I know me somewhat. Maybe we’ll see mandolin.guapacha.com in the near future??

Fifth Judicial District of Pennsylvania

In order to shame people into paying their fines, the city of Pittsburgh has put up a website where you can enter any surname or any street name and see any Summary Offense charges for that name or location. I entered Sanders and there were plenty of hits, oh the shame! The only person I know in Pittsburgh doesn’t seem to have any though – well done Vanessa.

If you’re an Apple fan boy (Josh) then no doubt you’re wetting yourself today with, at last, the official announcement of a shipping date for the new version of OS X, Leopard. It sure does look sweet and I’ll admit that I’ll be in the queue at some point to get my own copy. $129 ain’t bad, but if you can find four friends, you can have it for just $40 a head.

The side business has all but died these days but recently I had someone ask me to make a ‘backup’ of some 8mm films for them before they lent them to someone. Sure no problem I say. I set everything up and when it comes time to calibrate the digital camera onto the projector lens I see that the picture is totally grey. Doesn’t matter what I do, the camera can’t see anything. A little web research – looks like the CCD chip has died. At one time I had three camcorders:

1. A Sony purchased pre-8mm film business which turned out not to have a good enough optical zoom; I gave it away when I bought:
2. A Canon Optura 20, very nice quality but one day the firewire port gave up and I was no longer able to transfer the image to the computer. Next!
3. A trip to Cost Co for something cheap resulted in a Samsung SCD103, it worked great until this CCD chip business

How hard is it to keep a camcorder running? I’m not doing much film transfer work so I don’t really want to buy yet another camera but I have some potential work that I’d like to do. The alternative is to send one of the cameras for repair at a minimum $157, but a brand new replacement at Cost Co is not that much more. Sometimes the digital world is a PITA.

I just love this song from Kate Nash, called Foundations, and you can get it on the iTunes Music Store for 99c!

This one has it all – cute clay animation bunnies, new york city scenes and it’s all a plug for Sony’s new Bravia TVs so I score some bonus points there.

I decided yesterday that I was going to buy an iPhone on the way home. This was in part due to a feeling that I needed some major retail therapy, and by watching a lady use various aspects of her iPhone while waiting at the DMV yesterday. That thing is cool!

Fortunately for my bank balance a co-worker (and iPhone owner himself) talked me out of it. Mostly he reason was that I would be a hypocrite to buy one after all the things I said to him when he bought his, and he said to wait until a 3G version comes out. So, for now, Apple owns a little less of me.

In other news, I have now upgraded all my blog sites to 2.3. All went smoothly except for this site. Importing the tags from Ultimate Tag Warrior doesn’t seem to have worked very well and so for now the tags on here are hit and miss. I’ll look at that if and when I can be bothered. Oh, might also switch themes soon.

You can find a live album of hers on the iTunes Music Store, iTunes Festival: London – Amy Winehouse (Live). She sounds good but not quite as edgy sounding as in Friday’s videos. And also look out in November as her first album is finally getting a US release. I’ve not heard it so no idea how good it is.

In other news, I’ll be upgrading all the guapacha sites to WordPress 2.3 sometime soon so if these sites stop working, don’t panic dear reader, I’ll have it all back as soon as I can.

It’s back, baby, and it’s Amy singing live. Watch out for the crazy censoring of Me and Mr Jones in the second half!