No real post this week, thanks to the cold I can’t seem to shake off. Instead, have this picture of an adorable Bengalese/Siberian tiger cub:

This kitten grew up into “Mike VI”, the mascot of the LSU Tigers[1]. Note that I’m not an LSU supporter, and this post doesn’t constitute approval of domesticating tigers or using them as mascots.

Another image this week. This is an old favorite of mine I recently rediscovered:

No article tonight; instead, here’s a photo of one of the world’s oldest trees:

Those of you who visit this site (as opposed to reading it via various proxies like Google Reader) will have noticed that the image in the site header changes. I’ve set it up to randomly select from several images, and this post contains brief commentary about those images.
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Dublin is currently in the grip of one of its most severe winters. I’ve never seen quite this much snow here, or been in a Dublin quite this cold, before. The snow is absolutely beautiful, with a wonderful texture that’s not quite powdery.
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This is a pretty amazing collection of photos. They appear to all be from Google Maps Street View. My favorite.

This meal seemed to exemplify many of the changes in my eating habits since resuming carnivorism:

Pictured is a medium burger, no bun, with swiss cheese, avocado, bacon, and a fried egg; plus tomato, onions, and salad. It was excellent, and I absolutely recommend Chez Maman—it was excellent when I was last there too, and I wasn’t a carnivore at that point.

Yosemite was fantastic, and I’m too tired right now to post more than one photo, but I think this is the best one I took.
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Grey Whale Cove is a spot slightly north of Montara Beach, one of my favorite places to drive. Two Sundays ago I decided to get some shots of the area around Grey Whale Cove. Unfortunately, I’m a terrible photographer.
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I like this shot despite the various crooked lines.

Just a photo from Berkeley that I find amusing.

On Saturday Seth and his mother and I did some sightseeing. We’ve been having absolutely gorgeous weather recently, and we started off at Lafayette Park.
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I went to Point Lobos State Reserve with Niall Murphy yesterday, stopping at Monastery Beach on the way. I took some photos for the first time in quite a while.
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I’m rather fond of this photo I took earlier tonight. But I’ll stay silent for the moment on where I took it.
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I was on the top floor of the Chevron Building at 575 Market today, and took some photos.
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This is what my neighborhood looked like last Tuesday morning:
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This is a photo of a swan by Dublin’s Grand Canal that I took last May.
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When Jamie was here, we went up to Muir Woods, and I took a bunch of photos, hoping to improve on the last set. I also wanted to experiment with HDR tone mapping.
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Last night was the last sfmagic draft at Canvas, which closes on Saturday. We had 23 people, three draft groups, and I took some photos of the occasion.

The sfmagic group has drafted there for years. I’ve gone there almost every Wednesday night since late 2003, so over three years, and the group apparently met there for months (possibly a year) before I joined. But it’s closing, so we have to find a new spot (tentatively, Milano’s Pizzeria about a block up on 9th Avenue).

We had two pods of eight and one of seven. This is a shot of (most of) the A and B pods:

The guy on the right in the black hoodie is Ben Rubin, 1998 World Championships Finalist, who won pod B. In the far corner in the red jacket is Brett Allen, occasional PT player, who won Pod A.

Pod C was on the other side:

The guy farthest on the left, who appears to be sitting on a stool or standing, is Nick Lynn who won the pod. I don’t know any links for him, unless he’s the Nick Lynn who won Ohio Regionals in 2003.

I played in Pod A, and left to right these are Andy and Standish, my third and first round opponents respectively:

I’m pretty sure that’s Will’s hand behind Andy.

Round 3 (the empty seat with the pen and results sheets is mine, as I’ve already lost at this point):

Davey and Standish battling it out:

Davey would go on to win this match 1–0–1, securing a 2–1 record and 4th place in the process.

Seth and James, who like me ended up with 1–2 records for the evening, play a post–draft game of Constructed—likely the last game of MTG to be played at Canvas:

It’s all over, as Dralnu and Phyrexian Totem swing in to give James the last victory:

I started playing with my new Canon SD900 today. I was quite surprised by how small it is. I think it would fit inside a cigarette pack. I know that cameras this small aren’t exactly new, but I wasn’t expecting a 10 megapixel camera to be that tiny.
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I’ve been using iPhoto since I got my Powershot G2 years back, and it’s never struck me as anything more than “okay”. Sure, it’s simple, and does the simple things well, but when you have thousands of photos, you need something else.
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