Kevin Warnock

My wife loves Disneyland Resort. I think we’ve been there eight times in the last five years. By contrast, before I met her I went to Disneyland perhaps once every five years.

I posted Disneyland news earlier this year. What’s new since then is a new water display show Disneyland calls World of Color.

When I hear ‘World of Color’ I think of World of Good, the fair trade social impact company started by my friends Priya Haji, Siddharth Sanghvi and David Guendelman, now part of EBay and Charity USA. I was the first outside investor in World of Good, so it’s near to my heart.

What Disneyland has put together with World of Color is simply the most impressive water display I’ve ever seen. It is more impressive than the fountains in front of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I brought my Canon 5D Mark II to the show and shot video of the entire show. My camera got soaked by the water spray, and the lens got so wet at times the video is a bit degraded. But the overall result is good, and it’s probably one of the better videos out there since the Canon can shoot very wide angle since I used a 16-35mm zoom lens for this video. There are lots of Disney movie references in the show, most that I didn’t get since I’ve seen so few Disney movies.

I just got back home from a weekend at Disneyland park in Anaheim, California. My wife Monika, her parents, her brother and her brother’s girlfriend were there too. This was my first time at Disneyland with Monika’s family. We stayed at the Candy Cane Inn, which is a five minute walk from the front gate of the park.

Candy Cane Inn, Anaheim, California USA, February 7, 2010

Monika and I have been to Disneyland before, just the two of us. We went there on our first vacation together in 2006, so it holds a special place in our hearts. I wasn’t a fan of Disneyland before I met Monika, but she has shown me its charms. In fact, Monika signed me up for an annual passport this trip, and I now have an ID card in my wallet with my picture on it, like a Costco card. Yikes.

I decided to bring my camera with me – not my point and shoot, but my good Canon 5D Mark II that shoots outstanding video. Here are a few of the videos I shot. The first one if of the “It’s a Small World” ride. Since this is a peaceful slow moving ride, I just kept the camera on for the entire ride. I used a wide angle lens, and the result was pretty good I thought.

This next video I shot on the large Carousel.

This next video is of a parade of sorts. It’s not really a parade, as the performers move into position and then perform an extended show. Then they move a block or so away and do the whole extended show again. I think there are three such shows in a row, and the sets of shows happen twice per day. The show is called Celebrate or something similar. It was entertaining. There is a segment where the performers are on stilts. Have a close look at the stilts, which have a large area of contact with the ground. They look much safer than traditional wooden stilts.

I got some good stills as well, including this one of the boarding area for the Space Mountain indoor roller coaster. This was a time exposure, since it’s dimly lit. Note how the roller coaster car is blurred as it was just coming to a stop when I took this.

Disneyland Space Mountain roller coaster boarding area, February 6, 2010

I love buses, even Disneyland buses. I got to ride in the front seat right next to the driver, in the double decker Disneyland bus inside the park. This bus is just for fun, as it never goes faster than five miles per hour, so the lack of wind protection for the occupants upstairs is acceptable.

Disneyland double decker bus with Kevin Warnock in front passenger seat, February 7, 2010

Of course I shot video of my ride on the Omnibus, which you can see below.

Here’s a nice shot of me with my wife Monika, in a pink tea cup.

Kevin Warnock and Monika Varga in Disneyland tea cup, February 6, 2010

I’m looking forward to my next trip to Disneyland, which surprises me.

Bamboo Hut sign, San Francisco, California

Mark, a friend of Monika’s friend Aimee organized a private party in North Beach, a San Francisco neighborhood known for its active nightlife. He rented out the entire Bamboo Hut at 479 Broadway. This is a small dive bar, not a million dollar dance club. But Mark was able to sell out the place with about 100 friends in attendance, and it was crowded, but not too crowded. We all had a great time. I even was persuaded to dance on the bar, something I’ve never done before. I had to duck so as not to hit my head on the low ceiling.

Bamboo Hut, 479 Broadway, San Francisco, Dec 31, 2009

My brother and his family come to San Francisco every other Christmas to spend the holidays at my parent’s house, which is not far from my house. My brother and his wife have two great kids, a girl and a boy. This year the kids got a cool Lego set unlike any I’ve seen first hand. I know these sets have been around for years now, but I’ve never seen a set in use before.

Today’s Lego are inspiring kids to be inventors like never before. The set Andrew’s kids got has proximity sensors and inclination sensors, and motors that are powered from the USB socket on a PC or Mac computer. The sensors and motors are read and controlled by software that runs on the attached computer. The software let users program the Lego so that it actually does something.

In this video, Andrew helps his kids make use of the software, using a propeller plane I helped put together. I didn’t need to help though as the directions were very clear, and contained zero words… just drawings. It was all really quite impressive. I would have loved to have a set like this as a kid. In fact, I’d love to have a set like this now. Santa, are you reading my blog?

Along with my wife Monika and my brother and his family, I went to the beach today at Redeo Cove in Mt. Tamalpais State Park just North of San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was windy and chilly… so windy there is not much audio worth hearing on the video, as the wind was just whipping past the microphone of my camera.

The surf was pretty active, and we all kept our distance from the water. But the real fun on the beach was the makeshift all natural teeter-totter we discovered. Since teeter-totters have mostly been removed from playgrounds, I haven’t been on one in a very long time. These all organic models we rode today were even better than commercial models because even multiple adults could ride simultaneously.

Rochelle, who my brother and his wife have known since they were all undergraduate students in Washington, also joined us with her husband Henry and their inquisitive and well behaved young son.

Before we went to the beach, we toured the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, a short drive from the beach. This center has a hands on kids area where children can learn about marine mammals. The center is partly solar powered, and the installed panels provided shade to the recovering patients. The center is essentially a hospital for sick or injured sea mammals.

Sunset on Redeo Cove beach

My wife Monika and I went to my parents’ house at 8:30 this morning to open presents. My brother and his family flew in from their home in Colorado, which they do every other year. My grandmother Elsie Battaglia lives in Portland, Oregon and is 98 years old, so she no longer visits at the holidays. However, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, she participated in the present opening via video conference using iChat on my brother’s MacBook computer. We set the laptop up on the coffee table by the Christmas tree, and she was able to ‘be there.’

This sounds like it might be awkward or impersonal, but it wasn’t at all. The kids seemed to really like showing off each new gift they received by holding it up close to the camera. Grandma’s live-in helper Claudia would describe the goings on on screen to Grandma, who has lost much of her sight in recent years to macular degeneration. Both Claudia and Grandma really seemed to enjoy the experience. Grandma bought a 24″ iMac about a year ago specifically for video conferencing with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so this wasn’t the first time she’s done conferencing. But it was the first time she joined in opening presents Christmas morning around the tree.

I set up my video camera on a tripod and let it record a segment. I think it turned out great because you can see Grandma on the laptop and you can see everyone interacting with her almost as if she were sitting on the couch in person. I heartily recommend you try this at home with your loved ones that can’t travel for important events. It was really a special day today.

Monika and Kevin, Christmas picture, 2009, San Francisco, California

This Christmas my wife Monika and I sent out Christmas cards with an enclosed picture. This picture turned out to be one of the nicest pictures we have of the two of us together. Monika bought me my first set of pajamas with feet since I was a child. She got a set for herself as well. These pajamas keep us warm on cold San Francisco winter nights. Monika had an 11 x 14″ print of this shot made, framed it and we gave it to her grandfather Imre, Sr. for Christmas. This picture was taken in my house in front of our Christmas tree. Monika’s smile is just beautiful.

My wife Monika went to high school at Woodside Priory School in Portola Valley, California. Her biology teacher Father Maurus Nemeth, a Hungarian monk, officiated at my wedding to Monika. Tonight Monika, her parents, brother and sister went to a fundraising show and dinner at The Priory.

I can’t remember the name of the piano player, but he was interesting, so I shot a video of one of the pieces he played, above.

Woodside Priory dinner November 7, 2009

My wife Monika and I went pumpkin shopping today at 7th Avenue and Lawton Avenue.

I took a lot of pictures of the scarecrows, which were all different. I thought they were all handmade by children, but Monika tells me that the art supply store named Michaels sells scarecrows just like these. Here is a link to my shots on Flickr. I uploaded them at very high resolution, and I shot them at f 1.4 for very shallow depth of field.

Monika and I went to visit Noisebridge this afternoon. It was a bright, sunny and brisk day in the City. At Noisebridge, members may host classes. Today, there was a class with about 15 students focused on the intersection of technology and entertainment.

The machine shop has a miniature CNC milling machine. We were looking at it when two members came over and explained the work they are doing. One of the members donated it to Noisebridge.

The other member is reverse engineering the control mechanism, and had its control cable wired to an Archer brand breadboard. He had hooked up what appeared to be a potentiometer to one of the wires, but it was actually a more complicated control. From what I understood of the explanation, the knob was a digital mouse of sorts that sent control pulses to the mill. When the knob was turned the milling head moved up and down. The member who donated the mill said his original cost for the device was $3,000. It looked well made and seemed to be in good condition. One of the things I want to do one day is learn to make handmade custom watches. A CNC mill of this size would be a key tool in that effort. We didn’t catch the names of these two guys, but I saw one of them at the party Friday.

Monika and I had lunch at El Balazo at 2187 Mission Street. We shared the mixed vegetable burrito. This was the best vegetarian burrito I have ever had. It was bursting with interesting flavors. It had sautéed zucchini in it, which I love. The burrito was huge and was only $4.95 – and it was plenty for the two of us. The walls were bright yellow, with a pattern of  blue stenciled figures. This restaurant is a chain, and there are a dozen locations according to their menu. One suggestion I have for them is to list the other locations on the menu. This place has four stars on Yelp.com, but the reviews are variable, so maybe it’s not always as outstanding as it was for us today.

Next on our excursion was a visit to Adobe Books, at 3166 Mission Street. This is partly a used book store and partly an art gallery. The art gallery was quite interesting, with an unusual and creative mountain of used books set afire. No, there were not real flames, but one of those ‘fireplace simulators’ nestled into a quarter pyramid of books tucked into one corner of the tiny gallery space, which is at the very rear of the book store.

The book store itself was warm, cozy and inviting, with all kinds of fascinating books stacked everywhere. Monika bought The Satanic Verses by Salmon Rushdie, as neither of us has read it, and we’ve both been curious about it.

In the cookbook section, I was surprised to see a copy of the Chinese cookbook given to me years ago by my dear late friend Stan Pasternak. There also was a beautifully photographed book about canning fruits and vegetables. The photographs of tasty food in glass bottles reminded me of my long standing project to photograph the hundreds of glass bottles I have been collecting for photography since the mid 1980s. Most of these bottles are in records storage boxes stored under my parents’ house in the crawl space. My father reminds me to come pick them up every so often. They’ve been there for twenty plus years so far, but I maintain that the containers are only getting more rare and interesting with every passing year. The Planters peanuts glass bottles from the 1980s are very distinctive and identifiable. Now that I have a good digital camera, I am particularly looking forward to completing the project, which I started in 1983 while I was studying at Brooks in Santa Barbara, California.

Before we went to Noisebridge, we picked up some vegetables at the farmers market at Divisadero Street and Grove streets. We got there just before closing time at 2pm, and there were few customers. But there was plenty to buy, and the prices are lower than at the 9th Avenue and Irving street farmers market closer to our house, where we usually buy produce. We picked up some chili peppers that were still on the branches. I cut them off when we got home, and we probably ended up with 150 small chili peppers, which I plan to use in my Chinese cooking. We also bought some bitter melon, strawberries, plums and onions. Later in the Mission we bought some beautiful large red tomatoes that were a huge bargain at just $1 for three pounds. I wish I knew where the produce in the Mission comes from. If someone knows, please leave me a comment. The prices are just so attractive that I don’t know how they do it. We love farmers markets, and try to go every weekend during the season. At the Irving street market there is a vendor who sells just fresh dates. They are $7 a pound, but they are the most flavorful dates I’ve ever tasted. Eating them is like eating fantastic candy. Monika and I had a great afternoon.

I spent $25 today and I logged every penny of it in my new favorite Apple iPhone software application called iXpenseIt. This free app lets you quickly log every dollar you spend, and makes it super easy to use the iPhone camera to capture each receipt. Then, you can look at bar and pie charts on the phone to see where your money goes among expense categories. You get the data off the phone by sending yourself a spreadsheet by email. I highly recommended iXpenseIt based on my few days of experience.