This photo was taken from the Parc 55 Hotel near San Francisco's Union Square looking in the direction of the Civic Center.

Tripod, 2.5 sec at f/4 on ISO 100, 17-35mm f/2.8 lens

An interesting pattern was broken into the surface of The Pond in the southeast corner of New York's Central Park. My guess is that it was formed when someone threw a rock or something fell into the frozen pond - but why don't the other holes have star patterns?

Handheld, 1/200 sec at f/5 on ISO 100, 17-35mm f/2.8 lens

I noticed the other day that Tropicana has a new orange juice line on the market called Pure Valencia. Like all of Tropicana's juices, the juice isn't reconstituted from concentrates so it takes more like fresh squeezed. In my area, the Pure Valencia orange juices run about $5 for each 54 ounce bottle (9.3 cents an ounce) and that's a bit steep for orange juice when the Minute Maid is $2.50 for 64 ounces (3.9 cents an ounce) at regular price. So, does Pure Valencia really beat Tropicana's normal Pure Premium juice (which is about $4 for 64 ounces - 6.25 cents an ounce)?

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Tropicana's New True Valencia Orange Juice

I took this photo as part of a set of test shots in preparation for photographing a wedding at Hakone Gardens in Saratoga.

Handheld, 1/320 sec at f/2.8 on ISO 100, 70-200mm f/2.8 lens

Tonight Tina and I dined at a celebration dinner at MacArthur Park Restaurant in Palo Alto, California. This restaurant, opened in 1982, is actually the second MacArthur Park (the first was in San Francisco, opened nine years earlier, slowly declined over the years and closed last year under the faltering Spectrum Restaurant Group). When Spectrum opened the restaurant in Palo Alto, they selected a historic building right across the street from Stanford University (in fact they lease the land from Stanford) designed by Julia Morgan and built in 1918. During the last few years, Spectrum has been in Chapter 11 twice and has been selling off many of their properties. Four months ago, two of the men who helped originally open MacArthur Park Palo Alto (Chuck Frank, an early Spectrum executive, and Faz Poursohi, the first chef at MacArthur Park) bought the restaurant back for a reported $500,000. The started renovating and changing the restaurant back into what their vision was without closing for a single day (pretty impressive).

The party was held in their pleasant patio area in the back of the restaurant. We tasted a variety of food available at the restaurant: smoked salmon, sturgeon, a smoked whitefish, potato skins, onion strings, breaded and fried tomato slices, grilled hanger steak, baby back ribs, bacon, blue cheese and iceberg salad, grilled prawns (huge), corn on the cob, and roasted peppers stuffed with cheeses. All of the food was good and tasty, but not exceptional. But then, this isn't the type of restaurant that you go to in order to open up to new tastes and flavors. From the sampling I had, the food is just fine for the price point of the restaurant (entrees from $15 to $25 with steaks up to $38 [for a pound of T-bone]) and the building and ambiance is quite pleasant. I'm especially interested in returning to the restaurant because the dining room is well lit, which means potential for nice photographs.

MacArthur Park (Google Maps)
27 University Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 321-9990
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Revival Celebration at MacArthur Park, Palo Alto

Vertical columns and horizontal poles frame this view from the Metreon of Yerba Buena Garden situated above Moscone Center South.

Handheld, 1/40 sec at f/16 on ISO 100, 17-35mm f/2.8 lens

I was going to title this: Starfish Dinner or Eating Starfish or Starfish Digesting but all of those sound like it could be a picture of people eating starfish… This was taken at the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco. You can see the fish is various states of digestion/decomposition - from whole to just bones.

Handheld, 1/40 sec at f/2.8 on ISO 400 (digitally compensated +2.5 stops), 17-35mm f/2.8 lens

Found this guy hanging outside my front door at eye level a few days ago. I said, "Ugh!" and then grabbed my camera.

Handheld at 1/250 sec at f/16 on ISO 100, 105mm f/2.8 macro lens with Nikon SB-28DX Speedlight on A mode

This dynamic display of duck-billed dinosaur skeletons was found in Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History.

Handheld, 1/40 sec at f/2.8 on ISO 400, 17-35mm f/2.8 lens

I boot my operating systems from a boot drive and keep all my data on a RAID-5. Naturally, I want to keep My Documents on my RAID but a lot of programs default to using the Windows My Documents path (which defaults to C: drive). Luckily, you can change the location of Documents (as well as each individual Pictures, Music, Videos, etc.) pretty easily:

Open your user's folder (in my case it's called "Michael Chu") which is found on your Desktop or the top-right corner of the Start Menu. Once you're in your user's folder, switch to Details View so you can see the Folder Paths of each of the folders inside. All the folders with special icons can be moved to new locations (or merged with existing directories).

Just right-click on the folder you want to move and select Properties.

Click on the Location tab.

Type in a new location and click OK or click on Move… to browse for a new location.

Click OK and let Windows move your files. That's it!
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Windows Vista: Moving My Documents (or My Pictures) to another location