Ever since I heard “Lawyers, Guns and Money”, I’ve wanted to hear more of Warren Zevon’s music. So this week I bought “The Best Of Warren Zevon” at Amazon’s MP3 store. I’ve listened to it twice and now there are a few more of his songs that I really like.

A new favorite song is Lily Allen’s “Alfie” which I first heard way back, and then again recently on the podcast of the wonderful NPR show, All Songs Considered. It’s quite pop-ish.

Recipe for a smoothie: Two Frozen Bananas, Three Frozen Strawberries, One Frozen Peach, Vanilla extract (to taste), Two glasses rice milk. Blend. Serves two. Experiment with quantities!

Mesmerized by Phillipe Halsman’s Dali Atomicus.

Yay for soups! I got my wisdom teeth extracted and am mostly eating soups.

I don’t like calling any photo of mine a favorite, but some are just more interesting than others. Two years ago I listed just a couple of photos. This year, I’ve gone overboard with ten!

Here are my “favorite” photos from this year. I still have to develop two rolls, so maybe I’ll add more later ;-)

And here’s one that just spooked me out! :-)

I just moved this blog here from it’s previous incarnation at https://samgrover.wordpress.com/. I’m quite impressed at the ease with which I was able to export the previous blog and import it here intact with the entries and the comments. My thanks to the folks behind Wordpress and Movable Type. Subscribe to the new feed!

That move was simple. Now I have to move to my new place in real space this weekend. Unfortunately, that will involve some more work! Portland has five quadrants. Yea, five. Portland is weird. I used to live in the Southwest and then I was in the Southeast for the last 18 months and now I will be moving into a small house in the Northeast. It will increase my daily commute, but overall it will be great! By the way, the fifth quadrant is North, in case you were wondering.

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I’ve been sharing this video with friends since I first saw it some months ago. It’s informative and elegant and the music is cool too. It provokes my curiosity, especially with the way it ends. Take a look!

It’s been a while since I updated this blog. About ten months. I’ve been an intern at Intel during that period and I recently joined as an employee.

Also, now it’s been one year since I moved to the SE Portland. I like it here. I have a hour-or-so long commute each way on TriMet, which isn’t terribly bad as it gives me time to read. However, public transit doesn’t work too well when there are more things to do in a day, especially in different parts of town. Even though my schedule at work is quite flexible, public transit can become a bottleneck. That occurs when I want to do more than go to work in the morning and return home in the evening. I thought that was sufficient excuse for me to go in for a car ;-) and placed an order for a new Mini Cooper S in April. I expect to have delivery within a month and am looking forward to that. It will be my first car.

My photography has been up and down during this time. In January, I sold off my Nikon D70S digital SLR and bought a Voigtländer Bessa R2A film rangefinder. After playing with cameras and photography for a couple of years I had come to realize just the kind of camera that would work best for me. The Bessa fit that bill quite well. It was also quite affordable as compared to another option. My previous experience with a rangefinder was definitely a motivating factor. I will write more about my experiences with this camera in a future post.

Russ wanted to recreate the cover of The Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover along with his wife, Patty and son, Riley. He planned the shot and scouted for locations, narrowing them down to two. So, on a Sunday morning we went out to take the shot. We were a bit early for the chosen locations. The light wasn’t right. After a brief time looking around, we decided to go get breakfast and then return to take the shots.

On our way to LaurelThirst, we spotted an intersection on Stark Street and as fate would have it, it was better than the others and just right for the shot. Russ parked his Bug on the wrong side of the road and we started taking shots. They walked through the intersection once and I took some sample shots. After correcting their spacing and rhythm, I took shots of a few more passes with digital and film cameras. About fifteen minutes later, accomodating for light traffic, we were done and headed for a tasty breakfast. I had never tried to recreate a photo before. This was fun, and hopefully I’ll do more in the future. We left out some details, like Paul’s cigarette, Ringo, etc.

After going through the photos, Russ and family selected this shot as their favorite. Click on the image to see the larger version on flickr. There you will also find a link to the exact location on a map.

Amazon started offering downloadable movies a couple of weeks ago. That’s great, especially since they offer rentals. I prefer to rent movies since I usually only see a movie once. If I feel like watching it again and again, I would buy it. In that case, I wouldn’t buy a restricted downloadable file and wouldn’t recommend it either, especially with draconian agreements. I’d rather just buy the physical DVD at an affordable price. You can’t just give a restricted file to a friend and say, “Hey, check this out. It’s cool”. The same is true for restricted music.

The hassle of maintaining my own digital store and backing up stuff is another deterrent. Hard disks will fail, so one needs a more comprehensive backup policy than just saving the data onto a second disk. With movies, that’s a lot of data. There’s no way I’m going to put money into a backup system for that. Amazon’s videos won’t play on the Mac, so I can’t even rent it if I wanted to. That’s another side-effect of the restrictions. Apple is also offering movie downloads through their iTunes store, but they don’t offer rentals. So, I’m off to Movie Madness these days. If someone figures out a convenient way to offer downloadable movie rentals, I’ll sign on.

I was on my short commute today when I got a text message from my father in India. It said, " ... All ok in Mumbai. You may not be able to contact them as lines jammed ...". He was referring to my sister and her family. I didn't know what to make of this. I thought that perhaps the Sunday incident had flared up. I hadn't read the news this morning, so I called him and he told me about the bomb blasts. Seven bombs went off on board various trains of the western lines within one hour (Mapped locations). For more info and details from the blogosphere, see Ultrabrown, Vantage Point, Sepia Mutiny, MumbaiHelp, and Metroblogging Mumbai. Unfortunately, this isn't the first time this beloved city has been a target.

Just the other day, in conversation with friends, I was reminiscing my experiences with riding the trains in Bombay. I grew up there through most of the nineties, mid-teens to early twenties. Rush hour travel is the kind of thing you'd remember fondly only if you were nostalgic. The train cars are sometimes packed so tight, one could travel upright without either foot on the floor. 4.5 million people commute on the trains everyday. With that in mind, the horror of these events is inescapable. Emotions will run high, we'll all mourn, but the people of Mumbai will not be terrorized.

In 1993, in the days after the thirteen serial bomb blasts in two hours, there were billboards proclaiming that the city got back on it's feet within 24 hours. In memory of those who died, I hope that spirit prevails, that the aftermath is peaceful, and that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

From the comments to this blog:

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I've set up a personal domain at [samgrover.com](https://samgrover.com/). It is quite simple for now. I've also set up a photoblog there called "[As It Is](https://samgrover.com/asitis/)". It is about street photography and will have some of the photos I put up on flickr. Other sections remain to be filled and imagined.

I will move this blog to that domain when I've figured out a simple way to migrate it with all posts and comments intact.

P.S. I'm using DreamHost for hosting. Check them out and if you like their services, use the promo code SAMG to sign up with a large discount. Depending on the plan you get upto $97 off making this a really cool deal. I'm paying only $30 for an entire year using their Level1 plan.