The annual MacWorld Expo is back in San Francisco this week. The Apple Rumor / Product Cycle is in full force. Based on the banners currently hanging up in Moscone Center that read, “There’s something in the air,” websites, blogs and forums have been alive with speculation about the latest Apple product that Steve Jobs will unveil in a few hours.

The current consensus seems to be a new, ultra-thin, ultra-portable laptop. I’m not sure how much that news excites me though. Then again, exactly one year ago at this time, I wasn’t too excited about the rumored iPhone announcement. And now? I wouldn’t be able to live without mine.

Anyway, let’s hope the rumors about iTunes rentals and a revamped AppleTV prove true! The AppleTV sitting in our living has so much more potential.

The thing I am most excited about though? The unveiling of the iPhone SDK that will allow developers to start writing custom third party apps. Currently, the only way to do this is to hack your iPhone (and potentially void your warranty). However, the things developers are doing right now without an official SDK are amazing. I can’t wait to see what an official SDK will bring.

Let’s go Apple!

Word went out on Friday that storm conditions in the Pacific Ocean were going to create monstrous waves this weekend down at Pillar Point (a half hour south of San Francisco). And so, the annual Maverick’s Surf contest was organized on 24 hours notice. The winner of the contest took on waves that were 40 feet high at the end of the day. Insane!

Not to be outdone by Maverick’s, a few friends and I got together and we headed northward to Bolinas Beach to catch some waves (granted, these waves were 1/10 the size of Maverick’s). It was a perfect January day in the Bay Area. Photos were taken of course.

Read on to see more…

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Being employed in the environmental remediation industry tends to make one more interested in news items and current events about that industry. This article in the Tri-City Herald is about a remediation project that is about to begin near Hanford, Washington (which doesn’t exist anymore according to Wikipedia) that will clean up a burial ground for nuclear waste.

From the article:

Hanford workers are preparing to start next week digging up radioactive and chemical waste that could spontaneously catch fire when exposed to air.

[…]

Workers will be bringing up the barrels one at a time from behind blast shields and wearing full radiation protection gear and supplied air respirators. They’ll also expose no more than four drums at a time during the excavation to limit any potential fire.

Reading that definitely makes me appreciate my job more. The worst we usually have to deal with is particulate matter containing arsenic or lead. Radiation? No thanks!

Wired Magazine has a fantastic article on the history and development of the iPhone. I’m nothing short of amazed with mine and think it’s a fantastic piece of technology. I was hooked the moment I went to an Apple Store and picked it up.

It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple’s top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple’s boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn’t just buggy, it flat-out didn’t work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, “We don’t have a product yet.”

(Image is my previously hacked iPhone with original firmware v.1.0.2)

[Via Wired Magazine]

Doing some house cleaning, figured I’d post some photos from the Angie Mattson show at the Hotel Utah in San Francisco on December 13th.

Check out some of her music on MySpace or iTunes.

More pictures posted below…

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Last month, I wrote a small and fun little article breaking down the cost of a Sony Playstation 3. You can read the article here.

A small excerpt:

If you go to a movie theater to see the latest and greatest action movie, let’s say you pay ~$15 for a 90 minutes movie. So that breaks down to about $0.17 per minute for your enjoyment.

That’s a good baseline to use to begin comparing things.

At this point, I think I’m finally below $0.20/min. 😉

2007 was a pretty interesting year for the rockbandit.net domain. Despite not doing too much with the website this past year, I still managed to rack up quite a lot of readers. For a small blog, I’m pretty happy:

~60K unique visitors
~450K pages served
~1.1M hits
~33GB of bandwidth used

Crazy!

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Wow. It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly a year since I last posted! Thanks to graduating from college, getting a real job and figuring out how life works in the real world, I’ve sort of neglected my poor webpage. Perhaps 2008 will be a time to change that.

2007 was an absolutely amazing year though. How do I even begin to catch people up on what has gone on? Perhaps the best way at the moment is through Flickr.

Click on through, as I take you on a photographic journey of the last 12 months…

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Ugh!

I am still shaking. 🙁

Anyway, it’s totally my fault and I put myself in that situation. But regardless.

My plan was to take some night photos of the waterfall behind the Metreon in downtown SF. Normally, it’s a very pretty area during the day, but it can be kind of sketchy at night. I figured since there was a big convention in town and so many tourists would be nearby at the Moscone Center, it’d be okay.
Way wrong.

I was carrying my huge camera tripod with me (obviously looking like a target) and my camera in my backpack. I get to the middle of the grassy field (which is dark of course) and started setting up the tripod when I noticed someone running across Mission Street in my general direction and kind of sticking to the trees. This creeped me out.

So I folded the tripod back up and decided to walk back towards the Metreon. This dude ran up and cut me off. He had a hoodie over his head and a black bandanna over his face (total robber style apparently). His hand was in his pants and he said “Hey fool, give me all your shit!”

I was shocked even though I knew what was happening and all I could think to say was “What the fuck?”

He said, “I said give me everything, like your camera and wallet. I have a gun and I’m not playing” and stepped towards me.

So… I hit him in the chest with my tripod.

Ugh. (Stupid, I know!)

He backed off and said, “Alright, I see how it is. You better watch yourself” and ran off!

That was it. No fight or anything. Thankfully, nothing taken and I’m not hurt. Just shaken up a bit.

I flagged down a police car up the street and filed a police report. I doubt they’ll catch the guy though. I told the officer that I probably shouldn’t have hit him in the chest and he said, “No way, it’s great you did that. Next time, hit him in the fucking face though.” Ah… vigilante justice at work.

Eh… anyway, that was probably the scariest moment of my life.

I know you can’t put a monetary value on your life and objects can just be replaced. But my first thought was simply “My cell phone, wallet, iPod, camera and lenses are all in my backpack right now. That’s almost my entire life right there…” Not to mention my New Zealand sweatshirt… now *that* is irreplaceable. 😉

Joking aside though, it’s weird how instincts work. I wasn’t trying to be a hero or go Rambo style. But damn, I’m not a pushover either. That said, things would have been different if he actually had pulled a gun on me. I’m willing to wager at this point that he didn’t have one (he never showed it).

But I was still worried that maybe I’d get a bullet in the back as we went our opposite directions. 🙁

What a stressful night.

Anyway, here’s a photo of my savior and hero. (And probably the key reason I got mugged).

The American Geophysical Union conference is being held this week in San Francisco. Something like 13,600 of the world’s top geoscientists are congregating around town to present and talk about the latest earth science research. It’s a really awesome experience.

I got to help present a research poster this year on behalf of the SF-ROCKS outreach organization I work for, helping high schoolers get interested in the sciences. It’s definitely awesome seeing the kids talk to real scientists about what they learned and the research they carried out as part of the program. Some of the kids are absolutely brilliant too, and have a better grasp on science in their sophomore and junior years than I did when I was starting college!

Anyway, highlight of the day was attending one of the keynote speeches at the Marriott, given by none other than Al Gore! It was great getting to see him speak in person. His speech focused on how ”inconvenient truths“ (ie, research that challenges conventional wisdom) are being censored by the current government and that we as geoscientists have a huge moral responsibility to make sure that our research and its implications are heard by the media and general public, especially in regards to climate change. It was a neat sort of speech in a ”rah-rah let’s do it“ sort of way. He definitely does a great job. When he started his speech, he introduced himself by saying, ”Hi, my name is Al Gore. I used to be the next President of the United States.“

Hah.

Anyway, in other news, I am now in the new place. It’s on the 17th story of this apartment building in Lower Pac Heights (which I think they only call it that to give it a classy sounding name… we’re right in the middle of Western Addition and the Tenderloin. Hah… at least this immediate surrounding area is nice though).

Check out some photos!

Definitely love this place. My roommates are quite cool too. We also have very similar schedules and habits. Apparently, we’re all snooze button sleepers. So in the morning, the house is a chorus of alarms constantly going on and off for 30 minutes. It’s kind hilarious actually. A nice way to wake up. 😉

Last bit of news:
Just got my work schedule for next week and I’m pretty disappointed. They didn’t give me the days off that I requested, so I will not be coming home for Christmas. 🙁 Ugh! That makes me pretty sad. So many friends and family members I haven’t seen in so long that I was looking forward to see again. Thanks to the wonderful world of retail, I’ve missed out on two big holidays this year! Boo to that. I’m actually currently looking for a real job at the moment as well. Something that will utilize this nice, shiny and expensive geology degree that I’ll now have!

Speaking of which… my thesis defense went AWESOMELY! I just have a few minor edits to make on my actual thesis paper, then I am home free and done with my undergraduate education. Out into the real world! What a crazy prospect…