STS-134 NASA Tweetup and the final flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour

On April 28th and April 29th, 2011, I was fortunate enough to participate in the NASA Tweetup for STS-134. It was to be the final flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the second to last mission in the Space Shuttle program. I traveled to the Space Coast from San Francisco and spent three fantastic days with fellow Twitter users and enthusiastic space geeks at Kennedy Space Center. Things didn’t always go as planned (you’ll see), but it was an experience that I’ll cherish and never forget. Godspeed, Endeavour.

(more…)

Lotta’s Fountain, originally uploaded by Dave Schumaker.

Today marks 105 years after the great earthquake and fire ravaged San Francisco in 1906. I decided to take a stroll downtown and pay my respects at Lotta’s Fountain.

I took this photo at 2:54PM. Three minutes later, a magnitude 3.8 earthquake hit the Bay Area. It was located on the San Andreas fault and was just southeast of where the 1906 epicenter was thought to be. What?!

This is an epically awesome photo by Chris Kotsiopoulos taken over the course of 30 hours near Athens, Greece.

[via Kottke]

“F this train! (Don’t worry, it’s all cool.)” – January 3rd, 2011

Even when I’m otherwise pissed off at SF Muni, the F line always pulls through. It’s one of my favorite ways to travel through the city — the historic cars, the old seats, and the awesome growl of the train as it travels down the tracks. It’s not the quickest, but it’s fun!

Divisadero at night, in front of Gamescape in San Francisco. I absolutely love their logo (it’s the city skyline).

Ringing in the New Year with some simple light painting in our apartment. Here’s to hoping 2011 is awesome!

Is it that time of the year already? 2010 has absolutely flown by! One of my favorite ways to reflect on the past year is to look back on it through the photos I’ve taken.

See previously, my photographic year in reviews for 2009, 2008, and 2007.

(more…)

In 2002, I went on a geology field trip to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Before hiking into the canyon, I took a shot of our class hiking down into the canyon with an old Olympus C-3000Z point and shoot (a crazy, 3.2 megapixes).

Recently, a publisher contacted me to license the photo for the cover of a geology textbook. After negotiating a price, I happily agreed! The featured photo is below:

Interestingly enough, a former girlfriend who was on the same trip (not in this frame), would proclaim a number of months later that I was a “poor photographer.” Hah, it’s ironic that this particular image ended up being licensed!

The media is abuzz about a mysterious “missile launch” that happened off the coast of Southern California yesterday.

Interestingly enough, while growing up, I remember seeing a number of missile launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base while at our home in Southern California, nearly 220 MILES east of Vandenberg’s launch facilities! I looked through my photo archives this evening and found a series of (very blurry) photos I took on September 19th, 2002 from my parents’ house in Redlands, California.

You can read more information about this particular launch (along with some REALLY COOL photos) right here. It was a test of the Minuteman III rocket and this specific launch is referenced as “Glory Trip 180GM.”

It’s a shame the Space Shuttle never ended up launching from Vandenberg. We would have had fantastic seats for the launch, even though we were 220 miles away!

Click here for larger size.

In 2008, a number of friends and I traveled around the Adriatic Sea on a sailboat, visiting various islands off the coast of Croatia. Toward the end of our trip, we stopped by the small coastal village of Korčula (map).

While there, I decided to take off for a bit and go on a hike outside of town. I stumbled across an old fort hiding in the woods.

Curious about it, I walked inside to explore it for a bit. I’ll admit, it was kind of dark, dusty, and rather creepy. But also pretty cool!

I even found a way onto the roof of the structure, where I took the awesome panorama that you see at the top of this post.

As I was falling asleep a few nights ago, I thought about this trip and this structure specifically. I still didn’t know anything about it and random internet searches over the past two years revealed nothing.

I had the idea to load up Google Earth and view a layer of Panoramio, which shows photos embedded at where they were taken. While viewing the area near Korcula, I noticed a number of photos near the fort I had stumbled across. And they were named!

The mystery was solved: Fort Wellington!

This is the English tower Fort Wellington that was built in 1813 on the place of the Venetian fortification of the open type from 1616. It is located on the hill above Korcula Old Town, about 20 minutes walk along the steps from Plokata – the main square.

This building is currently deserted and is dangerous to climb the staircase inside the tower, as they are old and unreliable. Forteca tower is also devastated by horrible mobile phone network cables and transmitting masts that are placed there by Croatian mobile phone company.

Built in 1813, dangerous to climb, but awesome views. So fun! Interestingly enough, when I visited in 2008, they had actually taken the transmitting masts off the top of the building and moved them to a structure located near the building.

Anyway, it was a fun mystery to finally have solved! I’m glad I took the chance to go exploring for a bit. Bonus: the views on the hike back down to Korcula was top notch as well!