I spent yesterday on/near Mt. Rainier, hiking above Mowich Lake. I put up some photos from the day here. You can also see a panorama I took using the Gigapan hardware in Spray Park here.

It was fun to play with the Gigapan device, but it has a few fundamental problems. It’s too big to carry around all the time or just leave attached to your tripod, and too expensive for casual users (the beta version was ~$250). But, it doesn’t accomodate larger, prosumer cameras like mine (at least not without some hacking), so it’s hard to take the really detailed panoramas like the ones they show on their site. I think they either need to drastically reduce the size or the price before it can be a commercial success, or go after the higher-end market and redesign it to work with larger cameras/lenses.

The good news you can infer from yesterday’s hike is that both my ankle and shoulder are on the mend. I wore an ankle brace all day, and it didn’t bother me ’til the last half mile, and even that wasn’t bad at all. And in spite of the fact that I was carrying 10 or 15 pounds worth of camera gear, my shoulder held up just fine.

I did buy some tickets to visit the Bay Area – I’ll be there October 31st thru November 2nd. Halloween in San Francisco, anyone?

I’ve really been enjoying my new iPhone; it’s a first-generation version I bought used from a friend who upgraded. I followed these instructions to unlock the phone to work with T-Mobile, and it went without a hitch. I haven’t installed lots of applications, but the basics (phone, web, maps, contacts and calendar) are intuitive and satisfying to use. I am a little miffed at the lack of a good Notes application (I’d love the iPhone equivalent of Safe, but would settle for a decent app that synced notes to the computer), but I’m figuring it all out.

One of my goals in getting the iPhone was reducing the number of gadgets in my life – of the phone/Palm/MP3 player trio, the new phone will definitely eliminate the need to carry around my Palm (I’ve been using a T|X for a couple years now), and maybe eventually the MP3 player, too.

I’ve largely been focused on Sectionals, which is this weekend. Interesting to note that at the time I’m writing this, the top four seeds in our section (Shazam, D’oh, Shadrach and Moonshine) are all ranked in the top 25 teams, and that counts teams that only came together for one tournament (so it’s really more like the top 15 teams). We definitely have a tough section, but I’m confident Shadrach can make it to Regionals.

I have had some time for other fun stuff, some of which I’ll write about when frisbee’s over. Ice cream features heavily, as does rug shopping.

Recent cheers & jeers:

Boo: Full Tilt Ice Cream turned out to be a bust. They were out of most flavors, the ones I tried weren’t so hot, the pinball tables they have aren’t so hot either, it turns out it’s hard to play pinball and eat ice cream at the same time, and there was a high school band playing in there that made death metal sound like a lullaby. I won’t go back, and neither should you.

Yay: Shadrach won Spawnfest. While we would’ve liked to be in the “Elite” division, I’m glad we did well in “Classic”. The rainy finals game was capped by a pretty spectacular catch by yours truly (sadly, no one was video taping) – a great way to end the weekend.

Boo: Unfortunately, there are only two bids from Sectionals to Regionals this year. The Washington/BC section in particular has quite a few top notch teams (Shadrach, Shazam, Moonshine and D’oh), any of which could beat most regional contenders in other parts of the country. Because the less competitive teams in the area get enough play in city leagues, there’s no incentive for them to participate in the Sectionals tournament, and the number of participating teams directly determines the number of bids to Regionals. So we’ve got six teams, four of them really strong, vying for two bids. It’s gonna be a tough tournament.

Yay: Sam & Jane’s wedding. Check out some photos from a great weekend on Whidbey Island.

And an extra little shout out to website redesign. While it’s not really the most earth-shattering change, it does make me happy.