Darren Holloway

Photos from the 2009 Shiny Stockings Ball are up.

A few weeks ago, my Dad said “Hey, you’re this big shot photographer – why are there no new photos of you?”

Well, because I’m not big on self portraits. Fortunately, my friend Larry is turning into an even bigger photo geek than me, and he occasionally catches me at dances… Granted, he was probably taking a picture of the cute girl, and I just happened to be dancing with her ;)

Freda, a co-worker of mine, forwarded me an email that this weekend would be a negative tide at Half Moon Bay. This refers to the day every year where the tide is at its lowest level, and there are lots of tidal pools to look at.

So, on Saturday, I packed up my camera, my new tripod, and my macro lens, and drove out to Half Moon Bay.

After about a 2 km walk, I rounded the corner of a cliff, and saw the tide pools. The water was about 500 metres from the beach, which was good, given the gazillion people who were there.

This seagull seems to be saying “what’s with all the stupid humans today?

For the first 200 metres or so, I walked on rocks. After that, it was pretty much all walking on mussels. Several people had brought buckets and screwdrivers, and were busy collecting mussels for dinner.

Of course, the really interesting stuff was the finds in the tidal pools… Like this Sea Urchin.

Some kind of Sea Sponge…

Anemone!

This is a close-up of a pair of starfish. They were hard as a rock.

And, of course, seaweed.

Yum, fresh spices. Click for bigger photo.

We’re not supposed to have frost in California!!!

Taken with my new macro lens.

Photos from the 2008 Gatsby are up on my Flickr page.

Photos are up from the San Francisco Lindy Exchange on my Flickr account.. And, thanks to my friend Larry, there’s actually a few photos of me!

This photo: Darren, with standard stunned bunny expression, dances with cute girl.

When I have huge batches of photos that need to be worked up in Photoshop, I follow a certain order…

1. Photos where people said “Send me a copy,” because otherwise I’ll forget,
2. Photos of me with cute girls,
3. Everything else.

I’ve got numbers 1 and 2 done ;)

First up, Susan and I. I’ve known Susan from dancing for about eight years now.

Next, Darren looking like an idiot with cute girl. Hey idiot, look at the cute girl, not at the sky!

I woke up this morning absolutely exhausted. I had my breakfast, and went so far as to lie back down in bed before I decided “No, I don’t want to go back to sleep – I want to go to day 4 of Fanime.

Today’s viewings from the fansub room:

• Ghost Hound: A supernatural mystery story. Looks interesting.
• Ichigo Mashimaro: Cute little girls doing cute things in a cute way. Too cute for me. Note, however, that I somehow never managed to leave the room.
• Goshuushou-sama Ninomiyakun: Boy helps a succubus overcome her phobias of people. Epic nosebleed comedy.
• Nagasarete Airantou: Boy gets marooned on island where the only inhabitants are girls. More epic nosebleeds :)

And, of course, more photos. I managed to edit about another 30 and add them to the gallery on flickr – I also changed the order so the newest ones are first.

I am really tired. Unfortunately for me, it’s only 8 PM. But the second “must see” on my list starts at 5:30 AM tomorrow morning.

I spent most of the day in the fansub rooms, where they were showing two or three episodes of a given series. Really brief notes:

• Spice and Wolf: Really enjoyed this one. If you ask me, there’s not enough TV shows combining the economic laws of supply and demand with cute fox-girl spirits. They were showing four episodes, but I came in late and only saw two. I went to the dealers’ room looking for it, but it’s apparently only out as fansubs online.
• El Cazador de la Bruja: Also really enjoyed the two episodes I saw of this. Everyone is a bounty hunter!
• These are my Noble Masters: Saw two episodes of this and it looks like a lot of fun. Harem comedy for the win!
• Prince of Tennis: Man, the room was packed. After watching two episodes, I was thinking “I can see why this is popular, but it doesn’t really inspire me to watch more of it. Unless there’s nothing else on.”

Since I was already in the dealer room, I figured I had to do my part to help the economy; that is, other than by donating my tax dollars to bailing out real estate speculators and investment banks. I bought The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which I’ve wanted for a while but have never been able to find all four DVDs together at the same store. Now perhaps I can learn that dang dance properly. :)

I started in on working on photos of today’s cosplayers, but didn’t get too far – I need to go to bed. Seven new photos on the Flickr page; many more to come.

Today was the first day of Fanime 2008, San Jose’s big annual Anime convention.

This is my first anime con; it runs for four days, with seven rooms showing different anime and Japanese movies. I have two things on my “must see” lists, and about six things on my “try real hard to see” list. Today, the only thing on the lists was Rebuild of Evangelion 01, yet another version of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

So how was it? Well… I found it quite uneven. I was reminded of the hue and cry when George Lucas re-edited the Star Wars movies from my childhood. In fact, I was quite tempted to yell out “Han shot first!” It seems the plot is about 90% the same as the original Evangelion, and 10% is new, but because there’s only 90 minutes to tell the story of the first six episodes, a lot of things just jump out with no explanation.

The animation seems to be largely from the original anime, with some segments re-animated where the plot changed, and a lot move “movement” shots done with computer graphics. Again, uneven… Misato’s appearance is significantly different in the new sequences, and when they’re juxtaposed right next to the original animation, it’s quite obvious. Most of the graphics in NERV HQ have been replaced with computer graphics, but in a few places they still use the original graphics animation. Shinji is still whiny, but there were one or two places where I thought I saw positive character development… Then it was back to whining.

Overall, not as good as I’d hoped; but there’s enough new that I’ll undoubtedly watch the next three parts when they come out.

Other stuff I watched: Part of Karas (very nice looking but not really my preferred genre,) and a bit of the Shakugan no Shana marathon (again, not really my type.)

Most of the rest of the day, I was wandering around with my camera taking pictures of Cosplayers. Some photos are up on my Flickr page.

When I was a kid, I had horrible problems with allergies; so much so, that I ended up getting shots to help deal with the agony of springtime.

Fortunately, as I got older, I got over it. By the time I was in my early 20′s, I rarely had problems with hayfever. My theory is that over time, my body got used to the pollen in the air every spring and it stopped bothering me.

Unfortunately, now that I’m in California, there’s all new, improved pollen that I’m not used to, and I’m having hayfever problems again. Thankfully, they’re not anywhere as bad as when I was younger. But I guess that it’s going to take a few years for me to get used to California pollen.

My, that was a lot of exposition just to lead into an orchard picture ;)

My weekend:

Saturday: Sleep. Sleep in. Wake up. Wander around for a few hours. Four hour nap. Play computer games for a few hours. Four hour nap. More computer games. Watch Cliffhanger. Go to bed.

Sunday: Feel guilty about sleeping all day saturday. Do laundry. Spend all day in photoshop.

Accomplishment: I finally have my photos done from the Art Deco Society Gatsby Picnic in September.

My friend Larry just got a new digital camera. He brought it to the dance at Stepping Out last week, and as a result, I have a few new photos of myself dancing :)

Hey nerd, take off the badge from work!