MT at Phratry.net

X Photos were taken with a variety of film and electronic cameras. Some film was scanned by Kodak onto a PhotoCD, some manually using inexpensive flatbed or negative scanners. The cameras include: Pockeable, Casio EX-S2 or Nikon Coolpix S210; intermediate travel cameras Canon A620 or its replacement, a Canon A650; real camera, a Nikon D70 digital SLR with assorted lenses. For most photos, click the photo info button by the image to see camera and exposure details.

Some images are as taken, some have been improved, with Photoshop Elements, or with iPhoto now that it's become more capable. Mostly this means cropping, straightening, and tonal range adjustments. Movies have been compressed with Quicktime Pro.

Photo albums are generated in Mac OS X using JAlbum. This page is formatted manually using CSS with the help of Taco HTML Edit. Cyberduck helps move files to the server. Check 'em out.

The China2008 album was generated with Apple's iWeb. It's not flexible or easily customizable, and is a bit buggy, so this won't be repeated. iWeb does have a nice slideshow feature.

Page last updated 30 Dec 2008. Click here or on the X above to make this info box vanish.

Visiting China In April and May 2008, we visited China. Starting in Hong Kong (officially now China but still administered separately), we travelled to Guilin, Yangshuo, Shanghai, Xi'an, and Beijing. Adam took time off from studying Mandarin in Dalian to accompany us, plan travel, and interpret, making everything much easier. We visited cities, countryside, museums, parks, and ancient sites. We travelled by air, subway, bus, train, taxi, minivan, ferryboat, small boat, tram, maglev and bicycle. Check out the photos, look at the panoramas full size, and watch the silly movies. Enjoy, we did.

Talitha's UC Davis MD Graduation Talitha's MD graduation ceremony at the Mondavi Center, UC Davis. The culmination of four years of hard work, the first two at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, the last two at UC Davis School of Medicine. Some imperfect photos, but enjoy them anyway.

Visiting Korea Adam was in South Korea teaching English for a year. Linda and I visited Korea during his February 2007 break. We started in Seoul, moved on to Gohan in Kangwon Province where Adam was teaching, then went to the mountainous east coast. Here are lots of photos and a few short movies of cities, countryside, temples, palaces, museums, both ends of the DMZ, parks, and interesting minutiae.

Dusy Basin Frog Science In September 2006, I volunteered to help a Forest Service research project related to the Mountain Yellow-legged Frog. We hiked from South Lake, in the eastern Sierra above Bishop, to Dusy Basin on the west slope, starting at about 9000 feet, climbing to 12,000 feet over the Sierra crest at Bishop Pass, and then down to about 11,000 feet on the far side of the pass. The two real frog researchers made it in one day. As I was a lot slower, I took two days. It was well worth the effort, and a lot more interesting and scenic than almost all of my non-volunteer work over the years.

Laws RR Museum After hiking out of Dusy Basin, I had a bit of time in Bishop, which I spent at the nearby Laws Railroad Museum and Historical Site. I knew about this interesting museum, but every previous time I travelled nearby on Highway 395, there was no time to stop. The museum is the place to see relics of the Carson and Colorado Railroad, a narrow gauge (3 feet between the rails) line that began in the 1880's, eventually became part of the Southern Pacific empire, and operated until the late date of 1960, at the end moving the remaining trickle of freight traffic with a narrow gauge diesel locomotive.

Adam Graduates from UCLA Adam earns a BA in Linguistics, Summa Cum Laude yet, which gets him three stars in the nicely printed graduation program, and the right to wear a gold braid on his robe. Photos of Adam's Saturday departmental graduation ceremony, and some miscellaneous views around LA and UCLA. We didn't attend the big all-up Letters and Science graduation on Friday, but Adam has a few photos of that event on his photo pages (scroll photos and look for academic robes).

The Feather River Express The 2006 Feather River Express, a special chartered passenger train from Emeryville to Portola via the Central Valley and the Feather River Canyon, the westernmost and perhaps most scenic section of the route of the fabled California Zephyr. Passenger travel opportunities along this route are very rare in modern times, as it's heavily used by the Union Pacific for freight, especially double-stack containers. There is also significant BNSF rights traffic on the western portion, Sacramento to Keddie. We travelled out Saturday April 1, overnighting in Reno, and returned Sunday April 2. Portola-Reno connections were, sorry to say, via bus. The former WP Reno Branch doesn't connect at Reno Junction any more, in any case, so continuing the train ride from Portola to Reno would have involved a long way around via the Nevada desert. I took too many photos of the train going around curves, probably, but skim through the thumbnails and click on any that look interesting. Sunday morning we had time before departure to wander around the Feather River Rail Society's Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola, and I took some pictures of their collection and facility. Check out the museum here. And visit in person some day.

Jeremiah O'Brien to Sacramento On Friday, April 7, 2006 the restored World War II Liberty Ship Jeremiah O'Brien steamed from Pier 45 in San Francisco to the deepwater port in West Sacramento. The ship stayed over Saturday and returned Sunday. Those of us traveling one way on Friday returned to SF by bus that evening. Weather was decent in the morning, got gloomy and damp later. The ship is powered by a single three-cylinder triple-expansion steam engine driving one big propellor, and is capable of about 13 mph. But we did about 10 mph due to the currents in the river, as upstream dams were releasing water to make room for more rain and the expected soon-to-melt snow water. The ship has a lot of history, which you can read about on its official site or this interesting other site. In all these years of living in California I'd never travelled from the Bay to Sacramento by water, and it's a whole new perspective. The last part of the voyage, the Sacramento Deep Water Ship Canal, is pretty dull but by the time we got there it was raining and getting dark anyway. Not many photos of that. But do look at the engine and engine room photos. A fascinating place when under way.

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