Katy Dickinson

Photographing Tank Fish

One of our favorite restaurants is Michi Sushi (2220 Winchester Blvd, Campbell, CA). In addition to excellent food and charming friendly staff, Michi's has a big two-sided fish tank. Photographing tank fish is harder than taking pictures of flowers. Flowers hold still and are rarely surrounded by highly reflective surfaces. My only advice is - don't use a flash. It scares the fish and unless you are lucky, the light mostly bounces off the tank. I take many pictures and hope for the best...

Yucca flower with bee

Passion flower

Cactus flower

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 08:23PM Oct 21, 2008 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

Build Your Network! Come to Arduino Night

This is an open invitation to Arduino Night (buy a kit, build a kit, bring a board): 7:30pm-10:00pm, Thursday, 23 October 2008 at the Sun's Santa Clara Campus historic Mansion (across the road from the Auditorium). If you are in the area and open source or Sun SPOTs (Sun Small Programmable Object Technology) are your passion, this is a great chance to expand your network.

More event information is available in Alan DuBoff's mail: http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/ug-svosug/2008-October/000093.html.

Tiger Xylophone "XyloTiger"

This event is part of the Silicon Valley OSUG (OpenSolaris User Group) meeting. There are 72 OpenSolaris User Groups all over the world. See: OpenSolaris User Groups: Locations & Lists for more.

For one example of a fun Arduino project, see my 1 August 2008 blog entry called "OSCON and ServoBells". Come on Thursday night to see my husband John's improved Arduino xylophone (built from a Toys'R'Us tiger), plus his JMRI controlled portable N-scale model train layout. More on John's projects is on his website under Category:Arduino.

Image Copyright 2008 by John Plocher

Posted at 05:57PM Oct 21, 2008 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

Black Box Landscaping

Sun customers who are in the market for a Sun Modular Datacenter (aka a Black Box) are probably more concerned with adding cost-effective instant data center capacity than with landscaping. Rightly so! However, a Black Box has to go somewhere. As a dedicated gardener, for the last six months I have been watching with interest the creation of a handsome landscape setting for the new Black Box now inside of Sun's Menlo Park campus. "MPK" as we call the Sun Menlo Park campus includes one of Sun's two award-winning Executive Briefing Centers ("EBC"). The new Black Box is in the EBC courtyard in MPK.

I have a particular interest in the Black Box because the Technology Advisory Board or TAB, which I manage went on a prototype tour about six months before the product was announced in 2006. It has been exciting to watch that prototype data center in a shipping container turn into a real product.

From the 2006 announcement until April 2007, MPK sometimes got to see a Black Box when its truck came by as part of the Sun Tour. In April 2007, an April Fool prank featured an empty Black Box appearing in the center of MPK's grass amphitheatre. It was set up as an executive playspace for CEO Jonathan Schwartz and CTO Greg Papadopoulos. One of the display boards created for the prank showed a faked photo of what MPK would look like with Black Boxes (including windows) taking over the whole amphitheatre.

In March 2008, the MPK campus was being spruced up with new paint and landscaping. It was clear from the size and space that was left open outside of the EBC that a Black Box was coming our way, so I took some pictures. Then, this summer, MPK finally got its own real Black Box. Photos:

Sun MPK from the air

April Fools 2007, Fake Black Boxes

Mar 08: Space for Black Box

July 2008 - New MPK Black Box

MPK Black Box

Sep 08: SEEDs Visit Black Box

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 05:28PM Oct 21, 2008 by katysblog in News & Reviews  |  Comments[1]