Archive for the ‘Photos’ Category
Walled village to Moss Mountain hike by the Great Wall
An early start today for an outing with the Beijing Hikers to the Great Wall in Huairou County about 90 minutes outside of the city. From the description:
In the area of the village is what the locals reckon is the original White Cloud Temple in the Beijing area. It’s just ruins now, but we’ll take a look at it, as well as a ginkgo tree that is more than 500 years old and is protected by the government as a Level 1 Natural Treasure. (Level 1 is the highest.)
From the temple site we’ll follow a gravel trail on a gradual climb up through chestnut orchards and virgin forest, heading for a big pine tree on a ridge. Along the way we’ll pass a big white rock that allegedly has magical properties – after drinking the water that a small piece of this rock has been boiled in, new mothers will have no trouble producing plenty of breast-milk for their baby.
It will take us around about two hours to reach the pine tree on the ridge, and we’ll stop for a lunch break next to an shepherd’s abandoned house.
After lunch we’ll continue along the ridge, hiking up a bushy trail to another saddle on a ridge. From there we’ll be able to see Moss Mountain. Many years ago it rained so much that the village in the valley was encircled with floodwater, and the mossy foliage on Moss Mountain grew so dense that the whole mountain turned black.
An easy trail leads down to the foot of Moss Mountain, and from there we will follow a flat trail to finish the hike at a park.
The walk was a decent 6.8 miles with 1300 ft of climb. It stayed below freezing and there was snow falling for much of the day. It was good to make it out of the city into marginally cleaner air and get some decent exercise.
798 Art District
Clear blue skies made for a great opportunity to do some exploring. An easy ride on the 909 bus (which seemed to sport more technology than any I’ve previously ridden on)
The 798 Art Zone was built as a joint factory complex between the PRC and the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Its buildings and layout were designed by East German engineers and have a distinctive appeal. After the electronics and military manufacturing came to a close the area saw a rebirth as a community for artists and studios.
The building designs incorporate specific considerations for maximizing the amount of natural light inside. The lofting ceilings give a sense of expanse inside.
A maze of interconnected pipes still remains with random steam discharges throughout the area.
I only ventured into one or two of the galleries themselves and while I’m no expert I did enjoy what I saw.
Sunset at Dash Point State Park
On the way to Cabela’s we made a brief stop at Dash Point State Park today, it’s just a few minutes off I-5 going south towards Olympia.
Christmas Day at the arboretum
After a fine Christmas dinner of defrosted hot dogs (we’re trying to empty out the freezer), it was a lovely cool yet clear afternoon. We headed to the Washington Park arboretum to walk around a bit of the lake and to get some fresh air and exercise. It was nice to see others had similar thoughts but it was far from busy.
Recent trip to Colorado
As a mini pre-Christmas vacation, Amy and I travelled to Colorado for a few days last week.
We left Seattle early on Wednesday and were in Denver by noon. I called in to several meetings and continued to work through the afternoon and early evening from our hotel room to finish up some items from the week.
Thursday was an entirely different experience. We were up early and headed to a nondescript warehouse in the suburbs of Denver to witness the filming of a Food Network Challenge starring our very own Eve Samonsky. It was great seeing the behind-the-scenes set up; the coordination effort, number of people involved, logistics and sheer volume of recorded video was surprising to me, overshadowed only by the impressive creations of the competing pastry chefs. While the competitors worked non-stop for some 10+ hours, we broke up the day with a good breakfast at Lucile’s and a walk around Wash Park. We returned for a tense ending and to admire the result of a day of hard effort but you’ll have to wait until the show airs some time in 2010 to see it all.
On Friday morning we headed up to Winter Park for a couple of days of skiing. There had been about 6” of snow the day before but continues were dry, clear and cold by the time we arrived shortly after lunch. The first few runs of the season are always a bit of a challenge but it came back quickly. We enjoyed a good few hours on the slopes surrounding by great views of the snow-covered Rockies before retiring to a ski-in condo at the Iron Horse Resort (bargain found online just the night before!). More skiing on Saturday, followed by a good soak in the hot tub. Aching bones.
The views from the slopes are something you can’t really capture with a camera. The bright clear sunshine at 9,000+ ft, crisp 15 degrees F and brilliant blue skies are all around.
Back to Seattle on Sunday morning.
Day after Thanksgiving in Seattle
Although the Macy’s day-after-Thanksgiving parade was a little early for my tastes this particular Friday morning, the weather was so fine that I had to make to trip into Seattle for some photos, to catch the tree lighting and star illumination and for dinner and a movie.
I didn’t really have a particular theme in mind when I got off the bus so I just starting taking some shots with my 30mm prime. The black and white was an afterthought in post-processing.
The evening sun over Elliot Bay really made this one stand out.
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Post offices and the Bing Maps API
I spent an hour this morning hacking together a quick prototype that brought together Windows Azure hosting and storage, the Bing Maps SDK, and a set of photos that Amy and I have been collecting of US Post Offices. The result is a United States Post Offices mashup which shows a map with pushpins for each post office for which which we have a photo.
The practical part of this was really the experience rather than the output. In short, it was really surprisingly easy to pull together the pieces to make this work. It takes a little while to get Visual Studio set up as an Azure development platform but once that’s done (once) it’s trivial taking existing techniques and having them run cloud-enabled with barely any changes.
A few resources that came in handy:
- Windows Azure Platform
- WPF Client for the Windows Azure Blob Storage
- Data Visualization with Bing Maps
- Bing Maps Control SDK 6.2
- Bing Maps Interactive SDK
- Image Resizer (convenient replacement for the great XP PowerToy that did the same thing)
After all that, two things are clear: it should be a good PDC this year and there are many more post offices yet to be visited.
Halloween 2009
Sounders FC beat FC Dallas
A couple of years ago Seattle added another professional sports team to its list – Seattle Sounders FC an expansion team in Major League Soccer (MLS). The last serious soccer match I saw was Manchester United playing Chelsea in a summer game in Qwest Field several years ago and before that it must have been Stoke City in Britannia Stadium a long time before. Suffice it to say, it has been a very long time since I’d enjoyed a proper football game.
It was a cool, clear and dry night and the lights of the stadium beckoned.
I was impressed by the level of crowd engagement (quite different from the previous soccer game at the same venue). Singing, chanting, horns, drums and rowdiness behind the goal; just like England. There are still a few subtle differences, however.
The whole lower level of Qwest Field was filled, a record mid-season attendance of more than 33,000 people. Good to see such a level of interest and support.
It was a good game and all the more enjoyable to see the Sounders win 2-1.
Sounders game set on Flickr.
Harvesting pumpkins
It’s fall and that can only mean that Halloween is just around the corner. With good weather this morning, a quick search for ‘pumpkins’ on Yelp and we were headed to The Farm at Swan’s Trail in Snohomish. They have it all – a corn maze, a hay maze, wagon rides, cow trains and a substantial pumpkin patch.
Although there were a lot families there the place is huge and there is plenty to go around.
With pumpkins chosen we enjoyed a polish dog, corn and apple cider for lunch. Great way to spend a crisp, sunny morning.
