Daily Photo

Windows of a house on Nob Hill.

Peach cobbler I made with peaches from the Slow Food Farmers Market. Delicious.

San Francisco recently played host to Slow Food Nation. City Hall's Victory Garden was one of the centerpieces. These flowers were in the garden.

Chocolate cupcakes are delicious. Shaved chocolate is easier to eat on top of a cupcake than chocolate chips. And it looks prettier.

A wave crashes into an undercut in the cliff at Point Reyes near Arch Rock.

Flubber Glacier! As seen at Sonoma State University. See the YouTube video. There is also a video showing some debris flow experiments we did and a debris flow at the West Washmawapta Glacier.

Arch Rock.

The crashing surf at Sculptured Beach, Point Reyes.

Another pelican.

Two brown pelicans flying in formation at Point Reyes.

A bird soaring above a cliff in Point Reyes.

This daisy-looking flower is on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Point Reyes.

Another shot from point Reyes. Guess the scale.

Wave crashing at Point Reyes.

A nice orange flower at Point Reyes.

Another round of cupcakes. These are burnt-butter brown-sugar cupcakes. They were delicious but not really worth the work for just 12. If I were making 48 then maybe... The frosting is also made with burnt butter.

The last of the cacti pictures for a while, here is the full frontal view.

Two of the fully-opened cactus blossoms.

The cactus again.

The cactus in the road median near my house bloomed spectacularly recently. This is the early stage opening bud. I was worried about the cactus after some construction damaged it but it appears to be coming back quite well.

Mount Diablo from the Berkeley Hills (Tilden Park).

I've been making a lot of cupcakes lately. Some better than others. These are from a simple recipe from Nigella. I didn't cream the butter and sugar well enough so they were a little dense but still tasty.

Tadpoles in a little vernal pool near Middletown, CA.

These crazy plants were growing near the redoubt.

From the drive to Houston, this is an old lookout structure near Carlsbad Caverns.

A picture of the market in Jucuapa announces the arrival of El Salvador galleries.

A red and yellow flower in Allegria, El Salvador. Now I just need to add some captiions to the El Salvador pictures and then I'll put them up.

Before going to El Salvador, Taryn and I drove to Houston with a full car of stuff.

A mural in La Palma, El Salvador.

I finished the captions for my Juneau pictures.

A few days ago I was awake for the simultaneous sunrise and moonset over San Francisco. The picture was taken out my dining room window. Quite pretty.

Death Valley, Alaska has significantly more snow than Death Valley, California. I recently uploaded some new Juneau pictures. Additional captions will be forthcoming.

A tilted iceberg. I recently uploaded new scans from my first Antarctic trip. The image quality is now vastly improved.

I uploaded some new scans of the same pictures that have been in the New Zealand section for ages. The scans are far superior to what was there before. Enjoy.

One of these days I'll get around to putting up some more pictures from my Italy trip last summer. The Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome had a crane lifting big pallets of stuff onto the roof.

I put up a new set of pictures in the A to B section from Wildcat Creek.

Clouds over the San Francisco Bay.

Taryn graduated from SFSU! Yay!

A little food coloring experiment that didn't quite turn out as I had hoped, but it made for a kinda cool picture.

The San Francisco conservatory of flowers, with all the annual beds in bloom.

A very nice marine terrace north of Santa Cruz.

In case you missed it earlier: my computer broke a while back. I fixed it. It is okay if you want to call me a geek. I kinda like it.

Taryn and I stopped in a turnout next to Grizzly Peak road for a particularly nice sunset. The combination of cool clouds, warm colors, the sun right next to the Golden Gate, and just enough detail in the foreground silhouette made it interesting.

From what I can find on the internet, this was a platform for a radar that would have controlled Nike Missiles during the Cold War. The location is marked as Hill 88 on the park map. The park has a bit more info on the Nike missile site but doesn't really talk about the radar site on Hill 88. There was another Nike/radar site on the top of Angel Island and only within the last few years have they restored the top of the island (for the military installation they flattened the top of the island). The story of how the headlands came to be preserved as a parkland is an interesting combination of wisdom and luck.

The inside of an old military building on top of Hill 88 in the Marin Headlands.

A pretty bedrock outcrop in the Marin Headlands.

An old bunker in the Marin Headlands. The slope below this picture was undercut by a road and it is sliding away from the bunker.

The Marin Headlands in spring are incredibly green.

Sunset at San Gregorio. That's the last one from SG for a while.

Seagulls and a coastal cliff at San Gregorio Beach.

Also at San Gregorio beach. This bedrock cliff is slowly eroding away as the waves cut into the soft sandstone. There is a very nicely developed colluvial deposit on top of the bedrock and a thin soil on top of that. There were a bunch of seagulls flying around, probably catching a little draft off the cliff to help them stay afloat. It has been a while since I've posted a new daily picture. The reason is that my old computer died. I fixed it (see the pictures) but decided that it was time to get a new one. I now have the new one up and running.

San Gregorio beach is on the California coast a little ways south of San Francisco.

The haze over the Port of Oakland and the bay was strong a couple weeks ago. Taken from the open lot near my house.

This is the smallest of the three deer that live in our neighborhood. They often sleep under the trees next to our patio.

It is a '57 Chevy (according to HubcapCafe). It's very dirty from the tree droppings.

This is a detail of something large. Can you guess what?

It was gray outside a few weeks ago and then it was sunny for a good while. Now it is gray again, so I'll post this picture from weeks ago. This tree's spikey fruits/seeds(?) look like ornaments.

Enny Envy. The kids who tagged the back of the Arlington Pharmacy were caught by the Kensington Police. It was the top story for the monthly Kensington newspaper, the Outlook.

Another recipe from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food, these cookies were delicious. It's the same as the Nestle recipe except using 2 egg yolks instead of 2 whole eggs. And you melt the butter instead of creaming it when it is cold. This batch was perfect. The next batch was a little too crispy for my taste, but Taryn liked them.

A pink flower on one of the trees on our patio.

A mediocre picture of a delicious carrot cake that I made from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food. With cream cheese frosting of course. Baking is made much easier with a handy dandy kitchen scale.

On January 2nd, I went for a nice swim in Lake Tahoe. Really more of a leisurely dip. OK, maybe quick dunk. Brief plunge? I got my head wet. The water was cold but the sun was warm and the breeze helped me dry off. Photo taken by Taryn.

Skiers on Echo Lake.

A nice mini-cornice and a few animal tracks.

Overlooking Lake Tahoe from a ridge above Echo Lake.

Frost on a car window at Tahoe. It's not a particularly inspired picture, but I do like the ice crystal patterns.

Another beautiful sunset from my living room.

A hole in the clouds at sunset.

Some stuffed portobello mushrooms that Taryn made a while back. Delicious.

A pink face at the Albany Bulb.

An oil boom protecting the wetlands and mudflats to the right from the oil that is in the bay to the left. The statue was created from things found in the Albany Bulb landfill. A map shows the area at high tide (the whole area to the right of the peninsula is mudflat at low tide). Also note the cool refracting wave patterns.

Not too long ago, a cargo ship (the Cosco Busan) hit the Bay Bridge and spilled 58,000 gallons of oil into the bridge. The path of the ship went haywire just before the bridge. This picture shows an oil-covered beach between Golden Gate Fields and the Albany Bulb.

The cable car between Chamonix, France and Courmayeur, Italy is very scenic. This is the section between Point Helbronner (3462 m) and Aiguille du Midi (3842 m). The distance between the two endpoints of the cable is 5 km and there is only one pylon supporting the cable between the two ends.

A lake near the West Washmawapta Glacier. One of these days I will actually finish selecting a set of images to put up from Canada and a few sets from Italy. My thesis takes priority though.

The Medici mansion in Rome. Not to be confused with the Medici Restaurant in Hyde Park. Also not to be confused with steak and eggs at Salonica.

It has been a long time since I've updated the daily picture because I've been in Italy and Canada for most of the summer. Eventually I'll get around to posting those pictures but I'm realizing that one of the detriments of the digital age is the amount of time it takes to cull a large number of pictures down to a reasonable number. This picture is of the West Washmawapta Glacier in British Columbia, Canada.

Sand at Ocean Beach.

A road in Wildcat Canyon not too far from my house.

A zucchini cake that I made for Mother's Day from Nigella. Kind of like carrot cake but with zucchini, a lime curd filling, and pistachios on top. Quite tasty.

Some graffiti on a wall at Ocean Beach. The pile of sand came from the hole in the wall. I couldn't tell if it was natural or planned that way. I think it was natural though because there were a number of holes in the wall and the sand pile at the base of each was about the same size and shape which probably would have been difficult to do intentionally. I'm on the beach side of the wall and the sand would blow up onto the sidewalk or road on the other side of the wall and then blow back through the hole. Maybe. Who knows.

The Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.

An archway of flowers on a shrub/tree in Golden Gate Park's nice arboretum.

A big leaf at the Conservatory of Flowers.

Do you ever get a sensation like you're falling? Experimenting with the strobe feature of my camera's built-in flash.

This prickly plant lives next to the door of my house.

We've both been working hard lately.

Anytime we start getting distracted the ghost starts making faces at us. Wouldn't it be nice if we had such a thing to keep us on track?

An Indonesian soup I made out of the Around the World Cookbook. Nice and spicy.

What a delicious appetizer! So delicious that I will share the recipe: Take one avocado that has been in your cupboard for a least a week. It ought to be ripe, shouldn't it? It's been there long enough. Never mind that it is still hard. Cut it open. Find by taste and the look of it that it is in fact not ripe and not as delicious as an avocado should be. Consider throwing it away, but reject that idea as wasteful. Peel it. Try mashing it to make guacamole as planned. Find that it is too hard to mash. Hmmm, how to make it softer? Microwave it with some water for 1:30! Then drain it and mash it. Taste it. Not great, but edible. Add some salt. What could make it better? Nothing other than sweet, sweet mango sauce from your nearest Trader Joe's. Mmm, now it is good. Serve with tortilla chips and sausage (recipe follows).

Dinner: take two sausages. Put them in a small saute pan. Turn on the stove. Turn sausages as needed to avoid burning. When they're mostly done, put two slices of bread in the toaster and toast them. When they are done, put pickle relish on one and mustard on the other piece. Then put the sausage between the two slices and eat it.

A lemon tart/meringue I made using lemon curd Taryn made from lemons that grew on a tree at Maryann's house. The crust and the meringue were from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. I should have baked the crust a little longer by itself before putting in the filling and topping it, but oh well, they still tasted good.

This is a cup full of a wonderfully smooth and delicious concoction. Whatever could it be?

Hmm, it seems the previous picture was a bit misleading, as there was a false bottom on the cup. Here is the true bottom of the cup. Whatever could have deformed into such a shape?

Bacon! Mmm bacon.

Prager Casks.

The inside of Prager Winery and Port Works is covered in money. Quite literally. People write on the money and then it is tacked to the wall. "Me likey the port" says one. It is kind of amazing how many different countries have Queen Elizabeth on their money.

A tree-lined highway in Napa that had construction fences and green grass lining both sides. (They took some of it down on the left side).

A Morroccan Serpent Cake from the Around the World Cookbook. Dad helped me make it.

Experimenting with image overlays on my camera. I took the two pictures seperately and then combined them using one of the camera's tools.

Me and my camera.

The pineapple sage.

The vase I made.

Autumnal Birthday Cake. From How to be a Domestic Goddess.

My hand.