Two years later

It is hard to believe that around this time 2 years ago I was in New Zealand, halfway through my Global adventure. This stopover would be the longest at 4 weeks. It was a wonderful 4 weeks, especially since we were 2nd in the leg and were joint 1st over-all in the race.

In hindsight leg 2 was the most physical and challenging due to variable wind which was around 18-26 knots.This prompted continous sail changes from the yankee 1 to the 3. Unfortunately we didn't record the total number of sail changes, though I'm sure if we went through the log book, we would get a pretty close number, I suspect it was over 100.

Here are a few photos that capture the beauty of the South Island.

LA view of Hollywood

This photograph was taken with my new Nikon D80 DSLR. The detailed guide book tells you how to do stuff, though I have yet to understand what the stuff is !!!

I decided to purchase the Nikon D80 after seeing the National Geography article www.stunningnikon.com/dslr and reading the reviews on www.kenrockwell.com/tech.htm
& www.dpreview.com

I also downloaded the interaction learning suite 123di www.123di.com

I purchased the camera from a www.adorama.com
I also purchased a 5 million dollar home Crumpler camera bag from www.cravedweasel.com

The world according to Microsoft

Believe it or not, I have managed to survive in a world outside of Microsoft. yes my desktop has been Windows and I use Office, but most of applications I managed or developed where hosted on Unix/Oracle. Therefore I managed to stay away from Visual Basic, C++, .NET and SQL servers. Alas that is all about to change. I'm starting down a new path, a path that those in the open source arena would say is the path of the dark side.

I've download the VB and SQL server express editions and so far their online video lessons seem OK. Downside is the time needed to review each video and the gazillion books on the subject are enough to make my eyes water over.

Hopefully the express editions will introduce me slowly and effectively to these new programming languages and applications. Will keep you posted

Global Challenge BP Explorer website

With the demise of Challenge Business, the organization that ran the Global Challenge round the world yacht race, I have taken on the task of publishing the daily logs, photos and videos of my follow crew members on BP Explorer.

It was a wonderful year and its essence should be captured forever.
The blog site is http://globalchallenge2004.blogspot.com with links to videos on youtube and photos on flickr.com.

I hope I'm successful in capturing this great event. There is truely a lot of material around it. It is hard to believe that 2 years ago we were half way around the world in Wellington,New Zealand. The blog captures the build up and the actual event. It was a wonderful experience that for me feels like it was only yesterday.
enjoy !!!

Hopefully within the next few months I will receive the 32 hours of onboard footage and start the task of editing it and showing some unseen material.

You have to realise that 1/2 the crew didn't seen the other half for most of the actually onboard racing, so the videos may surprise even the crew.

cheers
John

Kiva.org

Here is a link to a great San Francisco based non-profit organization. This startup is located three blocks from my home. It is truely amazing that with today's technology that we can see where and to whom our money goes, check it out !! you can lend a small amount to people who are trying to make better lives for themselves.

Please lend/donate, every little bit counts

John

First Blog

Hi all,

OK I live in San Francisco and I'm a techie. Surprising this is my first blog. A couple of months ago I decided to build a Linux server on SUSE 10.1 with the plan to host my photo gallery. At the time I also looked into Blogging software. I build the website using Nuke-PHP and installed PHP5, mysql, Nuke-PHP and gallery2 successfully.

Unfortunately last week a virus pretty much destoryed the Linux server.

With that I decided to host my photo gallery on flickr.com and paid the annual $25 fee for unlimited files/bandwidth etc. Since I use gmail as my primary email account, I decided to use Blogger, event hough I'm a yahoo shareholder, Yahoo360 just doesn't seem as easy to use as blogger.

As I build out my photo album on flickr.com, I will post blogs with links to my photos past, present and future. I'm very excited to share my adventures with you.

Let me introduce to my muse...Jen. The greatest adventure lies ahead with you !!!



all the best
John