If you read photography sites, you couldn't miss Chase Jarvis' announcment of his The Best Camera trifecta of iPhone app, book and community site. The long and the short of it is that Jarvis has been shooting pics with his iPhone for several months, taking some great shots along the way, making the point that if the iPhone's camera is the one you've got, there's no excuse to miss a shot. He's now got his own iPhone app for taking photos and the community site to back the app up. His upcoming book is filled with his own iPhone shots.

Personally, I think all that is great, and Chase's blog is certainly great reading and plenty inspiring. What I did find kind of offensive is that he's apparently trademarked (or perhaps just applied for a trademark for) the line "the best camera is the one that's with you."

This line has certainly seen a resurgence of use lately (hell, I used it a few posts back), and while that resurgence might be due in part to Chase Jarvis, the line itself has been around awhile--certainly before I'd ever heard of him, anyway. And even if it was something he coined, it just feels wrong when you see it spelled out with the TM right after it. Hopefully the community slaps his hand a bit, he backs off and enjoys the otherwise positive buzz that the apps and his book seem to be otherwise receiving.

Apparently there's an incredible storm going on right now in Sydney that has the whole place covered in red dust, as shown in this Flickr gallery. There are some really amazing shots in there.

Ainsley On Her Tricycle, originally uploaded by Stmpjmpr.

Charles from Passion Trail Bikes is at Interbike (a bike industry trade show) in Vegas right now, and is riding a ton of new bikes and taking pictures along the way. If that kind of thing interests you (and it makes me sad if it doesn’t), you should follow his Flickr Photostream this week. (The bike in the pic is the new Turner DHR with the DW-Link rear suspension. Sweet.)

Pacifica is a beautiful place on the California coast just south of San Francisco. It has a reputation in the Bay Area as always being foggy, but that’s really not the case, at least not all of it. It certainly wasn’t this past Sunday, when most of the Bay Area was pretty hot and a group of us decided to get an early-for-us start on a ride there.

Some of the mountain biking Pacifica is best known for is a steep rocky area with several trails on it: Boy Scout, Mile and Crack. We planned on hitting some of the steep descents, so most of us broke out the heavy gear such as full-face helmets and armor, normally not used by us in the Bay Area.

Getting to the top requires some fairly serious hike-a-bike. One used to have to climb all the way up along the same route that one descends, which I’m sure you can imagine isn’t optimal, with other bikers flying down at near terminal velocity in sections. The locals have built a new set of switchbacks parallel to the descending line which, while it doesn’t keep you completely off the descent, is far better than it used to be. The new trail is really soft and narrow, with lots of freshly cut poison oak encroaching on it, so I’m hoping it gets some use to bed it in and push the vegetation back a bit.

It got pretty hot by the time we reached the top, and I wasn’t feeling too well. “Crack”, the fall line trail that we descended first, is a steep, rocky and sometimes loose affair. One of its challenges is that there’s no warm-up to get accustomed to that type of riding—it just starts at 100% and keeps on going. Those things combined to keep me pretty conservative the first half of the way, which isn’t how this kind of ride should go. I think the next time I go, I’ll plan to stop and session some of the features on Crack and get some extra practice in on this terrain.

Below Crack is Boy Scout, which has a lot of built-up jumps. I don’t really jump much, and although some of our crew have been practicing, a lot of the stuff on Boy Scout is still beyond their skill set. We did play around on the jumps for quite some time, and some local kids were there showing us fogeys how to do it.

The bottom of Boy Scout is a lot of fun. There are some steep drops, railing berms and some g-outs and jumps that are within our skills, and just a ripping good time. Unfortunately, the altitude gained at the start passes by all too quickly on the way down, and I think a lot of the group felt like it wasn’t a lot of return for the effort put it, especially on such a hot day. It was still fun, and I really think sessioning it would be fun.

Here is a link to the pictures, and here is a link to the GPS details.

Man, I rode 75 miles the other day and it felt like I rode a long way. This guy is circumnavigating the globe in about 150 days, which is downright incredible. Taking geotagged pics along the way hits a geek trifecta for me of bikes, photography and GPS. Very cool!

This story, taken at face value, is abominable. I can’t believe that there are too many families who don’t have pictures of their children without clothes on. I certainly have some of Ainsley. In fact, I have one, that I would normally share (but won’t in a post about how someone else got reamed so badly for similar photos) of her taking a bath in her rubber ducky bathtub. It’s adorable and I’m sure it will be a great photo for family memories down the line.

I think it’s amazing that so many people could be involved in a prosecution of something so instinctively normal to parents. Perhaps that means that there was more to this specific case, but it’s still off-putting to me.

It's been a long time since I've uploaded any pics. I've got a bunch more to process too.

Brian shot some video with my helmet cam while up in BC this summer. Here’s one of Credit Line:

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6IzGxghBQEU&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6IzGxghBQEU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

Check out his YouTube channel for more.

Lovely!

I was really surprised to hear that Dollhouse was renewed for a second season. I thought the first had some promise, but didn’t quite get there. And there’s certainly plenty of precedent for Fox killing off sci-fi shows that were better.

But they did renew it, and some of the stuff getting out there sounds pretty good to me. I hope they can pull it together for a great season two.

In the standard open and save dialog boxes in Snow Leopard, press Command-Shift-. to reveal hidden files.

(via Finer Things in Mac)

It seems like everyone has harped on Apple about the lack of MMS support in the iPhone since its inception. Now that the iPhone can do it, everyone’s bitching about AT&T holding it up.

My $0.02: I absolutely could not care less about MMS. If AT&T is spending any resource on this at all that could instead be used instead to give better basic phone coverage (let alone 3 G coverage), I’d be pissed to hear it. I just don’t want anyone’s pictures directed at my phone that badly. Got a good pic? Great. Email it to me or put it on Flickr or something.

I missed the original registration window by a few minutes, but I just got registered for RubyConf after being on the wait list. It’s nice to have it close to home (it’s in San Francisco), instead of having to fly somewhere. I’m looking forward to it—RubyConf is one of the more interesting conferences I’ve attended.

I recognize that I’m a guest, invited to your house, and that there’s a responsibility incumbent upon me to respect the rules of your home. Therefore, when you ask me to remove my shoes at your front door, I’ll do it and not complain. This post is my passive-aggressive way of telling you, since you apparently care enough about my opinions to be reading my blog, that I think that it’s rude to essentially suggest that your floors are more important than the comfort of your guests.

Yes, I’ve seen sites that tell of how much dirt is tracked in on shoes. Yes, I recognize that kids play on floors. No, that doesn’t make me any more comfortable taking my shoes off and putting them back on every time I cross your home’s threshold. And no, I really, really don’t want to wear the slippers you’ve provided in the bucket by the front door.

What do I want to wear? My shoes. You know, the ones I’ve paid a lot of money for. The ones I picked out this morning when I decided what to wear on the occasion of my visit to your home. Did you think I picked the ones that I wore when doing trail work the other day? If so, I promise that’s not ever going to happen, or I’ll volunteer to take them off without you having a rule requiring it of all guests to your home to cover your bases.

We’re friends, so I’m not going to make a bigger issue of this, other than to blog about it. You know, sort of get it off of my chest. And to also say, that when you come to my house, please keep your shoes on. My floors can take it, I can take it and my kid can take it. Wiping them on the provided mat is appreciated, though. :)