A quick shot of the sunset over the rocks.
-Ben Hanna
Posted from my iPhone via email
Lizard!
Little lizard guy!
-Ben Hanna
Posted from my iPhone via email
Skull hollow
This is the skull hollow campground I am staying at. No one else in sight!
-Ben Hanna
Posted from my iPhone via email
Critical mass
Through the rumble
-Ben Hanna
Posted from my iPhone via email
Mission murals
There are so many murals in the mission, I figured I should start posting photos of them.
This guy was painting it as we went by. It is his second mural – but I forget his name.
Posted from my iPhone via email
First friday back and iphone
I got back to San Francisco on Saturday night of last week and have been getting settled in for the past week. Our new place is in the mission district of San Francisco, and it is a very active, dynamic part of the city.
We had our first Friday meeting since I have been back and it went well, even if we had some problems with the Internet. Below is a photo of Jim leading the meeting.
I am typing this from my new iPhone 3GS that I picked up this morning. Still getting used to the typing and the interface, but I like it so far. Plus, I can now blog from anywhere and always will have a camera on me!
Panama
Ahh… taste that? A new brand of beer. I’m in Panama!
I left Samara, Costa Rica on a 4:30am bus to San Jose, where I switched to another bus that brought me to the Caribbean town of Puerto Viejo. I spent the night at a hostel called Rockin J’s, which is full of hammocks and tents. I grabbed a tent (with mattress) for $6 and caught up on some CS work before sitting around shooting the shit with some other travelers. I spent Easter in this town, and wasn’t really interested in exploring, plus it had been raining for so long that everything was flooded.
Up early the next morning I jumped onto another local bus that took me to the border. Here I had to sign all the forms, prove to them that I didn’t have swine flu (there have been 28 cases in Panama so far) and they let me walk across the bridge. I had been chatting with some of the girls that were in the same hostel the night before and after some bargining and playing the tourist drivers against the cabbies, we caught a $5 ride to the port. I was headed to Bocas del Toro, an island that is part of an archipelago off the coast of Panama.
45 min later we got to the boat place and hopped on board. A 30 min boat ride and we were there. This place is amazing. Crystal clear water, amazing shore line, and shallow reef filled bays. I am trying to get to Olrick’s island (a German guy who I met at burningman and again in Costa Rica) but was so worn out from travel that i decided to crash at a hostel here in town for the first night. After working out a pick up to the island I went to the beach.
Right now I am waiting for the pick up. Panama time is about the same as Costa Rica time -noon means anytime between noon and 2:00.
Ill post some videos and photos from the island while I am there. He has wifi and is trying to set it up as a remote work location.
-Ben
What’s your desktop look like?
In the mornings I tend to mess around in Photoshop and Illustrator following tutorials online and whatnot to get my brain flowing and to learn some new tricks. Today I messed around and finally organized my desktop.
Click to see it full size.
I don’t actually use icons on the desktop that often as I launch everything from the rocket dock or with shortcuts.
This is Windows Vista with the RocketDock application launcher and a background I made in Photoshop. I just put the icons in the bubbles.
What does your desktop look like?
A brief rundown of Costa Rica so far
I got here on Feb 15th and met Susy at the airport, packed stuff up at our friend Cyril’s house, and headed here to Samara.
There are now eight of us living in a beautiful, very large house that overlooks a horse field then the ocean.
We are:
- 3 developers
- 1 sys-admin
- 1 tech lead/dev/sys-admin
- 1 house manager
- 1 cook
- Me – UI and Design Team lead
Life moves slowly, and it is great. My bathroom is open to the air and a bird lives in the potted tree that sits at the end of my open floor shower. We have made good friends in the town, within the international school, at the bars, and among the local surf shops. Some romances with other people living here have developed, some persist and others ran their course.
We play with fire poi and drink guaro by our pool side in the evenings before we go out, and spend our Sundays lazing on the beach in hammocks among the locals. Surfing is good and fun, and several times a week we make it out on the boards, while some of us do yoga in the mornings or work out in the beach side gym.
The only negative point was last Sunday night, when we suffered a home invasion. At about 3:15am two masked men jumped our front gate and entered our home armed with a knife and a revolver. Our sys-admin was the only person awake at this time, and he was working on the roof alone. Seeing a head look through the window, he got up to see who it was, thinking it was one of us still awake. He turned the corner and was confronted by the two men, who pushed him back, speaking to him in spanish. They put him on his face on the ground and went through his pockets, taking his iPhone. Then they hog tied him (hands and feet tied to each other behind the back) with the extension cords that were on the roof. After taking his laptop and one of the developer’s laptops off the table on the roof and putting them in their bag, they told him to wait five minutes and they left.
He hopped/rolled down the stairs to my room where he pounded on the door, waking me and my roommate up. I got up, untied him, and then we woke up the rest of the house. After a thorough check of the house we established that around $10,000 of electronic equipment had been stolen. Four laptops, two dSLR cameras, two an iPhones and an iPod Touch, along with some other miscellaneous electronic equipment.
Everyone was alright and no permanent damage occurred, but the experience was jarring and we are now working on implementing better security around the house.
Other than that unique experience, everything has been great here in CR. This is Easter week and the whole country goes on a holiday. I will be traveling to the Caribbean side for a long weekend via motorcycle and am really looking forward to it. I have been told it is like going to Jamaica.