Mark Bult Design: San Francisco, CA, Established 1988

Bodega Bay getaway

My darling girlfriend/wife-to-be was good enough to plan a weekend getaway for us last weekend to Bodega Bay and environs.

At the risk of sounding thankless to Velma (which I'm not!), I wrote a somewhat negative review of the place we stayed at, the Bodega Harbor Inn. Not that it'd surprise her, since we agreed that it was a less than stellar accommodation.

That said, I actually had a really fun time the whole weekend (as I usually do when we travel together), went to places I've never been to, took a few photos which I'll post to the photoblog eventually, relaxed and slept a lot, and did some "recreatin' " (if ya know what I mean).

We saw a whale off the coast, standing on a cliff where the wind was whipping so hard you could lean into it. We got the lowdown on Bodega Bay and the other local hamlets from a friendly if talkative woman at the visitors' center. Had a very nice meal at the Blue Water Bistro, watched people making a huge sandcastle, saw dozens of colorful kites on a verrrry windy beach, and had a very quick trip to the UC Davis aquatic research facility that was closing about 10 minutes after we arrived.

On Saturday we drove inland, up the Russian River, to visit Guerneville. It seemed like much less of a cowtown and more of a cool little town once Velma informed me that it's a gay mecca and we finally turned off the main drag (no pun intended) and stumbled across a tiny whole foods grocery located in a house, and a really cool cafe with fantastic food being baked and served up by simply the most masculine gay men I've ever seen. I mean, right outta "Breakback Mountain" territory. We ate lunch there and had so much left over we had it for dinner too!

We took a short but satisfying walk among the redwoods of Armstrong Woods, which was damp and misty and beautiful, the sorrel blanketing nearly every square foot of the ground that wasn't pathway.

Thank you Velma for taking me away! You're the best. I'm gonna keep you ;)

Posted by espd at 1:18 PM | 
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Top 10 reasons why I haven't posted much lately

10. Monkeys ate my brainz.

9. Spending a lot of time redesigning Webshots.

8. If we're gonna get hitched in the fall, we kinda need to plan some stuff.

7. YouTube.

6. High quantities of rain make my language faculties go whoomp.

5. This site.

4. Wheeeee! Icons!

3. Not enough coffee.

2. I got a life. (Yeah, right.)

And the number one reason why I haven't posted much lately.
1. Been spending too much time on lala.com trading CDs.

Posted by espd at 6:08 PM | 
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Apple Boot Camp desktops

In honor of Apple's announcement today that Leopard will allow users to dual-boot OS X and Windows, and the beta release of Boot Camp, I made a couple desktop backgrounds for anyone who'd like them.



Choose your poison [1280 x 1024]
My Mac goes both ways ; ) [1280 x 1024]



Update: Per a request, I've made new versions for 1680 x 1050 (widescreen), including a third variant with smaller icons.

Choose your poison [1680 x 1050]
My Mac goes both ways ; ) [1680 x 1050]
My Mac goes both ways ; ) (smaller) [1680 x 1050]

As an aside, these desktops come up first in Google if you do an image search for Apple Bootcamp :)

Labels: Apple, backgrounds, desktops, Google, Intel, OS X, PC, tech, wallpapers, Windows

Posted by espd at 3:09 PM | 
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Mark's other places on the Interweb

Here's a list of my other places/profiles on the web, in case you want to learn waaaay too much about me in order to win some sort of Mark trivia contest, or y'know, just want to stalk me. Some of these links might actually be interesting to you, although most probably won't be. So I've provided some context/explanation.

Yelp
My reviews of restaurants, bookstores, etc. Yelp is a really great site, and I really need to add more reviews.

Last.fm
My iTunes playlist, updated in realtime over tha Internets from any of my three computers (home, work, laptop).

lala.com
Want any of my CDs? Get 'em for a buck each. After I rip 'em to iTunes, I'm getting rid of CDs using this cool new site (it's currently in beta, so access requires an invitation, or you can go in through this back door for now: http://www.lala.com/invite/pcworld).

Amazon Wish List
If you learned anything of value on my blog and want to show your appreciation, consider gifting something from my wish list.

Flickr photostream
An alternative to my photoblog.

Netflix
My queue usually has around 480 movies in it. Rental queue (RSS), Most recent rentals (RSS).

Consumating
As of this posting, I'm currently ranked a lowly 3506th : ( Of course, you could join and give me a thumbs up! (BTW, I kinda work there.)

Personal DNA
A surprisingly accurate personality profile. Apparently I'm a "considerate architect." Maybe I should've studied architecture after all...

CNET.com profile
Includes a list of my most-wanted tech products. I need to update this. (I kinda work here too.)

Download.com software reviews
I need to add more reviews.

LinkedIn profile
If you use this professional networking site (or want to sign up for free), you can invite me to be your contact.

Technorati profile

CreativeHotlist profile and résumé
I need to update this page, it's been almost two years!

TechSoup profile
If I could just get them to update the contact info, this page might still be worthwhile.

Friendster
It may be lame, but that doesn't keep me from having a page there.

Photoblogs.org profile
Just s few links to some other people's awesome photoblogs. I need to add more bookmarks here eventually.

Webshots member homepage
Completely blank at the moment, but this will fill up soon as I am currently redesigning this fine site and I have to use it to know how well it works (or doesn't work, as the case may be.

Shutterfly public albums
I haven't put any public photos here yet.

Yahoo! 360° blog
I don't use this much; mostly for keeping in contact with people on Yahoo!

Livejournal
I don't post on this Livejournal, I just maintain an account there so I can comment on the LJs of friends such as Ynnej and Yuliya.

IM me
But beware: If I don't know you, you've got less than 10 seconds to explain why I should listen to you before I block your nic.
markbult Yahoo! IM
mMayhemic AIM

Posted by espd at 7:38 PM | 
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Happy April 4th

As I walked in the rain from BART to work this morning, my jaw dropped as I passed a newspaper rack whose headline stated that Tom DeLay had quit. I slmost thought it was a late April Fool's joke. Turns out it's gloriously true.



By the way, if you're wondering where I got an image of the front page of the Chronicle, you might want to check out Newseum.org.

Posted by espd at 6:01 PM | 
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Google housing search beta

Google's got housing search in beta. To find it, go to Google.com and search for "apartment to rent". On the results page, use the form marked "Refine your search for apartment to rent" and you'll get a map like the picture above.

Posted by espd at 3:11 PM | 
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