Breakfast

My ‘ma was able to procure some wild Gypsy Mushrooms. They were delightfully aromatic when mixed with sauteed onions over my morning eggs.

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Digging These…

Recent looks from The Sartorialist:

Friday Evening

Mini Burgers (10/10, $3.00) with BBQ sauce and sautéed onions, Satellite Lounge, 1118 E Pike Street
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Ceiling detail at Del Rey, 2332 1st Avenue

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Meydenbauer Nightshot

The Meydenbauer Yacht club right after sunset, with some boats moored in the marina at right.

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Treasury Bills

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Image at Flickr.

Ladybug

I went to The Root Connection (a farm in Woodinville, WA) with my sister and her fiance and captured this little insect amongst the wildflowers:

Postcards from Greece

Here are a few photos from my trip in Greece from last month:

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Bellevue Waterfront

Could you imagine downtown Bellevue with a proper waterfront, complete with restaurants and a boardwalk?

Here’s a glimpse:

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The Bellevue Waterfront - Flickr

You Decide

Are these kids from Keratsini young alcoholics, or young recyclers?

Mini Bears Roam Greece

We ran into this little animal inside the Starbucks in Varkiza:

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Unbelievable Wealth

I thought London was wealthy — here in Athens, it’s out of control!  Last night, we went to a nightclub called Island with Patrick and Pavlos to celebrate the American College of Greece’s commencement, and the parking lot consisted of a Ferrari F430 Spyder, a Ferrari 599, a Porsche Turbo, an Audi R8, an Aston Martin DB V8, a BMW M6, various Range Rovers, Lotuses; the list goes on.  I’ve never seen any parking lot quite like it (though I imagine car meetups in Dubai would blow this out of the water!)

Here are the comparatively humble shots of London’s supercars from our visit last week:

Seattle Photoroll

Sometimes, living in a place makes one oblivious to the beauty that surrounds them — I tried to forget about that and take some shots of a beautiful Seattle day this last week:

Chile’s Chaitén Volcano: Electric Storm

Via National Geographic.

Bandon Dunes Photoroll

Playing Pacific Dunes, one of the top courses in North America:

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Happy Valentine’s Day

 Thanks to Washington Mutual for lighting Seattle up properly.

View From The Denver Art Museum

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What do you see here?

A satellite photo of a vineyard? Green algae on a slide? Keep guessing. To zoom to the original and gain some perspective, click on the image.

Got Some New Toys…

I’ve been reviewing these for the past week or so. Keep your eyes peeled for the written and video reviews.

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Tallest (and Shortest) Dogs

Via The Daily Mail.

Venture Spotlight: Picnik

One of the best ways to support your local entrepreneurship community (and venture capital community) is by using their services if they’re useful. One of the most promising Seattle-based ventures is Picnik.

Picnik is an AJAX/Flash in-browser photo editor, and, though it isn’t as powerful as Adobe Photoshop, it’s arguably much simpler and convenient, especially for non-professionals. It’s got a beautiful interface and it integrates with Flickr/Facebook/Picasa/Photobucket/Webshots albums for simplicity. Flickr has actually chosen Picnik to be its sole image editing tool.

The basic tools I tried got the exact result I wanted, and I was able to export into any common image format. Picnik hopes to make money by charging $24.95/year for its Picnik Premium service, which adds more fonts, editing tools, shapes, and effects to the basic tool. Considering that Picnik doesn’t require any software downloads, is easy to use and is well integrated with people’s photo storage partners, Picnik will probably do quite well if they can continue to advance their offering and define themselves as the premier in-browser image editing solution. One of their only competitors to date is Berkeley, California-based FotoFlexer, which also has a great in-browser editing suite and a healthy number of users.

Picnik is self funded to date, but may be open to taking on some money in a venture round at some point, as some journalists have noted.

Pacific Northwest Ballet: All Balanchine

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Last night, I took a date to see PNB’s All Balanchine, which featured music from Vivaldi, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky with choreography by the infamous George Balanchine, one of the founders of Amerian ballet. Before the show, we went out to a new Belltown favorite, Tavolàta.

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We had handmade mozzarella with red peppers in a striking artichoke sauce, and finished with a plate of fettuccine that came with onions and bacon. Both were mindblowing; kudos to my date for forcing me to try the mozzarella, I would’ve never thought of ordering it and it turned out to be remarkable. Overall, our meal at Tavolàta was fantastic. ****.

City of Angels Photoroll

Straight Outta Malibu

We met up with a friend of ours in Santa Monica, who was kind enough to show us around the 3rd St. Promenade, the beach, and the pier. Pasteur wouldn’t exactly recommend swimming in Santa Monica, so we headed to Malibu Lagoon to take a dip in the sea there.

Gotham Photoroll

Due to the fact that my sister lives and works in Midtown Manhattan, she never does any touristy things. I decided to change that by dragging her to Times Square and to the top of the Empire State Building, where we were able to immortalize the moment with these photos. Luckily, the Observation Deck on the 86 Floor was equipped with a strong fence that acts perfectly as a suicide-prevention device tripod.

Apple Store - 5th Avenue at 59th St.

The Biggest Apple Store in the World (not to mention in the Big Apple) juts out of the plaza in front of Bergdorf Goodman on 5th. I had to go to the Genius Bar to get a power adapter because European voltage destroyed it. Apple gave me the adapter for free with no questions asked, even though Europe destroyed it. Thank god for AppleCare.

Fist Fulla Ferraris

I took this photo a week ago in Monaco, and the memories of being surrounded by Ferraris are still strong in my mind. I’m heading to Monaco for dinner tonight. I went to the beach in Antibes and Cannes earlier-it was beautiful, merci a dieu. The weather report said it would rain today.

Wakeboarding On The Open Sea

I didn’t know if it would be too choppy out there yesterday…in the end I’d only fallen once due to another boat’s wake. The other times were due to me attempting to spin…I didn’t land any of those. Cheers to Mohammad for taking the photo.

All This Sun Is Getting To Me

We’ve seen some pretty warm weather in St. Barths. I’m finally starting to work into a little tan. Flying to Nice tomorrow (albeit via San Juan, Newark, and London). Hopefully I’ll make all my connections.

Fearless Cliff Dog

Link to Flickr photo.

Christina took me on a hike to a peak that looks out over North Bend, Washington, and looks across to Mount Si. We ran into this fearless dog on the cliff lookout up top.

Dicen que viven en la isla, pero de la fantasía

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Puerto Rico will always keep me coming back. Took this shot today at Seven Seas Beach, Fajardo, Borinquen.