Category: art & photography

富良野と旭岳 (Furano and Asahidake)

Post author By Aaron Hoffmann
Post date 14 January, 2013

Both famous Hokkaido locations for different reasons, this was an awesome weekend trip. Plenty of dessert and other good food, relaxing twilight hot springs, and some really incredible views. I’m not sure I could choose any one thing as the best.. it was all incredible.

Enjoy a few photos and “my first short film”, which is really just something I shot on the gondola ride down the mountain, and then swapped in some elegant music. In fact the scenery is majestic, the music elegant; the only thing out of place in that equation was me, in a U2 t-shirt, jeans, and mountaintop, wind-swept hair.

Roadside setting sun

The billowing summit

Autumnal flower field

Gondola panorama

Summit panorama

Warm and cool colors

Incredible dessert

Moody countryside

More moody countryside

Hokkaido from the top

Breaking light

Tags Furano, gondola, Hokkaido, ice cream, Japan, melon, mountains, ropeway, soft serve

art & photography Travel

旭山動物園 (Mt. Asahi Zoo)

Post author By Aaron Hoffmann
Post date 29 December, 2012

ã‚µãƒ¼ãƒ“ã‚¹ã‚¨ãƒªã‚¢ (rest stop, lit. “service area”)

ã‚·ãƒã‚¯ãƒžï¼(lit. “white bear”)

Fierce Animal House: this way

encounter

too focused to make eye contact with me

under the sea pt 1

under the sea pt 2

under the sea pt 3

sudden, heavy snowfall

Asahiyama Zoo main building

I took a three hour trip to a pretty famous zoo yesterday. While many of the more exotic exhibits seemed closed or at least temporarily moved from the outdoors areas for the rather harsh wintertime, I was able to sneak a few really nice photos.

Tags Asahiyama, Hokkaido, Japan, lion, penguin, polar bear, tiger, winter, zoo

art & photography everyday minutae

Apple curry

Post author By Aaron Hoffmann
Post date 11 August, 2010

My Macbook Pro lost its face Sunday. Actually, the screen and video output decided it didn’t want to display anything anymore, just its slate black face. Turns out my particular model was given a GPU/video card susceptible to failure, and this one’s time finally came. Luckily, due to its widespread occurrence, Apple and graphics manufacturer, Nvidia, teamed up to offer a free repair service to replace defective units with a revised chipset that supposedly corrects its predecessor’s shortcomings. After two days of intense troubleshooting and backing up of nearly 200GB of data, I had an appointment with one of the “geniuses” at the local Apple Store in San Francisco to help diagnose the issue, which turned out to fall squarely within the recalled GPU program’s boundaries, making me eligible for a free repair. While I’m without my modern computing luxuries for 3-5 days, at least I can count on other trees in my Macintosh orchard for the interim.

Since the appointment required me to travel over to “the city”, I decided to take advantage of the fact San Francisco has many more and many better food choices than Oakland or Berkeley combined and visit a small Japanese curry shop recommended by a friend. Japanese curry is a different style than what most Americans think of, usually relating to Indian styles…it’s not quite as rich or thick; perfect for my palate. I ordered it extra spicy and they totally delivered; you can probably make out some of the bright orange specks on the dish. I snapped a couple photos and had a lovely time trying to transfer them to my computer from my phone without the built-in bluetooth of my laptop.

Full circle.

art & photography miscellaneous thought of the day

Returning…

Thought of the day: Photoshop giggles: for the pen tool, P on the keyboard.

Pity that posting to my own blog has come to feel more like a chore than when I first started it eight years ago. Of course this site has been around pre-blog for an additional five to six years, but somehow having more streamlined tools like WordPress to ease the process of updating seems to have an inverse psychological effect where I’d rather wait until something big needs to happen or be posted instead of quickly publishing smaller things of less significance.

Speaking of big, it’s been awhile since the site has had a design refresh. I like the direction, but things need a little facelift. Look for that and some other creative work to be posted soon.

In the mean time, check out a couple panoramas from a visit home earlier this summer:

listening to:
Essential Best
Hiroko Yakushimaru

art & photography everyday minutae

What California living is all about

Post author By Aaron Hoffmann
Post date 10 June, 2010

Aside from a sharp decline in the cultural diversity, my new neighbourhood is pretty much perfect. Less expensive than San Francisco proper, safer, greener (vegetation aplenty), cleaner, less crowded, warmer… I could go on, but will save the occasional readers the trouble.

Check out the view from my new bedroom window (click to enlarge):

Polished off the final exam for my third semester of Japanese language last night… ã‚„ã£ãŸï¼

listening to:
Recovery
Eminem

art & photography thought of the day

V-day: I love the ocean

Post author By Aaron Hoffmann
Post date 18 February, 2010

thought of the day: if dung beetles eat faeces, what do they… um… output?

took a little walk to the ocean the afternoon of valentine’s day, and noticed the sunset casting some really wild colours across the western edge of north america, especially as it tries hiding under some thinly laid haze.