Ansel Santosa

A three-legged dog and a Bengal Cat

Ansel Santosa — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 01:33:39 +0000

It’s the beginning of Labor Day weekend, one the of the busiest times at work. I brought my camera to work like I always do but I didn’t expect to actually have time to use it. However, the weather was on my side. It was cold and windy today which scared people off so I ended up being able to take some photos after all.

Part of my managerial duties is to get change for the Lake Calhoun site. Have you ever held $500 in quarters? It’s really heavy…

It must be the beginning of their migration because I’ve been seeing more and more Monarch Butterflies this last week. This one stayed on the beach long enough for me to chase it down.

This Golden Retriever is so fast and nimble that I didn’t even notice its missing one of it’s front legs until it had been playing fetch on our beach for almost 15 minutes.

A couple took their 4-month-old Bengal Cat [who apparently loves the water] Canoeing with them. Bengal Cats are a relatively new hybrid breed: a domestic feline crossed with an Asian Leopard Cat.

Updates updates updates

Ansel Santosa — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:20:24 +0000

First of all as you read this page you may notice that it feels different but since I haven’t posted in a while you probably can’t figure out what it is.

New links/pages in header.
New logo [#ccc to #333 rather than #fff to #000. Myriad Pro was also changed to Helvetica Bold]
Featured photo on homepage. At the moment it will just be one of my black and whites. May be a slideshow in the future.
New links/info in footer.
Dark dotted pattern background and drop-shadow.
Merged blog and website.
New portfolio page.
New Ca

Looks good doesn’t it? Yep. Wanna know why? Because I didn’t really do it. I got the general concepts down but Sarah refined my ideas into something that actually looked presentable. Sad… I’m useless without her.

Other new things include a new phone number which is easier to remember and is also in the Silicon Valley area code [bonus!].

A new phone number means new business cards [see below]. I just ordered them yesterday. They are nicer this time around. Got rid of the cheesy [albeit fun] QR code in favor of a pretty graphic. It’s also two sided and printed on nice 100lb paper.

Random ducks

Ansel Santosa — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:43:35 +0000

Good, now I have your attention. The two words in the title of this post are completely unrelated.

Random thoughts

It’s Sarah’s Birthday on Friday!
I’m starting three new websites this week. One for a therapist, one of an alternative energy group, and one for a construction/restoration company. Two of them are going to be custom WordPress templates. It’s something I’ve never tried before so it should be fun.
I’m really excited to go back to school.
I’m obsessed with Gowalla and Foursquare but don’t have many friends using them. If you have an iOS or Android device, start immediately.
Google Voice integration in Gmail is amazing.
- I’m going to start doing Tech Talk posts again when school starts. I just don’t have enough motivation in the summer for some reason.
I bought a Kindle. It hasn’t shipped yet but I’m really excited for it.

I like ducks

Marriage in Madison

Ansel Santosa — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:35:02 +0000

This past weekend, Sarah and I went to her cousins wedding in Madison. It was relatively small, just over 100 guests, but it, and the rest of the weekend, was very fun. I didn’t take many photos during the ceremony [that's what the professional photographer was for] but here’s what I got.

Click here for captions and more photos.

Photos from Ireland

Ansel Santosa — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:59:44 +0000

Well I’m back from Ireland and I don’t even know where to begin. So I won’t. Seriously. I hope the photos will do the trip justice because I’m not nearly skilled enough to do it with words. I’ve posted 15 here but there are over 60 in my Picasa album. Suffice it to say that I absolutely love it there and if it’s not my favorite place in the world it’s for sure in the top 3.

Remember, tons more photos here.

Final thoughts from Hawaii

Ansel Santosa — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:46:20 +0000

[by thoughts I mean photos]

For our last full day in the sub-tropics, we drove up the east side of the island visiting parks, beaches, and blowholes [rock formation] along the way. Sarah and Nolan also parasailed [Gahhh! Scary...]

Taken with my 50mm 1.8, a 1.2x macro filter, and full set of Kenko extension tubes. Those are grains of sand the shell is sitting on.

See my July 2010 album on Picasa for the rest of my Hawaii photos.

Waikiki sunset

Ansel Santosa — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:09:23 +0000

Another quick photo post from last night. Sarah and I went out to dinner just to two of us which was much harder than you’d think, everything has seafood in it. Including salads. Annoying. After dinner we went to the international market a couple blocks away from the hotel and she picked out a new ring [yay! see below]. We walked back to the hotel along the beach as the sun set. ’twas very nice.

We’ve seen a rainbow almost every day. They’re all over the place because the weather here is kind of crazy. You can have a bright blue sky, an incoming storm, a rainbow, and a beautiful sunset all simultaneously [all the photos on this page were taken within 30 minutes of each other on the same beach]

Photo by Sarah.

We’re going up to the north shore today so expect more photos by tomorrow morning.

Photos from Oahu

Ansel Santosa — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 01:02:42 +0000

Well it’s been three and a half days and needless to say, I’ve taken a lot of pictures. Here are some of the highlights since my last post. In addition, we went snorkeling off the west coast of Oahu. I didn’t take many photos because we were underwater most of the time but there was a professional photographer with an underwater case for his D200. I won’t post his photos because I didn’t take them but if you want to see and you’re friends with Sarah on FB, you can find the album here. The snorkeling trip has definitely been the highlight so far. We got to see dolphins, a couple reefs, and tons of fish. It was beautiful. Today we went to the Honolulu Zoo which was a really crappy zoo but good enough for one visit. All other photos are just from randomly walking around places.

Winner winner mock duck dinner

Ansel Santosa — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:01:19 +0000

Okay. Right off the bat I’m sure you’re wondering why I didn’t say chicken. Well I’m a vegetarian now. Yes, Sarah was of course a contributing factor [thanks for being perfect ♥] but not nearly as much as you probably think. TOK was the beginning. During discussions in Herbert’s fantastic class, I came the the realization that eating meat it wrong. Not for everyone, and certainly not for every animal, but as humans in a first-world country, it is absolutely wrong. The only thing that ever made killing animals okay was for survival [and even that can be a gray area]. That is no longer a factor. Killing animals for food and shelter is no longer a necessity and hasn’t been for thousands of years in the developed world. In fact it is a luxury [a luxury which is subsidized to an absurd degree by our government...]. Since we have other sources of the nutrients we need whether that be plants, synthetic supplements, or genetic engineering, anyone who eats meat today is not only needlessly killing an animal, but also supporting the disgusting practices like factory farming that make it possible.

Unfortunately, like most others, this feeling was so compartmentalized from actually eating meat that it was difficult to stop [yes, they are delicious]. Over the course of post-TOK high school I ate less and less meat but I never made a huge effort. However, when Sarah and I went out west for school, out of cost, convenience, and curiosity I started eating less and less meat until finally this spring, while I was eating tofu teriyaki, I realized that I hadn’t eating any meat for a couple weeks and I just decided that I was done. It’s been about two months and I literally haven’t missed it once. Sure it’s harder to find vegetarian options but I’ve been eating much healthier and I haven’t craved meat a single time. I’m very proud of myself.

Yep, that was abrupt but I couldn’t think of a good segue, sooooo…

Gizmodo has a weekly shooting challenge for photographers. Anything from shadows, to candids, to macro, to bugs. You have 5 days to take such a photo and at the end they choose some featured photos and a winner among the 200-400 submissions. Last week the challenge was, predictably enough, fireworks and as you may have heard for Louie on Facebook or Twitter already, I won! [with the above photo]. I’m in Hawaii with Sarah and family this week so I haven’t been keeping up with blogs like I usually do. I was taking pictures on the beach this morning when Louie called me up to tell me. Needless to say, I was stunned and excited. I was very pleased with the photo but I thought at best I would get a featured spot. Well usually the winners are somewhat contested in the comments but the community seemed happy with mine:

“…the winner totally nailed it! Kudos!”
“The winner was certainly justified. Well done, beautiful photo!”
“Wow! When I finally scrolled to the bottom of the gallery and the winner photo came up, I was stunned! What a fantastic shot.”
“The Winner is definitely deserving. Very very cool.”
“…the winner is well deserved, that photo inspired a bit of awe in me.”
etc… click here for all the comments.

Anyway, sorry if this just sounds like a super self-centered post but I’m really excited about it.

Finally, photos from the first 24 hours in Hawaii:

Click here for captions and more photos.

Faces and Landscapes

Ansel Santosa — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 04:09:32 +0000

“A digital postcard”

Click through for HD.