Another picture of a San Francisco Fire truck, but this time a bit more than the bell alone.
This picture was taken as the truck was passing by at rather high speed. Trying to move the camera along with the truck caused the environment to be motion blurred and the firetruck to be rather sharp.
This panorama was assembled from 8 different pictures and shows an overview over San Francisco taken from the end of the Van Ness Avenue, which forms an inlet in the bay where people are allowed to swim with a small beach/recreational area.
The original image was 15256×2237, so I had to resize the picture so it would be easily viewable on screen, click the image to view the larger size.
PS: Who can spot the dragon hidden in the picture? 
The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurant and Market is a chain of seafood restaurants inspired by the 1994 film Forrest Gump. It was launched in 1996 by Viacom Consumer Products (which also owns Paramount Pictures) and is the first theme restaurant inspired by a film.
I’ve never actually went to eat there but by taking a look at their menu, I think this would be heaven for Ine as she is a shrimp freak, she orders shrimp about 75 percent of the time when we visit a restaurant.
With nearly three-quarters the size of France, California accounts for nearly 90 percent of entire American wine production. The Californian wines entered the international stage at the 1976 Judgment of Paris wine competition when Californian wines beat out French wines in both red and white wine categories.
California has over 107 American Viticultural Areas (AVAs), including the well known Napa, Russian River Valley, Rutherford and Sonoma Valley AVAs and about 1200 wineries of which 400 are located north of San Francisco also known as the Wine Country. Therefore, you can find a lot of wine shops around San Francisco. One of those shops is called “Cellar 360” and is located at Ghirardelli Square, which also hosts an annual wine festival called “unCORKED!” in May.
The Boudin Bakery is a bakery situated in San Francisco, California known for its sourdough bread. It was established in 1849 by Isidore Boudin, son of a family of master bakers from Burgundy, France, by blending the sourdough prevalent among miners in the Gold Rush with French techniques. The bakery has locations on Fisherman’s Wharf near San Francisco Bay, Disney’s California Adventure Park, and 30 other cafés scattered throughout California.
This picture of the bell of an SFFD fire truck was taken in one of the 48 fire stations the city has. The SFFD was formed in 1850 and the largest disaster in which the fire department was involved was the 1906 earthquake. The department found itself reduced to fighting the fires of the quake aftermath with axes and shovels, as most of the city’s water mains were broken.
A few weeks after the disaster, Chicago-based photographer George Lawrence saw an opportunity to capture a unique image of the sprawling ruins using his “captive airship,” a hand-built, 49-pound panoramic camera suspended from a series of kites. Lawrence’s foresight earned him a small fortune of $15,000 (more than $300,000 today) selling copies of his achievement. Click the picture to see the enormous detail of the image.
As far as technology goes, San Francisco is probably one of the cities with the most high tech companies in the world (Silicon valley is just a couple of miles away). Transportation wise, the city is still very old school. The cable cars are still operated in the traditional manner with manually operated cars. They are the only moving National Historic Landmarks in the United States and the oldest and largest such system in permanent operation. The picture below shows a still manually operated turntable, the cable car gets on the turntable and the operator rotates the turntable so it faces the new direction.
The modern version of the cable car system is called the People mover. You can find these transportation systems all over the world, for example Vancouver’s SkyTrain, Tomorrowland Transit Authority in Disneyworld, Las Vegas Monorail, …
I had been thinking about redesigning this site for quite a long time. As you can see, the new design is in place (with probably a couple of bugs remaining). The main reason I wanted a new design was because of the pictures not really popping out on a white background and of course because I was tired of the old look. The new design is a joint venture between myself and Ine, as she knows a lot more about colors and styling in general
Comments/remarks on the new layout are welcome, so if you notice any bugs in a specific browser or so, do tell
The picture below is the Niketown store on Union Square, which is the center of the main shopping district in San Francisco. Shops in the vicinity of Union Square include Levi’s, Disney Store, Victoria’s Secret, Macy’s, Virgin Megastore, …
This picture shows the crossing of Powell street with California street. At this point, the “California Street Line” and the “Powell Street Line” of the San Francisco cable car system cross each other.
The Powell Street cable passes underneath the California Street cable at the intersection of the two lines, because the California Street line was built first. Therefore, Powell Street cars must “let go” of the cable at a point marked on the pavement, coast across the intersection, and pick up the cable again on the other side. If the cable car has to make a stop after letting go of the cable, passengers have to get off and push the cable car back into position.
The crossing at Powell and California has a manned signal tower (as you can see on the right of the picture), because cable cars coming uphill from the south on Powell or from the east on California cannot see cross traffic until they are almost in the intersection.
Alcatraz Island is a smaller island located in the middle of San Francisco Bay in California, United States. It served as a lighthouse, then a military fortification, then a military prison followed by a federal prison until 1963. The most famous prisoner who served time in Alcatraz is Al Capone, who arrived in 1934 and stayed 4 years and a half.
Most of the people probably know Alcatraz from the movies The Rock(starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage) and Escape from Alcatraz(starring Clint Eastwood). The theme song of the first movie is I think one of the most used songs for tv series. Click the play button under the picture to hear the accompanying theme song.
Yesterday, Jeroen came over... Freddy: Heb ik ook gemerkt, denk eerder dat er iets van lichtstraal de lens moet...
Kris Taeleman | 
