The city of Menlo Park sent out a public notice this week announcing that the hours of the Downtown Block parties are changing and in that announcement, I derived the dates for the Menlo Park Summer Concert Series in Fremont Park.

The Menlo Park Downtown Block Parties usually mark the start and end of the Summer Concert Series, where they shut down Santa Cruz Ave going through downtown and really break it out for the night.

This year, the party hours are being extended so that now the Downtown Block Party will start at 3p.m. and go to 11p.m..

The dates of the block party, which earmark the first and last weeks of the Summer Concert Series are Wednesday, June 20, 2012 & Wednesday, August 15th, 2012.

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In Other News!

The Menlo Park Summer Concert Series will be running from 6/20/12 to 8/15/12!

At the moment, the Menlo Park Chamber of Commerce website nor the website of the ‘City of Menlo Park’ have any further definitive details beyond the dates noted.

“Summer Concert Series
Join us from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. the last Wednesday of June through mid August at Fremont Park to listen to some of the best local groups. The series features a variety of musical styles from Jazz to Country to hits of today and yesterday. Bring your picnic blanket and dinner, and of course there is always room up front for dancers of all ages.”

As I find out more, I’ll keep you up to date here!

Here’s an outline of the dates (Updated 5-9-12 with Band Names!)

June 20: Block Party & Big Cat & The Hipnotics (Blues)

June 27: The Hot Rods (Early Rock and Roll)

July 4: Hmm.. mayhaps there be no party on this fine night of National celebration!

July 11: Mark Russo and The Classy Cats  (Swing)

July 18: Dream Posse (Rockin’ Country)

-July 21-22:

26th Annual Connoisseur’s Marketplace  (A two-day art & wine festival on Santa Cruz Avenue features a juried art show with 200 west coast artists and craftspeople, a chefs’ demonstration pavilion, gourmet cuisine, wines and microbrews, a kids’ fun zone, and non-stop entertainment.)

July 25: Pat Wilder & Serious Business (Blues)

August 1: The Touch of Class Band ( Old School R&B)

August 8: TinMan (Classic Rock)

August 15: Block Party & The Sun Kings (Beatles Tribute)

-Bruce

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[ menloparkchamber

 ; menlopark.org ]

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For quite some time I was trying to catch my cats yawning but have not been so lucky to have the right timing.  (Caveat:  I’m talking about using my smartphone’s installed camera.  You know the ones, you hit click, the camera thinks about it for a second… the screen acts like it’s taking the picture, then the whatever was happening a second after that is what shows up.)

Well yesterday I was going to get some nice outdoor portraits of Willow and as usual, the moment I whip out the camera, she tends to move, change postures or something.  At one point, she decided she was tired of my “imaging” of her royal highness, and to evidence her exhausted patience, decided to yawn while I was snapping the pic.

HA!  Turned out to be perfect timing actually and I finally got my yawning cat picture!  So now the fun begins…  what caption should we give her?

Me, I suggest thinking the Tarzan jungle cry…  but any other ideas would be most entertained!

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The other day I encountered a scene so sad and heart-wrenching that it put to shame any emotionally charged scene I’d ever see in any movie or TV show.

The other day I had taken my ancient one (my cat) to the vet for a check-up.  Yes, she lives, though she’s deaf.  (No, she is really deaf and it’s not actively ignoring me.)  But while I was waiting for our appointment, an exam room door open and out burst the absolute saddest scene I’ve ever seen on the planet as it’s never easy to lose a beloved pet.

First the father came out and he looked distressed, but then his young son came out and he was crying but trying to put on a brave face.

After the men, two young daughters came away from the exam room, one staggering from spot to spot, leaning on the wall and a little one, rushing to the exit, hoping to not be seen crying.

Mom came after everyone else had left and she was no better off.

I just witnessed the unplanned passing of a much beloved family member and unlike some scenes I’ve seen before at the veterinary office where some of the family is devastated, the entire family was devastated by this sad loss.

It was so heart-wrenching that some of us in the waiting room were fighting back our own tears of empathy for these poor souls and they struggle to accept whatever it was that just took their beloved family friend from their lives.

To to the nameless family from Sunday, all of our hearts go out to you and may your little one be chasing butterflies or heaven squirrels through the fields in happiness…

-Bruce

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The other day a friend emailed me some images of underwater dog photos that were absolutely wonderful.  They were moments captured in time when different dogs were jumping into water, chasing balls.

The photos are property of photographer Seth Casteel, who is based out of Los Angeles & Chicago.

He has a talent of getting pictures of pets in candid looking moments.  In the below photos, he’s captured some dogs jumping in water after a ball.

Check out a blurb from his ‘About’ page:

“Award-winning photographer Seth Casteel has been featured on GOOD MORNING AMERICA, EXTRA, CNN WORLD REPORT, THE TODAY SHOW, JEOPARDY! and in TIME Magazine. As one of the most published pet photographers in the world, his work can be seen in hundreds of magazines, calendars, posters, books and TV shows. Seth has also had the privilege of working with and photographing a variety of celebrities including Cesar Millan, Ellen DeGeneres, Amy Smart, Denise Richards, Perez Hilton, the cast of TWILIGHT and the cast of GLEE.”

The photos below are frozen in such moments that it looks like good old fashioned monster stills from the genre films I we like to talk about here on BruSimm.

Check out these two sample stills I snagged and after checking these two pics out, you can check out Casteel’s LitteFriendsPhoto Facebook page or his website of the same name.

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Pet Peeve:  Have you ever noticed people that are walking around with their cell phone and they have an ear-bud plugged into the phone.  You know the kind that has a microphone in the middle of the line about a foot or less away from your mouth.

When those “rocket” scientists design things like the sound attenuation and reception of noise for the little microphones that are attached to the ear-bud line.  And then, through the magic of engineering, they place this little marvel of technology on the line, in the optimal location on the line so that the little microphone, a marvel of science and technology, can actually here your voice, filter out the background sounds and transmit your voice into the cell phone and to the other end.

So my pet peeve, or maybe my curiosity, is why in the bloody heck do people have to hold the little little microphone up to their lips when they talk into it?  I mean, it is designed to be hands-free and the users are sort of negating the entire purpose of the little gadget.

I can only imagine that they hold their blue tooth ear pieces to their mouth then move them to their ear to listen to the person on the other end of the line.

And that’s my nit for the day.  It’s more of a curious observation… Today I came out of the store and watched a woman using her ear- bud as described, all the while, stepping out into the parking lot and not looking about to avoid getting hit by a car.

Duh.  Double duh actually.

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Do you think that using Twitter hashtags helps your tweets be found, or do you think that they are becoming a waste of time and effort?  I’m leaning towards the latter as I’m noticing things like the term #nascar is no longer needed, as NASCAR itself will do just fine when it comes to trending topics. (As one example.)

During the Super Bowl I was trying to figure out the best hashtag to use and found out just how ill-defined the use of Twitter hashtags are.  No one controls them so there’s no centralized focus.  Then I started wondering just how useful are hashtags if there’s as many different hashtag as there are Twitter users for the same subject?

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Twitter hashtags are how people mark their tweets sent out on Twitter.  It’s a sort of keyword system that seems to stem from a blogger’s mentality to earmark what a tweet is about.

Initially, hashtags were used as a search function aid.  But they’re slowly losing any real meaning, for the most part.  For example, if I write that my “car exploded when starting it,” and append my tweet with a #fail, seems, well, like stating the obvious.

Sure, the tags can be useful.  When a TV show puts their hashtag up on the screen when the show is on, at least that solidifies all the users use of a common tag.  Or when a business might suggest their name as a hashtag, so be it.

But when left to their own devices, hashtag usefulness is wasted on the medium because so many make them up as they go along.  Or so it would seem.

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Examples of Wasted Hashtags

During the Super Bowl I caught an interesting set of patterns.  Locally in the Bay Area, there were no Super Bowl related trends.  Nationally, the Super Bowl related trends were action or person-specific.  Meaning, the term Super Bowl never showed up on Twitters trending screen.  Instead, terms like “Touch Down,” “4th down,” “Madonna,” “Manning,” “halftime” and what not were the actual trending subjects.  (Take note, that I did not put the ‘#’ in front of those trends.)

I myself was tweeting about the over-hyped Super Bowl TV ads and I was trying to figure out the best hashtag to use.  I saw #superbowlads, #superbowlcommercials, #superbowltvads and a slew of other kinds of hashes being used by my fellow twits.

But like I pointed out earlier, locally, there was nothing and nationally, the trends were event or name specific.  It wasn’t until you looked at Worldwide trends that a Twitter user could have deduced that THE hashtag to use to highlight their 140 character opinion on the $7 million a minute TV ads was #SBAds.  Yep… that was the trending tag, worldwide, and it seemed that the world was more interested than here locally, or on the national level.

But did you know…

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You Don’t Need Hashtags in Twitter!

I’m not sure if you’ve been following along or not, but Twitter has evolved a bit.  So much so that they’ve been able to trend away from using hashtag terms as actualy trending subjects.

I was tracking the trends on Twitter on three different levels during the last half of the Super Bowl and in all cases, amongst the top trending patterns, only 2 out of any 10 trends had a hashtag in front of it.

Check out what’s trending right now, while I’m writing this:

Here in the Bay Area:

#JohnCarter (Promoted)
#HowToSurviveAHorrorMovie
Clint Eastwood
Bob Marley
Super Bowl
MPH
The U
Madonna’s
Stoudemire
Tom Coughlin

In the United States:

#JohnCarter (Promoted)
#10paulydphrases
#HowToSurviveAHorrorMovie
Happy Birthday Bob Marley
Clint Eastwood
Super Bowl
Madonna’s
Stoudemire
Giselle
MPH

And Worldwide:

#JohnCarter (Promoted)
#10paulydphrases
#OneThing
Happy Birthday Bob Marley
Proud of Cher Lloyd
My Baby’s Nearly 18
Paul Dacre
Alberto Contador
Robert Nesta Marley
Axl Rose

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As you can see, the trend with hashtags is #fading as Twitter evolves.

I don’t think hashtags will ever go away.  Business entities like movies (see the promoted trend) and TV shows seem to be suggesting hashtags during their broadcasts like when you see #NCIS and what not.  But now-a-days, basic proper English is starting to be used instead of the enforced, one-word looking phrases.

But if you must stick with the old processes, there are sites like http://hashtags.org/ that can help centralize terms.  Which would actually make them more useful.

Psst:  The first message using a hashtag came from Chriss Messina:

“how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?”

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So when you start spouting a Twit for Twitter, or tweet to be more accurate, you may not need to try to come up with hashtags.  But then again… good luck not using them!  Despite my understanding that the ‘#’ is fading, I still join in with a tagged or two tweet.

And we’re not alone… 11% of tweets have hashtags.  But dang people, when you use 50 different tags for the same subject, you’re defeating the purpose of this tool.

Even the inventor of the hashtags has recognized they’re being overused and dilluted and is now suggesting slashtags…  but one man amongst 50 million tweets a day is getting lost in the #noise.  As it would /seem.

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[ gigaom.com: The History of Twitter Hashtags ]

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The Lone Runner and His “Path” of Resistance

This photo was taken from W. San Fernando St, looking N/NW, under the 87, looking along the Guadalupe River.   The angle of the shadows, the spot where I was standing and how the columns on the left lined up caught my attention.

The lone runner coming up the path just seemed like a great image to try and capture.  All runners know what this moment can represent.  The feeling as you soak up your “me time” while challenging yourself to go a wee bit farther or just an tick faster PR.

The moment presented itself and the above photo is, as you can probably tell, as-is, or no post-processing was applied.  It was taken from my Droid X 8.0 MP camera.

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I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, but I’ve been shown something very very cool that looks like, if the tech goes mainstream,  could literally change the world of photographic imagery, or at the least, image mastery and post processing.

It’s called LYTRO or the tech inside what’s called a Light Field Camera. It uses light to distill images into something much more than a regular image, beyond what photographers consider to be RAW images.

This is a new technology that could very well change the field of photography forever. This, I think, is akin to when film was invented to store images and goes beyond the tech of digital imagery that replaced film.  It takes the artist out of the photo taking and puts the artist into the photo post-processor. Or it could remove the artistic experts in the industry all together when the general masses start to get a hold of this tech.

So take a moment and check out this new image technology where, no matter where you click, the image comes into focus at that point.  Obviously these images have all the data necessary to refocus or zoom, no matter where you click, but I think its pretty cool.

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There’s more after the break…

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If you want to know more, check out these links….  lytro.com ; lytro:  picture_gallery

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Want to see something fun?  It’s called a Rube Goldberg Machine or contraption.  You have to have a slight appreciation for the plotting needed to make this kind of puzzle… and as far as I’m concerned, I don’t this this will work with my Kindle.  I mean, I guess it sort of could, but I’m not about that… I can “turn” my own Kindle page…  sort of.

Check this out… it’s a hoot (And thanks to John S. for showing this to me.):

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And for the record, I read more than one page of a newspaper!

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Here’s a creative use of one’s office-space.  (Yep, they have lots of time on their hands!)

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This is music video of sorts…  enjoy!

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On July 7th and 8th of 2012, Avon will once again hold another Walk for Breast Cancer event in San Francisco.

This walk to raise money to fight breast cancer will take the participant from downtown and into the wilds of Marin County as you will be able to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge and down to the Sausalito waterfront.

But don’t be fooled by that pretty outline.  You’ll be getting your exercise to boot because you will also be getting a chance to see for yourself sites like Fisherman’s Wharf, Lombard Street and lots of those wonderfully historic Victorian homes in the city.

Yea, that’s the sales pitch, more or less.  But it’s not just a walk… it’s a weekend because this will be a walk that takes you over 40 miles of territory!  Last year the first day took the walk from San Francisco to Corte Madera.  Then on Sunday, you walked back!

But it’s a good weekend as participants will be doing this to help fight cancer, and in this particular case, breast cancer.

But I’ve been talking up the San Francisco walk because that’s in my neck of the woods.  Avon is sponsoring other walks around the country…

Houston
April 21-22
2012

Washington DC
May 5-6
2012

Boston
May 19-20
2012

Chicago
June 2-3
2012

Rocky Mountains
June 23-24
2012

San Francisco
July 7-8
2012

Santa Barbara
Sept 22-23
2012

New York
Oct 20-21
2012

Charlotte
Oct 27-28
2012

If you’re wondering if these Avon walks have any impact, if you consider that the 2011 walks raised a few bucks:

Houston $1.8M;  Washington DC $5M; Boston $5.2M; Chicago $6.1M; Rocky Mtns $1.9M; SF $4.2M; New York $9.1M and Charlotte $1.7 Million.

That’s nothing to sneeze at and that kind of money helps the fight immensely!

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I always say it only takes the Power of $One.

What I mean by that is to never be afraid or embarrassed to contribute $1 to your favorite cause.  I’ve chosen my fight for personal reasons, as many of you have chosen your focused charities of choice.

So whether it be against cancer, ALS or what have you, never be afraid to send a single dollar along.

My prime example was during a NASCAR race during last October, during Breast Cancer Awareness month, if every single viewer of that race sent a lowly, single dollar to the cause, that would have been a quick $4 million bucks.

So yes, every dollar can count, no matter where you send it.

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Want to learn more?  Head on over to the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer website.

Thank you for coming by.


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