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We got a later start this morning. We started out with a trip across the street from where we were staying at the Universal Hilton hotel, to In-and-Out Burger. Double-double Animal style…the only way to get it. After that we opted to skip our previous plans to visit the LA County Museum of Art and the La Brea tar pits to instead go to Universal Studios to better enjoy the beautiful weather that we had.

We did Terminator 2: 3D, very outdated but still pretty entertaining. Also, Simpsons: The Ride, Shrek 4D, and The Mummy: The Ride. Of these, Simpsons was the newest and the best, using a near IMAX size screen and a flight simulator-like chassis to pull you right into the “Krusty Land” experience. And in a close second, The Mummy ride. This is an entirely indoor roller coaster that is short but well worth it…ride it twice if the lines are short.

After that we headed back to West Hollywood to meet up with Joey and Jason. I had to pick up a camera case for me to carry on for my flight back to Atlanta. We all chatted for a bit then Ash and I went to the Burton Outlet, and the Kidrobot store. Ash and I then made our way to Yogurtland which we’re told was recently the hotness in LA’s yogurt eating trend. Entirely self-serve, this yogurt paradise is a great place to stop in and get some refreshing mid-afternoon treats. Pick your cup size, pick your flavors and then toppings, but be careful as you’re paying by the ounce. $0.30/oz at the time.

Later, we had our name on the list for the green room at Jimmy Kimmel Live! After arriving we we’re told that the green room was up to capacity, so we waited outside for a while and checked out the stage that was setup outside for Kanye tonight. After a few minutes we returned to check on the green room. I looked down the alley as xenon headlights were barreling towards us. Two black Escalades on 24′s came to a halt right in front of us. I thought to myself, this has to be Kanye. Security jumped out and cleared the area and then Kanye, who is an arrogant half man, came out with two others in his entourage and entered the theater. We eventually made it in to the green room. They had free drinks, which was really nice.

Kanye’s performance was interesting. He performed “Love Lockdown”…eventually. He ended up doing the song 3 times. Thank goodness this wan’t a live broadcast of the musical part of the show. He blamed the band for screwing up for the most part. I’m not a big fan of the guy to begin with but this was really icing on the cake. He apologized for being un professional and performed 2 extra songs for the crowd. Overall this was a cool experience and was definitely a good show after all that crap.

Ash and I started out on Hollywood Blvd. for some morning Mc D’s. We continued shopping in that area and also East and West Melrose Ave. We met up with some friends at the Grove and got some lunch at the Cheesecake factory there. I know our choice in food isn’t very great…everything we ate pretty much we could easily get here in Atlanta but oh well, maybe next time we’ll research some more.

After that we drove up to the Hollywood Trail to check out the view and escape all the noise of the busling city below. Very romantical. We went back to the hotel after that cleaned up and headed to Universal CityWalk for some more shopping and dinner. We hit this great store called “It’s Sugar,” and I think the total purchase was $40 of candy. We had dinner at Wasabi, a not so good sushi joint at CityWalk. The only good thing was a big bottle of Asahi and also we saw John Stamos eating there as well. The sideburns gave him away.

Ashley and I are engaged!

Details are private…so if you see me, I’ll fill you in.

But I’m very excited to begin a new stage in my relationship with this beautiful girl.

It was a great day!

The championship for the Formula D 2008 season was today. The morning started out trying to setup some interviews for later that night and getting some pre-event interviews out of the way. After that I was let go for the afternoon as I wasn’t technically being paid for any shooting on Saturday. I stuck around and shot some stills of various things going on throughout pit row as well as some of the top 32 drift practice.

In addition to seeing an awesome drift event today, I found time to hit the Hollyridge Trail. A great way to see the Hollywood sign and take some great pics. I was also able to drive by some other great sights like the Disney Music Hall and the Chinese Theater. Both we’re found inadvertently by a simple re-route by my GPS unit…I was simply trying to avoid traffic and ended up seeing some cool stuff.

After my brief tour of LA I picked up some In-and-Out Burger and headed back to the track for the top 16 finals. Vaughn Gittin JR. ended up with the event win while Tanner Foust took home his second series win making him the first back to back series point winner. Oh and Rhys Millen won the coveted? tires.com triple crown title.

We hit up a high end restaurant to wrap up the season’s work on Wrecked Magazine. Denny’s…oh well, it was still fun and good food.

Jayke and I just got to the Radisson Hotel at LAX to stay the night. He has an early flight and I have to pick up Ashley aswell.

K, bed time.

Woke up, had breakfast downstairs in the hotel. It was pretty good. Freshly made waffle’s are yum yums.

We got to the track and I was on my own. Joey left to go pick up Jayke, Wrecked’s sales guy. So I was left to video and tweet (twitter) everything I saw. There we’re a few wrecks during practice. Hiro Sumida, McNamara, Pat Attack, and Bill Sherman all ended up in the wall at one point or another.

Overall the day went well. We headed into Pasadena again to grab dinner and drinks with Joey’s friend Crispin tonight. Then I decided to head back to the hotel for some rest while Joey and Jayke headed to little tokyo for a J-pop concert.

Day #1: I’m still overwhelmed when I see the smog in this city, regardless I’m ecstatic to be here.

We’re staying in Baldwin Park at the Courtyard by Marriott, which is about 5-10min south of Irwindale Speedway where the Formula D championship is being held.

Stay tuned for qualifying tomorrow. It’ll be an early morning with the mandatory media meeting at 9am.

The rest of the day after arriving at LAX included getting stuck in lots of LA traffic, a late lunch at Louise’s Tratoria in Pasadena, a trip down the street to the apple store to get Joey an iPod USB charger cable, Thai dinner with Antonio Alvendia, and now…bed.

I love this town!

Well I received my Nikon D90 about 2 weeks ago now. I’ve had plenty of fun with it so far…and in my opinion, it shoots great quality pictures. I was aware that SanDisk had released a new 30 MB/s edition of their Extreme III SD card to go along with this camera. Well mine arrived yesterday and I thought I’d do a little test to get some real world numbers out of it.

I’ve chosen three SD cards for comparison:

1. SanDisk 4 Gb Extreme III 30 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
2. SanDisk 2 Gb Extreme III 20 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
3. SanDisk 4 Gb SDHC (Class 2) SD card

My test was shooting a simple well lit area of my desk in order to get max fps. All cards were inserted into the D90 then formatted before each test. With the camera set to manual (*Auto-ISO off and Active D-lighting on…I’ll get to that later), Continuous High or CH shutter mode, and JPEG Normal, I proceeded to fire off as many shots as possible before the camera buffer appeared to get full and began to slow down the camera’s ROF (rate of fire).

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My results, though not exact, give you an idea of where the performance lies in this new 30 MB/s card from SanDisk.

1. SanDisk 4 Gb Extreme III 30 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
Approx. 90-95 shots at 4.5fps (after that it slowed to about 3.5-4fps)

2. SanDisk 2 Gb Extreme III 20 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
Approx. 50 shots at 4.5fps (after that it slowed down to a steady 3-3.5fps)

3. SanDisk 4 Gb SDHC (Class 2) SD card
Approx. 15 shots at 4.5fps (after that it slowed down to a about 1.5-2fps)

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The card didn’t offer any kind of speed boost but merely ROF endurance at the camera’s fastest continuous speed.

The card did seem to have a slight quicker rate of review when going through pictures in the playback mode. Also the quick review after you take several continuous shots was quicker too, but nothing amazing. But there is one cool thing, let’s say you’ve shot several of continuous shots like 30-50 for some reason, the live review will keep showing you the latest picture that it has written to the card. It takes a long time to catch up and show the preview of the last in the series. Well if you hit the play button or the shutter half way, the quick review ceases. This allows the writing process to the card to finish as fast as possible. After that, just hit the play button again and you’re able to immediately flip through all of the photos you just shot…instantly. This would be very good for shooting sports, when you might need to check photos quickly then right away begin shooting again. Also, the speed when downloading from the camera to a computer using this new SanDisk Extreme III 30 MB/s SD card is incredibly quick compared to the others. I was able to download 500+ full size jpeg pictures in a 2-3 minutes.

So overall this card has some performance gains over a standard card and the normal Extreme III card in keeping the camera from filling up the buffer.

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(Updated 3-5-09) *Now about the Auto-ISO issue. If Auto-ISO is enabled, and then activated by the camera** this can indirectly inhibit the camera’s ability to buffer. Also these other settings, pulled from the Nikon D90 manual, can cause the same effect…
• ISO is set to H 0.3 or higher
• High ISO NR is on and the ISO is set to 800 or higher
• If long exposure noise reduction is on
• Active D-lighting is on.

Here is the buffer size chart from the Nikon D90 manual…

**Auto-ISO: If the image being metered is going to be underexposed and the shutter speed has to drop below the minimum shutter speed parameter in the ISO sensitivity settings to achieve a proper exposure, only then will the camera force a change in the ISO settings from where you have it set at (i.e. ISO 200) – See below…

With the above settings, only when the camera’s shutter speed drops below 1/30th will the camera adjust the ISO above 200, but it will not exceed 1600.

Here are some night shots with my new D90. I’m very happy with it.