Since school started...

...I dont really have that much time to do anything on the weekdays without skipping class. We work out in the evening, but when i get home i usually try to do homework. Halo Reach isnt helping at all. I beat the game in four hours when i got it, but that was on easy. It took me about 3 days off and on to beat legendary, and the absence of the flood makes it a lot more fun than the other halo games. I never tried playing legendary until reach. When i realized the flood werent in reach, i thought i'd give it a try on legendary. Even though there were no flood, the last level alone took me 4 hours to beat cuz i kept dying.

But enough about the video games. Recently, I did the seven falls again with Maxx. He wanted to do some kind of hike before he had to go back to school so we opted to do the falls over the stairs. At 5:00 in the morning on Sept 11 we set out on the dark road into the falls and although i packed everything i even thought we needed, i forgot a flashlight. I keep one in my car though...but that one died a couple minutes in. We went pretty slow on the manoa falls trail and by the time we got to the falls, the sun had already risen.

HDR pictures

I recently found out about HDR photography, which is high dynamic range photography. It uses a bunch of pictures, some underexposed, one regular exposure, and some overexposed. The result is a cool looking picture that has many details in the lighting.

This is where i learned how to do it and i found out that photoshop doesn't make HDR pictures as well as the photomatix program can. It costs money to get the full version, though.

I also found out that it's possible to edit the pics and make them appear like HDR without taking multiple pictures. It's a good way to make those pictures that you can only get one of-like action pictures-look like HDR.

And i guess i should let everyone know that except for this HDR, the tilt shift and the most recent Haiku stairs post, i never used to edit my photos, so all of my pictures that were posted here before June were straight out of the camera. I used to be too lazy to edit the pictures and i still am, so as much as i can, i'm gonna post unedited pictures on here.

The Mysterious Seven Falls

On my attempts to research the seven falls trail, i couldnt find anything about them on google; only sites that talk about the manoa falls trail and nothing more. After hearing about the falls from Kevin, i wanted to try this trail that's closed off because firemen have supposedly pulled too many bodies of dead hikers out. That's what kevin says.

My alarm rings at 4:45 Thursday morning and awake in a daze to see that Dewey's already up and getting ready. I stay in bed wanting those few more minutes to rest, and just before i fall back asleep Dewey turns the light on. Damn. Can't sleep any longer. It was a good thing he got me up, though, because i wouldn't wanna miss the hike we had planned for that day. Thursday, May 20, 2010 was the day we planned to hike the seven falls with Kevin, the entertaining guard from haiku stairs. Mitsuo was supposed to come along with us, but he didn't get up again, so we left him.

Perry the Chameleon

update: Perry died on 4/25

Dupont: the second time

On saturday, 4/17/10, me and dewey went to hike dupont. It was my second time and his first and we set our new record for that trail. If you'd like a more detailed description of dupont, click here.

This post is just about how surprisingly quick we finished the hike. We partied the night before and went sleep about 2-3 in the morning. I expected to take a while since we took 7.5 hours the last time so i set my alarm for 4:45 and so did he. We actually woke up and left the house around 5:30. It was about a 30-45 minute drive out to mokuleia side and i grabbed parking by waialua high again.

So we walked down the long dirt path again and noticed the sun was beating us this time. Last time, we walked down a pitch black road and got mud caked on our shoes, but that day, we walked down a visible path that was completely dry.

The hike was the same, but we were actually going quicker than we thought. When we got to the top, it was 9:15. When we got to the gate that clearly says "No hiking," it was about 7 so it was a quick 2:15 climb to the top. By the time we were up there, the clouds came in and we couldn't see anything on top of freezing our asses off so we only spent a little time up there, about 30 minutes, and went back down.

At the bottom we hopped back over the gate and i looked at the time - 11:55. Our current record - start at 7:00 and back to the bottom at 12, cutting out the 30 minutes we spent at the top - 4.5 hours to complete the hike. Even with the extra 30 minutes added, that's still a hike that's about 10-11 miles that climbs up to 4000 feet, the highest point on the island, in 5 hours. That time surprised us when we got down because we didn't feel like we were rushing at all. It was a fun hike and i picked lots of strawberry guavas to eat.

And then that night we got invited to a party and of course how can you resist. We went over to kalo and ran the bp table. It was a really eventful weekend.

P.S. - we actually ran into cows this time and there was a bull with a bunch of females with some pretty mean horns. Good thing we never had to run from him.

here it is...

me dewey and chris went skydiving on 3/20/10. it was really fun to do and its like jumping off of spitting caves but 2000 times higher. unless youre certified u have to be strapped to an instructor but its fine cuz they do all the work and u can see the views. and after seeing all that we wanna get certified now.

we went to skydive hawaii down in mokuleia, and we got there around 1 in the afternoon. they gave us a bunch of waivers to sign and then we waited until our turn came. three instructors came over and strapped each of us up and then we walked across a grassy field to get to the runway. one more instructor came along to get videos of us and sell it to us if we wanted it.

Dewey bought the video and i edited it.