I was in Japan last week. Great trip, lots of fun, took tons of pictures, and more pictures are still to come on Flickr. Here’s one to tide you over for the moment:

Also, my employer, Skytap, came out of stealth two weeks ago with the announcement of our first product: Skytap Virtual Lab. More on this soon.

I’ll have much more to say this week than I have in a while. I hate these self-imposed quiet periods In other news, I attended the rockin’ 43rd LD’s caucuses, which was an absolute madhouse (but in a good way). I also finally got my hair cut today, which is critical due to my impending vacation to Japan in six (and counting) days. I also had a occasion to take more pictures today, of which I saved three. Less lame stuff coming soon, I promise.

Tycho from Penny Arcade regarding Sakuracon:

I’m fairly certain that a thirty-two year old man watching teens dressed as supernatural maids caper and gambol is not legal.

Meanwhile, I imbibed various and sundry liquids with some friends over the weekend on a houseboat on the edge of Seattle’s Lake Union, and had the good fortune to take this picture of portions of the Seattle skyline from an unusual angle:

I’ve been a bad blogger lately, but I’ve made up for it by getting out and taking lots of photos. You can check out all of my favorites on Flickr, including Cells, which is featured below:

Want to buy a print? Let me know.

There’s an article on the NYT website today about Popfly:

Mr. Montgomery was intrigued by the phenomenon of 13-year-olds who were “tricking out” their MySpace pages with “digital bling.” They didn’t realize it, but by cutting and pasting snippets of code together, they were programming, he said.

Here are my guesses for tomorrow morning’s Stevenote:

1. iPhone and iPod sales figures have surpassed the Street’s expectations.
2. Mac sales figures have surpassed the Street’s expectations.
3. 16GB iPhone
4. iPhone SDK
5. Apple TV 2.0 and iTunes movie rentals
6. No mention of 10.6 outside of “we’re working on it.”
7. Ultra-portable MacBook
8. Option for built-in 3G wireless data on the ultra-portable and Pro lines
9. Steve reveals he’s actually Cthulu, and that Eric Schmidt’s really Yog-Sothoth.
10. iPhone gets new/upgraded apps, including Google Maps with some sense of location awareness

I took a photo of part of the Seattle skyline last Saturday night that I am incredibly proud of. I know there are a number of improvements I can make to subsequent reshoots, and I hope to do so if there weather permits this weekend. It’s posted on Flickr, and you can view a thumbnail of it down below. Feel free to visit Flickr for the full-sized original, available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license.

I’m building a little one-off Mac OS X application for uploading photos to my website, and needed to add a few icons to it. Here are a few very high-quality resources I’ve found. There are actually some really nice, free icons out there for Mac developers.

DevIcons by Matt Ball

Kombine Free Icons

I’ve become something of a photography whore over the past few months. It started with a Digital SLR, and has moved to horribly expensive lenses, a burning desire to spend far too much money on lighting equipment, and an unholy fascination with framing everything I see.

In any case, some of my friends and family believe that my photos are actually pretty decent and urged me to put a few of them up for sale. Want to buy a print? You can check them out in my hastily constructed gallery, and buy them directly from Digibug.

One year ago today, I posted a list of predictions for 2007. Let’s see how I did:

1. Apple will release a new UI with Mac OS X 10.5 that is reminiscent of iTunes 7, and I will spend the rest of the year slagging it. - Thankfully, no. Apple did extend the god-awful iTunes 7 look and feel to iPhoto and the other iLife apps, but Mac OS X 10.5 was spared.
2. The word “innovative” will be used in a sentence with another Microsoft product. - Yes, indeed. In fact, PC World just named Popfly one of their 25 most innovative products of 2007.
3. I will begin offering many more thoughts on Web 2.0 usability and design than I do today. - Yes, but this was kind of a gimme. I didn’t start the year thinking I’d leave Microsoft for a startup, though.
4. Slashdot will become even less relevant, but Digg may not necessarily gain a greater readership for it. In fact, I think that 2007 will show that Digg has peaked. For Slashdot, I think we will find that its Alexa rating (where lower == better) has gone from 228 to something above 300. - Oh yes, I was indeed right on Slashdot. It also looks like Digg has at least flattened, if not peaked.
5. PodTech.net will change its name to something a little more aspirational and less asinine. - Tragically, no. However Scoble did announce he’s leaving, and it looks like the company is drawing it’s last breath. Half point.
6. Apple will release an iPhone, the journos will go nuts for it, and people who actually need their mobile phones for business will yawn and go back to their Blackberries. - Yep, pretty much. I still bought one.
7. Drunkenbatman will actually post something to his blog. It may or may not crash your browser. - He did. I didn’t expect it to be about punching someone in the face, though.
8. Either Final Fantasy XIII or Metal Gear Solid 4 will be announced for the Xbox 360. Not yet, though Assassin’s Creed shipped for 360, and Devil May Cry 4 is coming out for the 360. Half point.

6 points out of 8. Not bad.

Here’s 2008:

1. Digg will be sold and the legions of crazy fans will abandon the site, making the $100,000,000+ investment essentially worthless.
2. Windows 7 Beta 1 will ship, and people will actually be excited about it. Meanwhile, Office 14 is unveiled and greeted by yawns.
3. Apple hits $225 a share after Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote when Steve announces that Apple’s iPhone shipment volume is outstripping analyst projections, the iPod had another banner Christmas, and that Mac market share continues to climb. Apple closes out 2008 above 10% market share.
4. Apple releases another dud product as bad as the iPod Hi-Fi.
5. The rate of VC funding begins declining.
6. Facebook has another serious privacy gaffe. Brandee Barker and Zuck are unavailable for comment for several days.
7. TalkingPointsMemo takes down a prominent Republican senator.
8. Hillary vs. Mike. No, not really ;-). But an Arkansas grudge match would be amusing.
9. John Edwards and Mike Huckabee take Iowa.
10. Hillary Clinton and John McCain take New Hampshire. For more on this, take a look at ARG’s stats on New Hampshire: Mitt Romney leads John McCain 30% to 28% among men, while McCain leads Romney 33% to 31% among women. McCain leads Romney 44% to 19% among undeclared (independent) voters. NH allows unaffiliated voters to take part in their primary election.
11. Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee take South Carolina.
12. Hillary gets the nomination, but the process is bloody and easily drags out to Super Tuesday as Clinton, Edwards and Obama all take early states. Clinton selects Bill Richardson as her running mate.
13. The Republican nomination process gets uglier. Huckabee’s non-existent ground operations in Super Tuesday states, and the vitriol spewed forth by conservative commentators starts costing him some of the momentum he built up in the lead-up to Iowa. Giuliani easily takes the states that generally go blue (New Jersey, California, etc.). Florida is painful: Giuliani ends up taking it, but by a far smaller margin than originally appreciated.
14. I have no idea who the Republican nominee will be, but the VP nominee is almost certainly Huckabee.