I’m still gathering all the pictures from the Portland trip so I can’t send a link to them yet, but I can post links to the short movies I took with my digicam. They’re all .avi. Sizes listed below.

Multnomah Falls - sideways (1436 KB)
Driving across Bridge of the Gods (4119 KB)
Japanese Gardens - Pond and Surroundings (2542 KB)
Japanese Gardens - Rock Garden (4595 KB)
Driving across Morrison Bridge (1755 KB)
Circular panorama of trees at Washington Park (3016 KB)
Bigass redwood (1748 KB)

You can read about the Portland trip here.
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Finished Prague by Arthur Phillips last night. I burned through the first half, slogged through the third quarter, and regained some interest at the ending.

The book lost steam after the halfway point because characters started abruptly disappearing [desertion, marriage, whatever] which, combined with a series of conflicts and goals apparently coming to resolution, made for a vacant second half of the story. The characters themselves were interesting enough to hold my attention, though. There were a few surprises but also a few gimmies.

One thing that bugged me was Phillips’ repeated use of the same observation. He mentions how a character, deep in thought at a cafe, swirls his beverage and stares at the film of liquid left on the mugs’ interior. While this is kind of a cool observation to mention, it’s only cool once.

Oh yeah, and don’t let the book’s title fool you. The story is set in Budapest. The characters only have this nagging feeling that life in Prague is better.

Overall, my favorite part of the book was the writing. The narrator and several of the characters have that wry and biting sense of humor that always puts a smile on my face.

Other reader reviews here and here.