The Syn FISHOUT at Bidwell Ponds

Flyfishing with my kids. neices and nephews is on the top ten list of greatest things to doand our trip to the Wilderness Unlimited Bidwell Ponds was perfect.  Conditions were great for the first ever Wayne and Meng Syn family fishout.  Three words to describe the trip “Party Boat Action”  as wayne and I unhooked fish after fish as our kids schooled us in the art of flyfishing.  Emma, Mia, Mark and Matthew, and Michael will be taking us fishing when we are old.

The Backyard Theater

This summer, the main project was to to add pavers to the front and back yards to make room for a boat.   The pavers in the front yard opened up the driveway and house enterance in a great way.  Also by replacing the lawn in the backyard,  we created a space that I decided to convert into an outdoor theater where we could watch movies, tv and internet on a large projector screen in HD.  Using my old theater equipment,  I built a movable rack that houses the Sony HD projector, the Sat reciever, the htpc, and the BluRay player.   With a nice little fire pit in the center,  and hidden surround sound speakers, the whole system has been created to store away during the wet season without damage.

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The St Mary’s Part II-The Happy Ending

I have died and gone to trout heaven! The Best Dry Fly Fishing I have ever seen. My accomplices, Wayne, Jim Cramer, Mark Won, Papa Jon and Little Jon stayed at the Mountain View Country Inn, an awesome place to rest and eat with accommodations for 10 and free wi-fi not 20 minutes from the St Mary’s in Mountain View Alberta. Phenomenal Hatches of large and small mayflies made the fishing challenging but productive with fish in the 20-23 inch range common. Thanks to the generosity of Authorr\Expert Angler Jim Cramer, I had a chance to use some long furrled leaders on some shy trout and I’m hooked–9 foot furreld section with 8 feet of tippet. Also critical in my opinion–purple and pink comparaduns, clear thingamabobbers (glow in the dark ones will work), small CDC PMDs, Pulsating Caddis (#14), and black puppas. Most Fun Section-Wayne’s Wolrd!
Check out the Videos at my Vimeo Fly Fishing Channel

CALSO 2009

Last week Gina and  I attended CALSO 2009 with our great friends Barry and Graciella Kliger.  Dr Kliger and I attended UC Davis and Northwestern Dental School together and we have kids the same age.   Consequently, our daughters graduated high school with nearly identical records and got accepted and rejected by exactly the same schools.   After futile attempts to convince the girls to attend the old man’s college,  our girls will be attending CAL in the fall.

Good friend must check out the COED bathrooms in the Unit 3 where they put us up for the night. You really dont know someone until you share a bathroom with them in the morning .

Congrats to Mia and Kayla…..GO BEARS!

Every 15 Minutes… Leland High School

Fatalities are declining especially — the 15 percent decrease among underage drunk driving fatalities because of programs like this in High Schools across America.   Recruited by Leland to help edit the Video portion of the two day program,  I was amazed at the year of planning and secrecy that was maintained in order to put this program together.  Mia Syn was selected as the ASB student organizer for this event  which culminated in a two day surprise program on May 23rd 2009.   

My part in the program was to take the video and stills of the program and coordinate and edit a 10 minute video in a 15   hour period with Mia Syn and  Wes Diemling  (hell of a good editor!) to be shown at the Funeral Event the next day.  Filmed by Volunteers from AMS and San Jose Medical Group,  we used an 8 core Mac Pro, and two Mac Pro Laptops for the project working simultaneously.  The most difficult part of the project was importing the 7  hours of 8mm tape into Final Cut which was especially hard since we had 15  hours to finish.  The film was edited overnight in sections by the three of us and compiled an hour before show time  with no sleep.   In the future, using Flash H.264 Video Cameras would be advantageous since we can begin editing immediately without realtime inputing of film.  I donated the Nikon D2 to the program so that they had a good 35mm digital  camera for next years stills.

The Directors Cut of Leland Every 15 Minutes 2009

Every 15 Minutes – Leland High School 2009 from Meng Syn DDS on Vimeo.

Smith Creek Ranch

Uncle Yun proves once again that its better to be lucky than skillfull.  Last weekend, my cousing Dr Keneth Tan and I tried our flyfishing skills out on the trout of Smith Creek Ranch.  Our Group stayed in the lodge near the lake and consisted of Wayne Syn, Yun Syn, Keneth Tan and myself.  Our Guide was Rob Anderson of the Reno Fly Shop who proved to be as good a cook as he is a flyfisherman.  Rob is quite the expert on Peacock Bass fishing in the Amazon and has several specialized fly patterns in the Umpqua Catalog.

State Speech and Debate: 7th place OI

Congratulations to Mia in placing 7th in the State in Oratory Interpretation.  The Tournament tookplace in Culver City April 26, 2009.  Mia made it to the final round in 4th place but final round proved to be very competative and a “air conditioning” incident during her round put her at a disadvantage.   In probably the last Speech and Debate Tournament of her career,  she places 7th out of over 300 statewide contestants. (Thats Mohit with the 2nd place trophy for OI)

Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Nikkor Wide Angle Zoom Lens

So if you had to prioritize the acquisition of a full frame Camera-  the Nikon D700 or one of the best Landscape lenses in the world the Nikon 14-24mm f/2 ED AF-S   or a pro AVCHD camcorder,  which one do you acquire first.   I decided to pull the trigger on the lens and use it on my D300 till I can save for  the D700.   Check out the test shots I took with this lens on the hill behind my house.   They are HDR with Photomatix 3.

What happens in Vegas…

What happened today in Vegas … We shopped in the Mall of Malls–” The Fashion Show” and we found my daughters Prom dress.

New HTPC Projects

Thanks to Frank’s suggestion I recently Hacked an Apple TV with XBMC and Boxee.   I must admit that its and eloquent solution to a higher resolution XBMC but I’m a bit disappointed with the 720 limitations of the Apple TV and no GIGABIT Ethernet.    Here is a machine that I purchased for a great price and modified with a Patirot SSD 32 gig hardrive.  I decided after a few experiments, not to load XBMC and UMBUTU on the machine,  but instead load XP and Media Portal.  I find myself really missing the networking utils, the ripping utils and other “windows’  compression tools so Ive decided to to back to the HTPC instead of the upscaled XBMC.

I love this new box for its built in HDMI out and Digital audio out on the motherboard..  The Wireless keyboard mouse, although kinda cheesy,  works reall great.  Cgheck out http://www.neurostechnology.com/