Reflecting Clouds

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Last night my wife and I tried out new HD movie rental feature on AppleTV. Yes, I have AppleTV, I bought the day it was released. Why ? – Mainly to watch video podcasts on TV. There plenty of video podcasts to choose from and some are in HD. And now with Apple movie rentals, AppleTV became my way to watch HD movies since I do not have HD or Blue ray player but I do have HD TV set. HD movie we rented had a pretty good quality. Although some people on various forums claimed that its not as good as real blue ray experience but from my personal experience, the quality is on pair with HD content I’m getting through satellite. I wonder if it would make sense to cancel dish and simply stick with NetFlix, podcasts and Apple movie rentals. Those should cover vast majority of video content this family consumes and will probably be much cheaper. Something to consider when time comes to renew dish contract.

On sunday we hiked down from Skyline to Portola state park. It was sunny day perfect for relaxing stroll down the path. Green trees, fresh air, none on the trail, not too hot, not too cold, great day.

Until, we got lost… I have no idea how that happened. We were on a trail all the time and didn’t see any obvious forks. We were supposed to be passing hiker’s camp ground but I didn’t see it. I had to pull out GPS and discovered that we were about mile and a half south of course from the trail we were supposed to be on. Oh well, cutting through the forest directly was bad idea so we continued on down.

There are many roads in that part of the forest, some names of which do not match names on the map or in GPS map. It was rather confusing area but eventually after few stream crossings we hit “Old Haul Road” which brought us back to Portola’s headquarters and our car shuttle.

This evening we went to the top of Mission Peak to enjoy sunset over the valley. Weather was fairly warm and pleasant. Team of hang gliders was packing in, they come here often to take advantage of good upstream flows. No wild flowers yet and that rattle snake I encountered last time up there was some busy elsewhere too.

We stayed on the top till sunset and took few pictures playing with new camera. Hiked down in darkness under city lights.