Flutterby™! From 2009-09-01 to 2009-09-30

Aha! I've wondered what those bright pink flowers are: They're "naked ladies", or amaryllis belladonna. Inside Sonoma has the scoop on Sonoma's naked ladies.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Via Twitter user revtristy who retweeted it from pourmecoffee:

Cheney makes better sense if you add, "-- , Clarice" to the end of his sentences. "Torture worked, Clarice."

Giggle. Kinda.

[ related topics: Politics Movies moron ]

Charlene's taking an astronomy course at the local junior college. We've also been loaned a Celestron 52255 scope with a Meade Autostar mount, which I haven't been able to get set up yet: I align the scope roughly north/south (with the compass built into the base) turn on the automatic calibration tool, find the first star, and then it always seems to be 90° off from the second star. So I have to figure that out.

But, manually, we've seen Jupiter's moons, looked at Earth's moon a bit, been poking around...

Anyway, I've discovered the cross-platform Stellarium, which provides a sky view, with object search, and has been super handy for "okay, the mount wants me to point the scope at what?", but in helping Charlene understand some of the homework about orbital mechanics, I've thought it'd be nice to have a virtual orrery or astrolabe. So far we've been visualizing with lines drawn on tennis balls, or longitude and latitude slices cut from peaches.

So, anyone got suggestions for a virtual orrery? Looks like there's an Orrery available for Geomview, so I'm installing the latter now. There's the JPL Solar System simulator, but really I'd like something super simple, the planets, their moons, some notion of scale that makes it easy to see earth and moon rotation, and track the sun and planet paths earth-relative or sun-relative.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Astronomy Education ]

A suggested design for cut-rate airplane seats on short hauls. The seats would automatically lift up when empty, like in a movie house. There is some question whether they could be built to current safety standards, like withstanding a 16g shock. Interestingly enough, this designer also did the first-class seats for Virgin Air.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Aviation Real Estate Furniture ]

A Flutterby correspondent who may wish to remain nameless, as this was sent direction to me, brought this to my attention. It appears to have come from Motifake.com, but I'm having trouble finding the original there this seems to be it...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Humor Sexual Culture ]

The other day I posted an item about a rap artiste who forced her label to fulfill its contract and pay for her PhD in Psychology. Alas, the story is too good to be true.

A further investigation by Slate turns up the facts that: 1. Shante' never had a contract with that label, 2. She never attended Cornell, the supposed awarder of her doctorate. 3. Her undergraduate institution reports that she dropped out after only 4 months, 4. The state of New York has no record of her as a registerd psychologist or therapist.

Other then those minor points, I stand behind my story.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Education New York ]

New York Times article pushing AT&T whining that the iPhone is overloading their network. Uh. Yeah. Part of the reason we went with the iPhone is that the terms were easy to understand and there was a fixed price data rate. Now it probably happens that much of our heavy data use of the iPhone is actually on WiFi networks, if only because, as the article notes, the cell network can get unusuably slow, but I guess if AT&T is used to billing $1,310 per megabyte, then introducing an unlimited data plan for $40/month without planning for it could cause problems.

Via /.

[ related topics: broadband iPhone ]

Noted only because I was extremely disappointed that it didn't involve exploding a house with popcorn: Boeing destroyed a target ground vehicle with a laser mounted in a C-130.

Via /..

[ related topics: Aviation Community Real Estate ]

One of our neighbors has been involved in a startup that he's been close-lipped about, but they've taken off the wraps and last night we went to their first open house. The company is pix₂o, and they make LED panel displays, on the scale that you'd use in a stadium or big touring concert show.

They had a 1 square meter roll-up panel (they're built in 1 meter long 6 pixel high bars, one of the ideas being that you could put these things on rolls in a truck as you move your show around) last night, I think he said that at full brightness all white it pulled over 600 watts, which when they turned it all the way up, at LED efficiencies, made it painfully bright, at least in the indoor office environment. They claim it's very readable in sunlight at 25%.

They're looking for investors, but they've got a fab factory that's making panels, in the U.S., and though they're still tuning some of the video delivery bits of the pipeline could also deliver to someone who wanted an extremely bright big display. Know anybody who's setting up a touring concert or show that wants to put out some serious pixels?

[ related topics: Graphics Cool Technology Video ]

I thought I'd be the last person to complain about this. I wanted a couple of good audio books for the next few trips. The specific books I wanted seem to only be available via audible.com, and while I'm willing to pay $8 to $13 for some mind candy:

• I'm not willing to sign up for a monthly recurring bill to get it (they do offer a simple purchase though..)
• I don't want to install some "free" software to manage it (and the DRM), besides - they don't support Linux anyway (Winders or OSX only).

Yet, [quick google search for title] I'm only one click away from an easy, free, transportable (playable on the TomTom or iPhone or Sandisk mp3 player) version.

I wish there was a way to properly pay the content creator(s) properly and easily for their work, I respect their IP rights, I want to support them, and I want "more like this".

The current packaging and delivery mechanisms still suck.

Back to: http://www.librivox.org - at least I'm catching up on my classics.

[ related topics: Free Software Books Music Open Source Software Engineering Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Civil Liberties Macintosh iPhone ]

Wow. Pat Buchanan completely ignores history and economics and says Hitler didn't want war, Churchill pushed him into it. If you were ever in doubt that Buchanan is a raving loony with a fragmented grip on reality, this is the final nail.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs History Dictators Economics ]

This is the 150th anniversary of an unusal event: In 1859 a magnetic storm induced by solar flares flooded North America with energy. The Aurora was seen as far south as Havana, while telegraphers in New England disconnected their batteries but continued transmitting messages using the ambient current being induced in the wires! Wired has the story.

P.S.: Bonus points to anybody who can identify who gave the quote in my title!

[ related topics: Invention and Design Astronomy ]

SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) -- Scientists on Florida's Gulf Coast are trying to find an underwater robot that has mysteriously vanished.

What do robots eat in the wild?

[ related topics: Robotics Food ]

So you've probably seen this meme floating around the social networks:

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.

I love y'all, but, honestly, this turns the health care discussion downright silly. We are going to have people die because we, collectively, can't afford to keep them on respirators, and people are going to go broke because they're incapacitated. And the whole discussion is far more complex than this. With that in mind, my favorite parodies:

No one should die. (sorry not much of a team player this evening). --- Jessamyn West

No one should die because of zombies if they cannot afford a shotgun, or even just a machete, and no one should be turned into a vampire if they get bitten by one--or a werewolf for that matter(unless they want to be a vampire or werewolf). If you agree, post this as your status for the rest of the day. --- Ted Howard

No one should care about their health. If you agree please post this as your status for the rest of the day. --- Clay Didier

No one should die for any reason ever, and every human being should have a million dollars at all times. I want a pony. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day. (via mk, via rcm) --- Dave Polaschek

[ related topics: Politics Health Marketing ]

A little over 50 miles. 15.8 avg. Red Hill to Marshall Wall to Tomales, back through Chileno Valley. Notable incidents:

• Tight line coming down Red Hill, 38+ in a 35 zone, buzzed by a black Versa. I believe drivers who assault cyclists should have their corpses left atop the smoking remains of their vehicles as a warning to others. Expect that crap from big pickup drivers, not from small compacts.
• Descending the Marshall Wall, coastal fog was misting all over the sunglasses, had to look over the tops to get any sort of visibility. Not that there was much of that.
• Coming up Route 1 along Walker Creek from Tomales Bay at 23MPH, the two guys in front were trading leads passing on the left. Love hanging on to that...

Overall I was a little slow, but it was good to get back in the saddle.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bicycling ]

Just playing in the shop. This is unfinished mahogany, I need something a little stronger across the grain with smaller pores. Gonna try maple.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

Possibly more practical than wooden iPhone cases: A "walking" table.

[ related topics: Movies Furniture iPhone ]

Strong feelings about the health care proposals currently being debated in Congress? You can put your money where your mouth is, securitized "life settlements" (early purchases of life insurance policies) are now available.

[ related topics: Politics Health ]

In commenting on this article about how Lego® brand plastic bricks are becoming single-use toys, Jason Kottke observed:

Man, when even the financial analysts are saying that you need more open-ended play toys, you've really gone off the rails.

[ related topics: Lego Mindstorms ]

I'm not generally much on conceptual vehicles, but these are cool enough works of art that I'd ride one despite the impracticality: Josh Hadar Metal Design.

[ related topics: Art & Culture Graphic Design ]

Interesting juxtaposition of "Banana Republic" ad there, SFGate.com...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Turkish police have raided a villa outside Istanbul where several women believed they were participating in a Big Brother-type reality show. Scantily-clad images of them were sold to cell-phone subscribers. There seems to be some question of whether the women were held against their will or not. And if the promoters were actually selling the "big-brother-type" experience, was their claim of running a reality show actually true? While this might make an intriguing argument in a US court, I suspect the Turks will take harsher view.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Enforcement ]

John Marcotte, author of the 2010 California Protection of Marriage Act, talks to Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed.com. I can't tell if Marcotte is a straight-faced satirist or legit and serious. I don't suppose it matters, because I think the end result is the same...

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture Marriage ]

Sociological Images on the origin of "Don't mess with Texas".

[ related topics: History Consumerism and advertising ]

Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologizes for the U.K.'s treatment of Alan Turing.

Good.

Went to see "9" last night with Forest. Impressive and creepy art direction, but the world wasn't imagined well enough that we could make our own predictions and discoveries, and the screenplay was written like a young children's movie (which, despite the presence of some barely post-language kids in the row in front of us, this most emphatically was not). Sound was overbearing and physically painful at times, and didn't have to be.

And, of course, it had the obligatory post-apocalyptic anti-science message.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies Art & Culture ]

1. If you don't cover illegal immigrants, you don't get the big savings.
2. Can I have my health insurance company and my life insurance company duke it out? Seems like if I get really sick, my health insurance company will want to drop me, but then my life insurance company will have to pay off. There's got to be a way to play this...
3. Bla bla bla "portability", how about a way that I can switch my coverage from the Kaiser group plan we've got now to a Kaiser individual plan without typing in 20 pages of medical questions that Kaiser already has in their database, in better form than I can retrieve?

[ related topics: Politics Health ]

Josh Olson will not read your fucking script (copied here). Via MeFi.

And, no, I won't fix your computer either.

[ related topics: Movies Writing ]

Alabama Supreme Court upholds sex toy ban. via Carnal Nation

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Law Current Events ]

Snicker: Using Glenn Beck-like tactics back at him: Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990?

This site exists to try and help examine the vicious rumour that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. We don't claim to know the truth -- only that the rumour floating around saying that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 should be discussed. So we're going to do our part to try and help get to the bottom of this.

Why won't Glenn Beck deny these allegations? We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 - in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?

[ related topics: Humor moron Journalism and Media ]

One of the problems with Libertarian attitudes is that private industry will do everything it can to deceive the consumer. Profits and performance bonuses happen on a dramatically different scale than things like personal health, so it's a much smarter thing for a company's executive team to do things like take action injurious to the long-term health of their customers, get their short-term bonuses, and then let the chips fall where they may when years down the road issues crop up.

Drug companies have been guilty of this repeatedly, and the recent scandals over the "Smart Choices Program" (ie: stuff the right artificial vitamins in sawdust, pay your logo licensing fee, and they'll call that healthy too!) show perfect examples of this sort of behavior in the food business.

However, what's even scarier is when private industry teams up with the government, as has been happening with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the Juvenile Product Manufacturers Association (JPMA). Here's a debunking of one small piece of the propaganda they've been spreading: Peaceful Parenting - How the Stats Really Stack Up: Cosleeping Is Twice As Safe

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian Health Food Bay Area Software Engineering moron Theater & Plays Consumerism and advertising Archival ]

Is the Coast Guard or CNN to blame for false-alarm scares yesterday? I'm linking to this one to keep it around for when someone brings up the "can't we just grab that off the police scanner?" topic in the "open data" discussions.

Al Tompkins, a faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a journalism center in St. Petersburg, Fla., also told the LA Times: “It’s a really dangerous practice to use radio traffic as your principal source of information, because it so often turns out to be incorrect.”

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Law Enforcement ]

We're moving health insurance from Charlene's coverage with the Marin County school district supported Kaiser Permanente policy to a private Kaiser Permanente policy. We just finished going through the online application: Holy cow was that an annoying piece of software. I swear it filled in crap randomly and made us go back to fix it. And they've got our medical record numbers, we've been on a Kaiser plan for years and years, why the hell can't they just take our numbers and move us to a different plan?

The only possible explanation is that by going back through that lousy-ass piece of crap that is https://kaiser.healthinsurance-asp.com/ is that they can make us somehow enter bad data which gets used later for "post-claims underwriting". What an annoying joke.

On the good side, at least it's not Blue Cross.

[ related topics: Health Bay Area ]

A bunch of folks are linking to this article about a film about Charles Darwin being too controversial for the religious United States to find a distributor. Perhaps, though, the real problem is stated in this review:

Watching this film about Darwin's life, I felt his pain – in having to sit through nearly two hours of Annie's ghost appearing to him and admonishing him. "Don't you dare give up on your book, daddy," it says, wagging its finger when Darwin is agonising about the reception his work will get. I desperately didn't want to give up on the film, but well before the end it had lost me.

[ related topics: Religion Books Current Events Work, productivity and environment ]

Philip Greenspun, no particular friend to the Obama administration or polices, talks about the "Republican Plot to Make Obama Look Like a Socialist".

Sean Leather (and I'm not sure where to link to him any more) offered up this article about Virtual U: The World’s First Higher Education Simulation Game:

“Designed to foster better understanding of management practices in American colleges and universities, Virtual U provides students, teachers, and parents the unique opportunity to step into the decision-making shoes of a university president. ...

And here I thought Minesweeper and its variants have been around for at least 25 years...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Games Education ]

I have all sorts of complaints about the iPhone, but recently I've been playing with some other touch screen devices, and I'm being dragged in to an epiphany: Within a few years we will consider devices which have their own touch-screen display to be klunky and anachronistic. The interface to our gadgets will be a bluetooth or wifi enabled device of roughly the form factor of our current cell phones.

Roughly Drafted has some musings on this front based on some features in the iPhone 3.0 OS, which I was searching for and will investigate further.

[ related topics: Wireless iPhone ]

Imagine a country where the government backed currency becomes less used for day to day common transactions than a new currency backed by either/both cell phone usage units (minutes) and energy units (Joules, gallons of Gas, kWh, Btu.. etc..). Basicly: Technology/Services/Energy as a medium of barter exchange. It has a lot of issues.. but I'm seeing it being done in several places among the common population and I'm trying to wrap my head around the issues as the concept of "money" becomes more and more abstract.

[ related topics: Wireless Invention and Design moron Currency Energy Monitoring ]

It had to happen sometime: The World has been canceled.

[ related topics: Current Events Architecture Maps & Mapping ]

A nice little web application security checklist. Flutterby needs a few updates, mostly about using redirects.

Jalopnik crash week begins with an offset crash between a 1959 Chevy Bel Air and a 2009 Chevy Malibu. All that romance of old cars starts to look kinda scary.

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

Charlene is taking an astronomy class that involves several nights in the field. Yesterday evening I drive up to Liberty Glen, part of the Lake Sonoma area, set up camp and met Charlene at one thirty this morning as her class ended. Tonight I'm sitting overlooking the lake and gazing out at the stars.

The class syllabus forbids visitors, so I'm on my own. Last night I used a scope that a friend had bought as a gift to Charlene that has middling optical quality, but two eyepieces, one of which really fills the screen. Tonight I'm using a rather nice borrowed Celestron on a Mead Autostar mount, but I'm having no luck getting the mount calibrated, and the only eyepiece has a fairly wide field of view, so I'm randomly panning around and regularly checking back on Jupiter's moons. It is a good experience to get reacquainted with the constellations.

Lacking better sky mapping technology, Charlene has the nice spinner thingy, I'm using three iPhone apps, Distant Suns, GoSkyWatch, and Star Walk. Reviews coming when I'm typing on a real keyboard.

The main realization is just a reminder of how much light pollution we suffer from. The sky glow from Santa Rosa is hefty here, but even with that I can see enough of the Milky Way to make picking out Cygnus take a little searching.

And pictures of the rattlesnake that curled up under Charlene's bag back at camp are coming when I get back home. Next time I definitely bring hiking boots first, sandals second.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Space & Astronomy Astronomy iPhone ]

I'm still recovering from the weekend. Luckily, I got deluged by links from CJ, so while I'm recuperating and working here's stuff for you to read.

• Honolulu considers a fine on stinky bus riders.
• A $500 home in Hawaii. I'm still engineering out my proposed shop to replace that open awning-ish thing in our back yard, hoping for some alternative to stick-built to pop out and become feasible, so construction stuff like this excites me.
• child porn charges filed, man blamed cat, about which CJ says: "I have known of a man to get in trouble over pussy before.....but this is a bit of a stretch". Rimshot.
• And the really cool one: thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events Work, productivity and environment Public Transportation ]

Charlene and I went camping and stargazing up at Liberty Glen near Lake Sonoma.

Yesterday we came home, and I did the usual household stuff, and then I helped her write some summaries of the lives of famous astronomers.

I went to elementary school in The Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School in Harlemville New York. Years later, I got in to reading Steve Talbott's NetFuture newsletter, at some point he said "if you like this, consider sending some money to The Nature Institute, so I did, and then as they started sending me newsletters I realized that they were a part of the community around the school in which I grew up.

One of the things that struck me about the history of astronomy as Charlene and I went through the various ones last night was how long a bad idea could persist. Wrong pronouncements on how the world should be by philosophers like Aristotle, with data fudged to fit their models, managed to trump millenia of observations to the contrary. Aristarchus pointed out that the solar system was probably heliocentric, and that the reason we didn't observe parallax in the stars was that they were far enough away that he didn't have the tools to see shifts that small, and was widely quoted by others as saying this, but we still wait fifteen hundred years to credit Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo with this observation, because they, particularly Galileo, were strong enoguh to stand up to the established thinking and say "no".

And, of course, Galileo got taken to task by his contemporaries as much for the fact that he was downright nasty about calling them ignorant as he did for doing so in the first place. The whine of the times was "well, if he hadn't hurt our feelings...".

Anyway, this ties in to The Nature Institute and my elementary school experience because those folks are proponents of something called "Goethean Science". In getting this quick overview of astronomical history, I'm getting a good reminder of why we should start with reality and work forward, rather than starting with a philosopher's ideas and work backwards.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Quotes Interactive Drama Photography Technology and Culture Nature and environment Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Community Currency New York Philosophy Gambling Photovoltaics ]

TC and I banter back and forth occasionally about our long-standing bet over whether mass-market broadcast media will ever fall to the point-to-point on-demand world.

Dr. Horrible's presentation last night at the Emmys addresses this a bit.

[ related topics: Movies Todd Gemmell Journalism and Media Economics ]

Meanwhile, in London, a music teacher has been jailed for lesbian affair with 15 year old pupil. The Times quotes the student's mother:

In a statement, the mother said that it was first thought that Goddard’s influence was good. “She appeared to be thriving and happy for the first time in a very long time,” she said. “I felt that the allegations were a vicious rumour and I couldn’t believe any teacher at the school could do such a thing.”

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Current Events ]

This one's for Diane: The cuteness in this rat stealing a leopard's lunch sequence of photos is so over the top it burns. Via Columbine.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

I made a wooden kick-bike for one of our COTS/Family Connection kids.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Bicycling Woodworking ]

Tacky Tattoo Photo Gallery - There are like watching train wrecks. I like Tattoo's, admired many (including Eric's eye), but never seen something I'd want on my body for the rest of time. After the recent conversations about post-modernism high-brow intellectual conversations, this will bring our collective Flutterby IQ back below 200. And yes, I actually like a couple of these as well. But I don't want them on my body.

[ related topics: Machinery Trains Aviation - Helicopters ]

One of the ongoing discussions in Petaluma is about a development that'd take over a good portion of the fairgrounds (and I haven't seen what that would do to the Petaluma Speedway), and whose anchor tenant is supposed to be a Target.

Petaluma has a K-Mart, and my first impression is that they basically carry the same product lines, although the the pro-development faction touts that Target has a more upscale focus.

Anyone know a way to drill down on the realities of this? My first thought was to go take a bunch of notes in the appliance sections, but it'd be nice if someone else had already done that legwork for me.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

There are a lot of medical and neuro-science claims being made on the basis of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans. If you scanned a dead salmon, would it show reactions to humans? Here's the poster mentioned. Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Physiology ]

I'd love to find a transcript for this, because the talk isn't information dense enough to be a primary thing, it's more a "leave the audio running while you do something else", but there are a few good ideas in Dave Parry's The University and the Future of Knowledge lecture:

"Faced with the transformation of the digital, the newspaper industry chose to protect a business model instead of preserving their social function ... my fear is that the universities are making that same mistake."

Via Jo Guldi through Kaliya Hamlin.

[ related topics: New Economy Journalism and Media Education Economics ]

Word of the day: Duct Tape Programmer - Makes me laugh and cry. Fun read. At the rate I'm implementing code into production right now, I feel like I am the grand wizard of duct tape programmers.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Gyro Wheel replaces training wheels. and can be fitted to more than one bicycle. I see these making the family and friends rounds as kids learn to ride... and might be fun for other projects after the kids all learn to ride. Not as high-tech as a Honda UX-3 self balancing unicycle, but cool enough.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sociology Segway/Ginger/IT Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Ogle Earth has an interesting note: Hunting for Iran's secret nuclear plant near Qum on Google Earth.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping Maps & Mapping ]

Dating site OKCupid has analyzed half a million first messages to see what works. Sociological Images republishes the graphs and has different commentary.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Weblogs ]

CJ provides us with Life Magazine: 30 dumb inventions. I think I like the "yodel meter".

CJ and I have been exchanging some email about home-made large format photography. I really (really) shouldn't get sucked down that slippery slope, but it's soooooo tempting to try to build a large format camera. View cameras are fun, and the tweakability and care necessary to set up a shot (while viewing it upside down) makes them a far different experience then modern "point it in the general direction and it figures it out" cameras.

So here's a page he sent me on home-made large format cameras, and this led to a discussion about the issues with chemicals (in his case, he's on a septic system, which makes disposal hard, but getting the chemicals and materials is also becoming harder), which led to using coffee as a print developer.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Jim Hillen: Los Angeles is a desert, on the loss of creative work from the LA area, and the importance of maintaining rights and creative control when you put your heart into your work.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Economics ]

Twitter OTD, Bill Humphries pointing out that:

btw: birther/teabagger/wingnut is to conservatives what actor/waiter/model is to LA.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Hey, next Saturday our sleepy little town is hosting the Macintosh Computer Expo. Dori and Tom are gonna be there. Admission and parking are free, seems like I should scrape out some time to wander over there.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Macintosh ]

This last weekend I ended up at a kid's football game, taking pictures of a particular cheerleader and her brother the offensive lineman, came home with a couple of hundred pictures, culled them down to 8 or so, gonna print those up and stuff them in an album.

Right now, I take pictures.

One of the things about large format photography is that from the very beginning one is making pictures rather than merely taking them. Apropos of yesterday's link, here's a sampling of CJ's pictures.

[ related topics: Photography Sports ]

Skud has "a followup on the Shuttleworth incident", more sexism in open source.

[ related topics: Free Software ]

Continuing the large format photography musings inspired by CJ, here's a photo.net thread on building your own electrolytic silver recovery system.

Also, last night I got offered a stat camera. It's been a while, I don't remember if such things typically had aperture control, but that'd be a lens with a shutter and 20-some-odd inch coverage... And a bellows...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Hey, Charlene's going to do a month of volunteer/interning on the south end of the Berkshires this winter. I know when Chris came out to visit the Bay Area he bought a cheap car and sold it when he left, which may be an option, but anyone else got suggestions on a car for a month, somewhere near New York on the Connecticut/Massachusetts border?

[ related topics: Invention and Design California Culture Automobiles New York ]

From this SE thread, user "nihil", QOTD regarding some particularly silly National Review punditry:

Pointing out exceptionally stupid / reactionary statements from NR pundits is like shooting quadriplegic luminescent fish in a transparent, laser-gridded barrel with a M110 semi-automatic sniper rifle : even thought it shouldn't, it still gives you a boner.

[ related topics: Quotes ]