The Iao Needle, which you've seenbefore, is off to the upper right of this photo.
This turned out to be a strange series of pictures. I came home one morning to find the West Maui Mountains to be free of cloud, which is fairly unusual. So I decided I'd go down to the Iao Valley to get some good pictures of the Needle, since my previous photos were all thick with cloud.
I keep my camera with me at all times for just such an emergency, so -- despite having worked a 15 hour shift -- I headed over there. The sky was beautiful, the air was cool, and the tourists were minimal. I got to the park about 7:30am and climbed up hill and down dale until about 9.[*]
And when I got the prints back...they sucked. The actual photos of the Needle were a bizarre shade of green; rather bright but washed-out. Working with the scans today, I realized that those images had little contrast. I fiddled with the colors but was never quite happy with the results (I'll post 'em eventually, though).
Was it the lighting, the film, the temperature of the film (COLD), the processing? Don't know. The later photos in the sequence, like this one, were a rich, almost embarrassing green. I did minimal fiddling with the colors of this one, and found I had to desaturate the color before I felt I could post it. That doesn't happen very often, I can tell you.
Anyway, as I said the Needle off the frame to the upper right. You can see the little brown viewing shelter on the near hill. The tin-roofed building on the lower level houses the restrooms.
This is the view from the upper half of the parking lot; I was just about to leave when I realized this might make a pretty good picture. So I climbed over the parking lot railing and wandered onto the grass to get an unobstructed view. By this time the tourists were beginning to roll up and they were following me like goslings. "What's she taking a picture of? What can you see?"
[*]Stayed up that day until 11am, which meant I'd been awake for 23 hours -- not unheard-of, but unusual -- woke up again at 1pm and couldn't get back to sleep, though I was exhausted. Thought I was going to die. So you can imagine my emotion when I saw the thoroughly unimpressive prints.
That's...colorful, isn't it? Sometimes I see postcards that look like this, and I always think, "Aww, they cheat -- they've used some kind of filter." But no filter here; I have a sky 1B and a polarizer on my lenses, but when it gets this dark I have to take them off. So that's what it really looked like.
That is, that's what the film thinks it looked like. I don't remember it quite so purple. This is 100 ASA Velvia, which apparently does purple really well.
I blew about a third of a roll on this one sunset, so you may see others in the series again. I had six or seven rolls developed, and a good percentage of the shots are like this. Gets a bit tedious after a while. "Ho hum, beautiful sunset. What else is there?"
A couple weeks ago, Volokh blogger Orin Kerr -- that's Professer Kerr to you -- was goofing off instead of working, looking for the cheesiest Lawrence Welk clip he could find. His is OK -- it certainly demonstrates the sartorial horror that was the '70s -- but commenter SKardner tops it with this beauty:
For those of you reluctant to click, that's the "modern spiritual" "One Toke Over the Line" performed on the Lawrence Flipping Welk Show.
As someone in the Youtube comments says, a stage full of musicians and no one knew what that song was about? Riiiiight.
Nice color in that clip, by the way.
Been meaning to post this for a while, but didn't get to it. But I'm on vacation now, and I can post every day if I want to, and you can't stop me! Muahahaha!
I love this picture, and saved it until I could jigger with the colors on a nice bright screen (rather than my laptop screen). Note that the rainbow appears broken -- I didn't notice it at the time, and can't explain it. I took several pictures, and it looks similar in all of them.
This was taken in July or August (I got very bad about logging my photos) in Kihei on the beach behind the Kauhale Makai condominiums, which you see there. The lights in the windows are reflections of the sunset behind me. I didn't notice those at the time, either. Some of the other photos show more detail in the clouds, but no reflections. I like the look it gives the photo -- like a dark, brooding Scottish castle, only in sunny Hawaii.
This was taken less than half a mile northward of last week's picture, still on the same nasty beach. But the nasty beach has much better views inland than the better beach, to the north.
Of course, when you're walking on the beach at sunset, you don't generally look inland. I vaguely remember snapping several shots of the ho-hum sunset and then turning around and holy cow!
Waipuilani Beach Park is a tiny little park on a crummy, rocky, seaweedy, smelly beach. There is what looks like a fish pond there, though I couldn't google up any mention of it, and at high tide the water just covers the rocky walls, creating tiny ripples from both left and right, making a V pattern on top of the wall.
That's what you're supposed to be seeing there, but the ripples refused to be synchronized with the shutter, so you don't see those on the left very well. Stupid waves.
The land on the right is Pu'u Kukui, on Maui; on the left is the island of Lanai. Off to the far right is a windsurfer. In the middle is the sun.
Fogbows differ from rainbows in that the water droplets in a fogbow are much, much smaller. See here for more than you ever wanted to know on the topic, and a gallery of images. Don't miss the eerie Finnish car fogbows!
I have got to get me a wider-angle lens. The 28mm just ain't cuttin' it. It can't get all the bow.
I looked into the cost of switching to digital: about a grand, minimum. Two for the camera I'd really want. Did I mention that doesn't include lenses? It doesn't. I could save my pennies until I can afford a digital camera, or I can buy a new lens for my 28-year-old camera -- cost: about $400. Decisions, decisions.
Yes, Canon FD lenses, around 20 years old now, can still go for $1000 or more. A 17mm f/4 lens is about $400.
I mention this only because I have nothing else to say about this photo. Look! Fog!
Finally, finally got around to sending off my film. Got it back last week, lotsa good stuff. Hope you don't overdose on beauty.
I'm a little wary of posting anything that needs its colors fiddled with. I haven't got my big monitor set up, and the colors on the laptop monitor are kind of iffy -- not to mention dependent on the viewing angle. I'm afraid I'll over-compensate. Of course, there's no telling what it'll look like on your monitor.
Anyway, this one was colorful enough without much twiddling.
Did I say you'd get sick of Maui? As Tom Selleck used to say:
It was too much to hope that I would be first with this, although it looks as if this outfit (don't click if you don't wanna) meant to impeach him from the Senate. (Thanks to noted aspiring OB/GYN Andrew Sullivan for the link.)
Why wait? Call for Obama's impeachment now and beat the rush! After all, I saw my first "Impeach Clinton" bumper sticker in late fall of '92, between election and inauguration. In fact, I think there ought to be a Constitutional amendment mandating impeachment proceedings against every President from his first day in office until his last. This will have three benefits:
1) Avoid the suspense Sooner or later, every President is going to say or do something that will have the opposition party slobbering for his blood. Maybe he'll refer to Russia as "the Soviet Union" (or vice versa). Maybe they'll find out he never returned a library book in the third grade. Maybe he'll say something during the SOTU that is technically true, but the opposition will insist that he said something else, or meant to say something else, or was really saying something else, in code words so shrill that only dogs and his loyal supporters and outraged opponents and the media and foreigners and Martian bacteria can hear them, but which fool the average American. Maybe he'll call his opponents "my opponents", and be known for a racist. Why hang on tenterhooks waiting for this event? Impeach immediately and automatically, and no one will have to strain his credulity (a painful medical condition which costs Americans millions each year).
2)Busywork It keeps Congress occupied and off the streets.
3) The bastard's guilty anyway. Oh, maybe not of the first offense he's accused of, but if we dig deep enough, sooner or later we'll find that he's guilty of something. If all else fails, we can always force him into an impeachable offense, if only by getting him to swear under oath that his mother-in-law does not look fat in that dress.
Remember: any power-hungry sociopath who would seek the Presidency is already corrupt, has already sold his soul to the highest bidder just to get to the primaries. As Plato wrote, you gotta have a screw loose to want to be President in the first place. What sane person would subject himself to the scrutiny of professional amateur gynecologists and live birth certificationers? Serves 'em right to be impeached.
By the way, I would have written pretty much the same post had McCain won, but not with quite so much satisfaction.
Dissenting opinions (the highest form of patriotism -- remember that come January 20) here and here. Both of them deal more generally with the goody two-shoes, spoilsport theme of urging McCain voters to refrain from hysteria, paranoia, dementia, miasma, hand-wringing, pants-wetting, Valium-popping, and conniption-having -- in short, acting like the Left has lo these eight years.
Of course, it's difficult to make this case when (apparently) hysteria, etc, has propelled the loony left's favorite from obscurity into the White House. More on that later, if I feel motivated.
UPDATE: InstaPundit wants to wait for an actual impeachable offense! Sheesh! That's like closing the barn door after the horses have eaten your children!
This afternoon I committed what Tom Blumer (whoever he be) calls a travesty, by voting early. (Blumer's post via InstaPundit, who does not agree on the whole travesty thing.)
We're working some mighty long shifts at work, and next week I have to work Monday and Tuesday. I might get four or five hours of sleep Tuesday morning, and there will be NO time for anything else. So I'd been worried about how I was going to manage to vote, and was very glad to find that I could do it in advance.
So early this afternoon I dragged myself down to the county courthouse. It was packed with early voters; we could hardly get off the elevator for the people already standing in the hallway. But it went pretty quickly, and I was out in about half an hour.
For ballots, we were given a choice of paper or plastic -- i.e., electronic voting. I took plastic, mostly because there wasn't a line for it at that moment.
When I had made my selections, the machine spit out a piece of paper like a cash register receipt (which it retained) for me to check against my electronic suggestions. This serves as a paper trail in case they have to do a recount. Glenn would be pleased.
I don't think much of some of Blumer's objections. Yes, the political landscape can change after you vote. Your preferred candidate can do something spectacularly stupid, which would have changed your mind about him. That can happen after the election, too. Tough noogies.
Most of his other objections pertain to ballot security, which is a concern. But those are also true of absentee ballots, which I don't think anyone questions the need for, and ballots cast on election day as well.
I don't have a driver's license for my new state yet (been putting it off, intending to find another place to live, but it doesn't look like that will happen soon), so when I registered I brought along my passport for ID, and three utility bills, a bank statement, and my car registration for proof of address. This time I brought along those things plus my voter registration card.
They looked at the photo ID, but at no time did they check my address. That does worry me.
Anyhow: travesty! Now I can sleep soundly Tuesday, and try not to be distracted by (almost wrote from -- Freudian slip there) election returns Tuesday night.
Noooo! It Comes in Pints is closing its doors! No doubt another victim of the mortgage crisis.
They have acquired a cheap Blogspot dive in which to hold the FFOT, for those who are interested. I was never into it, since it meant typing bad words where people might find them next to your name. Well, my name. I always type my bad words and then erase them without fear. Sniff. Meemoriieeeeees....
Fortunately, that ol' plucker Ken S. has a new blog over here in the bad part of town, too. Go welcome him, and tell him where the fightin' hookers hang out.
Michael Tottenblows the lid off the Biden Gaffe-O-Matic. During the debate, Biden said,
“When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.”
To which Totten replies,
What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.
That's it! Totten has stumbled onto the fact that Joe Biden is from another universe.
President FDR going on TV during the '29 crash? In this timeline, no; in Joe's universe, yes!
In Biden's universe, the Constitution is slightly different.
In Biden's universe, Neil Kinnock plagiarized him.
And so forth.
Whether he is an unfortunate inadvertant traveler (see Miriam Allen deFord's "Slips Take Over") or the agent of a hostile entity (see Charlie Jade) is as yet unknown. (Frankly, since 9/11 I think we've all wandered into Murray Leinster's "Sideways in Time", and haven't realized it.)
Here is a list of situations that obtain in Biden's home universe. Maybe we should start a massive research effort to see that he gets home OK.
I'm not really dead. Not yet, anyway. I'm getting better!
It's more a matter of what Lileks wrote about here: a great big heapin' helpin' of Who Gives a Shit.
I now live in a beautiful area. I have taken a zillion pictures. The film is still in its little cannisters. I have not had the money to get it developed. I sort of wish that I had a digital camera, and wonder how long it would take me to save for one if I didn't buy any film or processing for this one. I think the time scale is on the order of about ten thousand years.
Anyhow, that's why I haven't posted any pictures of the new area in seven long months, and hardly any pictures in the last couple. I runned out. And my scanner is still in its box in the closet, where I put it when I moved in.
Oh, great, now you got me depressed.
Anyhow, here's my last good piccie of Uluru.
Uluru, Aug. 2000
I think I didn't want to show this because it's scanned from a print -- a print on the back of which I wrote the details of the picture in bleedy marker, so that you can see dark marks in the upper right hand corner of the print. It showed up in the scan, too, so I spent a lot of time trying to touch it up with the clone tool (I can work for Reuters now!). This was done with a regular scanner, before I got the photo scanner. You probably can't tell at this resolution.
My dad used to say that kind of thing all the time. We moved a lot, so we were always living in a new -- i.e. different -- house. I think I was in my thirties before I realized that you don't have to show the house to everyone who comes over. Anyhow, Mom and Dad were always painting or panelling or wallpapering, and often they'd get some little bit wrong and have to try to cover it up. Dad was always saying, "Now you see this here, well, we messed that up. But you'd never know it if I didn't point it out!"
Ha ha! Thought I had gone, didn't you? Well you were wrong! I'm still here. Still kind of low on FFs, too. I must send my film off.
Anyway, here is a very old photo, scanned from print, since I don't know where the negatives have gotten to.
Lincoln Memorial, Jan. 1990
It's hot here, so I thought I'd choose a nice, cool image to look at it. Tomorrow night I will be freezing. Maybe I should have posted a hot image as well. Next week, perhaps.
I was in D.C. for a conference. That was the time that Dan Quayle addressed our group. I was going to write about it, but I see that I already have. Well, that was easy.
This photo reminds me of a painting, but I can't think which one. Maybe by Michael Whelan. (WARNING! Long pretentious -- yet minimalist -- flash opening there. Really cool, but it tries the patience. I guess if you're not willing to wait for it, you don't deserve to look at Whelan's art.)
Last Friday, the Iolani Palace in Honolulu was occupied by a group claiming to represent the true king of Hawaii.
About 25 members of the Kingdom of Hawaii, Nation, with its self-proclaimed king Akahi Nui, began locking the gates at about 5:30 p.m. One palace employee was allegedly assaulted at the palace gates.
It was the second time a sovereignty group locked the palace gates this year. About 70 members of a separate group, the Hawaiian Kingdom Government, occupied the grounds on April 30.
"We don't have any information on this group (Kingdom of Hawaii, Nation)," said [Kippen] de Alba Chu [executive director of Friends of Iolani Palace]. "We never heard of them before.
"Other sovereignty groups are very upset with this," he said.
I love fireworks packaging. I always have. I loved the shiny cylinders and cones and crude bright colors of my youth. I wasn't as fond as the actual fireworks; I don't much care for loud noises (I like the ones that give off a shower of color with only a soft hiss). I always wished I could throw away the explosives and keep the packages.
I have moved to a new state, one whose laws are a strange mix of humorless, puckered liberalism and laissez-faire libertarianism. It's as if Montana collided with Massachusetts (actually, given all the celebrity homes there, I wouldn't be surprised if Montana is becoming like this, too). It's not unusual to see people riding motorcycles clad only in shorts: no shirt, no shoes, no helmet -- no problem.
And fireworks are legal. They're so legal they're not confined to dodgy fireworks stands (at least, I haven't seen any), but sold right in the grocery store, in front of God and everybody. You know those giant Easter baskets with a stack of toys inside? Or the big box o' beach buckets they sell at the beginning of summer? Well, they have boxes of fireworks like that. Wonderful artwork, with names like "Peach Blossom in Spring" and "Mach III Fighter" (in the same box).
At Costco they had boxes of fireworks six and a half feet tall and two feet wide. I saw a small, skinny man trying to rassle one of these babies into his cart, while his little kids danced around excitedly.
I really wanted to buy some -- for the artwork -- but
1)I'm cheap, and 2)What would I do with the boomy bits?
Strolled out a little while ago to get the mail. Yes, I know it's Sunday, but I don't get much real mail, so I don't bother to pick it up every day.
Anyway, the sole piece of mail was not really for me. This isn't too unusual; I haven't lived here long, and I get mail for three or four people who may or may not have ever lived in this apartment before me.
But this mail -- which was something from Citibank, something important-looking -- was for someone on another street.
In another city.
In another state.
In short, it was for someone in Los Angeles, three time zones away. The street name is not remotely similar. The name of my town does not look remotely like "Los Angeles". The zip codes are not remotely similar, either -- no one mistook a 9 for a zero or an 8 for a 3.
The only reason this ended up in my mailbox is that the apartment numbers are -- sort of -- the same.
I want to know how it came to be that no one in the local PO took a look at that letter, and said, "What street? In Los Angeles??California???" No, they just ignored the zip code, the state, the town, and the street, and dumped it in my mailbox.
There are no words.
Since it looks important, I should take it down to the post office in person and hand it in. I won't have much time on Monday, though.
I guess we're supposed to be grateful that things don't go astray more often, what with the volume of mail that the Post Office has to handle -- including vital credit card offers and advertising circulars and whatnot.
I've been reading Victorian novels where characters write a letter one day and have the reply waiting for them at breakfast the next morning. This is not only an impressive tribute to the Royal Mail (or whatever it was called then -- which, of course, didn't have so many credit card offers to transport), but to Victorian correspondents, who didn't have much else to do with their time.
I'm digging around in the dusty photo vault. I don't think I've used this one before:
Uluru, Northern Territory, Australia Aug. 2000
This was taken from quite a distance away. I think it might have been taken at the same time and place as this. It was certainly taken on the same day, but I think I must have taken one picture, turned around, and took the other. But I'd have to dig out the negatives to be sure, and I'm too lazy.
I love the haze in these pictures -- it adds a dreamlike quality. Makes me want to follow the mirage over the horizon.
The ZaZa Hotel, lurking in the background on the left, has saved you from a truly dire title[1]. Here is an unlucky Foto Friday (which, luckily, was not posted on Friday).
Mecom-Rockwell Fountain and Colonnade Houston, October 2007
According to this site, the columns were once part of the Miller Theatre [sic], "[a] classic Doric proscenium structure...[that] featured 20 Corinthian columns on either side of the stage." This opened in 1923. (NOTE: A Doric structure with Corinthian columns? How gauche! But they're not Corinthian -- not enough gunk on them.)
And then the Sixties were at our throats, and the present structure -- which looks like a hangar for diplodocuses, guarded by the annoyed, fossilized remains of a prehistoric Phyllis Diller -- was foisted upon the world.
I shall really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find FFs from now on, as I don't have much scanned that is presentable, and I haven't been able to get my most recent stuff developed (have to send it to Kansas). Do try to endure.
[1] If lemonade is made from lemons, what is colonnade made from? :::::::::::::::::::
News of the Future, 20 hours from now: Hay-on-Wye, Wales-and-not-at-all-Herefordshire
A man was thrashed today at the Hay Festival while attempting to "arrest" John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. The man, whom witnesses identified as noted intellectual lightweight George Monbiot, had barely confronted Bolton when Bolton's formidable moustache, Regis, acting of its own accord, executed a perfect body scissors on Monbiot. Soon Regis was delivering a two-lobed paddling on Monbiot's exposed and reddened gluteus maximus.
Monbiot, best known for being the inspiration for the epithet "moonbat", had earlier announced plans to perform a "citizen's arrest" of Bolton for the "crime" of advocating the Iraq War. Monbiot reasoned that Bolton's culpability stemmed from his being among the signatories to a 1998 letter to then-President Clinton urging regime change in Iraq.
Reporters' questions regarding Monbiot's own advocacy of Iraqi regime change were unanswered as of this writing. Many questioned whether Monbiot would be willing to accept responsibility for the massacres that no doubt would have resulted from that untried scheme. This reporter's guess is: Hell, no.
It is presently unknown whether Monbiot faces any charges over the incident, or whether he will simply be slapped on the wrist and sent to bed without his organic fair trade nonfat soy latte.
Neither Bolton nor Regis was injured in the encounter.
To be technical, this is the fountain in the Richard and Annette Block Cancer Survivors Plaza in Houston:
Bloch Fountain Houston, TX, Oct. 2007
I like this picture because it looks as if I'm trying to sneak up on the fountain, afraid to approach it. That was pretty much the case: there were other people crawling around the park that day, taking pictures inside the gazebo there, and I had to stand in one place to get a shot where they were hidden behind the columns. The large building in the background (Warwick Towers, according to Google Maps) kind of spoils the effect, but I could scarcely have it demolished. Not on such short notice, anyway.
If you're having trouble seeing the fountain, well, so was I. It's in there somewhere.
This is on the corner of Hermann Park, between the Mecom Fountain and the Natural History Museum.
It turns out that this is one of a chain, if you will, of parks dedicated to cancer survivors, set up by Richard Bloch. Read all about it here. Richard would be the R in H&R Bloch. There are 21 such parks (so far) scattered around the U.S., plus one in Canada. Start the virtual tour here. The descriptions each mention a computer -- noting where the computer is within the park -- but the purpose of the computer doesn't seem to be explained anywhere. I didn't see any computer; perhaps I didn't go into the gazebo, what with the plague of tourists. The Houston park surely must be the smallest of them (as suggested here, on what seems to be an earlier version of the park page -- some of the pictures are slightly different).
Check out the New Orleans park! Looks like the Rosicrucians have conquered Las Vegas. The Rancho Mirage park looks like an alien version of Disneyland ("PYRAMID POWER"). OK, now I want to collect the set, go to all those cities and photograph the parks. It would certainly give me something to do, should I ever be stuck in Indianapolis or Omaha.
Every few days I come across something interesting enough to write about. But I don't have time then. By the time I have time to write, the event has become ancient history (2 days in normal time, 2 millennia in blog years). So that's why no blog.
To make up for the lack of Foto Friday last week, here's a three-fer: the George Rogers Clark Memorial:
George Rogers Clark Memorial Vincennes, IN, June 2007
I took Niles here last summer, and he was mildly interested in this large memorial park, until he learned that Clark was celebrated for kicking British butt. Doh! Guess I forgot to mention that part.
Check out the inscription at the top:
You can only read part of it. The whole thing reads, "The Conquest of the West - George Rogers Clark and The Frontiersmen of the American Revolution."
You don't often see an uncritical, unabashed reference to conquest these days. The Memorial was dedicated in the benighted days of 1936, by the benighted FDR.
Be sure to check out the park's web site. Enjoy the nice pictures of the redbuds, then look inside the Memorial at the seven murals. I have pictures of them, but they're pretty crummy. My flash was not powerful enough, and I was unable to make the tourists go the hell away.
The murals are by an artist named Ezra Winter. Most of them are very colorful, but mural number 3 is very dull. Questioned about this, Winter explained that, hey, Vincennes is very dull in the winter (depicted in the mural), and he wanted to be accurate.
If you look at the first photo, above, you might see a chunk of stone near the riverfront, just in front of the Memorial. That's this:
Statue of Francis Vigo Vincennes, IN June 2007
Francis Vigo, honored in the names of counties and townships and countless businesses around Vincennes. On Memorial Day that year, the city woke to find that someone had broken Vigo's nose. It was still buzzing with indignation weeks later. A park ranger told us with satisfaction that the culprits -- teenagers -- had been identified and would be Dealt With.
I think Vigo looks like he's preparing to get out of his seat and give chase. "You damn kids BRING BACK MY NOSE!"
Visible behind Vigo is the Lincoln Memorial Bridge which carries the business loop of US Hwy 50 into Illinois. Supposedly this was the place where the young Abe Lincoln forded the Wabash to get to Illinois (which he had heard was calling itself the "Land of Lincoln", and he wanted to know what that was about).
Like Lincoln, Niles and I likewise crossed the river on foot, but we were sensible enough to use the bridge, so as not to get wet. I believe that's the only time I have crossed a state line on foot.
So, exciting, eh? Now, wasn't that worth the wait?
If I weren't using the laptop, I'd know what this picture looks like. As it is, it changes every time I move my head. So it might suck. Deal.
Terry Hershey Park Houston, December 2007
This is just a tree with some moss. I took a bunch of pictures in Hershey Park just before Christmas, using some filters I'd been acquiring over the fall. They didn't turn out as nicely as I'd hoped. According to my notes, this one was taken with a dark green X1 filter and a Nikon Soft 2. The X1 darkened the sky quite a bit but let the trunk and the leaves at the top shine bright white.
Houston doesn't boast a whole lot of stunning scenery. My present environs are a little different. I've been lugging my camera nearly everywhere recently; maybe in a few weeks I can post some local pictures.
Anyhow, here's a Foto Friday. If you didn't see it on Friday, it's because I forgot to remove the stealth pixel paint. Yeah.
Anyhow, here 'tis. I don't have a good idea of how it looks, compared to previous efforts, since I don't have the big Samsung monitor (which I used exclusively before) hooked up, and am using only the laptop screen. So I hope I haven't over-tweaked.
The Blue Mountains, Australia, July 2002
Here's an interactive web cam of the Blue Mountains, although I couldn't get it to work. And here are some more photographs. I am very generous in linking to this site, since his pictures are far better than mine (be sure and check out the other two Blue Mountains galleries there, as well as galleries of other places around Australia).
This was taken on my last full day in Australia. Due to incredible stupidity on my part, I didn't get around to seeing this particular sight until then. It was winter; I should've gone in spring and summer and fall, to see the changes. But I was more interested in sitting around and moping. (In my defense, I didn't have a car then.)
Now I live in a photo-rich environment, and I must guard against the inclination to mope.
The Blue Mountains are just west of Sydney. There's a bit of history here. The Blue Mountains supposedly get their name from the haze of eucalyptus oil droplets. However, some note that mountains (or anything else) at a distance tend to look blue and hazy (cf. the Blue Ridge Mountains, which contain negligible amounts of eucalyptus oil).
When I was a child I read this fairytale, in which a man goes to great lengths to find the Blue Mountains. The "Blue Mountains" sounded so beautiful and romantic, I wanted to find them too.
In case any of my largely-imaginary readers were worried, I am not yet dead. I may be soon, however, since I will be without internet (except at work), for more than a week. GASP! AIR! GASP!
Photos of the new home will have to wait until I a) am no longer broke, and b) can get them developed and scanned. Oh, and taken. Stay tuned (after a week or so) to read (maybe) of the gripping tale of the home search, with exciting chapters such as "Is the Pig Included in the Rent?" and "Apartment Manager by Day, Fire Dancer by Night".
Two men obviously thought James Pickett, 80, was an easy target when they showed up at his home on Saturday with a knife...
What the men didn't know is Picket had taken a pistol and put it in his pocket before opening the door. "He jumped and turned and I shot him," Picket said.
The two brothers, Paul and Holden Perry, ran but didn't get far before calling an ambulance.
"The only problem was I run out of bullets," Picket said.
And was reminded of this:
He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It’s a pity I’ve run out of bullets, he thought as he went back up the tunnel, pursued by Goddam’s cries of rage…
This photo may look a little crooked, as if the camera was not being held straight. That's just an optical illusion created by the slope of the ridge line in the background. Yes.
This was taken from Mt. Hamilton Rd. just east of the 3m telescope (above me on my right, out of the picture). The main building is visible on the peak in the background.
The large white dome on the left side of the main building holds the historic 36" refractor. That link says that it's the second-largest refractor in the world, second only to the 40" refractor at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin. That's what I always thought, too, but Wikipedia (WARNING! WIKIPEDIA!) says that the second largest is the 1m (39") Swedish Solar Telescope in the Canaries. Its design is not a traditional refractor design, although it does have a 1m lens. So we'll give it an asterisk.
BUT MY POINT, before I got bogged down in minutiae, was that the tiny white dome on the right side of the main building holds a 40" reflector. Yes, the tiny dome holds a bigger telescope than the huge dome. Bigger in diameter, that is, which is the important parameter. The refractor is of course much longer than the reflector, which is why it needs all that dome.
Through the miracle of Blogger, this post has gone back in time. It was posted on Friday, though it is in fact Sunday as I write. Do not attempt to adjust your browser. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. And we control time. So don't piss us off.
In my prints of this, the telescope glows with an unearthly light. It took a lot of fiddling to even begin to reproduce it in this image. I think it had something to do with the polarization and reflection off the white paint.
This was the largest telescope in the world for something like 50 years. There's a Russian telescope that's a meter larger. According to Wikipedia its first light was in 1975, but even in the late '80s it was having grave difficulties, and was not really working.
Nowadays, of course, 5m is not considered any great shakes. The largest single mirrors are the (twin!) 8.4m mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. (See here for a gripping 2003 tale of how the first mirror was moved up the mountain.)
If you use many small mirrors you can make telescopes much larger, of course. The proposed names for these telescopes are getting larger and sillier too, with the European Extremely Large Telescope (42m), the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (100m), and the Jaw-Droppingly Mind-Crushingly Huge Telescope (1 gagjillion m). I might've made that last one up. (I think the OWLT has in favor of the more modest EELT.)
Speaking of gripping tales, the story of the building of the Hale Telescope is told in The Perfect Machine, by Ronald Florence. This great book turns glass pouring into high drama.
Was at a conference all last week, got home Friday but was too beat to find something decent to post. I'm writing this on Sunday, but I've back-dated the post to Friday, because I can. This still isn't decent, but it's what you get. Behold the glory and wonder of the view from the Honolulu airport:
Honolulu Sunset, Dec. 2006
...but it's what you get.
For certain values of "you" -- values which are, apparently, purely imaginary. I've been doing this every Friday for 18 months. I miss one Friday, and the roar of apathy is deafening. So when I apologize for tardiness or the poor quality of an image, I'm apologizing to thin air.
Harrumph.
This would discourage a lesser woman, but fortunately I am made of harder stuff.
Unfortunately, however, I am entering a period of great upheaval and change, and I don't know when I'll find the time to scan, or breathe. Therefore Foto Friday may well be intermittent for several months.
A week ago today I got an email from my stepdad that started out like this:
How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn't inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education"...
"Dad, you scamp!" I thought, "What are you up to now?" Dad is what is known in the vernacular as a card, and so I read along, figuring I'd come to a lame punchline at some point. I thought maybe he'd stumbled across some other fellow with his name who was the kind of do-gooding low-life who trots off to African conferences.
But no. No punchline of any degree of lameness. Instead it's a sad, long-winded (sounds like Dad there) tale of how he stupidly left his dough, credit cards, ID, etc in a taxi and now he's flat busted and is going to be kicked out of his hotel and he's using a library computer and only has thirty minutes and can he have $1300, pronto.
He must've already sold Mom, because there's no mention of her.
It wasn't signed, "Dad", you understand. It was signed with Dad's name.
So I googled up the Empowering Youth conference, and it turns out that it only exists in the fevered imaginations of spammers. This is apparently a scam that's been making the rounds for a couple months. I can't figure out whether Dad's account has been hacked, or whether it's a virus, or what.
Back in October, this made the Quad-City Times when a local naturalist was the purported sender. In that case, the reply-to email address was changed, which may mean his actual email account was not compromised, although his address book was. Just the other day, an African dance tutor from Leamington, in the UK, had begging letters sent in her name. Both of those wanted more money than "Dad".
And in November the scammer struck a bunch of activists who were protesting Irish PM Bertie Ahern's recent raise. In that case, the heart-rending plea for assistance was affectionately signed "FarTooMuch Bertie".
The originating IP on the one I got was 41.219.201.254, which is part of a dial-up pool in Lagos, Nigeria.
You have to wonder what kind of people have friends who don't know them well enough to tell them they're haring off to Nigeria, but do know them well enough to touch them for 1300 smackers. Friends who are too dumb to contact their credit card companies when the cards are lost, and yet clever enough to find hotels which don't demand that reservations be secured with said credit cards in advance.
And the scammers didn't put enough thought into their conference name, "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education". Shoulda been, "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education with a View to Providing Rainbows, Ice Cream, and Ponies to All." What kind of stone-hearted freak could turn down someone who'd go to that conference? Besides me, I mean.
Anyhow, I called Dad, who was very surprised to find that he was in Africa. I told him he might want to change his passwords. He called back today, saying he was embarrassed -- everyone in his address book had gotten one of those emails. I didn't get a chance to ask if anyone had been taken in by Dad the Do-gooder.
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