tag/travel

More Austin - Mount Bonnell, the Museum of Illusions, and trying to see some damn bats. The Dinosaur Park, Cedar Creek TX For both of our Mexico big side trips (Akumal Monkey Sanctuary and cenote + snorkle with Ruta Maya) we shelled out for the photography package - (more important for the monkeys, plus the sanctuary seems like a better cause) I checked out the sunrise, found a new path by the hotel that later had some lizard friends.. We got a tour to check out some cenotes (these underground limestone caverns, many with water and part of an underground river system) and snorkeling near the coral... Great long weekend up in NH w/ Melissa's ol' PPLM crew, overlooking Attitash Mountain. Admittedly the skiing is pretty bad this time of year but the Sawyer Rock swimming area Saturday was excellent. On the way back Melissa and I hit the old Home of the Water Fairies, Diana's Baths. un week-end rapide entre amis à Montréal, Melissa et moi avec Anna Kellie et Matthew. My "first half/second half" galleries of our NOLA trip had more of an eye for the photos that worked well visually... these are photos that didn't make the cut but help tell the story of a lovely week, a story we might want to refresh our memories of later.

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Fun "Best of" Video for my far and away favorite way to spend a Sunday afternoon, the street style teaching marching band that is School of Honk :-D I'm not usually a food glamour shot person but it seemed to make sense to do a log of the most interesting meals we ate in New Orleans... we tried to make our own food tour in terms of hitting most of New Orlean's most well-known specialties.

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A nice lagniappe - Kenneth Terry outside the Café du Monde

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52 Things Tom Whitwell learned in 2019 - great stuff. Melissa and I are about halfway done with our NOLA getaway... here are some photos splitting the difference between "documenting our trip" and "I like the way this photo came out" (so not showing all the food diary shots, I'm better at eating food than photographing it.)

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Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

Found this quote I grabbed 16 years ago... it really summarizes an important aspect of my philosophy. There is an objective truth, and you should feel compelled to align yourself with it, but you can never be certain you're there, and an important part of both understanding both probability and empathy is to be respectful of other's view of it, so long as there is a good chance they are being sincere and not obviously cynically manipulated.

Heh, another relevant previously blogged quote form 5 years ago:

The universe of ideas is just as little independent of the nature of our experiences as clothes are of the form of the human body.

Yesterday Melissa and I went to DiggerlandXL - Diggerland is a kid-friendly construction-vehicle themed amusement park, and the XL is the grown-ups area that lets you spend an hour in an excavator, bulldozer, or wheel loader.

Seeing the sunrise from the Jersey Shore had always been on my "should get to that!" list, this morning Melissa and I did just that...

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--from Concept art of vehicles driven by Toads from Mario Strikers Charged. via Supper Mario Broth

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I think I just summarized my life philosophy really succinctly to my roommate:
'you do what you gotta do. and sometimes you do it in heels'

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"Relationships are all about asking people to hold things."

(This was especially true in the context she said this, the airport, as we both played that game of 'Ok do I have everything? Ok do I still have everything? Let me check again. How about now?')

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My iPhone 6 was sort of on its last legs so I upgraded - but I went for the iPhone SE, which is the old iPhone 5 body with a 6S camera. There's something great about that old form factor, how easy it is to manage for quick camera shots etc. (Remember when smaller was considered better for electronics?)

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My dad accidentally texted me with voice recognition...while playing the tuba...

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A kissing booth at a fair is basically a PG rated glory hole.

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[How is half of such an advanced country so hell-bent on going back to the 18th century?] Because the same people that like to mock "safe spaces" and "participation awards" and "the pussification of America" are fucking ignorant cowards who are intimidated that women and minorities might actually be edging to equality to the point where simply being a barely high school educated white male isn't enough to stay ahead of the curve.

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Are. You. F'in. Kidding. Me. :
"Returning home to Trump Tower from the White House may not be Mr. Trump's only embrace of the familiar. His aides say he has also expressed interest in continuing to hold the large rallies that were a staple of his candidacy. He likes the instant gratification and adulation that the cheering crowds provide, and his aides are discussing how they might accommodate his demand."

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When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism. I'd prefer to be a citizen of the world myself, but we need to understand people who put nation over humanity. And sometimes there's something to be said for the view in the United States, there are many things we get right, and paths to improvement. Unfortunately the white-america first got this know-nothing elected.

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Weird happenings in Arlington - Accused FBI Impersonator Tried to Enter Arlington Home - my housemate reports seeing a news van right outside our house. I wasn't sure how much tourist time I'd get in Ireland during AOL #DevFest2016, but a 2 hour walking tour on Thursday, ending at the AOL office and with a great guide Sean of LetzGo City Tours showed us quite a lot in the two or so hours we had.

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I know I'm being dense but I don't get the graphical message here. The text is implying things are cheap here (~$4.70 for a small bottle of soda not withstanding) but unless they're making a really bold claim about relative currency evaluations, it doesn't make a lot of sense? how do I parse this?

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I think that the pain in the ass factor of our customs and immigration process relative to other wealthy democracies says loads. and not in the USA's favor. It's not that we're THAT much more popular, we're just a big old C.Y.A. nation. AOL #DefFest2016 in Ireland...

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Was looking into why my iPhone image/video file name counter had been set back to 0001, 0002. It's because it rolled over from 9,999... yeesh.

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A light dinner of Ketchup Potato Chips and Red Wine following a Kinder-Egg Amuse-Bouche. Some of why I love Québec!


Yesterday I went White Water River Rafting with some coworkers on Maine's Penobscot River with Northern Outdoors- their final rafting day of the year, which is too bad because it was GREAT! Here's a montage (crudely iMovie'd-- cripes, what a frustrating UI'd program) of the "One Second Everyday" footage I took with my waterproof Canon.

Highlights of the day included M. getting swept out of the boat on the very first (admittedly Category 5) rapids, gentle life jacket swimming, shooting numerous rapids and getting lots of water in the face, an excellent lunch with a choice of "river" chicken, steak, or salmon, getting flipped trying to "surf" (getting the raft to stay in one place on an Eddy - it's great, reminded me of staying on a bucking bronco), a fun plunge down a small waterfall (hauling the raft back up some rocks for repeated trips), an awesome prolonged "surf" in that same area, again leaving the raft to do some bodysurfing down the "waterslide", then using oars as crude sails, pushed along by a tailwind from stormy weather behind us.

A set of photos from the day, cunningly arranged to imply a totally misleading story:

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Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. [...] Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, & that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love.

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A+W makes, like, the worst, weakest Diet Root Beer. At least until you realize that it's Cream Soda. Then it's pretty good, actually.

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loveblender Finishing off London with another mad dash, not helped by having almost the whole dang Northern Line being closed, and then bus stops randomly shut down. We hit the New Globe Theater, Camden Markets, and the British Museum before heading off to Heathrow.

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Getting drunk is like having a 3rd base coach that waves you on no matter what

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'And what could be smaller than something that *doesn't exist*?' 'Whoa, whoa there, Saint Augustine!'

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Animated GIFs before there were computers

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Haha, Sound FX from Atari 2600 Donkey Kong ride again... so funny to hear in the safety video on British Airways.

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I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.

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We both came to live in this modern city. Are we not B(3) Middle people? Even your excrement would have proper market value if packaged properly.

Officemate Nick and I are squeezing in a day or two of London into our business trip to Cardiff. I took so many crap photos today. Here are some of the ok ones, including a fortuitous rainbow over the Thames.

Quote of the moment, from a placard at the Tate Modern:

"For example, most of the cells in our face have migrated forward from a region at the back of our head."

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Rpgs are a terrible genre for romance. Relationships aren't guaranteed if you do all the right things. They're more suited to roguelikes...

Skipped out of work early with my office/travelmate to see Cardiff Castle before heading to London. Quote of the day, from some informational signage outside the main house:

In some large houses, a 'Long Gallery' on the upper floor was used for exercise during poor weather. The 'Ladies Walk' at Cardiff Castle is an outdoor version. It allowed genteel exercise away from the smells of the medieval town of Cardiff.

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Dream thought: In our universe, mechanistic or quantum, every decision is Hobson's Choice. But the Self isn't Hobson's customer; We are the horse, galloping heedlessly into the night.

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Slate on he Tea Party "Heroes" Oh man, I had forgotten going after Clinton via impeachment- since the 90s, after losing an usual 3 candidate race, Republicans have been tantrum-throwing toddlers whenever they lose the presidency. (And when they got the presidency, the neocon agenda got us into Iraq- brilliant!) For the final day, we decided to do a little ziplining in the morning, then Riana went on one of her vertical hikes and I took on a spot of touristy kayaking with a bunch of people from the cruise ships.

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We're basically the descendants of nervous monkeys.

from a Wired article on the popularity of meditation and mindfulness in Silicon Valley.

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As the crickets' soft autumn hum
is to us
so are we to the trees
as are they
to the rocks and the hills.

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My hand is able to touch things only because my hand is itself a touchable thing.

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"It was as though after the demise of the ancestral, pagan gods, Western civilization's burnt offerings had become ever more constant, more extravagant, more acrid--as though we were petitioning some unknown and slumbering power, trying to stir some vast dragon, striving to invoke some unknown or long-forgotten power that, awakening, might call us back into relation with something other than ourselves and our own designs."

A more chilled day, taking in some museums.

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With EB and his two daughters yesterday-- we followed the fine Rockport tradition of going down to the waterfront and sketching and painting. I'm not sure if I've ever tried to do a landscape before... moderately pleased with the results.

Photo of the same scene:

We hitchhiked for the first time in my life to and from the glacier (shh don't tell mom -- but it feels much safer to do so there than most places, in part because the roads of Juneau aren't connected to any larger highway system.) Saw the glacier, admired the falls, touched some icebergs, and saw salmon there to spawn and (from the viewing platform) a bears that was snacking on them.

Mt. Roberts is a mountain directly behinf Juneau's downtown area. It has a steep tramway you can ride to a decent visitor's center 1800 feet up -- but taking the tram up would have been too easy and insufficiently nature-y...

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Am digging unwinding from moving with Saints Row 4. GTA meets Hulk Ultimate Destruction via Crackdown and Bioshock. A day with a bit of hiking and biking in Gustavus before heading back to Juneau

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Disheartening things about directing movers alone for big stuff, then spending day on dregs: 1. aloneness 2. too much big stuff 3. too many dregs. I'm so far removed from a minimal kind of way I( think I)'d prefer to be. It was the only overcast and rainy day I had in Alaska-- most years, that would be atypical, but it has been a sunny summer there. Perfect for kayaking Glacier Bay since we were going to be wet anyway.

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The only thing can stop a bad guy with a gun is... Antoinette Tuff is amazing.

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My Halloween costume is gonna be Slutty Howard Taft. Oooo, ooo, someone help, I'm stuck in this hot, wet, sudsy bathtub, ooo

This day we took a boat tour of Glacier Bay on the Good Ship St. Phillip (A "Jet Powered Catamaran", technically.) None of the wildlife photos really came out, but there were sea lions, eagles, mountain goats, whales, and lots of interesting birds including puffins.

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Scalia is a disgusting troll, a "strict originalist" only when it's convenient to him and people like him. Disgraceful. (Another good view on this kind of strict constructionism )

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Fun Quora about common knowledge at your place, astonishing everywhere else The Software Engineering one wasn't 100% right, but wasn't too far off. Took a fun little jaunt to DC with my buddy JZ, partially to see the "Art of the Video Game" exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery...

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"So are you saying we're related to monkeys?"
"I'm saying you're related to yeast."

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I'm not sure if Netflix's streaming selection is strong enough to stand alone. Not having "ok, physical delivery" as a fallback will hurt. I think Netflix will now mostly be good for watching seasons of TV shows- otherwise might as well buy things a la carte with Vudu or whatevs.

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I refuse to believe that corporations are people until Texas executes one.

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Do people know the expression "net-net"? As in the bottom line, getting to the point AFTER weighing pros/cons? Realizing it might be obscure

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At my UU Science and Spirituality group, the idea that Evil isn't "choosing bad" per se, it's choosing bad BECAUSE it's bad. Which goes along with my idea that deliberate, subjectively recognized evil is rareish; but people might be prioritizing an "ungood" good...

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1. Something must be done
2. This is something
3. Therefore, this must be done.

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A frame from every Loony Tune from 1930-1969... When the merry-go-round broke down, indeed!

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Wow, this may be New York's best riot ever http://bit.ly/kWlpeT via @IBHirsch

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I'm all for anarchy, but then again, who will keep up the roads?

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Coworker quote of the day: "I just realized that if you combine Lil' John and Lil' Wayne you get one full sized John Wayne."

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So f'in irritated that (ironically, since I'm checking from London) US folk can't get the Kindle "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency". Money to be made here, get your stupid "rights" act together. Off to look for a bootleg PDF to supplement my well-paid for paper copy.

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--I downloaded the explicit MP3 first, as is my wont... man, it's much funnier with Mario noises than with gratuitous F-bombs...

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For English-speakers, that notorious language barrier is about two feet high. It keeps many people out of Europe, but with a few communication tricks and a polite approach, the English-only traveller can step right over it.

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--I love the drama of the character name introductions, and the cleverness of the mapping to "realistic" characters. Tomorrow: live action! A fond Auf Wiedersehen to our friends in Germany and we head to London... take the train in, find our apartment, rest for a bit, then start wandering...

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Why people think OSX is good is beyond me-File management sucks- coverflow view is no substitute for drag select region and cmd-c,x,v shortcuts

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There's something haunting and sad about this: antiquity had its own antiquity. http://on.io9.com/ilQm4n

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Plus OSX finder and Chrome have this ridiculous gesture short cut to zoom in- I accidentally make it all the time, no idea how to reverse.

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And then Preview's "Previous" and "Next" buttons don't think "maybe I want the next image in the directory", I had to "open" 'em all. DUH! Maybe I could cmd-A select all, then "Open with" but I don't have a simple way to unselect the 5 .mov files so that Open with is there. With Windows, I could, say, click the first, hit shift-end, then shift-arrow back up. MACBOOK DOESN'T HAVE AN END KEY. Do Mac users type? Keyboard support is so bad, simple file manipulation so poor, the App-not-Task model is so weak-amazing iOS is so good, when OSX is so bad.

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-H.R. Puffnstuff. Man, if you didn't grow up with this -- and I didn't - it seems really weird and nightmarish...

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Click for fullsize... it was on a new system where I was having a Bad Chrome Day.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2295128/ The GOP: once the party of Lincoln. Then realism. Now, utter delusion and denial.

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--More fun with American currency

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Since I'm in a land of "funny lookin' money"... ideas for US Currency redesign by Michael Tyznik Yes, past, pre-publishing me (see below) I am in Germany now! Today we went to Heidelberg.

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--They were saying this is one of germany's favorites...thought I'd post it since I should be there now!

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Oddly, despite being at the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe and the cabaret, it wasn't a super-photogenic day.

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At the risk of sounding like "un poseur" -- ubiquitous cheap baguette and very good inexpensive table wine is a nice way to live.

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Hooray for FC Porto... your fans were making a hell of a lot of noise around the Arc de Triomphe tonight!

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Motown Single Ladies:
We slept in way later than we have before, like 1PM... must be a bit of jet lag... then we headed to the Modern and Contemporary collections at Centre Pompidou...

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RIP Jim Henson, September 24, 1936 - May 16, 1990

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Why, IMO, OSX sucks: no Irfanview. Think about installing ImageMagick. Installer for that requires Xcode. WTF. I just don't jive with Macs.

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half the shit in my Netflix queue could be listed as:
Things A Better Version Of Me Would Actually Sit Through

(The other half of mine tends to be "might contain boobies") For technical reasons, at least for the time being I'm going to have to be very selective about how many photos I publish here, just saving the truly odd or visually decent ones...

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Safely in Paris. loving the app CityMaps2Go-- even without paying for data roaming you can preload maps and then know where you are!

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You know, from a UI perspective, toggle push buttons that change the state of a system are kind of problematic. If the current state isn't immediately clear, than it's ambiguous if a button should tell you what the current state is, or what the state will change to if the button is pressed.

For example, my cellphone has a virtual button "Speaker On", and if the other person isn't talking, I don't know if that means the speaker is on, or will turn on if I press that button.

I see this a lot with music players... there's the convention of the right pointing triangle for "play" (and a square or two vertical lines for "pause") but often it's a guess if it means "playing" or "play".

Today Amber, Kjersten and I went to the 100th Anniversary Sandwich Fair in New Hampshire. We had a lot of great fair food, but, ironically enough, there were absolutely no sandwiches to be had.

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The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

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So is Gap inviting people to do their logo for free because their Helvetica one is so bad, or was that the result of asking for free work? One final bit of Lake George-ism -- I've always liked this poster, an old party invitation, though I'm not sure of the year or of all of the references, but here's an attempt at transcribing it... (Merri-Vue must've been the name of one of the other cabins.)

Merri - Vue extends to you - a hesitant invitation to come on up and grab a cup of gin, or hooch libation ....... we've stripped the joint, so there's no point to limit jubilation .... besides our thirst, Anthea durst have a birthday celebration ..... bring bob along (we may be wrong) it's quite an education, to see him drink and slowly sink in quiet stupification . ..... our john's inside, we say with pride no need for constipation! ........... so tell ivân to use the can*, fur coats are his temptation ......... black tie and tails, long dresses, veils, just use the imagination .......... the date is Sun*, we'll go to Mon . to miss. hyatt's consternation ......... come one; come all to the merry brawl the seasons wind-up celebration ...... 5:00 PM

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"Hi! I'm Princess Laidup! Note that I'm wearing less clothes in this movie than before! That's because my Figure's improved! Unfortunately my acting HASN'T!" --Leia from MAD's parody of Return of the Jedi... I remember being kind of fascinated by this drawing back in 1983 or so

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...at Jabba the Hutt's palace with Oola the slave girl, who, it turns out, has a rather long 'jabba' where her 'hutt' should be...

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Maybe I should replace the Larry-the-Cable-Guy's "Git-R-Done" with Tim Gunn's "Make It Work" for describing crunchtime work methodology.

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How to spot a geek: have them make a list of scary words and see if they include "non-Euclidian."

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsmaker/college-safety-rankings/ --yeesh, my alma mater Tufts "Most Dangerous College"? Harvard #3, MIT #14. So, one thing Lake George has is nature!

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Things I learned about this weekend: "Nose Grease", a convenient lubricant at hand for carpenters and people with chapped lips and what not.

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Things I learned about this weekend: I observed again how a star-filled, low-light-pollution sky really looks like a sky dome arched above.

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Things I learned about this weekend: if there's no such thing as a "Jacksi-One" (Pepsi One and Jack) maybe there oughta be. (Why no love for Pepsi products as mixers in general?)

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http://is.gd/fbWGN This spoof video and that Chappelle Show w/ Wayne Brady had that "shushing while strangling" thing- where's that from?

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/13/charlie-brooker-google-instant -- Google's War on our attention spans.

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Technically, my job wouldn't be impossible without jQuery and Firebug, but man, it's pretty close!

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If I ever saw an amputee being hanged, I would just start yelling out letters.

This weekend Amber and I joined good ol "what happened to my sidebar" Dylan and a crew of people up at his family's cabins on Lake George, NY...

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http://www.thesandwichfair.com/ -Amber wants to go to the 3-day "Sandwich Fair" I was psyched, but it turns out Sandwich is a place name :-(

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Sad how Outlook 2010 is trying so hard with discussion threading, and failing. A search should show you results, not hide stuff in threads!

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New in iPhone OS 4: The Full App-by-App Breakdown - not much interests me except for folder for playlists and the homescreen, and FINALLY maybe the option to have an SMS character count. Still no sign of a "Ctrl-F"-style search in page feature for Safari.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/weekinreview/11giridharadas.html - interesting NY Times bit on 3rd world use of the "humble" cellphone.

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Yours 'Til Niagara Falls of the Moment
After the SkyWheel we went to Brick City, an interesting lego exhibit thing...

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The truth is always a compound of two half-truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.

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Man, I can't find an iPad sketch app with really good webpublishing options... Some of that critique of it not being a creating tool is true

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My kingdom for a pixel-centric iPad sketch app... I want flood fill, cropping, and resizing/anti-aliasing as the last step, damn it.

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At Michael "Iron Chef" Symon's restaurant "Lolita" (corner of "Professor" and "Literary"). I'm like the Humbert Humbert of Cleveland dining!

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Man- between being a bit more southerly than Boston and more westerly in the time zone, Cleveland is much lighter later. 8pm was still light!

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Yours 'Til Niagara Falls of the Moment
After we took in the falls we headed over to Clifton Hill, which is a crazy mashup of glitzy and lowbrow rides and attractions. Amber consented to go on the big old ferris wheel the Sky...

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It's humbling, actually. When you devote your entire life to the endless, selfless quest to improve the lives of others; when you live a monk-like existence, and focus all of your power and genius on the singular goal of creating objects that nourish souls and transform people's lives with magic and wonder; and when people tell you that this is, indeed, what you've done -- well, it's gratifying. Namaste, entire population of Spaceship Earth. I honor the place where your desire to consume becomes one with my desire to create.

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http://www.metafilter.com/90762/LADYGAGA-for-14-points#3028153 - alternate rules for board games (in honor of the "dumbing down" of Scrabble) - I wonder if Candyland could be fun with those rules?

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You know what I think will really revolutionize comics? People making better f*cking comics.

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Yours 'Til Niagara Falls of the Moment
Amber and I kicked off our Cleveland trip with a jaunt up to Niagara Falls... we got there a bit before sunset, and caught some nice light...

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Whoa, thought I was just super dizzy after my nap...it was an earthquake!!

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Little Caesar's pizza! Man how I've missed it, the old after church standby. Still frickin' cheap, $5 for a pretty big pie (but no longer square :-( )

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Of all the criticisms of the iPad, "no multitasking" is probably the least real to me. Except for, like, IM-notification, you're only doing one thing at once anyway, and a fast context switch is good enough.

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The iPad feels like the future. Despite the unfortunate name, it IS "more intimate" somehow-Still this generation feels a bit gimmicky, and the lack of Flash is a bummer.

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Watching Butler lose at the final second, along side 2 folks who worked there, was heartbreaking. Screw Duke and their recruited freaks. Table of Contents for my vacation to Portugal ... (by coincidence, exactly a year and a half after my Japan wrapup)

friday

calling london

saturday

lisboa!

sunday

castle of são jorge

monday

oceanário

tuesday

feira da ladra e cascais

wednesday

évora

thursday

torre de belém e marcos

friday

berardo / aqueduct / bica

saturday

sintra

sunday

back to boston

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http://gawker.com/5369364/william-safires-finest-speech - the speech ready if the Apollo moon landing had left the astronauts stranded. RIP, William Safire.

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HULK feel pain, too! If Wolverine prick us with claws do Hulk not bleed green? If General Thunderbolt Ross tickle Hulk with Apache gunships do Hulk not throw tanks? If gamma bomb poison Hulk do we not become Hulk? And if Ducky ignore us for Kenya-born Nazi Commie, shall Hulk not weep like little Disney Princess?

(via Bill http://www.thoughtviper.com/newest.html )

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"Hi Kirk, Hope you are doing in the best of the mood!!" -- random recruiter spam to me. Nice to see the recruiters out I guess...

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dumb kosher-ness thought: babies drinking breast milk. Isn't that like drinking milk from a bottle made of meat? (Some googling explains breast milks is pareve, ok to eat with meat or dairy)

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--100 years of Special FX (via via BB - click either the movie or that link to get to a list of the fims)

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Woman in Central Square wearing pajamas and reading cable TV manual loudly. If she were in Harvard Square, it would be performance art.

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I love my puppy ... I love that he is so young and full of life ... And that he will still die first.

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Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

Photoblog of the Moment
My final day in Portugal! Marcos and I decided to hit Sintra.

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--Best Fight Scene Ever? Cracked has analysis and a few other candidates

Photoblog of the Moment
My antepenultimate morning in Portugal! That pretty much stretched right into my penultimate morning in Portugal...

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http://www.universityonyouthanddevelopment.org/ - Marcos set this up, with his role in the Council of Europe (sort of a non-defunct European League of Nations)

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--from a Series of Video Game makeovers. Would be fun to use graphics like this in a real game.

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Botswanan roads are famous for having big potholes and big wildlife to avoid. There's a joke among South African overland drivers: if you see two eyes in the middle of the road while driving through Botswana at night, chances are it's a giraffe standing in a pothole.

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--Thanks to the (maybe meanspirited?) People of Walmart site, many many more people now know the inexplicable video genius of RickyTic3

Photoblog of the Moment

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MOMWARNING: Very, very weird, and just a tad homoerotic. But fun!

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From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light--a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes.

In about one and a half centuries--after the lovers who made the glow will have long since been laid permanently on their backs--metropolises will be seen from space. They will glow all year. Smaller cities will also be seen, but with great difficulty. Shtetls will be virtually impossible to spot. Individual couples, invisible.

The glow is born from the sum of thousands of loves: newlyweds and teenagers who spark like lighters out of butane, pairs of men who burn fast and bright, pairs of women who illuminate for hours with soft multiple glows, orgies like rock and flint toys sold at festivals, couples trying unsuccessfully to have children who burn their frustrated image on the continent like the bloom a bright light leaves on the eye after you turn away from it.

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You've gotta choose people who aren't much more motivated than you are - but don't surround yourself with total narcissists. Otherwise, things start to be about something other than you.

Photoblog of the Moment
So the day started off kind of oddly - we thought we had ordered tickets for me for a quick hop over to Madrid, but the airline didn't get the message, so after some fumbling with getting around the airpot I took a bus over to the Oriente area. Near the Metro stop I saw this brilliant tacky old-Mini Cooper...

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8201997.stm - hunting for fun/goofy leading economic indicators. Photoblog of the Moment
Yesterday I walked around Lisbon on my own after getting up at the crack of 1PM. (Those external blackout shades they have here, with the pullcord on the inside, are terrific for that, just wonderful.)

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20cameron.html?_r=1 - "I want to ask if it is in your heart to forgive me. You don't have to." and other last words on Texas' Death Row. Photoblog of the Moment

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English has a big vocabulary, but Portuguese has a word, "brinde", for the secret toy surprises you get inside, say cracker jack or cereal.

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--Time Lapse from an AMAZING $150 space balloon photography project - brilliant!


--impressed by the deftness of this Python/Trek mashup. (via)

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Photoblog of the Moment
So I'm not sure if I'll be able to match the photoblog I made in Japan last year, in terms of # of photos, in terms of internet access, in terms of Europe not being as exotic as Japan. (Heck, in terms of me lying about the apartment too much, though I'll try not to overdo that)

Still, here's a day of it. Because I didn't think things through, I ended up having an overnight stay in London. But it worked out ok, I got to see a little bit more than I would have otherwise, and maybe a layover in an English-speaking but foreign country helped ease the transition...

So, leaving Friday... So, like I suggested yesterday, EB and EBSO and EBB and I went to the Topsfield Fair... TOMORROW: COMPARE AND CONTRAST WITH THE HARVARD SQUARE OCTOBERFEST AND "HONK" PARADE!

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Not only working today but there's the regular all-division townhall meeting at 8:30... Nokia Finnish overlords know not from Columbus!

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<<we've got a long way to go / it's beyond Martin Luther, upgrade computer>>

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Listening to MP3 playlist versions of R+B mixtapes I made for my car in 1996. The 90s were a good decade for mixtapes.

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"Now lets take it on home! 'Cause ummm.... we gotta go home!" --Marge Simpson, "Springfield Soul Stew" Ugh, break-up today.

My fault.

Sigh, like Milan Kundera wrote "We never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."

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Japan of the Moment
So one odd series of photograph I took in Japan were manhole covers. Not every one I saw, but I saw a few that caught my eye, either because of design, or with a splash of cover, or because the hole was in grass instead of asphault, etc...


That last one probably is the one that got me noticing them on one of the first days, but I didn't think to photograph it 'til the end.

OK, I know I've written an awful lot about Japan, and this should be my penultimate entry (assuming I get to assembling the list of interesting man hole covers I photographed...) While I really enjoyed assembling each day's travelog just after it happened, I kind of longed for a summary like I had for some previous trips -- a way of telling my future self, where the heck did those 14 days go? As well as having a single URL.

It's kind of odd that each day's entry starts with three random quotes or links, but oh well.

thursday/friday	to Japan! Fly to Japan, via DC instead of Chicago. Josh meets me at Narita Airport and we take trains to his place in Shim-Matsudo in Chiba.
saturday	Kamakura and Yokohama Josh and I head to Kamakura. We hike all over place and see the Zen temple Engaku-ji, the larger Shinto temple Tsurugaoka Hachiman, wash money in (Zeniarai Benten) and adore Daibutsu, the outdoor giant Buddha. After we head back east to Yokohama, go up Japan's tallest building the Landmark Tower, hop the water-taxi, and then have dinner in Chinatown.
sunday	Akihabara, Takeshita Street and Harajuku Josh and I meet up with my college buddy Alex. We geek out at the Electric City Akihabara, taking in one of the giant stores (Yodobashi-Akiba) and the weekly street fair. Then we see super-you-threndy Takeshita Street and chic Harajuku. Finally we have dinner near the famous scramble intersection (as seen in Lost in Translation when it had the giant dinosaur on the electronic billboard.)
monday	to Hiroshima I head out on my own to Hiroshima, walk to my posh (but cheap) hotel and pay my respects at the Atomic Bomb Dome. After I go gift hunting in the impressive Hondori shopping arcade.
tuesday	Hiroshima I visit the Peace Memorial Park and with a heavy heart view the displays at the Memorial Hall. Then I hike across the city and up to the Museum of Contemporary Art and check out the Manga Library. Finally a train to Kyoto.
wednesday	Kyoto I take a bus tour of Kyoto along with some friend Finns and Norwegians. The rainy day tour features the elegant Nijo-jo with its Nightingale floors, the Golden Pavilion shrine, and the Imperial Palace. After a buffet lunch and light shopping at the Kyoto Craft Center I switch to the Nara tour for the afternoon, getting attacked by friendly but hungry deer outside Todai-ji, world's largest wooden building and home of a Buddha even larger than Daibutsu. I paint a tile there, the tour makes one last stop at the Shinto shrine Kasuga Taisha, and then it's back to the hotel, damp but happy.
thursday	Osaka I hop the train to Osaka, the third largest and most generally easy-going big city of Japan. I go to the of Osaka-Jo, have some squid on a stick, enjoy seeing a slightly twisted version of home in America-Mura, have more great vendor food, and then witness the restaurant apocalypse that is the Dotombori district. Finally I ride the Hep Five Ferris Wheel (starting on the 7th floor of the shopping center and spinning its way up) and catch the bullet train back to Tokyo
friday	Ginza and Asakusa Josh and I head through the Ginza and Asakusa district and take in Sensoji Temple, with its giant lanterns and huge festive row of vendors. Then we watch two great programs of Kabuki.
saturday	Hakone Josh and I journey out to Hakone, near the base of Mt. Fuji. We take a bus over steep climbs and scary hairpin turns and do a bit of hiking. We drink in magnificent views of the lake and Mt. Fuji, as well as a visiting a few neat shops. Finally I try the Japanese Onsen, natural springs, with nary but a little towel to hide my junk and then sit folded on my hand as I decompress in the hot water
sunday	Akihabra Again and Shinjuku Another day in Tokyo. Josh and I go back to see some stuff we missed in Akihabra then we again meet up with Alex. After a brief respite in Starbucks Josh heads home and Alex and I head to the top of the neo-Gothic Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building for more great views. We then see a bit of Shinjuku and have some great conversation over some Shabu-Shabu hot pot cooking.
monday	to Kanazawa via Echigo-Yuzawa Time to head to the west coast on my own, this time to Kanazawa. The snow covered landscape near the Echigo-Yuzawa station is just breathtaking. I walk to my hotel, taking in some cool public sculptures and then see the Oyama Jinja shrine with its lovely rustic pond gardens. I get a feel for the city watching a video at the minimalist Noh Museum and then head to my hotel, right in the heart of the Katamachi scramble area.
tuesday	Kanazawa A brief stop at a Shinto Shrine and then I spend hours exploring Kenrokuen Garden, arguably Japan's finest. I follow the water, see some shops, and take tea. Then I get lost in small forest of Kanazawa Castle, never sure if the storehouses I saw were all there were to see because of the construction or if I was just lost. I then experience the delight of the 21st Century Contemporary Art Museum, including the so-brilliant permanent installation Swimming Pool. A quick dinner at McDonalds (lemon pepper shaka shaka chicken is weirdly good) and then I see the Red Sox opening the season against the A's.
wednesday	to Tokyo I walk to the train station and then head back to Tokyo. On my own I hunt down the brandless brand store Muji (at last!) as well as a particular shop in Akahabra I wanted to check out for some gifts. Back one final time to Shim-Matsudo where Josh and I head out for some pizza - Pizza Hut, but Korean BBQ style!
	Final Thoughts All the things I didn't have time to fully ramble about when putting together the previous updates.
	Manholespotting A quick postscript, manhole covers that seemed a little interesting at the time.

Bonus: Larger versions of 13 of the most visually compelling shots on Flickr - now backed up here in 2019 So during my trip I kept a list of "Japan Topics" on my iPhone, a few words to remind me of a topic I wanted to mention in the travelog... the thing was my daily updates were often done for speed, so most days I just selected, picked, and captioned the photos without so much verbiage.

On the plane ride back I decided to type up what I had to say while Japan was still fresh in my mind. It got pretty wordy though (also some if it reads as if I was typing on a tiny laptop keyboard while sleep deprived on a plane) so rather than taking up all the space here (or breaking it up over a course of days...) I made each iPhone note a link to display/hide what I wrote about that on the plane. Or just hit "Show All" and see just how wordy I got... there are a few last photos lurking in there to.

SHOW ALL

"biggest/ seems like land w.o. enough to do"
"there is a lot of language to ignore people don't read anyway - also USA fairly multilingual"
"land of cell ringtones"
"josh on students consulting each other"
"point cards / loyalty programs"
"internet cafe / overnight"
"frission of earthquake"
"superweapon"
"thankful for robot"
"Einstein letter to FDR / military police committee minutes"
"little sense of big cities small when talking tickets"
"ask showing fingers over five"
"doorways step up over"
"use of please"
"rr pass envy and reserve seats"
"Japanese foreplay = 'brace yourself!'"
"formula at register / and tray / seasonal foods"
"green spot / eyelids Japanese"
"build boat on lake water?"
"kabuki description"
"fedora and alex"
"libraries in museums"
"tipping, lack thereof.. sales tax wired in / most coins clearly labled... big bills ok"
"rice balls are neither, sort of"
"stairs more for disembarking"
"trains and naps, warm... plus heated seats"
"conductor and cart ladies on train always bow"
"train timing makes up for not knowing Japanese"
"stabber"
"loyalty to objects I travel with"

So thanks again Josh and Tomomi and Erin... I had a fantastic great neat time there and it was all over way too soon...

• I see that scientists have decided that all blue eyed people have a common ancestor. Is there anything scientists can't do?
  
  I think that this is patently bullshit.
  
  How can it be that there is any possibility that I might be related to the fucking cretin that uses my Tabasco sauce without my express or implied permission?

• The 10 Best Internet Fads.
• How to Make Friends by Telephone are some pointers from the early days of Bell... my favorite bits are "GLUB-GLUB-MO-BLON!" as what you sound like if you shout too loud, and "Speak TO the person at the other end of the line - - not TO the telephone - - then you're more apt to be pleasant and understanding" which, somewhat modified, is good advice for the Internet today.

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Travelog of the Moment
So today, back to Tokyo. Kind of melancholy, I can feel a part of myself working to say good-bye to Japan, knowing that while a return trip isn't out of the question, it's not assured either.

• 
  This woman is inspecting what is supposedly Rasputin's Dong.
• For some reason, 3 years ago LAN3 provided me with a link about Carter getting attacked by a 'swamp rabbit'
• I've always wondered where the phrase "throw ___ under the bus" comes from, usually in the sense of "make ___ the scapegoat". It's seems a rather peculiar choice of metaphor... its not like buses demand sacrifices, or throwing someone under one will do much to slow down the bus. Maybe it's for better traction under ice conditions?

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Travelog of the Moment
Mornings in hotels I tend to watch kids' tv, it's more interesting that the news and I like watching people teach English. There's this one show with muppet-like folk, they all play instruments along with a human pianist. I'm impressed with how much fidelity the instruments seem to be handled; they're not just holding them and flailing, which seems to be the standard for puppet musicianship.

• Random anecdote: We tried to get a "pep band" going for basketball games in high school but we were getting too much flak about not being able to play during the course of the game. I remember thinking how lame Mr. A's (the band director's) arguments were, something along the lines of... don't the refs use whistles? And aren't whistles tones? And aren't tones a form of music? So let the band play!
• Ah, the age old Satanic Lyrics when you play songs in reverse.

• If one were to take the 25,000 word Oxford Pocket English Dictionary and take away the redundancies of our rich language and eliminate the words that can be made by putting together simpler words, we find that 90% of the concepts in that dictionary can be achieved with 850 words.

  You wonder about the other 10%... how much is just technical? How much is poetry?

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Travelog of the Moment
So today I set off once again on my own to Kanazawa on Japan's west coast.

• Popular Mechanics debunks 9/11 myths.
• Odd anecdote: when I was a wee lad I was eating too many grapes so my mom put the bowl on... a piano, I think it is, out of reach. She comes in later to find me clambering up over the piano to get the little treasures, and my all-innocent response to her fierce look: "gapes... I yike gapes". That's a bit of a family catchphrase to this day.
• Thoughts of a 90-something year old guy -- all the way back to when he was an 88-year old guy!

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Travelog of the Moment
Now reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This is actually a profoundly wonderful book, thanks for the suggestion Lex!

You know, I've taken almost 1,200 shots so far this trip. Yeesh!

Today was a bit of a repeat of last week, visiting the electronics store area Akihabra and meeting up with old college buddy Alex.

• 
  AAAAAIIE! scary skimasks scary skimasks scary skimasks!!!
• ATI's classic show-off-your-videocard CGI percussion video. Heh, you know, now that full video is cheap and easy, no non-interactive video playback is going to be all that impressive to me.
• Designer Challenge: it's video of 9 chairs that can pack into a FedEx box. Most are just stools, and some are just wrecks, but a few are clever, and it's amusing to see the staff of CITY try to figure them out.

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Travelog of the Moment
So today was another day taken at a leisurely place, sight-seeing-wise, but with plenty of hiking. Josh and I headed out to Hakone, near the base of Fuji, and then went toa traditional Hot Spring.

• Admittedly the heavy use of Engrish is a bit offensive, but I do kind enjoy Misinformers Playstation 3 Sneak Preview from way back when:

  mis: So you mean, you can plug a phone line into it, and play multi-player games online, like with the Dreamcast?
  
  Sony: Dreamcast? Ha ha, funny stupid yankee! You dishonor me with your mention of this Dreamcast. The Praystation 3 does not connect to internet, Praystation 3 CONTAIN the internet. You prugga in the computer to the port, the internet isa all there. We copy it inside machine for fast access.
  
  mis: Wait, so you're saying that you copied every single file on the internet into this box? That doesn't even make any sense! The internet is a constantly changing network of millions of individual machines. How does the PS3 update its so called "internet" if it has no connections to the real network?
  
  Sony: Thasa right. No connections. Praystation 3 get internet from outerspace.
  
  mis: And its power?
  
  Sony: It run on love.

• Nice photoblog: Derilect New England
• Ken Perlin seems to have some interesting toys on his site.

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Travelog of the Moment
Fairly relaxed day today.

• I made a note to write about this one Arby's ad they had playing in Cleveland circa 1987 or so? It just had this goofy nebbish guy going "I want BEEF - LOTS of BEEF -- eee arrr!" I think he then knocks down some columns, obviously designed for easy knocking-downage, ala Samson. I think the close then had him say, sounding almost chastened "Arby's, for a manly kind of guy". Something like that. (2019 UPDATE - here is the ad)
  
  I just wanted to share that somewhere in my brain are some cells that fire almost anytime I hear BEEF discussed.
• Learn about the homeless by what they carry on their persons.

• Recall: it's more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slowly.

  Of course girlfriend cmg thinks I drive like a grandparent anyway.

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Travelog of the Moment
Today I took trains to Osaka, third largest city of Japan. Osaka is know for its cuisine, its dialect Osaka-ben (confession: it all sounded like Japanese to me), and the easy-going nature of its people. Scheduled to be in Tokyo, I was worried I didn't have enough time, and while a daytrip is never enough to really take in a city, I got to hit the major things Josh suggested.

• 
  If the size of a man's components matched how many nerve endings were contained therein. I gotta be honest, I'm almost a little surprised he's not more well hung.
• 10 most wanted Design Bugs
• fishhighway, Habitrol for Fish...

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Travelog of the Moment
So Wednesday I went on a bus tour of Kyoto and Nara. I wasn't utterly blown away by the tourguides (who may have been gearing for people who did zero reading about Japan in general) but it was the best way to get to these geographically diverse sites. Plus, a day with more riding and less walking seemed like a nice idea for my feet.

Also I met some nice people from Norway and Finland (dropped my Nokia street cred) and to be honest often they seemed more interesting than the tourguide's spiel.

• I know I scanned this once, and may have even posted it, but one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons is just a brick with this caption above it:

  FOUR HUNDRED SELECTIONS OF THE WORLD'S FINEST MUSIC, OVER ONE THOUSAND FULL-COLOR REPRODUCTIONS OF MANKIND'S GREATEST PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES, AND TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE TIMELESS CLASSICS OF WESTERN LITERATURE COMPACTED INTO A TWO-BY-THREE-BY-SIX INCH BRICK

  You know... I'm sure it misses the joke but you could probably get that all on a 100Gb drive these days.
• Random idea I had for a short story: a very realistic study of a guy's reaction when a teammate on his football team does something incredibly and surreal-y awful to a member of the other team, like knock him unconcious and rip off his testicles.
• You can't get too much geekier than a Geocities page full of alien fonts from the scifi show Babylon 5

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Travelog of the Moment

• * Users must be given obvious and easy control over color usage. Different people have very different combinations of monitors, background colors, limitations in color perception, and general preferences. There is no single choice of colors that will work for any substantial portion of the user community.
  
  * The basic nature of the human visual system is that it separates objects based on intensity differences, not color differences. If you are designing colors for a white-background display, every color you use must be, with few exceptions, a low-intensity color. Hot pink on white may look snazzy, but people will have to work hard to read it.
  
  * Dark blue should never be used for anything somebody is expected to read. Short wavelength colors tend to focus just in front of the retina, and will thus always be a little bit blurry.

• Crappy Movie Pitches -- the older ones are a bit punchier than the stuff that's on the front page.
• meaningoflife.tv

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Travelog of the Moment
So I thought Monday would be mostly travel, but I got to see some important things. I braved the Tokyo subway and then the bullet trains all on my own, got to Hiroshima, and then determined to heed Josh's admonition to "don't be that girl from Lost in Translation" (i.e. sitting moping around a hotel room) I headed out for a few hours of exploration.

So, the trains. It's too bad that "and the trains ran on time" has such a negative connotation, because it's actually quite handy. They are extremely punctual, except when someone stepped in front of one... a not uncommon occurrence, maybe 2 or 3 a month - infamously the result of a nation that has A. a strong and idiosyncratic sense of honor, B. not much of a religious prohibition against suicide, and in fact a social precedent for it (A Spitzer in Japan would be dead by his own hand by this point, Josh says) and C. Really, really fast trains.

• - this is the "Rhino" truck from the show "Mask", the last toy series I got into, after Transformers and GI Joe. Ever since then I always get the feeling that the back end hitch part of trailerless semis I see should be able to roll around independently, as shown here.
• Gary Kitchen's Gamemaker was a very cool program for the C=64. That link is an attempt to collect games people made on it for posterity.
• Physics funnies:

  Special relativity is the girl you meet at the dorm party while you're dating electrodynamics. You make out. It's not really cheating because it's not like you call her back. But you have a sneaking suspicion she knows electrodynamics and told her everything.

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Travelog of the Moment
Another amazing day with Josh. I'm going to be traveling to Hiroshima and Kyoto on my own by rail, so I might not be posting quite so extensively for a bit...

• The Society for Barefoot Living Most important facts: 1 It is healthy for your feet to go barefoot. 2 It is not against the law to go barefoot into any kind of establishment including restaurants. 3 It is also not against any health department regulation. 4 It is not against the law to drive barefoot.
• A log of SciFi Dreams Coming True.
• languagemonitor.com: interesting content, terrible webdesign, at least in Firefox.

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Travelog Photo Insanity of the Moment
So, Saturday. Josh played tour guide and we hit Kamakura, with dozens of temples and a giant Buddha, and then the port area around Yokohama. I appear to have gone a bit crazy nuts with the photos this day.

• There is never a time in the future in which we will work out out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

  I thought it was interesting to compare that to Henry Miller's

  There are no 'facts'-- there is only *the fact* that man, every man everywhere in the world, is on his way to ordination. Some men take the long route and some take the short route. Every man is working out his own way and nobody can be of help except by being kind, generous, and patient.

• The 60 Second Novelist
• On "Allison"

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Travelog of the Moment
In theory my jetlag "isn't so bad", but then again I'm writing this at 4AM (3PM Boston time.)

I now have the technology and 'net access to try travelloging in real time. This likely means my observations will be extra facile and I'll be less likely to know if they represent just what I see, or Japan as a whole. And so it's going to be more raw and mundane than if I were pulling it together after. So, those disclaimers out of the way:



A few other notes:

• I noticed more people who seemed to have more mundane tasks than in the USA: an airport employee at the luggage carousel, wrangling bags coming out of the chute to make sure they didn't get stuck, a man making a pass through the train with a mop (it being a rainy day), and then at the rail station, a man with a construction uniform and a megaphone warning people getting off the train to be careful about the construction going on. Josh talked to me about the pride and work ethic entailed even at these "low level" jobs, but more striking to me was the-- attention to detail, I guess I'd say, that it was worth having someone responsible for these particular things.
• I'll probably get some photos of this later, but the department store we ducked through is interesting, because it wasn't really a department store... it rather looked like one, but each section was a separate vendor with its own cashier. So while there are other "proper" department stores around, there's also this "evolution of the bazaar" in effect.
• Josh and Tomomi live four or five stories up, and the stairs to their building are exposed to the outside... Josh says this is extremely common in Japan.

So I bid a fond farewell to Seattle. I think my consulting role went well, though I had to put in some brutally late nights, and it was one of those things that never feels perfectly resolved.

Got a chance to wander the city a bit more on my last evening there.

I even found a very fun little arcade at the lakefront. I think the arcade games were set at their easier settings for the most part, which I appreciated. I played Star Wars Tilogy Arcade, destroyed the Deathstar which is always enjoyable. I also played ticket games, I usually don't go for that but they had this one mallet game, sort of a virtual Whack-A-Mole but with a real mallet on a big screen.

So see ya, Seattle... I'll miss you, and how you have the Daily Show on at a decent hour. Plus my hotel had the NFL Channell... man, as much as I enjoy following the Patriots and gaving a game on in the background, 24/7 football coverage is kind of creepy.

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Fortune of the Moment
"You may find if you relax that you dream a thousand new paths and awake to walk your old one."
--Excerpt from the card I got from the Arcade's mechanical fortune teller. It was a lot better than the one from the mechanical Elvis at the Pike Place magic show that started "You are nature's stepchild. You enjoy nature and thrive when you spend time outdoors." Damn, Mechanical Elvis just doesn't know me at all, does he...

So this is Seattle! I got in town around 4 last night, so I figured it might be the best chance to explore a bit. And I splurged a tad and decided to give Canon one more chance, with its weirdly PSP-looking SD630. I ended up having fewer interesting photos from Texas than I expected.

Here's one oddity....the room had a note waiting for me that said, in part:

Please let us know what you think of our new bedding package. At this time, we are still waiting on two items that will complete this initiative; bed skirts and bed scarves. We have been waiting on these items for the last several weeks and could not, in good conscience, wait any longer to let you feel the new bedding.

What amuses me is the "in good conscience" bit. I never thought bedding would carry such a moral imperative... Here's a photo of the bed once they got to adding the "bed scarf":



I have to admit, the scarf didn't seem that great to me. It was there just for my final night, and actually had fallen on the floor by the next morning. The rest of the bedding was excellent, and I don't see that a decorative scratchy throw adds to it that much.

Anyway...one other bit of Texas ephemera...



Beek jerky in convenient (?) "chewing tobacco" shredded form. Pretty gross. It was pretty finely shredded, I was expecting something more like "big league chew".

So, the only shots I really like are of these flocks of birds in Addison...



Umm, don't park your car under the trees in that area. But full size versions of the images are on my desktop backgrounds page.

Finally, the ugliest self-portrait I've ever taken...



Tada. Mike and Dave from this weekend. In the background is that neat building with big arch, between 93 and the harbor.

We went on the subway this weekend. I've always been struck by these two signs:

PASSENGER EMERGENCY INTERCOM UNIT AT END OF CAR.
SISTEMA DE INTERCOMUNICACION PARA PASAJEROS EN CASO DE EMERGENCIA SITUADO AL EXTREMO DEL TREN.

They say basically the same thing, but it always struck me how much more concise the English version was than the Spanish. On the other hand, certain other phrases, especially involving verbs and recipients of action, are much tighter in Spanish. That plus the smaller selection of word ending sounds probably is what makes for better poetry. But English seems good at the nouns.

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Link of the Moment
There has been 4 of 5 cartoons in the What The Drugs Taught Me series up for a while, don't know if the fifth one is ever going to show up. (UPDATE: Here's the Final Cartoon) I like the narrator's mom's rule, a two year statute of limitations, after that you can admit anything and she can't get bad. (Other favorite quote: "Maybe everything I've been told is bad... is good!" Such a goofy sophomoric way of looking at the world.)