Wednesday, 6 May 2009
New-cam again. I’m getting used to using this aspect ratio. The big problem seems to be extraneous visual crap creeping in on the sides (as above). Still, these were gorgeous roses, on a section of street I think of as Rose Row, because three houses have front gardens with nice, well-maintained roses. We had a nice park-walk with the new-cam (its first!), despite overcast skies….
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
’Maters are bloomin’ now (and have been for a couple of weeks).
Hey, it’s really a cool camera…. Here’s a better still….
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Big news: new toy tool…a small point-and-shoot still camera that shoots 720p high-res video, too, and at 16:9 if you want (I think—not really my knowledge realm). Well, if you have a big storage thingy-card-deal. And we do. Two of them. 16-gig each. I think the battery will run down before the hours of video that would fill each card are recorded.
And what is it? A Panasonic Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 that DPReview calls the first camera with AVCHD Lite HD recording. Does that make your heart beat faster?
Me, I’m groovin’ on the 25mm ultra wide angle lens. The pansy-heart-picture is from the new-cam, but it’s been thissed & thatted, so I doubt you can tell much. Just trust me! It’s a lovely camera!
Friday, 24 April 2009
I just discovered New Coke Bottles….
Ah, material culture change…. I guess I don’t get out much. Or when I do, I’m not in the soda aisle at the groc store….
Conference news: I missed seeing the lovely Oralia because she’s suffering tooth problems. I’m sad. But I did see her hubby and get caught up a bit.
Conference news: Overwhelmingly, across the Maya lowlands, the “collapse” (whatever that is) preceeded the Maya drought you hear about. It’s hard to evoke cause-and-effect, therefore. And, prime-movers are out. At least with this example of sociocultural change.
Friday, 13 March 2009
The spouse and I have been working on a collaboration. Actually, we’ve taken the extensive work already accomplished*, and built anew the website of the Society for Georgia Archaeology. BTW, JCB this morning discussed the technical angles on the technological heavy lifting he’s done.
* …with the previous version of the content, and the articles in The Profile, mostly….
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Foot of La Penserosa, an 1856 marble statue of a woman (see face photo here) by Hiram Powers. At the High Museum of Art, last year.
That is: the tooth the dental specialists call number 18—middle molar, left bottom.
Failed root canal. That’s what I heard last week about number 18 from the periodontist the dentist referred me to. Ugh. Today, I had the first step in getting the bad tooth (Bad tooth! Bad!) replaced with an implant—oral surgery, or extraction of the offending dead tooth (dead from the root canal). Now, step two, I’m healing—and hoping that goes as well as the extraction, which took half the scheduled time—a very good sign. Then on to the next step(s).
And I caught a cold yesterday. Oh, fun. (Sniff! Blow! Discard.)
Speaking of face problems…. This is why I’m not on Facebook—the NYTimes reports that Facebook has changed their terms to retain the right to use whatever you put on their site forever, even if you delete your account:
This month, when Facebook updated its terms, it deleted a provision that said users could remove their content at any time, at which time the license would expire. Further, it added new language that said Facebook would retain users’ content and licenses after an account was terminated.
Although some argue this is not a big change. In short, Facebook’s “trust us” model is not good for users. However, all this is why you read about me here, on my own domain.
Friday, 6 February 2009
The mining company has piled this waste crap (okay, tailings) next to the road in Copperhill, Tennessee. I thought that strange until I got home and looked at GoogleMaps, and I can see that they’re using the pile as a visual buffer, so you can’t see the even uglier mining activities behind it. Clever. I had thought they would prefer not to remind us of the ugly by-products of their surface mining. Apparently, it was the lesser of two evils…. As one county webpage notes:
Copper ore was discovered in this region in the 1820’s.* From the time of this discovery through 1987 the Copper Basin had the largest metal mining operation in the Southeastern United States. Early profiteers gave no attention to the environment, cutting down every available tree for copper smelting, creating an acid rain that killed over 60,000 acres. This turned the land into what was later described as having the appearance of a red moonscape.
So, now most of that hideous moonscape is hidden, mostly by vegetation barriers, but also by being buried. Here, where the highway passes right next to the mine (or smelters, or other machinery—something ugly), they’re “using” the waste piles….
* Not quite; Native Americans knew about the copper deposits before Euroamericans arrived….
Sunday, 1 February 2009
The original Stormy Kromer headwear, although named for a man, was crafted by a woman, Mrs. Kromer, who modified a baseball cap. I’m partial to modified caps, although my own most famous modified cap has gone missing—very sad.
On this day I learned the legend of Stormy Kromer. I had thought it just a myth. Silly me.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
I can’t really say what I’ve been up to the last few days. Yet.
Somehow this wee image snuck in here though….
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
It’s been a long time since I looked very closely at marbles. They’re kinda cool, even the rough-made modern ones.
I had a bit of fun playing marbles for a while. Then, one kid whose dad worked at a machine shop brought a single large—larger than ping-pong balls!—steelie out of his pocket in the middle of a game, and then the game changed! His steelie would turn our glass marbles to dust and fragments….
As you might imagine, within about two recesses, no one would play with him!