Its time again for our Opt-in Holiday Card. We write it and make it available, but don’t print it, don’t send it, and you don’t have to read it. Really – you don’t. Won’t hurt our feelings.
Month: December 2004
Updated Banner
I’ve just shortened the banner by 30px which should help with looking at the gallery pages on 1024×768 screens. Previously, the 140px banner was just a bit much, but I didn’t really pay much attention to it on my monster screen. I’ve also been looking for banner replacements, but none have been satisfactory as of yet.
Most haven’t noticed (or care), but I’ve also added a link to audioscrobbler below the current track. Its a plugin for your media player that reports what you’re listening to and keeps track over a period of time then you can see who else listens to the same types of music and what other kinds of music they listen to. Its much easier to use than my current track reporter and works on WinAmp and iTunes at work and home.
Oh – and I’ve added password protection to the Friends galleries. Some people may be cast in an imperfect light in those pictures, and we wouldn’t want people to get the wrong ideas. Let me know if you’d like the username and password.
Cannon Beach with Family
This weekend we met up with my parents and Hilary (briefly) for some relaxing at the sea. As is intended when going to the beach during the winter, we got some excellent storming, though Saturday itself was amazingly nice. So we walked, sat, ate, and had fun.
I’ve added pictures of it to my gallery. I doubt others care that much, but I love pictures from the beach because of the colors. The grays, blues, browns and yellows just seem so calming. As is the steady wind and noise from the waves.
I really like winter beaches. The steeper gradient is more interesting, as is the flotsam left behind. Still early in the season, the high tide had already carried logs up an access ramp. We even narrowly escaped a sneaker that had us scrambling onto the rocks. There was some evidence of mass wasting in areas, and always artifacts of people trying to hold onto their precious bluffs. Don’t they know they can never win?
Let pompousness serve the city
After my class final at PSU, I took the shuttle back to work. Just after the shuttle left, he started to accelerate to turn onto Brodway when the light turned green. The bus jerked to a halt and the driver honked at a person who crossed in front of the bus. The driver opened the door and suggested the pedestrian obey the signals. The pedestrian taunted the driver: “What are you going to do – hit me?” I could easily hear from the back, but the pedestrian, whom I will refer to as jackass continued with the following dialogue:
Driver: “You should obey the signals”
Jackass: “What are you going to do? Hit me?”
Driver: “You should obey the signals”
Jackass: “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? HIT ME?!?!”
Collective internal dialogue of all the passengers: “Yes, please do…”
Long pause
Jackass: “Never do that again. You hear me? NEVER DO THAT AGAIN. SAY IT!”
The bus driver closed the doors on the jackass, whom several passengers had stood up to get a better view of. I also got a better view. The jackass looked like he must have been a professor whose mistress/student had just broken off their relationship. His face was splotchy pink with unrighteous anger. Evidently he wasn’t aware that the 13 people on the bus also had places to go. But we missed the light and sat there for another several minutes in silence.
Ironically, this all took place under the pedestrian bridge which is decorated with the school’s mission: Let knowledge serve the city.
Creative Cartography – Envisioning Neu York
Artist Melissa Gould replaces New York City’s street and palce names with those from Berlin in an exercise to view 1930’s New York if the Nazis had defeated teh U.S. The map, called Neu York, may load slowly.
Its an attractive map with a unique perspective. Via filterfine.
Derelict Car
I think someone abandoned their car in front of our house. Its not that bad of a car, but the front is smashed up a bit and its parked haphazardly. I’m starting to imagine ways that it may have been crashed. Like hitting a cop car while fleeing a bank heist.
I may call about it if it hasn’t been moved by Thursday, but I’ll be very tempted to see if its unlocked and if there is anything cool inside. Like a garage door opener.
update 12/8:
The owner of the car appears to be the family down the hill that parked their POS explorer in front of our mailbox for the duration of the snow storm. We didn’t get any mail for nearly a week! Anyway, they have a new explorer-esqe vehicle, and this appears to be the daughter’s car. I would have asked if they planned on parking there long term, but Barley charged out to see what was going on while she was getting stuff out of the trunk. After that, she got into the beast (OR license 986 BBB;) and drove off.
Bird Tree
After I got home from the dog park with Barley, I started to eat some wounded gingerbread men. Looking out the window, I was amazed to find the back yard full of birds. The cherry tree alone had juncos, chickadees, a flicker, a downy woodpecker, a house sparrow, and a scrub jay in it all at once. I tried to take pictures of it as quickly as I could, but the scrub jay flew away.
I used photoshop to sloppily paste images of the tree together, but the zoom on my camera, the varying angles at which the images were shot, and the upcoming final presentation for my Geographic Thought class all led to a rather large, blurry, and far-from-stellar image. I don’t recommend looking at it unless you’re on broadband.
Comment spam from local event
I just deleted comment spam from Mt. Angel Oktoberfest. It was in a relevant post about the festival, but jeez, it was like a full page ad.
The Power of Succinctness
I’m reading a book that has been deemed important to the discipline of cartography, and I’m loathing it. The writing style is excessive and whimsical to the point where I forget the point somewhere mid-sentence. I read a few sentences to Michelle, who felt the author had never taken a legal writing course. I checked Amazon’s reviews of the volume, and found that others felt the same way about the long lists of examples ending in ellipses. But I imagine the author’s own children may also take issue with his writing style:
“For 17 years I have supported their growth and participated in their development, helping them turn from mewling, all-but-helpless infants incapable of controlling their sphincters into the assertive and all but autonomous hulks who last summer roamed on their own around Manhattan.”
How embarrassing to have your father refer to your sphincter. The scary part is, I can almost see myself writing this way. I’ll try not to.