A young George and Harrison.

As an adult I watch The Temple of Doom and chuckle.  The “over the top” quality of this installment of the Indiana Jones franchise is much higher than that of the other two movies.  I mean come on - the cart scene on the tracks?  You just have to laugh.

The setting for this film, when compared to the other two existing films, is also light years different.  In both The Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade - Indiana Jones begins on an adventure, goes back to his job as a professor, and then joins the race against the clock to find something before the Nazis do.  This format works best for Indiana Jones and I think that The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will end up being a mashup of both of these formats.  In all of The Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones is out of the country, with brand new people we’ve never seen.  The time element is also non-existent.

Ok, the good the bad and the ugly.  The good: The Temple of Doom is, again, a fun ride and has some of the best scenes in any of the Indiana Jones films.  The scene from the Obi Wan bar is classic as is the journey to India.  The bad: The Temple of Doom, in my opinion, pales in comparison to Raiders or Crusade. The ugly: None of the characters that we liked in the first two movies even make a cameo, oh and Kate Capshaw.

I’m re-watching Indiana Jones; The Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade!

Here are Gary’s television appearances, in order of their original airing (the list), starting with Mad Money with Jim Cramer from May 13, 2008.

Choose any video by clicking the title and that will reload the player.

1. Late Night with Conan O’Brien - August 1, 2007. #
2. The Ellen Degeneres Show - September 20, 2007. #
3. The Ellen Degeneres Show (recap) - September 21, 2007. #
4. ABCNews - Nightline - October 4, 2007. #
5. The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch- May 7, 2008. #
6. Late Night with Conan O’Brien - May 12, 2008. #
7. Mad Money with Jim Cramer - May 13, 2008. #

If you would like to embed any of these videos on your site, click the # (pound) symbol to go to their respective URLs to get the HTML embed code. If you need help with this task, you may ask in the comments of this post.

Gary’s mission to “Change the wine world” is definitely underway.  You can help him by spreading the word about Wine Library TV, but more importantly Gary wants everyone to open up and try new things.  Don’t be afraid to go out of your comfort zone and enjoy wines that you’ve never had before.

Thanks for all of your hard work Gary.

Note: This page to be continuously updated. Last update: May 13, 2008 - 10:10pm EST.

I couldn’t think of a much better title for this link, so I used the title from the actual ManBabies.com web site.  ManBabies.com, essentially, is a collection of altered images with men holding babies but having their heads swapped.

While the purpose of this site originally was to showcase Dads with their children, and having their heads swapped, it seems to have grown outside of those boundaries pretty quickly because I find it hard to believe that all of these photos are actual father / child.

My favorites so far? There is this guy being thrown into the air and the bodybuilder - as two examples.

Source: ManBabies.com — Dad?
Via: Boing Boing: Swapping heads with dad and kid photos.

Tonight I spent some time making up my first ever Amazon Wish List.  Why?  Because I wanted to browse around Amazon.com, not buy anything, but not waste my time either.  Now I have a good list of all the things that I was able to find in a short period of time that I will, one day, probably end up buying.

At first glance the list may seem a bit over the top.  It is.  It consists of a 42″ LCD HDTV, a few lenses for my DSLR that are in the $1,000+ range, and a few other miscellaneous things that one might consider “extravagent”.  Again, it is.  But I have good taste (*snickers*) and this list is really more for me than anyone else.

Should someone want to pick up one of the more inexpensive items on the list as a thank you for something they’ve found on my site, some of my projects that I’ve done over the years, or because they’d rather do that than owe me a beer “forever”, now they know where to look.

Source: My Amazon.com Wish List.

(Side note: I added this to my sidebar on the home page and about page along with a link to buy Threadless tees.  If you buy a tshirt from Threadless using that link I get a credit towards buying a shirt for myself.)

Some of my favorites (pictured) are the Spartan, Gene Simmons of KISS, and a Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle.

So far Joe D! has published 75 peices of his art work, which have received a total over over 500,000 views.  He is as surprised as anyone about the attention they are getting.

“wow, i’m surprised how much everyone likes this. it’s just something i’ve been toying around with every now and then, it all started when i would draw glasses or beards on money with the counterfeit pen on the registers at work and just grew in to a hobby.”

 I wonder if he takes requests?  A Mr. T version of Lincoln might be a good place to start.

Source: Refacing Government Tender.
Via: Boing Boing: Hilarious Money Doodles. 

“if I ditch cable, buy an AppleTV and only watch shows I’ve BT’d (I’ll pay for movie rentals), I’ll save myself over $600/year (ATV included)”

Allow me, first, to decrypt this message for you.  What Dan is saying here is that if he ditched cable television, bought an Apple TV, only watched shows that he download via BitTorrent and movie rentals through the Apple TV, he’d save $600 per year even with the price of the Apple TV taken into consideration.

The part of this post that interested me most was him saying that he’d watch shows that he downloaded via BitTorrent on his TV with the Apple TV.  So on my way home from ViddlerHQ, a one and half hour drive from the office to my doorstep, I called Dan and asked if he found an easy way to accomplish this.

From my, albeit very minimal amount of, research I’ve found that getting the Apple TV to play most codecs is no “easy” task.  Sure if you like the command line and SSHing into the Apple TV to hack the crap out of it, then it might be right up your alley, but I am always up for the quickest, simplest solution.

That is when Dan told me how he currently solves this problem; Connect 360.

I had seen Connect 360 around the Interwebs before, but I had never given it a spin.  This weekend I downloaded the trial, tried it out, and within 10 minutes of using it on my Xbox 360, I bought it.

Connect 360, in as simplest terms as possible, tricks your Xbox 360 into thinking your Macintosh is a Windows PC - and by extension shares your iTunes, iPhoto, and Video libraries to be enjoyed on your TV.  It works like a charm too.

My Connect 360 Preference pane.

This simple preference pane is where you adjust your options for Connect 360.  From then on it runs as a background process and “just works”.

If you have an Xbox 360 and, like me, have been wanting to jump onto the Apple TV in order to share music, photos, and video to your TV - consider purchasing a copy of Connect 360.  I’m really happy I did.

Thanks again Dan.

When I saw that Mahalo Daily was sharing Vlog Idol on Viddler, I actually started watch all of the episodes when they came out.  I wanted to create a way for other people, like me, who needed to catch up on the series quickly.

From this page you can watch all of Mahalo Daily’s Vlog Idol episodes starting with episode one.

Source: Mahalo Daily Vlog Idol: All Episodes.
Shared by: Jason Calacanis: Mahalo Vlog Idol / Bachelon.

Today I noticed that he is also in Lisbon, Portugal.  Small world.

Source: Lisbon: Campo Pequeno.

Rob, a Monster drink, and a laptop. The usual scene here at ViddlerHQ.

To be more specific, Open Road TV visits San Francisco’s Presidio, which is now a National Park, and goes on to explain its many changes over the years.  One of the places they stop, is at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic campus.

“Explore San Francisco’s fabled Presidio, now a national park, and go behind the scenes at George Lucas’ new and spectacular Lucasfilm and LucasArts production facility.”

“Spectacular” indeed.  The majority of the video ends up being about the campus.

Source: Open Road - Visiting San Francisco’s Presidio.

I’ve seen this reported in a few places, that Sprint is going to spend $100,000,000 on a marketing campaign aimed directly against the iPhone.  Why am I the only one that loves this?

For the first time in nearly a year, Apple is actually going to get some competition.  iPhone knock-offs do not count as competition.  The Instinct, and more specifically this marketing campaign, is something I would consider real competition.  They are using Apple’s own tricks against them (see: the Mac vs. PC marketing campaign).

Some of the points these commercials pick on are related more to AT&T’s EDGE network than the iPhone itself, but that’s ok with me.  The point is, Sprint’s EVDO and GPS features in the Instinct are better than the current iPhone’s EDGE and “location aware” features.  The interface might not be as good, but that is besides the point.

If this campaign forces Apple to move even one-step faster than they would otherwise, or if this makes AT&T and Apple make EDGE faster, the “location aware” features better, or the new iPhone hardware even $1 cheaper than they would have - then I am all for this campaign reaching as many eye balls as possible.

Competition has always been good for the consumer.  As much as I love my Apple products, I want them to have the stiffest competition possible if it means I will end up with even better products than I might have otherwise.

Be sure to go over to Gizmodo and watch the commercials.

Source: Sprint Spending $100 Million to Kick iPhone in the Nuts (iPhone Wearing Cup)

“With creative features rivaling ‘Pro’ applications, while retaining plasq’s signature ease-of-use, Comic Life Magiq is a Quantum Evolution of Comic Life.”

I’m downloading the trial right now to give it a spin.  I’m fairly confident Eliza would like to get her hands on Comic Life Magiq to create some really neat photo projects.

Video demonstration of Comic Life Magiq

Source: Comic Life Magiq.
Related:  Other posts tagged with plasq.

Sure “movie making magic” has improved so much over the years that much of the special effects, dead mannequins, and sound effects sometimes come across as laughable - but at least they are somewhat believable (unlike some of today’s outlandish impossible feats of human nature).  There are some scenes that are undeniably real which sported no visual effects, besides perhaps speeding up the frame rate, which were refreshing.  These were the moments in the film that made Indiana Jones real, gave him character, and made you want to see what he’d pull off next.

I think Andrew was the one who said, while we were watching Raiders of the Lost Ark last night, that a few of the scenes felt very much like James Bond.  I think George Lucas and/or Steven Speilberg have come right out and said that some of the inspiration for the franchise was a Bond-like, American figure, in the 1930s and 40s.  A few scenes feel more like Bond than others.  Like the scene when Indiana is fighting the huge bald guy while the plane is in a perpetual spin and fuel is making its way towards a flame.  The “setup” for the catastrophe and Indiana being the only one aware of what was happening certainly feels like a Bond moment.

End of Raiders. Beginning of Crystal Skull?

Raiders is probably my favorite Indiana Jones film, and I think it is only because it was the first.  The Last Crusade, which I’m looking forward to re-watching soon, is definitely in close second.  I enjoy the subject matter of The Last Crusade more than Raiders, I think. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that they don’t make movies like this anymore, and I’m beginning to wonder if The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will pale in comparison to Raiders, Temple, and Crusade.  Chris thinks that they will have a ton of special effects.  I’m hoping they don’t.  The trailer shows some special effects, and I do expect them to use effects in scenes where nothing else would make sense, but I’m hoping there is at least one or two scenes where Indiana Jones does it himself and not some digital double.

I’m re-watching Indiana Jones; The Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade!

Catching up on Indiana Jones, in style.

In Tiger, when I clicked Show All I got a really nice Spotlight-only window that I could then drill down into the results more specifically.  For example, if I was searching for photos of my friend Chris Fehnel, the window in Tiger looked like this.

Tiger’s Spotlight “show all” window.

Pretty straight forward, right?  It breaks out Documents (or in this case conversations I had with Chris in iChat), Email messages, his Address Book entry, and photos that I had tagged with his name.  Brilliant!

Tiger’s Spotlight window also allowed for some sorting options on the right “panel”.  Sorting by date, kind, location of the file, etc, - is quick, easy, and straight forward.

Now, let’s take a look at Leopard’s Spotlight window when clicking Show All for a search for “Chris Fehnel”.

Leopard’s “show all” window.

I don’t even think I have to explain how bad this is.  Imagine being new to the Mac, and seeing this window.  This is horrible, unusable, and makes me wish I could downgrade to Tiger.

If anyone has any suggestions (besides Finder replacements), I’m all ears.
 

There are some drawbacks, however: After visiting the site numerous times you kinda forget what you’ve seen and what you haven’t.  Subscribing to his feed is actually the feed to his blog powered by Tumblr.  And, some of the links from the front page have no way of getting back without clicking the back button on the browser or hacking up the URL.

But what this site lacks is made up for by the fun of actually playing with it.  Very cool.  Pushing the envelope. Kudos.

Source: Dan Phiffer (phiffer.org).

You too can sport such Indy awesomeness by downloading

• The Raiders of the Lost Ark icon set,
• The Indy’s Desk desktop background image.

I’m looking forward to the next three icon set installments for The Temple of Doom, The Last Crusade, and the new The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  I would have liked to see a desktop image or two for each of these movies included in the icon download.

Source: The Iconfactory presents Indiana Jones.

If you are a like me then Shaun Inman’s proposal for CSS Selectors will probably leave you with a furled brow.

Rather then being left standing in the dark I tried to wrap my head around what Shaun was trying to accomplish with his proposal.  I didn’t get.  But I wanted to.  So I setup a quick example page that illustrated my question.  I then hopped, skipped, and jumped over the Shaun’s Web site, and asked what I was missing.  Shaun, kindly and succinctly, replied.

The non-CSS guru explanation of the CSS Selector proposal

I can’t be sure that any of you reading this are in the same boat as I was.  In fact, I’m sitting here thinking at all of you are smarter than I am when it comes to these things, and that you’re not even reading this right now.  But if you are, and you’d like to understand this debate a little further, here is as simple an explanation as I can give.

A style can not be attributed to a parent element when a specific child element is present.

I don’t even know if I worded that correctly.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t.  So here is the long-winded version.  In Shaun’s first example he shows that an image, that is wrapped with a link, would have the same style as a normal link.  The problem is that, currently, CSS can not determine the differences between a normal link and a link that has an image within it.  It just isn’t “smart” enough.  That is, without the help of something that runs after the DOM has loaded fully like the awe-inspiring John Resig’s jQuery plugin.

Here is a quick explanation of what John Resig’s JavaScript is doing.  Once the page loads, jQuery parses through the entire HTML document, determines which links “has images” (see documentation here) and then you may run specific JavaScript functions on those links specifically.  You could, for example, add classes to those links dynamically with jQuery, rather than mucking up your code with classes inline.

Shaun’s proposal is to help make CSS, and browsers, “smart” enough to determine when styles should be attributed to links and when not to be attributed to links that contain images.  This was only his first example, Shaun gives others.

I really hope I did an okay job explaining this for those of you that, like me, didn’t understand it before pounding my head against my desk.

Addendum

Shaun has hit me back with a succinct definition that correctly uses the lingo.

“CSS allows you to style elements based on their parent/ancestor elements but it does not allow you to style a parent element based on the presence of a descendant element.”

You can look backwards, but you can’t look forwards.  Thanks Shaun!

Saturn. Early March, 2008.

Extraterrestrial storms are not uncommon.  And it isn’t uncommon for these storms to last a long time.  According to the post, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, featured as the picture of the day on July 18, 1999 (which was a picture from Voyager 1 taken circa 1979), has been studied for at least 150 years and has been observed from Earth for over 300!

Another point of interest, about the electrical storm on Saturn, is that the “… storm has roughly the width of planet Earth.”.  I’m interested to see how long this storm lasts.  Aren’t you?

“That’s no moon.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: A New Hope.   But wait, yes it is.  If you look closely at the image of Saturn’s electrical storm, which has been color shifted to better allow us humans to see some of the spectrum that we couldn’t otherwise, you will see Saturn’s rings.  Just below the rings you will see a faint “dot”, which to the untrained (read: mine) eye, appears to bit a fleck of dust on the lens.  This is Saturn’s small moon Janus.

Side note: We had an excellent view of Saturn when we attended Public Night at the Astronomical Observatory. But it wasn’t anywhere near as good as this shot and we certainly didn’t see the electrical storm.

Source: NASA: Astronomy Picture of the Day: A Persistent Electrical Storm on Saturn.

But wait, there’s a lot more…

After writing this morning, I’ve since read another article on NASA.gov about Cassini tracking the “raging storm” on Saturn.  There are quite a few tidbits of interest.

1. “The new storm is located in Saturn’s southern hemisphere–in a region nicknamed “Storm Alley” by mission scientists–where the previous lightning storms were observed by Cassini.”
2. “Amateur astronomers have kept track of the storm over its five-month lifetime. “Since Cassini’s camera cannot track the storm every day, the amateur data are invaluable,” said Fischer. “I am in continuous contact with astronomers from around the world.”"
3. “Cassini’s radio plasma wave instrument detects the storm every time it rotates into view, which happens every 10 hours and 40 minutes, the approximate length of a Saturn day. Every few seconds the storm gives off a radio pulse lasting for about a tenth of a second, which is typical of lightning bolts and other electrical discharges. These radio waves are detected even when the storm is over the horizon as viewed from Cassini, a result of the bending of radio waves by the planet’s atmosphere. ”

The radio waves they are referring to are actually recorded by Cassini.  You can listen to, and look at the statistical data for, that audio here.  The audio is only 28 seconds long but represents two hours of audio on Saturn.

The erring widget.

I began reusing Ta-da Lists recently when I found out about the iPhone support.  It works beautifully.  When I think of something while I’m on the go, I can add a ta-da list item with my iPhone painlessly.  When I’m back at my computer, I reference the very same list.  I love it.

Up until the other day I was using the Ta-da Lists widget as my way to interact with my lists on my Macintosh computer.  But for some reason the widget now just spins (pictured) while trying to get the lists and their items.

I don’t know what is going on, but I’ve sent a few messages to whomever I could find contact information for.

As a side request: If anyone knows an application, rather than a widget, that utilizes Ta-da lists - please let me know.

I am neither a Cowboys nor Bills fan, but I still went to a Monday Night Football game there. Must have been for booze.

Taken while walking to get coffee.

The first floor in a parking garage.

Taken somewhere around 2am while walking in downtown Pittsburgh.

Too many choices? I’d like to think just enough.

One of the many days of working at Panera. This one Eliza, Chris, and Andrew were there.

“Would I recommend this film? I think so. It’s not a strong recommendation, though. Consider it an appetizer for the wonderful bounty that rests in months to come this summer.”

I think my recommendation to see Iron Man would be a little stronger than Sameer’s, only because there isn’t enough to complain about Iron Man to recommend not seeing it.  In other words, I’d leave it up to you whether or not you wanted to see Iron Man.  It isn’t a must-see, in my opinion, but if you see it you probably won’t be disappointed.

“Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark is excellent. I laughed out loud way more than I thought I would. I think if you put Downey in any movie as a quick-witted, pompous billionaire, you’d be entertained to some degree.”

Robert Downey, Jr. is great in Iron Man.  In fact, I don’t recall seeing a performance by RD, Jr. that I haven’t liked.  There are moments when the smell of cheese was a bit thick in the air, but - this is a Marvel Comic movie.

To sum up my thoughts on Iron Man: After watching it I didn’t immediately want to rush out and buy the DVD.  I will probably watch it again, simply to be sure I didn’t miss any of the dazzling special effects, but I’m in no rush.  I am, however, looking forward to the next installment (which I am sure there will be one) because we won’t have to worry about the Iron Man setup.

Source: Movie Review: Iron Man.

I just downloaded it, dragged it into iTunes, synced it onto my iPhone, and tested the ringtone.  It is great.  It is loud.  It progressively gets louder (perhaps to not scare the crap out of you).  And I am now using it as my default ringtone.

I now have two custom ringtones on my iPhone; this one, and a remix of the Imperial March that begins with a clone trooper (aka Storm Trooper) saying; “Look sir, droids.”.  Both are perfect.

Source: The Missing iPhone Ringtone.

San Francisco from Dolores Park in July 2007. Another beauty from the iPhone archives.

The image above is, supposedly, the longest set of driving directions that you can find on Google Maps.  Some guy named Alan Taylor has taken the time to figure this out, and although you could custom drag a longer set of driving directions, he’s pretty sure this is the farthest one.

While other countries, and drivable continents, do exist - Google Maps will not show you the driving directions in these areas.  Otherwise I’m pretty sure a trip across Asia could make the above set of directions like a weekend trip.

Pretty cool.

Source: KOKOGIAK - Google Maps - Long Drives.
View map: On Google Maps.
Via Jason Kottke. 

I was wrong about the marsh, but I was able to get a few good photographs anyway.

But, that’s ok.  I fully expect to be wrong now and then.  I spent maybe only about 30 minutes pushing through some thick brush in order to get to the place I wanted to be to find nothing but a small trickle of a stream.  I’ll get over it.

Hmmm, where to shoot next?  Maybe it will be a good spot, maybe not - but I’ll keep trying regardless.

I think the most important ones, for me, are perspective, framing, intentional empty space, and the horizontal line.  Everything else seems to fall into place once you follow those few things and really begin to see your photographs before you snap.

Source: 21 Ways to Shoot Better Photographs | 10e20 Blog
Via: Jason Kottke.

Photoshop my friend Andrew

I’ve created a zip file that contains the following:

• A Photoshop document with Andrew already “cut out”.
• Five original photographs of Andrew.

Download this zip file, create your own creations, and either link to them or (preferably) embed them into your comments below using the IMG tag.  If you want to go really crazy cool you can record a screencast, upload it to Viddler, and use the video commenting plugin here on my site to include a video of your work too.

I’ll work on getting some sorta prize together.  Right now the winner (which I will choose before the end of the week) will get a Viddler tshirt for sure. But I think I can find some things to sweeten the deal in between time.  (If you have something you want to add to the pot you may contact me.)

Examples!

I took a few moments to create my own examples of some of the things you could do.  Here are two really quick Photoshop jobs to help inspire you.

Basejump!

Underwater

What can you make Andrew do?

I’m looking forward to seeing what you guys can come up with!

Update: I’m getting submissions for this through email, but I’d much rather them as comments so that others can see them too. So if you are going to email them in, at least leave a comment here, and I will add the image to your comment myself (if you don’t know how, etc).

Finally taking the time to go through each page in the manual. Eliza and I have had this camera since last fall and although I’ve been using it, I’m just now getting a chance to really kick the setting’s tires.

Parental discretion is advised.

Look for gonna scccrrrape you sucka to hit store shelves and the iTunes Music Store soon.  If you would like to request my services for your upcoming album, please feel free to contact me.

You’ll notice that after each link on my site, I have the following text:

“Have a recommendation? Do you have a link, product, service, book, or something you think I’d be interested in linking to? You can write me an email and let me know about it.”

If you find something interesting, please let me know about it!  If I find it interesting, I’ll post about it here on my site and give you credit for the find.  Oh, and I don’t want this to be limited to virtual things, quite the contrary.  If you let me know about a physical “thing” that I might be interested in, I might just beg you to send me one so I can try it out for myself and then write about it.

Buy! Buy! Buy my photos!  I am not sure why I haven’t done this sooner but you can now ask to purchase any of my photos.  You can request the original digital file or a print!  Here is the text that appears below each photo here on the site.

“Please note: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. If you would like to buy an original copy of this, or any of my photos, please contact me.”

I’m mainly doing this for anyone that would like to use my photos commercially, obviously.  The license that I’ve decided to use, for any content on my site, pretty much states that you are free to use my “stuff” non-commercially so long as you give me proper attribution.  If you want to use it commercially, you’ll have to throw a few dollars into the tip jar.

So please, use the suggestion and money boxes.  I’m excited to learn about interesting things that you come across in your lives.  So get started!

As an example of this, I post my mobile photos taken with an iPhone which only has a 2.1 megapixel camera.  Yet, I feel, some of the photos I’ve taken with my iPhone are really interesting shots.  I try my best to take photos with my iPhone that I know will turn out, rather than trying to get it to take photos I know it won’t.

I feel the same can be said for us.  Each and every one of us have things that we’re really good at.  On your worst day, if I asked you to list the things you’re good at, I’m pretty sure you’d be able to give me a few things that you think you do well.  This is where people need to embrace their limitations, rather than ignore them.  You might call it; coming to grips with reality - I call it a relieving epiphany. The day you figure out what you are best at, and what you’d rather have help with, is the day you’ll become a much happier person.

Continually doing the things you are not good at is a road depression and perhaps failure.  Sometimes we are faced with situations we are forced to deal with, whether we like it or not, but these circumstances should be rare if we set ourselves up correctly.  Figure out what you do best and let someone else help you with the rest.

The next time you are faced with a task, ask yourself if you are the best person to do it.  If you are not, you may find that one of the other few billion people on this planet might be the best person.  If you have no other choice but to do it yourself, embrace your limitations and do the best job that you can, but try to find help for the next time that task comes up.

This thought process is nothing new.  In 37Signal’s book, Getting Real, they call this Embracing Constraints. Although the angle of approach for this discussion is a little different in their book, the outcome is the same, deal with what you’ve got in order to produce the best result.  When in doubt, leave it out?  Here is a quote from their book:

“Instead of freaking out about these constraints, embrace them. Let them guide you. Constraints drive innovation and force focus. Instead of trying to remove them, use them to your advantage.”

Again, instead of trying to do everything yourself, do what you are good at and you will find success.  So, what are you good at?

Date taken: December 1, 2007 |  My friend Daniel Nicolas in Hollywood, California.

This is one of my more favorite photos that I’ve taken with my iPhone, and only one of several of Danny.  What reminded me that I wanted to post this photo is that I wanted to recommend you taking a look at his photos, as well as his site (which is currently under a bit of construction).

Last night Keystone College’s Thomas G. Cupillari Astronomical Observatory was open to the public, and so Eliza, Chris, Andrew, and I took the short ride out to take advantage of the exceptionally clear skies. I could not be happier with my decision to go. We had a great time learning about, and gazing at, our solar system’s planets, stars much larger than our own sun, and distant galaxies.

Every Wednesday and Friday from March 12th until May 30th, of this year, the observatory is open to public lectures and viewing sessions. While we were there we were given a ~30-minute lecture about the viewable sky in our hemisphere, the constellations, and some of the quirkiness of star gazing. The lecture was jammed packed with information and I look forward to one day listening to it again, just so I get it all.  After the lecture you are free to use, under the careful observation and help from the staff and volunteers there, the telescopes that the Observatory has in place.  We primarily used four main telescopes while we were there.

The planet Mercury at sunset (just left of center).

Before the lecture, and before we even peered through any telescope, we were able to get a clear glimpse of Mercury, the planet closest to our Sun and only visible during the morning and evening.  An object so clearly visible, yet often overlooked as probably being the first star you can see as the sun sets, yet is actually an entire planet.

After the lecuture, the first telescope we used in the circle-shaped building with a rotating roof, is a telescope built by the firm of Alvan Clark & Sons of Cambridgeport, MA in the late 19th Century.  In 1971 Thomas G. Cupillari bought the telescope from an ex-host of the Today Show on NBC, Dave Garroway, and with a contribution of $5,000 from the Scranton Area Foundation - built the building in which it now sits and is operated.  Focused on Mercury we were able to get a much better look of the atmosphere’s affects on how we see objects in the sky.  Mercury appeared to be a giant rainbow, really a neat looking site.  With a rather swift movement, the gentleman maneuvering the telescope for us, pointed the telescope nearly straight up in the sky.  After adjusting the rotating roof into position, making slight adjustments to the telescope through the finder, he said “Ok, this next thing is a fake.”.  I was the first to look through eyepiece when I saw Saturn, complete with its many rings, being displayed as vividly as a photograph in a science book.  With black space and only a few stars surrounding it, it really did look fake.  I was amazed.

The second telescope we used to focus in on Betelgeuse and Mars.  The woman handling this telescope, who also gave the lecture, put me to the task of finding some of these objects.  The telescope were were using was “thrown together” by one of the volunteers using a few old parts of a Meade telescope he had.  I am not sure which parts were original, which parts were modified, but the telescope performed wonderfully.  The view finder (not sure of the technical term) was equipped with an infrared bulls-eye.  Lining it up to an object in the sky could not have been easier.  Mars shown like a jewel in the sky.  It looked like a woman’s ring; diamonds surrounding sapphire.  I can’t describe it any other way.  Saturn appeared much more far away but still just as crisp.

The third and fourth telescopes were in a building with a fully retractable roof.  The one we used most was, I think, a Meade LX200 on some sort of custom fixed mount (here is a photo of its lens).  It was operated by remote control and held hundreds of thousands of astronomical objects in its database.  Type in a number, hit enter, and the thing lined itself right up with what you wanted to see.  Using this telescope we focused on entire galaxies, appearing like nothing more than dust in space, which contain billions of stars.  We were also able to see a planetary nebula (described as such because of the relative shape of the nebula, not because the nebula produces planets rather than stars) which had a bright center and a fuzzy aura.

Me

Eliza

Chris

Andrew

Looking through the Meade LX200 at Mercury.

The fourth telescope was fixed towards the southern sky and, using it, we were able to see a few stars that were “nearing the end of their lives”.  The star was bright red, like a distant break light, and was clearly distinguishable from its neighbors (yet you’d never see it with the naked eye).  We used this telescope the least of all.

Left: The main telescope building. Right: Same building from the rear at sunset.

Being clothed in only sweatshirts as the temperature dipped into the low 30s, we had to leave before the sky truly got pitch-black, but I’m looking forward to a return visit in less than two weeks, were we’re encouraged to bring our own telescopes (I have one that I want to learn how to use better).  I can’t tell you how anxious I am to get back out there, prepared with tools and proper clothing, to be up all night and gaze at the stars once again.

As of: May 1, 2008

Somewhat recently, according to this graph (pictured), the Apple iPhone has taken over the top spot as Flickr user’s use it more than any other camera phone to publish photos to Flickr.  The Nokia N95 had a demanding lead over every other camera phone, while the iPhone took the lead with an amazing upswing.

This is not suprising to me, giving the ease of uploading from the iPhone to Flickr through email.  For those that have “jail broken” their iPhones there is also an application they can use to upload photos directly to Flickr.  I shutter [sic] to think what this graph will look like once version 2 of the iPhone software comes out, and there is an official application, or many applications, for uploading photos to Flickr.

Source: Flickr: Camera Finder.

The World’s Cities: Moscow.

To help quench my perpetual thirst for knowledge about things I know nothing about (the very definition of learning, I’d guess) I read a book (pictured) about Moscow.

This book is not very long, is filled with illustrations, and was written prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, but I still found the book incredibly informative. I learned a few subtle things about Moscow that, I feel, even a trip to the city wouldn’t have awarded.

If you’re following me on Twitter, you may have already read some of these little tidbits, but here are some of the more interesting things I picked up from the book:

• There are no commercial advertisements, billboards, in Moscow.
• Ice cream stalls are as busy in winter as they are in the summer.
• To make streets wider, they literally moved historic buildings backwards 15 yards
• On their very first day of school, children bring flowers for their teachers while those in the final grade, tenth, bring useful gifts for each of the children starting their first day.
• “Red Square” is actually a mistranslation of Beautiful Square.
• The Lenin Central Stadium can seat over 113,000 people.
• Dining out usually consists of eating leisurely, dancing between courses, and occupying a table for the entire night.  So go out early, or book reservations by phone.

Please note this book was published in 1978.  Some of the above notes are to have most likely changed slightly over the last 30 years.

This book is part of a series of books called “The World’s Cities” and I’m keen on picking up another edition, about a different city, in the near future.

I know it isn’t even 10am yet, but lets just call this the “link of the day” shall we?

Nina Katchadourian decided, in 1998 no less, to repair broken spiderwebs around the home she was living in at the time.  She used red sewing thread and a few dabs of glue.

Here is what she says about the reception of her work by the spiders:

“My repairs were always rejected by the spider and discarded, usually during the course of the night, even in webs which looked abandoned.”

I could look at this exhibition all day.

Source: Nina Katchadourian.
Via Kottke, Boing Boing, and others.

GGW! Normally that accronym would be reserved for late-night commercials about incredibly inexpensive DVD-sets with future women that will sue Joe Francis.

But not this time.

This time GGW refers to NASA’s celebration of the Hubble Telescope being launched 18 years ago!  And so they’ve put together a site of awe-inspiring images that Hubble has captured of galaxies that are “merging”.  They wanted to put up photographs of galaxies that were “in love” since they are “in love” with Hubble.  Truly touching, isn’t it?

“As this astonishing Hubble atlas of interacting galaxies illustrates, galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures.”

Indeed.

Source: Merging Galaxies.

I’d be remiss not to mention my goal of Bringing it all together and how I’m getting pretty close to my personal online publishing Utopia.

Jeremy Keith wrote about his personal efforts, and the efforts of a few others, and how the strategies all differ. It seems that there are few different ways to go about “bringing it all together”, you just have to choose which one you like the best.  Here is a short list:

• Publish only on your own site.
• Publish everywhere but aggregate back to your site.
• Publish everywhere but link from your site.

Source: Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : The vanishing personal site

An example view in Times.

Personally I think this view is refreshing (though it could stand to use some more padding) and I can’t wait to see how this application really works.  The only application that I can remember having a view like this was FeedDemon, but that isn’t on the Macintosh.

Source: Read RSS Newsfeeds In Style With “Times” | The Apple Blog

I’m not sure how long I’ll keep this set, but I do have some goals in mind with the random header images.  Eventually I want at least one for each of my interests: basketball, wine, food, family, technology, star wars?, and anything else I’m interested in at the time.  I also have a few favorites from my photo collection, which will also find their way into the rotation.

Refresh a few times and let me know which one is your favorite, I hope you like them.

Date taken: April 28, 2008 - Dinner at Mirakuya in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Delicious.

First, he speaks about Michael Arrington’s crack at Blaine Cook of Twitter.  In short, Arrington puts a lot of blame on Cook for Twitter’s stability issues and then some “experts” reply in the comments.  Then, he talks about some of the opinions being spewed out about Wordpress and its supposed downfalls as it pertains to scalability.

Lin is much more versed in the technology, especially the infrastructure, behind-the-scenes in both of these cases than I am - so I will not be offering my opinions here and ask that you read his.  Also, I will not be linking to the other sources of this story, because I’d rather you read them with his context.

Side note about this link: I found this article through Matt Mullengweg who wrote and published a post called Armchair Scaling Experts which has been taken down since and I don’t know why.

Source: random($foo): Internet Asshattery, Armchair Scaling Experts Edition.

Since it has no name, that is what I’m going to call it. Either way, it is darned good. Simple. Refreshing. And contains vodka.

Where I sometimes shoot the rock. It doesn’t look like much, but it is always available, free, and never crowded.