Entry tags:
Entry tags:
Omer, day 30
The view last night:
It looked even prettier in the twilight sky, but I didn't have a chance to take a picture then.
It looked even prettier in the twilight sky, but I didn't have a chance to take a picture then.
day-trip: Oxford, Warwick Castle (and passing mention of Stratford-on-Avon)
I enjoyed this day-long bus tour. Our first stop was Oxford, where the university is made up of 32 individual colleges. Our guide told us that students apply to Oxford and are assigned to colleges, though I think applicants can indicate preferences. Many lectures are open to the entire university, and according to our guide you can study most subjects at most colleges -- it's not like there's a math college and a fine-arts college and so on. Anyway, he took us to one of them, Christchurch.
The dining hall may look somewhat familiar to some of you:
( photos )
The dining hall may look somewhat familiar to some of you:
( photos )
Paris day-trip
A coworker pointed out to me that if we were going to London anyway, we might consider a day-trip to Paris. I hadn't realized that it was only about a two-hour train ride. So we did that.
We booked a tour package that started/ended in London, so they arranged train tickets and the local guide. That was absolutely the right thing for us beginners to do -- and I would not do it again. Lesson learned: book our own train tickets (and get to choose the times and the seats) and either find a local tour or use the on-and-off tour-bus loop. This worked ok, but I would have allocated the time differently.
( photos )
We booked a tour package that started/ended in London, so they arranged train tickets and the local guide. That was absolutely the right thing for us beginners to do -- and I would not do it again. Lesson learned: book our own train tickets (and get to choose the times and the seats) and either find a local tour or use the on-and-off tour-bus loop. This worked ok, but I would have allocated the time differently.
( photos )
London trip (a few photos)
I'm having some trouble with Picasa tonight, so the other two albums (Paris and Oxford/Warwick) will have to wait, but meanwhile, a few pictures from our trip to London in January:
( photos )
( photos )
license plate
For those who remember this XKCD:
With the following mouse-over text:
With the following mouse-over text:
The next day: "What? Six bank robberies!? But I just vandalized the library!" "Nice try. They saw your plate with all the 1s and Is." "That's impossible! I've been with my car the whole ti-- ... wait. Ok, wow, that was clever of her."I saw this in the parking garage at work today:
random bits
In the last two weeks we lost both ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
merle_ and
pedropadrao. I will miss them both. :-(
merle_ and
pedropadrao. I will miss them both. :-(
And there's no good transition from that to, well, miscellany, so this paragraph will have to serve.
I suppose, technically, if you're not sure if a TV show has jumped the shark, then it hasn't. But, that said, I doubt I'll be back for the next season of "Once Upon a Time", a show that got off to a good start in season one, carried it through part of season two, and then started going farther and farther afield of its original context. In addition to links to "the enchanted forest", the land of fairy tales, they mixed in an Arthurian knight (short-lived), Captain Hook, I think a couple other odd ones, and now, in the season finale, it's clear that Never-Never Land is going to be a major factor. If they were doing the work to tell a Gaiman-style story about all these realms being intertwined or some such I'd be on board for that, but it sure feels like they're just making things up as they go along now. Oh well.
Links:
Full moon silhouettes, a really gorgeous video of the full moon rising over the Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, NZ. (Link from Dani.)
Best court sanctions...
ever! from osewalrus. As Ose says, best use of the term
"Red Shirt" in a legal decision. And you thought court decisions had to be
dull...
This is great (given that such idiots exist, which is not great). Bill Walsh was riding his bike and happened to be running a helmet-cam when a cab made an illegal U-turn across the bike lane, after being warned that it was illegal, and promptly got pulled over by an oncoming police officer. The video is short and cuts out before we get to see the expression on the cabbie's face, alas.
Feast of the
ravens, a photo with an interesting story behind it. What do you
expect to find when a large group of ravens congregates? Not this.
From shewhomust.
siderea posted an excerpt from (and link to) an essay about
libraries, mandatory
internet use, and the very poor that is well worth a read. As more
and more stuff moves to "online only", whom are we leaving out in the cold?
The ones who can least cope, it seems.
I hadn't realized that 3D printing was advanced enough to make medical implants... a year and a half ago. Ok, this was an airpipe splint, but are plastic organs in our future?
Sad cat diary, a video in the general style of Henri (but not just one cat), from Talvin over at DW.
cats, and LJ experiment
The experiment: I'm not really interested in increasing my use of LJ for photo hosting, so let's see if I can make Google+/Picasa do that for me without too much hassle.
( photos )
We've been to the vet for some followup stuff. In the two months that I've had them Giovanni has gained two pounds and Orlando has gained a pound and a half. My vet would not object if they gained a little more, but obviously this rate of change is not sustainable. I could tell that Giovanni was filling out some (though my estimate was low), but Orlando doesn't seem much different. You can't tell in this picture, but he's pretty scrawny.
Giovanni may have a food allergy (whee!), so we're currently transitioning to a hypo-allergenic diet to see if that helps. So far they're eating the mix of old and new food, though a little less enthusiastically.
And we hit a new milestone last night. Orlando has, for a few weeks, been sleeping at my feet for a couple hours a night and then running off. Last night Giovanni joined us for the first time, Orlando followed a bit later, and both of them stayed all night. Time will tell if this is affection or a desire for more warmth in these cold winter nights.
link round-up
I've been accumulating browser tabs for a while, so here's a "misc" dump. (Aside:
this new LJ "choose your icon by browsing pictures, and by the way we won't put
them in alphabetical order or anything nice like that" interface really stinks.
Grr.)
siderea posted The Music Theory Song: Intervals (YouTube).
For anyone who's trying to work on ear training to hear intervals, and for
those of you who already grok that, this video's for you. Really.
12 letters that didn't make the (English) alphabet. I forget where this link came from.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thnidu over on Dreamwidth posted
a link to "Earth as Art", which looks to be a nifty photo collection.
The link isn't currently working for me, so I'm linking his entry instead
of there for now.
More beautiful photography, from a locked post. Warning: gravity alert -- it wouldn't be hard to get sucked in.
Some time back I noticed that one of the regulars in the Mi Yodeya weekly parsha chat drew a lot on Abarbanel and that it sounded interesting. I asked him if he knew of an English translation and at the time he didn't, but more recently someone else who remembered my question pointed me at this adaptation (not translation). This sounds like something I should check out. (And it's kind of cool that, months later, somebody remembered my asking and followed up.)
When atheism is good: a chassidic story, linked by thnidu on DW again.
From XKCD: an exploration of wise men, stars, and paths. What would the trip look like, depending on what star you were following when? I can't confirm the math, but I found it an interesting read. (I don't know why he has the journey starting in Jerusalem, though.)
A map of every grocery store ever. Interestingly, my regular "big shopping trip" store (as opposed to the "grab a few things on the way home from work" store) recently remodelled and deviated from the norms. Now I can't find anything without effort.
And a funny cartoon from
gnomi:( Read more... )
short-term thinking
It appears that, sometime in the past, someone either taught Giovanni to be a shoulder-and-neck-sitter or declined to discourage the behavior. That's really cute with a 2-pound kitten. Ahem: they do not stay two-pound kittens forever. This is a terrible picture (Giovanni loves to investigate the camera instead of sitting still if he detects it), but to get an idea of scale:
And here are a couple pictures of Orlando:
Orlando did not go into hiding again after the vet visit, and yesterday afternoon he spent an hour or so in my lap in the living room (yay). Giovanni likes my office, particularly the computer desk, but is reluctant to explore the house much -- coming into the room next door while I was watching TV last night was a big stretch, and he's made some brief late-night forays into the bedroom. So far as I know he has not yet been downstairs under his own power. How do I nudge him along in that? I don't want a litterbox in my office forever.
For all the suitable places in the house, particularly for Orlando, I'm surprised that they both tend to sleep under the same chair in my office, concurrently.
a few links
I don't think I've ever seen mammatus clouds before. They sure are pretty.
This information visualization on population per land area surprised me at the extremes (Bangladesh and UAE).
Avram's letter to his parents on leaving home, an interesting little d'var torah for Lech L'cha (starts with Genesis 12).
A few weeks ago I played Quack in the Box for the first time. It's a fun, cynical little game about health care, and now that I've linked it here, with luck I won't forget its name. :-)
Not a link, but is anybody else suddenly seeing a lot of LJ spam?
This information visualization on population per land area surprised me at the extremes (Bangladesh and UAE).
Avram's letter to his parents on leaving home, an interesting little d'var torah for Lech L'cha (starts with Genesis 12).
A few weeks ago I played Quack in the Box for the first time. It's a fun, cynical little game about health care, and now that I've linked it here, with luck I won't forget its name. :-)
Not a link, but is anybody else suddenly seeing a lot of LJ spam?
Entry tags:
Israel pictures
I've finally distilled my pictures from Israel into a single album (68 photos). Lots of parks and sculptures, and a bunch in and around the Old City.
Album (Picasa)
I still owe more posts about the trip, including the program at Shalom Hartman, davening at Shira Chadasha, and miscellaneous other things. Oh, and for the curious, my complaint against Air Canada is currently at VISA. Next up on that front will be Christopher Elliott (thanks for the tips).
Album (Picasa)
I still owe more posts about the trip, including the program at Shalom Hartman, davening at Shira Chadasha, and miscellaneous other things. Oh, and for the curious, my complaint against Air Canada is currently at VISA. Next up on that front will be Christopher Elliott (thanks for the tips).
last night of Chanukah
A full chanukiyah makes me happy -- you might say it provides a warm glow.
The commandment is to publicize the miracle, so after a couple minutes that becomes:
(I took these with my phone; I haven't yet read the camera documentation nor played much with those settings, so these are with default settings.)
The commandment is to publicize the miracle, so after a couple minutes that becomes:
(I took these with my phone; I haven't yet read the camera documentation nor played much with those settings, so these are with default settings.)
Pennsic pictures
I posted some Pennsic pictures here. Most are from the homes tour, including several of this nifty new Tudor shower house:
I didn't take any pictures in our own camp (but have in past years and you can find them in other Picasa albums). We're planning to do some exterior work on our house this year, so look for new pictures of that next year.
I didn't take any pictures in our own camp (but have in past years and you can find them in other Picasa albums). We're planning to do some exterior work on our house this year, so look for new pictures of that next year.
more natural beauty
siderea found this beautiful video of time-lapse photography
by Terje Srgjerd of the Arctic light, just before the midnight sun but when
it never quite gets dark. This is stunning, and if you click through to
his Vimeo page you'll find links to two others too:
The Arctic Light from TSO Photography on Vimeo.
Today's APotD isn't of the sun but of the moon, in partial eclipse, behind a colorful lightning storm:
thnidu posted a link to this video composed of time-lapse
photography covering one day in Helsinki -- two views, side by side, one
at each solstice:
(Link later broken, alas.)
natural beauty
The description "midnight solar eclipse" (wait, how does that work?) got me to click through on Astronomy Picture of the Day a couple days ago. Wow, gorgeous!
short takes
I interrupt preparations for the class I'm teaching next week at the music and dance collegium
(gosh, I hope I have this calibrated right...) to pass along some random short bits.
Dear Netflix: I appreciate the convenience of your recent change to treat an entire TV series as one unit in the streaming queue, instead of one season at a time like before. However, in doing so you have taken away the ability to rate individual seasons of shows, which is valuable data. It also makes me wonder, when you recommend things to me based on my ratings, if you are giving all ratings the same weight -- 200 hours of a long-running TV show should maybe count differently than a two-hour movie. Just sayin'.
These
photos by Doug Welch are stunning. Link from thnidu.
How Pixar fosters collective
creativity was an interesting read on fostering a good workplace.
Link from nancylebov.
Speaking of the workplace, I enjoyed reading
how to run your career like a gentlewoman and several
other articles I found there by following links. Link from
_subdivisions_.
Rube Goldberg meets J.S. Bach, from several people. Probably fake, but it amused me anyway. (This is a three-minute Japanese commercial. Do commercials that long run on TV, or would this have been theatrical, or what?)
Speaking of ads, in advance of our SCA group's election for a new baron and baroness today, the current baron sent around a pointer to this video about an upcoming British referendum on voting systems. Well-done! (Of course, I agree with both the system and the species they advocate. :-) ) I wish we had preference ballots in the US.
A while back a coworker pointed me to how to make a hamentashen Sierpinski triangle. Ok ok, some of my browser tabs have established roots; Purim was a while ago. But it's still funny, and I may have to make that next year.
Speaking of geeky Jewish food, a fellow congregant pointed me to The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals. which looks like fun. I've certainly found myself in that kind of conversation at times (e.g. is unicorn kosher? well, is it a goat (medieval) or a horse (Disney)?). Some of you have too, I know. :-)
dr_zrfq passed on this article about
a dispute between a church and a bar. Nothing special about that, you
say? In this case the church members prayed to block it, the bar was
struck by lightning, the bar owner sued, and the church denied responsibility.
I love the judge's comment on the case: “I don't know how I’m going to decide
this, but as it appears from the paperwork, we have a bar owner who believes
in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that does not.”
47 seconds of cuteness:
elk calf playing in water, from shalmestere.
I don't remember where I found the link to these t-shirts, but there are some cute ones there.
housekeeping
This is why we can't make the bed in our house:
He usually crawls under the covers at night and is often there in the morning. In the last few weeks he has started returning there immediately after his breakfast. (I don't understand how he breathes under there, but obviously he does.)
now we know
Remember this funky snow formation, from the storm on Feb 6?
I wondered then how long it would hold that form. (It had already survived most of a day when I took the picture, which is longer than I would have thought.) The answer turned out to be: 12 days. It was there last night when I came home from work, and gone this morning. It did suffer some minor degradation along the way, but only minor -- the form was intact.
Wow.
I wondered then how long it would hold that form. (It had already survived most of a day when I took the picture, which is longer than I would have thought.) The answer turned out to be: 12 days. It was there last night when I came home from work, and gone this morning. It did suffer some minor degradation along the way, but only minor -- the form was intact.
Wow.
the logical consequence of snow
We had had about 30" of snowfall (in two batches) when I took these pictures this morning.
( Read more... )