November 2007 Archives

The fact that this is a computer generated 3D image astounds me. The level of detail is completely life-like, even down to the fuzz on the fabric. Clicking the image will take you to a full sized image (which is rather large) in which you can see the fuzz. When the larger image opens in the new window, you may need to click that image (if your cursor becomes a magnifying glass with a "+" in it) to get the life sized image. This link takes you to a "how they did it" post.

Source: CGArena

I think that when you can see the amount of carbon your car emits into the atmosphere, the issue becomes a little bit more real. Click on the image for a large image you can read.

Source: Frederik Samuel

Hemmy.net posts some amazingly creative work.

But the pictures were great!

Adam Kalsey created an online badge or button maker that is shown in the screenshot below (click the image to see it full size). I've used his button maker a great deal and highly recommend it. I've posted about it before and am posting about it here again today because the screen shot below includes the settings I will need the next time I update my 100 About Me v1.4 button on my About page, which was just updated to 100 Things About Me v1.4.

Just one little itsy-bitsy problem... The wine would have flown a couple of inches into her mouth before making its way down. But, jeeze, as creative as it is, who cares!

Source: Hemmy.net

Click the plate above to listen to one of my favorite anthems of thanksgiving: Now Thank We All Our God from the album Te Deum And Other Church Music by The Cambridge Singers

This Fall has been exceptionally colorful--exactly the opposite of what I had anticipated given the draught. Click on the picture above to enjoy 9 of my seasonal photographs. You will be astounded to know that each of these pictures appears exactly as seen by the camera. I have not retouched them in anyway: no color saturation, no normalizing or color balance. The colors are just vibrant and vivid as is!

Rarely, but sometimes none the less, a day comes along that is filled with horrible negative energy. Today was such a day!

Today I spent hours dealing with technology that just didn't want to work properly. I was on the phone with a tech support "specialist" at Apple for well over 2.5 hours who insisted I'm insane. He stated that something I've been doing for years and years with multiple Macs and different display devices is not and has never been possible. Therefore, it is not an issue with the new 10.5.1 operating system. I suppose I'm delusional.

I also spent an ungodly amount of time dealing with Apple's Pages program trying to print a basic mail merge for the Christmas newsletter. The program crashed a multitude of times. Then the paper, having been printed on one side, started to curl and go through the printed crooked when printing the second side. Maddening.

A "simple" little digital movie task almost worked the first time I tried it. Every subsequent attempt wholly failed to work in any shape, form, or fashion. The technology never again performed in the way the program is supposed to perform when using iChat Theater to present a Keynote presentation.

Then I got a traffic ticket for running a stop sign. What irks the hell out of me is that I was not in any hurry at all. I was driving well below the speed limit through this neighborhood. I never even saw the stop sign, and I'm a rather attentive driver. No other cars or people were around except for a parked police car right in the area. Hmm... My guess: it's a favorite and easy money maker for Dekalb County. For all the bluster, It's not about safety, really, or the county would make sure the sign is more readily visible. The police car just sits and waits to write another ticket.

Today I learned that a former co-worker is retiring next week. I'm disappointed that I will not be able to attend the celebration as I will be out of town.

But the worst part of the day was learning that the little girl that has cut my hair for several years, who started her own hair salon a couple of years ago, who was young, who was easy-going, kind, and thoughtful, who got married about a year ago, who had two unexpected strokes 2 weeks ago, died shortly thereafter. Two weeks earlier she shared with me about how deeply meaningful her prior weekend had been to her: she had just been on a spiritual retreat to a monastery associated with her faith. Hard to believe. Tremendously sad.

Well, after almost an entire year, here I sit in "my" old booth at the re-opened Silver Grill in Midtown. It has almost the entire same group of employees-- just new owners. I walked in, sat down, and Peg, well into her 70s, many of those years spent working here, said in her inimitable southern drawl, "You want your unsweet tea, hon?" It felt like coming back to the dinner table at home.

I chatted with one of the new owners, Sam. He said the name and the sign, though very similar, are not identical. Originally, the new owners were going to open the restaurant as a completely different concept, but so many people stopped in while they were bringing the space up to code saying they should keep it the same that they decided to do just that. They even hired back the same people.

I love it. It smells the same, has the same menu, and still has the same down home feeling. With new hardwood floors, tables, chairs and booths and a credit card machine (finally), it sports a bit of a spruced-up look.

As I'm leaving, the cook asks me, "Was that chicken breast succulant and juicy enough for you?" We laughed out loud. You see, some 15 years ago, when I first ordered at the Silver Grill, I ordered a chicken breast with specific instructions to the cook. I hate dry chicken. It had to be "succulent and juicy." Ever since that day the cook always cooked up a fresh piece when she saw me walk in.

Some things are just hard to beat. Having the Silver Grill back in Midtown Atlanta is one of them!

Posted from my iPhone

Click to enlarge

I get stuck in airports all too often. In Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson you have to suffer with the constant, pervasive playing of CNN. What is driving me insane these days?

No longer do news organizations report the news. Now, we have to suffer through opinion making. "Tell me, reporter so and so, you are an excellent reporter, what do you think about whether or not he is using steroids and what will America think?"

Who gives a damn what a reporter thinks, speculates? Tell me the known facts and then shut up. Instead of wasting my time talking about who is a good reporter and what s/he thinks, move on to some real news, some actual journalism.

This is exactly why I don't watch the news. It isn't!

Clever sidewalk art. I don't recall now where I saw it.

Thanks to an email, I now know the source.

Every now and then I hear or read something that really makes me stop and think. Check this out:

And he said, 'Joe, you know, there's only one unit of exchange, and it isn't any kind of currency in the world. It's called the calorie. 3,000 calories in and 3,000 calories out and everything's sustainable; the world is sustainable--the unit of measurement of heat energy. But when oil came along as a cheap source of it, you have human beings using 1,000,000 calories a day. And so we built a civilization that no Caesar could have built hurling along at 70 miles per hour in hard exoskeletons at high speed. People don't really understand what the cheap oil fiesta provided.

And besides being non-sustainable, the ultimate unit of exchange and the ultimate decider will be the availability of the calorie––not just the one in your stomach, the one that melted that metal, the one that grows the plants, the petro chemicals that grow the plants, and so on. And he said, at some point it's got to come back down. It will come back down.

He said the third world will never rise to the first world standards. You will see the first world drop down to the third world standards because they're closer to sustainability. ... Everything runs on electricity, and electricity runs on oil. And when it doesn't run on oil, it runs on coal which makes the situation worse. Imagine when the electrical grid starts dimming out. It's pretty scary stuff.'"

He goes on to say that running out of oil will not happen as a gradual decline over decades. He states that since our consumption of oil is increasing geometrically instead of linearly, it will happen with a relatively unexpected suddenness. Since our civilization is built and sustained by oil consumption, what will the transformation to a different source of energy look like?

Wow!

Source of Quotation: Joe Bageant's July, 2007, podcast with George Kenney over at Electric Politics (about an hour and a half into the podcast)

"Microsoft's has taken a bruising in the Japanese marketplace just as Apple's OS 10.5 was released, according to a new report by the country's Business Computer News," Electronista reports.

You know, I don't really have anything to hide because I don't do anything illegal. But I don't think my phone conversations, my email or other internet activity, my spending habits, etc. is the government's (or corporate America's) business. It's only the business of those with whom I choose to share it. This of course is the whole notion of privacy, something this administration has seriously breached, and that breach cost the government this citizen's trust.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF.org) shares a news announcement regarding our privacy:

"My job required me to enable the physical connections between AT&T customers' Internet communications and the NSA's illegal, wholesale copying machine for domestic emails, Internet phone conversations, web surfing and all other Internet traffic. I have first-hand knowledge of the clandestine collaboration between one giant telecommunications company, AT&T, and the National Security Agency to facilitate the most comprehensive illegal domestic spying program in history," said Klein.

AT&T provides my mobile phone coverage...anyone else nervous?

Source: AT&T Whistleblower on Privacy

Since no one believes me, obviously I need to prove once and for all that indeed I do know how to get around in the kitchen and the dining room. So here is a pano as irrefutable proof! And, naturally, no pano post would be complete without access to a Pangea Plugin version which can be found at this link.

Click the photo above to see me at home in the kitchen and dining room

Ok. I couldn't stand the pano I posted yesterday of my office. It was too blurry and too grainy. These things bother Tim. So I reshot it this morning at a higher ISO (400). Oh, and I made sure I actually focused the camera--details. (Shooting panos is mostly done in manual mode. If you forget to focus the lens...) The end result is a vast improvement from yesterday's post. So, if you looked at the pano on the day it was originally posted, yesterday, and have a need to see a better result, simply revisit yesterday's post. The links now take you to new files.

I have been using a little program called ecto for almost as long as I have been blogging--around May, 2004. ecto (yes, properly not capitalized) is a little desktop application that links to a large number of the most popular blogging platforms and allows users to quickly and easily post content. For example: the Mac version links directly to your iPhoto library to upload pictures from that source with just very little effort.

To make matters even better, the guy who writes the program (present tense for a reason to be disclosed in this post), Adriaan, is just a really nice guy. He sold our school a very reasonably priced site license for his program because he said he values education. That's just nice!

At any rate, he has been rewriting the program: ecto 3. The new version, rewritten from the ground up I believe, features many improvements and has a nice, new, clean look. For an example of a new feature: you can now save a pdf document in your pdfs folder on the server and save the thumbnail in your images folder on the server! (Thanks, Adriaan!! I'll pretend I was the only person that asked for that feature! I love it!) You now have access to all of your media (audio, photos, and video) for quick and easy posting. You can also post straight to your flickr account from ecto 3. And on my MovableType blog, posting now seems much faster.

Since the beginning of November, I've been posting exclusively with the new version, ecto 3. If you owned ecto 2, the upgrade is free! Even if it were not, the program is very inexpensive, less than $20, and a really useful tool. I highly recommend it.

I must confess to loving the little flash-based image rotator at the top right of my blog. The pictures remind me of many of the wonderful places I have visited and photographed. I tweaked the rotation a bit: speeding it up and adding some of the pictures I shot of the fireworks here in Atlanta on the 4th of July, 2007. I just realized that I never created a photo album for those. I'll add that to my list of To-dos.

Just over a year ago (October, 2006) I spent 3 weeks in Japan––an amazing experience I will never forget. The Japanese are so incredibly hospitable, and I love their pervasive sense of peace, balance, and harmony: "never disturb the harmony."

While in Arao, at the craft museum, I had the opportunity to make a mug from the Shotai clay. The process, while not very difficult, required patience and a good sensei. We were to make the mug, which would be fired and then shipped back to the USA. The whole firing and shipping process would take about 2 months after we left. I sincerely thought I would not be able to successfully make a mug, let alone have it shipped back to the my home without breaking.

However, in early December a package arrived from Japan: my mug! It turned out beautifully. I have it my in office to remind me of the good people in Japan. While making it, on the bottom, with a great deal of help, I carved my name in Japanese. I attached to it a rice paper sticker I received from my very gracious host family, Saburo Sakai-sans' family, in Arao, at the tea ceremony that followed the making of the mug. The sentiment expressed: a cherished once-in-a-lifetime experience.

So 23% of Americans think "W" is the worst president in the history of the nation*. Naturally, I agree and wonder if the remaining 77% of Americans have been asleep for the past 7 years!

*According to a recent poll on CNN

Yes, born in this place are all of the great ideas to solve all of the world's problems. The room also serves as a guest room and media room. The bright light from the windows made the pano a bit blurry and grainy even at 100 ISO. Hum. And, naturally, no pano post would be complete without access to a Pangea Plugin version which can be found at this link.

Click the photo above to visit my office

Today I was on my way over to get my hair cut when my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number as it appeared on Watts' dashboard (my car). The person called me by name (those sales calls always start by calling me by my legal first name and I hang up without even responding). It was a friend of the girl who has cut my hair for years.

She told me that Sarah, who is probably in her twenties, had two strokes this week and is in critical condition in the ICU. Her mother and husband can only visit her for very brief periods of time each day as she is unconscious.

This is so hard to imagine as she is so young, laid back, and easy going. Send your thoughts and prayers her way.

The old Dekalb County Water Works has long since been abandoned. The forest and the graffiti artists are laying claim to the area.

Only some very large concrete retention tanks remain along with some foundations and one area of mostly collapsed, vine-covered brick walls. Here and there steps lead up to no place. An old stone bridge arches over the nearby creek. It too goes nowhere–just a bridge in the middle of the forest, rather odd indeed.

Not far from these ruins is a damn that was intentionally smashed in its middle to allow the creek, which at one time served as the county water supply, to now flow through. Large stone benches still line the side of the creek. What did the place look like back "in the day?" Were there roads to this place deep in the middle of the forest?

To see a pano of what it looks like now, simply click the image below. The Pangea Plugin version can be viewed from this link.

I just paid my property taxes. I am enraged. How on earth can my property tax TRIPLE in just six years?!

I guess someone has to pay for all of the needless security cameras that line the roads (ostensibly to keep me safe from the terrorists rambling down Atlanta's roads) and the ridiculous traffic cameras that automatically give everyone a ticket for running the light. OOOh! I feel safer already!

I suppose I would feel less annoyed with government if:

• I felt we were getting something we needed for the amount of money we pay in taxes
• Our community was enjoying the benefits of more effective government services
• My property value actually had tripled in the same time period
• Schools saw increased funding

For god's sake, what are those who live on fixed incomes supposed to do? Sell their homes and leave Atlanta I suppose! This is outrageous.

War is terrorism
with a big budget

But, I was always told not to play with my food!

Source: Hemmy.net

So the measure for vouchers failed in Utah, despite the money from Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne, who bankrolled the initiative, calling the referendum a "statewide IQ test" that Utahns failed. Funny to me (not!) that we frequently see those with money trying to manipulate the system to their own personal advantage.

"They don't care enough about their kids. They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don't care enough about their kids to think outside the box," Byrne said.

Source: The Carpetbagger Report

Or, Mr. Byrne, perhaps the citizens in this reddest of red states are wise and insightful. Perhaps they care about our nation's public schools as essential to the survival of our democracy. Perhaps they love their children. Perhaps they respect the people who work hard teaching their children every day. Perhaps, Mr. Byrne, they lack the hubris and arrogance you demonstrated in what appears to me to be the comments of an ass.

But then neither did the billions of dollars worth of no bid contract work Halliburton received from the Bush/Cheney administration. And, of course, that didn't seem to matter at all, despite the obvious known connections between Cheney and the company. So, I guess this really isn't important either? Where did ethics and a sense of propriety go?

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 — The inspector general of the Department of Education has said he will examine whether federal money was inappropriately used by three states to buy educational products from a company owned by Neil Bush, the president’s brother.

John P. Higgins Jr., the inspector general, said he would review the matter after a group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, detailed at least $1 million in spending from the No Child Left Behind program by school districts in Texas, Florida and Nevada to buy products made by Mr. Bush’s company, Ignite Learning of Austin, Tex. Mr. Higgins stated his plans in a letter to the group sent last week.

Members of the group and other critics in Texas contend that school districts are buying Ignite’s signature product, the Curriculum on Wheels, because of political considerations. The product, they said, does not meet standards for financing under the No Child Left Behind Act, which allocates federal money to help students raise their achievement levels, particularly in elementary school reading.

Source: Bush Brother’s Firm Faces Inquiry Over Purchases - New York Times

Nick Carr has an thought-provoking article on the revival of Marshall McLuhan's media theories on his blog that was also published at The Guardian. It's well worth the read. Especially sobering to me is his citing McLuhan's statement from Understanding Media, explicating his views on commercial exploitation of electric media:

"Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left."

The limited ownership of our nation's media, concentrating so much power and influence in the hands of so very few, is of enormous concern to me. If, in the Marxist's opinion, religion was the opiate of the people, in our nation today, the opiate of the people has become a pervasive and continuous diet of media, making the typical American mentally fat, out of shape, and lazy. We have become overweight media slobs.

Thinking isn't dangerous, it's responsible.

I have always had great respect for the memory of this former first lady.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
--Eleanor Roosevelt