The Time Sink

Oh, me and Father's Day? We postponed it for a week or two. Yeah, that took the pressure off everyone from just too darned many simultaneous events this last weekend (by last count: Three Father's Days, two birthdays, one graduation, one bon voyage and one cage cleaning (for the partridge))...

On the other hand, a side trip to Ireland will allow you to experience a return to the Land of Zork with Noah Grey as he tries to jump start his morning. Ah, the memories from the days when the adventure began with a small mailbox (you may have to be nearly as old as me to appreciate that one). Oh, and for the cemetery bloggers? The man did Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin up right! Yes, I'm fawning, but his photography is just outstanding in my book...

Speaking of photoblogs and photobloggers... Laanba over at Photine had this link on Websites as a Graph up the other week (source and source code). It looked interesting so I gave it a run...

This first graph is what these Daynotes pages look like. ...kinda' basic, but that's to be expected: this page is tables-driven and designed to work across most browsers and resolutions.

...but when we move to "Views", things get a little interesting:

...and the photoblog? Well...

For the geeks in the crowd, that applet worked just fine here on the FC5 boxen; the screen caps and processing were handled in The Gimp; the rest is Bluefish and gFTP as usual...

Well now... For Jacob and Gary and the other Minolta users out there: don't sell those lenses just yet: Sony's Alpha 100 DSLR is out (and they're keeping the mount!)...

A few months back, when the Sony/Konica deal finished up, some of us were expecting to see something from Sony by the end of the Summer. I mean, they'd already been supplying Konica Minolta with the glass and CCDs for their lines, so it wasn't going to be any big surprise if they made a product of their own. The question was where would they position themselves in the market.

Hmmm... Summer is just breaking and it looks like Sony has been working in the background while things shook out. ...and on a DSLR! Just as an overview: it looks like the Konica "Anti-shake" has been moved over and improved; the lens mounts also came across; some of the little stuff like the lens covers and remotes look to be the same; but the lens selection looks to be pretty darned good (Zeiss!)...

It looks like I'm getting a little bit better at the grill, although there is still room for improvement (Tuesday's frozen Teryaki chicken was only acceptable as 'sandwich makings' in my opinion). Tonight's marinated chicken breast fillets with grilled zucchini and squash seemed to go over well enough with the gang (okay, Brad and Shelley on the veggies; Daniel and I ate the chicken <g>)...

Shelley had found a recipe for a marinade (actually two) for chicken and a 'mop' for the vegetables, so we added that into the "Summer Trials" we're running this year. My brain just cannot wrap itself around firing up an oven to fill the kitchen with heat and then have to use the AC to cool the place off. If we wanted it hot, all we'd have to do is open a window!

It was 102 when I got home from work today, with 108 predicted for the weekend. I think anything we can do to take the heat load off the interior is a good idea. ...and outdoor cookery is one way to do that.

I'd really like to post about the heat, but each time I start to lay things out in my mind it starts sounding like some bad 60's poetry or some really terrible haiku!

Here's something else this week for the photographer/artist readers here: The shot below was supposed to be just a 'framing shot' of the rock face near Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite; it was one of those 'just to record the area' photos... All was well until I noticed the sunlight on the edge of a wall plaque as I was relaxing outside after cooking dinner earlier this week. That shot was evocative of something I'd recalled seeing when I looked at the Yosemite shots and I ended up using a portion of this photo as part two of "Afternoon sunlight"...

...and that's when I noticed the bird floating above the scene. ...and that took me to processing the heck out of that portion of the shot (Dreamy Filter). ...and that led me to looking at the clouds thinning on the upper right. ...and that lead to today's post. ...and I still haven't posted Bridal Veil Falls yet!

Click for a larger version

"Thermocline" is the word for the day... The pool has a layer about six inches deep at the top that's about 97F; the rest of the depth is likely about 90F. Enough said...

I spent much of yesterday 'playing with my Tinkertoys': we have some beach time coming up and I need to make sure all the bits and pieces I need for connectivity and posting are gathered together, charged up and ready to go.

Click image for larger version

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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