I loved the architechture at the University of PA in Philadelphia! The University buildings themselves were covered with great gargoyles (all commissioned sculptures!) and plaques commemorating Ivy Day. I’m slowly digging through a huge collection of slides from my days there (I was a lab technician in the Biology Dept. in Leidy Labs and worked for Drs. Lee Peachey, Clara Franzini-Armstrong, Louis G. Tilney among others).
Lovely sculpture from the Univ of PA Museum in Philadelphia.
The wave itself was cast silver and the sphere polished crystal – mesmerizing to look at!
It was inside a plexiglass case that was none-too-clean and the lighting was very poor, thus I had to use a flash – took several shots to get a proper exposure.
Spotted this on Doug’s Dynamic Drivel:
Well New Years Eve is almost upon us and many of you will be doing the traditional champagne toasts. Please learn the correct way to open a bottle of bubbly.
We’ve had close to 30″ of snow in the past two weeks, we’ve had to rely on help from our trusty neighbor Taylor to come dig us out!
Just had a family scare – my dearly-loved Uncle Les (above, on the left) was hospitalized after becoming ill and horkin up blood! Well, a scenic tour up *ahem* you know… and doctors discovered he had bleeding ulcers! Could have something to do with his wife‘s recent death piled on top of Christmas stress!! Luckily he’s all fixed up again and planning to come home shortly.
Kudos to my cousin Joe (above, right) for keeping me apprised of this – Thanks Joe!
My best wishes go out to my cousins who are no doubt a bit concerned!
WHEW! (holds up two fingers a la Maxwell Smart) Missed it by that much.
From Bloomberg.com
George Orwell Was Right: Spy Cameras See Britons& Every Move
By Nick Allen
Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) — It’s Saturday night in Middlesbrough, England, and drunken university students are celebrating the start of the school year, known as Freshers’ Week.
One picks up a traffic cone and runs down the street. Suddenly, a disembodied voice booms out from above:
“You in the black jacket! Yes, you! Put it back!” The confused student obeys as his friends look bewildered.
by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti
‘Twas the night before Christmas,
Da whole house was mellow,
Not a creature was stirrin’,
I had a gun unda my pillow.
When up on da roof’
I heard somethin’ pound,
I sprung to da window,
To scream, “Ay! Keep it down!”
When what to my
Wanderin’ eyes should appear,
But dat hairy elf Vinny,
And eight friggin’ reindeer.
Wit’ a bad hackin’ cough,
And da stencha burped beer,
I knew in a moment
Yo, da Kringle wuz here!
Wit’ a slap to dere snouts,
And a yank on dere manes,
He cursed and he shouted,
And he called dem by name.
“Yo Tony, Yo Frankie,
Yo Sally, Yo Vito,
Ay Joey, Ay Paulie,
Ay Pepe, Ay Guido!”
As I drew out my gun
And hid by da bed,
Down came his friggin’ boot
On da top a my head.
His eyes were all bloodshot,
His b.o. wuz scary,
His breath wuz like sewage,
He had a mole dat wuz hairy.
He spit in my eye,
And he twisted my head,
He soon let me know
I should consider myself dead.
Den pointin’ a fat finga
Right unda my nose,
He let out some gas,
And up da chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh,
Obscenities screaming,
And away dey all flew,
Before he troo dem a beatin’.
But I heard him exclaim,
Or better yet grump,
“Merry Christmas to all, and
Bite me, ya hump!”
The legend lives on
A panarama shot by my pal Mark Berenson – he shot single frames and I assembled it in Adobe Photoshop. The thumbnail opens a scaled-down version. If you want the full effect, download the PDF and you can zoom way up. Enjoy!
Panarama (pdf, 1.1Mb)
There are many poems that speak to my heart – this is one that speaks often. The opening phrase is so hopeful, I can only think the author was divinely inspired.
Always wanted to dress your iPod collection up as The Village People? Well, wait no more! Those zanies over at iAttire have just what you need.
Here we see a full-size iPod sporting the ‘Cowboy’ character. All you need is some scissors and a (very) steady hand to make those into crotchless chaps.
There’s a whole range of outfits, including the quintessential Beret as well as Pirate and Princess.
Funny stuff.
Have I mentioned John Gruber at Daring Fireball is a God? Well he is. Bow down chillins, he da man.
His post today smokes the Blue Meanies like an earthworm on a barbeque grill.
I think I had a gene for Rogaine or sumptin… I had hair growin out of my elbows for pete’s sake. Luckily I had those bullet-proof glasses to keep the hungry looks from all the babes from blinding me. (yeahright) My patented ‘muy macho’ pose.
Remember when you could get a tour of the airplane’s cockpit? The pilot himself took this shot. I think it was on Frontier airlines. With my blogging background there’s no way in hell I’ll ever see the inside of a cockpit again. It smelled funny. Aftershave and something… funky.
19 years old. Note – under no circumstances should children this young be given beer. I was. It was all downhill from there. (fun tho!)
I had as many grey hairs as I had clues. I would gladly trade them back… then again… maybe not.
During my contracting days at IBM. I took my glasses off for this shot. My pal DJ Cline took this. Ah, I remember when most of my hair wasn’t grey. I’d just bought my first house (in Longmont) was making a great salary and working with folks I loved at one of the best employers in the Boulder Valley. It was the salad days.
HP Settles with California in spy scandal
By Ina Fried
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: December 7, 2006, 1:53 PM PST
update The California Attorney General’s Office said Thursday that Hewlett-Packard will pay $14.5 million to settle civil charges related to the company’s now infamous spy scandal.
Spotted these at:
http://limitthesky.com/gallery/index.php?level=album&id=11
Site was suffering badly from Slashdot effect as of 12/6/06 8:18am MST
From Slashdot.org
0xbl00d writes “Eweek.com is reporting a new Microsoft Word zero-day attack underway. Microsoft issued a security advisory to acknowledge the unpatched flaw, which affects Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Word Viewer 2003, Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac and Microsoft Word 2004 v. X for Mac. The Microsoft Works 2004, 2005 and 2006 suites are also affected because they include Microsoft Word. Simply opening a word document will launch the exploit. There are no pre-patch workarounds or anti-virus signatures available. Microsoft suggests that users ‘not open or save Word files,’ even from trusted sources.”
—
Good grief.
Someone tell me again WHY the business world loves Microsoft?
It’s like the old bear/hunter joke: ‘You don’t come here for the hunting, do ya?’
Swing by DJCline.com and take a look at the Headers page. It shows the 40+ header images that cycle randomly. Some of my best work – had great fun creating these. Several are based on my own photos. Enjoy!
“Paperless electronic voting machines ‘cannot be made secure‘ [pdf] according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In the most sweeping condemnation of voting machines issued by any federal agency, NIST echoes what critics have been saying all along, that due to the lack of verifiability, ‘a single programmer could rig a major election.’ Rather than adding printers, though, NIST endorses the hand-marked optical-scan system as the most reliable.”
–
Golly gee whiz.
Like no one’s been SCREAMING that for YEARS. Nice to see the kids at NIST weigh in on this. Hopefully now all the naysayers will WTF up.
Jim Winkler of the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church once again points the way to what I believe true Christians should strive for: Love.
An Easter Lily in a greenhouse at the University of PA, Philadelphia (Leidy Labs). Every year they’d grow hundreds of these for biology students to dissect when studying plant reproduction. The greenhouse would be heavy with the fragrance.
Cupid watching his arrows burn on the altar of friendship.
Close-up of a statue I saw at the Philadelphia Art Museum. It was part of a travelling show – the Campbells Collection (as in soup, yes, that Campbells – it’s actually pretty neat – all those paste porcelain tureens and bowls led to some insane paste porcelain sculpture. Luscious stuff. Serious eye candy.) Can’t find any other references to these on the web. If I can find the full shot of the statue, I’ll post it too.
Boulder Public Library Main Branch Entrance.
A lovely truncated cone shape with a geodesic internal framework.
