Update 8:40 am Oof. I’ve finished the shovelling (for some value of finished). Y’know how I hurt my back two weeks ago? Well, it was still sore before I went out to shovel this morning. I think now I’m going to be completely out of commission for a while. Again, the problem is having to lift a shovelful of wet, heavy snow. And it’s made worse by the fact that my shovel has no way to keep it from twisting in my hands, so about half the time it just turns and all the snow dumps and I have to scoop it up a second time. Anyway, I’ve got an owie. And next time I’m out shopping, I’ll be looking for a new shovel, too.
I also noticed that there was enough snow sticking to the clotheslines that it was bending the poles inwards. I knew there were wimpy, but I didn’t think a few inches of snow on the clotheslines would bend them. So I chopped down the lines. I don’t think I want or need the clotheslines out there, but the one pole holds up the bird-feeder, and I’d hate to see that get dumped in the snow.
But Jim points out that Dan the One Man Band (who we saw on our vacation in Ireland) has a website. It’s kind of entertaining if you’ve got flash so you can see it all.
From here down was all written before 7:15am
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| A snowy morning |
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I knew it was too early in the year to be looking at the grass in the back yard and thinking about raking it already. Nature answered with an inch of snow when I woke up and now it’s up to about two inches. Don’t know how much there will be total, but I’ll be out shovelling soon. The snow makes the trees in the back yard look real pretty though, so I had to take some pictures. First is the raw one right out of the camera (they’re both scaled down, since at full size, the sensor noise is pretty awful), and the second is “enhanced” by Photoshop’s “Auto Levels” command. I’m not sure which I like more, but I think the moody colors of the original are more striking.
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| the "enhanced" version |
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Most of the pictures I present here are unmanipulated. I may do some cropping in iPhoto as I import them, but that’s about it. I generally don’t touch the color or anything. But I sometimes wonder if I should learn a little more Photoshop mojo so I can do more in the way of retouching. I don’t know for sure, but if you have a strong opinion about any of the photos you see here, let me know what you think. I suspect some of the pictures would look better manipulated, but I don’t know enough right now to do a good job of it, so I don’t even try. In any case, the first one is closer to what my eye saw, though without so much of a blue cast. The second is striking in a different way, mostly because of the unworldly colors that appear around the noise from the camera.
Finally, I’ve been playing with the drop-caps some more. They’re now a bit higher, as that makes Mozilla render them properly. In Safari, they should be 0.2em lower. I’m aware of the problem, but the only solution I see is to send out different CSS based on the browser, so I’m working on some code to do that. If you know of a cool CSS hack to change the height of the drop-caps (specifically, using the margin-top) between Safari and Mozilla, I’d appreciate any tips.
- Okay, this is about the only reason I can see myself going to SXSW, but it’s a damned compelling reason. March 18 and 20 will be the end of an era.
Isn’t ten albums enough?
I don’t think it is. And apparently there are a couple I’ve missed. [boing boing] - Drivers picket, commuters cope and life goes on, but rush-hour traffic yesterday was nastier than usual as there were more cars streaming out of downtown who don’t know the rhythms of commuting. I’m wondering if I can take my bus pass in somewhere to get a refund. There’s no point in holding onto it if I can’t use it on a bus, and I’ve got almost $20 left on the pass. And no, money isn’t that tight, but it might help pressure the MTC to come around more quickly if they had to start shelling out refunds. [press-patch]
- Experts say new desktop fusion claims seem more credible than when the same guys published basically the same thing two years ago. The press releases are Researchers report bubble fusion results replicated and Sound waves may aid nuclear fusion reactions. When I asked Bob the Physicist (who used to work with sonoluminescence, so he knows something about what’s going on here) about it, he replied with the following reasons not to get too excited (I’ve paraphrased here):
- The original paper in Science in spring 2002 was widely panned, and the reviewers recommended not publishing it because of internal inconsistencies and lack of details.
- There are also quite potent physical reasons why it is unlikely, because these bubbles (in deuterated acetone) would not get very hot on collapse.
- These guys have refused for years to provide basic details of their experiments. Nobody can duplicate their results.
- Three decades ago, Patrick Moore helped found Greenpeace, but now some people call him an Eco-Traitor because he promotes nuclear energy and genetically modified foods – and swears he’s still fighting to save the planet. His new approach seems pretty reasonable to me.
- You don’t hear about accidental condom inhalation every day. This case from India looks legit, though. I guess this is a warning of some sort. I know I’d spend time searching if I lost a condom while having sex, but I wouldn’t have thought to see if it had been inhaled.
- John Stossel writes Confessions of a Welfare Queen, or
How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars
. There’s federal flood insurance that protects expensive houses built in stupid places like flood plains or too close to the ocean. There’s crop insurance and price supports for farmers, some of whom aren’t rich, but many are. There’s ADM, which is in a class by itself in receiving welfare. And finally, there’s eminent domain, which is no longer just used for road or other public works, but for “development” like a casino owned by Donald Trump in New Jersey. Yeah,I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
- In spite of what Scott thinks, dogs take a lead over children as there are more dogs per household than children. Of course there are people like me who probably skew the numbers – you don’t need to find a girlfriend in order to get a dog. [fark!]