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February 23, 2007

Goodies from Bellevue, WA!

I received a surprise package today from clear across the U.S. When Steve from Not a Nerd emailed asking if I drank coffee, I didn't realize he had an ulterior motive. :-) Last month I posted that Steve and his wife Elena were opening a cafe in Bellevue, WA and that if you lived in that area, you should stop by and sample the goods. (That's what friends are for; to wish them good luck and do what you can to promote them/their business... at least that's how I look at it.)

Anyway, back to the surprise. I opened the package and found a love note (joking!) from Steve written on beautifully designed white lined notebook paper. [wink] Steve even apologized for the paper -- as if THAT MATTERED! Underneath the note I found a bag of Bolivia "Los Yungas" Medium Roast coffee AND a box of chocolates from Elena's other business, Grendel Sweets. How cool is that? It's the next best thing to being there and sampling everything in person.

Miss Piggy (that's me!) is in her glory. Thanks Steve and Elena!!!

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Pound and a Half Rats Visit KFC/West Village

The reporter is literally standing there LIVE going "Look, rats!" and the camera guy films the rats. Not exactly a stake-out. The KFC Taco Bell is at 6th Ave and West 4th Street in NYC. - Consumerist

Eww.

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Friday Feathers

A fantastic songster, the Baltimore Oriole is usually heard before seen. Easily attracted to a feeder offering grape jelly, orange halves or sugar water (nectar). The female Baltimore Oriole is a pale yellow bird with orange tones, gray brown wings, white wing bars, a gray bill and dark eyes.

The male Baltimore Oriole is a bright flaming orange bird with black head and black extending down the nape of its neck onto its back. Black wings with white and orange wing bars, an orange tail with black streaks. Gray bill and dark eyes.

Sits in tops of trees feeding on caterpillars. Female builds a sock-like nest at the outermost branches of tall trees. Often returns to the same area year after year.

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February 21, 2007

You Go, Girl!

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named Frances E. Allen the recipient of the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. This award marks the first time that a woman has received this honor. The Turing Award, first presented in 1966, and named for British mathematician Alan M. Turing, is widely considered the "Nobel Prize in Computing." It carries a $100,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation. - ACM Press Release

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Quote

"Excuse me, sir. Kindly remove your ego from your ass."
- Greg @ Reject Reality

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February 16, 2007

Friday Feathers

The Laughing Kookaburra, Dacelo novaeguineae, is a familiar Australian carnivorous bird of the Kingfisher family, well known for its call. Previously known as the Laughing Jackass, it is now best known by its aboriginal name.

This bird has a large head, a prominent brown eye, and a very large bill. It is known for its "laugh" which it uses to greet its mate after periods of absences. It can be heard at any time of day but most frequently shortly after dawn and especially when the color drains from the forest after sunset.

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February 14, 2007

Valentine's Day

A nice and thoughtful Dutch man sent me a cute e-card featuring a stuffed bear and cutout hearts. It was a great surprise and truly appreciated. :-) Thanks! (You know who you are.)

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February 12, 2007

It's that time again

I have 3,987 people in my social network, but none of them will sleep with me. Assholes. - Be My Anti-Valentine

*chuckle*

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February 11, 2007

Quote

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three. - Alice Kahn

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February 9, 2007

Friday Feathers - Closeups

I never intended to photograph birds. I'd been caught up in photographing deer and shooting what I considered portraits of them. Unfortunately the deer never showed up one day and I wanted to shoot something, anything other than trees, plants, leaves, etc. The birds were all around and I thought it would be an excellent challenge for me to get a decent shot of them.

My first photographs of birds were taken with a Sony Cybershot. Though it's a decent digital camera, it's not exactly the ultimate when it comes to bird photography. You're severely limited by the simple fact that you cannot change the lens -- it is what it is. When I got the Nikon D50, you can imagine how delighted I was to be using a camera where I could change the lens!

The first lens I got after the 18-55mm that came with the D50 was a 70-300mm, a lightweight lens that helped me get closer to my subject. Then came the 200-500mm lens and, well, I was in heaven... kind of. I knew the power of that lens and about the only complaint I have about it is its weight. Though hand-held shots are indeed possible, you really have to concentrate on keeping that lens steady in your hands, or else. Using a tripod with a lens that large would be the norm, but I've yet to become best buddies with my tripod simply because I find using one extremely limiting. I think I see too many disasters waiting to happen, such as rushing to get a shot of a bird only to knock the tripod over, sending the camera and that big lens crashing to the ground. *shudder* The other thing is that it is not easy to follow a bird in flight when the camera isn't hand-held. You have to be able to maneuver the camera sometimes in a split second otherwise you miss the shot -- and I've missed many because I couldn't flex the tripod fast enough.

When it became evident that I was hooked on photographing birds (though I still photograph deer whenever they're around), I went to the bookstore in search of books written by bird photographers. I found one that became my bible. It is written by David Tipling, a professional wildlife photographer. Mr. Tipling shares a wealth of valuable information in his book, and the photographs he's taken are spectacular. The one tip that popped out for me (remember I am a beginner here) is to focus on the bird's eyes.

I got into the habit of zooming in on a bird's head. I was going for that shot where you could actually see the color of a bird's eyes. Some are black, some are brown, some are yellow. Who knew? The eyes were never the primary focus for me; instead I was attempting the bird-in-flight shots or a full-body, standing still one. Then I moved to closeups, and I now have a folder of headshots that have become favorites. The red-bellied woodpecker in the shot above has become an all-time fave, as this particular woodpecker has afforded me numerous opportunities to photograph it, resulting in a number of photos I'm particularly proud of.

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February 7, 2007

She said: "I think I'm gonna puke..."

Back story (Read that first.)
Proposal
Reaction

Ain't love grand?

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February 6, 2007

Weather Widget

One of the funner* things that comes with Apple's Tiger OS is Dashboard. One of the widgets is a clock showing the current time and a week-at-a-glance weather chart that you can customize.

This morning, Greg @ Reject Reality who lives in Adelaide, Australia, attempted to post the temperature image from his Dashboard widget in the comments of my last post. Unfortunately the comment was mangled and only the text appeared. Anyhoo, I grabbed his widget and mine, altered the Celsius to Fahrenheit for his locale, and voila!

Though it looks like the temperatures are similar for the week-at-a-glance, Greg's temps are in Celsius, where the temps for my neck o' the woods are Fahrenheit. And there ya have it. By the way, just because the temperature reads 11 degrees it is REALLY (you know, feels like) minus one in New York -- one below zero.

*funner - yes I know this isn't a word. Sue me.

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February 5, 2007

"Feels Like" is the Real Temperature

Dear weather people:
Kindly refrain from telling us non-meteorologists that the temperature for today will be 18 degrees (perception) when the REALITY, aka feels like, is minus 2 degrees or BELOW ZERO. Seriously. What benefit is it to ANYONE to report anything other than FEELS LIKE or WIND CHILL FACTOR? Where, pray tell, will it be 18 degrees? In the doorway of a building? Going from outside to inside? WHERE?

Here's my weather report for this neck o' the woods:
Forget bone chilling. It's bone-crumbling, ice-like conditions the minute you step foot outside your door. Forget your one hour-every day walk. It ain't gonna happen. The wind's a'whippin' and yer ass is gonna freeze. You can count on it. It not only FEELS LIKE that, it IS like that. Take a taxi or hop the subway to work. Stay inside and when you have to be outside, make it quick.

Side note: It's posts like these when I really miss my friend Al, who used to always chime in with weather reports from upstate NY when I'd bitch about the weather. *sigh*

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Weekend Review

aka: Under the Weather :|: Sleep, Commercials and a Bit of Football :|: Checking for Updates :|: Here's to Good Friends :|: This post is ALL OVER THE PLACE.

Where did that expression for not feeling so great come from -- Under the weather? What is that, like being followed around by a storm cloud filled with rain and thunder and lightning?

Anyhoo... I've been a bit unwell, not long after spending some time with my year-old nephew. Why is it that if you go near a kid who's been sick you catch whatever it is in mere nanoseconds? I simply forgot this when I paid my visit. Friday evening I began feeling, uhm, strange and suddenly really, really tired. I went to bed earlier than I normally do and sleep didn't show up. Instead I found myself in one big wrestling match with my comforter. Saturday wasn't bad and I felt okay but not 100 percent. By Sunday morning I was exhausted when I climbed out of bed, even though I thought I was feeling rested and better.

No such luck. I think I was awake for an hour and then just went back to sleep, hoping that this time I'd sleep until I could sleep no more and wake up okay. I repeated this 3 times during the day (go to sleep, wake up, go to sleep, wake up) and finally said enough! Time to watch the Super Bowl, which I did, hoping to see this guy's Super Proposal commercial aired on CBS. Instead I saw way too many Coke commercials, Bud Light commercials, CBS commercials (seeing Katie Couric one too many times made me more unwell) and only one that made me chuckle: Late Night with David Letterman, featuring Letterman AND Oprah. And the game itself? Bummer 'bout da Bears, but hey, that first touchdown moments after the national anthem was cool. :-)

Update:

I just remembered it was 2 commercials that made me laugh. The other one was the beer-stealing crabs. Go here and select the second clip.

In between the Bowl watching and pondering if goldfish crackers were safe to eat given the bizarre state of my innards, I hopped online to check for updates on the search for Jim Gray. The most current and reliable information is here. The blogging community is HUGE. That's a lot of eyeballs. Hopefully you put your eyeballs to good use over the weekend (thanks to those who did) and if you didn't, you still can. Just go here.

Speaking of friends, Friday before succumbing to the evil virus I emailed some of my friends, requesting that time permitting, they review the satellite images. Jim "Space Man" Thompson IMMEDIATELY jumped right in and not only posted the info on his own blog but also over at the Houston Chronicle's TechBlog (and thanks, Dwight!) Other folks I emailed wrote back to say they'd review the images and also ask their friends to do so. Thanks to all of you!

So... that's all I can deposit here right now. It's day three of what ails me but I'm hopeful that it'll be gone RSN. I'm off to have some oatmeal... maybe.

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February 3, 2007

Help Find Missing Computer Scientist Jim Gray

Jim Gray, a renowned computer scientist and Microsoft researcher, was reported missing at sea on January 28. He'd gone sailing in his 40-foot sailboat and did not return. The Coast Guard was unsuccessful in its search and called off further attempts to find him. (See today's New York Times and the San Jose Mercury News for more information.)

A number of Gray's friends worked tirelessly to gain access to the satellite data and people from NASA, Digital Globe, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon worked hard to get the data collected and make it available in a very short period of time. His friends and family are asking for assistance in reviewing satellite imagery shown on the page here.
(http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=J0XZ58STDWJZ5QY4F9M0)

The page has satellite images taken after Gray went missing; you'll be presented with five images at a time and can indicate which ones might appear to contain a sailboat. You'll need an Amazon ID and be logged in with it. The buttons beneath each image won't work until you click the "ACCEPT HIT" button at the bottom of the page, then you'll be able to mark which images you believe contain something. The image you mark will then be forwarded to a specialist for further review.

If you have a bit of time to take a look at the satellite imagery, that would be a huge help. Feel free to copy/paste this post into your own blog or send it as email to your friends. Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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February 2, 2007

No Shadow Today

Mr. Groundhog Punxsutawney Phil has determined that an early spring is on the way.

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Friday Feathers - Flubs

This photograph of an egret was taken at a wildlife sanctuary. My 200-500mm zoom lens was new and I couldn't wait to try it out.

Unfortunately I forgot my tripod and instead had to steady the hefty lens in my hands, as there was nothing around me I could lean the camera against (railing, post, etc.) The egret was about to land and I lifted the camera to take the photograph. It's one of the first few photographs I took with the new lens. Thankfully I became used to the weight of the lens and managed to keep it steady for subsequent shots. Though this particular lens can indeed be used successfully without a tripod, it took some time to get used to its weight.

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Bloggies '07

The divine Ms. Zoe at MBIAT has once again been nominated for Best European Weblog, (scroll down the page to see all nominees) an honor she has won for the past two years. Congrats on the nom, Petunia!

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