There looks to be a sudden influx of LOLcat creations lately. This one gives a new spin on the classic Star Trek episode "The Troubles With Tribbles".
Author: John
Memories of Japan
After years of thinking about it I have decided that it is high time that I post my Japan 2002 trip photos to Flickr. I had all of them on my old gallery page on TeamDroid but after this last move I have decided not to install the software again. It breaks every time I have to move my files and that has been quite a bit lately.
Getting everything right in Flickr is very time consuming. Each photo has key information that I need to enter into the meta data fields. Things like title and description are somewhat simple. Just a basic name of the subject of the photo and some thought about the image. The tags are a bit harder as I am attempting to use Japanese text on some of them. Things like ‘??‘ (Japan) and "??" (Tokyo) are easy but it’s a little harder with ‘???‘ (vending machine). I still have to add the images to groups but that will be much later. I’m not looking forward to that part of the project.
In reviewing these photos I’m amazed at just how poorly my Nikon 950 did while I was there. I think it’s mostly the 180 degree fish eye lens that I used on a lot of my images. I love the effect but the edge focus and fringing goes to hell if the aperture isn’t stopped way down. Oh well, I still got some pretty good photos. I’m looking forward to my next trip where I can use newer equipment and get a chance to take some film cameras with me (actually I did have one film camera on this trip. I had my stereo Realist format camera with me but the shutter broke on the second day)
Not all of these are ‘award winners’ by any stretch of the word. These are just vacation snaps, memories of fantastic journey.
So, once this lengthy process is finished my Japan 2002 set will be done. Then it will be time for my trips to Oregon, Fargo, South Dakota, and a bunch of other places.
Flash Gordon to Hit SciFi in August
All I can say is that it has got to be better than ‘Buck Rogers’ was in the ’70s. I remember my father showing my copies of the comic strip from the 1930’s and was quite looking forward to the TV series. What showed up on the family TV was not what I had expected. Ok, I liked it but I was only seven. What did I know back then.
I do remember the Flash Gordon cartoon series that was in the Saturday morning line up. That was pretty good, I liked the idea of the the planet Mongo marauding around the galaxy plundering and conquering as they went. It stared off well but started to take on the suckage as they dumbed it down and tried to make it funny.
The 22-hour series, a contemporary take on the popular comic strip franchise, is slated for an August premiere. It will feature Johnson (Smallvill) as space traveler Flash Gordon embarking on all-new adventures.
Info about the series has been a bit thin. I found a press release about the production and a tiny remark that the sets for the planet Mongo are going to be redressed sets from the upcoming TV series ‘Tin Man’. ‘Tin Man‘ is a re-imagining of the ‘Wizard of Oz’. I’m not even going to go there, I never fully recovered from a bout of ‘The Wiz‘.
All Hail Our Tiki Masters!
A brilliant parody of the famious ‘Chick Tracks‘ talking about the evils of tiki statue worship. All hail the tiki gods!
Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci
Here is a little Saturday afternoon time killer. I found this web page that has a bunch of drawings by one of the most well known classic artists Leonardo da Vinci. Nothing super spectacular about these scans other than the fact that they were drawn over 500 years ago. His insight into ho objects and humans worked is still amazing after all these years. Go browse through them yourself and see if you don’t agree.
Skiing Conditions On Mars, Not So Hot…
This throws a wrench into my summer vacation plans…
Using observations by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, scientists have discovered that water ice lies at variable depths over small-scale patches on Mars.
The findings draw a much more detailed picture of underground ice on Mars than was previously available. They suggest that when NASA’s next Mars mission, the Phoenix Mars Lander, starts digging to icy soil on an arctic plain in 2008, it might find the depth to the ice differs in trenches just a few feet apart. The new results appear in the May 3, 2007, issue of the journal Nature.
"We find the top layer of soil has a huge effect on the water ice in the ground," said Joshua Bandfield, a research specialist at Arizona State University, Tempe, and author of the paper. His findings come from data sent back to Earth by the Thermal Emission Imaging System camera on Mars Odyssey. The instrument takes images in five visual bands and 10 heat-sensing (infrared) ones.
NASA – Sharp Views Show Ground Ice on Mars Is Patchy and Variable