blueslugs.com » General

Reasonable photos from 2009

Stephen — Thu, 06 May 2010 05:56:30 +0000

I’ve started uploading a subset of my photos to Flickr. Here are four from 2009 I’m reasonably happy with, with some commentary.

We took a short trip north to the coast in the spring, camping a few nights at the Bodega Dunes site in Sonoma Coast SP. This bird was interested in our activities, although not as aggressive as some distant cousins at San Simeon.

NASA Ames had an event last year, with much model rocketry on the airfield. This model Saturn V was one of the most impressive rockets fired, and I was happy to catch it as it took off.

The dock at the cottage. Weathered, if not gnarly.

I was amused by the modification to this sign. (O.P.P. is short for Ontario Provincial Police; C.P.O. for Community Policing Office; C-3PO for a particular protocol droid.)

Indispensible?

Stephen — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:47:08 +0000

Last October, the New York Times was considering extreme yachts:

â€œToday, a megayacht is indispensable,â€ said Olivier Milliex, head of yacht finance at the Dutch bank ING. â€œItâ€™s not like 15 years ago, when a yacht was a luxury item.â€

Hmm. I don’t have one, so I think “indispensible” isn’t the right word. Perhaps “megayacht ownership is assumed”?

Dense election coverage

Stephen — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 06:46:38 +0000

A couple of people have asked me to comment on the Canadian election last week. Although I was up to date with the limited reporting in The Economist, the two to six weeks of latency in my Maclean’s subscription meant I never really connected with the current situation—I was already rather fed up with the random delays, and am switching to The Walrus as an experiment. In any case, I’ve been in the USA for over thirteen years now; my perceptions of Canada are, politely, distorted by nostalgia.

I did get to admire the CBC election night coverage. Check out the density of this snapshot of reporting from a British Columbia riding:

That’s four distinct presentation areas: (1) riding result, (2) national seat summary, (3) provincial changes, and (4) a message area:

Although there isn’t one in the snapshot above, area (4)’s text messages would sweep in, and were mapped on to a curve parallel to the lower side of the elliptical ring.

The screen is reporting 22 numbers—more when more parties or independent candidates were standing—which seems pretty high for a television graphic (plus the party associations, candidate and riding names, and the riding’s location in the country). The beige field is a good neutral background for the presentation of the range of colours needed to handle the multiple parties participating.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of the confusing artwork behind Peter Mansbridge and his panel, which lacked the elegance of the reporting screen. (The panel’s banter wasn’t that entertaining, but I get the impression Senator Segal is quite an operator.)

Forecast for coming late nights

Stephen — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 04:57:10 +0000

I can see late nights ahead: there’s a lot of writing to do for work, and enough daytime interruptions and meetings to stop me from proceeding swiftly. Happily for those idle enough to read this blog, this new phase of sleep deprivation means the completion of assorted partial entries—and the release of the various pieces of code I’ve written/salvaged/jury-rigged over the summer. (For instance, I’ve got an unfinished book review of an overview of professional poker started over two years ago: since then, poker became hot, went mainstream, and then sold out (or maybe that was Bravo). Better to finish, or to have a running joke about the “poker book review”?)

Loss of T-Mobile service?

Dina — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 04:11:52 +0000

As I drove to work in Menlo Park this morning, I was unable to operate my cell phone. I tried several numbers from my phone list and typed others. I turned the phone on and off and even tried to call T-Mobile. Each attempt was met with a message about the number being unregistered. It was a very strange feeling to be unable to talk on my drive and my car seemed particularly quiet. I have not been able to find information about the disruption on the T-Mobile website. Does anyone know anything about it?