SEH #1

A lot of times there isn't much going on with us. It's hard to come up with something to post. I've been thinking about what to post on dull days and came up with a new feature for Earl World -- Song Essence Haiku (SEH). I'm going to post a series of haiku where each one summaries the essence of a particular song's lyrics. Basically a Reader's Digest condensed version of a song. I'll also give links to the complete lyrics. OK, these are a going to be a bastardized form of haiku, but here we go with a few examples to get started.

#1
Signs everywhere.
Many bad scenarios,
so make your own sign.

Signs
5 Man Electrical Band


#2
Chicago gangsters
have a gunfight with the cops.
Papa makes it home.

The Night Chicago Died
Paper Lace


#3
A man meets a girl.
Goes from the bar to her place.
But she is a he!

Lola
The Kinks


#4
Beautiful stranger;
say hi for her attention.
It’s love at first sight.

Hello, I Love You
The Doors

A Spider's Snack

Caught this spider a few weeks ago. It had a snack all wrapped up for lunch.

Hope Springs Eternal for Fox News

I like reality TV...probably too much reality TV. I also like cooking shows. Put the two together with some spice and what do you get? Hell's Kitchen. It's on our must record list on the DVR. He'd be a bugger to work for, but it's entertaining watching Gordon Ramsey yell at the chef contestants.

After Hell's Kitchen comes our early local news broadcast on Fox. I don't know why I watch it, except that it comes on early. I don't care for the anchors, the weather lady has an odd delivery, and the timing and production quality isn't the best (rolling the wrong film, cutting off anchors, etc.). I guess I watch hoping things will improve.

Last week the local Fox news had a national feed story about a real-life Hell's Kitchen. Of course that caught my interest. An L.A. restaurant called The Foundry on Melrose has (according to the Fox L.A. reporter Gina Silva) put web cams in their kitchen. According to the story, you can go to their web site during dinner and watch the head chef talk or yell to the cooks as the orders go out the pass through.

Wow...who wouldn't want to take a peek that every now and then? Well the answer to that is Gina Silva. Although she suggested going to the web site to watch, she didn't give the URL (I rewound the story on the DVR to listen again just in case I missed it). No big deal in the Google era. I went to The Foundry website and saw the live feed near the bottom of the page. I clicked on it and a new window opened. Instead of a video feed, I got a "coming soon" message. So Gina was touting something that isn't available!?! What a lame 'news story'.

Finally, the end of the local Fox news broadcast has a quick recap of tomorrow's forecast. That's OK, except that they don't plan the time to finish in the 10-11 time slot. Therefore, the weather summary actually talks over the beginning of The Simpsons episode that follows. What is bad is that they shrink the start of the Simpsons into a tiny window so you can see the weather person and the forecast graphic. I don't want to see that! As a Simpsons fan, I want to see the start of the show what Bart writes on the blackboard and how they end up on the couch. However, in the tiny picture-in-picture window you can't see anything!

Ideally they should cut 20 seconds out of the news cast so they don't run over into the Simpsons. Not too hard for a 1 hour news cast. If you're doing a picture-in-picture, shrink the weather person and make the Simpsons full screen. Hello...Fox 19...are you listening?

South Pacific and Birthday Saturday

On Saturday we went up to the Dayton area to visit the Dayton Gotos. It was a couple days after Catherine's 5th birthday and they had an additional celebration for the family. You can see all the photos I took in a Flickr set here (click on each thumbnail to see a larger image). This was my favorite photo of the bunch. Remember how you were so excited opening presents as a kid -- especially when you opened something you thought was really cool? That expression says it all. Although I have to say she thought everything was just "adorable."

After dinner we went to see the Epiphany Lutheran Church production of South Pacific. I had never seen that musical before. They did a great job and there were several solid voices in the cast. Of course the most important performers were my brother-in-law, Dean, and niece, Christina. Here are a couple photos of them on stage. I have others here, here, and here.

Fighting Siblings

So what do two sisters do when they get together after not having seen each other for a year? Fight! Dianne and Michelle had a quick boxing bout on the Nintendo Wii Sports game. Michelle won by a unanimous decision.

CRG Schedule Change & Skater Bios

Had a call yesterday from the Cincinnati Gardens saying the Cincinnati Rollergirls made a schedule change and canceled their planned August 4th bout. It was nice of the folks at the Gardens to call. I was curious about the change and went to the Rollergirl website to see if there was any info.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover the Dames' and Corsets' team information was updated (who knows how long that's been up) and that skater info and photos are posted. It's a very good addition to the site. Not all the entries are complete as yet, but it's interesting reading. I especially liked the quote and tagline elements. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Sk8Crime: "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye...then it's fun and games in the dark!"
• Miss Print: "Live life two minutes at a time."
• Roseanne Scarr: "The fastest way to an opponent's heart is through her chest."
• The Librarian: "112 lbs. of shut the hell up" and "Don't make me shush your ass."
  

Check out the CRG website for more info on these and other skaters.

I didn't see anything there about the schedule change. However, Miss Print had a post about it today. It makes perfect sense given all their activity piling up in August.

Don't forget the next Cincinnati Rollergirl bout is coming up fast -- July 21st!

Crazy for Cardboard

As frequent readers know, I'm crazy for manapua. It's a must have food when we visit Hawaii. For the uninitiated, it's a bun filled with a Chinese barbeque pork. Here is one recipe from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and there is a lot of information at the Manapua Research Lab site. You can find the buns steamed or baked. Personally, I'm a baked manapua guy. They are so tasty!

Today Julie Gaw had a post on the Foodie Report blog about food vendors in China stretching their barbeque pork by adding cardboard to the filling. Mental note to self: don't eat pork buns from street vendors in China. Strange, but I didn't see cardboard in the manapua recipes on the sites above. Is cardboard what gives them the authentic taste? Independently, Dianne shared this story from CNN about the same issue.

So stick to the domestic manapua. They taste so good though...I might even put up with a little extra fiber.

Daisy

A couple weeks ago I spent some time taking shots of a single daisy outside of our neighbor's place. The entire daisy set is here on Flickr. I also did some Photoshop manipulation of this photo (click here to see it) for the Focal Black&White pool on Flickr.

The '7' Years - Part 2

No especially fond memories jump out from 1987. I was in graduate school in the middle of learning to cryosection (make sections about 1/10 the thickness of a human hair from frozen tissue samples) and gathering data for my thesis work. Is this what a chemist is supposed to be doing? You section using a glass knife (we couldn’t afford a good diamond one), looking through a microscope. The sample and knife are in a very cold chamber to keep everything frozen while you work. You pick up the sections with an eyelash to place them on a support for viewing. That was tedious work! It was also cold on the hands. Even though I grew up in Minnesota, I never had frostbite until I was doing cryosectioning. In the summer it was humid and everything frosted up so bad it eventually blocked the movement of the sectioning arm. I had to put the whole thing in a glove box purged with dry nitrogen to keep the frost from forming. Ugh!

That year was also the start of several years of a long distance relationship with Dianne. She graduated and was off to grad school on the West coast. That stunk. Phone bills were high. Too bad there weren't things like Skype back then. Not a banner year in Earl World.

And 1997? Although most recent, that year seems like the biggest blur to me. I had recently changed assignments at work and was in the middle of helping prepare osteoporosis study reports that were used later to get Actonel approved for the treatment of osteoporosis. I was working on the bone densitometry (measuring bone density changes using an x-ray beam) and bone histology (measurements of bone tissue sections – fortunately I didn’t have to cut the sections) parts of the work. It was a stressful time but rewarding knowing that you were contributing to something that’ll help millions of people.

I believe that was also the year I took my first woodcarving class at University of Cincinnati's CAS using my tuition remission obtained from teaching at Raymond Walters. The class was part of the woodworking program and was geared primarily toward carving for furniture makers. However, for those not in the program, the instructor showed how to carve other items like caricature figures once you had the basic techniques down. I haven’t made time to carve lately, but I’d like to pick it up again.

The '7' Years - Part 1

I saw a couple of movie anniversary announcements that got me thinking about the years I’ve experienced ending in 7.

One of the MANY preview/advertisement items on the Bridge to Terabithia DVD (a recent Dianne pick) was a pitch of this year’s 40th anniversary of the Disney movie The Jungle Book. That was one of the first movies I got hooked on as a kid and a gift I received was a Jungle Book LP record. It had all the wonderful songs and some movie dialog. I played that so many times the grooves must have worn out. I’m sure everyone was sick of hearing ‘Colonel Hathi’s March’ and ‘The Bare Necessities.’ Incidentally, I also heard it’s the 40th anniversary of the movie The Dirty Dozen. Although I didn’t see that as a kid, it’s a great film and one in our eclectic DVD collection.

In 1977 I got my very own 35 mm camera and first used it on a summer trip with my dad. I had played with old 35 mm cameras we had around the house. They were OK, but it was tough getting pictures without a light meter, guessing the exposure. With some reading and some advice from my dad, a photographer friend, and a neighbor interested in photography, I ended up getting a Minolta XE-7. See more photos of the camera at this site. Shortly after getting the camera, my dad took a few days off and we did a driving trip with many stops on the way. We drove to Duluth, along the coast of Lake Superior, across the edge of the Boundary Waters to Ely (oh man was that #1 a windy road cut through the forest!), and then down through the red soil region of the Minnesota iron range. On that trip, I finished up one of my first rolls of film and forgot to press the rewind release before cranking the exposed film back into the canister. I thought sure I broke something. My dad found a photo store and the clerk quickly diagnosed the problem, popped the camera in a black bag, and saved the exposed film. The camera was fine. That thing is built like a tank (and weighs about the same). I took thousands of photos (especially for the high school paper) with that camera and still have it.

That year was also big in Little Falls as it was the 50th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic. A lot of activities went on including a visit from a replica of the Spirit of St. Louis. I remember watching much of the airport festivities from the roof of the small terminal building – access arranged by my dad. It was quite the event.

More about the later '7' years in my next post.

Boeing 787

Boeing is unveiling their latest passenger jet, the 787, today at 3:30 Pacific time. It uses carbon composite materials to give a lighter, more fuel efficient airplane. Boeing will be busy making these for many years as they already have over 600 preorders for the new plane.

Their website has some videos showing the new plane and some of the interior on their web site here. They also have a series of videos covering the history of all the Boeing 700 series aircraft that you can look at here.

Blue Ash Airport and Park

Thursday's Cincinnati Enquirer had an article about the soon to be complete purchase of about half the land of the Blue Ash airport. The City of Blue Ash (CBA) bought the land from the City of Cincinnati in order to develop it into a park with plans for several buildings including a convention/performing arts center. I have two main issues with the city going down this path. OK...let me say up front that I'm biased and skeptical since I fly out of the airport.

First, this plan offers no assurance that the airport will remain open. The future park land now contains all the ramps, airport parking, and businesses that support the airport. To develop the park and keep the airport functional, these businesses have to be torn down and relocated to the opposite side of the runway. According to the purchase agreement, the relocation is handled by Cincinnati who runs the airport. A clause in the contract allows Cincinnati to close the airport and sell the remaining land if the relocation costs are prohibitive. Why on earth the CBA entered into an agreement containing such a clause is beyond me. Although they acknowledge the value of the airport, their actions don't support keeping the airport.

The second issue is the character of the proposed park. When I think of a park, I think of primarily green space. With several buildings, an observation tower, and roads proposed, how much green space will be left? Right now the area looks pretty open because of the runway and the lawn around it. But if Cincinnati opts not to relocate the businesses and sells the remaining property, it will be developed. The character of the park will be changed dramatically with the adjacent development that isn't shielded by any tree line. The CBA has said they don't have plans to purchase the remaining property -- i.e. no contingency plan.

So am I worried about the airport and the remaining property? YES! It's now a year after this plan came out at the Blue Ash city council and the manager of Blue Ash airport (a Cincinnati employee) is quoted in this week's Enquirer article as saying "we're trying to determine how much the reconfiguration will cost. The Federal Aviation Administration's collection and funding bill expires in September. So it may not be until September or after that we will know what kind of money is available." The article also mentions that the reconfiguration plan is still being developed. Still being developed?!? Wow!! I want that job. If you don't even have a plan yet, how can you possibly know how much it will cost or ask for support from the FAA?

In the meantime, even though the CBA has surplus money in its coffers, a 25% increase in the city income tax associated with this land purchase went into effect in January. According to the Enquirer article, through June 15th that increase alone brought in $2.1 million for the CBA and they are paying Cincinnati $1 million for half the airport land. Hmmm....so by the end of the year the tax increase will probably bring in about $4 million. That would have easily been enough to purchase all the land and then the CBA would have controlled the outcome (either to reconfigure the airport or protect the green space).

Is purchasing all the land with the income raised 20/20 hindsight? NO. Several folks suggested this option during the debate last summer and the CBA council shot it down. I'm no city planner, but it was obvious there would be enough money for purchase of the land and park development. Was the council that stupid or was there some behind closed door politics going on? I sincerely hope the entire property is developed in such a way to protect our tax dollars. However, events over the last several years and news stories like this continue to raise doubts. I'm certainly not voting for Jack Buckman in future elections.

Friday Photos

In between my usual check-up at the doctor this morning (all is well), lunch at Chipotle, and running a couple errands, I stopped to snap some photos.

There is a railroad yard near downtown Sharonville. Sharon Road goes over the tracks and the bridge gives a nice vantage point for watching the tracks. I stopped there and took a few photos. The power lines are an annoying obstruction, but I worked around them in a few shots. You can see the entire set of photos in my Flickr set.



I also stopped at the Evendale community park. While walking to take a couple flower photos (I thought this one turned out well), I found this seed pod on the ground. I'm the worst at identifying trees, so I'm not sure what tree this is from. It was basically a sphere just a bit bigger than the size of an average acorn. The openings look like a bunch of open bird beaks.

I Need 2 Pairs of Glasses

I’ve been wearing glasses for only a few years now. I noticed when reading things weren’t quite as sharp as they used to be, especially in my right eye. I was starting to hold things further away from my eyes to improve the focus while reading. The eye doctor said they weren’t that bad, but if it bothered me I should get reading glasses. I did. I’ve grown dependent on them now, especially in situations with bad lighting.

When I first got my glasses, I was cleaning them constantly. I still clean them a fair amount. Mostly at work where I have a handy stash of pre-moistened cleaning wipes within easy reach. Today I was due for a cleaning because I didn’t go to work on the 4th of July holiday.

I took out a wipe, cleaned the lenses, and put the glasses back on. It was better – most of the specs were gone. But now there were some smears. How could that be? I took them off again and held them directly under my desk lamp while striking my best trombone player pose to get the glasses further away. Sure enough, smudges.

Another wet wipe and a couple outstretched arm’s length inspections later, everything was fine. Ah…I can read clearly once again. However, in a couple of years I’ll need some prosthetic arm extensions so I can tell what I’m doing when cleaning my glasses. Either that or I need a second pair of reading glasses to use just when cleaning my glasses. Yikes!

My Simpsons Avatar

Thanks to Erika Jean for pointing out the site for the new Simpsons movie coming out later this month that lets you create your own Simpson avatar. Here is mine. I love the t-shirt.

The site is a little bandwidth intensive, but fun to play around with. Beside making an avatar, you can take a tour of Springfield and play some games as well. I didn't do too well playing 3 card Moe at Moe's tavern, but I was assessed a 'hot tamale' on the Love Tester located there.

Are You Addicted?

After Dianne's post about the Zombie apocalypse quiz, I noticed the same site had a quiz to measure how addicted you are to blogging. Erika Jean admitted her addiction recently. Below are my results from the quiz. What's your score?

66%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Dubai's Palm Islands

I saw an interesting National Geographic Channel documentary on the construction of the first Palm Island, the Palm Jumeirah, off the coast of Dubai.

Palm Jumeriah is a man made, 3 1/2 mile diameter island in the shape of a palm tree with multiple fronds. It was made entirely from natural materials (i.e. rocks and sand). The purpose was to build an island to increase the shoreline of Dubai that would be used for living, relaxation and tourism. The documentary described the many challenges encountered by the engineers during construction.

They had to find the right materials and move them to the right place to create the palm shape in the ocean. They used satellite images to verify the shape during construction. You can see the original island (and now a second) on satellite images at Google maps. They had to coordinate construction of the breakwater and fronds of the island, and had to alter the breakwater to allow water movement through the fronds to prevent stagnation.

Once built, there were challenges to stabilize the sand to prevent liquifaction during earthquakes that would destroy the island and any structures built there. There are plans for hundreds of villas, shopping malls, and 22 hotels. Also, there were unanticipated consequences of erosion, both for the island and for the original coastline. Engineers are having to do Palm island maintenance (remove sand from some spots and move to others) to maintain the shape because of waves and ocean currents. The shore currents that maintained Dubai's straight coastline were altered by the huge island. The shore in some 'upstream' areas of the current gained sand while areas past the Palm island were losing sand at the rate of 15 feet per year! Once again, constant maintenance is needed to protect the original beaches.

Thinking about buying or investing in the island? You can read more about the Palm Islands here and Palm Jumeirah here. Here is the official web site for the three palm island projects. With this construction experience, what's next? Read about Dubai's larger scale project, The World.

Interesting from an engineering view, it's a reminder of how major alterations to the environment have many unintended consequences.

Macros of Spiders

Taking macro photos is a lot more difficult than I expected. I thought I'd try taking some insect photos by looking at some spider webs in a shrub outside our front door. I took this photo of a tiny spider -- about a quarter inch long body. At first glance, I thought the spider was hanging there quietly waiting for something to stumble into the web. But when I looked at it magnified, the spider was busy cleaning itself (or maybe waving at me). The spider was moving its legs a lot. The Flickr comments criticized the focus. Actually, the focus was good, but the depth of field was poor so not much of the subject is in clear focus.

When I came home a couple days ago, a new spider had made a web just outside the door. The orientation of the web was such that I could easily position the camera on our deck perpendicular to the web. The spider was a little bigger and a lot more sedate too. I grabbed my stuff and gave it another try. The web was about a foot in diameter and connected to some flexible branches that were moving in the breeze. I took about 40 photos with various settings to be sure I'd get some with a good focus. I used a small LED flashlight at an angle to give a shimmer to the strands of the spider web so they stand out a bit more from the background. The shot below is the best close up of the bunch. Click on the image to go to a larger view. It's no spider like this one at the Eclectic Studio Cafe, but I think it's an improvement over the first attempt. I also took this shot from further away to give a better sense of the web itself. Look closely and you can see the concentric circles of the web. Now I need focusing rails, a shutter release, etc. Shsssssh. Don't tell Dianne.

Must Be Number 26

Earlier this week, Time magazine posted their list of 25 sites you can't live without. Check out the list here. I pulled a few sites from their list that are on my often visited list. Let me know what you think.

Headache

I've had a bad headache all day today. I thought it might be sinus/allergy related until I heard Gary Burbank's explanation for my pain. I was listening to the BBC (Broadbank Burbcasting Corporation) today while doing some mindless printing and filing this afternoon.

Quite simply according to Gary today, I am suffering from "Paris fatigue." Pretty much any physical ailment you've had in the last couple months can be ascribed to Paris fatigue. It seems every news program, newspaper, and magazine has something to say about....well, nothing really.

Or maybe it's iPhone hype overload?

I need some Excedrin.

A Couple Blog Enhancements

If you're a returning visitor, you probably noticed I've added a button at the bottom of each post that lets you bookmark the post -- on the off chance you find something interesting. You're able to pick your own favorite bookmark tool like del.icio.us, digg, etc. Incidentally, I'm big on using del.icio.us. If you're a del.icio.us user and want to network links, leave a comment or link to cincisquirtle.

It took me a bit of playing around in the Blogger template before I got this to work. Most info on template mods described adding buttons to posts on the old version of Blogger and not the new version. After poking around a bit more on Google, I found an easy way to do it using the free tool available on AddThis.com. It was really easy with that code. Another helpful site for Blogger folks is the Beta Blogger 4 Dummies site. Good articles there.

Also, a keen reader's eye may have noticed the RSS feed icon in the badge area on the sidebar. I've added a Feedburner feed for the blog. That button lets you easily add the Earl World feed to your RSS reader (personally I like Bloglines). Feedburner has a very clear help section for bloggers that includes details for folks using certain tools like Blogger. With their clear directions, it was very easy to set up.

Just below the RSS subscription link, you'll notice I added a link that lets you set up an email subscription to the blog. That was another feature available through Feedburner. I know some folks, like my dad, are big into email. If you'd like to get an email containing posts rather than surfing here to read (although I can't imagine missing out on the sidebar action), that's the option for you. No new content, no email for you.

Findlay Market

On Sunday, Dianne and I ventured downtown to go to Findlay Market. It's the oldest, continuously operating market in Ohio. They have a mix of permanent, year around shops and seasonal stands selling produce. You can read more about the market on their web page. It's funny we've lived here for over 10 years, but had never been to the market. I've always heard a lot about it, but we just don't go exploring downtown.

The worst part about going to Findlay Market is getting in and out of the area. The market is in a bad neighborhood. We were ordering lunch at the Bella Luna restaurant's satellite store at the market when a woman came in to order. She had been sitting alone at a table outside (see the picture) and left her purse there while she came in to get some food. The person waiting on us told the woman she probably don't want to leave her purse unattended in this neighborhood. I thought that was good advice.

It was a dreary day and rained a bit when we were there. Nevertheless, it was fun to walk around. We picked up a couple things and had a good grilled panini at Bella Luna. It's not somewhere I'd go every weekend, but on a nice day it's an ok spot to have lunch, hang out, and pick up some local produce. The photo below was just some of the produce at one of the stands.

AFI's Top 100 Films

Last week the American Film Institute released their revised list of the top 100 films of all time. We caught part of the show, but missed the end. I went to their website to look at the list. Here are their top 10 and my two cents.
1. Citizen Kane -- very good movie, but probably not my own #1
2. The Godfather -- I've only seen bits and pieces
3. Casablanca -- own the DVD. Several Bogart pics in the top 100 including the Maltese Falcon and the African Queen (also have on DVD).
4. Raging Bull -- surprised this is so high
5. Singin' in the Rain -- I really don't care for musicals. Who breaks out into spontaneous singing and dancing during the day?
6. Gone With the Wind -- never seen the whole movie, just scenes.
7. Lawrence of Arabia -- own the DVD. Great cinematography!
8. Schindler's List -- powerful
9. Vertigo -- very good Hitchcock movie. He had several in the top 100 including Psycho, Rear Window, and North by Northwest. I'd swap Rear Window and Vertigo in the ranking.
10. The Wizard of Oz -- there's no place like home!

Go to their website to see the rest of the list. They also have a good flash piece that lets you review the list in groups of ten and get some basic information on films you choose. Click here to check it out. What do you think of the list?

Summer Flowers

Last week I got a new macro lens for my camera. While we were at the Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park, I tried playing around with the new lens by taking some photos of the summer flowers there. Here are a few of my favorites from the initial round of experimentation. The shot of the bee in flight was just sheer luck. I was trying to get it on the flower and missed. You can look at all the flower shots in a Flickr set here. Click on the image to see a larger view.

Carpet Alarm

As much as I'd probably hate it every day of the work week, I might need one of these. I know Dianne would probably like it better than hearing the snooze alarm go off umpteen times in the morning. Check out the carpet alarm here.

Shameless Soliciting

I have to disagree with Dianne's analysis of the conclusion of my last post. I was just saying thanks to those who leave comments.

Now this note below, created using one of the large number of tools on the Custom Sign Generator site, would be a shameless solicitation of comments.

Earl World Hits 400

I never would have predicted it when I started a blog on January 2, 2005. My last post was my 400th post to Earl World. Today I did a quick browse through some of the old entries.

Initially I thought a blog would be a good way to share digital photos of our travels with family and friends (this Hawaii entry is an example) or just photos I snapped around the area. I do like including photos in the blog entries when possible. For awhile I was making short posts like this one that I didn't even remember until looking back today. That entry actually is related to this recent post.

I sometimes share silly happenings like this one that probably don't mean much to the average reader just passing through. However, that post and this related follow-up still make me chuckle. I hadn't been having many sleep jerks until a few days ago when I had a dream that a firecracker exploded right in front of my face and I jumped. Although I purposely don't post a lot of personal info, I do like the journal aspect of the blog.

With Statcounter I have a little idea about the volume of blog traffic and what folks are looking at. Sometimes what I think are the silliest little posts like this one (what a bad photo!) and this post about a viral video ended up generating literally hundreds of hit over many months!

Of course there are a lot of flying posts with the requisite picture of Tony (Dianne loves that so much). There are also posts about flying related travel and even aviation brushes with greatness. That was a great trip!

There is an occasional post about a brush with a celebrity, some posts about local restaurants,
sporting events, and even the occasional rant like this post and this post.

Probably the best part of blogging are the comments. I'm not blogging for fame, but it's nice to get comments now and then. Thanks to all who have left comments -- many folks on a very regular basis! I know it takes extra time, but it's very much appreciated.

Go to Mars...Sort Of

Don't have any plans for the next couple years? Do you speak Russian? Maybe you could make just over $6 per hour, 24 hours a day for the next few years. The European Space Agency is looking for a few guinea pigs...er, applicants to help them out. Read about it here.

This sounds like a Big Brother or Real World experiment on steroids! If you got stuck with a couple weirdos, it could be a LONG couple years!

Quick Chill - Chemistry in Action

Ever go to the fridge and discover there isn't any cold soda in there? Or have you ever just bought room temperature soda cans at the grocery store and wish you had a cold one to drink?

You could just put it in the freezer for a few minutes to cool it more quickly. It's faster, but not the best by cooling through mostly convection.

A better, and more geeky way, is to leverage some chemistry and use freezing point depression. Check out this video for a demo.

Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park

Dianne and I went to the Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park on Saturday morning. It's a private park between Hamilton, OH and Ross, OH that has many outdoor sculptures scattered throughout the grounds. Most of the works are quite large! You can read more about the park at their website. There is an admission charge ($5/adult), but I thought it was well worth it. They also have annual memberships and the cost of your day visit can be applied to an annual membership purchase. It's a nice way to try out the park before joining.

It's a huge place with lots of hiking trails, ponds, benches, picnic tables, and mowed green space -- I can't imagine keeping all that grass mowed. There is also a small amphitheater for outdoor concerts. You can rent a golf cart, dubbed an Art Cart, by the hour. We rented one and it was actually pretty handy to be able to jump on and off to look at the sculptures and take pictures. It's a little easier than a car and Dianne enjoyed driving the cart. The place is pretty hilly and it was a hot day, so the cart was nice. There are plenty of small parking areas where you can stop with a car or cart, walk around to the sculptures, and then move on.

We had most of the place to ourselves. There was a fishing derby going on when we got there. Most folks were localized at one of the ponds for the fishing derby. I liked the kinetic sculptures and also this large group of carved, etched stones that kind of had a Stonehenge like feel to it. The photo here shows just a couple of the stones in the group.

It's a bit of a hike out there, but I thought it was worth the trip. The park attendant mentioned you're welcome to bring a picnic, like some wine and cheese if desired, since it's a private park. That would be a nice outing.

Check out the set of photographs I took at the park to see more of the sculptures. By the way, I took a photo of this work for Carla.

CRG on Sports Rock

Thanks to Miss Print for the ‘heads up’ on the Sadistic Sadie & Pale Rider appearance on WLWT’s Sports Rock with George Vogel and Ken Broo. Normally it’s not on my watch list. First, I’m not a fan of these local sports talk shows (well…I’m not much of a sports fan period). After all, how many times can you discuss what to do to fix the Reds or talk about the image of the Bengal team given all their player run ins with the law? Second, I’m not a Ken Broo fan. Sorry, that’s just me.

It was a short segment, but good that WLWT had them on. I can’t believe they didn’t have video from Saturday’s event – only old video. Nice effort on WLWT’s part! They need to evaluate their photo/reporting priorities. Kentucky Speedway or CRG? Hmmm….that’s an easy one. They’re both ovals, but the derby is much more exciting to watch. One question George or Ken asked Sadie was how much do you get paid. When I’m talking to folks about the Cincinnati Rollergirls, I get that question too. They’re surprised to hear it’s all volunteer and pleasantly surprised to hear about the local charity benefit provided by the Rollergirl events.

Supposedly the WLWT site has podcasts of Sports Rock, but I couldn't see anything recent on the site or through iTunes. All their archives were old.

Talking with Sadie briefly after Saturday’s match I knew she injured her shoulder. It was bad to see her on Sports Rock with her arm in a sling. I thought George mentioned a separated shoulder. Yikes! Hope she gets on the mend quickly. I’m also curious how Sk8 Crime is doing. She went down hard late in the third period and was holding her knee. Hopefully that was nothing too serious.

I enjoy all the action, but I certainly don’t want to see any injuries.

Minnesota 121, Cincinnati 140

Last night Dianne and I went to see the Cincinnati Rollergirls take on the Minnesota Garda Belts at the Cincinnati Gardens. As expected, it was a hard hitting battle. But unlike my cousin Brenda's (who lives in Minnesota) prediction on my pre-bout post, The Cincinnati Rollergirls kept the lead from start to finish and defeated the Garda Belts. Check out my photo set from the match here.

The Cincinnati Rollergirls' All-Stars team really did an excellent job as a team. The jammers did get a workout, as the Minnesota blockers made it tough to get through the pack. Sadistic Sadie, shown above with Desicration (Minnesota in green), did a tremendous job jamming. Another big jamming contributor for Cincinnati was EMolition. She is shown here wearing the jammer star with Panterrorize blocking. Just like last month for the Corsets, she had some great jams. There was one jam in the third period, when the score was fairly close, where EMolition scored a lot of points to help seal the victory. I caught this photo as she passed the Cincinnati bench during that jam after easily slipping through the pack. All the jammers, including Sk8 Crime, Roseanne Scarr, and Gummi Lov were working hard and contributed as well and added depth to the Cincinnati team.

It was a tough bout and there was a lot of hard blocking going on. This shot shows Sadie going shoulder to shoulder with the Garda Belt jammer around the turn. I caught this photo just before Panterrorize gave a block to the Minnesota jammer. One reflection of how difficult it was in the pack is this photo of the penalty boards the end of the match. The refs were using this to track minor/major penalties. In general, it's those folks in the pack that were blocking hard that had the most stickers. Just like the last Cincinnati match, I'd say Panterroize, Juwana Hurt, Arche Enemy, and Sk8r-Kinney all stood out. But just like with the jammers, all the pivots and blockers were contributing to make it hard for Minnesota to get through the pack. There were quite a few tumbles to the concrete during the bout. Several folks went down hard including Sk8 Crime, Sadistic Sadie, Ji Spot, and a couple other Garda Belt skaters. Hope there were no serious injuries.

One again, the whole Cincinnati Rollergirl organization made the bout a fun event. Many of those not skating against the Belts were circulating in the crowd, involved with the demo, passing out surveys, or otherwise helping with the event. The half-time prize contest involving the skaters and random people from the crowd was a nice idea. The Minnesota group even brought their team mascot, Tom the Leprechaun who added a little flair. Like last time, the skaters stayed after the event to meet the fans (me pictured here with Sadie) and they also had an after part at the Gardens. At this match, Dianne and I had the honor of sitting trackside on the VIP couch. It was exciting sitting in the "suicide seats" area and it was nice to meet and talk with some more of the group!

Finally, I think the biggest improvement at last night's event was the sound. The announcers were very clear and understandable. Being able to hear easily added a lot to the event.

The Rollergirls must be proud to have won their first match against an out-of-town team -- and to have done it while skating in the Gardens makes it all that much more impressive! Pretty cool! Looking forward to the next match on July 21st.

Knots

I don't tie a lot of knots, so I'm always struggling to remember how to tie a knot for some specific purpose. I ran across these two sites on knots that I thought would be useful.

The Mother Earth News site has this page with what I would describe as traditional diagrams showing how to tie the 10 most common knots.

The Animated Knots by Grog site uses a series of images that makes a progressive animation of rope movement to illustrate how to tie each knot. An example is the bowline. I like how you can look at each frame individually and also look at the mirror image or inverted animation. The site also has animations for many different knots as well as general information on rope care and purchase.

Don "Mr. Wizard" Herbert

Before Beakman and before Bill Nye the science guy, there was Mr. Wizard. Don Herbert, a.k.a. Mr. Wizard, died yesterday after a long fight with multiple myeloma. The LA Times has a nice obituary article for Don Herbert.

I remember watching Mr. Wizard's show when I was a kid. The Mr. Wizard Studios web site has a nice bio/timeline page. I clearly remember watching his first-run shows from 1970. I always thought he was Canadian because of that set of shows. I didn't realize he was also from Minnesota. Those shows and the short spots he did for Saturday morning cartoon interludes in 1972 were always interesting. Who knows, maybe that started my interest in science.

Anyone else remember watching Mr. Wizard or are there more Beakman and Nye folks that are blog readers?

The Reactee

Dianne will confirm the last thing I need is another T-shirt. However, I was intrigued when I saw the Reactee on the Swiss Miss site. It's an interactive T-shirt -- well, about as interactive as a T-shirt can get.

You create a shirt with some short saying or slogan. You also put a unique keyword on the shirt. Using the keyword, anyone can text the keyword to the number on the shirt and the service will send back a text message that you specify (and you can change).

I know what you're probably thinking...why do you need text messaging when people could just come up and talk to you about the slogan on your shirt? Well, the geek factor itself makes it cool for a single shirt. However, you can order and wear shirts that others have created. You might not know what the text message response will be.

I'll have to think about a Reactee slogan. Any suggestions?

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

I've mentioned some of the comics at the xkcd site before. Many of them are science related. I found the recent comic below about the electromagnetic spectrum hilarious! It covers everything from the stadium wave to the sinister Google projects. I love the absorption spectra. Click here to see a larger version of the comic on the xkcd site. I might keep this link handy for my first year chemistry students.

Saints vs. Cinners This Saturday

I'm sure most folks reading this realize the Cincinnati Rollergirls (i.e. the Cinners) will be hosting the Garda Belts of the Minnesota Rollergirls from St. Paul (the Saints) this Saturday at the Cincinnati Gardens. The Roller Derby Diva has several posts about the match and the Cincinnati team. There is also info about the bout on the Cincinnati Rollergirls site.

I took a look around the web for some info on the Minnesota Rollergirls. Not being a MySpace user, I hadn't realized that Sadistic Sadie and Blu had practiced with the Minnesota Rollergirls last March. Read Sadie's blog entry about the trip. That should have given them a good look at the competition. From the little bits I've read, the Garda Belts may be a tough team!

There is a nice video about the Minnesota Rollergirls that you can watch here on the Cool Hunting site. The co-captains of the Garda Belts are in the video.

The Minnesota Rollergirl site is quite good. Here is the Garda Belt page. I wanted to look at the team. Apparently they have a leprechaun as a mascot. It fits well with their green uniforms. They have some great skater names and from the bios it looks like there are some tough skaters. The co-captain of the Garda Belts, Desi Cration, got a league award as the hardest hitter in 2007. I liked Demora Liza's description of the position she plays: "the one that just knocked you on your ass." The best names on the roster are Citizen Pain (her first word was Roseblood), Hanna Belle Lector, and Amyville Whore. Very creative!

Read an article (with some pictures) about the Minnesota Rollergirls here.

This'll be the first out of town team hosted by the Cincinnati Rollergirls in the Gardens. I'm sure there'll be some hard hitting jams. Be there to catch the action and cheer them on.

Rock, Paper, Scissors on Steroids

Most everyone has probably used the rock, paper, scissors game to decide something. On the off chance you're not familiar with the game, you can go to the World Rock Paper Scissors society web page to see the internationally recognized hand signals and learn more about the ins and outs of the game.

If that's too simple, I found out there are more advanced versions of the game thanks to the Unlikely Moose blog. The UMOP.com site has several variants that involve added hand signals. The chart for the seven signal version of rock, paper, scissors is shown to the right and the large version can be found here along with an explanation of the arrows. If that's still not enough, here is the chart for the 101 hand signal version. When you need a chart like that to learn the signals for an RPS game and decide who wins a match, things are out of hand (pun intended).

Miscellaneous Items

I decided to post a few miscellaneous items I've seen while surfing around and catching up on some blog reading. I know these will be old news to some readers, but I'm going to post them anyway.

For the cooks in the crowd, this knife cabinet shown on the right is an interesting twist to the traditional butcher block. Check out the guy at the bottom of the case. Read more and order here from the Wireless Catalog site.

For the chemist and/or woodworker readers, this wooden periodic table that's a conference table is amazing. You'll notice that different groups of elements are represented in different types of wood. In a hollowed out space below each square in the table, there is a sample of that element. On the main page you can click on the tile for any element to display more information on the element. Go here to read why the table was made and go here to read about the construction. What a geeky project, but how cool is that!?!

Having worked in the osteoporosis area for many years, anything bone related always catches my eye. I'll admit this is very pricey, but this spine lamp on the Mark Beam Studio site is really striking.

I'm fascinated with the persistence of vision effects that you can get with LEDs. A previous post about these LED car rims is a great, although expensive example. If that's too expensive, check out this retro style LED fan that displays a series of images to create an animation.

Finally, what blogger hasn't had trouble coming up with something to write about or no time to type up something? Even with a subject, it's nice to include a picture or a movie to spruce up a post. But finding things on the web to link to does take some time. Well, problem supposedly solved by the folks at NEC. The PaPeRo are cute little robots that automate the creation of a multimedia blog. You just talk to them about your day and they analyze your words and searches for content. Sounds too futuristic. Read more about it here at the Far East Gizmos site. Anybody using these?

DAAPWorks 2007

The College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati has an end-of-year show where graduating students display their capstone projects. The show is called DAAPWorks. On Friday evening, Dianne (an alumnus) and I went down to UC to see the show.

I have zero art talent and no eye for design, but it's fun to look at the projects. Personally I like looking at the digital design, industrial design, and industrial transportation areas the most. Some of the architecture projects are interesting, but many don't have any problem statements or explanation at all -- just a model and some drawings. It's striking how some of the projects just jump out at you as having had a lot of thought and work behind them. We saw some very good work. There were quite a few of the interactive digital design works that were well done. The photo here shows Dianne checking out the interactive projects. There are a couple more pics of Dianne at the exhibits here and here.

We did see part of Sk8 Crime's project called off the chest -- unfortunately the video part of her work wasn't playing when we were there. Fine artist by day and Cincinnati Rollergirl by night (or vice versa).

On the way back home, we stopped briefly at the collection of large signs sitting across the street from Essex Studios and the American Sign Museum. Unfortunately I didn't see any church signs. I took a few snapshots of the signs. You can see the collection of photos here on Flickr. Although the sun was setting and the light wasn't the best, I got some cute shots of Dianne with the signs like this one where she is kissing the bear.

Twitter Haiku

As you know from an earlier post, I like Twitter. I'm still not sure exactly why. Whether you like Twitter or not, I think you'll find the TwitterKu blog creative. All the posts on the TwitterKu blog are haiku made from phrases pulled from the Twitter stream. Pretty funny! I like this one.

Quick Trip to Minnesota

Sadly, I made a quick trip to Minnesota last week for my Uncle Russell's funeral. I stayed with my dad for a few days and got back home on Tuesday evening. I took this photo of my dad on Monday afternoon while we were sitting outside waiting for my cousin and his wife to stop by. With all the activity associated with an unexpected death, the trip is still a bit of a blur.

The service held on Saturday was done very well with pastor John Longley, a long time friend of Russell, officiating. There were quite a few people at the service, many that I didn't know. However, I did have a chance to visit with several people (relatives, old neighbors, parents of folks I went to school with, my 4th grade teacher, etc.) that I hadn't seen in years. After the service, Diane and Dave stopped by to visit for awhile. My dad took this photo of Diane and me.

M&M's Dark Chocolate Game

I liked the Addams Family TV show. I remember that series from my younger days. I especially liked Uncle Fester, played by Jackie Coogan. He was always doing something crazy.

Lately the M&M folks have been advertising their dark chocolate M&Ms with a black & white commercial with M&M caricatures of the Addams family. I laugh every time it comes on. The Uncle Fester M&M is the best. If you haven't seen the commercial, you can see it here on the M&M site.

While there, I also clicked on the game link they have -- find 50 dark movies in a picture. Look through the picture for clues to dark movie titles. When you click on a clue, a text box pops up and you enter the movie title. If correct, the box goes green and the clue turns black & white. It's kinda fun to try.

I had to enlist Dianne's help to fill in most of the answers. In about an hour we found 46 of the 50 titles. The only bad thing is we didn't see a spot to find the answers for the clues we couldn't identify. So, if you know the answer to any of the following, please leave a comment with the answer. From left to right, we were stumped on:
- the grim reaper in the fenced in circle
- the woman carrying two kids
- the woman next to the water barrel (thought this should be lady in the water, but no)
- the man in the lower right with the odd head

Saturday Night Yuppies

In an unusual departure from our typical quiet Saturday evenings at home, Dianne and I ventured to Hyde Park Square last night. Our first stop was Indigo Casual Dining Cafe for dinner. (Incidentally, that Indigo link is from the ZipScene site -- a nice place to go for information on local events, music, dining, etc. in your city) It's a nice spot for dinner. Last night was a beautiful evening in the Cincinnati area so their patio was packed! However, we got a table right away indoors. I had a chipotle beef wrap (good but enough for two so I have lunch today) and Dianne had her usual ravioli with asparagus spears. Dianne is hooked on her recently purchased Pokemon Diamond game, so she was playing a bit while we were waiting for our check.

After dinner, we went just a couple doors down to the Vineyard Cafe and Wine Room. You can read more about the place here (also lots of links to reviews), here, and here. It's definitely an upscale, yuppy spot with an extensive wine menu. There are quite a few selections available by the glass and pages of wines by the bottle. The wine room/bar area is fairly small, but they have a nice, small enclosed outdoor patio available. Incidentally, the bar is a couple doors down (toward Indigo) from the main cafe. It's not well marked unless you're looking for the Vineyard awning over the doorway.

Our main purpose in going there was to hear Nick Tuttle play. We just started taking guitar lessons from him about a month ago and thought it would be nice to hear him play some songs. Nick plays guitar and sings at the Vineyard every Friday and Saturday evening. If you're in the neighborhood and want to hear some very nice acoustic guitar, stop in there for a drink. You can also eat there or have dessert. It's a nice outdoor spot on a pleasant evening. And if you're not a wine drinker, they also have beer and other spirits.

A Chapter a Day

Thanks to the Upper Fort Stewart blog, I happened upon the Great Books site. The site offers mp3 audio of great books and poetry broken up in chapter sized segments that are posted daily. You can listen online or download the chapters to your iPod to listen wherever you'd like. Nice site for audio book lovers.

Flickr Photo Stream

I've mentioned the stream toy of fd's Flickr Toys before. It's a little web app that lets you look at the stream of photos being uploaded to Flickr. It's not something I use a lot, but it's fun to see what folks are posting.

Today I found a different approach to watching the Flickr photo stream. It's called Flickrvision. It also shows photos but it puts them in a call out box that appears over a map. The pointer shows where the photo is being uploaded. It's a little slower than the stream toy because of all the map scrolling, but it's an interesting addition to the photo stream.

Zypsy

Dianne clued me in to Google mobile's SMS service a while back. It's not something I use everyday, but it's handy to search from your phone when you're out and about.

Today, thanks to MakeUseOf, I saw another similar service called Zypsy. Although you can text them like Google, you can also call and leave a voice mail with a question you'd like researched on the web. Folks at Zypsy do the search for you and return results via a text message. Sounds intriguing. Has anyone tried Zypsy yet? I wonder how good the results are...I guess it would depend on how specific the question is.

The King of Cars

I'm not sure why, but one of the many reality TV shows I like to watch is the King of Cars on A&E. If you haven't seen it, the show follows the owner (a.k.a. Chopper) and sales people at the Towbin Dodge dealership in Las Vegas. It's one of the must record shows on our DVR. Perhaps being made by the creators of Dog the Bounty Hunter has something to do with me liking it.

I couldn't imagine being a car salesman (or any salesman for that matter). Having to hustle to meet, talk, and bond with folks you don't know in order to close a deal sounds like a job from hell for an introvert like me. I don't even like buying a car for myself -- having to make the deal is a pain. Nevertheless, the King of Cars show intrigues me. Chop and his antics are entertaining.

So this CNN story about the large US Flag at Towbin Hummer in Las Vegas caught my eye. I'm guessing this must be Chop's brother. Patriotism or advertising or both -- what do you think?

Cincinnati is Above Average...

...in garbage.

I went to the library today over lunch to check out the latest issue of the Cincinnati Magazine to read the article about the Rollergirls. The new issue wasn't on the shelf yet. It's a good magazine so I browsed through the April issue. There was a short Earth Day article containing facts about our local landfill run by Rumpke.

Fresh from reading Stepf's post about our carbon footprint at the Foodie Report, I was intrigued. Also, I used to work out that way and drove by Rumpke Mountain every work day for several years.

Folks do refer to it as a mountain since it is huge and actually the highest point in Hamilton county! According to the Cincinnati Magazine article it is about 1050 feet high. For perspective, the elevation of the Blue Ash airport (on a plateau in northeast metro area) is about 850 feet. That's sad!

The article also mentioned the mountain produces enough methane gas each year to heat about 20,000 homes. But what caught my attention was the fact that this is the 7th largest landfill in the country thanks to the fact that the average Cincinnatian dumps 650 pounds of trash there every year. That, combined with industrial waste, grows the mountain by about 2 million pounds each year.

I thought the landfill size ranking seemed large given our population. The City Data site has the Cincinnati metro area ranking 23rd in the US in 2000. So I guess the people in the Cincinnati metro area throw away more stuff than average in order to have made such a large landfill.

OK...I know it could be Rumpke Mountain is big because it's an old landfill (started in the 40's). Nevertheless, it'd be nicer to be above average in the recycling department instead of the garbage mountain department.

80 Years Ago Today...

...this plane was landing in Paris.

I was Tagged -- Ages Ago

Josh of The HOV Lane blog, a frequent visitor and commenter, left a comment on my last post letting me know he tagged me. I was embarrassed when I went to his blog to read the tag and saw that he tagged me weeks ago!! In my defense, I hadn't visited in awhile since I read his pit stop post saying he was working on his "Send Me a Sign" project. OK...that's a pitiful defense.

The tag requires that I pick up the closest book around me at the time of the tag and give the title and the content of the third paragraph on page 128. I saw the tag when I got home today and the closest book was "Made to Stick" by Heath & Heath. It's an interesting read (I'm only part way through) about why some ideas or concepts stick with you while others fade. They give 6 elements to consider. A lot of implications for marketing, motivation/guidance, and teaching. The 3rd paragraph on page 128 is in the chapter about making ideas 'concrete' to help make them stick. It says:

"The same philosophy is just as useful for ideas that are more transcendent. The Saddleback Church is a very successful church in a suburb of Irvine, California, that has grown to more than 50,000 members. Over the years, the church's leaders have created a detailed picture of the kind of person they're trying to reach. They call him "Saddleback Sam." Here's how Rick Warren, the minister of the Saddleback Church, describes him:"

They go on to explain how the Saddleback Sam profile is a concrete example used by church leaders to guide them when making decisions on ad campaigns and so on.

The other task in the tag is to tag three others. I'm tagging Pat at The World According to Clarke, Kyle at The Adventures of a Boring American Family, and Erika Jean (as a student she must have lots of books around).

Red, Black and Blue -- Cincinnati Rollergirls

On Saturday evening, Dianne and I went to the Cincinnati Rollergirls' opening event for the 2007 season: Red, Black, and Blue. It was their first event held at the Cincinnati Gardens. Overall, this event was a quantum leap improvement over their bouts from last year! Their skills have improved a lot -- that made it fun to watch. In addition, they've made many changes that make the event more fun for fans.

The two CRG teams, the Dames of Destruction and the Full Metal Corsets, skated against each other. With Panterrorize and Sadistic Sadie skating for the Dames and several members of the Corsets not skating (notably Collier Mama), I thought it might be a lopsided match. I was wrong. It was a close match the whole way. High scoring too with lots of action. The skaters have really improved a lot!! I know...you've heard that from me before. But they must have worked hard during the off season!

I was struck by how well the pack was structured and how the pack teamwork improved compared to last year. The pivots really were keeping the pack together and the referees were good about not allowing blocks away from the pack. The tight pack made it harder for the jammers to get through, but it was a lot of fun to watch. The pack was doing much better at planning blocks on jammers as well as on opposing blockers to clear the way for a jammer. Foxy and Juwana Hurt for the Corsets and Panterrorize and Arche Enemy for the Dames stood out for me as good blockers. There were also a lot of whips to help the jammers keep up their speed. It was exciting to watch.

The jammers have improved as well. Sadistic Sadie is clearly a strong skater and great jammer, but there are more players now that are challenging her. The photo on the right shows jammers Sadie (in blue) and Sk8Crime (in camo) facing off in one jam. Miss Print had some great jams for the Corsets -- there were at least two where she scored and the Dames jammer had zero. Unlike last year where she might get hung up in the pack, Miss Print was persistent and able to battle through the pack even when blocked. I thought the best new jammer was Tabatha for the Corsets. She is a fast skater that is a great addition to the Corset team. The Corset captains EMolition and Sk8Crime also were good jammers that helped the team stay neck and neck with the Dames. Hopefully with a healthy squad they'll beat the Dames next time.

Finally, it was nice to have relatively few penalties and no brawls. Just good, clean action. It didn't appear anyone was hurt...well, I mean major injury. I'm sure there are a lot of sore skaters today from the hard blocks and falls. But most all of the blocking seemed legal and there weren't any malicious take downs.

On the venue and conduct of the event, the group put a lot of thought into improving the event for the fans. The Gardens is a good choice for their events. Parking is easy and the seats give a good view of the action. Before the start of the bout, the girls gave a demo that briefly explained the pack, the jammers, scoring, and basic blocking. That was a great idea for folks watching for the first time. Other improvements included a nicer event program, light strips making the track boundary easy to see, real time scoring during a jam, and after each jam they had a skater with a whiteboard circle the track to show the individual jam total. That was very nice!

The Rollergirls also go out of the way to involve the crowd. The half time tricycle race for the kids was great. The skaters stayed after the bout to meet fans and sign autographs. Dianne took the photo at the right of me with Miss Print. I noticed she still has a Cincinnati Riots sticker on her helmet (her former team). Also got a photo with Sk8 Crime. Click here to see the Flickr set of photos from the match. We didn't stay for the after party upstairs, but that's another example of the Rollergirls making it fun for all. They also did a lot of PR work before the match. I heard a couple skaters, including Sista Sac, on Friday with Gary Burbank on 700 WLW.

If you haven't been to see the Cincinnati Rollergirls, or went once last year, you have to catch them this season. You'll have a great time. Catch them on June 16th for their match against the Garda Belts from the Minnesota Rollergirls.

Armed Forces Day at KBAK

On Saturday morning, Dianne and I flew to the Columbus, Indiana airport (KBAK) for brunch. The field was a former air force base that has been converted into a municipal airport. The runways are very long and there is a lot of space on the ramp for parking. Dianne got a nice shot of me with the Tiger on the ramp in front of the main terminal.

There is a good restaurant called Hangar 5 in the main terminal building. They serve breakfast and lunch. The restaurant has a strong aviation theme with aviation named entrees (I had the Cherokee), waiters in commercial pilot uniforms, aviation decor, etc. There are lots of booths near a long set of windows that give an excellent view of the main ramp and runways. The food isn't fancy, but it was good.

The field also has a small military aviation museum, the Atterbury-Bakalar museum, that gives some history associated with the former military base. The emphasis is the WWII to Vietnam era. Since it was Armed Forces Day, the museum was open for extended hours and there were folks that had brought in items from WWII and Vietnam to re-enact what a camp would look like. It was a nice bonus to see during our visit. Click here to look at the entire set of photos on Flickr.

Red, Black and Blue This Saturday

My 5 1/2 month wait is nearly over. Can you believe it's been that long since the Holiday Havoc event?

This Saturday the Cincinnati Rollergirls take to the rink to start the 2007 season at the Cincinnati Gardens. According to the recent post by Miss Print on the Roller Derby Diva blog, the event is being called Red, Black and Blue in honor of Armed Forces Day. Actually I just saw the event poster is on Sk8 Crime's blog. Tickets are only $10 in advance. It's a good value for a sporting event. Check out the Cincinnati Rollergirl website or the Cincinnati Gardens site for more info.

I hope the Rollergirls have a great turnout at the Gardens. We'll be there!

Sunday at Spring Valley

Today Dianne and I went to the outdoor pistol range run by the state of Ohio at the Spring Valley Wildlife Area just north of Waynesville, Ohio. It's a bit of a drive, so we don't go there very often. However, it was a nice day to be outdoors. I guess a lot of folks were tied up with Mother's Day so it wasn't very crowded at the range. We had a good time. Dianne took this photo of me shooting the Ruger .22. We hadn't been shooting for quite awhile and it took me a bit to get back into the swing of things. At the start, I wasn't able to get very tight groupings. By the end, I was getting a bit better.

On the way back home we stopped in at the Red Stewart airport just south of Waynesville on route 42. It's one of the busiest grass only airports that I know of in the area. It was a beautiful day to fly. We saw a few gliders in the air that were towed up from the field. While we were there we saw a glider being towed up. There was a Wilga, an unusual looking utility plane, on the ground. It's one of the planes they use to tow gliders.

Before heading home, we stopped at Claddagh's Irish Pub for dinner on the patio. Caesar salad and fish and chips. Great day to sit outdoors for dinner.