...do you have yours? Tickets are available for the Cincinnati Rollergirls home events. You can buy single event tickets through Ticketmaster or get a set of VIP season tickets through the Cincinnati Gardens box office. There has been a lot of discussion about the upcoming season on the Roller Derby Diva's blog. I'm looking forward to another exciting season of derby action.
This weeks photo theme in the Macro Mondays group was diptych. That's the fancy term for two separate, individual images that are complete themselves but integrate to create a whole work. Painters have done this for ages by using hinged panels or hanging pieces together. Connecting photos is easy with digital photography. It's coming up with a good subject that is hard. Dianne had some great ideas and, once again, provided her finger modeling skills in one shot.
For my first try at diptychs, they didn't turn out too bad. Others in the group had some wonderful ideas and executed them well. See all the images in the pool here.
I got to work today and was unpacking my bag when I realized I forgot my reading glasses. Yup, I left them on the computer at home last night instead of putting them in my work bag. It's not a huge deal, but it sure is annoying. I was stretching my arms to read stuff all day today.
It seems I'm always forgetting something in the morning. I need my glasses, iPod, headphones, planner or moleskine book, sometimes lunch stuff, etc. I try to put everything in it's place the night before -- or on the entry way table. Dianne has said I need a morning checklist like I have for preflighting the plane.
So this story in Wired caught my eye today. Ford has teamed up with Microsoft and Dewalt to implement an RFID system that checks the bed of your pickup truck to make sure that all of the tools you've tagged are loaded before you drive away. That's a great idea. I just need RFID tags on all my stuff and then have a reader installed in the car or near the door out of the house. An alarm could go off if I'm missing something when I leave. That's an easy solution to my lack of organization and forgetfulness.
The theme for this week's macro photo project was "cutting edge." I went with the sharp edge interpretation of the theme. The first photo below is another one of my professional finger model, Dianne. It's not real blood. I used cherry concentrate to simulate blood. The second photo illustrates a really sharp knife -- one that can split hairs. Actually Dianne was able to find a split end in her hair. It took me forever to get that positioned properly across the knife blade. The last shot is obvious. I started the hole and then disconnected the drill and carefully moved everything into my homemade light tent to illuminate the drill bit.
I've been taking guitar lessons for about 8 months now. I suck at it still, but I enjoy it. Nick is a great instructor and does a lot by ear and encourages you to bring in music you're interested in to motivate your effort. So I've been going back through my music collection looking for songs that have relatively simple, easily heard guitar parts that I can learn. It is fun to play along with a song.
My latest effort is the Jill Sobule song called "Somewhere In New Mexico." It's a song about an agnostic girl that wants to change her life around. It's kind of funny and dark at the same time. I have a ways to go before getting it down. Dianne has heard the song about a 1000 times in the last month.
While looking around for guitar tabs and videos of the song, I ran across Jill's effort associated with her latest CD project. You can read about her next project on the aptly named site Jill's Next Record. Instead of working through a record label, she is making a grass roots effort to raise money through her fans. There are various donation levels and each one has something associated with it. For $25 you get an advanced copy of the CD. For $5000 she'll come and do a house concert for you. Can we get a group of 100 fans to each kick $50 in and have her come to Cincinnati for a private show? :^) You can hear her talk a little about it, and hear a little ditty about Super Tuesday voting, on the NPR site here. Click on Listen Now near the top of the screen or watch the video to hear and see her play the song.
The hand washing information from the Cincinnati area at the NeedToLook site certainly caught the eye of this germ-o-phobe. I don't know how scientific the data is, or even whether or not it is made up. But I do know there are males that don't wash their hands after using the restroom. What is that all about? Is it laziness?
Perhaps all restrooms need these automatic hand washers installed. Or maybe a sensor on the door handle that doesn't let you out with dirty hands -- kinda like a breath-a-lizer interface for the ignition of a car.
This week the Macro Mondays group on Flickr had a theme of refreshing. I wasn't too excited about the theme until I bounced the idea off Dianne and she suggested the F5 key in Windows that has a refresh function. Perfect idea for the theme -- something a little out of the ordinary. It was also a good project to get me out of the light tent and experimenting with some lighting ideas I've been reading about at the Strobist blog.
The photo below is Dianne at her laptop keyboard. I used two flashes: one high and from the rear and one low and from the right. The extra flash on the right was key to removing a harsh dark shadow on the camera side of the finger. I gave the rear flash 3 times the power of the right flash. I thought it turned out ok.
I wasn't too interested in the game -- actually I thought the Patriots would win, so it was more interesting than I expected. The best part is the advertising. There is a lot of money on the line, so the creative advertising minds have worked overtime to supposedly come up with their best efforts for the game.
The Advertising Age website has videos of all the Superbowl commercials here. My winner, by far, was the scream video for Bridgestone tires. The second was the clydesdale training for the Anheuser-Busch team. After that I think the e-Trade baby and the FedEx pigeons were pretty good. Did you watch the game? What was your favorite new commercial?
I just happened to see this article in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette that mentions the Fort Wayne Derby Girls' team the Bomb Squad will be in Cincinnati for the start of the derby season here on April 12th. I'm sure there will be more details and publicity soon on the CRG site. The article also discusses the latest WFTDA rankings where the Fort Wayne team has moved up a bit. You can see the latest quarterly ranking here. Unfortunately the Cincinnati Rollergirls team isn't ranked due to inactivity. It'll be interesting to see where they end up when the season gets back in full gear.
P.S. I noticed that tickets for individual Cincinnati Rollergirl events are now available through TicketMaster. However, I didn't see a season ticket option or a reserved seat option (one idea they were tossing about). I'm sure their site will have more info soon.
The Great Urban Race is coming to Cincinnati on April 19th. It sounds like a local, mini version of the Amazing Race where you have to solve clues, do challenges, etc. We signed up. Join us on the race. I'm not sure how we'll do on questions about Cincinnati, but we're lining up our native Cincinnati friends to call for help.
If you're not in Cincinnati, check out their website anyway as there are many events being held in cities across the country. The events lead to the championship in Las Vegas in November.
One of my many quirks is the way I like to eat a slice of apple pie. I eat the filling first -- I use the fork to dig out the filling while leaving the crust shell intact. Once all the filling is gone, I then go back and eat the crust. The residual liquid from the filling is enough flavor for the pie shell. Dianne always gives me a look when I eat apple pie that way. Is that odd?
So I laughed when I read Matt's post at the A Whole Lotta Nothing blog that talks about tackling and solving his cupcake eating problem by pointing to a set of Flickr photos that "hack" a cupcake in order to get good cake and frosting distribution in each bite. I don't have that problem, but I can relate. The hack is a little messy and it kinda spoils the presentation, but it solves the equal distribution issue.
It's comforting to know I'm not the only one with eating quirks.
One of my everyday humor blog reads is the Indexed site. Each post is a graph or Venn diagram that is a humorous illustration of a common observation. I get a lot of chuckles from the site. I thought last Wednesday's post was particularly funny. I guess I'm in the target audience for that one. Incidentally, she has a "best of" book coming out in February.
These macros show some of the fossil pieces embedded in shale. The largest bits are about the size of a dime. The bit in the last image is a little smaller.
Today Dianne and I went to the Essencha Tea House in the Oakley part of the greater Cincinnati area. I had read a lot of good reviews of the place in the paper and on-line in the Foodie Report. A friend gave me an Essencha gift card as a Christmas gift. We decided to stop in and check out the place.
It's a very nice store with a relatively small, modern style seating area. It has a more modern look than Churchill's downtown. A good place to relax, try some tea, and chat. As you can see on their website, Essencha has many loose leaf teas and tea paraphernalia as well as lunch and fancy dessert items. Dianne tried the bubble tea and I had a cup of Assam while there. I also bought some Lapsang Souchong (or stinky tea as Dianne calls it) and Darjeeling loose leaf tea. The loose leaf tea comes in very solid, well sealed metal containers.
I was impressed with the store. It's a convenient location for us. If you've been there, I'm curious what you thought or how it compares to your favorite tea spot. We'll be stopping there again when we're in the area.
Saw this little typing test on My Crazy Life...in Pictures. Angie has a great blog -- probably because she is a faster typist :^)
62 words
When I left work yesterday, the sun was setting and it was pretty chilly for Cincinnati. It had cooled off during the day and it was clear. Without the sun the temperature was dropping fast. I was all bundled up with my winter jacket, hat, and gloves so it wasn’t too bad.
As I put my stuff in the car, I turned around and saw a co-worker about 30 yards behind me wearing a thin leather jacket, no gloves, and no hat. The guy had a shaved head too. I couldn’t believe my eyes. His ears had to be cold – I’m surprised they didn’t turn to ice and crack off his head. As I pulled out of the parking lot I noticed the outside air temp was 18. With the breeze, that’s officially cold. How could that guy stand it? Am I just a cold baby?
It was a cook-it-yourself night, so I stopped to get some dinner on the way to my guitar lesson. I was looking down, reading the news on my phone while waiting in line. I glanced away from the phone as the line moved and noticed the girl in front of me was wearing flip-flop slippers. Was she nuts!?! She had on a thin sweater and a light down vest, and no hat or gloves. Slippers when it’s 18 degrees! How does she deal with the heat and humidity here in August?
Is this a classic example of the tail ends of a normal distribution describing cold tolerance? Clearly I’m in the tail of low tolerance while Mr. Shaved Head No Hat and Ms. Flip Flop Shoes are in the opposite end of the distribution. Where do you fall in the distribution? How do you dress for the cold?
I saw this article the other day in the Wall Street Journal. It's about a mix-up between two drugs with similar names: edetate disodium and edetate calcium disodium. Whether or not the word "calcium" is on the label is pretty important to a patient.
It reminded me of a lab my students did last quarter where they were running multiple reactions with different chemicals and making observations to characterize the reactivity of various compounds. There were a lot of reagents set out for the lab. One person mixed up the label on two acids, added the wrong acid to a reaction, and ended up producing hydrogen sulfide gas that really stunk -- even though he was using an individual fume hood. I caught it quickly, even with my poor nose. Not much harm, so it was a good lesson about being confident with chemical names and looking carefully at the label before using something.
If I'm ever sick and in a hospital, I may panic if I see a former student working as a nurse or a pharmacist. I'll be going through my mental rolodex trying to remember what grade they received and how good they were at chemical nomenclature.
So I went a different route. Dianne and I made a trip to Fresh Market to get some items to illustrate the sugar theme. The photo at the right is a macro of the colored sugar crystal sprinkles on the frosting of a cupcake. Thanks to Dianne's suggestion, I made a triptych of the cupcake that had the sprinkles. That is the photo below. I also got a nice shot of some gummi worms, a sugar cookie, and other stuff that you can see in the set here.
I'm getting caught up on my blog reading after vacation. I noticed that Miss Print had a blog post last week talking about the 2008 season for the Cincinnati Rollergirls. There is also a blurb on the Cincinnati Rollergirl site and I'm sure there will be ticket information as the events get closer. Save these dates:
April 12
May 17
June 7
June 28
July 19
The other bit of news in Miss Print's post is that the bouts will all be inter-league competitions. That'll be great. There was a lot of discussion on her blog last season about the CRG only bouts not being exciting. Personally, I didn't buy it, but the move to only inter-league bouts should satisfy all the fans. It's possible now that there are several teams established in cities that are relatively close. It should be an exciting season. The CRG group is also looking for volunteers. Check out their site for contact information.
If you haven't been to a match, you have to check them out this season. Get your taxes done early and celebrate by going to the April 12th match. The CRG group is also looking for volunteers. Check out their site for contact information.
Today Milton took us to our niece's soccer game. She's a co-captain of one of the Punahou junior high/middle school teams and this was a playoff game for them. Here are a few photos from the game. The first two are of Taylor. The third is a non-Taylor shot that I thought was interesting. The last one is of Milton and Dianne talking at half time. I was experimenting with a new camera -- still a lot of settings to learn. I put these photos and a few more in a Flickr set. Click here to see all the photos.
Also on New Year's day we drove up to the North Shore to see the waves. It was a pretty nice day on the south shore, but fairly cloudy with a little passing drizzly on the north shore. Even so, I still think it's fun to check out. The waves were only about 6 feet high, but they break pretty close to shore. It's a beautiful site and a great place to watch the surfers. One surfer was doing repeated jumps and flips off the waves. When I went closer to get some photos, I saw a photographer near the water taking pictures of only that surfer. The photographer had a HUGE telephoto lens, so I'm sure he got some good shots of those stunts. The set of three photos below shows one of his jumps. I put a few other photos below. You can see the salt spray coming off the crashing waves in the second photo. The third photo shows the sun coming through a break in the clouds. The last one is a surfer picking a spot to enter the surf and get to the action.
Click here to go to Flickr to see other photos from New Year's Day. When there, click on any thumbnail to see a larger version of the photo.
There is a park next to the temple that had several large trees including a large banyon tree. You see them all over Oahu, but they are usually surrounded by buildings or wires. This one has such a nice setting I had to get a shot -- even though it was towards the sun. It's hard to appreciate how big it is, so Dianne volunteered to stand next to it for scale. That little blue spec by the trunk is her.
The water at the pier was crystal clear and very deep. Dianne looked into the water and saw all sorts of fish. Some of them were pretty big -- at least a couple feet long. There are fish food dispensers on the pier, so we bought some food to feed them. It was quite a frenzy. Click here to see a photo of the fish.
We looked around a bit at the marketplace. Around the facility they have several statues of hula girls. I really like this photo of Dianne joining in the hula dance with one of the statues. So cute!
Happy New Year!
This marks the end of the third year for Earl World. Thanks to all those who drop by -- especially the regulars and those leaving comments.
There was quite a spectrum of boats docked at the pier. Some were in good shape and others were in need of some paint. Some of the crews were working hard and others were together having some beers. I don't know how much fishing activity there was since the rough seas have kept many boats docked. An article in yesterday's Star Bulletin talked about the high price of Ahi due to the limited fishing possible in the last few days.
The tower is next to an elementary school on the side of a hill. It has been raining here quite a bit -- not constant and not hard, but the ground is pretty wet. What we didn't realize going into this was that we were going to have to climb around some steep, slippery grass covered slopes in order to get a picture. That was an adventure. I was slipping going up the hill and got pretty muddy. Dianne took a bit of a spill going back down and got a little dirty.
The color in the picture is pretty accurate. The green used on the tower is a solid color and doesn't exactly match the surrounding vegetation, but it is a good attempt to hide the tower. From a distance it doesn't pop out at you unless you're looking for it.
After stopping at Carol and Milton's place, we continued up the Eastern shore of the island for a little way. We stopped at a beach park and I got a couple photos. Click here to see a B&W photo of an offshore island called Chinaman's Hat (or as Dianne now likes to say, the Chinese Man's Hat). The slight bay was providing some protection, so you can't see the large waves in the photo. They were breaking quite a ways offshore. The photo below shows the Ko'olau Mountains just inland from the beach. The palms give a feeling how strong the breeze was. Even on a cloudy day the mountains are beautiful.
After lunch we walked around the mall a bit and then decided to go to the Ala Moana beach park. We took a leisurely walk around the park to check out the beach, the fishermen, the harbor, the canoes, and the surf. Although it was a cloudy day and there was a stiff breeze, it was a nice walk. The photo to the right shows one side of the harbor entrance where all the driftwood has washed up on the rocks. I have a similar photo here showing Dianne walking along the rock wall on the beach side of the park. The panorama photo below is taken from the breakwater wall located at the end of park. It's a panorama looking towards the Waikiki hotels and Diamond Head crater in the distance. That's Dianne on the right at the end of the wall.
Our first stop was at Carol & Milton's to feed the cat and do some laundry. Well...Dianne fed the cat and did the laundry while I was outside taking some flower photos. Unfortunately, I don't have a friendly botanist on the trip with me, so all the photos in my Flickr stream are labeled "flower." Some of them were on trees and some were on low plants or bushes.
It was mostly cloudy with some passing rain showers -- sometime pretty hard. The changing light made it hard to get some good shots. But the water on the flowers was nice. We also got caught up on some TV by watching the last episode of The Amazing Race.
Afterwards we grabbed a bite to eat at the Windward Mall and then we went to see the Byodo-In Temple located in the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park. The temple was finished in 1968 to commemorate the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. The temple is a scale replica of a 900 year old temple at Uji, Japan and like the original it is constructed entirely without nails. Although there are many temples in the area, this one is in a nice setting next to the mountains. The photo below is an HDR photo of the front of the temple. In the background you can see the mountains surrounded by the low rain clouds.
Inside the temple is a huge Buddha (18 feet high) sitting on a lotus flower. According to our informational brochure, it was carved in Japan, covered with cloth, and painted with 3 coats of gold lacquer. On top of that is gold leaf. It is thought to be the largest Buddha figure carved since ancient times. It's hard to appreciate the immense scale of the statue with this photo.
The ponds around the temple had lots of large koi fish and a couple of black swans. I did get a panoramic photo of the back of the temple. You can see some of the orange koi swimming in the pond. Although the day was very overcast, the high dynamic range images bring out some of the beauty of the temple. I'm glad we stopped for a visit. Click on any image to go to Flickr and see larger versions. I didn't include all the images in this post, so better yet go to this set to see them all. Click on each thumbnail photo to see a larger version.
A few days after we got to Hawaii, I was dealing with a cold and a sore throat. I thought I had licked it with some over-the-counter stuff. I felt like I was on the mend on Christmas day. That night I woke up with a splitting sinus headache that stuck with me. I thought I'd see how things went, but as the day progressed and an ear ache developed, I knew I was in trouble.
So I sucked it up and looked around for a doctor in Hawaii. Went to one clinic based on a recommendation from the in-laws, but they weren't accepting my insurance. What a pain trying to find someone appropriate. I have to say thanks to some kind Humana representative that offered some suggestions and advice. I ended up at an urgent care clinic in Waikiki and walked out with the expected decongestant and antibiotics. Hopefully that'll help me put this behind.
If you have to be sick, at least this is the place to be.
I took this HDR photo below of a little cove along the rocks. Just out of view at the right of the cove was a very narrow beach were a few kids were swimming. Must have been a lot of work to climb down there, but they had the place all to themselves. When we stopped at the parking area for the overlook we noticed bits of safety glass all over the parking lot. There was a Jaguar parked there with the driver's side window broken out and the mirror busted. Down the road at another overlook we saw another pile of glass. Someone was on a rampage.
Yesterday Dianne and I drove a road called Tantalus/Round Top. It's a windy, at times narrow road that hugs the roughly southern side of the mountains north of Honolulu. Along the drive, there are multiple spots where you can pull over to the side of the road and enjoy the view. The lush vegetation lining the road is beautiful too.
We had made the drive many years ago, but thought we'd go again. We found a state park off of Round Top that had a wonderful overlook. The view was amazing and the photos don't do it justice. You could see everything from Diamond Head crater to the Honolulu airport. The photo below is us at the overlook. In the background you can see the runway of the Honolulu airport. I have several panorama and HDR photos that I took from this overlook and one other. You can see them all in the photo set here.
We started with a guided tour of the battleship USS Missouri. I visited the ship many years ago (more decades ago than I care to admit) when it was mothballed in Bremerton, WA. At that time you could only go on the deck and visit the spot where the Japanese surrender documents for WWII were signed.
Now the Missouri is docked next to the Arizona memorial near Ford Island at Pearl Harbor. Not only can you go on deck, but parts of the ship are open and available to tour. In addition, you can pay for a guided tour through parts of several decks inside the Missouri. Dianne and I did that with three other folks. The small group made it a very nice tour. The group can't be that big as you get in to some pretty tight quarters. The guide takes you inside one of the main 16 inch gun turrets, and through various locations such as the officer’s mess, the crew’s mess, sleeping quarters, the post office, the “bank,” the machine shop, the firing control area below the turrets, the boilers, the electrical and steam control areas, the bridge, etc. It was a very interesting tour. If you tour the Missouri, take advantage of that option.
After the Missouri tour, we went over to the Pacific Aviation Museum. A private group is constructing the museum around the site of the old airfield on Ford Island. The museum is near the site where some of the first bombs in the Pearl Harbor attack hit Ford Island. The museum is in the early stages of development – one of the hangars with planes from the WWII area is complete. Right now it is a small museum, but the planes they have are beautifully restored. The image here shows one of the scenes they created to showcase an F4F. We didn’t spend a lot of time there as there wasn't a lot to see (I found the Missouri tour more interesting), but it is a nice facility. As other hangars open up to cover other eras, it’ll be quite the aviation complex.
I've never tried skydiving -- and I never will unless staring death in the face. That first step would be a doozy. So when I saw this article in the New York Times, I couldn't believe the headline. These folks are insane! I like the comment from the Physics prof. Yeah, in theory it should be possible. I'd be looking over the proof behind that conclusion very carefully.
The phone case popped off my belt while getting out of the car. The phone/case hit the bottom of the door opening and tumbled out on the ground. I had dropped my phone once before while in the case with no issues. But this time the front display of the phone was damaged. It was on, but the whole screen was completely white. As much as I loved the phone before, I hated it after that. I couldn't see who was calling, if the phone was charged, what time it was...argh! It was very irritating.
After thinking about it for a bit, Dianne and I went to the Verizon store and got a new, replacement phone last night. I decided to stay with LG, and went with the ENV - orange. It's very similar to my old phone...a little smaller, a little lighter, a little better camera. But most importantly, it has a working outer screen. Like LG's tag line, Life's Good!
Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Earl World by Email
