My wife finished packing up nearly all the books today, in preparation for the move next month. I only kept a few out, on-hand; in the spirit of useless lists, here’s what’s left on my shelf:
And a couple of books on cheese I borrowed from my mother.
Amusingly, at the library today I picked up Beer for Dummies. Not because I need to learn more about beer (well, not entirely; beer is one of the few topics I have some in-depth knowledge on), but because I like the “Dummies” books and want to see how well the topic of beer is treated. A quick survey of the contents reveals a decent spread:
Should be an interesting read.
Since I subscribed to Reuter’s Oddly Enough RSS feed the other day, I’ve noticed that about a sixth of the odd news involved biting in some way. Weird? Yeah. Creepy weird.
I found this passage from Frontier Doctor to be particularly interesting:
When I came to eastern Oregon in 1905, all of the beautiful pine timber was an open park-like forest, without any underbrush, where game could be seen for a long distance. Each summer there were many forest fires, the vast majority of which were caused by lightning. As there was no underbrush, these fires consumed nothing but the dead pine needles, cones and twigs that had been blown to the ground by the winds. The little blaze, only a few inches high, crept slowly over the ground and cleaned the floor of the forest of all debris, killing the pine beetles on the ground, but did no damage whatever to the green trees. There were a few dead trees scattered through the forest that had been killed by the pine beetles. These dead trees almost invariable took fire and burned up and the beetles with them. It was these annual fires which had existed for centuries that had produced the beautiful open forests free from dangerous underbrush, and killed so many of the pine beetles that they were held in check. The tiny blaze of these fires was not hot enough to injure the pine seed. When the timber was cut off and the sun was allowed to strike the ground, these little pine seeds began to germinate and a new second growth of trees immediately sprang up.
No one tried to put these annual fires out, as they were known to be a benefit to the timber. When the big lumber companies began to buy the timber, their representatives in the field saw to it that their holding were burned over every year. If the lightning did not start enough fires, the timber men started more of them.
Nearly one hundred years later, I’ve never known these forests not to be thick with underbrush, and the “normal” forest fire is a raging inferno that destroys everything it touches.
What happened? Ignorance. As usual.
For a while now I’d been watching the previews for “Van Helsing” and wondering just why that movie had been made. Sure, sure, summer blockbuster and all that, but I mean what’s the point? Taking characters out of classic literature, going all League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on them, and making a movie that really has nothing to do with Dracula or Van Helsing other than names—is it really so hard to come up with something original? (Or are they hoping to cash in on that key demographic of English lit majors who also happen to like early twentieth-century monster movies?) It really sounded like something John Carpenter would come up with, and I was wondering about Hugh Jackman‘s choice of movie roles.
Well, we went and saw the movie tonight, and… I’m still wondering why it was made. Oh, it wasn’t out and out terrible—I’ve seen much worse—but I’m still left scratching my head over it. Otherwise, it had big action, the effects were good, the CGI morphing sequences well done, the actors had a good time camping and vamping it up. Some scenes were creative, some were almost painful to watch. And, could someone please explain to me, at about halfway through the movie why Van Helsing pulled out a bottle of what looked like green Scope mouthwash to drink?
Ah, well. It’ll probably be the number one movie in America after this weekend. And you just know they left it open for sequels. They’re aching for sequels. And if they’re going to be pillaging literature again for villains—or even using classic movie monsters—it’s amusing to speculate as to who they would be. The Invisible Man? The Creature from the Black Lagoon? The Blob?
Here’s an interesting site I stumbled upon today: The Degree Confluence Project. From their homepage:
The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories will then be posted here.
Sort of like a blog post for every latitude and longitude intersection on Earth (well, every one on land, anyway). Cool idea. Here’s the nearest confluence to Bend.
This reminds me of another idea I had along these lines after reading an article in Discover Magazine: geographically-based Web browsing. It’s not a new idea, I can’t claim it, but here’s the gist: You have a portable device that’s connected wirelessly to the internet (laptop, PDA, whatever) and is GPS-enabled, so you have realtime GPS coordinates for wherever you are and a live net connection. Then, you browse pages that aren’t accessible via a Web address, but accessible instead based on your current location—tagged by the latitude and longitude fed via the GPS. These “pages” can be like standard Web pages—ads, for instance, for stores that might be close by—or they can be more interactive—forms for users to enter notes tagged to that location that can be read by others. Virtual graphitti.
So, there would pages and content that you could only access while sitting at a certain bench in the park, and totally different stuff that could only be accessed in front of the shoestore downtown, etc. etc. Sort of a cybergeek way to “map” the Web onto the real, 3D world. To find pages you’d have to navigate to the corresponding real-world location. I like the user interaction part of it, too, the thought being that anyone could leave those “notes” for others. That’s pretty key. The term I had at the time for all this was “geosurfing.”
Imagine some of the cultural weirdness this could engender: most content would be tagged to “people-safe” areas like sidewalks, parks, buildings, etc., but there would always be daredevils who would tag a geosite corresponding to the middle of a busy city street or freeway, accessible only to those brave or stupid enough to try. Or horny teenagers (or porn entrepreneurs) would have cached geosites of porn in secret or obscure places (creepy thought: like the end of the pew third row from the back of the local church), or in bars to help enforce adult-only sites. Geosites near movie theaters could have user-posted reviews of what’s showing, or spoilers, and restaurant sites might have similar notes—need to figure out a good wine or recommended dish when on a date? Check the local notes discreetly. It goes on.
The main drawback? No ubiquitous WiFi. So while this might be a cool application to build (the data model and concepts are sketched out pretty well in my head), and might work in a large, well-wired city like San Francisco or New York, it really wouldn’t work at all here in Bend, and that’s obviously where I’d most like to use it. So, filed away for the future.
Well, it’s official, there’s gonna be a Bend blogger meetup on Wednesday, May 12, at 7:30pm at the Bend Brewing Company. Jake blogged it here, and there’s even a Bend.com press release on it here. All are welcome, the more the merrier.
The funny thing about this is, my wife saw the press release on Bend.com and knew about it before I did. Aren’t I supposed the one who’s plugged into this stuff?
Notable: Weblogs mentioned in the Oregon Voter’s Pamphlet. Definitely milestone-worthy. The interesting thing to note is not that “blogging” is referred to in print, but that it is mailed to every home in Oregon. That’s impact.
Here are some pictures of various flowers in my yard that I took today at lunchtime. No particular reason, other than I like them and since we’re moving soon, I figure I’d better get pictures while I can.
They’re not the best quality pictures out there; it was awfully bright when I was taking them, and I’m definitely not as skilled as some people. And I certainly should be better at identifying various flowering plants and trees; unfortunately, whatever rubs off never seems to stick for any decent amount of time. Anyway, the pictures:
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We have an embarrassment of riches in dandelions this year. This is a small sample. I’m very, very tempted to pick as many as I can and try making dandelion wine; the only problem is, I just don’t have the time to sit down for a couple of hours to do so.
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No, I’m not sure what this is. Maybe a cherry?
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Bright splash of color on an otherwise green and brown background. The worst part is, I’m sure I know what this is…
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A crabapple tree blooming. It’s particularly fragrant.
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Could these be bluebonnets? At any rate, we have a good number of these and I think they’re pretty cool.
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These are in the bed in the front yard.
It was a stunningly beautiful day here in Bend, this first day of May. The first part of the morning was spent taking pictures down from the walls, part of our gradual effort to get ready for the move coming up in June, and not long after we’d finished boxing up a bunch of paintings and pictures, I got a phone call. Apparently the boss was heading in to the office to do some work, but found himself locked out.
So, off we went to make a day of it. After getting the boss into the building, we swung by the storage unit to drop off the boxed goods and then drove over to check out the progress on the new house. It’s coming along nicely, and quickly. There were people there working on it, so we didn’t wander around much.
Afterwards we took a leisurely route up Awbrey Butte on our way to lunch, and stopped at a garage sale on 1st Street, which turned out to be one of the most unusual streets I’ve seen here in Bend: narrow, steep (there’s a big dip in the middle), overlooking the Deschutes River, and all very nice, very expensive houses. It very much reminded me of something you’d find in San Francisco, which is very cool. I’d never seen that street before, though I don’t make it a habit to wander about Awbrey Butte much.
We had a decent lunch at Cousins, out on the deck overlooking the river. Perfect day for an outdoor lunch, even if it was a tad breezy. After that, I took the kids home while my wife went out for a bit. The rest of the day was enjoyed at home, playing outside with the kids.
Ah, May Day.
