Category: Uncategorized

Thanks for wondering. We’re fine; the nearest fire, although only 1.5 miles from the edge of Boulder, is on the far side of Boulder from us. We also live away from the mountains and hence away from wooded areas (i.e. large collections of flammable material). Yes, it’s scary; no, we’re not in any immediate danger.

Here’s a video of fire-fighting aircraft at the nearest fire, taken today:

 
I knew a commercial pilot who used to fly fire-fighting runs like that. He said it was the most-fun flying he’d ever done; I can kind of see why. read more

Chris posted another copy of the Donna Summer video on his blog here; in the ensuing discussion it was pointed out by “Vaihe” that there is a copy with the original audio intact on YouTube, wherein you can hear that the band actually is performing the music. This came as something as a surprise to me; I had only seen various copies with the audio replaced, and hence assumed that the Midnight Special appearance was a massive just-for-show lip-sync fest. Turns out I was wrong. Here’s the complete version:

It’s a nice live performance by Donna Summer, as well as being an interesting live rendition of a track that was never actually played live in the studio. I can’t help but think the guitarist looks a little pained, however. read more

While watching this, I had to keep reminding myself that I was seeing live action and not edited video:

It was a really long day, but a good one. We visited the Great Buddha in Hase (near Kamakura). I’m really tired so I’m just going to post this snapshot of Akihabara I took from the train-station platform. Probably the most interesting thing about it is that I shot it without a tripod, using the Canon S100’s night mode.

If you hit google.com today, you’ll see that their logo is a photo of origami. I’m going to take the liberty of posting a screenshot here, since it’s probably a one-day event (although I’m sure that all of their Doodles end up in an online museum somewhere):

It was created in honor of Akira Yoshizawa, who would have been 101 today. Mr. Yoshizawa is recognized as the father of modern origami. He invented the notation system that’s used worldwide to create instructions for folding origami models. He also invented wet-folding, a technique which adds a sculptural aspect to origami. It’s not an exaggeration to say that he’s the person who transformed origami from a relatively simple craft to the complex art form it is today. read more

I bought a new camera recently–a Canon PowerShot S100–and have been taking lots of pictures in an attempt to learn how to use it. I put a set of photos with a winter theme on my flickr site here. I took all of these between mid-January and now, which means they span three substantial snowfalls.

The third snowfall happened recently during a very cold night. It deposited large, perfectly formed crystals in fluffy drifts. This kind of snow doesn’t happen very often, and it’s beautiful. It almost looks fake, like a CGI demonstration of Pixar’s new Winter Phantasy rendering engine or something. It’s also a difficult photographic subject, in no small part because of the difficulties inherent in operating a compact camera in an ambient temperature of 10F. Next time it happens I’ll try again with a tripod. read more

Okay, I freely admit that I’ve been neglecting this blog even more than usual recently. I think this may be an unfortunate side-effect of having a presence on Twitter: things that I might blog about I instead tweet about.
In any case, after a lengthy stretch of sunny weather, it snowed here this morning. As luck would have it, we had an appointment in town and hence had to drive through the thickest part of the snowfall. I took this opportunity to shoot some video with my iPod–actually Tracie shot the video since I was driving–and play with the current version of iMovie, etc. Here it is:
read more

Boulder got dumped on last night and this morning. There are drifts well over a foot deep here at the house. I put up some photos from the morning’s excavation on my Flickr page here.

Looks like we’re in for a good snowstorm tonight. It’s just before 9:00PM, we’ve already received a couple of inches, and it’s still snowing steadily. There’s a Winter Storm Warning in effect with snowfall rates predicted to be up to one inch or more per hour, with a total accumulation of up to 12 inches here at Boulder. I dashed outside to take a couple of snapshots of the lights on the house and the snow. They’re not great–my camera just isn’t up to low-light photography–but it’s kind of neat how the flash caught the flakes in the air. read more