The date on this article is Dec 1 but it was only recently brought to my (actually Tracie’s) attention. It’s about liquefying corpses as a “green” alternative to cremation. To quote the juicy part, so to speak:

In alkaline hydrolysis the body is submerged in water in a stainless steel chamber. Heat, pressure and potassium hydroxide, chemicals used to make soap and bleach, are added to dissolve the tissue.

Two hours later all that’s left is some bone residue and a syrupy brown liquid that is flushed down the drain. The bones can be crushed and returned to the family as with cremation. read more

As you may have noticed, this site went offline since early on January 2. If you sent email to either me or Tracie between then and yesterday, it bounced. The short version of the story is that the service that hosts studionebula.com had a massive hardware failure and it wasn’t until a few minutes ago that my website was fully restored. Email started working on Wednesday, but if you sent something to a studionebula.com address between Friday evening and Wednesday evening, it was probably lost. Please re-send anything which was bounced back to you; I have no other way of knowing what was lost. I also have fallen behind on email that arrived shortly before the outage, for which I apologize, particularly to two of my cousins. read more

I took this photo yesterday morning:

On the left is my Lenovo tablet, my main laptop computer. On the right is a mostly empty glass containing a small amount of sports drink, i.e. a slightly acidic, somewhat sticky fluid. You’ll notice that some amount of said fluid is on the screen, in the keyboard, and on the power connector of said computer. Whoops. Considering how much time I spend around computers, it’s surprising that this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often.

I powered the machine down as quickly as possible after the spill and pulled the AC cable from the wall. I should have pulled the battery next but I couldn’t resist capturing the moment in a photograph. Then I removed the battery and poured the remaining liquid out of the keyboard. Then I cleaned off the screen as well as I could. Unfortunately some amount of the liquid got in between the LCD and the bezel, I think. read more

We’re enjoying a white Christmas today; there’s about eight inches of snow on the ground. The kittens weren’t quite as amused by the boxes and wrappings as we expected them to be, but Zed was very pleased with the homegrown Oregon catnip we received from our friend Reida. Now we’re relaxing, listening to Christmas music, and looking forward to dinner.

Best wishes for the holiday season!

I think that the video here establishes that digital photography has not just equalled film, but surpassed it. That link will take you to a Vimeo video of Prague, shot at night, only with available lighting. (I’m not embedding it here because you really should watch the HD version and that won’t fit in the format of this blog.) It’s stunning. I’m not a photographer of any skill, but wow, I’m amazed.

This has been around for quite awhile, but I thought of it tonight when we were out for our annual Christmas-lights viewing:

I suppose you have to be quite a geek to get excited about a PC case, but the case described here is a thing of beauty. Too bad it costs about as much as I spent on the entire PC I last built.

For reasons that probably defy rational explanation, we have added another cat to the household. His name is Alfred; he’s a short-haired Siamese/orange tabby mix and is two years old. Imagine someone used Photoshop to replace the dark parts of a Siamese with orange tabby markings and you’ll have a mental image of Alfred.

Alfred apparently came from a troubled home. He was left in the night depository of the Longmont humane society building with a note explaining that he got along well with other cats and had had his vaccinations. It seems that someone cared enough about him to try to aid in his placement in a new home but couldn’t afford the usual fee for surrendering a pet. read more