It’s been a pretty good holiday break. A few festivities, a few nights out at the local watering hole, a few people I hadn’t seen for quite a while, a few days of working around the house, and a few days of just being lazy and laying around home. A nice mix, I think. I got less done than I might have, but more than I expected. I still haven’t finished hauling all my books out of the basement and up to the bookcases, and I don’t completely have the business shut down, but I made enough progress on both of those tasks, that I’m satisfied.
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| Basilica Dome |
One of the things I’ve been doing is going through my photos and posting older ones to flickr. Some that I’d previously posted here, but many that just weren’t on the web at all. It’s interesting how some I’d even flagged to put on flickr got missed. Since I don’t seem to be jazzed about going out and taking new photos at the moment, this is a good compromise, I think.
I’ve also done a few updates to the website here. Nothing major, but little stuff that needed doing.
And I think that’s going to do it for 2007. Happy New Year, and I’ll see you in 2008.
- For example, I updated the list of Minnesota Gun Shows for 2008. It’s an annual task that doesn’t benefit me a whole lot, but a couple thousand people look at it every year, so I’ll count that as a win.
- I wrote up a recipe for a Roasted Citrus Pork Butt I cooked for myself on Friday. I had tasty roast pork sandwiches all weekend!
- As of tomorrow, TSA’s new battery rules mean you can’t carry spare batteries for your electronics in your checked luggage, but can in your carry-on. I’m feeling safer already. Update: Bruce Schneier has more on the New Rule [that] Restricts Lithium Batteries On Planes — apparently it’s because the FAA figures fire-suppression systems in the cargo holds couldn’t put out a fire caused by lithium-ion batteries.[boing boing and schneier]
- Ooh! The Historical Marker Database looks really promising, but needs more data. It’s pretty sparse.
- Cool. There’s some good news about PGP and the 5th Amendment. A Vermont judge has ruled that you can’t be forced to divulge your PGP key. [schneier]
- Privacy International has put out The 2007 International Privacy Ranking. If you’re surprised that the US ranked as an “endemic surveillance society”, you haven’t been paying attention. [boing boing]
- My friend (and ex-roommate) Bob was interested in Light Field Photography and UV Photography. The UV Nikkor 105mm lens and some of the stuff Trazy’s been doing proved of interest to him. Since I’ve been having trouble getting email through to him, maybe this path will work to get him the links.
Weather in Minneapolis for December 31, 2007 December 31 in History
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| The Tiffster |
One of the things I like about my local watering hole is that I get to meet a lot of college-age folks. One of my favorite ex-bartenders, who’s moved out of state, stopped back in and seems to be doing really well. That kept me out later than I’d planned, but it was a good time.
Plus I’ve got the next week and change off from work. I’m pretty happy with work at the moment, but it’s still nice to have a break. I’ve got a metric assload of work to do when I get back to it next year, but for now, I don’t have to think about that, and can ponder the deep realities of the bar-scene in my neighborhood.
- As I mentioned before, shooting with a film camera with waist-level finder got me thinking about photography differently. Now I read Leica M8 Revisited and think
Ooh!
Of course I haven’t even gotten out of the house with a camera for over a week, so I’m not sure a new toy is exactly what I need. Spare time, maybe, but… [luminous] - For the pot luck at work last Thursday, I used Alton Brown’s Coq au Vin Recipe except used pheasant instead of chicken. It turned out pretty tasty, except I forgot about the fact that the rampaging hordes start eating early. At 11am, the bird still hadn’t cooked off the bones, and there wasn’t time to thicken the sauce. It was still tasty, but if people had waited until 11:30 or 12, I think it would have been a lot better.
- The Lakota, Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US, withdrawing from treaties they say the US has repeatedly broken. Parts of the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana and Nebraska may become part of a separate nation. [metafilter]
Weather in Minneapolis for December 22, 2007 December 22 in History
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| Merry Christmas, you filthy rebel scum. by A-Wix |
It’s been one of those weeks. Nothing really wrong, as far as I can tell, I just haven’t had a ton of energy for anything beyond the basics. Maybe it’s the impending holidays. Maybe it’s a project at work that I have mixed feelings about. Could be the cold weather. Or maybe it’s some mix of things. In any case, I’ve been in a lazy state of mind lately. My big goal for today is to get the (overdue) Christmas cards written and ready to drop in the mail tomorrow. Pretty ambitious, eh?
Special thanks to A-Wix for capturing the swell image of one of the members of the 501st Legion out at the mall on Friday. I think it would make a fine Christmas Card.
And I think that’s going to do it for this week. Did I mention I was feeling lazy?
- This set of Snappy answers to stupid hippies takes on hemp, biodiesel, container ships, local farming, and medical marijuana. And it made me laugh. [accordionguy]
Weather in Minneapolis for December 16, 2007 December 16 in History
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| Cathedral St. Boniface |
Sorry for the lack of updates. I was out of town for work last week, and every possibility for getting on the ’net except for my cell-phone prevented me from getting through to my server via ssh. Bleh. Sometimes I hates teh intarwebs.
Before leaving town, I’d busted out the new snowblower and done not only my sidewalks, but also those of a couple neighbors. Which worked out real well, since there was another three or four inches of the white stuff while I was gone, and my neighbor helped out by taking care of my sidewalk while I was away. Yay!
I had some excitement yesterday. I headed down to the basement to do some laundry, and discovered that a patch on the main stack had fallen apart. There wasn’t actually a hole, but the outer plate was off, and I was worried about what might happen, so I got a plumber out post-haste. $500 later, I’ve got a new 2 foot section of cast-iron, and all is well with the plumbing again. Whew. Even though it was expensive to get a guy out on a Sunday, and probably wasn’t an “emergency,” I’m still getting full body shivers when I think of what could have happened had the patch completely failed.
Over on my flickr stream, I’ve been alternating posting new photos with posting ones from the archives. It’s been interesting digging through photos from my vacations in 1999, 2000, and 2002. But I didn’t take a camera to San Jose last week and didn’t get out yesterday so I’m out of “new” stuff again.
And with that, I think it’s about time for me to get ready to head into work. A week of meetings wasn’t in my plans for work, so now I’m about a week behind my self-imposed schedule, and I should probably do a little catching up before it’s time for the Christmas break. Have a good week!
- Feel like making a cartoon of yourself? This South Park Studio is just the thing for it. Uses flash. [strobist]
- The Concrete jungles’ dirty secret: Miles of unpaved streets isn’t much of a secret in my neighborhood. The section of the Como neighborhood that they talk about in Minneapolis is right outside my door. [metro mpls]
Weather in Minneapolis for December 10, 2007 December 10 in History
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| Doors |
The first real snow of the year started within the past hour. They say we’re in for 6-10 inches here in town. But they also said it wasn’t supposed to start snowing until around noon, and there’s already accumulation at ten am. I guess we’ll see, but I’m expecting to get a chance to try out my new snowblower sometime today or tomorrow.
In other news, I guess I found the cure to my recent photography blahs. Two weeks ago there was a film-only flickr photowalk and I went out and bought a new (used) camera for it, since my existing film camera needs some work. I got a Mamiya 645 Pro with the waist-level viewfinder in it. I’d never shot medium format before, never used a camera with a waist-level viewfinder before, and hadn’t shot film for something like 15 years. But I had a blast, and exposed 32 frames of film. Got it developed and scanned them in, and came up with about a dozen photos I like. Other folks took some nice photos that day, too. Here’s one of my favorites from the day.
And since then, I’ve been digging the photography thing a lot more than I had in early November. Went out on the day after Thanksgiving and shot some digital, and yesterday I picked up more film, a developing tank, and some chemicals. Plus a telephoto lens for my Mamiya. I’d planned to head out to the Auto Body Experience show this evening to take some pictures, but we’ll see how the snow is. It might just be a good night to stay home. But anyway, I’ve been having fun with the cameras again, and that’s a good thing.
- As Dan said about this story of a guy getting pulled over on his bike by the cops, Oh hell yes! It is to be amused. [flutterby]
- This collection of Pictures from Hitchhiking Across America looks interesting. [metafilter]
- It was early June when I had 10,000 Views on my flickr stream. I’ll hit 25,000 shortly after writing this. Cool.
Weather in Minneapolis for December 1, 2007 December 1 in History