From: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/enlarge/squirrel-portrait-banff.html
Couple was taking a picture with self-portrait mode and mr.squirrel was interested in the noise from the camera. Often the best pics are those that are completely accidental.
On an overcast Sunday I decided to follow up on the news that Outlook Express is going away and download Windows Live Mail. What a mistake! First off, why do so many software companies (Google, Sun, Apple, Microsoft, pretty much everyone) try to trick users into downloading and installing junk along with the application they actually requested? That’s why so many peoples’ IE menu bars cover half their screens with all the google/yahoo/bling/crapweasel menu options on them.
OK – Live Mail installs and tries once again to add messenger, office integration, whatever else – I say no again. I open the application – but what’s this? Have I gone blind? It’s a washed out palette of grey on grey against a slightly blue-ish grey background. I can hardly read it on my laptop screen. No problem – alter the colour palette. But wait – my only choices are washed out blue, washed out green, washed out purple, etc? Have these guys ever heard of 508 compliance? It’s absurd and useless to me.
OK, forget it – this whole UI looks like it will add unicorns and my little pony icons to all my emails. Does it come with sparkles and rainbows as well?
So I download Thunderbird – perhaps their UI wasn’t designed with 9 year old girls as their target demographic. It wasn’t, but joy – because Hotmail has to connect via POP3, none of my folders show, and every email is marked unread.
Back to Outlook Express, which has now commenced to download an extra copy of every email in my inbox.
Fuck this – I’ll deal with it later. Time to go for a walk and hope it starts to rain hard on me.
(Yes I know – none of the cool kids use hotmail any more. I should be one of those people who send emails to their entire address book every six months changing their address and wondering why I never get email from old friends. Bah Humbug!)
Walking back from Marshall Stack I passed a group of three people sitting around a tree on the sidewalk. They were deep in a conversation in Russian and drinking tea from formal, brightly decorated china teacups and saucers.
All around them the usual chaos of the East Village on a Friday night carried on.
I was just uploading pics from my camera and I found these portraits that I took of Akla the weekend before he died. I’m happy and sad at the same time, because he does look happy and contented sitting in the sun – but of course he’s not around to be with any more.
What a great dog he was.
Mostly because it offends me that airlines think we are so stupid. It’s the practice of advertising air fares at less than half their true cost with the following disclaimer (from United’s email today, but could be any of the American airlines): “Sample airfares shown are each way based on required roundtrip travel.”
Why is this legal? It just seems untrue, misleading, and most of all stupid.
Let’s follow their example:
“Drive the new Ford Fusion for only $6000 (sample price is per wheel based on required four wheel purchase)”
“Come and see the new Saw 15 movie for only 10 cents (sample price is per minute based on required 90 minute purchase)”
“Try Subway’s new 42 cent foot longs (sample price is per inch based on required 12″ purchase)”
If you could at least buy a one way flight for this cost, that would be one thing, because most people will fly round trip anyway – but I know from experience that often one-way flights are a lot more than half the cost of a round trip – in some cases they are more. But overall the main thing that bothers me is the assumption of stupidity on the part of purchasers. Or am I just naive?
I’ll admit I’m torn on Japanese culture (and I realize how absurd that statement is). I love to be in Tokyo and hope to visit the rest of Japan some time – particularly Hokkaido – and I love Japanese art and design. Their architecture and craft are among my favourites too.
Where I have a major issue, though, is the whaling and dolphin-killing. It’s very hard to forgive that and see past its influence on the culture as a whole. I’d like to believe (as I have read) that support for these is an older generation thing and dying out, but I have nothing direct to base that on. I know I did see a whale meat restaurant in Asakusa when I was there last.
All the above notwithstanding, this is fantastic (via Susannah Breslin at BoingBoing):
From “Eye of the Beholder” by Anton Kusters:
“I’m in the front seat, riding with Soichiro in his car on his way to Shinjuku. “One cuts off one’s finger to make a point”, Soichiro explains while driving. “Usually to show the sincerity of an apology after doing something wrong.”
“You cut off a single digit of your own finger in a ceremonial way, while facing your boss, and then you present the severed finger on a folded napkin to him. It reinforces the power of your apology. It shows that you’re serious about what you’re saying.”
Somehow, i don’t feel like questioning that.”
(Image credit: Anton Kusters. Via This Isn’t Happiness.)
Finally back at home after two whole weeks away – one week on vacation, flowing into a work meeting in New Brunswick, followed by a couple of days in CT.
One thing that I noticed on my trip was how my music choices changed as I got away from work and real life. I drove up to Portland and stayed there over night and then caught the ferry across to Yarmouth, NS at 8am Sunday. It was an early start and followed a lot of hectic activity to get things settled before I left. As soon as I got in the car to drive to the ferry, I chose (subconsciously, I think) my “ambient” playlist rather than the usual rock, punk or techno that seem to be in heavy rotation usually.
I stayed with this genre and audiobooks through the whole trip with the exception of when I was working out in the hotel gyms. I really feel like this music choice contributed to my mellow attitude throughout the past two weeks – so maybe I should try and stick with this to keep my stress level and blood pressure down.
In case you are interested, here are some of the artists I consider “ambient”:
Rhian Sheehan – fantastic NZ musician I discovered by accident in Wellington. He has a new CD out and I can’t say enough good things about him. Ordered the CDs from Amazon, because I’m still old-fashioned that way and the Virgin Megastore is no more.
Mary Bue – was in my classes at UMD and I used to see her at Amazing Grace on my way back from the beach with the boys. Great musician and I see she’s put out a couple more CDs and moved to Seattle. I need to check her new stuff out.
Jordan Reyne – another random Wellington find; NZ has some great music that is worth seeking out. I was listening to her “Passenger” CD. She describes her music as “industrial tinged folk music”.
Low – another Duluth connection. I don’t know Alan and Mimi, but we were friends with Scotty / starfire who worked for them (don’t know if he still does). I saw Low the last time they played Webster Hall and it was an outstanding show.
Peter Gabriel – specifically the Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack.
Ali Farka Touré – If you don’t know his music you should. He was a Malian guitarist, literally from Timbuktu, and one of the greatest guitarists ever.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – again a magical singer and musician. I found (randomly again) a CD of remixes of his work called Star Rise and all its tracks are great.
Verve Remixed series – remixes of classic Nina Simone, Hugh Masakela, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan tracks.
Check some of this out if you don’t know it! Perhaps it will calm you down too.
I’m actually posting this from New Brunswick, but it’s the same (Atlantic) time zone as Nova Scotia so I think it counts. I was away for the past week in NS and had a great time just touring and taking lots of photos. I started by taking the ferry to Yarmouth (from Portland, ME) and then spent three days in that southern area of NS.
From there I headed up to Halifx and had planned to go from there to Cape Breton. But at that point I decided to cut back on so much driving and to head across to New Brunswick and the other side of the Bay of Fundy.
I’ll post some pics here when I get the chance, but it’s been a great time to decompress and slow down. Now I have to face the triage of a week’s worth of emails in my inbox.
Akla
A very, very tough day last Wednesday as I had to make the decision to put Akla to sleep. He was 13 1/2 years old, which is remarkable for a big dog and he had made it through at least two near-death experiences, but it was still a very hard decision to make.
I’m extraordinarily glad to have known him and Bear – they were both very special dogs in their own way – and to lose them both in the space of three months is very hard.
Akla was born in Iqaluit, on Baffin Island and he was a Canadian Inuit Sled Dog . In fact, he was a rare type of Inuit Sled dog, a merqujuq , which is a genetic variation found in some northern dogs – his coat was extra long and didn’t have guard hairs. That’s why I got him; because he would have been used for parka fur if I hadn’t taken him to Vermont.
Anyone who ever met Akkie knows he could be a handful – he was always the boss in the hierarchy (I have scars to prove that), he was noisy, stubborn, demanding, and unbelievably bad when whe was young. But for the same reasons he was a wonderful character; I don’t think too many people have met such an “original’ dog. By that, I mean he was from a place and type of dog that preserved his dog-ness. He was as close to a wolf as you can get, but he liked to have his ears scratched, to walk on the beach and in the woods, and to greet anyone who came near to him. I have no doubt that he could easily have killed a person, but the only human he ever hurt was me, and those were always unintentional.
Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for opening my eyes to what “a dogs’s life” could be. I love you and miss you.
