What Was The Question? In which I dredge up the work from my days as a MICA student. Most of it is salvaged from my original student space. Aside from the Strangelover, there isn’t a whole lot of new material, but the aim is to reawaken my inner digital artist and start reinspiring some interactive output. (Hopefully without all the far-left postmodern baggage. ;)
Titan Flyby 1
Today, Cassini made its closest approach yet to Titan, which I call Saturn’s Fuzzy Moon. The pictures will be coming in tonight, and maybe now we’ll know if the moon really does have oceans of oil*, in which case we’ll soon be invading. (* Yes, yes, I know, they’re not strictly oils made from the decay of fossils, but simpler hydrocarbons.)
Cassini also scoped out the Huygens probe’s future landing spot. If Huygens enters Titan’s atmosphere correctly and is able to transmit back, we’ll have our first closeup visual — and audio! — data from Titan in mid-January 2005. If the probe is especially lucky, it might even splash down in a hyrdocarbon sea, and “float” there indefinitely.
More on Spaceflight Now, and discussion on Slashdot.
Lions and Tigers and Bears
Panda bears, that is. And a Zebra. Seen at the National Zoo. If you’re in DC, be sure to view the tiger cubs, out and about every morning.
Photos taken with a Canon Powershot A400.
WMATA: The Last Straw
Today, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority kept me waiting in a Metro station for almost as long as it would have taken to walk to my destination — unacceptable even with the NewYoFla single tracking situation.
Last Friday, hour-long delays due to a broken track forced me to walk to and from work. The day before that, negligence from WMATA employees caused a station to flood.
Add to this the past few weeks of Red Line funk, the post-Redskin game scheduling snafu, the racist station manager, the mysterious train operator abandonment, the constantly broken escalators, and the candy bar and french fry and cellphone arrests.
I pay anywhere from $80 to $100 a month to use WMATA’s trains, and in return I’ve gotten increasingly poor service: a deterioration that gets more palpable day by day.
Well, no more.
Last Friday, WMATA forced me to walk to and from the office. After church today (for which I was late, thanks again to WMATA) I walked home. I think I enjoy the walk. So I’m going to walk to and from work for a while, and start structuring my life so that I rely on the DC Metro as little as possible. Sure, I won’t be able to avoid taking the Metro at times, but I can try to keep as much of my cash away from WMATA as I can, because I know that it only gets exchanged for shoddy, antagonistic service. I’ll be able to save some money, get more exercise, and reduce my stress levels due to riding a train marked “Union Station” which only goes as far as Judiciary Square.
(Update: Hmmm, urban inline skating is also a possibility, now that I’ve found a sports shop downtown which sells accessories to replace my poor skates’ depleted brake pads.)
Update: Things get a bit better.
Tree Going Red
And that is all the “foliage spotting” I plan to do.
Photo taken with a Sony Ericsson Communicam attachment (on T300 phone).
Enterprise’s Autumn
Too bad Enterprise‘s ratings aren’t doing too well, just when the series is getting better. As with most Star Trek incarnations, it takes a few seasons to pick up the pace, and that’s what the third season has done for the series — never mind the massive problems of continuity posed by the Xindi and Temporal Cold War story arcs.
Word I hear on the grapevine (okay, on TrekBBS) is that the new writer, Manny Coto, is an Original Series fan. Though I didn’t like his baptismal episode, Similitude, (review here), having a Classic Trek afficionado doing prequel screenplay can only be a good thing, and I certainly like how he wrote his way out of the “Temporal Cold War” corner — thoroughly disposing of the Time Travel plotlines like the garbage that they were. Now, that Enterprise seems to be gearing for a run at real prequel episodes, it’s a pity that the series is entering what will probably be its last season.
More on TrekToday, and spoilers from IGN on tonight’s episode, Home.
Dodging the Red Line
Major subway problems and slow, refugee-clogged buses forced me to trek to work on foot this morning, a 2.5 mile walk of about 45 minutes through windy, gray mid-autumn cold.
At Judiciary Square near MCI Center, a group of suited Metro security (?) personnel milled out of a bus, unsure as to where the station was.
On K Street at Franklin Square, a woman was walking up and down the sidewalk with a sign: “TERRORISTS GO TO HELL. IF YOU VOTE BUSH YOU MIGHT GO TO HELL!” (She must have known that today is INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY.)
At McPherson Square, a flock of geese flew overhead in V formation. A driver in a pickup truck saw the flock, pulled a little goose call from his glove compartment and honked it loudly out his window. None of the geese stopped, but it was good for a laugh from passers-by.
I really should walk to and from work more often. Good exercise, great scenery, and exhilaratingly biting cold as the fall transitions to winter.
Sox and Snake
Congratulations, Red Sox. So I was part-joking earlier this week that “all” the Sox had to do was win three more games in a row; then not only would they get to the World Series for the first time in eight years, but also make history as the first team to do so after coming back from a 3-0 ACLS deficit. Well, they went and did it. Recovered their game losses and went on to a smashing win in New York last night.
Salim, Meg, and Allah are understandably ecstatic, and Michele is magnanimous.
Fellow Yankees fans, I commiserate with you in these slap-happy times of distress and despair.
Pandora Up Close
Photo taken with a Canon Powershot A400.
Artsy NY/NJ Weekend
I was up in New York and New Jersey with Amy last weekend: Saturday morning at the Met to sketch some Old Masters, Saturday afternoon at the Forum Gallery to view the paintings of Paul Fenniak and Peter Greaves (we knew Peter from MICA; amazing artist — check him out), and Sunday at the Rahway Arts Guild for an opening in which Amy had a painting. Lots of art viewed, and we took some time at home to watch the new DVD editions of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.
I also went on a spree with the new camera. Here’s the visual fruit, including Amy and my reflection at a pizza place near Lexington and 57th, and a highly original photo of Grand Central, from an angle which I bet no one has ever thought of before.
