OK/Cancel: Funny up-and-coming online comic about an HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) Designer. Any graphic designer who has worked with hardcore, UI-challenged programmers should identify immediately with this one. (via anil’s daily links.)
Tight Circles
Taikonaut
China launches a spaceman. Based on feedback on Metafilter and Slashdot, I would describe the general reaction as “guarded, magnanimous optimism.” The community is ebullient with congratulations to China, but there’s an underlying current of “Oh no, them thar oppressive Communists is a-beatin’ us at our own game!”
Seriously, it takes money, will, and guts to launch such an ambitious space endeavor — ambition which our own space program seems to have lost in a mess of budget cuts and gray hair. Come on, NASA! When will we be seeing that Space Plane? A Moon Base? A Mars Base?
Whales! Mate!
In Finding Nemo, there’s a part where Marlin and Dory meet a humpback whale right in the turbid waters of Sydney Harbor. At that part, I commented to Amy that such things could not possibly happen near a big city port.
Well, I was wrong. Turns out it’s a fairly common occurrence down there.
Followup: Blogged at Shalom’s. Australia really is an action-packed place, ain’t it?
Relocation to Miscellaneous
In the early days of web building, it was considered good practice to offer your visitors free downloads like branded screensavers and desktops, to build recognition and make your site more “sticky.” That was the rationale behind the download section in my earlier sites. These days, however, such software gimmickry is better relegated to the background in favor of more compelling content — such as that provided by, oh, perhaps, a weblog.
My downloads, however, continue to attract no small number of hits from old directory listings, and as such deserve to remain somewhere on my site. Hence, I have moved the link to the download page, with its old-fashioned desktop tiles and Win9x splash screens, off the front page and into the Miscellaneous section.
(Also moved to Miscellaneous: archives of Pula.ph and the Prepaid Cards Blog. And of course, Ang Dating Daan’s Kaanib.net lives on.)
Twenty-Seven Today
On a completely unrelated note, my wishlist.
Will Ever Be, Will Ever Be, Will Ever Be
Yesterday at choir we practiced “Thou O Jehovah Abideth Forever” from the Four Motets of Aaron Copland. Personally, I have a hard enough time just listening to Copland, so I expected the singing of his work, with all its atonal post-romantic dissonance, to be musical torture. And at first, it was. But it was kind of fun, too.
After church and practice were done, it was another one of those achingly pretty days when the sun is out and the sky is blue and the temperature is exactly 72.5°F, so I went running around the National Mall for a bit, after which I sat on the grass in front of Air and Space and had a hotdog.
A Golden Galaxy
Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / Nor hurt nor torment cometh them anigh / O holy hope of immortality / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / To eyes of men unwise, they seem to die / They are at peace, O fairest liberty / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / On earth as children chastened by Love’s rod / As gold in furnace tried / So now on high, they shine like stars, a golden galaxy / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God.
“Souls of the Righteous,” T. Tertius Noble
Treasures Aplenty
Amy came to DC this morning, with a cake and presents for an early birthday mini-celebration. We met up with my uncle, aunt, and a distant niece, then passed by Beekman, the townhouse compound on Meridian Hill which was my Washington pied-a-terre on my arrival last year.
As my uncle and aunt saw to some business, Amy and I wandered over to a nearby yard sale, where she found a fireplace duster and a little round jar, and I got a large magnifying glass and two CDs: Nathan Milstein’s 1946 LOC recital and Welsh Male Voice Choirs. All for under $8.
After a spicy lunch at Bua, the whole group sauntered over to the FBC parking lot to check out the Fall Festival, where, o joy of joys, the church library was sponsoring a giant book sale. Long after my uncle, aunt, and distant niece had left, Amy and I were scouring the tables — especially the one labeled “Free Books,” which was laden with decades-old almanacs, old National Geographic atlas inserts, and bibles and devotionals with hip 1960s covers. We went home with The First Man in Rome, The Wind in the Willows, and an encyclopedic 1971 Almanac.
Amy and I dropped off these treasures at my apartment, then walked across the Mall (I love my location!) to Air and Space to view the newly opened Wright Brothers exhibit. When we had had enough of the early days of flight, we walked back out, spread our jackets out on the grass of the Capitol Lawn near the Summer House, and watched tourists go by while we talked.
Then we had cake and tea.
It was a good day.
Wright
The original Wright flyer, on display at a special Wright Brothers exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum. That is not, however, an original Wright Brother flying it.
Photo taken with a Palm Zire 71.