how now brownpau
And now, I present to you my first two Photo Booth snapshots:
At right, the “Squeeze” effect is used to greatly exaggerate my hair and chin. At left, what looks like a simple disheveled self-portrait is actually a successful application of Photo Booth’s “Tired Guy in Bathrobe with Messy Shower-Hair” effect. I don’t look like that in real life. At all. Seriously. No lie.*
(* – Lie)
Yup, I got a new MacBook.
First off, a semi-postmortem on my faithful old G3/700 iBook, “Vizzini,” which dropped from a loosely zipped backpack onto a hardwood floor on 29 Dec 2007 while we were at Tali Beach. It has actually continued to work since then, but with an irretrievably broken CD drive, a screen that intermittently goes blank, and heavy black scratches on screen and casing. The iBook is almost six years old at this point, and due for replacing; I had hoped to hold out for new Montevina or Nehalem notebooks from Apple, but first there was the Montevina delay, then a MacMall limited sale event which included deep discounts on mid-range MacBooks with 4GB RAM preinstalled, so I jumped for one. It arrived last week.
The MacBook, which I have named “Hidalgo,” (after the Filipino painter) is a white Penryn Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz Rev E with 160GB HDD, 4GB RAM, GMA X3100 integrated video (144MB RAM shared), OS X 10.5 Leopard, and glossy screen. It’s a lovely machine; streamlined and solidly assembled, runs fast and smooth without any lag — click on an app in the dock, and the icon barely has time to bounce once before the app is open. The extra RAM is definitely a big help, and ensures that the computer is future-proofed for years to come. Plus, not only did MacMall preinstall the 4GB RAM, but the original 2x1GB sticks were included separately in the box, so we swapped out the RAM on Amy’s older MacBook (a lower-end 512MB Rev B) and upgraded that one, much to her joy.
The old iBook ran OS X 10.3.9, and I skipped over 10.4, so 10.5 is my first experience with many features introduced since then. I’m not sure I like “Stacks”, but it hasn’t been much trouble. I’ve kept Spaces off so far — don’t need more than one desktop — and I’m holding off on Time Machine till I can get a Time Capsule later on. I also have yet to try the new iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand. And Dashboard is new to me, though I don’t foresee it replacing functions for which I already have well-established web habits.
I adapted much faster to the wider keyboard than I expected, but the new function key bindings confused me, and I still get thrown off between what a key does by itself and with “Fn” pressed. Double-finger trackpad scrolling, however, is awesome and I have taken to it like second nature.
In the week I’ve had this MacBook I’ve carried it around in a backpack and already gotten it more scuffed than Amy’s MacBook, which she’s had for over a year, so I think I had better get a soft case, so as to keep this in better condition than the old iBook ended up in. I’m pretty happy with the MacBook (much happier than I was with the iBook on purchase), and I want this one to last a while.
(As for the old iBook, I stuck it under the bed with a USB webcam peeking out from the nightstand, and it now serves as a second cat-cam for the webcam page. VNC ensures I can still access it without pulling it out from under the bed.)
Coming soon: must-download software and first Photobooth pics.
(Little wooden figure on back of sign uploaded by brownpau.)
Seen outside the Hirshhorn Museum.
Not much to show this weekend other than a couple of blurry photos of Pandora looking up at the camera with her blue and green eyes, and rubbing her head on a couch leg:
Oh, and this quick snap of her looking perplexed at a new arrival to our home:
I had stopped writing for DC Metroblogging earlier this year, at a point when my posting frequency was down to about once a month and my work/home life simply did not give me time for it. There was no drama or conflict involved, just simple quiet lapsing into dormancy because I had too much on my plate.
I recently got back in on local weblog action, however, when I met up with my friend Tom Bridge to help start a new DC site, We Love DC — lovingly designed by John Athayde and coded up in WordPress by myself. The launch of We Love DC did involve some drama, as the current team of writers (not including myself, since I had left earlier for different reasons from theirs) simultaneously pulled a surprise public resignation from DC MB to move over to WLDC — a Fourth of July stunt which caused some anger. Being a nonconfrontational type, I’m kind of glad I threw in my writing hat before the conspiracy had surfaced, making me less implicit in it and guilty only of going where my friends were — though I still did support the “rebels” by doing their WordPress development work, which prompted this thought on my Internet alignment.
Anyway, check out We Love DC. Against my better judgement, my DC-interest writing pants are back on, and I’m an author on the site. Most of my material will be shorter snippets for the Daily Feed, but I’ll have an occasional longer feature, like my entry in the “Why I love DC” series.
My author archive, and my author feed, which I guess I should add to Feedburner or something.
Amy and I spent Sunday afternoon at the Botanic Garden. Despite it being the Fourth of July weekend tourist volume was tolerable, partly because USBG probably isn’t quite so high-demand, and it was near closing time. We spotted these two ladybugs mating in the flowers: (warning, real sex, not safe for work if you are a ladybug)
And a lovely grouping of sweet cinnamon flower buds:
Much more in the Fourth of July 2008 weekend photoset.
We stayed in for the Fourth of July, watching the fireworks from a friend’s apartment with a view towards the Mall. I set my camera on a tripod in time lapse mode to take a shot at 1-second intervals through the course of the show, while wget was simultaneously running on my computer and fetching a shot from the ABC7/NewsChannel8 city cam every two seconds. Both time lapse videos made for a fun sped-up fireworks show, made more whimsical with the addition of Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever played from a 1913 Edison Cylinder. Hopefully next year I can try for this effect from up close, if the weather cooperates.
As you can see from the photos, Pandora celebrated the Fourth of July in her customary aged feline manner, lying on the floor, dozing off, and occasionally rolling about.
The 2008 Folklife Festival covered Bhutan, NASA, and Texas. (Yeah, yeah, I know, NASA.) Time constraints caused us to miss the Texas part — in violation of that popular Southern precept, “Don’t miss with Texas” — but we got a lot out of Bhutan and NASA.
Bhutan
My first impression of Bhutan was “Wow, there sure is a lot of cheese and chili in their food,” while looking at the Bhutanese prepared by Indique Heights. We didn’t try the ema dhatsi, having just had lunch, but we did get some dumplings called momos, and helped a homeless old lady rooting through the trash get some for herself, too.
There were also the requisite arts and crafts — weaving, painting, calligraphy, blacksmithing, storytelling, cooking, pottery — and Bhutanese people in native garb wandering amongst the tourists, posing for photos and answering questions.
NASA
NASA anticipated questions concerning its participation in an event normally more geared toward traditional and native arts and culture with “Why is NASA at the Folklife Festival?” signs (PDF). It was more of a public relations venue for their 50th Anniversary, but amidst all the spaceflight technology there were interspersed personal touches and bits of history.
My favorite part of the whole experience was speaking with Ron Woods (aka “Dr. Space”), a NASA technician who has worked in the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs, doing spacesuit maintenance and flight equipment processing. This was a guy who had handled stuff worn by astronauts returning from the moon, sat with Deke Slayton in Mission Control (and later helped suit up Slayton for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project), and is the go-to guy for anything to do with Space Shuttle Orbiter hardware. It was great fun talking shop with him about spaceflight technology and history, and of course trying on parts of the Apollo spacesuit test article he had with him. Now that’s NASA folklife.
We were only able to go for an afternoon last week, and were unable to revisit yesterday due to the Fourth of July crowds, but what we saw was enough for a memorable experience. Full photoset from the 2008 Folklife Festival here.
Had a bit of a medical incident this morning which necessitated a 911 call and a ride to the hospital in an ambulance. Thanks to DC Engine Company No. 3 for the quick response, and thanks also to the emergency doctors, nurses, and techs at GWU Hospital for their thorough ministrations. Video and photos from a long, somewhat action-packed day:
And don’t worry, folks, Amy is just fine now; after being discharged she was even feeling spry enough to have a spicy Pakistani lunch at Mehran and do some grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s. We’ll be taking it easy for the Fourth of July.
