Two Fireworks Timelapses

2008-07-07.

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.

SD1000 time lapse, full size.

City web cam time lapse, full size.

Caturday!

2008-07-05.

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.

Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2008

2008-07-05.

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.

Ambulance, Hospital

2008-07-03.

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.

Metro Zamboni

2008-07-01.

Friday, around 7PM, Metro Center was crowded with people, and a WMATA guy was driving a huge floor-cleaning machine back and forth around the packed Shady Grove platform, pushing people out of the way, dangerously close to the platform edge.

Hey Metro, this couldn’t wait till later in the evening, like not right after the Friday night rush hour? It was an incredibly stupid, obnoxious sight.

Mobile Catchup

2008-06-28.

I’ve lately had to avoid posting directly to here from my mobile phone with the Flickr2Blog MMS feature, because T-Mobile seems to have altered the graphical signatures they surround MMS messages with such that MMS messes up when passing through Flickr’s filters. Hey, T-Mobile, fix that by not breaking your MMS with marketing cruft. So here’s some of the stuff I haven’t been posting straight from my phone — an m&m ice cream bar, a sign for “two piece of trout” at Chen’s Watergate, and the famous Ground Force One, a charter bus painted to look like the executive plane.

Chicks and Asses

2008-06-27.

Just a couple of fuzzy, shaky animal videos shot from my phone while on the go last week; at left, noisy adolescent blue jays scratching for food on the Capitol Lawn, and at right, passing by a pair of canalboat-towing mules on the C&O towpath in Georgetown:

Walking Home

2008-06-26.

I didn’t really feel like dealing with record-breaking Metro crowds after work today, so I braved the heat and walked home, pausing briefly at a farmer’s market in Penn Quarter to grab some cherries and a bouquet of summer flowers for Amy. Two snapshots and a short video from along the way:

At top left, crepuscular rays from the sun shining through clouds over Pennsylvania Ave NW. At top right, CCNV, the largest homeless shelter in DC. Below that, the scene from Lafayette Park looking across Penn Ave towards the White House, with the usual spectacle of tourists and protestors.

In the Dentist Chair

2008-06-26.

View from the dentist chair this morning, taken with my phone while I sat waiting for the oral surgeon to come in and check my mouth a week after the extraction of my wisdom teeth. The gums are fine, no dry sockets — just a “wet” socket that will fill in over time but needs constant rinsing to keep clean — and I was able to comfortably start on solid foods after this appointment.

Bush, Arroyo, Carrots, Sticks

2008-06-25.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was in town yesterday to pay a visit to our neighbor at 16th and Penn NW (funny guy from Texas, you should meet him sometime). Now, much has been made of a supposedly offensive statement he made — “I am reminded of the great talent of the- of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House” — but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t meant to be an insult or insensitive quip about second-class citizens doing menial labor. He was referring to Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford, a US-naturalized Filipina and the first female White House Executive Chef.

Much, much more fascinating to me was this fuzzily generic statement on Filipino counterterrorism measures:

The President has been very strong in having a carrots-and-sticks approach — “sticks,” of course, say we’re not going to allow for people to terrorize our citizens; the “carrot” approach is that there’s peace available.

I took that to be a misunderstanding of what I thought was the accepted symbolism of “carrot-and-stick” — that of a carrot dangling from a stick held in front of a donkey to keep it moving forward — but it turns out that the definition of this phrase is part of an ongoing controversy: old references take “carrot and stick” to mean classic reward/punishment discipline, while the dangling “carrot on a stick” is actually a more recent metaphor with little direct relation to “carrot and stick.” So hey, Bush got it right. Sort of.