how now brownpau
This is a pair of sandals I bought in the Philippines a long time ago. As you can see, they are branded “Brick’s,” which I think is supposed to look like “Birks.” Anyway, a strap just broke on this pair, in an un-shoe-goo-able spot, so I took a photo for posterity before throwing the sandals out, as they have served me semi-faithfully for almost a decade.
Sitting outside Rosslyn station waiting for the 38B bus because of Metro screwiness, I spied these three cabs lined up across the street:
Blue Top Cab, Yellow Cab, Red Top Cab. The three primary pigments.
(By the way, the bus took longer to get there than the wait for the Orange Line, though we weren’t sure of that because the above-ground train information screens were not working. Real nice.)
Ever since a recent bladder mishap led to the disposal of her regular hangout mat behind the video rocker, Pandora has taken to sleeping in and around the bedroom closet.
The wall, it is not for sitting.
(DoNotSit.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
It’s with some pride that I note my Cassini Iapetus animation got a small mention from NASA GSFC’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for September 15th, 2007. It’s not the main feature photo (that’s a red/blue 3D stereogram of the ridge) but I do get a link below it, on which, if my referrer log is any indication, a lot of people are clicking. So there’s another 15 minutes of fame for me, thanks to Cassini and Iapetus.
Here is an LOLIAPETUS just because I am feeling silly.
The site’s been getting lightly hit at intervals by a series of spam comments and referrers using multiple drug-based subdomains prefixed to a fix set of rotating .info domains. Pretty common and predictable spam strategy, and still just a few hits so far, but it may start ramping up, so those of you who want to keep the spam off your logs and entries, just add these domains to your keyword and URL blacklists:
pechenka.info, knizhechka.info, dorozhka.info, krantik.info, tumbochka.info, kolonochka.info, televizorchik.info
As far as I can tell, the spoofed traffic is being generated by some black-hat SEO package called Bucksogen, but I’m not too sure about that because their site is in Russian or Belarusian or Estonian or something.
Got Amy some dahlias at the farmers market.
(Dahlias.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
Back in the Philippines, six years after Joseph Estrada’s impeachment and popular ouster for corruption, the Sandiganbayan has finally delivered its verdict on the accused ex-President — guilty of plunder, though not guilty of perjury, and his co-accused son and ex-Senator has been found not guilty of complicity. The sentence is life imprisonment.
As expected, Erap and his lawyers are denouncing the verdict as biased and politically motivated — although one wonders why they previously made such a big show of submitting themselves to the court and having faith in a “not guilty” verdict while simultaneously calling the Sandiganbayan a biased “kangaroo court created to convict him.” The only contradiction more deafening than is this constant bragging that his true innocence is already decided “in the court of public opinion.” Ironically, it was via an unconstitutional court of public opinion that he was ousted in the first place, and an equally unconstitutional uprising that attempted to unseat his equally corrupt successor later on, and so the cycle of Philippine politics continues.
More from the BBC on his “prison,” pertinent text from Amee, and links from Manuel Quezon III. Update: And a hat tip with more links from MLQ3. Piece of historical trivia for you: I made the “kalbong Erap” image above in Photoshop with some help from a photo of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s head.
NASA/JPL’s Saturn probe Cassini has just completed a close flyby of Saturn’s oddly shaped black and white moon, Iapetus. I’ve been watching the raw image stream for photos of the moon, and there’s an especially striking sequence of wide angle shots from a close pass over the equatorial ridge, a giant mountain range which gives Iapetus its distinctive “walnut” shape. I pasted the ridge sequence images into ImageReady last night, and was able to make a simple flyover GIF animation: (Click to see it larger.)
Just for context, the highest of those mountains are up to 13 km high (8 miles or 42,650 feet in imperials), 1.5 times the height of Mt Everest on Earth.
More info from this JPL press release, and I note belatedly that Emily of the Planetary Society weblog also animated the flyover, beating me to the upload punch by a night. She has also stitched photos of the transition from light to dark on Iapetus.
Also posted to Slashdot.
Update: On a suggestion from someone in that Slashdot thread, I submitted this animation to NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, and it got posted as a link below the 3D stereogram, which is pretty cool. More here, plus LOLIAPETUS.
