The wall, it is not for sitting.
(DoNotSit.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
Iapetus GIF on APOD
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.
Creek.jpg
New .info Spam Run
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.
Dahlias.jpg
Got Amy some dahlias at the farmers market.
(Dahlias.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
Erap Guilty
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.
Iapetus Flyover GIF
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.
Recent “Reading” – Harry Potter
Earlier this year, with Deathly Hallows on the horizon and me not having read any Harry Potter books yet, I resolved to finish them all and see what I was missing in the world of contemporary British children’s fantasy literature.
I didn’t have the time to crack open a bunch of hardcovers, however, so I went for audio books from the library, ripped from CD to listen to on my iPod Shuffle. (Did I mention my wife works for the library? It’s awesome.) In this manner I was able to hear Jim Dale read every Harry Potter book in sequence, almost back to back, from March to July, while riding the Metro or walking between home and work or washing the dishes or doing other things which needed my hands and visual attention.
Some quick general thoughts on the whole series:
- Rowling does an okay job of illustrating teenage angst, but excels most at evoking a sense of delight and wonder from the quirky and absurd. Her prose for internal conflict and interpersonal drama, not too good.
- I do wish they had kept the name “Philosopher’s Stone” for U.S. audiences; the name has strong medieval connections, and those not in the know about the mythic stone could have stood to learn about it from the title.
- I was shocked at how much the movies omitted. Ron as Keeper, and Ron and Hermione as prefects in the fifth movie, for example.
- Order of the Phoenix was too long and needed editing.
- Deathly Hallows was mostly a disappointment, seemingly a progression of vignette-like scenes and expository text culminating in a climactic monologue.
- I can’t help but try to spot the Campbellian formula, especially Dumbledore as the Gandalfish, Obi-Wan-like wizened mentor figure who dies or departs to free the protagonist to find his own path to heroism.
Lest I sound too negative, I must hasten to point out that I was pleased with Harry Potter overall, suffered no doubts or conflicts about my Christian faith and reading about sorcery and witchcraft in children’s fiction, and thoroughly enjoyed listening to the books. At the end of it all, I still regard the first book as one of the best ones of the series.
AMT.jpg
Flower Macro
Taken with Amy’s camera (a Canon Powershot SD450) in the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden (right near where we got engaged). I forgot what kind of flowers these are, but they have a fried egg kind of color, don’t they? And look at the little square buds.