Rhonda Vincent album covers

Some time ago I had posted about buying Rhonda Vincent's newest (at the time) album Taken.  I got an email from Amazon a few days ago notifying me that she's releasing a new album later this month--which I intend to buy also, and I got curious about her back catalog.  I really wouldn't mind getting all these albums because I like her music so much, but that isn't the point of this post.  I don't know what the point is, really, except to point out that there has been a definite evolution in her appearance through the years.

She started out as a member of her family's band, called The Sally Mountain Show.  They're still around, although they perform without her now most of the time since she's gone solo.  Here's an album of theirs from 1986 with her pictured in the center holding the fiddle.  She's a multi-instrumentalist, so she isn't always pictured with the same instrument.

The next one is from 1990. She looks the same; even looks like an identical hairstyle.  I'd say both of these photos make her look something like a pretty deacon's wife dressed up for Sunday morning church.

One year later, same look. This album was released with her family band although she had just begun to go solo.

This was released the same year, 1991, so understandably she still looks pretty much the same.

The next was also released in 1991--three in the same year. Okay, so something has changed a little. The denim clothing and a not-so-carefully-coifed hairstyle has her looking much more relaxed, although still quite, how shall I say, wholesome.

1993, and something has certainly changed. Her hair color has gone from brunette to auburn, and there is a noticeable addition of vividly-colored lipstick. I'm not saying she wasn't wearing it in the previous photos, it's just very prominent here. And the style of photography has changed her appearance from pretty to sexy.

Then from 1996. Gone forever is that tightly-managed 80s hair, although it's hard to tell if it's still auburn or if she went back to brunette. I notice that the photographer used a shallow depth of field to throw pretty much everything but her face out of focus. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Four years later, 2000. Hair color seems to be almost black and a kind of challenging expression has replaced the stock smile.

Now in 2001, her hair has gone auburn again. The lighting and the depth of field places all emphasis tightly on her face. A slight over-exposure washes out most of her face but makes her clear blue eyes really stand out.

2003. Boom. Noticeable change with this one. Under her jacket is a tight top that emphasizes her bust and shows a streak of tummy.

Boom boom. The sweet deacon's wife is nowhere to be found in this one from 2005.  Her hair appears almost tousled, not coifed at all, and although her arm is blocking the view, her plunging neckline leaves much to the imagination.

Holy...! From 2006.  An almost wild rock-star mane and a dress that leaves nothing--or everything--to be desired.  She looks like she just put her mandolin down because she's about to ravish you.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.   Bluegrass has come a long way since Flatt & Scruggs.

A somewhat more demure appearance on this one from 2008.  And by "somewhat more demure" I mean a "your friend's totally hot mom" look.

In 2009, we get a tight close-up of her face and bare shoulders. Bare shoulders.

And then...uh...yeah. Okay, from 2010. For some reason this album cover always distracts me.

So finally we get to her upcoming album, Sunday Mornin' Singin'.  This is an album of "gospel," or at least gospel-related songs, so I think she has chosen wisely to go back to the pretty deacon's wife look.  A quite demure white dress that almost looks like a very conservative wedding dress.

What will the future hold?  I only hope her next album is titled Saturday Night Hoedown.

I guess that's one way to get your business noticed

So there I was...

Doing my job, minding my own business on a quiet day in a quiet neighborhood with no packs of vicious dogs roaming the streets, no panhandlers, no reverse vampires that can come out in the daytime, not much traffic to speak of, no pink cars....YAAAUUUGGGHHH!!!

I promise I don't go out looking for these things. They're everywhere.

"Resurrect Dead" documentary

Trailer:




I had come across what's called "the Toynbee tiles phenomenon" some time ago, reading various weird stuff on the internet.  I watched this documentary this morning on Netflix.  Good show.  They pretty much solve the who and even the how, although not the why.  I suspect the why is because the guy is nuts.  But he's harmless, so more power to him.

Just wanted to throw this out there

According to the medical examiner's report, the guy in Florida who ate the homeless man's face had no drugs in his system except plain old marijuana.

Unless you believe that MJ can affect you like it did those people in Reefer Madness, this makes his actions pretty much unexplained.

A thing I found

I found this lying in the street yesterday, so I brought it home to take pictures of it.

I assume it's a key ring, but when I first saw it from a distance I thought it was a fishing lure.

Another horribly pink car

The colors in these two shots aren't the same because I was moving and the angle of the sunlight was changing.  Neither is entirely accurate to the actual hue of this monstrosity, and for that you should be grateful.

Another forgotten TV show

I was just reminded of this one by the blog Great But Forgotten:  Wizards and Warriors.  A very short-lived swords & sorcery comedy from 1983.  Starred Jeff Conaway after Taxi and Julia Duffy before Newhart. Even my dad, who never had any truck with fantasy/sci-fi programs, liked this show because it was really funny.  I think it may have been even funnier for me than for him because of my D&D playing history.

News flash: I was wrong about something

In a bygone post I had mentioned that Liam Neeson had a minor role in the movie The Sword and the Sorcerer.  Well, I was updating my Netflix queue recently and noticed that that movie had moved from the "saved" category into the actual queue, which means it is now available from them on DVD.  I moved it to the top of the queue of course, and was checking out information about it at imdb.  Liam Neeson was not the person I was thinking of.  The character I was referring to was played by Simon MacCorkindale, who you may remember better (but probably not) as "Manimal."*

I'm still kinda peeved that you can't stream it, but you can stream frikkin' Krull.  Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing Matt Houston beat up on Bull Shannon.



*I have never been able to forget his name, although I had him confused on this point.  As I once told a friend of mine, "how can you forget a name like Simon MacCorkindale?"

Probably of very little interest to anyone

Just got a tip from one of my distant kinfolk about this entry at Wikipedia.  The man this place is named for and I are both descendants of one Friedrich Treybig, which was my grandmother's grandfather or possibly great-grandfather, I always forget.  But I have it all written down somewhere.

A couple of work pix

I had my regular cycle 15 today (Sunset Station).  I had seen this one before, I think its owner drives it to work a lot, but not always.  I don't usually get all gushy over automobiles, but wow this is a cool truck.

And the train.  Someday I'd like to get some shots of this with a real camera.

Scrabble idea

Someone has probably already done this, but it occurred to me recently.

Several months ago I splurged for $3.99 and downloaded a Scrabble game for my phone.  Since it's not a smart phone, it's not a "play against your friends" kind of game.  It does have a pass & play option so you can pass it to another person and play a two-player game in real life.  Or you can play solitaire or against the computer.  Someday I might have to post a rant about how this game must have been programmed by a semi-literate, politically correct feminist, but now is not the time for that.

My idea would have to be played on an old-fashioned board with real tiles and so forth because the electronic versions are all hard-wired to prevent anyone breaking the rules.  So here it is.

Play as normal, except:  words/names (yes, proper nouns!) are allowed, but only if they appear in The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings.  If you play a word/name that appears only in Hobbit/LotR (or at least originated there), you get bonus points.  Which means it could be a multiplier or just a straight specific amount of bonus points, I'd go either way.  Alternatively, words/names that are specific to any sci-fi/fantasy book could be allowed if the players all agreed.  Except if anyone spells a word or name from any of the Shannara books you lose points.

I must admit that I sometimes pass up a higher scoring word just so I can spell a word that I think is cool--exeunt, for example.  Although if you can put that on a word multiplier it adds up pretty well since X is an 8-point letter.  And recently I got away with using "taxon," which I wasn't evens sure was a word on its own.  Anyway I think it would be really cool to be able use "Bilbo" or "M*rg*th."  I suppose there would be arguments as to whether such words as "shire" would get you bonus points or not (I would say no).

By the way, so far my best single word was "squinted," for which I got 122 points.  Not that I actually can remember that kind of detail, but the game keeps track of that.  I've been able to use all 7 letters three times.

I still haven't been able to use "zymotic" or "squamous," although I did manage to play "gibbous" once.

"Rare photo of bee sting in action"

They think this may the first time this has ever been photographed, although it has been known for centuries.

Also note the newspaper:  The Sacramento Bee.

I must ask, however, about this sentence:

Garvey has bees in her blood: As dairy farmers, her father and grandfather kept bees to pollinate their orchards. She said bees have been in her family since around 1850.

What does dairy farming have to do with bees?  It would have made more sense to say "as fruit farmers, her father...etc."

Cool photo, anyway.

Shopping carts in the wild

Wild shopping carts continue to thrive even in the barren wastelands of Naco-Perrin.  Here we see a pair of common steel carts engaging in their mating ritual, while a rarely-seen yellow cart keeps watch from a safe distance.

The comments I get...

Whenever I hear someone recycle that old adage "there's no such thing as a stupid question," my reply is always, "you don't spend much time on the internet, do you?"

Whitetail buck

I had to go feed the deer today, and took some photos while I was there. I think this is the best one. More at my Flickr photostream.  Also one photo of a squirrel who sneaked in to grab a couple of bites of that sweet, rich, high-protein buck feed.

I saw something today that was not able to get a photo of.  I took a walk around my dad's tank (pond for non-Texans) and spooked a young killdeer out of the grass.  He was apparently not quite able to fly.  I tried to get a shot of him, but he was too fast and wily for me.  That's the first time I've ever seen a young killdeer.

Photo stuff

I've been taking lots of photos that I haven't posted on this blog.  If anyone wants to follow my photographic adventures, check out With Camera Eye.

Also here's the link to my Flickr photostream.

This fills me with an indefinable terror

From the Ear-Trumpet, of course.

Mission Espada photographs

One of the deals you get when you buy a car from DriveTime is 3 free oil changes per year for 3 years at Sears Automotive.  So today I went in to get my free oil change, and had a nice morning nap in their waiting room for about an hour.  I had dragged my son along with me for company.  Fortunately they had their waiting room TV on some channel that showed a program about a grey whale that was rescued and rehabilitated by Sea World in San Diego and that kept him interested while we waited.  We had gone to the Sears at South Park Mall for the work, so it was just a quick trip from there to Mission San Francisco de la Espada.  I just wanted to drop by there for a few minutes for photography practice.  Most San Antonians probably already know about Mission Espada, but if you're not from around here you can read about it at the above link.


The chapel main entrance.  Sometimes, especially if you go there on a weekday, you can also go inside and look around, but today they had baptisms going on and we stayed outside.  This is still used by an active parish, as are all of the missions except for the Alamo.

It was not a good time of day to be there--around midday, so it made for some rather harsh lighting, but I wasn't going to schedule a special late afternoon trip to take pictures--at least not today.



Here's another shot of the chapel front in portrait.


Zoomed in on the bells.  It appears that the arch over the top bell was rebuilt from different materials (bricks instead of stones) at some later date.  One of the things I have noticed since I started taking lots of photos is that I notice many details in the photo that I missed when I was on site.  I've been to this place several times and I hadn't noticed the brick thing before.  Today the glare was pretty bad and I don't think I could have noticed it with my naked eyes anyway.


This was the photo I most wanted to capture and I took numerous shots of it.

 
A portrait of the front door.  This may sound strange, but I have always been kind of fascinated by large, heavy wooden doors and their immediate surroundings.  Yeah, now that I've actually typed it out loud, it does sound strange, but there it is.  If you click through and view the full size version on my Flickr site, you should be able to see lots of wood-grainy goodness.

There isn't much else to see here; this is the smallest of all the missions.  There are still some walls left of the various living quarters, but if I remember correctly, when this was built it was never completely finished as it was intended to be, so some of the ruins are of walls that were never really finished anyway.  I hope to revisit the other missions over time and post some photos of them as well.

Well, when we finished, I took the back road out that comes out on...Villamain!  I wanted to show my son the "haunted train tracks."  Now, as you already know if you read this blog, I have a meter route that crosses those tracks and goes a little way up Villamain and ends right where that road from Espada comes out, but it's usually about 8:30 on a weekday morning when I go through there, and I have never seen anyone doing the "track thing" when I was there.  Today was different.  As soon as I turned onto Villamain I could see a group of people standing at the crossing, with one other person parked in a minivan on the tracks.  They were doing the track thing.  My conversation with my son went something like the following.

(approaching the tracks)
Me:  You ever heard that story about the haunted tracks, where the ghost kids push your car off the track if you stop on them?
Son:  Yeah.
Me:  Well, this is it.  Those people there are trying to see if their car will roll off the tracks.
Son:  Why?
Me:  The kid ghosts are supposed to push your car off the tracks so you don't get hit by a train.
(we turned the corner and passed them; I saw the back of their minivan slathered with baby powder)
Me:  Look!  Look!  They even have baby powder all over the back of their car!
Son:  Why'd they do that?
Me:  You're supposed to be able to see the handprints of the kids in the powder after they push your car off the tracks.
Son:  [facepalm]

My son's expression when he facepalmed himself made the whole trip even more worthwhile.  Priceless.

Zoinks!

I've been playing around with my camera pretty much every day.  Today's what if was "what if I try to photograph my glow-in-the-dark t-shirt?"

This is not a song from my childhood

Corky and the Juice Pigs - Eskimo

I don't know why I thought of this song today, and I don't remember where I originally heard it, but I have the impression it was on some NPR program.  Or possibly a Canadian program, from back when the local NPR affiliate used to carry Canadian news programs at night because they had nothing better to do.  Either way, it still cracks me up.

photoshop

I haven't done any "photoshops" in a long time--except I use Gimp because I can't afford Photoshop.  But anyway, when I saw this old painting I couldn't resist.  The guy looks so much like Tom Baker to me.  I also put this on Facebook, but I doubt that more than 1 or 2 people there will "get" it.

Lovecraft's Worlds

Just a brief post to point out Lovecraft's Worlds, which you will probably not be too interested in unless you are a fan of weird fantasy from Lovecraft's era.  I guess you could say it's a somewhat technical blog about all the many places in Lovecraft's stories as well as stories of other associated authors.

Some forgotten TV shows

Last night I somehow got into one of those internet things where I was trapped on imdb.com for a while, looking up forgotten TV shows.  Sometimes I still wish there was some way I could see these again, but for the most part, they have never been released on DVD or even VHS.  Anyone remember any of these?

The Manhunter:  1974.  This one starred Ken Howard (later of The White Shadow).  There was also a pilot movie before the series.  He played a WWI vet who turned bounty hunter during the Great Depression.  He kept a frikkin' arsenal of 1930s-era firearms tucked away in all sorts of clever hiding places in his car.  I remember one scene in which he needed to transport a criminal but didn't have any way to secure him, so he stopped at the first hardware store he could find and bought a bear trap (bear traps being a standard in-stock item at hardware stores in Kansas during the Depression, apparently) and rigged it up with a stick and some rope in his back seat so the criminal's foot was in the partially propped-open trap.  The bad guy said, "If I move, that thing'll break me leg!"  He told the guy, "I guess you better not move, then."  When I was 10 years old, that was high comedy.  I still think it's pretty funny.  This lasted 23 episodes (plus the original movie) before it got the axe.

The White Shadow:  I don't think I need to say anything about this one.  Most people probably remember it.  I watched it regularly.

And while I'm on the subject of Ken Howard, did anyone ever see the TV movie he made about Father Damien?  I thought that was a pretty good movie, but the only time I ever saw it was when it originally aired in 1980.

Lucan:  1977, 12 episodes.  Somewhat of a ridiculous premise:  a young boy is lost in the wilderness of  Minnesota and rescued and raised by wolves.  At the age of 10, he is found and brought back to civilization by a friendly doctor.  The series begins when he is a young man, pursued by an obsessive cop who thinks Lucan committed a crime that he is really innocent of.  He doesn't have any super-powers, but under stress reverts to more animalistic behavior--basically turning into a creature of pure fight-or-flight instinct--he can run very fast, jump quite high, and when angry his eyes turn red, if I remember correctly.  And he is a fearsome fighter when cornered.  When I was 13 I loved this show.

The Master:  1984.  Okay, this show was pretty dumb, and the fighting sequences were terrible, but I really liked it.  I never could see Timothy Van Patten as anything other than Salami from White Shadow, but even back then I would watch and love anything with Lee Van Cleef in it.  He played a guy who was the only "occidental American" (in the show's words) to be trained as a ninja.  He came back to the U.S. to look for his missing daughter, and hooked up with Van Patten's character who he began to train in the ninja ways, or something, and they got into all kinds of misadventures together.  By the way, if you click on that link you can see a graphic of some old VHS release with Demi Moore's (as a teenager) picture on it.  She was never on any episode of that show.  The only reason for this that I can think of, and I'm just guessing, is maybe they used a photo of her for the Master's long-lost daughter.  I also don't understand why imdb lists Van Patten as appearing in only 6 episodes, because he was in them all.  It managed to struggle on for a mere 13 episodes before disappearing from the face of the earth.

It's Your Move:  Also from 1984, this sitcom starred a young Jason Bateman as Matthew Burton, a teenage evil genius who was constantly scheming for money and to gain power over the dimwits who surrounded him.  This show was hilarious.  It lasted only 18 episodes, and culminated in a two-parter about a rock band called The Dregs of Humanity, who always appeared on stage in heavy, macabre makeup, often obscured by special lighting and fog effects.  The catch was, the Dregs weren't real, but were essentially life-sized marionettes  manipulated by Burton and his sidekick/assistant Eli.  Unfortunately, I was never able to see the conclusion of this story and I don't know what ultimately happened with the Dregs.  I also seem to remember a minor character who may have appeared on only one episode, a young girl named Enid, who either wanted to be or thought she was a horse.  But I may be getting her confused with some other forgotten show.

Spencer:  1984 again.  Two years before Ferris Bueller was a wise-cracking teen who broke the fourth wall and directly addressed the viewer, Spencer Winger was doing it.  Spencer was played by Chad Lowe, who left the show after 7 episodes because of a contract dispute.  He was recast with some other guy and the show was renamed and went immediately and directly down the toilet.  Thirteen episodes total, but only the ones with Lowe are fit to watch.  Really funny.

Parker Lewis Can't Lose:  73 epiodes and it's not on Netflix?  WTF?!

By the way, why hasn't the full run of Benson been released on DVD?  And why isn't Forever Knight on Netflix?

The Famous Teddy Z:  1989, a sitcom starring Jon Cryer.  Married With Children ran for, what, like 65 years and this only lasted 20 episodes?

Stressed Eric:  This was a British animated sitcom from 1998 that ran for 13 episodes and which someone thought would be good for American television.  I knew that from the first minute of its broadcast in the states that it was doomed.  I watched every episode they aired here, but they showed only a few of them.  This is probably the only half-hour sitcom-like show that made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to pass out from lack of oxygen.  Good news, though:  I discovered that you can watch six of the episodes for free online at Hulu.  I haven't yet, but I will.  I only hope one of them is the one with the exploding horse.

Does anyone remember the 1990 TV series version of The Flash?  A curious thing that I remember about this show was that, although it was set in contemporary times, all the cars were old, like from the 50s.  I don't know why they did that, but it was cool.  Also, Amanda Pays.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot TV101.  1988, 13 episodes, starred Jason Robards' son Sam.  I thought that was a cool show, too.

And of course, let us not forget the great Max Headroom.  Far too smart for its time.  Even in this watered-down format, most people just couldn't take such a dystopian cyberpunk view of the future, which deep down they knew was going to really happen, and happen soon (20 minutes into the future).  I so miss this show.  Also, Amanda Pays.

I think it's one of those Coke/New Coke/Classic Coke type conspiracies

Does anyone else remember when you used to go into a music store, and have to decide if you were going to go all the way and spend $17 for the CD, or if you were just taking the cheap way out and get the record for $9.99?

My curiosity is killing me

I am just dying to know what make of car is being kept underneath this cover.  Aren't you?

The bullnettle

With all the flower photos I have been taking around my house, for lack of anything better to photograph, I felt compelled to shoot this fine specimen.  This plant also has small white blossoms, but they are past the flowering stage now.  I know from experience that these don't grow much in the S.A. area, but they are common and cursed out here in the sandhills.

Once I mentioned this plant to a co-worker, and he had never seen one, so I cut one off and took it to work with me the next day to show to him.  He was impressed, I guess, if that's the right word.  I put it back in my truck and he asked me why I didn't just throw it in the trash.  I told him I wasn't going to take a chance with it escaping into the wild in S.A. because I didn't want to be responsible for that.

There are lots of "regular" nettle plants that grow in the S.A. area, but the pain they can inflict if you accidentally bump into one is so minimal that I don't even consider them as real threats.  If you ever bump into one of these, you will know about it.

This plant is called a bullnettle.  By the way, I learned from my grandmother that those big clumpy-looking things on them, which she called "bullnettle nuts," are technically edible, but in my opinion getting at the "meat" is more trouble than it's worth.  Although I have done it, to satisfy my own curiosity.  I used leather work gloves and two pocket knives.

Dave, if you read this, this plant also probably grows in the area of your new home.  They are very hard to get rid of, and I learned from a very young age to simply avoid them.  When I was a kid, we had one very large specimen--it would have put this one to shame--that kept coming back after it was cut off.  So one day my dad decided to dig out the root.  The thing he eventually pulled out of the ground was about 4 feet long and probably 5 inches thick at its thickest point, and he didn't even get the whole root.  He cut it off deep in the ground and re-buried it, and that was enough to finally kill it.

Once when I was a teenager, I was helping my dad to herd our cows and as I was running around to cut them off and head them in the right direction, I was paying too much attention to the cows and not looking where I was going.  I ran right over one of these that was waist-high on me and got the full effect of it in both legs.  Man, that hurt.

Z/28

A phone shot from yesterday.

The eyes! The dead, staring eyes!

I stumbled across this inexplicable scene of papier-mâché horror today somewhere on W. Laurel.  At least they died smiling.

Old safe

I saw this on Steves near S. Presa last Friday.

Riverwalk expansion construction

I took this with my phone today.  This is a shot of some of the Riverwalk expansion construction from a spot that most people will never go--and really have no reason to go there--unless you live there or are reading the water meter.  The location is about right here.  For a long time this meter never got used, until the construction began and then the meter was replaced with a new one and now it gets used all the time.  I think it was originally for irrigation of the riverbank area but I'm not completely sure.*  It's most likely now being used for the construction work, because all of the new Riverwalk irrigation is going to be with recycled water.  If you ever go by some place where they're doing construction and you see a network of purple pipes all over the place, that's the future irrigation system.  All irrigation pipes, meters, etc., are that color of purple.  If you click to enlarge and look closely just to the right of center, you can see the Tower of the Americas peeking over the treeline.

By the way, all of the S.A. golf courses used recycled water for irrigation, too.  The Toyota plant and some of the other businesses that cover a lot of area also use recycled irrigation water--for example that big bakery out on highway 87 east.


*There are a lot of old irrigation meters scattered around that were put there long ago, before the recycling project began, and are now just sitting there, unused for years--even decades.  Many of the islands in the downtown area were originally equipped with irrigation, but then later they were bricked or paved over to reduce water usage, and the old meters are still there, doing nothing.

Lantana close-up

Lantana in my "front yard," if you can call it that.  Today's camera practice.  In the area where I live, which is known as "the sandhills" because of the extremely sandy soil, lantana does not grow wild.  Our property was briefly owned by someone else before we bought it, and although whoever it was never put a house on it, he did install a water meter and a septic tank before putting it back up for sale.  I think he must have planted this lantana bush too, because it's the only one I've seen growing anywhere around here.

We meter readers usually refer to this as !@#$%^& lantana because of the way it likes to swarm over water meters.  I've also seen a lightly bluish-purple variety growing in yards and flower beds around S.A., and I would actually like to get some of that because the color is much more agreeable to me than orange and yellow.

I adjusted the contrast on this because the intense sunlight here tends to bleach the colors out.  I also scaled it down to 1024x768 because I didn't think a big 3000+ pixel graphic was really necessary.

By the way, I was going to only buy a 4 gig card for this camera, but they had a 16 gig card on sale for only $5 more, so I got it instead.  Even at the high-res setting, that 16 gig card will hold well over 7,000 pictures.  Holy cow.

Smoke angel

My first attempt at photographing smoke.  I'll try a better setup some other time.  Not good enough to put on my Flickr photostream, but okay for the blog, I guess.

Another flower

I don't know what this flower is, it's just another of those flowers that I always see.  So I'm kind of ashamed I don't know the name of it.  I found a flower on the internet called the coneflower that looks similar to it, but the coloration wasn't the same.  I'm going to have to get a good book on Texas wildflowers so I can ID all these things.

I took a walk around the place today with the camera to see what I could see, and well, there isn't much to photograph in the back of the place--just very dense brush.  I kept my eyes on the ground to see if I could find a copperhead back there in the leaves, but not today.  I ended up taking 66 photos and there were only two that I thought were fit for anyone to see, and they are both of this flower but from different angles.  You can see the other one at my photostream.

Sunrise reflecting from the Alamodome

I took this about 7:00 yesterday morning from S. Cherry.  The fuzzy ghost at the bottom is either my gloved finger or part of the new case that I recently got for my phone.  It was obscuring the camera lens and I was still figuring out how to work around it.  I worked it out today with a couple of other pix.

I don't get it

Another phone photo, so it was very overexposed in the bright sun yesterday, but that's a caricature of Ben Franklin with a pipe wrench, or that's what it's supposed to be, anyway.

Is there a Franklin/plumbing connection of which I am unaware?

Another song from my childhood

Okay, I can tell you why I remembered this one. I don't remember how it started, but I saw a picture of the group of Greasers from The Outsiders and couldn't identify them all, so I looked it up on imdb.com (the one I couldn't ID was Rob Lowe).  I saw in the credits that Gailard Sartain had been in it, so I looked him up to see what all of his acting credits were.  Then I hopped over to Wikipedia and looked up Hee Haw, which led me to this song.



For some reason I was always fascinated by that guy playing the snare drum.  My favorite Hee Haw girl was the one in the black dress with the long black hair.  What was her name?  I wonder who that skinny woman with the big glasses was.  I don't remember her.

Squirrel drinking from bird bath

Taken through the front door glass. High zoom (partly digital), so the quality isn't all there, but not bad I guess.  I retouched this one a little.

Two more pix

Another black-eyed susan. I know I already posted one yesterday, but they grow in wild abundance around my house and give me lots of opportunities to practice macro photography. This one was not edited at all, unlike the one I posted yesterday, which I cropped and adjusted the colors a little to make it brighter and deeper. This one is SOOC (straight out of the camera), with some tiny feeding insect on it.



Here is another of my cameras, a Pentax Spotmatic F, mid-70s era (Pentax stopped making the Spotmatic in 1976, and I think the F model was the last of the variations, or nearly the last).  Of course this one is fully manual with no zoom capability.  I also have an early-90s era Minolta but the Pentax has more character.  When I get roped into taking pictures of some family event, I usually load the Minolta with 100 or 200 ISO film and use it for outdoors, and load the Pentax with 400 ISO for use indoors without a flash.

My wife and I purchased the Minolta when we were first married so we would have a good camera for preserving memories.  The acquisition of the Pentax is more storied.  Back in the early 90s one of my cousin-in-laws was busted for possession of an illegal substance that starts with "m" and of course all his property was confiscated by the state as part of their war on drugs racket.  Everything, that is, except his boat, which was docked at Canyon Lake and was therefore overlooked since he didn't offer any information about it.  This camera was in the boat.  He gave my dad the boat and all its contents in return for bailing him out of jail.  My dad wasn't really interested in learning how to properly use the camera so he turned it over to me (my dad kept the boat).  I was able to gather from reading a book on photography that this camera had a light meter and required a battery for the meter to operate, so I took it to a camera shop that used to be on Gulfdale to find out what battery I needed.  The original battery that this camera used is no longer made because it was made with mercury, and had a kind of odd rating of 1.3 volts, but the guy there had already worked on this model and made a small conversion that allowed it to use a modern 1.5-volt battery of the same physical size, which didn't cost me very much at all.  I was able to download a pdf of the original manual recently, which was nice.

I'll have to ask my wife where all our photos are stashed.  I might be able to find a few that are fit to be scanned and shared.

New camera and some sample pix

I have been almost desperate for a decent digital camera for some time now, and have been doing a lot of research and deciding how much I could afford to spend. Today I got a Canon Powershot SX150 at Best Buy. The price had been marked down to $149. This is only a wild guess, but I think the price reduction on this one must be because it's about to be replaced by a newer model. Original price for it was $249.

I still have a lot to learn about using it--by the way it's definitely not a DSLR, but it's somewhat more sophisticated than a basic point & shoot. Anyway, you can expect there to be a lot of gratuitous amateur photography here in the future.




 I think this guy is a Texas Spotted Whiptail lizard.  I just got lucky and spooked him into some leaves as I was walking down the driveway.  I took several pix of him, and in this one I caught him with his eyes closed.  Blinking?  The way this camera works in auto mode is it uses optical zoom until the optical zoom is at its maximum, and if you keep zooming from there it switches to digital zoom.  I try to stay away from digital zoom but this one still looks pretty good even with some digital zoom involved.




 Indian Blanket.  This one and the one below I cropped for a better aspect.




Black-Eyed Susan.





This is my favorite for today.  By the way, anyone want a puppy?  We have three, all male, two black and one brown.

I'm really happy how sharp these turned out.

Poured what over the topic?

link

Okay, but

What if you have a door that you can lock without a key?  Then you'll just lock yourself out of your house.  Also, why on earth do you keep your shoes in the refrigerator?*



*Let's avoid the obvious quip:  "so he'll have some place to store his keys."  Thanks.

Yikes

Click.  Design your own settings if you want.  This map is based on a ground zero of the Tower of Americas, with a bomb the power of the first U.S. h-bomb.  Try the presets and see just how piddling the Nagasaki bomb was compared to what's possible now.

A good improvised terrorist bomb would utterly destroy downtown.  And that's no exaggeration.

A great xkcd comic

Even if you don't usually read the web comic xkcd, I recommend checking out this one, because it's quite imaginative, uses very clever rhymes, and is also funny.

I'm not really familiar with the"modern major general" song, although I have heard it, so I just used that "Super***" song.  Sing it out loud to yourself and it will be even better.

Bad analogies

My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck By Lightning has some of the worst analogies written by high school students.

Except...I really like #6.  I think I might steal it someday.

Christopher Bowes official video: David Tennant's Hands

Christopher Bowes is the lead singer of Alestorm, the pirate metal band which I've mentioned before.  This is completely different.  Bowes goes into crooner mode while playing along with an electronic organ.  The full album is available for a free legal download; link at YouTube.  I got quite a good laugh out of this.

A rare post about art

As great a work of art as da Vinci's The Last Supper is, it has always seemed somehow awkward to me.  Just now I have realized why.  I suppose Leonardo wanted to get everyone's faces in the picture, and that's why it is the way it is, but doesn't look a little too much staged?

It's like when on a TV show, there's always one side of the table that is vacant:  the side toward the camera.  It's easier to film that way, and let's face it, no actor on a TV show wants to sit with the back of his head toward the camera.  That's what Da Vinci's painting looks like to me.

I just realized this because I have just seen The Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist by Nicolas Poussin.  Doesn't it look so much better?  A close, secluded, poorly-lighted room rather than that bright, airy space of da Vinci's.  And let's face it, if you were one of the apostles, wouldn't you move your seat somewhere nearer Jesus if you saw that one whole side of the table was empty?

Signs

Clearing out some work pix.

I'm familiar with the phrase "cleft of the rock," but I'm not sure what a "clift" is.

Intrust?

And some big flower that I thought I'd grab with my phone.

I've been looking (online) at some digital cameras, and pretty much decided what I want.  I had intended to get one on Monday, but unfortunately the repair to my car is taking longer than expected and I'm going to be grounded pretty much all week.  The good news is the warranty is paying for the fix.  I don't intend to take a camera with me when I'm working, but I am planning on combining my new hobby of geocaching with some photography (my intended other new hobby).

I also dug out the old Pentax Spotmatic that I acquired some time ago and got a new battery for the light meter.  I had also intended to have a roll of test film developed by now to see how it does, because I haven't used it in a long time, but I kind of ran out of things to photograph around the house.

I like the old Pentax because it's completely manually operated.  The digital camera I'm looking at has plenty of automatic functions but can be switched to manual, and also has a macro mode.  I'm hoping the car will be ready by Friday, so maybe I can do something Friday afternoon or Saturday.

Today's internet idiot: Jacinda Frost

Maybe the spammers are now able to strip plain text emails from web pages now, I don't know.  And I'm sure they don't care how stupid they look sometimes.  But this one definitely gave me a chuckle.

The article in question, if you recall, was about heavy metal music.

Griff the Invisible (movie, 2010)

Australian, 2010, 90 minutes, PG-13 (for violence, I guess). I watched this movie today (Netflix streaming). A strange little tale of Griff, a socially crippled young man with super strength who, with his new and unexpected girlfriend Melody, tries to develop a suit of invisibility to further aid him in his crime-fighting endeavors.  Melody, meanwhile, is convinced that with the right frame of mind, she should be able to pass through solid walls.  Griff is also tormented by a bullying co-worker and aided in trying to live a normal life by his older brother.

Eventually, Griff is able to become invisible and Melody learns to pass through solid walls.

Or do they?

I gave it 4 stars.