Eerie and melancholy, that's the original Universal The Mummy for me - and why I really like it. It didn't appeal to me much when I was a kid -- he wasn't very threatening and I just didn't get the love angle. But that love angle is what makes this movie, I think, the most adult of all the classic horror movies.

Im-Ho-Tep has a very specific goal -- Continue reading »

When I was - lets say - around 12, I collected monster models by Aurora. I'd save up my allowance money and every month or so buy the next model. I wasn't particularly any good with gluing them together or painting them, but I had fun with it and that was the point. I remember my friend Carter Perry and I made a monster museum in my attic with the models and sundry other discovered artifacts (Dracula's cape, Mummy wrappings, and the like).

I grew up and left them in my room at my mom's house. But due to that house's previously discussed time-machine properties, they have survived the years. So I've recently brought them up to my house and will share one each week until you've seen the all.

I start off with The Wolfman. When I was a child Continue reading »

Not much to say, just thankful spring is almost here.

My Mom's house is kinda like a time machine. She's been living there for some forty-some-odd years now, and things tend to accumulate. Many years ago my friend David Winstead commented on a room in her house the she never used as being a "60s museum" because she never replaced the original furniture.

So I found this little brochure for a timer thermostat from Sears. In the years before the microprocessor and the digitization of everyday life, this was cutting edge technology. The future in the 70s (just like the present in the 70s) was going to be analog. The ideas are the same now as they were then -- thermostats on a timer, playing your music for a long time automatically (cf. lp record stacks). But the implementations were going to be bulky and a bit of a kludge.

For this thermostat, you had another device (the timer) that you had to plug into an outlet and also wire back into the thermostat. Today it's all in one and run with batteries and you can adjust the time almost as much as you'd like.

There's still no flying cars (much to my personal disappointment), but overall the future has turned out to be much more spiffy than the 70s led me to believe. Devices are smaller and less wired than anyone imagined. My house now is cooler than that Monsanto House of the Future that I saw in 1975 an Disneyworld's Tomorrowland. And with far fewer mannequins. Couple of more brochure pics after the jump. Continue reading »

I like pizza. I make it every other week or so. The 'pizza stone' I used in the past was always too small -- the pizza would droop over one side. So I tossed the stone and opted for a better and cheaper alternative. I bought some plain quarry tile from the Home Despot. It works just as well as a stone, and it covers the whole rack -- so no droopy pizza. The photo is one with Swiss Chard cooking on the aforementioned tiles in mah oven. Continue reading »

So I just figured out this High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging stuff. Basically it allows for a greater range of lights and darks in a photo. Usually when taking a picture of a scene that has areas that are really bright and really dark, you're screwed. Expose for the light areas and the darks are too dark, expose for the darks and the lights are blown out. HDR helps to solve that.

Taking photos in canyons, for instance, is difficult for that reason. The areas in the frame that are in sunlight and those in the shade are normally too far apart for the camera to handle -- even though to human eyes we can see both. For HDR you bracket your shots by about 2 stops (take three photos, one normally exposed, another 2 f-stops underexposed, and one 2 over) and shoot in RAW (not jpg). Shooting with a tripod would probably give you the best results, but I handheld the shot the above -- so it'll do. You apply Photoshop magic and you get the photo that you saw, not the one your camera did.

Oh, and that from Coyote Gulch from our trip to Utah last year. Continue reading »

I had a conference in New Orleans in Dec. Neither of us had been to the city, so H joined me and we stayed about a week. I have to say, New Orleans is just about the perfect US city for a long weekend visit. Everything is walkable in the French Quarter. And even the further afield places in the city are only a short cab ride, or better yet, a short streetcar ride away.

We only had a couple of days to play tourist, the conference and all. So we toured a couple of cemeteries, generally walked around, and ate. And ate and ate. We didn't have a bad meal in the bunch, but these restaurants were the stand-outs:

• Cafe Reconcile - wonderful soul food
• Cochon - excellent pork
• Elizabeth's - good food & no pretensions
• Coop's Place - comfortable bar
• Casamentos - best oysters ever

It snowed when we were there, so one of my strongest memories of the city is that it's a rather chilly place. And I really liked the streetcars - they seem to just make sense. I took along the camera, but didn't work too hard at it. The best stuff is the infrared from the Lafayette #1 cemetery. Take a look at the photo album and let me know what you like. Continue reading »

Yesterday we spent the morning walking and standing in the 20 degree weather to be a part of the Inauguration of Barak Obama. We went mainly to be able to say that we did it. In the years to come if someone asked if we went, I didn't want to reply "Uh, even though we lived within walking distance, we were too lazy to walk an hour and experience a seminal moment in the history of this country." So we walked and hour and you know the rest.

And there were a lot of people there. We crossed Memorial Bridge and got as far as the Capitol side of the Washington Monument before the crowd became a bit too packed to try to go further. It was about 9 am, and 1.3 miles of packed humanity stood between us and the ceremony. I didn't expect to have a good view, I just wanted to be a part of the day. The Jumbotrons and the sound system provided the sights and sounds.

This was easily the largest crowd I've ever been a part of. Although it was cold, the chilly air provided a good pretext for conversation. And all the folks around us were friendly and in good spirits. Unlike the July 4th folks, the attendees weren't there to just have a good time. Although we had fun, we felt a sense of purpose. There's something deeply gratifying about booing the former president with 2 million like-minded compatriots. And also cheering the incoming one.

I wouldn't say it was pleasant, but it was deeply pleasing. And we can say that yes, we were a part of that day.

Make sure you check out the Photo Album Continue reading »