This weblog is no longer being maintained. All information here has been ported to EclecticEchoes.com. This site (heupel.com/eclectic) remains only for archival purposes.
January 31, 2005
Belly Button (Round)
Ever get a song stuck in your head?
Have you ever gotten a song from your 4 year old’s collection stuck in your head?
My son was given an excellent book and audio CD for Christmas, and it’s been getting a lot of air time recently. The book is Philadelphia Chickens by Sandra Boynton. It’s an excellent book and album, but for the past several hours I’ve had the song Belly Button (Round) going through my head and I just can’t get it out! Of course it doesn’t help when I remember the visuals I had when I first read this one to my son.
Imagine if you will — a smokey, dimly lit jazz-type café, everyone drinking espresso or cappuccino. A tall thin figure all in black with a barret and sunglasses steps up to the open mic in the corner and starts emotionally reciting -
Belly Button (Round)
So round. So profound. So great to contemplate.
Belly, Belly Button,
You’re oh so fine.
I’m so happy you’re mine.
…
January 29, 2005
Shhh! Secret Photoshopping
Got an email from an old friend in Idaho about a bargain (if you’re into Photoshop at least)…
Avondale Media has an instructional DVD out called Secrets of the Photoshop Masters Volume 2. Thing is if you order the DVD and use a coupon code, you get the DVD for free. You still pay shipping, but at $5.95 for a $49.95 DVD, I’ll bite. Sure enough after entering the coupon code the total came to $5.95.
The coupon code is: APLPSM2
January 25, 2005
Jack of all Trades
Not an entry really…just, well, just a rant.
Sometimes it really sucks being a jack of all trades! I can’t tell sometimes if I am being a “goto guy” or whipping boy.
You get bogged down in so many different side jobs from that the main job suffers. You end up as the go to guy. I am trying to implement limits and as in Getting Things Done, “redefine” my jobs back to what they were originally. Then I can focus on actually getting some results. The fault is not any one persons but in large part it’s mine for accepting the side taskings. Time to stop, and redistribute those existing side tasks. Finish up the ones that I’ve started and can finish in a reasonable amount of time, give the rest back to those who gave them to me.
January 24, 2005
Gassho-Zukuri
I have always loved the traditional Japanese farm house architecture. I loved finding this image at flickr of Shirakawa-go buried in snow by tsuda. Fortunately the Gassho-Zukuri of the Gifu Prefecture has been preserved in large part because of it’s identity as an important part of the Japanese cultural heritage. The village of Shirakawa-go in Gifu — made of mostly Gassho-Zukuri — was added to the World’s Heritage List in the mid 1990’s.
The steep pitched A-frame gable roofs are thickly thatched. Like much traditional architecture in Japan the construction is without nails, relying on the architecture of often complex joints and rope binding. The shape of the roof and it’s insulating materials are adaptations of the traditional Japanese farmhouse to the climate requirements of this region. The space in the roof — often divided into 2 or even more extra “floors” — were commonly used for sericulture. The spaces were well adapted to the labor and space intensive raising and processing of silk worms and the coccoons. The silk production was a very important part of these farmers’ income as it was work that could be continued through most of the year while farming in these areas was confined to a pretty short season.
January 23, 2005
Digging Out...
…Not Today!
The winds are finally starting to calm. 10—15mph constant with gusts to 30—35mph. Still snowing a small bit, more like a dusting. Looks like we got 15—18" total, but it’s hard to tell for sure because of the amazing drifts. A few look to be 4' or more. I took 3 measurements in “drift free” areas—15", 17", and 18".
The storms hit along with the astronomical high tide, the storm wind created a surge on top of that so the high tide was 5—10' above normal. It looks like the Art Center Parking lot and a few other areas got some flooding. Of course considering the temperatures those areas froze solid as the tide receeded.
Hopefully the winds will continue to calm (so the wind chill temperatures are not below 0ºF) and we will be able to squeak out soon for some good time playing before evening….but if not, this snow will be around for a while.
Update: The winds did calm (although now they’re literally howling again) and we did get out for some fun and pictures—including the one you now see here. More to follow…
Blizzard '05
Well, there’s about a foot of snow and more on the way! The bad part is the wind though. It’s staying strong at 25—35mph with gusts above 50!
From WeatherUnderground:
“Snow this morning…possibly heavy at times. Snow tapering off and ending by late afternoon. Visibility one quarter mile or less at times in blowing and drifting snow. Total snow accumulation 1 to 2 feet. Very windy with highs around 25. North winds 25 to 35 mph with gusts up to 55 mph. Wind chill values as low as 5 below.”
I don’t think we’ll be going out for my birthday dinner! For that matter I don’t think anyone around here will be going out much today with those winds! Sure is pretty though. There are a few more pictures in my flickr gallery. I’ll add more (locally) later today.
Memories of Texas
I finally had a chance (and remembered to Get It Done) to develop some shots from our visit to Texas this past fall. I figured it’s the perfect night to post this, especially given the situation outside… 12+ hours of steady, heavy snowfall.
It’s both at flickr and in the Eclectic Images Wildlife Gallery here. In the Wildlife Gallery I actually uploaded it so that the 1600×1280 version is available.
January 19, 2005
Abscessive
Damn, that abscessed tooth really hurt!
And of course it happens while we have company, so I’m grumpy and out of it when I should be enjoying myself and their company. Luckily we found a good dentist in the area, who took me at 7:30pm in an emergency visit in the -5°F night.
So good in fact that I didn’t feel the first two shots of novacaine at all. The third was in the roof of my mouth, but tolerable. After that, no pain at all. Just the really strange sensation of a tooth getting wrenched out. Wierd. Really wierd.
January 10, 2005
Nuts!
Oh, if only this could really take place! Varifrank has created a marvelous scenario in which Gen. McAuliffe comes back and gives the Washington press corps a what’s for. A very good read:
“Son, if you and yours in this room continue to give these people the mantle of legitimacy, then the men under my command who died back there in Bastone will have died in vain. The war against the enemy of mankind didn’t end in Berlin or Tokyo or Seoul, that war goes on today. That war is being fought by men and women every bit as brave as the men who I served with in the past.
…
“People are going to die in this war until someone says “I surrender”. If you are ready to surrender, I suggest you do so, for the rest of us, I have just one word for you:
“Nuts!”
January 04, 2005
Flickr Test
Just trying out flickr. Decided to use one of my personal favorites to use as a test. This is a shot from a year ago, taken for a photo assignment/contest on the Fred Miranda Forums.
I was thinking possibly of trying to set up a run of 5 different images, including this one, as art prints and greeting cards, with all the proceeds to go to the tsunami relief efforts.
January 03, 2005
What does Firefox Say About Me
A week or so ago, Liz Lawley showed her online life as reported by her browser. I thought it was a very interesting idea, unfortunately I had just done a fresh installation of Firefox—prefering to instal the 1.0 release on a clean slate—so there was nothing my browser would report. Now however, going up to the address bar and typing in each letter of the alphabet this is what my browser says about me:
- a - Amazon
- b - Binary Bonsai
- c - CGNetworks
- d - Digital Producer
- e - Editors Bin
- f - FTP Online — Web Design: A Decade Under the Influence
- g - Gmail
- h - Heupel.com
- i - Index Tools
- j - Joel on Software
- k - The K Desktop Environment
- l - live.curry.org
- m - mamamusings
- n - Nick Bradbury
- o - OSX-E
- p - panel.dreamhost.com
- q - nothing, no q’s here…
- r - RichardGoodwin.com
- s - Apple Store
- t - Typography - Hoefler & Frere-Jones
- u - The Untergeek
- v - Newtek Forums
- w - WordPress Wiki x - another blank, poor x and q…
- y - Redland Youth Ministries - a product of MeanDean
- z - zengarden - that’s what I usually type into the address bar, it resolves to the right place through google, even ahead of the domain, zengarden.com
- 0 -
- 1 - came up with y internal testing server on a 192.168 network.
- 2 - 2005 Bloggies
- 3 - 37signal’s Signal vs. Noise
- 4 -
- 5 -
- 6 -
- 7 - D. Kieth Robinson’s Asterisk
- 8 -
- 9 -