It’s big, and bright, and very… orange… 🙂
Monthly Archives: February 2007
It snowed today
We had a beautiful snowfall today — just gorgeous. Big, fluffy snowflakes kept coming down for what seemed like (and probably was) hours. When it was done, we had a thick, white blanket of fresh powder everywhere. Tree branches and leaves were heavy-laden with the white stuff. It clung to everything, weighing it down, bringing it closer to eye-level so we could enjoy it more. Ligia’s piano lessons were cancelled, but we couldn’t stay in. We took the MINI (which has snow tires) and went out for a drive.
We stopped at Cabin John Regional Park, which is a favorite of ours, and walked through the forest, taking photographs of everything that caught our eyes. I took my tripod along, and an umbrella that acted as a protector for the lens. Snow powder kept falling off the branches, and it wouldn’t have done to get the lens wet. Then, on a whim (but oh, what a welcome one!) we stopped for lunch at Momo Taro Sushi, inside Cabin John Mall. We had miso soup and sushi, of course: California rolls, tuna rolls and salmon rolls. They were delicious, as usual. Then we drove out some more, but it was no fun this time. The trucks had already cleared the road of snow. It’s not a lot of fun for me to drive on a clean road in winter. It’s much more exciting when there’s snow on it. That extra element of unpredictability adds extra enjoyment to an otherwise regular drive. Yes, I realize it detracts from the practicability of it all, but by gosh, I like it when things are sometimes impractical.
I tried to look away from the clean, black road to the postcard views that lined it: houses covered in a thick quilt of white snow, little picket fences barely visible, bumps where shrubs used to be, cars covered in their entirety — everything quiet, beautiful and relaxing. I’d love to find a long, winding country road that never gets plowed, and drive on it for hours, with a good camera in hand, lots of memory and plenty of battery life. I think I’d drive slowly, stop just about every minute or so, and take photos, lots of them. Gosh, I’d love to do that for a living, just go around taking photos, all day long…
We’re home now, and I’m post-processing some photos I took a while back. Now that I’m done with a pressing project of mine — that thing plagued me for more than a month — I have a little more free time and can catch up with my backlog of photos. That’s a wonderful prospect, and I look forward to it with joy.
Quirky music videos
I like quirky, odd music videos, alongside the well-made, polished commercial stuff. My latest favorites from YouTube are enclosed below.
The Kooks have some pretty good music. Here they cover Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”:
This Japanese group put together a stop-motion animation video set to something that could be called music:
Luray Caverns, in Virginia, has a man-made wonder: the Great Stalacpipe Organ. It’s made of little hammers that strike stalactites of various dimensions, producing musical sounds. I heard it in person, and it sounds pretty eerie in that big, dark cave.
Don’t know if these fellows are real policemen, but the song and video are pretty funny. Perhaps it’s because I can’t understand a single word:
Have you ever heard Bolero played on a single instrument? No? Then have a peek at this:
A talented flute player by the name of Greg Patillo put together some unique interpretations of popular theme songs:
Cool animal videos
Whenever I find good videos on YouTube, I fave and categorize them. Here are some of the animal clips I faved lately:
I’ll post more clips like these soon. Sorry about the mouse infestation video (second in the sequence), but it’s worth watching.
Google Docs (and their online office suite)
Until yesterday, I just didn’t see the point of online office suites and of apps like Google Docs. Sure, I thought they were nice as proof-of-concept stuff. They made me go “Ooh! Look, cool Ajax!” but I didn’t use them. But this past weekend, I needed to find and work on an old document. Problem was, I hadn’t touched that thing in months. So I had to wonder which one of my computers I used when I last made changes to it, because that’s where the latest version would be.
Finally, I dug it up, and emailed it to my Gmail account. I figured I’d open it later and review it. And when I opened that email containing it, there was an option to open it up in Google Docs instead of saving it locally and editing it in Word. So I thought, why not, let’s give Google Docs a shot! I opened it up there, and all of a sudden, things clicked! I realized that instead of always digging up the latest version on my local computer, I could simply keep one version on Google Docs, edit it where I like, and attach it to emails I send from my Gmail account or save it locally. I know, this is basic stuff, but until I actually correlated the access-anywhere functionality of Google Docs with the need to use it, it didn’t click for me. And I suppose it’s the same with a lot of other people.
Storing important documents online makes sense. It especially makes sense for those things you only need infrequently, and by the time you need them, you can’t remember where you put them. For example, a list of your belongings (to use for home owner’s insurance claims), or letters to people (for those rare cases when you need to write and mail them), or a list of places to see when you go on a trip, etc. are all documents that can benefit from being easily accessible and editable. Or how about that short story or article you’re working on? Give it a try and see how it works for you!
While I’m on the subject of Google Docs, I should mention there was a bug with the option to email a document right from the Google Docs interface. It just didn’t work for me, so the Google engineers might want to have a look at that. I also think it’d be nice if an option to attach a Google Docs & Spreadsheets file was added to Gmail’s file attachment dialog. Currently, if I’m writing an email and wish to attach a Google Docs file, I need to either save it locally (defeating the purpose of using it online) or publish it, and include the URL to that file in the email. I’d like to be able to browse my Google Docs & Spreadsheets storage area and select a particular document right from within Gmail’s interface.
Raoul Pop 