This is a temporary exhibit at the museum, with sculptures created by local artist Radu Lupu along musical themes. All are interesting, and some are for sale. You can contact the artist via the museum.
We liked the one entitled “Lira”.
Category Archives: Events
C&O Canal photo on cover of poetry book
One of my photos from the C&O Canal has made it onto the cover of a poetry book to be published this year, written by Jean Wilbur. The book is called Walk the Towpath, and it can be pre-ordered from Finishing Line Press.
Here is the photo.
Here’s what it looks like on the cover of the book.
From Ms. Wilbur’s bio:
“Jean Gleason Stromberg, who writes under her maiden name, Jean Wilbur, has been writing most of her life, primarily in the service of others. She grew up in Northern California where she learned to love the outdoors, was educated at Wellesley College and Harvard Law, and practiced corporate law for many years. She is increasingly focused on writing, especially poetry, for herself. She walks on the C&O canal towpath in all seasons. She lives with her husband, Kurt Stromberg, in Washington DC and on a houseboat in Sausalito, California. Her sons have settled in Northern California.”
Keynote video from State of the Word 2010
If you haven’t yet seen the “State of the Word” keynote from WordCamp San Francisco, held on May 12, then it’s worth a watch. Matt Mullenweg, WP’s founder, talks about WP’s history, the challenges of a growing platform, and highlights the neat features of WordPress 3.0, which will soon be released.
I’ve been a big fan of WordPress, and have been using it since late 2005 (publicly since 2006). After more than three years of self-hosting a WP.org install, I moved to WP.com, so I could focus on writing and leave the hosting to the folks that made the platform.
Can’t wait to see (and use) the new features of WP 3.0!
Six new kittens born this past week!
Mitzi and Trixie, our two sister kittens, are about a year old, as I mentioned last week. And they were also recently pregnant. I say “were”, because both of them gave birth to three beautiful kittens each, within the span of a few days, this past week. You can read the details below, or you can watch a video I’ve put together which includes footage of all six kittens, as well as Mitzi’s birth. If you’re not comfortable watching a live animal birth, then please don’t watch past the first segment of the video.
Given that cat pregnancies last about 65 days, I’m guessing they each met their prince charming sometime in early to mid-March. By looking at the kittens, we can tell Mitzi’s tomcat was striped, and Trixie’s tomcat was black. And we pretty much know who they are, since we saw two tomcats matching that description prowling around our garden these past few months.
Trixie’s tomcat resembled Felix, our own boy wonder. He was all black, except for white socks on his paws and a white-tipped tail. Mitzi’s tomcat was a fairly fierce striped tomcat, quite a large and strong fellow. I think Mitzi prefers striped cats, like her. She doesn’t like Felix very much, although he gets along great with Trixie.
Trixie gave birth first, last Sunday night, on May 16th — the night between Saturday and Sunday of last week. She hid in the cellar, where she found a nice, clean box and she managed quite nicely by herself. In the morning, she showed up for food, minus the big belly. We looked for the kittens but didn’t know where they were until she led me to them. What a relief when we found them! We took the box and Trixie and put them in a nice, quiet storage room next to our house, where she could nurse them in peace.
When we checked the kittens, we discovered she’d given birth to two tomcats who resembled their father, and a striped kitten whose color doesn’t match hers or Mitzi’s or her mother’s, so it’s possible that she may have mated with two tomcats — perhaps even Mitzi’s tomcat. Continue reading
Green IT Week: June 1-7, 2010
ComputersOFF.org is hosting a virtual Green IT Week from June 1-7. This is an issue that’s of particular importance to me. Having been an IT director, I know how much power the combined laptops, desktops and servers of an organization can consume, and how much pollution is generated by the disposal of computer hardware (see this post, and this one as well).
I’ve written about this topic since 2004. Here are three of my articles that deal with saving energy in IT:
Green IT deals with two things:
- Electronic Waste: Minimizing the negative impact of information technology use on the environment, and
- Energy Efficiency: Using information technology to help solve environmental issues
They’ve put together a few facts that help to drive home their message, so I’m going to quote them below.
By turning off your computer each night or when not in use (i.e. lunch times, weekends, when in meetings at night) for a year you save as much energy as it takes:
- to run a clock radio for 1,392 weeks
- to make 9,280 bags of microwave popcorn
- to wash 464 loads of washing
- to use your blow dryer for 5,568 hours
- to vacuum for 464 hours
- to produce 3,480 plastic bags
- to run your microwave 24 hours a day for a week
- to boil your kettle for 24 hours a day for 268 days
By turning off your computer tonight when you leave work you will save as much energy as it takes:
- to run a clock radio for over 3 weeks
- to make over 20 bags of microwave popcorn
- to wash over 1 load of washing
- to blow dry your hair over 12 times
- to vacuum for over 1 hour
- to light a 100 watt light bulb for over 10 hours
For both companies and individuals, there are some really easy actions they can take to reduce their energy use, including:
- Turning off computers, games consoles and TVs when they are not in use
- Setting your computer to “sleep” after 15 minutes of inactivity (this reduces the power it uses because “sleep” mode is a lower-energy use mode for the computer to operate in)
- Turning devices off at the power point (because even in standby mode your appliances are using electricity)
- Buy green energy (to help push electricity suppliers to convert from coal based production – which creates greenhouse gases and requires mining – to sustainable technologies like wind power)
- Buy and use a laptop instead of a desktop computer. Laptops only use 190kW (average) of electricity per year.
Want more of these neat factlets? They also have 100 Green IT Tips. They’ve put together a video as well, where various celebrities endorse the cause.
Make sure to check their website from June 1 to June 7 for more good info about Green IT.
Raoul Pop 