Flyover Country

I walked part of the way into work this morning, and was surprised to find a group of goats “mowing” the grass alongside I5 next to downtown Seattle near Boren and Pine. Who organizes this?

Update: claimed by Boris.

Shot at Discovery Park today. Did about 650 pictures, ended up really liking about 80 of them. Still, I whittled those down to 15. Posted them up on Flickr just a little while ago, added them to my SmugMug gallery, slapped them up on Facebook, and submitted to Photoshelter. Jiminy Cricket!

Anyway, I had fun last time around with offering up a free 12×18 print to the first person who names their request in the comments below, or emails me, and I’m going to do it again. For now, though, the rules stipulate you can only win once (Wes).

To recap: leave a comment or email me telling me which photo you want a signed print of. I will have a 12×18″ print created for you, which will be mailed to you free of charge. Even if you’re in New Zealand (although I may reconsider the geography part).

If you don’t win, you can always acquire open edition prints of these pictures on my Photo Gallery site, hosted by SmugMug. If you want to see the full set, check it out on Flickr.

Rosie, one of my favorite photographers on Flickr, has a handy-dandy post up on her technique for achieving a ‘vintage’ look and feel in photographs, which I’ve often wanted to duplicate. I was guessing that she was taking some semi-arbitrary texture and compositing it on top of her photos, but it’s nice to have the details.

I find myself agreeing with Maureen Dowd for once. Dear god, what is the world coming to?

I don’t get Barack Obama. Sure, he was annihilated by Bobby Rush back in 2000 in a primary campaign for a Congressional seat, but ever since he’s seemed like such a star-crossed politician:

2004 Senate race: Jack Ryan, a wealthy Republican who shares the name of Tom Clancy’s heroic CIA agent and later-on US President, is forced to withdraw from the race after it came out that he wanted Jeri Ryan, Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager, to engage in all sorts of ‘deviant’ sex acts (at least, I imagine that Family Values-Oriented Republicans would consider these acts to be deviant). Oops.

The Republican Party eventually scares up carpetbagger and certified whackjob, Alan Keyes, to run against Obama. Obama annihilates Keyes by a 43 point margin. 

2008 Democratic Primary: Obama defeats the vaunted Clinton machine in Iowa, throwing the seeming inevitability of Hillary’s electoral capability into terrible disarray. Although the elections dragged out for six months, it seemed virtually certain after the dead tie on Super Tuesday that Obama was going to win the Democratic nomination.

2008 Presidential general campaign: John McCain, who should have been destroyed by Obama before now, continues to hang on by continually taking advantage of his most ardent constituency: the traditional media. He exploits Rudy Giuliani’s brilliant noun+verb campaign strategy (”a noun, a verb and 9/11″) with his supposedly difficult-to-talk-about P.O.W. experience (”a noun, a verb, and P.O.W.”). 

McCain seems to have overplayed the P.O.W. card, though, as not even that (ahem) brilliant strategy has not deflected McCain’s inability to remember how many houses he owns. McCain’s campaign PR team tried to parry this striking blow by announcing to the world that:

[McCain] is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years—in prison.

dun-dun-dun! Apparently the media has started charging for their former free ride for McCain on the strength of his 40-year-old P.O.W. experience. About damned time.

Anyway, Obama. His opponent for the Presidency seems to be on the verge of self-destruction. A smart-sounding, funny-named black guy is about to accept the Presidential nomination of the Democratic party in a year where the entire country hungers for change and a President who seems to care about them. McCain doesn’t even know how many houses he owns. He thinks that Americans are living in a ‘mental recession.’ He’s about to get pounded.

Robin Leach of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous—um, fame—isn’t exactly helping John McCain out with the hullabaloo over how many John McCain owns:

In an early morning phone call Friday from his fabulous crib in Las Vegas, Leach told The Times that he isn’t really surprised at McCain’s odd memory lapse given the complex lives that the super-rich lead.

“He probably was confused as to which homes are in his name, his wife’s name, or corporate names,” Leach explained in his familiar, deep British baritone. “In his attempt to be honest, he put his foot in his mouth.”

Yeah, it’s an honest mistake that any American who owns 7, 8, or 10 homes could make. Who knows which blind trust, shell corporation, or member of my family owns one of my many palatial manses? How can I, just an average joe, be expected to remember how many pairs of $500 Ferragamo shoes I own? You just can’t keep track of this sort of thing when there are more important problems facing America.

And, John McCain does have important things to do, like remind all of America that he spent five years in a Hanoi hellhole nine times a day, or act belligerent towards Russia.

I just did something exciting that I’m probably not allowed to talk about yet. I’m sure I’ll be able to talk about it in a week or two. But it’s fun, and involves Objective C.

The creators of I Can Has Cheezburger just launched a new Engrish pictures website called EngrishFunny. They have one picture up of a Japanese coffee vending machine (selling something called Deepresso), which made me feel nostalgic for the vacation I took to Tokyo and Kyoto this sprint. Man, I want to go back there.

more the engrish!

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch wrote this followup to a recent post on VentureBeat:

VentureBeat’s Eric Eldon reports:Industry sources tell us that although Android will indeed start as a mobile OS, Google intends to expand it to be a sort of universal operating system that will span set-top boxes for televisions, mp3 players and other communication and media devices and services.

If what Eldon is hearing is true, that means that Android could one day spread beyond mobile phones and set-top boxes to a multiplicity of devices.

Isn’t this the kind of quality investigative journalism you’d expect from a publication reputedly worth a cool one hundred million dollars (or more)? I mean, VentureBeat says that Google will expand Android onto STBs, MP3 players, and other devices, and then Erick builds his frighteningly prescient analysis on top of it: “that means that Android could one day spread beyond mobile phones and set-top boxes to a multiplicity of devices.” Wow! I mean, just, wow. I could have never come up with anything as insightful as that. Thanks, Erick!

The NYT has a travel article up today about the sights and sounds of Minneapolis and St. Paul. All good advice, with a highlight:

Tell room service to keep it quiet when they deliver coffee. Or if you are feeling ambitious, go to Al’s Breakfast in Dinkytown (413 14th Avenue SE; 612-331-9991), hard by the east bank campus of the University of Minnesota. Wait against the wall for one of 14 stools, while eyeing the food of the patron whose stool you are coveting. Minnesota is a friendly place, but don’t ask for a bite of his blueberry pancakes.

I have never waited longer for greasier food, nor loved the whole thing more than at Al’s Breakfast.