Tuesday, July 29, 2008

smells so hard

It rained this morning after 25 days without rain, which is a pretty good stretch for here. It smells great outside! Inside it smells great because yolanda brought home a great big bag of rosemary (an entire Trader Joe's paper bag full, compliments of Lindsey's garden). Good smells all around. Kitchen smells good because I made waffles. I should have made rosemary waffles.

Plans for today:
1)get the dog's nails trimmed (1 pm)
2)wash the sheets
3)watch "Papillon"

Giving up on trying to give up coffee is much easier than giving up coffee. I tried to stop drinking coffee for a week because I as getting really anxious when I drank any at all, but that only lasted a day. I think while I am out today I will buy some decaffeinated and try that. Also, I can't find the bike pump.

I got some hiking done in the gorge yesterday. Kira and I did a 2.15 mile loop around Latourelle falls. Highlights included going off the trail to get a better look at the top of the falls and finding a demolished house covered in plants.

I am getting better at making thai salad rolls. The rice papers aren't as sticky as the wheat flour ones.

Monday, July 28, 2008

worked a little

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebs - Collage - Morph

I found this thing while i was trying out the new search engine cuil.com which is getting a lot of press. I didn't find this on cuil, i didn't find anything on cuil. When i google image search "chris hedstrom" you get a picture of mike barron as the number one result, and when you image search "mike barron" you get a couple of pictures of naked guys. Also, a link to a thing such as above.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Phone Macro

I really like my phone's camera. I think it takes decent photos for what it is, and it does a very good autofocus, actually changing the distance from the lens to the sensor, which i think is pretty sophisticated for phone cameras. What it doesn't do, however, is take very good close ups of small objects.
I had an old fujifilm digital camera that stopped working about two years ago. That camera had served me well, but it became unreliable and wouldn't save the photos it was snapping. It had a switch on the side to enable it to take close up images of small objects. I imaged that the switch slid a tiny magnifying glass in front of the lens. My plan was to take that tiny piece and put it in place of the small swivel dustcover on phone's camera.

After I took the camera apart, i found it was simpler than that. The switched just slid the lens further from the sensor. This was disappointing because it made my project much more difficult, since the actual lens is about a centimeter in length, one solid piece of glass. After trying to hold it up to my phones lens and take pictures, i decided that punching a hold in some tape and adhering it to the phone would work better, and it did. Observe:


Here's some of the pictures, and a movie that I did.



The last thing is smaller than the size of a pinhead. There are hundreds of the all over the side of my house. I am going to keep my eye on them.


This is inside of a dandelion on my walkway. The longish looking thing looks like a Dermaptera (earwig) or perhaps a Staphylinid (rove beetle). The beetle sits still at the end because the lens is actually resting on him. The focus on anything, it has to be sitting right on the end of the lens, which makes it no good for stalking teeny-tinies.

I'm happy with the lens but i wish I had a way to attach it other than with tape, and that it didn't stick out so much. Oh well.

Dumb Dog Faces

Took some pictures of the dog yesterday, and got some gems.





Here's More:
beatrice

Saturday, July 19, 2008

WASP knife



This knife has a CO2 cartridge in the handle, and blasts whatever you stab it into with carbon dioxide. The idea is that if you are attacked by a bear or shark, you can stab it and it will inflate and explode their organs. I posted this professional video because
1)the guy's wearing a scuba outfit in his backyard
2)the picked the worst angle to show off this feature
3)the table is made of stumps
4)they spent all that time on stenciling WaSP onto the back of the table, and the rest of the table is made of stumps.

The knife is $400. Apparently the british police are convinced would be knife killers are going to use it on their victims. All they have to do is look for the scuba diver covered in spattered blood and watermelon with a pocket full of empty CO2 cartridges.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Got it!

We finally had a night clear enough to see the international space station, and yolanda and I just saw it pass over, right through the big dipper and to the NE. Neat! The next pass is in an hour and a half, at 3:50 am. I think i'll skip it though.

Noel and Colby and I took the dog to Forest Park this evening, on a 2-3 mile walk through the woods. I got a couple of new beetles too. It was very cool in the park, which was good since it was about 90 in the sun, and beatrice would have boiled to death. Lots of people said she was cute. I don't know how to react to compliments to our dog. Usually I am not acknowledged, which is fair because I didn't really do anything but bring her to the spot where the other person happened to be. I think that its funny that when dog owners meet, we are expected to be friendly and talkative - about the dogs. I have never asked anyone's names or been asked my own name, just the dogs' names. Topics are usually dog related. Dog owners think other dog owners are very shallow and that the center of their life is the dog. I am going to try to stray into other topics next time. "What'd you spend your stimulus check on? Not enough, eh brother? Didn't catch your name..." I'll let you know how it goes.

Also, earlier today, I was sure that I was seeing a volcano erupting. I looked at google news and saw that there was a very big eruption in Alaska and was blown away that I could see it. Then i realized it was the wrong direction and wrong time of day. Eventually I saw that it was a wildfire in Washington. I was not the only one who made this mistake, according to one article.



When I saw it at about 1 pm, it was more vertical. It's not very dark smoke, so I thought it was steam. Doesn't matter.

Check out episodes of "Nevermind the Buzzcocks" on youtube. Very funny show that Yolanda just showed me. Look for the ones with Noel Fielding, and Amy Winehouse. Also, the party seemed to go well, though yolanda and I fell asleep at midnight, which is a little embarrassing. Apparently people stuck around til about 3, which is funny.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

New

I went to a orientation/registration at OSU on wedsnesday and that went well. This term I am taking organic chemistry, ecology, and some other classes. Right now I am registered for some sociology class, as well as a class about food preservation and how its affected history. The second two are some of the required core classes. I also found out a get a gig of free webspace, which I am pleased about, not because I plan on making a website but because I can use it to store things. The following is a test to see if i can use it to host things like images. More likely I would use it to host things like flash (as if I make a lot of flash cartoons):

\

Thumbs up means success.

Also, I bought a car on tuesday, a black 2008 Honda Fit. So far, so good. I drove it to Corvallis and back and enjoyed it, except for the FM transmitter we had didn't work so well. The actual purchasing was terrible and took 5 hours total. Then it wasn't ready to go, then it was, then they forgot my registration, now they've forgotten my lifetime oil changes. My favorite thing about it is the "magic seats" which are the fold every which way back seats. My least favorite thing about it is no middle arm rest and that I had to go to the dealership at all. Those people are just terrible.

I'll probably seldom use "refresh" mode, but it's nice to know that I'll have someplace comfortable to sleep of for some reason I become a homeless man.



Don't Forget if you're in town. Party tomorrow. 7ish. Bring stuff to grill and drink. Goes to ??? obviously. We have a kiddy pool, but by 7 it'll be too cold to "swim" probably. Most likely going to be great. Bring Whomever.