First picture I ever uploaded to Flickr? It was this one 3 and half years ago.
Mexico’s having a national Flickr convention in Guadalajara tomorrow. Flickrites are flying/bussing in from all over and converging on GDL. All my mates’ll be meeting up, wandering round with cameras, meeting interesting people, sharing photo ideas, techniques, badges, possibly T-Shirts… and trying to sort out hugely complicated bar tabs. I wish them all the best. And am just a little jealous.
A whole new browser and Picasa 3.0 beta, all in the same week? Didn’t they just launch a spy satellite too?
People don’t come here for tech reviews, so suffice to say Chrome is fast and well worth installing. Picasa continues to be a delight. I’ve got it tied up making a video slideshow with music and automatically uploading it to YouTube, but apparently there’s all kinds of other stuff too. Collages, proper image editing (removing blemishes), erm, slideshows again. I’ll edit this and post the youtube thing in here in a minute.
What else? Well, ever been in a cybercafe, desperately wanted to see pictures of Atticus and find out what I had for breakfast, but then forgotten what the address was of this site? something to do with tequila, spiders and logs? well, now gwynf.com will get you here in half the time. I found a coupon for godaddy (TEST99 if you want to try it), $1.19 for a domain for a year and it had to be used up soon, so there you go.
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Above collage made stupidly easily with Picasa 3…
Nanny’s house is on the market. After a lot of work from Mum, Dad, Gill, Geoff & Rog, here’s the site: maycottageksm.co.uk
Here goes an ill-advised dip into politics after being force fed 3 nights of none-more-patriotic speeches from the democrats’ conference. Obviously, Obama’s the one to vote for. McCain getting in is too depressing to contemplate, but the Daily Show came up with this fine effort last night that hit the nail on the head for the tone of the entire proceedings.
Look it! I made a poster…
Went to the zoo today with DrSita, but buggered up the directions and ended up arriving too late to meet most of the assembled L&C staff, and missed the food too. Packed the place was. It’s the last Sunday of the school holidays and it isn’t raining so any family worth their salt brought their children to Portland Zoo so they could shout things like “Can I ride the zebra” and stare into cages trying to find the animals.
As zoos go it’s not bad. They just had a baby elephant born two days ago so there was all kinds of talk about that. I learnt that Indian Elephants are called Asian Elephants in America. Though maybe they are in England too these days. I can’t be PC in both countries… The bat cave was grand though my pix didn’t come out cos I was tripodless. I might go back one day. On a school day. In the rain. Maybe the polar bears will have come out of hiding by then…
Washington Hills
…but without the equipment, technical nor local knowledge.
Yesterday Sudarat was kind enough to invite me along on a trip and picnic out to the waterfalls just north of here as a friend of hers is visiting. Incipient rain proved not to be a problem and instead gave me plenty of material for dramatic sky pictures, long exposure pix of falling water and it brought the sturgeons out to play. Sturgeons? Yep, we went to a fish farm where they had a pond full of the buggers. I skipped the museum before going to take pictures of them and saw the mother of all fishes gliding around the pond. Doing the museum first is too much like reading the manual before playing around with your latest toy for me… Anyroad, a stranger struck up conversation with me as one of them, about a metre plus long, glided into view- “Is that Herman?” she asked. I said I’d only just arrived and wasn’t on first name terms yet. The recording in the museum bit explained that Herman the Sturgeon is the biggest fish in the water, 25 years old or so… and an uglier customer you’d be hard pressed to meet. My fisheye lense seemed appropriate…
We’ve had a fair bit of rain lately too so the waterfalls were even more spectacular than usual… I can’t wait for how they’ll be in a month or two’s time…
We drove over “The Bridge of the Gods” into Washington too. So that’s another state to cross off. Lovely day it was, shame DrSita missed it because of her training schedule. We’ll be back though. We’ve also sourced a great ice cream shop for you, Dad, just round the corner from the trails.
Other news… translations and web design finally seem to be coming in and I’ve an interview next week for another web gig. Today I’m going to make a promotional poster for Sita’s course because since it was advertised late there aren’t many signups just yet. That’ll change once word gets around. Carmen Miranda is going to feature prominently
After seeing no cheap BBQs at yard sales, charity shops and Fred Meyer’s we went to Lowes for a new one, then spent the best part of 2 hours assembling it in the garden. Things went faster once I found a hidden bag of screws under the dog.
Leif and Sudarat came round later and we had a well pleasant evening of Sita’s cooking, local veg and tales of squirrel hunting up north.
We ended with an ’80s music trivia DVD game, which I got for $4.99 from Goodwill (seemed more fun than Bibleopoly)
Hope our neighbours were okay with screams of Kajagoogoo at around midnight…
We’ve been round various garden centres of late trying to find an agave plant. DrSita ruled the first place out as she asked if agaves would grow in this climate and they answered “Well, it’s a cactus, it should do okay”. One of the first things you learn about agaves is that they’re not cacti.
Several other garden centres haven’t had anything more adventurous that Aloe, but we’re not giving up because a few miles down the road there’s a place selling Pulque (only open on Saturdays and only in bulk).
Anyroad, yesterday at the aforementioned Fred Meyer (pronounced Maya) while BBQ shopping we found this…
Very much a last resort.
Our first stop on our tour of Milwaulkie and Sellwood yesterday was air-conditioned super charity shop, Goodwill, about 5 mins walk from our house. There are about 20 smaller Goodwill shops scattered around Portland but this is the main depot it seems where a steady stream of unwanted bric-a-brac flows into the place as crowds of bargain hunters pick over the trays for bargains to flog on eBay or to decorate their house. There seemed to be about 10 new trays an hour coming in and I’ve no idea what happens to the stuff that doesn’t get sold, if it goes to other goodwills or just gets recycled. It’s a strange place and probably the most ethnically diverse site in Oregon. No barbecues though, which was the idea for going there in the first place.
When you comment on this blog (any many others) it displays a little personal graphic (avatar if you will) next to your comment. If you’ve signed up for a Gravatar then the blog will recognise your email address and display the Gravatar you uploaded. If you haven’t signed up for one you just get the default picture, Atticus looking forlorn with the legend “I need a Gravatar”… Out of the dozens of commentators in this blog only César (AWOL) and I have signed up though…
Ah go on, personalise yer comments
but it’s too bloody hot. I’ve been playing me guitar in the basement and had to stop.
Today’s new song to play, Art Brut, Emily Kane…
And I bet it’s the .4444444° that makes all the difference… Luckily there’s an air-conditioned cinema nearby so we’ve been watching all kinds of nonsense. Pineapple Express, has its moments but is still nowhere near as good as Knocked Up. Tropic Thunder last night cracked me up a fair few times. Mark Kermode says if a comedy makes you laugh five times or more, it’s a success and thus it definitely qualifies and is worth watching for the panda scene alone. Hellboy II is an option for this afternoon…
There are all kinds of small, independant cinemas dotted around Portland, our nearest however was showing Mamma Mia for 3 weeks and has now moved on to The Sisterhood of the Traveling (sic) Pants II, so we’ll have to go a little further afield.
We also found a Fred Meyer down the road, a huge, air-conditioned superstore stocking everything from cider to sweetcorn holders to trees. If they let you take your dog in it would be perfect. As it is ‘Cus and me just head down to the park at the bottom of the street, stick to the shade and paddle in the river. Even the basement’s starting to heat up. Righty, I’m off to shut the windows and blinds. We’re adopting Andalucian living habits. Siestas included. Hasta pronto…
Or somesuch, let’s see if a) this link works and b) you can read it…
Didn’t work, so… click here and shove this site’s address in the box:
Gorgeous it is. And a lot cooler than the triple digit temps in our house…
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This morning I got up, poured myself a cup of coffee from the machine, opened the kitchen windows and then entered a world of pain as I jammed my finger between the sliding window frames. Now I’ve got a bruise under the nail and our peas are no longer frozen. Then, cos it’s forecast to get HOT again today I went out with young ‘Cus for a walk but he kept stopping to lick his foot because he too has some kind of paw injury. So we made a detour so he could splash about in the stream and soften his little paddy paws up to get rid of the splinter or whatever. He, and I, seem much better now, though neither of us will be typing at full speed for a few days.
We did a pub quiz last night and fared miserably though I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice atmosphere and good questions. Though three out of four of us had PhDs (and one of us had a 2:1 in Hispanic Studies from Swansea Uni…) we came last. I blame the Doctors.
Other news, still applying left right and centre for jobs. It’s slow going. The radishes I planted a few days ago have already got shoots. We’ve now got a(n) herb garden going. Going to a faculty barbecue tomorrow. Considering heading for the coast on Friday to escape the forecast 99 degree temperatures. Still haven’t worked out the new recycling rules and how to get our rubbish collected. Learnt a new song yesterday on the geetar… Modern Girl originally by Sheena Easton, revived by Camera Obscura.
Doubtless there are more elegant ways to present this info than copying and pasting graphs from wikipedia.
August has been pretty hot of late and I can’t work out how to use the sprinkler system in the garden but I’ve a feeling this won’t be an issue for long… Half our garden has weed cloth under the soil. I just made that name up, it’s an underground tarp to keep an area free of plants. So my plans for being self sufficient in spuds for the next year are somewhat hindered, however there’s an area between the trees on the right which I dug over and planted some veggie seeds which should thrive in these conditions even if I took a few liberties with the recommended spacing. I’m going to get a couple of tomato plants today and hope it’s not too late for ’em. Either way it’s all good ‘cos neither of us are big tomato eaters… Also, apparently you can grow spuds in a rubbish bin so there’s still hope for a vegetable I actually like to eat.
My underground corporate headquarters is coming together too. I finally got a scanner that works with Vista and Ubuntu so I don’t have to keep wandering off to fax things. I made a photo display wire and bulldog clip thing. Put my Guadalajara in 1943 street map poster up along with a few others. Made shelving from the splintered remains of Sita’s IKEA stuff. Without using any hexagonal screwdrivers.
And upstairs is looking good too. We cleaned last night before some friends came round but I didn’t do a video walk through, that’ll probably be the next thing I post. We had the Olympic Opening ceremony on in the background with occasional cheers for Mexico, Chile, Ireland, Thailand and Iceland (t’was a multicultural gathering). It was an impressive ceremony, and unless the UK can get together its own military dictatorship in the next four years I think London 2012 is going to be pretty anticlimactic after China’s effort. 2012 people eating chips in unison to the sound of Blur’s Parklife maybe?
Plans for today? Portland Saturday Market.