Yesterday I donned gloves and shoes for trimming back some of the blackberry vines in our yard. As I put them away in our shed, it occurred to me that I regarded them in an equally utilitarian way — occasionally useful for protection but usually just an encumbrance that I don’t need.

Graham got a little bored at the Scout meeting. Luckily, he brought along his iPod which was freshly loaded with his new CD by Chameleon Circuit. All of the music is Doctor Who themed which is pretty cool. That Graham found it on his own is even cooler. My son, the nerd.

Graham forgot his book AND his cello when we left for school this morning. Fortunately, he remembered when we were only a block away. I snapped this after he had retrieved both. Yes, that’s snow again. It snowed a little overnight.

Someone on Twitter coined the term “snowpocalypse” to describe the breathless media frenzy of the impending snow storm last week. Unfortunately, the snow has not melted and it has been a little snowpocalyptic around here since it arrived. I snapped a few pictures and put them in a set on my Flickr account. Unfortunately, there are probably more to come. I left Iowa 20 years ago to get away from this crap!

I’ve been carrying my Canon (purchased in 2001) less because my iPhone has a built-in, albeit crappy, camera. I’ve become quite enamored of the ability to instantly upload a picture from the iPhone to Flickr, so I have quite a few on-the-spot type pictures populating my Flickr account lately. Even though they often come out grainy (especially in low light), it’s still pretty cool documenting an event as it happens.

The other reason I’ve neglected the Canon is because it has been entirely replaced for shooting video by the Flip I got for my birthday in September. I can take it anywhere since it fits easily in a pocket but sometimes I just set it on a shelf, point it at the boys (or cats), hit “record” and let it run for 20 or 30 minutes. It’s probably unwatchable for most people right now but in 10 or 20 years I think I’ll be glad that I did it. Soon I’ll have to comb through the hours of video that I have collected in the last few months and post a few videos on YouTube, but that’s going to have to be another night’s work.

I love the boy’s face, which doesn’t even seem wet, surrounded by brown liquid that doesn’t really look like water. Click the thumbnail on the right for a better view.

My cousin Sue has wanted to take me to the Spam Museum in Austin, MN for several years. Yesterday our dream came true when we made the 1-hour trek with my mom from my hometown of Riceville, IA. Unfortunately, when we arrived, we found that the museum is closed on Monday. Even so, the gift shop was open and I picked up a few things. Afterwards we drove across the street to Johnny’s Spamarama for a spam-themed lunch. I had a delicious Spam Reuben and Sue had the Spam Western Melt. My mom declined to have a Spam dish.

A number of humor sites on the internet feature something called “photoshop contests” wherein a particular photograph is modified to (hopefully) comic effect. One particular site (4chan) began having “caturdays” in which the contests would be cat-oriented. Eventually, the idea became more widespread and websites devoted to lolcats began to appear. The most famous of these is probably icanhascheezburger.com, where lolcats developed it’s own subculture and vocabulary. Here is one of the first lolcat pictures:

The caption represents what the cat is saying or thinking and is usually in broken English that can best be described as “baby talk”. If cats learned English from the way their owners talk to them, you can imagine that many of them might talk this way. The peculiar phrasing served as a precedent for later pictures. Here is another oft-used idiom:

Lolcats can often be found “in ur noun, verbing ur plural noun.” This one departs slightly from the formula:

Lolcats can also take on specific roles in which they are renamed to reflect that role. The first was “monorail cat”:

 

Others would follow:

Eventually, somebody invented “ceiling cat” who is the Creator of all lolcats:

Although ceiling cat’s first appearance was somewhat off-color, future appearances were less risque:

Sometime after that, ceiling cat’s nemesis, “basement cat”, came to be:

Another favorite device is to pretend an imaginary, invisible object is in the picture:

Sometimes the lolcat is helpful or generous, but fails due to personal weakness:

Of course, there are variations on that theme:

Some pictures depict the lolcat in a particular situation expressing human emotion:

Like a child, the lolcat mostly likes playing games that require imagination:

Occasionally, other animals join the lolcat fun:

All pictures from icanhascheezerburger.com where you’ll find thousands more.

So many great parts to this photograph: rising moon, Mt. Hood in the distance and Portland waking up.

Thomas remixed a photo of mine from last summer using some Photoshop tips he found online.

The Library of Congress recently released some of their photos on Flickr. This particular picture is very compelling, but there are scores of others in the “1930s-1940s in Color” and “News in the 1910s” sets. Some other favorites:

• Portrait of a Farm Boy
• Unidentified stacks of home-canned food
• Camouflage class in New York University
• Rural school children
• Worker at roundhouse in Clinton, IA
• Seed and feed store

When I was 9, there were few things more exciting than the arrival of the Sears Christmas catalog. I bought my microscope and my chemistry set out of that catalog. I wanted to get the electronics set but never did.

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Originally uploaded by tufts_of_tafetta

Last night I rode on the memorial ride for Tracey Sparling, the young woman who was run over by a cement truck while trying to cross Burnside on her bike. The ride was mostly silent except for the constant tinkling of sad bike bells in the still night. None of my photos came out as well as this one which shows the “ghost bike” adorned with notes, flowers, candles, etc. See my earlier entry for more details about the accident. A number of people took pictures and posted them on Flickr.

• Alder to 1st
• 1st to Salmon
• Salmon to Hawthorne Bridge
• Hawthorne Bridge to Springwater Corridor
• Springwater Corridor to Powell Butte
• Various trails over Powell Butte to 162nd
• 162nd to home

What a glorious sunny afternoon to ride my bike the long way home. It was a tremendous effort to climb Powell Butte – one that found me laying down, gasping for breath on the side of the trail at one point – but it was well worth it. On my way down the north side of the Butte, I wondered how hot my brake pads were getting. My rims were plenty hot when I got to the bottom and as I touched the front rim, I heard the distinct sound of air leaking from the front tire. At least it didn’t blow out when I was flying down the hill at 35 mph.

It took me about 15 minutes to pull the tube out and install my spare. I was actually pretty refreshed when I got back on and pedaled towards home. How surprised was I when I came upon this at 162nd and Division:

The picture is pretty blurry (you can click on it to get the full-size version), but it’s a car that had run up a telephone pole and came to rest in a vertical position. Somebody at the scene reckoned he must have been going 100 mph or better. I asked around and they said it had happened about 15 minutes before.

Now picture this: me in the bike lane at that moment had my bike tire not gone flat 15 minutes before. Freaky, huh? More pictures on my Flickr page.

I ride over this bridge nearly every day but it doesn’t look this good in real life.

I had to wait a short time this morning for this to pass by the Steel Bridge. They had only opened the bottom part of the bridge, so I could have gone over the top of the bridge, but I chose to take these pictures. Check them out, I think they turned out really great!