Here’s an orange flower for this week’s PhotoHunt. There’s a bit of green in the photo too, I’ve really been liking the way green has been showing up in my photos.

Anyone know what kind of flower this is? I think I took this by the garden plots behind U of M Dearborn…

You can participate in PhotoHunts too.

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Just had the best dessert at Applebee’s for only one dollar! A tiny warm brownie with a small scoop of ice cream. It was delicious!!! And did I say it was only $1?

Not the best photo, but the flash was too bright and it was kinda dim (this photo) without it, it was even better than it looked!

I guess they’ve only been doing this Brownie Bites deal until 4 PM, but they (at least the Allen Park Applebee’s) is extending it.

They had Long Island Iced Tea’s for $4 and I got a huge amount of shrimp and fries for $11 with it. Yum!

Everything was great there (thanks Tiffany!) except there were at least 5 feet of receipts printed off for my purchase (I paid with credit and finished off a gift card) which was a little insane….

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A turtle swimming around in a aquarium at the Belle Isle Nature Center. I’m not even sure what kind of turtle it is, it was just a “regular turtle” until I really liked the photo. I’ve really been liking green in my nature photos lately.

And of course you can click for a larger version.

I really do like the way this photo came out, he(?) was kind of fussy and wouldn’t hold still for very long, but I did get a few shots of him, this is just the best one. I’ll have to put together a few of them to share with you…

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I was at the Belle Isle Nature Center the other day and got a picture of this interesting looking fish called a Longnose Gar (sometimes called Garpike, Needlenose Gar or just Gar Fish (or Lepisosteus osseus). See the wikipedia or the Animal Diversity Web entries for more information.

I got pretty lucky with this video, it was my first try and it’s as if we rehearsed the scene. I tried more than a few more times and I just couldn’t get the camera lined up (or the fish to perform properly)

If you’ve got a fast computer be sure to watch the Gar Fish in HD and be sure to click the full screen option at 720p.

See, doesn’t it looks like we planned it that way?

FYI, I shot this on my iPhone 4!

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Wow, I just saw this list today for the first time, and it’s got some amazing tidbits from the past. I was suprised I’ve read most of them, in their original form or in reprints.

Today is the last day to vote, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look at the list.

I voted for number 28 which from the Sandman Preludes and Nocturnes story, where he does a “verbal” battle to retrieve an item from hell.

My second choice was moment 43 from a short story “Luthor is a big, fat jerk” where is offer a country girl $1,000,000 to come be his “assistant” for a year, and gives her 10 minutes, basically just to screw with her mind.

My third was moment 88 where from Season of Mists where Lucifer (after kicking everyone out of Hell) gives the key to Hell (the largest piece of “psychic real estate”) to the Sandman and pretty much says “deal with it”.

And my fourth (and last for this list) moment is 88 (which might also have been a short story) where Lex Luthor refuses to believe Superman is Clark Kent. Maybe not as significant in the DC universe as some others, but when he realizes he missed his chance…

While my two Sandman choices are from the DC universe, it’s not from the popular DC universe. I predict the death of SuperGirl will rank high, as with the death of the Joker and another scene or two from the Dark Knight returns.

Actually, I’ve got another pick, moment 10 when John Constantine (from Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits) giving the finger to the triumvirate that rules Hell because he manages to sell his soul to all three of the demons (to cure his cancer) and knows while they all want him dead, the battle that will ensue since all three want him, they likely won’t do anything to hasten his death…

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I think it would drive many of you all cRaZy but I think I could handle it.

Wouldn’t live be easier, if you did everything literally? Eventually things would get better after the crazy parts but I think it could be a good place to be.

Let’s not worry about the underlying themes, bring them to the top or don’t bring them at all….

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I love surprises! And I don’t need much. A weird candy bar I haven’t been able to find. A pint of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Coca-Cola in a glass bottle!

A complicated thing could possibly disastrous though: Don’t take me on a surprise trip to Chicago without my camera(s) and rollerblades (or bicycle). I’d need something to make be bring the right supplies. Tell me we’re hiking for a bit so I bring two kinds of shoes with a camera or two and that I should bring my blades “in case the new paved trail is done”.

Parties are good (I’m pretty happy with a party even if it’s not a surprise!). A trip around the world, surprise away, it should include some places that I want to go…

I’d be really surprised if Kim sent me some of those Star Wars cookies she baked

This question is from this week’s (#122) Friday Question…

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Jewel dresses up as a regular person and sings her own songs! It’s a little long, but pretty funny, especially if you’re a fan…

Click for a larger version.

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I like using a NewsReader on my iPhone (or iPod Touch) and one of my favorites is Doppler. It’s easy to use and it synchronizes with Google Reader so it makes off-line reading easy to do. So this means that when you read an article it marks it as read on Google so you don’t end up reading it again.

It caches all your RSS feeds for off-line reading so it’s pretty fast when you’re going through the news since it cached it in advance; but this means you do click to click on the link a minute before you’re ready to read since it doesn’t download in the background. I usually tap it before I leave the house since it’s faster on the WiFi, even if I don’t read it soon, it’s cached most of the recent articles so that when I do sync over 3G it’s already got most of the new news…

TIP: When configuring to sync with Google it lists all your individual feeds at the top of the list, but if you scroll to the bottom of the list you can choose your “folders” as defined in Google Ready

I’m mentioning this software today because it’s free for download until July 20th, 2010. It’s worth the money, but free is better, isn’t it?

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I thought this was an extra cute advertisement. So that means you get to watch it too…

Here’s the direct link.

Personally, I’m not a huge AT&T cell phone fan, but they do have the iPhone and do I love that part of them. And the network is really fast…

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Throughout life, even before cell phones and even before call waiting, I’ve called people on the phone sometimes initiating (but sometimes returning a call) and they don’t answer so I leave (or not leave) a message. I then move on with my day: I hop in the shower, go to work, I start some laundry, go for a bike ride or I might have even placed the call before walking into a meeting of some sort (it’s not like I’m calling people at 4:59 on a business day).

I can’t tell you the number of times I get a call back within moments and, because I’m not there any more, I can’t take the call so I end up with a message that says “why aren’t you there?”. In most of these cases I have no reason to believe they’ll be calling me back in a few minutes, I have no idea why they didn’t take my call. In a few cases, I’ve even gotten a “I don’t like that you aren’t then when I call you right back!”. I’m not on a tether, I’ve committed no crime…

Isn’t the real question,
“Where were they when I called?”?

If I don’t know you’re calling me back soon, why would I be sitting by the phone? They weren’t sitting by the phone, right? I could be there for hours and still be unavailable when you finally call. Especially these days, many people have call waiting, if they needed to click over just to say “I’ll call you back in 5, unless it’s important”, or they could text back with out even interrupting their call (although I’d prefer “I’ll be done in an hour” compared to “what do you want?”). The other problem is when someone does answer when already on a call, they say they’ll call you back in 5 minutes (or an hour) and triple the time has past. How long do you wait before leaving or calling back? If you leave, are you in trouble because they said they would call?

I’m not a big fan of people clicking over for every incoming call, so if I’m expecting a call I’ll tell a person I’m talking to (at the start of the conversation), “I do need to take a very quick call from so-and-so” or “I’m on my way to meet someone, so if they call I need to take it for a minute”. Otherwise I generally ignore call waiting. Although, when doing a job search, I’m apt to take unknown callers when from area codes of where I’m applying.

Related sidebar: I’ve noticed times that when I don’t leave a message, I think I’m more likely to get a call back when I don’t leave one! But then it doesn’t mean they played the actual message (if I left one) that might have some useful info like “I’m running late, I’m hopping into the shower and I’ll be on my way”.

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This is for Photo Friday and this week’s theme is “Symbols”. This is not my favorite picture that I’ve taken of hieroglyphics, but certainly by shear quantity it has the most symbols in it.

This is taken at the temple of Edfu, near the south end of the Nile on the west side. Most cities/temples were on the east side , I’m sure I was told why but I can’t recall; I want to say “evil” was from the west, but I really aren’t certain.

You can also view a huge 2300 pixels wide version.

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I have friends in real life and they all get treated differently. Some are people I see weekly, some I see once a year, some I talk to once in a great while. Some I exchange pleasantries with and some I’ll complain/talk about work or my love life. Some friends I’ll travel with and and some I really only keep in touch with on the phone. Every relationship is completely different, not better or worse, just different. And I might turn down invitations with certain people for certain things, you don’t say yes to every single event/trip/movie you get invited to, do you? I don’t really like sports, a friend isn’t going to think I don’t like them just because I won’t join their group of friends in getting season passes to some team, right?

My on-line life has similar parallels. I might chat with someone often or occasionally. Some of my on-line friends are people who might have traveled to the same place I did so I friended them, but it’s so long ago I don’t even remember how we ended friends in the same place. Some are my friends in real life but I do no actual communications with them on-line. Just like real life the on-line people are treated differently treated different. So just like in real life, requests to be friends can be denied; I’m not looking for season passes that portion of your life, I’m happy with the way things are.

Plus you get on-line friends who ask you to join farmville, mob wars or what ever other junk they might play I automatically decline, I don’t play those things (I do play Scrabble though). And keep in mind when people invite you to those things, they are actually sharing some of your (possibly) private information with those games/programs, that’s how you get the invites.

In addition, I treat my real life differently than my on-line life. I occasionally talk about things to strangers on-line that I would never mention to friends or family; they might stumble across it, but it’s not like I had directly shared it with them.

I’ve actually got more friends and family on some social networks than I’d actually like. Who knows who might read something and share it with someone, like my Mom, because they assume I already have. And on the opposite side, in my real life my Mom probably shares more with friends and family than I’d prefer.

Here’s an on-line example, I’m friends with some of my cousins kids and one day talking to my mom and aunt I ask how my cousin’s son (the aunt’s grandson) enjoyed the high school dance the other night. When asked how I remembered, I mentioned that I saw some photos on-line (I did know my aunt knew there was a dance). So of course they asked to see them and I said, you know he’s shared those photos with people he knows who is going to see them and I didn’t feel right showing them; I was actually surprised how well they understood. I told them if I shared stuff he didn’t want shared, he might block me or limit my access or (even worse) he might limit himself…

It’s not like there was anything inappropriate in the photos, but it just wasn’t my info to share. And now that I think about it, I don’t even think they were his photos, I think they were just tagged with him in them.

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This is for Photo Friday and this week’s theme is “The Coast”. This is actually just a series of photos (7 or taken with my iPhone 3gs and stitched together with AutoStitch.

This photo was taken north of St. Pete Beach, FL. Possibly Medina?. Click it for a 1200 pixel wide version. A few stitching problems due to everyone not standing still but still a nice photo considering I was shooting into the sun during the evening.

The second photo is the same photo, but just before cropping.

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I remember how excited I was when I managed to get an invite for the service. Back then we actually called it Google gmail (or was it just Google mail?).

Looks like I gave away about over a hundred invites back when they were “closed” for accounts (maybe more if I deleted some, but if I did, I don’t know why all the others would still be in my sent box). Towards the end, they pretty much had unlimited invites but you still had to know someone to have them send you one.

Little did we know we’d have all the Google applications that now come along with it.

It’s the number one e-mail that I recommend to anyone these days, even though it may not be the address I always use as my return address, it’s generally where the mail gets forwarded to.

PS – I always tell people to not use the e-mail your internet provider (cable or DSL company) gives you for free, you’ll lose that when you want to switch providers. If you use that address for important things you won’t want to switch since you’ll lose that address. That’s why some people are still hanging onto AOL addresses after all these years…

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I had just commented the other day on how much I loved this photograph. And then Friday shows up and I’ve got a chance to use it. This is for Photo Friday and this week’s theme is Sexy.

This photo was taken last summer on Lake Huron on the Canadian side.

PS – Did you notice the conflicting product placement..?

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So when I went to the launch of the Space Shuttle a few weeks ago it was pretty strange. The launch was at 6:21am but my parking placard (permit) said to be there by midnight. So there was a lot of time to kill before the launch. I had causeway tickets, but the (shuttle) buses don’t even start running until 3:30 am.

The visitor’s center was crazy place. It’s just like if you went there in the daytime and everything is open: IMAX, gift shop, the “rides”, just about everything (not the bus tours around the space center). Excepts it’s dark and people are sleeping on the lawn and on benches and wherever (made me think of refugees).

Here’s the direct link and it’s also in HD.

It was just an interesting experience to be there for. I’m sure the video doesn’t share the experience properly. I didn’t get any footage of the people on the lawns, if I find some I’ll add them to the post.

Here’s a clip that I shot a minute later on the way to the car; I guess I was pretty excited when I got there, duh?!?

FYI, tickets for STS-132 go on sale in the morning at 8:45a ET on Monday, April 26, 2010. The causeway will be gone a few minutes after 9, I bet the visitor’s center will be gone by 9:30 (I think they’re about $65 and $40 each).

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So I ran out of gas. But check out this video as to where the warning light is. They couldn’t have hidden it better unless they tried! I knew I was low, but I hadn’t realized that low.

Direct link to the video.

I did manage to coast the car down to the bottom of an exit ramp, but I wasn’t anywhere near a gas station (or anything else). I had to call and wait for a tow truck to bring me some gas.

I’ve probably run out of gas five times in my life: three of those were rentals, once I coasted into the gas station, and the other time I had said “make sure we get gas as soon as we get in the car, I’m really low” (we both forgot).

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I thought this video of the cat playing with the iPad was pretty funny. Actually it’s pretty slow at the beginning, if you click here it should start a minute in the video.

Here’s the direct link to the Cat iPad video (in case I screwed up the links above trying to start them).

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A nice path off the Merrit Island causeway.

Click for the direct link to the video

I spent some time roller blading here today.

Photographed (as a half-dozen individual photos), stitched (with AutoStitch), edited (with ReelDirector), uploaded and blogged ALL on my iPhone. It scrolls too fast, I’m only given 8 seconds for the maximum pan with the ReelDirector app (not sure why there is that limit).

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