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.

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….

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…

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!

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….

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…

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.

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.

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.

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..?

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).

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).

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).

This is the path the shuttle takes when it’s on the massive crawler and has to go from the VAB (vehicle assembly building) to one of the launch pads.

It’s the wide dual dirt/gravel roads (with the grass strip in the middle) towards the back.

The launch pad all the way to the right is 39A and the other (a little to the left) is 39B.

If you click on the photo you now get the huge version which is 3,900 pixels across and 700 pixels down (if it only shows up as wide as your browser, click again, then you can scroll right and left). You can click for a more normal 1024 pixel size too. Sorry, I appear to have problems uploading the huge version of the panorama from my phone. I’ll fix later at hotel.

So I’ve been in Florida for a few hours or so. There was an incident at the airport where they closed down baggage claim and car rentals so I had to wait a little bit to get a car (they bypassed the luggage and got that to us); I heard they were bringing in the dogs (to sniff for something?) but never saw them from where I was sitting. So I got my car, picked up a few essentials (a case of water and a 6-pack of Coca-Cola).

The weather is awesomeI’ve already had my Easter dinner so now I’m heading to check in the hotel, grab a shower, get my stuff organized and then head over to the Kennedy Space Center. I have to be there by midnight to catch the 6:21am launch of STS-131 the Space Shuttle Discovery!!! Very excited about this. I’ll have hours and hours but it’ll be dark so I’m not sure what I’ll have to post but some photos or videos might show up while I’m there goofing around…

It’s a beautiful day out. So instead of sitting in the house on this great day, I went for a bike ride and I’m sitting outside the library. They’ve got WiFi and it actually reaches outside pretty good.

The problem is the sun is really making it hard to see my screen. I could sit in the shade but then I’m not in the sun (I might as well as be at home). My XO laptop had this great LCD display that actually worked better in direct sunlight than it did in indirect sunlight. It has a color display but in the direct sunlight it washed out all the color leaving a very clear greyscale image. (I think it might have two different types of LCD displays sandwiched together.)

I’d like some kind of a high contrast display for my laptop that worked like that one (that wouldn’t get washed out in the sun). It’s just to get information typed in, it doesn’t need to be pretty ,have a fast refresh or anything. It’s got a clip at the top theat just rests on my current laptop display (the top edge of it could be a spall solar panel to help with power) and it’d plug into the video port on my laptop and the USB for some power.

Here’s a quick video to show you the quality of the display of the XO Laptop. It’s a little out of focus at times because I’ve got macro on and I keep moving the camera.

Watch a larger version of this video in YouTube.

If the XO didn’t have such a crappy keyboard, I’d be tempted to use it outside and use VNC to remotely access the display on my MacBook. But then I’d have to haul to computers around with me.

Anyone have any suggestions for something like this?

My condo is about 10 years old and (in Michigan at least) they’re allowed to use plastic PVC pipe in some instances. At least it passed inspection, so I assume it’s allowed. It’s never really bothered me except where the fresh water goes into the tank of the toilet, there is this flexible hose that goes into a metal clamp and it’s just cheap looking. I can’t think of anything else that I’d really complain about the construction of my condo (other than a few missed spots when they painted). Also, the hose seems like it’s bent with a bit too much tension, which might be part of the problem, but I really don’t know about these kinds of things, I’m not really the handy-man type.

In the bathroom the hose got bumped during normal cleaning and leaked a little as a result. I touched the hose and it stopped, so I jammed it back in there and put a little bucket underneath it. It seemed fine after a few months so I pulled the bucket and noticed it dripped a little later so I put it back (tried this twice). So I’ve left the bucket there for ages and it’s been there for years. I’ve never seen any moisture whenever I’ve looked, but it’s really not in the way, so I’ve left it.

This past week, cleaning the other bathroom, I barely bumped the same toilet hose and it started dripping. I tried to shove it back in but it’d start again, the more I fussed the more it dripped. It even started dripping out of the other end a little, so I turned the water off to that toilet and used the other one for the last few days.

I went to get the parts to fix it today. The guy at Home Depot (Larry) seemed to know what he was talking about so I asked him. I described it to him and he said it didn’t make sense, the hose should come off. So I showed him the pictures I took on my phone, and he agreed it really didn’t look like the hose would come off the one end; he specifically said he’d never seen anything like it. So he sold me a new valve, a new hose and some Oatey PVC primer/glue. If it was more normal, I’d only have needed the hose ($5) but as it was, I spent less than $20 on everything; but if it works, I’ll replace the other one and never need the bucket again…

I Googled for a few different types of directions, my biggest concern was 2 things: One, if I screwed up I’d have to cut the pipe near the wall (to remove the old connector) and if the pipe gets too short, it’s time to start removing dry wall. The other being that there was a little water dripping out, so I was afraid it would impact the process. I found absolutely nothing on if I should worry about the dripping water and the pipe length turned out not to be a problem.

I found two good references: Gluing PVC Pipe and Fittings and the FAQ at the Oatey site (the “glue”) and the eHow on using purple primer and PVC glue.

I thought I’d have to saw off the old connector (this was going to be my least favorite part) but it was just pushed on with some kind of a pressurized sealed fitting (or else it took no effort to break the glue seal) and I’d seen something similar in metal before (I’m guessing). So no sawing off the pipe, I just cleaned up what was there. By the time I was ready, the dripping had stopped.

So I cleaned off the pipe, made sure it was dry, and applied the purple primer to both pieces (the applicator is built into the can). Waited a few seconds (less than 10) and applied the “glue” (technically I “solvent welded the PVC pipe”, not “glued”) to both parts (two times). Pushed the connector on, while giving a quarter-twist, and held it for two minutes.

Now I just wait two hours and it should be ready to go. I wish I’d taken a few pictures before I started the process…

I actually think it’ll be ready sooner than that (I’m well below the water pressure PSI it’ll handle and it’s much warmer than needed), but better safe than sorry.

The purple primer can was really really full and it spilled easily, I’m glad I had newspaper down. The only other thing that could have made this easier would have been to have someone else here, the water shut-off is three floors down and when I turn it on when IF it starts leaking I won’t know until I come all the way up here and then have run all the way back down to turn it off (and then run back up here to clean it up).

I’ve still got an hour to wait until the unveiling (or maybe the flood)…

Later: So I hooked up the hose and turned on the water and everything seems to be fine. The water seemed a little discolored at first, I didn’t expect that with the PVC pipes, but I ran all the faucets for a while and all seems great now!

FYI, the pictures of the parts (valve, hose and “glue”) are similar to what I used. Finding the exact one was kinda hard, the glue is the same (Oatey PVC Cement w/ Purple Primer #30248).

I’ve really been cleaning and getting rid of things lately. Last week I easily had double the average, but this week I’ve outdone myself. How much? Enough to where I thought I should take a picture of it!!!

The stuff on the left is recycling, the stuff on the right is trash. The box in the very middle is some book-type stuff that I’m not sure if it’s recyclable so I’ll let them figure it out. I’ve also got some boxes of books and stuff to take to the Salvation Army or somewhere too.

My neighbors are probably wondering why I’m doing flash photography outside at midnight..?

The inside it still a bit of a disaster, I’ve got to get that picked up since my mother is stopping by tomorrow today…

So people used to say something like “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?”, for most of my life I think the closest I could come to that was “Where was I during the attempted Reagan assignation?”, it’s not the same thing, but it’s a President being shot so it’s what came to mind for me in those situations.

Two other things that stick in my head were the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. The Challenger sticks more in my head mostly due to the imagery of it’s explosion 73 seconds after the launch.

Clearly for many people, “Where were you on September 11th, 2001?” will be that type of question. Personally, that one sticks in my head mostly because I saw much of it live. But then I assume the attacks was designed that way, one crash so that everyone was watching and then additional crashes while so many were already watching. And then so many watched the towers fall so even if you missed the earlier part of the disaster there still parts for you to catch live.

It’s generally disasters or death that people remember: The Oklahoma City bombing (1995), the London Bombing (2005), when John Lennon was shot, when Princess Diana died and things along those lines (FYI, I don’t remember when all these happened). That’s sad that these are the parts of life that people remember and talk about. Keep in mind, it’s not when the event happened it’s really about when you heard about it.

Maybe because disasters are always disasters to most people but great things to one person aren’t always a great thing to another person…

If you can think of some “Where were you?” events, please add them to the comments!

This is a time lapse of the roll out from the VAB (Vertical Assembly Building) to the launch page, I’d guess it’s about an hour of moving per minute. I’ll admit it’s not the most exciting time lapse video but it’s a lot faster than the live video was last night (it was about seven hours until attached).

Just before midnight last night, space shuttle Discovery began its slow roll from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39A. Riding aboard the crawler-transporter, the shuttle completed the 3.4-mile trip and was secured to the pad by 7 a.m. EST.

– NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

Here’s the direct link to the roll out video.

So I’m pretty excited about this, not the roll out itself, but once it’s been on the launch pad a few more days and the figure out if there are any issues it’ll help firm up the launch date. I figure once the GOES-P mission goes off this week that’ll help too, I don’t think there is anything else big in the meantime.

Here are some newly released aerial photos of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center from the New York Times. I can’t believe this was over eight years ago…

The images were taken from a police helicopter — the only aircraft allowed in the air space near the towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

ABC posted 12 other photos from the collection of the 2,779 pictures. Some look to be the same or awfully similar.

Found at Zudfunk.

So what do you think it would look like if you wandered too close to a black hole? Scientists at the University of Stuttgart in Germany created a black hole simulation to let you input some different parameters to see how it would look.

The program’s creators say it could be an excellent tool to familiarize people with the weird ways that black holes warp light.

The video below is a narrated sequence with a few different views. Here’s the original article at New Scientist.

Direct link to the black hole video.

Found at the Woot blog (which is not generally where I get my science news).

Here are a series of three videos taken in Haiti last week by CNN. They’re not of the earthquake itself but of the area afterwards.

What is so interesting is that it’s video and you can drag the mouse to look in all directions, but the video (and audio) keeps playing as you drag the video around. At 900×500 it’s pretty large video too, I can’t promise how it’ll play on your older computer. CNN put this together so maybe they’ll add more later.

Video 1 in a three minute car ride through Haiti.
Video 2 on a three minute walk in Haiti.
Video 3 short car ride through Haiti.

It’s similar to the YellowBird demo I mentioned a few months back

Wow! They’re already lined up at Best Buy in Dearborn. They store doesn’t open until 5 AM!!!

Here’s a link to the HQ video.

That’s insane, I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like later on…

I love xkcd, a cartoon about life, tech, love, science and other abstract concepts. I’ve referenced a few xkcd cartoons before, looking now I see I haven’t even mentioned a few of my favorites. I’ll have to remedy that…

You’ll have to click to see the other four frames of the cartoon.

FYI, hovering your mouse over the actual cartoon usually adds a little more to the cartoon’s story (or explains some of the geeky concepts concepts).

So you can order ESPN Magazine from Amazon for a present for someone for only $5. This is for 26 issues shipped over the year. It takes 4-6 weeks to start, so it should arrive right around New Year’s…

It’s even got choice in the drop down specifically to renew too.

Normally I wouldn’t try to sell you something I’m not interested in for $5. But when I starting writing this post people were reporting getting a $5 credit at checkout which made it free for the year, I don’t see it when I put it in the cart.

But it is a deal so I thought I’d post it anyways (since I’d already written it up and created the affiliate link) and it’s the right time of year for some stocking stuffers. Leave me a comment if you get it for free (or even if you buy it for $5).

THIS DEAL HAS EXPIRED.

So I was in southwest Michigan the other day and managed to catch the sunset. I snapped a few photos with my Digital Rebel XT. Actually I snapped a bunch of photos, but I picked these three to share…

These were all taken in a little roadside park in St. Joseph, Michigan.

I really like this one, but I wish the bushes had a bit more detail.

I’ll have to play around with these and see if I can get a little more detail out of the trees and bushes.

Would more people take the stairs instead of the escalator if it was more fun?!?

Here’s the direct link to the stairs video.

This is actually part of something called The Fun Theory which is an initiative of VW.

I stumbled across this new segment of The Ellen Show called “Know or Go” on the web. It’s a little game show segment. The best part isn’t the first contestant falling through the trap doors, it’s the reaction of the other two contestant’s when the first falls!

So I applied for the job at The Big Trip and the big requirement was a ninety second video to go with it. I just found out about the job yesterday and put this together this video this afternoon.

An applicant will be selected from a pool of an estimated 30,000 worldwide applicants to travel and explore various travel destinations around the United States for a period of 3 months. Their journey will be documented, filmed and aired on thebigtrip.com in mini-episode form (similar to programs depicted on the Travel Channel) for millions of viewers to view each month.

Here’s my video in larger HD quality.

Not only will the applicant we choose get a dream job, they will receive a generous salary of $50,000 USD for their 3 month journey. The traveler will be given a video camera and a MacBook to upload the videos to the internet.

Oh, and they give you an iPhone too!

With a guesstimate of 30,000 applications the odd are low, but you can’t win if you don’t play! And I do love to talk about travel on-line…

LATER: I don’t see that many applications on YouTube (part of the requirement), I’m thinking less than 500, maybe even a lot less than that, but it’s possible people didn’t add any keywords or description. Also, the requirement was to be 60-90 seconds, quite a few are a little longer, many are a lot longer (and a few are too short); I wonder if that being too long will disqualify them? Most of the ones I like are too long, I could have gone longer, as it was I had to trim it to get it to less than 90 seconds…

In the United States Daylight Savings Time (DST) ends today. So at 2 AM on Sunday November 1st, 2009 set your clocks back one hour in the US (if you’re in the EU, you should have done it last week).

I hate them messing with the clocks, but more importantly, I hate them messing with my internal clock…

But I won’t complain about the extra hour sleep

Image courtesy of WikiPedia…

Great day outside on Hines Drive today. Lots of great colors as fall approaches. Here’s a panorama I took with my iPhone (and stitched it on my iPhone with AutoStitch on the phone too!).

I think it took eight or nine images to build the whole thing and it came out to 4000×506 pixels. This program works quick: I took the photos with the camera app, ran the AutoStich program, clicked the photos, it built a tiny thumbnail, I clicked the stitch button and few minutes later I’ve got the panorama on the screen!

Click to enlarge panoramic image, if it doesn’t load correctly, here’s a 1024 wide image.

I was excited to watch but the results were boring…
Click for a larger version of the CNN moon crash Video.

Here’s the animation, which was much more interesting.
Click for a larger version of the CNN moon crash Animation.

I hope the animation is pretty much what happened, we just couldn’t see it. I hope the data that they get is good data. I’d prefer that it shows there is water;ut if there isn’t, I hope the results show there isn’t. No data / bad data means failed mission…

The LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) spacecraft was also passing by a little bit later (90 seconds?) so that should have have some additional data.

LATER: A little more info on this at CNN. They said this was the fifth most watched webcast ever.

Will Farrell and friends speak out to help insurance companies.

Found at Feministing.

I like Will Ferrell when he’s not running around with his hair on fire (or other stupid stuff).

And yes, I know I’ve been posting too many videos lately

I love WordPress. I think I’ve expressed that many many times. The plug-ins that people supply are amazing too. But what I’m surprised about are some basics that some plug-ins don’t have. When going to the configuration page from a plug-in they neglect some basic information:

• the name of the plug-in
• the version number of the plug in
• the name of the programmer
• a related web site
• a link to where the plug-in is located on WordPress.org
• A few sentences with some very basic instructions would be nice too

How can I recommend your product to anyone else without a link? Or how can I donate to the author if I don’t know where (or who) they are? Or how to use it without any instructions?

Some of the plug-ins have great instructions, but if you can’t find the site with the information it’s not very helpful. Some of the plug-ins have the information in a read me file in the plug-in folder, but some of the folders don’t have names that match up with the name of the plug-in very clearly. And really, if you’re going to create a read me file with important information, just paste it into the plug-in page.

Some plug-ins are great and include all the above, but many leave out a thing or three.  Some go above and beyond: including a list of people who donated and a list of information to include when reporting bugs (WP, PHP, MySQL and more); please note in this example, that they don’t tell you collect the information, they actually have the list with all the version numbers (all you have to do is copy and paste).

I might be sounding fussy, but I’m not talking about user interface and minor confusing instructions, I’m talking relatively big things here. Things that could get the author recognition or donations. Things that could prevent people from using the plug-in that they bothered to create (they do want people to use them, don’t they?).

This new free add-on to AT&T Cell phones that starts today for sign-up. You’ll get to choose 5 numbers with unlimited to and from calling for individual plans $59.99 a month or higher. Family plans $89.99 a month or higher get to choose 10 numbers (shared between all users). It looks like this is Unity or Nation plans; see http://att.com/alist for more info (this link still gives you info, but the login seems to generate an error, so just login normally and click on manage your A-List).

That’s calling to any other company cell phones or land-lines!  It’s a free upgrade to those who qualify so it’s kind of a no-brainer to sign up.

Five numbers for an individual plan. That’s huge! I’d guess 95% of my minutes go to the same five numbers; 75% percent probably go to just three numbers.

Only standard domestic landline or wireless numbers may be added. Directory assistance, 900 numbers, customer’s own wireless or Voice Mail access numbers, and machine to machine numbers are not eligible. Only voice calling is eligible.

- From the AT&T A-List “Feature Terms & Conditions”

Even if you have enough minutes, it’s silly to not sign up and get the free leftover minutes put into your rollover account. It might even be worth it to lower your plan if you have a much higher plan.

Here’s the thing though, if you have more than enough minutes, this really isn’t going to help much, you’re probably already on an appropriate plan. It’s really most helpful if you were already considering raising your minutes. If you were considering adding another phone (or two) to your plan, you might get away with doing it and not having to add more minutes. Or if you’ve considered ditching your land-line and just going cellular. Remember AT&T is doing this to be competitive and probably did the math for everyone’s most called numbers; it was probably this or lower prices and who wants to give up money these days…?

Please let me know in the comments how this plan might benefit you most. And remember to come back in a few months and let me know how this affects your bill, especially if you change your plan and save money because of it.

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!!!!

If you’re not sure how, here’s how to talk like a pirate.

Here’s the direct link.

This looks pretty awesome. Until I saw the target. Video looks pretty good though.

It’s gotta be fake, a few feet short and you’d hit the platform. When I first saw it, I thought the pool was in a lake (so if you missed no big deal) but the wooden platform is just too much of a way to kill yourself if you missed (and it’s not a very big pool). So I vote “fake”…

Found at -273.

The City of Dearborn was supposed to have fireworks earlier this summer but it got rained out (I think that’s why it was delayed) and tonight was the make up day.

Wow! It was amazing, it was a constant barrage of fireworks for about 25 minutes. Very cool.

It was an impressive show. I won’t miss another one at Dearborn’s Ford Field if I have a choice about it.

The Space Shuttle Discovery is on the launch pad right now. This always excites me and still gives me chills when it takes off! You can watch NASA TV live on their site. At this point, they are in a hold and I think they are still supposed to launch in the next hour (11:59 PM EST).

I’ve always wanted to see a launch, I don’t know why I’ve never made this happen. I was supposed to go a few weeks ago to see this launch (STS-128), but they moved the date so it didn’t work out. I’ve got to make this a priority over the next year before they stop the shuttle launches.

It’s been 25 years since this ship’s maiden voyage, it was August 30th, 1984 when Discovery had it’s first launch! It was the third orbital vehicle in service (OV-103) and is now the oldest running shuttle. Wow!

Once they introduced the shuttle, I always thought they’d have some way to take passengers. I always assumed that’d be airplane type seats in the bay, like envisioned in the 1970′s James Bond movie Moonraker (anybody have an image of this?).

So let’s just plan to catch a shuttle launch in the next year, okay? Anyone have any tips on going to a launch?

I’ve generally had pretty great health insurance. But I’ve been bothered that so many people have no insurance. This is a simplification of the benefits of socialized health ‘insurance’.

Here’s the direct link to it YouTube.

Here’s the thing: I think that some kind of socialized health will probably personally affect me negatively. I think that companies that offer great insurance will cut back a bit and it’ll cost me more out of pocket either at work or in my taxes (even if they don’t cut back, it’ll cost me in my taxes). But for more people to have better health care I’m willing to lose some of mine.

* Disclaimer: This is my view-point. I’m not very political. I’m (mostly) just sharing this cartoon and titled the post the same as the video. But feel free to offer your 2 cents on the video.

It’s the little things in life that make me happy.

I’ve been waiting to get to this point for days and days…

From the Friday Question #76:

What is your favorite (cold) cereal? You know, the one you could just eat bowls and bowls of?
So this summer, when I was up north at my Aunt and Uncle’s place, I had Kellogg’s Special K Red Berries Cereal one morning. It was delicious and it’s “Special K” so it’s got to be nutritious, right? Well, it turns out it’s pretty negligible on the being more nutritious when compared to something like Frosted Flakes, and it’s way more expensive. (But don’t tell my aunt!)

So my usual favorite is Frosted Flakes, but occasionally I’ll buy some of the Kellogg’s Special K Red Berries as a treat.

FYI, cereal is more of a snack to me, it’s pretty rare that I eat it as breakfast (especially when at home).

The Lens Day Challenge for this week is Traffic.

This is on a busy side-street in San Jose, Costa Rica; It’s a block or two east of La Sabana Park. I think it’s this messy intersection off of Calle 40; but if that’s where it is, it’s not even a very good representation of the intersection.

Tori always has interesting lighting at her concerts. Lots of changes during the show with more to do with the set and lighting (no actual physical changes). I always enjoy it.

The concert was awesome (as Tori always is), had a great seat, row G (on the right side) so it was perfect. As people cleared out I was able to move up front for the last few songs).

Below I’ve got a few low quality photos (my iPhone is great, but in the dark it’s not so great) and a video to illustrate the lighting.

The video is just a few quick clips so you can see the lighting (I think it’s four clips about seven seconds each).

I’ve never seen this before but if you follow the direct link to YouTube and click on the HQ button at the bottom it makes the movie bigger (like the HD button does). Give it a try.

But I haven’t figured out a way to directly link it to make it the bigger HQ automatically (you can append &fmt22 to force into large HD or &fmt=18 to force into normal HQ but I’m looking for the large HQ answer, anyone?).

I was at the Detroit Opera House the other night to see Tori Amos in concert (that’s another post) and I really like the building. I’d like to see it in better lighting and take a bunch of pictures with my nice camera to see how good they might really come out.

These were just with my cell hone but I think they came out pretty good.

These are actually exactly the same photo but just cropped differently. It’s five or six photos stitched together (but they were stitched together using AutoStitch on my cell phone) to make one big photo.

The banner is an edit from a photo I took in Cardiff, Wales. It is of the Wales Millennium Centre (see photo) with (what they simply call) The Water Tower in front of it.

These are located in Roald Dahl Plass (plaza) dedicated to the Cardiff born author Roald Dahl. This Millennium Centre is beautiful at night, I didn’t have my camera when I wandered down there when I was in town, but that photo will be on my list for the next trip. And hopefully there will be water coming out of The Water Tower next time too! The Plass is lit very pretty too!

I’ve been thinking about Cardiff and also thinking about changing my photo so I choose this. I don’t have a lot of really wide photos that crop well so I looked around and found this one. Plus, I’ve got Torchwood on the the brain this week (month).

On the photo (in this post) if you read the right half of the building you can see it says: “In These Stones Horizons Awen (Awe and?) Sing”. The left half says something in Welsh. I was told the building is built from materials made all in Wales.

I mentioned the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing earlier today. Here’s a few other “space” things that caught my eye:

That’s it for now. Please post any recommended links in the comments below.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

On this day 40 years ago Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. I’m not sure what else needs to be added to that statement: “We landed on the Moon”! How amazing is that?!?

Just for some frame of reference: The Moon is 238,000 miles away (384,000 km), if you were driving 75 miles per hour it would take you 3,100 hours. Keep in mind that’s speeding and you don’t get to pull over for any bathroom breaks or snacks!

Actually it took them more like five days to get there, so just dividing that out, that’s around 2,000 miles per hour (assume it took them a while to speed up and slow down).

When I was a kid, my mother purchased me a two record set of the mission. Lots of audio recordings of the launch and landing. I’m thinking there was some insert with a bunch of photos too. I played that a lot on my record player. I don’t have any idea what year she purchased that, but I’d say I was six or seven(?), and it was amazing to me!

It’s still amazing to me. Whenever I can watch a launch of some kind or another, I always turn on the TV and still get thrills and chills. I get chills just thinking about it as I’m writing this…

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia.

So one of the coolest programs I’ve downloaded from the iPhone App Store is AutoStitch. It takes a bunch of photos and stitches them together. Alex Lindsey talked about this on MacBreak Weekly a few weeks ago. He spoke so highly of it, I plopped down my $1.99 and started using it immediately.

You take a bunch of overlapping photos and it stitches them together, it does this completely automatically, there is no user intervention. You can use pictures you’ve taken with the iPhone but you can just as easily use pictures that you’ve synced with the phone. So this can work for the iPod Touch too, just sync some photos and when you’ve got some spare time, stitch them together. It does an amazing job.

I first used some photos that I shot on my Canon SD1100, it that just happened to be synced to the phone and did a great job of stitching them together. So you don’t need an iPhone, an iPod Touch with photos that you’ve synced works great too.

Above you can see a sample screenshot from the program where I chose 22 photos and it stitched them together (click it to enlarge). Remember all I did was pick the photos and a few minutes later it churned these out. All these photos were taken with the iPhone 3gs. If I cropped some of the edges of the photos, it’d look like I took there with a really wide angle lens.

Here are two samples:

These pictures were taken at CityFest in Detroit this summer.

I’ve used it multiple times and only once had a problem; it got confused when I did a 360 panorama when the same type of railing showed up several times, this was because all the condos where I live are similar so it really couldn’t match things up. There are some matching issues with color/contrast and people moving, but this is really great!

This software is well worth the $1.99! I think I got that much fun out of it in the first hour, let alone all the time since then. ZZZ