Blackberry lovin’ dog
Monday, August 4th, 2008Laika loves to pick and eat the blackberries that are so abundant this time of year…
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Archive for the ‘Photos and Videos’ Category
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Mini Vacation to Death Valley and Pinnacles
Sunday, April 27th, 2008We’ve visited Death Valley several times…it’s one of our favorite places. In fact, we were married there in April 2001. So it’s not unusual for us to get the bug to return in April. Of course, it’s not all that unusual at all, given that everyone is doing it these days. Damned bloggers, giving away our best spots. <smile>
We combined two nights at Death Valley with a night at Pinnacles National Monument, keen to see the California Condors who inhabit the area. It was a spectacular trip…there’s nothing better that California in the springtime! But, as Uncle Steve reminds me, “Really, the wildflowers are crap and the animals will bite and kill you. It’s best if you stay out of Death Valley, readers!”
And we even saw the condors at Pinnacles. Here’s my photos from the trip:
You can also browse Steve’s photos.
This trip was made possible by Therm-a-rest. We decided to spend the money we might have used on a hotel room in Death Valley on new Therm-a-Rest DreamTime
Kids, listen to Aunt T and get out there to enjoy the days when you can sleep or sit anywhere, before your bones get old and creaky like mine!
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David Lynch, Pundit
Saturday, February 16th, 2008Both of these fit my mood today. Thanks, Jay!
On product placments:
On watching movies on your phone:
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Young Engineers
Monday, January 28th, 2008This is getting passed around the MAKE offices. I love it!
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Should I be proud?
Monday, January 28th, 2008One of my photos was captioned and featured on one of my favorite web sites today:
moar cute puppy pictures
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It’s a JC Penney Ad. Seriously.
Thursday, December 6th, 2007I’m speechless. via O’Reilly Radar.
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This is my brain on the brain machine
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007As Maker Faire Austin closed, I got a chance to try the Brain Machine.
The Brain Machine was a featured project in MAKE 10 by Mitch Altman.
I didn’t expect much from the Brain Machine, but I was quite interested, given my recent experiences with meditation, which has been quite different than putting on psychedelic glasses with blinky lights. To be honest, I was exhausted physically and mentally by Maker Faire (I love the event, but it does leave us staff feeling a bit brutalized by the end of the weekend), and I figured that sitting quietly for a few minutes ignoring people and looking at pretty light patterns might be a nice escape.
To use the Brain Machine, you put the goggles and headphones on, close your eyes lightly (don’t squeeze them shut), and just relax and start the machine. The LED lights flash and beeps play in your ears. Interesting patterns play against the inside of your eyelids, and anything you do consciously seems to affect them. The basic background pattern changed as my focus changed to different depths of field (even though my eyes were shut). I saw big hot flashes of red when I took a deep breath. It was interesting.
The big surprise, though, was sitting at the wrap meeting about an hour later, and realizing that I felt pretty damn good. Happy, overall tired but not ready to drop, just ready to be quiet for a while. My mood was much better than I would have expected. Was it the Brain Machine? Maybe. I can say that now I want to make one myself.
Even better than having a chance to try the brain machine was having a chance to meet and hang out with Mitch Altman, MAKE author and inventor of the TV-B-Gone. Mitch was already one of my favorite MAKE authors because of his dedication to supporting his projects in the discussion area on the MAKE site (I see every article talkback so I can watch for spam trends).
Another maker I was happy to get to know was Gretchen Eisner, who lives on a small island in British Columbia and makes clothing with “electronically active components made from conductive textiles”. Incredibly, she helped our sales guy and me open and unwrap hundreds of Tinker Toy canisters (a pretty formidable job!), because all but one person from the Hasbro team was stuck in other cities due to flight delays.
I was especially happy when both Gretchen and Mitch said almost exactly the same thing, very excitedly, after the Faire: “X-number-of people completed the project!” Their enthusiasm for sharing what they’ve learned themselves exemplifies exactly what we want to happen at Maker Faire.
I was sorry to have missed Justin’s dad (though I did see his cool rubber band car). But such is working Maker Faire!
My own photos of the trip to Austin are up on Flickr. It was fun to travel with my coworkers…several of us were on the same flights. And traveling through Santa Ana, with fires and duststorms, on the way home, was interesting even though it was a little troublesome.
www.flickr.com
terriem’s Maker Faire Austin photoset
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Thunder Mountain Monument
Monday, October 15th, 2007I’m almost done getting all of my vacation photos organized, but here’s an interesting subset of them, from our stop at Thunder Mountain Monument. Here’s a random selection from the set…more details about the monument and photos from our visit are on the Flickr set page
www.flickr.com
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Posted to Flickr:
Thunder Mountain Monument is perfectly
set in the desert along I-80 near Imlay,
Nevada. It’s the life work of Frank
Dean Van Zant, born in 1921 in Okmulgee,
Oklahoma. Van Zant considered himself a
Native American member of the Creek
Nation and later became known as Chief
Rolling Mountain Thunder.Van Zant served in the Civilian
Conservation Corps in his early teens
and later served in World War II. After
the war he studied theology and became
an assistant pastor for a Methodist
congregation, turned to law enforcement
for two decades as a sheriff’s deputy,
and finally became a private
investigator before retiring. (And, I
would add, beginning his
"real" work).Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder wanted
to memorialize the plight and suffering
of Native Americans. From a sign at the
memorial, "I don’t have the
financial means to do anything other
than build with what the Great Spirit
has provided to me. That is the junk
that has been cast away by the white
man. The Indian used everything and the
white man is wasteful. I will build a
Monument to the Indian people from the
refuse of our white society."The main monument began as a travel
trailer that was continually built
around. Among the structures that
survive today are a glass bottle house,
inspired by the bottle house in Rhyolite, NV, near Death Valley.The sculptures and structures of the
monument are striking and ghostly.
There are fences built of junk, ladders,
and sculptures of women and warriors who
look as though they’ll come to life in
your dreams. Steve visited here in the
1970’s, a decade when the site became a
popular destination for the counter
culture…I’m grateful that he thought
to stop on our trip this time. Steve’s got excellent photos here also.Dan Van Zant, Chief Rolling Mountain
Thunder’s son, is working to keep the
monument alive. You can read more about
it, and the history of the place and its
creator’s life, at thundermountainmonument.com.
I found the monument to be very moving, even haunting. And it was inspiring to me as a symbol of what can be accomplished when one follows oneself in the process of creating from the heart.
Laika and I walked around to the front of the main monument while Steve circled around another way. She stopped, stared into a spot inside the fence where I could discern nothing, and barked…looked at me, looked back at the spot, and barked again.
Steve asked me later, “What was she barking at?”
“Ghosts.”
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