Spring in Florida

This morning, walking in to the office, spring was just positively palpable. It almost seems like it happens all at once. Suddenly the oak trees are showing that pale green that you just can't copy, the breeze seems the blow right through me, and my skin tingles with my first sunburn of the year. Now I can almost smell the beach from any part of town, if I stand there and concentrate (and maybe I can). I hear more seagulls, and the cheering crowds are back at the little league by the house, so the house is intermittently filled with enthusiastic cheers. I get chills thinking about the beach in the morning. Every hair on my whole body seems to know that it's spring.

Those of you who complain that the seasons don't change in Florida just aren't paying attention.

Photo Counter Folding

A kind of depressing item on Boing Boing today: a picture of a message at a photo counter, announcing that decreased demand has caused the photo counter to close. I expected this sooner or later, as digital makes much more sense for snappycam shooters. But I had hoped for later. I really like film. I'll be sad to see it go.

Boing Boing: Photo-counter: DUE TO DECREASE IN DEMAND THIS SERVICE NO LONGER AVAILABLE

A PBS Online presentation about Folk art and "Backyard Paradises"

This presentation online by PBS about folk art's "Backyard Paradises" is fantastic and fascinating....
OFF THE MAP | PBS

I'm sure they're everywhere, this week-after Easter. But here it is: the Ducky Peep AFTER-30-seconds-in-the-microwave photo. It was delicious. It had to be done.

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THE PEEP SHOW

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Cool quote

From today's Word a Day email from wordsmith.org (Regardless of how you feel about Mr. Chomsky):

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." -Noam Chomsky, linguistics professor and political activist (1928- )

Amazing online art piece.

THE ZOOMQUILT | a collaborative art project Wow. The FLASH version is highly recommended.

Running Octopus!

Very interesting finding -- some octopus actually pick up 6 of their legs, and run on the remaining two! Not only is this interesting, the video of it that goes with the article is pretty amusing:
Octopuses occasionally stroll around on two arms, UC Berkeley biologists report

Thanks Tantannie!

The Solar Death Ray

Oh yes, oh yes. The Solar Death Ray. Some intrepid geek out there has created an aray of 115 mirrors that focus the rays of the sun on to a single point... and do we use this power for good? Oh, no, we do not... and of course, the results are in the image gallery. The 7-year-old within me jumps with joy. And before you ask, yes, he DID do green plastic army men.

Thanks to Slashdot.

A Children's Alphabet-Zoo Site

Really delightful site for kids and anyone who loves typography. Clicking the letters makes them transform into animals, made out of type! Shame that there's such lag after clicking, but that doesn't diminish the page's brilliance.

Meatigami!

A Japanese page featuring instructions on how to make animals out of little sausages. Now, PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD!

a phrase:

So I wonder sometimes why you are watching

While I toss my pithy little matches into the bonfire of the discourse of our species

How to make a Duct tape Wallet

Oh yeah. MIGHTY cool. How to make a Duct tape Wallet

Edison and Ana Tobin enjoying a bath last week. I thought that this one was might cute.

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School Bus from Hell - I saw this friday on the way home from work.

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Bumper Sticker

On the way in to work today I saw bumper sticker with the Marines logo, and the phrase "Dying a Natural Death is for Pussies"

The car was driven by a senior citizen.


Yikes.

Times Bicycle Tour

I rode the Times Bicycle Tour with Alfie on Sunday- I didn't make my goals, but I had a great time. I summed up the experience yesterday in an email, so I'll cheat and just post that here:

It was a gorgeous day for a bike ride in the country, in spring, in Florida. Lots of oak trees wildflowers, foals, calves, sunshine, blazing downhill descents and a (damned) stiff breeze out of the East. We missed the start time for the 75 miler, and took off with the 40 milers, and out of a combination of factors (poor training, poor warm up, too much breakfast, not enough dinner, ride starting with a 4 mile climb) I ended up puking my brains out after the first 5.5 miles.
After which, I felt much better (and usually it takes me 10 miles to warm up), but we had lost a lot of the riders who would have helped pull us along at a better pace, and I had lost a lot of valuable nutrients and electrolytes. I pretty much gave up the main goal right then. I felt weak, and rode very poorly for most of the rest of the day (even had to walk up the last part of 3 or 4 of the climbs). Around the 30 mile mark my quadriceps started cramping up, but I finished the 40 mile ride ON the bicycle, so I'm glad for that. The idea of getting swept up by the sag wagon was mortifying. We ended up completing the ride in around 2:45, (+/- 14.5 MPH). I felt a little bit better seeing that there were people walking, stopped, or resting at the tops of almost every good climb (there were a lot of them) but was nonetheless disappointed that I didn't even come close to meeting my goal.

The summary: I had a really good time, and it was a gorgeous day in beautiful countryside, but from an athletic perspective, it was as close to a total disaster as it could get without entirely ruining the fun. I am going to have to take a good, hard look at the feasibility of an April 10th century.

TMBG Repeat count

By the time I had left the house this morning, we had listened to tracks 14-18 of Flood 3 times. When "Road Movie to Berlin" comes on, Edison runs full tilt to the stereo to wind it back to "Whistling in the Dark".

I said "say cheese", and I got a whole lotta cheese, allright...

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The Amazing Flying Edison... the muddy version.

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I took this afternoon off from work. This is what I've been missing - Ana Tobin enjoying a custom known as "tiny bath"

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Drawn!

A simply amazing blog about cartooning, illustrating, and art. Yikes!
Drawn!
via BoingBoing

Giant Steps by Michal Levy

Giant Steps by Michal Levy is a very, very cool extremely short film to the soundtrack of John Coltrane's Giant Steps. Thanks to Gabe W.

Whistling in the Dark

I have succeeded in getting the kids hooked on They Might Be Giants' Flood (as previously discussed here). A side effect of this is that Edison now knows that he needs to make the CD player's display read "14" in order to hear how favorite tune, "Whistling in the Dark". But my favorite developments are Ana Tobin trying to sing along with "Istanbul (not Constantinople)" and the fact that Edison has identified which engines from the Thomas and Friends stories sing which songs. Apparently, Gordon sings "Whistling in the Dark", Bill and Ben (the twins) sing "They Might be Giants" and Henry sings "Road Movie to Berlin".

Trying to imagine what he sees in his head while he's imagining these engines singing these songs is heartwarming and very funny (to me). It's interesting to see how he fits things into his world, too.

Odd eBay item

The big questionon everyone's mind, is did they take it from a real vegetarian?

I absolutely love this shot of the kids. Nick was watching the kids yesterday and took this picture. Edison in particular LOVES Nick's camera phone.

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