February 2008

A bubbler is an old fashioned name for a drinking fountain.

A Benson Bubbler is a drinking fountain named after Simon Benson, the rich guy who donated 20 of them to the city of Portland in the early days of the 20th century.

Benson gave the City of Portland $10,000 for the installation of twenty bronze drinking fountains. These fountains, known as Benson Bubblers, are still in use in downtown Portland. It is said that the fountains were put in to dissaude workers on his hotel from going to a bar to get a drink of water and then decide on an alcoholic beverage instead.

The intention was a double exposure, since the fish eye has a cool switch which allows for that, but alas, the effect was less than stunning.

Benson Bubblers

An incredibly ugly piece of public ‘art’ in a small square between 6th and Broadway. In the afternoons, a group of local skater boi (s) make it their bitch.

Virgin Galactic, the spaceship division of Virgin Group, unveiled it’s first spacecraft back on January 23rd. Construction is nearly complete and it will soon begin the mandatory 50 test flights for safety. Nevertheless, flights are being booked for 2009 at 200 large per, which is quite a lot of large for a 2.5 sub orbital flight. The price drops to 100 large after the first 100 reservations and Richard Branson promises to drop the price to 20K eventually.

That puts it in the realm of possibility for the Average Joe. Definitely, ‘Once in a Lifetime’, but still possible. People save over the course of several years to have a really fun blowout vacation on a fancy cruise ship in the Caribbean or to travel all over Europe for two months, why not this? But is the ROI on a 2.5 hour suborbital flight worth it? While I would like to experience such a flight, if I’m going to drop 20K, I’d want my ROI to be a bit better than 8000K/hour. That’s a hell of a lot of gelato in Italy is all I’m saying.

Then again, if you’ve got the frequent flyer miles, why the hell not:

Virgin Galactic claims up to 200 people have already booked seats on the sub-orbital craft through 2009. Though the initial ticket price is $200,000, a British businessman named Alan Watts was able to redeem two million frequent flier miles for a 2009 flight.

Last Father’s Day, the Fetching Mrs. Bixby gives me a fisheye camera 2 from Lomography, a company which started out selling cheap Eastern European fixed lens cameras to young, urban, hipsters, thereby elevating grainy and poorly composed snapshots into an art form. Looking at their online store now I see they’ve upped the quality a bit and have increased their offerings, but you can still get cheap fixed lens cameras in case you need to scratch your Young, Hipster Art itch.

I like my fish eye. It came with a roll of cheap ISO100 film so I loaded that bad boy up and lived the Lomography motto, “Don’t think, just shoot.” I burned through that first roll pretty quickly and it ends up in a drawer for six months until this morning, when on a whim I decide to get it developed.

The results are to be expected. Only half of the roll came out, I suspect because I thought the roll was over and rewound the film too early. I really don’t remember now. Of the images that did come out, about 4 are even close to the right exposure to be seen by the naked eye. I present to you now the three that have some compositional interest.

Enjoy.

It took me a while to get this next one. It’s a shot of the dash of my Mustang.

He’s made 8 of these now. This one is on the myth of the declining middle class.

After watching this one, go back and watch the rest. Good stuff, Maynard!

Victor David Hanson skewers Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama.

It is so nice to be able to walk to the office without being bundled for an arctic expedition. We still have to get through March, so a few more cold days are probably in store for us, but I’ll enjoy the warmer temperatures we’re having now unconditionally.

By ‘warmer’, I mean upper 40’s. The high today is expected to reach 53°, which is almost too warm for a sweater.

I love that the weather is actually something I need to consider in my day to day activities for a good portion of year now. It’s something that helps to take me out of my comfort zone and actually think about things that are further than 10 inches from the end of my nose.

This can actually apply to me. Mount St. Helens is stil active.

Kinda cool.

Linux geeks don’t type on a keyboard, they pound.

I admit this is entirely anecdotal, but for the quiet James W, every Linux geek I’ve known does not type on the keyboard, they attack it with a ferocity that is frightening to behold. Perhaps it the pure Open Source which burns deep in their soul, I don’t know, but the quiet tap of the keys is not for them. Oh no.

This observation comes from hearing the new guy in my office go at it like a Viking to an unsuspecting coastal English village.