digitization

firstmonday.org, a website interesting in and of itself in that it has 'peer reviewed journal content for the internet' has an article about digitization of media, specifically sheet music at the universtity of indiana. a little poking around reveals some of the hardware they use for various types of digization, and I ran across a most interesting thing entitles 'the chymistry of isaac newton' with links to translated sections of his lab notebook with images

simpsons interview

www.blondeblog.com/vsimpsons.html a verry funny interview of the actuall actors.

Different type of dumpster diving

Saw this in today's Seattle Times. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2003226168_diving27.html Not happening in Seattle but interesting non-the-less.

yukon bears and sun

We finally got a little sun in the Yukon, and saw a mother grizzly with two cubs. We were intending to do a 480 mile day and go all the way to Haines, but the crew was too tired, so we spent another night in hanes junction. this time the place was full and we got a less than $100 room. We didn't even try the raven, a local souped up three 'canadian' star hotel. last time we went through, we stopped there for some dining, but they put there german noses in the air and said 'for hotel guests only'. ok.. the town has 3 places to eat, the raisen as we thus refeered to it, a general store which was closed, and the frosty freeze, that had pizza and burgers. we ate at the frosty freeze both times we stayed and it wasn't half bad.

The next morning we did the short jaunt to hanes. AWESOME mountians and it did get a little cold on the pass (around 3000 feet?) someone said the sign was in meters, and we looked at them, because it was NOT over 10,000 feet. The last shot is of a special fire weed that happened to pop up in the middle. I wonder where that came from.

ak - boundry

The canadians decided to mow a strip on the 'unpatroled border'. jen says 'how do you know it wasn't the american's?'....... well.. with some simple logic I explained that the US is much happier to let illegal people in than canada.

leaving alaska

it rained the entire time we were in alaska (about 1 week). it let up occasionally, but not when you needed it to. [*update- right after we left, it both washed out 3 bridges near denali, and snowed] jen and I even bought heated vests at alaska leather in anchorage. the lady was AWESOME, and by far the best motorcycle shop for many thousands of miles. as far as apparel goes, the best shop we have been in thus far. we got directions from the BMW shop in ak (they suck... jen says 'not so good') and they described alaska leather as a set of rickty old buildings on the corner. the warning was just saddness because the motorcycle shop didn't hold a candle to what barb had. barb is jens new hero, and after jen told her so, she reluctantly agreed to a photo op with the sign.

There was a sign at the register.. 'prices subject to customer attitude'. our price was 10% off. after a hasty tour of alaska, including a plane flight to kantishna (the center of denali park) and a 2 day stay, we headed out of alaska, completly soaked, and never seeing the mountian. oh yeah.. the official name of the mountian is STILL mckinly. the park is named denali. something about a loser in ohio or something.

ptarmagin - denali

bear - denali

some bears and a shot of the dirt road in the park.. busses only.

moose - denali

gold panning

glaciers

Yukon signs

Even people from the great state of Idaho have made the trek to the Yukon to add their stolen signage to the collection. (top center)

For people like kevin, they make their own signs, by stapling pockets and a crotch to a self made torso midsection. I believe thats the great state of TN.

ak-trip bison

ak-trip animals

this last black bear was the second one we saw, about 3 days later.

lynx

This was near muncho lake, in the evening, so the light was not terribly good. I was in the lead and zoomed past. a small amount of motion caught my eye so I signaled to those behind that I had seen something. I was hesitant to turn around because something as prized as a lynx would not stick around. many have been to alaska, or lived in alaska for some time and never seen one. This was our third major game sighting, after caribou, and moose.

When we got back, the lynx was still there, eying us. I was sure it would be gone by the time I got the camera out, which is a major ordeal when you pack a camera as big as ours on the motorcycle, but it stuck around. I would estimate 3-5 minutes. it even curled up when I crossed the road to get closer to get some close ups. I large pickup passed and was very confused why we were crouched looking at the ditch. if you didn't know it was there, you couldn't see it. some pictures taken from only 30-40 foot away, with a 300mm zoom on the canon rebel. we haven't quite figured out the settings, but we put it on manual and bumped the ISO up to 800 and that seemed to help but also acounts for the grainyness of the pics. there was just enough light to get the autofocus to work, which was good as i'm not to terribly good at manual. the lense did not have the polarizer on it. if anyone wants a 3meg jpeg. email me.

improve everywhere

improveverywhere.com has a really funny overview of over 200 people in new york screwing with a home depot.

AK update

W have traveled about 400 miles so far and will be going into see denali mountain tomarrow. we'll send you pics when we have a chance to download some. so far the highlight was a lynx that curled up beside the road while we took pictures of it.

Wait, that was ... my cheese!

Alodia and I were browsing uncles games yesterday in the mall and discovered The Nacho Incident. In an ironic twist of reality, we happened to read about cheese being impounded by the US boarder patrol. It is our belief that the game has gone too far.

developr

sometimes i like to see what the competition developers are doing on the web.
ya know the one's i'm talking about - those that managed to get the fan to run backwards and reassemble that crap that hit it. I present to you: http://hypotheticals.org/
if your not on ie (and who is) dig in the code and witness this message if you were to try to right click