Posts Tagged: friends

Weekend Tidbits or an Ode to Hedgehogs, Water, and the Deep Time of Trees, plus a few Con Men

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions, tidbits.

Hedgehogs, UK Politics, and general understated Amusement in this Metafilter post: “1566 seems very recent, but the hedgehog was around before then”
Transcript of MP Rory Stewart’s hedgehog defense in Parliament in 2017.

Of all the possible Tory MPs possible to be the next Prime Minister, one can only hope that the Conservatives will vote for Mr. Stewart and not Mr. Johnson.

Why Water is Weird

Black, Hot Ice May Be Nature’s Most Common Form of Water

This Evangelical Prayer-Coin Grift Is What the Age of Trump Is All About

“The Wall Street financiers and C-suite lords-of-the-universe have made a Faustian bargain of their own, simply accepting that the President of the United States will have regular bouts of public insanity and upend the post-World War II geopolitical order because the Dow is up and taxes are down. This will not end well for them or for the Evangelicals, because everyone who gets in bed with Donald Trump ends up debased and disgraced. Often, he convinces them to do it to themselves. “

Men Have No Friends and Women Bear the Burden
Toxic masculinity—and the persistent idea that feelings are a “female thing”—has left a generation of straight men stranded on emotionally-stunted island. Unable to forge intimate relationships with other men, it’s women who are paying the price.

A landmark malaria vaccine has been rolled out in Malawi

This Graphic Shows the Best Air-Cleaning Plants, According to NASA

The Art of Blooming Late

Winning the Peace

Trees of deep time are a portal to the past : The vanishing groves
A chronicle of climates past and a portent of climates to come – the telling rings of the bristlecone pine

More Dreams

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions, travel + places.

Fri. 11.09.18 – Last night I had more bizarre dreams that bordered on nightmarish. It was truly cold here in Mammoth, with the low of 12F / -11C, and El Coache’s heater worked overtime to keep the internal temps around 54F / 12C. As a result, every time the heater cycled back on – loudly – I vaguely woke up. When one is roused from sleep on a regular basis, one tends to remember most of the dreams from the REM sleep one does get.

In last night’s case, it was dreams of other people hitting my rental car and me being stranded with a rental car employee yelling at me about my insurance. Somehow, in each dream, Family Hernandez (Alex, Paige, the boys, and Penny Laine) showed up to drive me home and rescue me from bad rental car employees.

My brain on anti-histamines and being woken up by an RV heater is a rather frightening place. And yes, with all of my serious allergy problems of recent years, I am a daily or twice daily anti-histamine taker – I like living.

I am renting a car next Wednesday and plan to pull two sets of rental car insurance, just in case – as Alex and Paige may not be available to pick me up.

Furthermore, I am wearing ear plugs tonight.

Jason, Tiffany, and Jason at Lunch

Posted by & filed under art + photography, fun stuff.

Jason Schupp at lunch Tiffany Brown and Jason Toney at lunch

Sun 06.30.13 – On this Sunday, CJ and I went up to Santa Monica’s Back on the Beach Cafe to meet up with Jason S, Chuck, Tiffany B, and Jason T for brunch and then a walk down the boardwalk to the Santa Monica Pier. It was a lovely day catching up with friends and I took my Nikon FM3a film camera with me to the party loaded with Ilford XP2 Super 400 B&W film.
I have a new true love, besides my friends, in the Ilford XP2 Super 400 film. I love the grain, the contrast, the no need for any post-production other than adding metadata in Lightroom. Next to Fuji Velvia 50, it is my new true film love.
Thanks to Jason, Tiffany and Jason for letting me take their photos.

The Serendipity of Twitter, or How I found Dhruv in London

Posted by & filed under fun stuff, photos + text from the road.

Dhruv Bhutani in London! Nirave
Dhruv and Nirave Ms. Jen and Dani And then general mobile geekery ensues... Oxford Street all dressed up for the Diamond Jubilee

All photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8.

Sun 05.06.12 – I arrived at London Heathrow to start my two month #AppRetreat this afternoon around 1:30pm or so. The airplane journey from LAX to LHR was fairly uneventful and so was passing through passport control and customs at Heathrow.
Upon arriving at my fave studio hotel and getting settled in, I checked twitter, only to see that Dhruv Bhutani was tweeting about sightseeing London. After a few back and forths, I found myself taking the Tube down to Oxford Circus and meeting up with Dhruv, Nirave, and Dani at the Slug and Lettuce next to the Apple Store on Regent’s Street.
[Insert jokes here about mobile geeks meeting up next to the Temple of the Oh Holy Jobs…./]
I last saw Dhruv and Nirave at MWC in February and Dani last year in Berlin and did not expect to see any of the three on my first evening it in London, so it was a delightful surprise to find Dhruv in London for a few days for the Galaxy S III launch.
From our meet up point at the Slug and Lettuce, we walked over to Busaba eathai on Wardour Street in Soho for a very tasty dinner of chicken, chicken, chicken, and aubergine, as well as a lot of mobile device and app programming talk.
Thanks to Dani, Nirave, and Dhruv for making my first night in London a great one!