Read my VisualDNA™     Get your own VisualDNA™

Anniversary

This server served me well. In five days it will have been one year from the day I began blogging. It's become a part of my life and there is nothing I regret about recording my experiences online. Not only do I learn about computers, participate in blogging communities, and have a record of what I do, but along with writing I improve in my analysis of situations. It's a kind of forced level-headedness. I admire those who blog and absorb the lessons it has to offer.

Servers.

I have officially switched to (LiveJournal.)

"Army of Darkness"

Eleven 32 keeps rolling around. Here we are again.
The contractor, the crew and I just watched "Army of Darkness." We couldn't decided whether it was a spoof or genuinely horrible. There were explosions, dead people, ugly blood-seeking creatures lurking in pits, and a fabrication of cliche's acting as protagonist. He was rude, and traveled in time from the 21st century to the renaissance.
Last night the Cody Rivers Show made a repeat performance at the school. They tried their new act on us. Though this performance was weaker than the first it was more impressive. Afterward and feeling moody I walked to the dock, hitching a ride from a cordial couple, and there experimented with flashes on the anemones under the float. I got the clearest pics at -2 exposure time. Generally I'm against flash. The wince-inducing blinder sucks the reality out of most pictures. Inspired by dark daffodil pictures (DaffodilPics) I took photos of the clouds over Bitte Bear. Playing with these at home I had a hell of a time getting them to look like anything at all. I ended up turning the white level inside out so that what picture I was left with was grainy and black and white, but looked like Something.

The anemone pictures are alright, but I didn't get many because flash eats battery charge. No sooner had I figured out the right exposure time than the little red "replace battery pack" light came on, and I was left, all alone, no one beside me, to cope in the darkness.

I tested the water and found that the phosphorescence were especially thick. I scooped them up and they blinked innocently, batting their photonic eyelashes.

To warm up I walked home briskly. Like so many important scientific statements, I've come to a realization, and it sounds obvious. Sometimes not liking something is a good enough reason not to do it. I don't like walking in the dark alone. I don't think I'll do it anymore.
Last night I thought I would challenge myself and take the shortcut home, but the reason I hadn't before was because I cannot see in the dark. The entire walk I worried about staying on the path, tried to guide myself by looking for the light line where the trees separate, and not seeing it. Dave comfortingly told me that many people have trouble with the path. I want an eye test. That or a guide dog.

Awumbuk.

The word is "awumbuk." It's from the language of the Baining people of Papae New Guinea. It combines sadness, tiredness and boredom and is brought on specifically by the departure of visiting friends or relatives.
A fun German one means the pleasure derived from another person's suffering; "schadenfreude."
Mwahaha.
This pic's inspired by Charlie's bird photos.
Here I was messing with exposure time.
Salmon! Those are salmon!

Stupid beauty.

.nORMAL

I wish there was a good onomatopoietic word for the sound of knocking. The heat is bringing out my curiosity and pointless creativity. There are plenty of words for sounds that don't sound like the real noise, and weren't originally supposed to sound like it anyway. Why is this? Where do words come from, they obviously being sounds, beside a sound someone relates to the sentiment? For example, a knock on the door. "Knock" doesn't sound like the booming, rattly, sharp sound of knuckles on faded oak. Maybe the word is based off of the sensation of knocking. Maybe sore skin inspired "knock."
I feel really relaxed. Not normal, but relaxed. When do I ever feel normal? Maybe to feel normal you need to be rememberring and labelling, or maybe to have the combination of memory and consciousness. Maybe I do feel normal. Huh. Relaxed though. I definitely feel relaxed.
Yesterday I was happily lazing in my bed when I heard knocking and looked at my collapsable travel clock. It was much too early to get up and go to the door, and early enough for the person at the door to know that I wasn't getting out of bed for them and their bloody knuckles. They persisted and got louder. I figured it was a carpenter hammering.
"Oi!"
"What?!"
So, reluctantly I decentized myself and went to deal with the racket, finding a painfully awake Tristan in the spacious mud room. He reminded me of microscopy class.
In microscopy we collected and looked at samples of murk on storage Rubbermaid tubs behind the cabin. We saw dafnea, water bears, looked for amoebas, and squinky things of all other flavors. We also looked at the plaque on the jaw bone of a dead sheep (which turned out not to be plaque but dried gum) and the plaque on Tristan's teeth after he ate delicious and fatty chicken. We looked at mosquito larvae and a spider. If you desire arachnophobia you should examine a spider under 30X magnification. There's white hair everywhere and all the legs were still attached. The best part were the pincers. The thing became more lovely when we shined a lazer at it (we didn't have a good overhead light). It was so beautiful that we recorded footage of me prodding it with the camcorder. This brings us to noon.
Julie made lunch.
We did stuff and bickered about schedules stupidly. Then Dave offered to take us youngin's to haul up prawn pots. The industrial fisherpeople have wiped out many of the best spots which means that Dave's pots were far offshore. Past White Rock. The guys pulled up more than 300 meters of line (for two nearly empty pots. I think we got six prawns total) while Camilla and I swam around the boat. Rock heated air off Point Disney blow dried our hair on the ride back. Quite satisfactory.
In the evening we played pounce. It's odd the sensation of having one day erase another. This morning one of the most "present" times in my life was yesterday. In one week it will be a distant memory, and even now, I can't remember what essays I wrote, why I didn't work harder, if we had visitors. After pounce we had an improvisation session with rhythm and decks of cards and singing and harmony and playing with each other. I had a really good time.
We bickered about what to do and I was elected to get the tv from the cabin. We watched "Bowling For Columbine" and I was reminded what a fantastic movie that is, and what an excellent director Michael Moore is.
I don't have the resources right now, but in a book about language that we have there is a list of emotion words from other cultures that we don't have in English. There's one that means "the emptiness and lonliness that presides, the proverbial anvil of emotions that smashes when a friend leaves." It may be Yiddish or something. Tristan has gone to Seattle.
I couldn't concentrate in math and doodled so thickly on my paper that the numbers don't show. We went to a marimba concert at the school and held art class under a tree while spectators didn't dance. Elementary students curiously looked over our shoulders, received compliments ungracefully, and several proved superb models.
We chilled, I returned "Monkey Wrench Gang," and revolved back.

Let Me Title This Later.

Our Fatastic Cosmos.