Heirlooms

I imported a batch of photos this morning, and I saw two in there that Tracey must have taken, and they really caught my eye. Not only are the images pleasing on their own, they made an emotional connection with me because of where the objects came from.

This one is of a clock that always sat on a table in my grandparents' house. I can still remember it chiming on the hour when we visited. It lived on a table my grandfather had refinished beautifully.



And this one is of a German incense burner at my other grandparents' house. I always begged my grandfather to light it, and he always would—but never without a caution against the dangers of smoking.



So of course, the photos of these simple heirlooms reminded me of my grandfathers, whom I have missed a lot over the past few years. Grampy and Granddad, I miss you, but you will always be in my memory, and these things will always be in my house to remind me of your love.

Giant Steps

Coltrane was a genius before the term started to be overused. That being said, the person who made this stop-motion animation of the notes appearing as Trane plays them is the greatest genius of our time.



Via John Mayer. (Yes, John Mayer has a blog.)

Best book about pony

I had to share this bizarre ad I saw on Facebook. I have no idea what it is for. Enjoy.

Chrysostom's Easter Sermon

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not, 
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!

Feast royally on it; the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; 
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.

He has destroyed it by enduring it.


—St. John Chrysostom’s Easter Sermon

* * * * * * * * * * * *

For a decidedly inferior Easter sermon (read: one preached by me instead of the Golden Mouth), come visit Artisan Church tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. or 5:00 p.m. We're kicking off our Failed Christians series, which I'm tremendously excited about.

Drawing the Candidates

From the New York Times, a fun article about political cartoonists and what they think about when deciding how to depict the presidential candidates. (Hat tip: Andy Ihnatko via Twitter, who quotes Barry Blitt: "McCain's head looks like a keg of pilsner.")

Safari 3.1 and new tabs

I've been submitting "bug reports" to the Safari developers for about a year requesting a New Tab button, so I would like to take credit for the fact that in Safari 3.1, you can FINALLY open a new empty tab using the mouse. No, it's not a dedicated interface button, but I'll take it: double-click anywhere in the empty space of the tab bar, and a new tab opens up.

Not ideal, because it becomes useless after you have enough tabs open to fill the tab bar and require the double-arrow "more" symbol, but I'll take it.

Attention baristas

Despite what you see on the side of the cup, this is not a latte:



Unfortunately, it's not really a cappuccino, either.

This sloshy drink, which I disparagingly (if not cleverly) call a "cappulatte," is the bane of my cafe-going life. (Children in Darfur should be so lucky.) It's not really all that complicated: a latte is espresso with steamed milk; foam is only used for decoration. A cappuccino is the same amount of espresso with half the amount of steamed milk and a pile of stiff foam on top. The kind of crap pictured above is what you get when you order a latte from a donut shop, or from an automatic machine. Or from a barista as dumb as a machine, like the ones at Starbucks.

What's that I see?

Been too long...

Please Hammer, don't hurt'em

If this doesn't jinx the Houston Rockets' historic win streak, nothing ever will (AP Photo/David J. Phillip):



Someone should tell this fan that it's 2008.

Love'em or hate'em

However you feel about cats, whatever loathing or goodwill already exists in your soul for the Felis catus, it is likely to be increased by watching these videos.

Okay, I'll tip my hand. Isn't it fascinating how cat lovers can watch a video about a cat destroying property or waking you up in an annoying way at a ridiculously early hour, and say, "Ooooh, that's SO cute! My cat does that! This makes me love her even more!"? (Check the comments on the videos.) Well anyway, let's just say I generally have the opposite reaction. These videos, though they are well animated and have very good sounds, make me like cats less. Interestingly enough, Lolcats elicit the same bizarro-responses from cat people and non-cat people.

And before anyone clumsily points out that some dogs eat poop (cat lovers appear to believe this is some kind of pet argumentation trump card), I'd just like to point out that no dog owner in history would see a video of a dog eating poop and like his dog more as a result. That kind of "logic" is reserved for cat owners.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

This might be the greatest sentence ever written.

New camera: Canon Digital Rebel XT

We got a new camera last week using some tax return money. Our previous camera, a point and shoot Olympus, served us well for several years, but after the shine of having digital wore off, I began to be frustrated by its limitations. I'm by no means a great photographer, but I did get hooked a little bit when I took a course in college years ago. ("In college years ago," ouch.) So we purchased a modest digital SLR, and I've been in digital heaven ever since it arrived.

The camera is a Canon Digital Rebel XT, which is Canon's previous generation consumer DSLR. (Amazon has a great price on it, by the way—order from that link and earn me pennies!) I have liked every Canon digital I've ever shot with, and this one is no exception. And the upgrades over a viewfinder camera are tremendous: super-fast focusing and image writing, a gentle flash that doesn't crush your subject with bright light, and of course the ability to control aperture, shutter speed, and ISO manually.

It's this last bit that I'll be experimenting with a lot. I'll post a photo now and then so you (and I, honestly) can keep track of my progress. It will only be a once-in-a-while thing here on the old blog, but if you care to see more, my Flickr account can be found here.

Here's the first one. I took this in my friend's kitchen in aperture priority mode so I could experiment with narrowing the depth of field. The light was low, though, so opening the aperture meant I needed to increase the ISO in order to get a fast enough shutter speed for handheld shooting; this resulted in a fairly "noisy" image. And if you don't know what that last sentence meant, that's okay—I'm not entirely sure I really know yet. Anyway, I like the image I got. What do you think? (Click to enlarge.)