MetalGeek : Code, Metal and Cleverness

Large Animals in Wisconsin

Eddie The Chicken at Ed and Sharon's; 7 Miles west of Hwy 64/107 from Merrill, Wisconsin.

The Big Moose Supper Club's big moose in Tomahawk, Wisconsin.

Gnarls Barkley - Reckoner

These guys were fantastic at the Minnesota State Fair last week. I've been a fan of Danger Mouse since The Grey Album, but I'd never heard of Cee-Lo before the duo formed Gnarls Barkley.

Cee-Lo is an amazing perfomer and had the audience eating out of his hand for the whole show. The biggest surprise to me was this cover of a tune from Radiohead's In Rainbows. As much as I love Thom Yorke, Cee-Lo is a better singer.

Labor Day Peace March in Saint Paul

These shots were taken before things got out of hand. There were a few rowdy kids, but mostly it was very peaceful. Some of the cops with the black helmets seemed pretty wired, so it wasn't hard to imagine things could get out of hand in a hurry. The media seems to have bought the official BS about the dangerous violent radicals ready to riot, so the cops probably figure they can bust a few heads without getting into any trouble.

New Camera

I've been playing around with a new camera, a Canon 40D. The stock lens that it's sold with is actually very nice. It's a 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM zoom, which isn't a huge aperture, but with the image stabilization, it's fast enough for general use. The equivalent focal length for a full frame camera would be 45-216mm. It's not really a macro lens, but with the zoom, you really can get in close. All of these photos were shot with this lens.

Here are a couple of creatures hanging out on a (purple emperor?) sedum. The little yellow spider appears to be a juvenile goldenrod crab spider, and is less than 1/4" across. Without my glasses on, I thought he was a speck of a flower from some other plant, until he moved. Maybe that was his disguise.

Bisbee

Bisbee is a tiny and fascinating old mining town in the far southeastern corner of Arizona. We spent a couple of days there in April, wandering around and enjoyng the strangeness of it all.

It's is the most arty and liberal place I've seen in this stubbornly conservative state. The people there seemed almost bemused by the tourists, but not terribly motivated to take advantage of the situation. The vibe was extremely laid back and mellow, but it was a weekday. They say the weekends are a little more hectic, but it's hard to imagine that it's as awful as most of the rest of the state has become.

If you do visit, try and check out the Kartchner Caverns, near Benson (about an hour on the way to Tucson). They are incredible, but make reservations, or you'll be sorry. It's the closest you can get to seeing a cavern unspoiled by humans unless you find one yourself.

Main street

The Copper City Inn, a lovely three room hotel, run by the bartender at the best restaurant in town.

The Lavender Pit, just south of town.

These are my kind of people
(kinda-sorta-sometimes)
Refugees and refuse-to-bees
Dematerializing right in front of me
Down-loaning lives that don't work
Shirking at jobs that don't pay
Playing games they can't win
Chasing dreams on the wind
Time tunnelers traveling light
Leading their own invisible parade
These are mind kind of people
Psycho path finders, non-propheteers
Mickey-mouthoffs without funny ears
Up and coming down and outers
Closet clinging kings and queens
Alcoholistic fate heelers

   ONE WAY
   <--ST--
<-------------<
>DO NOT ENTER->

<--> THIS WAY - THAT WAY
My Way - Your Way
The easy way - hard way
UNA VIA - OTRA VIA
Nizhonni ??
THE ONLY WAY
Which Way? go A way
right way wrong way

John McCain is a Pathetic Panderer

In his own words:

Olbermann at his best

Part 1:

Part 2:

Coping Calculator Upgrade

I've added a couple of tweaks to my world famous coping calculator which helps you cut a round tube to fit another round tube. It now uses vectors in the pdf version of the pattern, which should print and scale a little better than before.

And there's also another version that attempts to make the page big enough to put a large pattern on it. It's here:
http://metalgeek.com/static/cope_custom.pcgi

The operation is a little flaky, but it may help somebody.

Big Shoulders

All this talk about Obama got me thinking of Chicago. All the work that's going to have to get done to clean up Bush's many messes is going to require some very big shoulders.

Chicago has always been a tough town. When my dad went off to fly bombers in the Army in World War 2 (there was no separate Air Force back then), he had to take a train packed with recruits across the country to training. When another future soldier asked where he was from, he answered "Chicago." The other kid responded excitedly: "Oh yeah? Let me see your gun!"

Carl Sandburg is more eloquent:

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

The Audacity of War

I'm speechless.

Inspiration

I went to see Obama at the Target Center in Minneapolis today with about 18,000 others. This video captures the spirit of the movement about as well as anything I've seen.

See also:
http://www.dipdive.com/ (high res version)
http://will-i-am.blackeyedpeas.com/blog/689747 (will.i.am's blog entry)

Olberman strikes again

This is what a real patriot sounds like. Thank God there are still a few left.

Freedom is about Authority

58 years after Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, we have a presidential candidate who espouses the ideals of Orwell's nightmare:

"Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."
-Rudy Giuliani

http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2007-08-09/news2.html

Gee, that sounds familiar:

"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."
- Campaign slogan of the Inner Party

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

Yellow Slime Mould

This is some strange stuff. It starts out looking like the cat barfed up a couple of Peeps. Then it puffs up and turns powdery pale yellow. It you break it open, it's got gooey fluorescent mustard inside. No, I didn't taste it. In a couple of days it turns grey and then brown like a dead mushroom.

I'd thought it was a fungus, but it seems to actually be a bunch of amoebas. Or amoebae. Wikipedia has a great article on it, which includes this gem:

In the DVD release of "This is Spinal Tap" there is an outtake of an interview with David St. Hubbins where he speaks of slime moulds, saying "They are both plant AND animal...it's like they can't make up their mind...and, you know, they think it's them...who've been running the earth all this time."

Slime Mould on Wikipedia

Supporting the Troops

With the story that's recently come to light about the mistreatment of wounded vets at Walter Reed, it's perfectly clear that this administration has no real desire to "support the troops", except in using that phrase as a bludgeon on anyone who fails to bow down to Dear Leader. As Steve Gilliard puts it, "The GOP no more cares about soldiers than farms care about shit."