Frostbitten

Vox Hunt: Puppy Power!

nobody@vox.com(Spike) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:37:57 +0100

Show us a puppy.

If you can remember this, wave your walking stick.

[Watches with amusement as people of a certain age hum and look wistful while the juniors look on.]

Next, an early Canada Day (Yay, eh?) treat: the incomparable Jane Siberry. Stick with it; I almost guarantee you'll find yourself humming it the next time you take your pooch walkies. Lyrics are here or as notes to the track.

The track is from her 1989 album (nineteen years! yikes) Bound by the Beauty. More Jane (or Issa, as she is known now) at her online store.

(Sorry there's no album art in the icon thingy-bob to the right. I've got bored jumping through the hoops needed to do that in Vox. *sigh!*)

Dingo Go

And finally, a bit of guitar and didgeridoo. Nice steady pace, perfect for driving along the Great Ocean Road, pulling away on rowing machines, or doing the ironing and wishing you were on the Great Ocean Road instead.

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Vox Hunt: Sixth Grade Serenade

nobody@vox.com(Spike) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:21:37 +0100

Share a song you listened to in 6th grade.

It was an even-numbered year, and that meant another posting to a different base, a thousand miles or so from the last one. We moved during the summer vacation, and when we arrived, there wasn't a house (a PMQ - "permanent married quarters") available, so we got put up in a hotel. We stayed there about three months, which meant I started Grade 6 at one school and switched midway through the term.

And all the while, this was playing on the radio. If you want to sing along, the lyrics are here.

New Seekers - Look What They've Done to My Song Ma 45 rpm

Younger viewers may need to get a grown-up to explain what's happening in the video. :-)

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In the future, TV will be all around

nobody@vox.com(Spike) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:14:48 +0100

This is nifty. Click the play button, then click and drag the mouse anywhere in the picture.

Immersive Media - whales

They do this by combining up to 11 video streams, filmed using a camera head with the lenses arranged in a geodesic pattern (like a soccer ball).

More info and demos at the ImmersiveMedia site.

Needs a little tweaking (to increase the resolution and dynamic range) before it's ready for prime time, but think of the possibilities.

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To boldly go where others have already been

nobody@vox.com(Spike) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:57:30 +0100

This is for Mark.

Mars Landing 1962 - Alternative 3

Alternative 3 was a "documentary" aired in the UK in June 1977, 31 years ago (a strike meant it wasn't aired on its planned date of -ahem!- early April). This segment was included near the end of the programme, and is "footage" from a secret joint US-Soviet manned landing on Mars in 1962.

Watch out for the last few seconds. Now tell me... are you ever going to look at the Mars Phoenix photos in quite the same way again?

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JK Rowling at Harvard: Failure and Imagination

nobody@vox.com(Spike) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:40:53 +0100

JKR gave the commencement address at Harvard last week: The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination. Nothing much for PotterFans - although the opening joke probably gave a few Trembling Uptights apoplexy - but she has a couple of interesting takes and twists on her subject, and she doesn't lose sight of whom she's addressing.

...personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You can watch, hear, or read it at the Harvard Magazine.

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Sunset over the suburban forest

nobody@vox.com(Spike) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:06:09 +0100

Sunset

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The Thorn Birds

nobody@vox.com(Spike) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:01:20 +0100

Incoming

[grins at the collective groan from the neighbourhood]

I was pottering down at the end of the garden, as you do, and while trying to tune out the sound of one of the neighbour's kids practising The Last Post on a trumpet, I gradually became aware of the soft "huu-huu" coming from nearby. Coming, in fact, from the middle of the b*st*rd spiny tree from heck.

So, armed with tea, ginger snaps, binoculars, and camera, I spent the next little while watching this pair build a nest. "Build" is probably over-stating; the canonical description is an improbably flimsy platform of twigs. At any rate, it's all very civilised: he goes off and fetches twigs from nearby gardens, while she sits on them and fusses at them with her beak until they more-or-less hold together. All the while, they're calling to each other: she softly, he the usual three-syllable call. (Useless factoid of the day: their specific name, Streptopelia decaocto, contains the Greek word for eighteen, because someone decided that's what their call sounds like. This just goes to show that you shouldn't go naming birds when you're hammered on Ouzo.)

Peekaboo

Speaking of names, it's awfully tempting to nickname them Barack and Hillary, but really, what have the little birdbrains done to deserve that?

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Prime location

nobody@vox.com(Spike) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:06:04 +0100

The secret of good hunting is picking the right spot to wait. Under a street light is good, for example.

Waiting

Gotcha

If you look closely, you can see "the one that got away" in the lower left.

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Insert Tabby into Slot-A

nobody@vox.com(Spike) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:31:25 +0100

Curiosity

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Shake it like a Polaroid picture

nobody@vox.com(Spike) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:27:26 +0100

Round-the-twist

or perhaps it's more a case of

C'mon let's twist again
Like we did last summer...

These two rooks were drying out after a moderate downpour this afternoon. (You'll note that the sky is slate grey again.)

Photographic (& confessional) footnote: the birds actually took turns to shake off the water, so this is a composite of two photos taken about ten seconds apart. Pretty sure one of them is the hokey-crowky bird from an earlier post..

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