rain_gryphon | Entries tagged with pictures

And Blackburn remain in 20th, out of (for the moment), the relegation zone!

*****

Absolutely rivetting photographs of American small towns by night. I don't recognize any of these places in particular, but I've been through ones just like them more times than I can hope to remember. And I love that the one store is named "American Flags and Poles". Always a market for those.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: East Trumpistan

Colour photographs of Soviet street scenes in the early 1950s. As always, this sort of thing fascinates me.

*****

I never knew that we once tried making coins out of glass.

*****

Android app identifies birds from photos.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Some song about Roumania

I'll confess my absolute ignorance here, and maybe one of yez Brits can enlighten me on this, but what is the deal with Emily Thornberry posting a picture of a white van? It was a big story last week on all the British news outlets, everyone seems to agree that this was a terrible thing to have done (she even lost her job over it), but not a single article that I can find discusses the meaning of it. It's apparently something which is glaringly obvious if you live in the UK, but I've not a clue about it. I was expecting some US news outlet to pick up on the story and explain the meaning of it, but none of them have said a word about it, quite possibly because it's baffling to them as well. What's the deal here?

Current Mood: confused

One of the things that's always caught my imagination about the Zulus during their glory days are the remarkable names they gave to their regiments: uThulwana, "The Dustcloud Makers"; uDloko, "The Maniacs"; and the remarkably warlike (both in name and deed) inGobamakosi, "The Humblers of Kings". Then there's the abaQulusi - "Those Who Display their Buttocks". I have to suppose it means showing your butt to the enemy as a taunt. Still, it amuses my inner 9 year old. For all that they had a risible name, they nonetheless enjoyed a fearsome reputation on the battlefield.

*****

A remarkable collection of period photographs of St. Pierre on Martinique. Many are of the ruins after the eruption, but there are also a fair number from beforehand, showing scenes of daily life. This is a disaster that's fascinated me since I was a child, one I have a reasonable amount of shelf space dedicated to, and most of these I've never seen before.

Lots of stereo views here too. It oughtn't to be that hard to make a stereopticon, print them out, and view them properly.

And you can still buy stereopticons, apparently. You can even still get a proper Holmes Stereoscope as was used during the Civil War.

*****

Sometimes there's a very small boundary between stupid and ingenious. I suspect there's a reason putting a saxophone mouthpiece on a length of coil spring never caught on, but it looks absolutely 1940s Big Band. They tended to invent instruments if they wanted a particular sound back then. I can easily see Spike Jones using one of these.

Current Mood: cheerful

Supplement to the entry of July 14th, in which I visited Arcturax, attended a community festival, and saw 'Kansas':

It's the mighty Qat of Arcturax.

The Town Crier's car was on display at the festival. IMHO, this is how the government should paint all of their vehicles. It would be so cool seeing the President riding to affairs of state in a limousine painted like this!

This kid had two aliens.

That night we saw 'Kansas'.

*****

Soon thereafter, I attended the Ohio State Fair:

Part of a display of Presidents sculpted from butter. Buttersculpting is a popular Ohio pastime.

This Calf had just been born.. Her mother is still licking her.

After an unexplained absence last year, the Lego city returned. As ever, it's full of macabre fancy. Here, a parachutist descends toward the Sharks.

The Alice in Wonderland cake won Best of Show. There were other cakes much more expertly executed, but none which even approached this cake's sheer awesomeness.

It's the Peachcat!.

There was a fursuit vendor at the Fair. It's a cute design, but finished in low-grade fur, and certainly not worth $999.

Meanwhile at the Indiana State Fair...

In Indiana, we sculpt with cheese!. I like the way they used wheels of cheese with leaf patterns cut out to represent the trees behind the barn. That's imaginative, although it's perhaps not that obvious what they represent until you look at the concept sketch.

Current Mood: cheerful

A photographic supplement to the post of April 20th, 2004.

I'm slowly going through my old pictures, and posting stuff for entries that were made before I had the photobucket account.

Before Ye Olde Parade - Max Goof as Kevin J. Dog. He wore his blue bear in the parade itself, though.

Meejeep (Ferret) and Magnus (Peacock) in the assembly area.

Sunday morning I went walking about on my own. In any old downtown area, a lot of the neatest looking stuff is overhead, where most people don't notice it. Roller coaster tracks, near the 10th Street boardwalk entrance.

An ancient burned out sign had been there so long that the light bulbs in the bottom actually had rust inside. Stuff like this just fascinates me for some reason. Who knows how long those have been there, slowly decaying, with no-one ever bothering to look? Further up the sign the bulbs are still good, and the sunlight makes an interesting pattern through them.

Am I ever going to get tired of these? 'tain't likely. McGee!

This weekend I attended the Indiana State Fair. It's larger than the Ohio fair, and somehow just more to my taste as a State Fair. Indiana places much more emphasis on agriculture, with huge swatches of ground given over to farm machinery, numerous barns full of animals, etc.

Festive Food flags flutter at the fair.

Jack o' Lanterns carved from giant pumpkins. Indiana produces surprising amounts of giant vegetables, the moreso considering that we've never had any atomic testing here. Meanwhile, outside the contest building, the forklift delivers another giant pumpkin.

A cluster of flags.

Fluorescent light bulbs illuminate a vendor's tent. I just liked the way they looked.

Beanie Baby Bears stare with their beady eyes...

Part of a diorama that Purdue University built using Roaches. This is part of a complex that includes a little racetrack where they race live Roaches.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Aqua - "Coming back from Mars"

Posted on August 29th - photo supplement to post of June 22nd

Sunday June 20th I was at the United States Grand Prix. They held the race in June this year instead of September. In some ways it made things hectic, as Morphicon was coming up the following weekend. Still, I went to cheer on Ferrari. The weather at least was gorgeous, much nicer than last year's USGP, and no tornadoes like we had during the Five Hundred either.

The Speedway's always got this sort of carnival that springs up around it whenever there's a race. A large part of that is food kiosks. Here they're selling fried green tomatoes, an Indiana favourite. I kid you not. I can't stand the things, but I'm definitely in the minority among Hoosiers. I keep wondering how many of the foreigners took this for some elaborate practical joke.

Before the race there must be the traditional festivities, including the World's Biggest American Flag. There's something idiosyncratically American about wanting to have a flag so big it takes an entire crew of people to display it.

There're flags everywhere. Here're some fans of Jensen Button showing typical British reserve. Zsolt Baumgartner has an unexpectedly large cheering section that sits right in front of us, enthusiastically waving their Hungarian Flags. They've got a banner too. These guys go berserk every time he comes past, egging him on. He went on to finish eighth that day, his best ever, and actually won a rare constructor's point for Minardi.

The drivers are always driven by in antique passenger cars. The Ferrari drivers are in what I think is probably a late 1920s Cadillac. Barrichello is waving at the crowd while Schumacher engages in some back-seat driving.

The Williams drivers are in the Cord model 29 that was used as the pace car for the 1930 Indianapolis 500.

I never take a whole lot of photos of the race itself. I look at it more in the light of vacation snapshots, to remind myself of what I saw and did that day. I did get one of Schumi, and another of the promising Takuma Sato, who finished a best-ever third that day, for his first podium finish. Here's Schumacher, Barrichello and Sato on the podium, during the playing of "Deutschland Uber Alles" that traditionally follows every Grand Prix :)

Now I've got a place to host my snapshots, and I can do the Austin Dern thing. So, anyway, Saturday I went to the Ohio Stoat Fair. A good time was had by me.

In some ways, the Ohio fair is more like an amusement park than a state fair. One whole section is given over to the DNR. They've got a settler's cabin, an Indian teepee, a meadow, a swamp, animals, etc. These young Swans were part of the swamp, as was the bizarre Duck Rocket. Allegedly it's a nesting box for Ducks, although it looks more like some cruel practical joke from a Warner Brothers cartoon.

They've got an excellent Rabbit Barn. It's an old machinery shed from about the 1880s or so, open on all sides so that the Bunnies are out of the weather, but get plenty of air.

The Gourdkitty didn't win a prize, which I thought sucked. I'm partial to Cat-shaped bric a brac, though.

I love the fair at night. I've got a longstanding thing for coloured lights. There's an ariel tramway running right down the middle of the fair. At night, the cars move along mysteriously, silhouetted against the sky, faintly lit from below.