September, 2011


18
Sep 11

Catching Up

Poor rickshaw guy. They made him carry six people and their cooler. Hope they gave him a nice tip.

The professionals now clean Toomer’s Corner by hand:

Sunset over Montgomery.

Clouds over the Samford campus.

For more pictures, including all of Catember, go to the September photo gallery, which is now live.


18
Sep 11

Catember, Day 18

Catember


17
Sep 11

A lot can happen in 659 days

(Update: This has been re-printed at The War Eagle Reader.)

Auburn lost to Clemson today, an ugly 38-24 defeat. Clemson outplayed the guys in orange and blue, ending a 14-game streak in the series that dated back to the Korean War. Most importantly it also ended Auburn’s 17-game win streak, which dated back to the Outback Bowl at the end of the 2009 season. It had been 659 days since Auburn last lost. One year, nine months and 21 days. Since Nov. 27, 2009:

That’s the day the Tiger Woods story broke.

President Obama sent 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.

More than 1,000,000 World Cup tickets went on sale in a big international farce.

President Obama accepted his much ballyhooed Nobel Prize.

As the World Turns was canceled.

The world’s tallest man-made structure, the Burj Khalifa in United Arab Emirates, opened.

The earthquake in Haiti claims 230,000 confirmed deaths.

The Vancouver Winter Games.

Volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajökull, an ice cap in Iceland, disrupted air traffic across northern and western Europe.

The Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11, and beginning a horrible ecological disaster.

S&P downgraded Greece to a junk rating.

Scientists suggested, through a genome project, that Neanderthal and humans might have interbred.

Nine activists were killed in an Israeli Navy forces raid on a flotilla attempting to break the Gaza blockade.

Spain won the World Cup.

Wikileaks.

Monsoons lead to flooding in Pakistan. Over 1,600 were killed, and more than one million were displaced.

The World Health Organization declared the H1N1 influenza pandemic over.

Thirty-three miners in Chile were trapped 700 meters underground, and returned to the surface after being trapped for a record 69 days.

The International Space Station, in October of 2010 took over the record for the longest continuous human occupation of space, dating back 10 years. (Now that’s a streak.)

Researchers at CERN trapped 38 antihydrogen atoms for a sixth of a second, the first time in history that humans have trapped antimatter.

Harvey Updyke.

Flooding and mudslides in Rio de Janeiro killed more than 800.

Auburn won the 2010 National Championship.

The Tunisian government fell.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned, leaving control of Egypt in the hands of the military.

The 9.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the eastern portion of Japan, killing more than 15,000 and leaving another 8,000 missing. Emergencies are declared at four nuclear power plants.

The United States and a host of other countries become tangled in the Libyan Civil War.

Some royalty got married in London. Americans cared way too much.

Osama bin Laden killed. Party in the USA.

Syria and Yemen are in turmoil as the Arab Spring continues. There have also uprisings or unrest in Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia and more.

The world’s first artificial organ transplant was achieved, using an artificial windpipe coated with stem cells.

NASA’s space shuttle program concluded with the return to earth of Atlantis.

76 people were killed in twin terrorist attacks in Norway.

NASA announced that its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured photographic evidence of possible liquid water on Mars during warm seasons.

Clemson beat Auburn. Stanford (Stanford!) holds the nation’s longest winning streak.


17
Sep 11

Catember, Day 17

Catember


16
Sep 11

Deadline day

Turned in the last paper after having a Microsoft Word crash at 24 pages and 5,400 words. Good thing I’d just saved the document. Shame the autosave feature doesn’t function correctly.

I pasted my references into the paper and then watched the pinwheel of doom appear. I re-opened Word, confident that I’d just pressed the Command-S, and found an old version of the paper. Well then. This is the auto restore function, which picks a version of the from about three hours ago. So I closed that, opened the file in the traditional way and found my updated paper. For the most part. I had to re-make a few changes, despite the save. This is a level of aggravation you don’t need after six consecutive hours focusing on one project.

I’ve been told I expect to much, but Microsoft, which has been in the word processing game for some time now, shouldn’t have problems of this nature.

Yes, I expect it to work.

Got everything fixed, though, properly formatted and sent away. With time to spare!

So dinner was late, but the paper was on time. And that’s been my day: a 15-mile bike ride, reading, thinking, writing, editing and dealing with technology.

And now for this week’s YouTube Cover Theater, where we sample the talent playing in their homes for the adoring crowds of their webcam and random people on the Internet.

This week’s feature artist is Sam Cooke. Why? Because I couldn’t find enough Gene Vincent covers. (The world has enough Be Bop A lula. Let’s try some variety, Internet!)

Kiersten Holine is actually an independent artist — she’s selling a demo and an EP on her site — which is a bit at odds with the YouTube Cover Theater premise. But who cares, this sounds great:

Sayaka Alessandra is a Japanese-Sicilian Italian (I love those combinations and always wonder: how did your parents get together?) who’s bio starts “Sayaka Alessandra started her singing career on YouTube recording cover songs of many various artists … Since being discovered on YouTube Sayaka has gone on to sing in Café’s, Lounges and outdoor venues.” So that’s in keeping with the premise …

And now, two guys sitting in an apartment:

And for the second night in a row, I’m going to bed at a respectable hour. No need to check my temperature. I’m fine.