Tvindy

My Top 10 Flickr Photos

I may not have mentioned it here, but I use Flickr a lot. My first photo uploaded was back in September 2005. (Strangely, the second was in May of 2007.) Since then, I've uploaded a grand total of 1604, constituting about the top 10% (in my opinion) of the digital photos I have taken. I never take the time to work on them before uploading, even though there is a lot that could be improved by cropping and adjusting the levels.

According to my stats, I've gotten 92,121 views as of today. While impressive, this probably has more to do with my thorough tagging of each photo than with my photograph talents. Flickr gives a lot of interesting statistics, including listing the top photos by number of views. The list is both interesting and surprising, enough so that I thought I would share it here.

10: Ostrich Egg and Chicken Egg (469 views)

Here we have my mother holding an ostrich egg next to a chicken egg. The big one was a Christmas present from me and made a tasty omelet.

9: A Human Burger (482 views)

Brazilians personify The King a bit differently.

8. Giant Bat Skeleton! (510 views)

Not something you'd want to run into in a dark alley.

7. Astronomy Cast Live (574 views)

This was a surprise. Apparently more people are interested in looking at photos of Pamela Gay than seeing a giant bat skeleton. Who knew?

6. Pizza Hut Box (698 views)

But even Pamela Gay is no match for a pizza box, at least not one with Portuguese printed on it.

5. Stuffed Piranhas (703 views)

Their teeth may be sharp, but I still think the giant bat skeleton is cooler.

4. Red Tape Girl (704 views)

This is a pretty typical costume for Dragon*Con. I guess people like to look at photos that contain cigarettes.

3. Satanic Tattoos (918 views)

Sadly, this mural no longer exists. It has been replaced with a picture of a far less satanic-looking octopus.

2. Cat Eating Spaghetti (1232 views)

This was so odd that I did a bit of research to figure out what was going on. I'm pretty sure people were looking for this.

1. Spongebob's Pineapple (2813 views)

Notice that this got over twice as many views as the number 2 photo. All I can say is that way too many unsupervised small children are using the internet.

Ancient TV Pics

Recently I got a bunch of old negatives scanned at ScanCafe.They were pictures that I had taken on a very inexpensive camera when I was between six and eight. Today I'll share with you my adventures in photographing the TV.

The image below shows our first color television. If you look closely at the screen, you'll see that the program being aired is The Munsters, with Lilly and Herman in bed.

I have a vague memory of my mother telling me that it wouldn't turn out, because of the reflection from the flash. I decided to try again without the flash, my logic being that one of the two pictures would probably be acceptable. This is the result with no flash:

Clearly the first photo is the winner, although you can still clearly see the contents of the screen in the second, which is the end credits to the Munsters. It is truly astonishing to me how blind that camera was without a flash for indoor photography.

This final photo (of another TV set in the house) was a decades-long mystery to me. The original print was not clear enough or large enough for me to ever be able to determine what was on the screen. It looked like some sort of odd tropical fish. Once I saw the 21st-century scan of it, I very quickly recognized it for what it was. Can you identify the program?

Birthday

Gadzooks! It's time to post again. Today was my birthday. It's amazing how fast things are changing, especially with social media. Today I got birthday congratulation from people on Facebook, Twitter and Orkut. I don't remember how it went last year, but I'm pretty sure the most I got was was couple of tweets on Twitter. I'm looking forward to seeing where birthday wishes come from on my next birthday.

I'm Pathetic

Oops! I just realized that I forget to post yesterday. It's not that I was busy and simply didn't have the time. I actually had very little to do yesterday, but it somehow slipped my mind. Oh well. This entry will have to stand in for the one I was supposed to do then. Later today I'll put something up with a bit more content. (Unless I forget.)

By the way, I found out that there is an actual NaNoWriMo equivalent for blogging in November called NaBloPoMo. Unfortunately, I'm no longer eligible, since as I said, I missed yesterday.  :(

30 Days 30 Posts

I doubt this blog will ever recover its former glory, but I don't want to let it die entirely. This month I will attempt to write a new entry every day. Also, I will make a point of visiting the blogs of my followers and actually catching up on what they've been doing. After November, who knows?

Podcast Listening Made Easy

I've been pretty busy lately getting married, moving to Brazil, and podcasting, so this blog has been seriously neglected these past few months. It's not dead, though. I will be back but not quite yet. It has surprised me that almost no one who reads this blog has checked out my podcast as an alternate source for news about my life, but a recent comment by 'mouse clued me in to the fact that not every blog reader knows how to listen to a podcast. With this in mind, I'm posting a simple Pickle player that should make it easy for anyone with a computer to listen to episodes of Brazilianisms. Enjoy!

The Wedding Date(s)

It's hard to believe I've been in Brazil for two months now and still don't have an exact wedding date. The bureaucracy here is truly astonishing. On December 5th, we will have completed our 45-day waiting period and can then set a date (assuming the marriage is approved). Since marriages can only be performed on Wednesdays and Fridays, we're shooting for Dec. 7th, but we don't know if we can get that day at the last minute. Therefore Dec. 12 and Dec. 14 are our backup dates. If anyone wishes to attend, just hop a plane to Belo Horizonte, Brazil and stay from at least as early as Dec. 7th to at least the 14th, and you can see the wedding.

Any readers of this blog are welcome to attend, but I would especially like to invite the following from my blogroll:

• Bakerina: She could bring Lloyd, and it would be a pleasure to take them around and expose them to the unique cuisine of Brazil. Also, Bakerina could bake us a fabulous wedding cake.
• Bill Stevenson: He will freak out when he sees that the iPod Shuffle goes for nearly $200 in Brazil.
• Jenny and Geoff: They're already in the southern hemisphere, so it would be a quick and easy trip for them.
• Michael Moore: (No, not the Michael Moore.) He could bring the whole family, and the trip would give him and his daughter something to blog about. Apparently nothing blogworthy has happened in their lives since July.
• 'mouse: He's a lawyer. My fiancée is a lawyer. They can talk about lawyering stuff.
• orionoir: I'd love to see the pictures he'd take around here. (But I shudder to think of the adventures he'd wind up having in Brazil!)
• Snow: She really really needs a vacation!
• Teka: She already speaks Portuguese. This would be a great opportunity for her to show James around Brazil.
• Will: He's never been abroad and needs to see the world. Plus we could put together at least a few truly awesome podcast episodes, perhaps even reviving The Dynamite Coalition.

Anyone on the above list is welcome and would have a place to stay if they came. (That is unless they all end up coming, in which case I am screwed.)

Some Updates

I really don't know what the future hold for this blog. I certainly don't find myself posting to it very frequently, but I definitely won't be taking it down any time soon. (I get a lot of hits on some of the older entries.) Certainly, updates are owed to my readers, so here goes.

• As listeners to the podcast already know, I'll be getting married in September and moving to Brazil. Probably, we'll be living in an apartment in this building (in case you want to check out the floor plan).
• Before leaving the country, I'll be attending both Inconjunction and DragonCon. If you happen to be going as well, let me know, and we can meet in person.
• I've been honored at the Podcast Pickle with the task of selecting the Featured Podcast of the day every day for four months. (That's 120 casts I have to find and write about!) You can see my selections on the main page.
• I'm gradually putting up thousands of photos (mostly old ones) on Flickr.
• You can also find me on twitter.
• My podcasts can be found here and here.
• Blog posts, podcast episodes, Flickr photos, and twitter entries all theoretically show up on my Jaiku page, your one-stop site for all things tvindy.

Saturn's Hexagon

[Addendum: About a day after writing this, it occurred to me that people might assume it is some sort of April Fool's joke. Amazingly it is not. However, I have managed to discover a more plausible explanation for Saturn's hexagon.]

Remember the Cassini probe to Saturn and its moon Titan? Well, it's still going strong. The above image shows a distinct hexagonal formation directly above Saturn's north pole. The shape is 15,000 miles wide (large enough to encompass nearly four Earths). Apparently the Voyager probes had detected it on their flybys in the 80s, but this is the first time that the entire hexagon has been captured in a single image. And it confirms that this is a real longterm (perhaps permanent) phenomenon. What I find interesting is that so far, scientists haven't put forth even the most tentative theory as to how such a structure could form or maintain itself. (Obviously it was built by intelligent Saturnians.)

Saturn's south pole has a radically different, yet no less dramatic, appearance. It actually looks to have a form more appropriate to Uranus.

Tweaking

I may not be posting, but for some reason today I was motivated to do a bit of tweaking. I guess I was getting tired of the old banner, so I put up a new one.