Good Sunday morning to the Tribune! The Café for today is open, so please c’mon in, relax, do the crossword, and enjoy a fine hot caffeinated beverage. Nothing and everything is on special today, so order your pleasure.
There are only a couple notices on the FBC Bulletin Board this morning:
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CG and/or DJ: please contact your party using the white courtesy phone.
Thank you. |
The Froggy Bottom Photography Fair is forging ahead on the weekend of October 8th & 9th.
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I’m out most of the day, so the Café will have to operate on the honor system. Just remember, it’s our Commons.
Oh, and if you must recommend this Café, please unrecommend one of my DC March photo diaries. It would deeply offend my vow of humility to see three of my diaries, all devoid of serious political content, on the Rec List. Thanks!
nope- no humility allowed- the many cats have have spoken.
Good morning all you guys.
Arrived Khartoum last night and believe this is last internet access for some days to come. Flying down to southern Sudan very early tomorrow for about a week.
I’m on dial-up, but have very much enjoyed some of the diaries from the march – photos of so many familiar handles, you too Brother. I am only intermittently on as there have been many meetings today {7 hrs ahead of NY-time} and have not found any reference to how many actually marched. What were the estimates?
ask — I’m wondering about standards for the Photo Fair.
Did any of the March Photo Pages cause bad delays for you? Or any particular photos take much longer to load than others?
I’d appreciate your comments.
Hi katie,
It was not too painful, maybe up to a minute to load. But running more than one window at the time was horrible. The worst part is the weird keyboard, where I have to guess where the special characters are – they are not where they are supposed to be…
mlk’s loaded quite fast. Brother Feldspar’s were slower but not too bad, dammit janet’s were about the same. dblhelix’s were so slow I gave up. But speed on a dial-up can be affected by changes in the line quality which can come and go so I’m not sure what impact that might have had on the different diaries.
And I’ve opened up cafes that have lots of graphics in them and had them load in a reasonable amount of time. So I’m guessing that the file size of the images is the most significant factor.
I’ve only recently graduated to DSL so I remember the pain well. In photoshop I never save with a higher quality level than 6 out of 12, which I believe is accomplished by some combination of limiting the number of supported colors plus possibly some other type of compression. If the image is to convey a nonartistic point, I save at 3 or 4, otherwise 4-5 in almost all cases.
Looking at the disk size, this makes a real difference. A test 150-pixel-wide photo I just saved totals:
Now at our maximum 400 pixel width, the full 12 quality is 180 kb when the photo is a little wider than tall. A few high quality pictures quickly add up to some serious download time for dialup.
BrotherF — how dare you say your march diaries are devoid of political content? What is more political than seeing so many proud Americans exercising their right to free speech?
Hope you and everyone are more-or-less recovered from yesterday’s events.
Finally going to get the spouse’s ear tended to, if he’ll ever get moving… 🙁 Tonight is dinner with his folks for their 50th wedding anniversary; I have to finish putting their gift together — we got them a nice card and I’m sticking in a gift card for Sweet Tomatoes (their favorite place; they stop there for dinner after shopping at Costco), and I made a note regarding the brick we donated to the Opportunity Center of Palo Alto in their honor, so I need to stick that in an envelope.
Other than that, it’s miscellaneous errands and possibly some laundry if there’s time…
Have a great day, everyone! 🙂
how dare you say your march diaries are devoid of political content?
I think I have the right to say that my own diaries aren’t serious, which is what I had meant by the phrase “devoid of serious political content.” I meant that my collections of photos are mere fluff compared to the outstanding pieces of writing we see here daily. I meant that while of interest, they didn’t deserve to take the place of the eloquent descriptions written by others. I was embarrassed to see two of my diaries on the Rec List simultaneously, and am somewhat gratified that (a) they’re no longer there and (b) diaries like BostonJoe’s are on the Rec List in their place.
Morning Brother and all…..how is everyone doing. Are the bootribbers on their way home?
Katie, you may be able to solve your photo, contest loading problem by having everyone use clickable thumnails or posting them on a photo group site, like ephoto.
Here is my photo offering for today.
I would like to try to explain the Total FUBAR that happened with my very carefully planned breakfast for my fellow Tribbers- turns out there was ANOTHER group that ‘took it upon themselves, to move down into the restaurant ‘in the words of the lady I talked to today-who already had a private room going on in the hotel-she was there and she was distraught,apparently.
The restaurant is not run by Holiday Inn- so I get to call and bitch at Pauline(who is the subcontractor along with her husband).I was not charged– of course I checked that first- but –still fumin!!!
Lady at the desk remembered it very well and she was all in sympathy.
I’m really sorry everybody.
Don’t be sorry! Thank you for everything you did for us!!!!
Cool, foggy, overcast w/ mist and light rain today…great for sleeping…
Looks more like Gooserock’s mornings…
Thanks again for the efforts of everyone yesterday, all those who attended and shared their experiences and those who kept the fires burning @ BT…KUDOS to all.
Peace
It’s a glorious early autumn day in Puget Sound.
The darkish band 1/3 of the way down is the water ruffled by a “cat’s paw” of sharp ripples being freshly created by a localized gust of wind.
The prevailing wind is blowing from the right rear of the picture, but this gust has been bent in by the shoreline and a bluff headlands farther ahead and away to the right of the view.
Sailors, windsurfers and such types take advantage of these conditions, especially when working upwind. You can’t sail straight upwind but you can approach to about 45 degrees or so, like a road wending up a mountainside.
Beating (heading as close as possible into the wind) toward this shore from out in the water to left, this dark patch represents not only some increased speed, but also the ability to point temporarily closer against the average prevailing wind in the rest of the bay.
So you can gain a few feet due to speed, and another several yards by shortening the distance needed to zigzag on the way upwind. Over the miles it adds up.
And it’s really fun to have nature do your work for you, moving you towards any point in the compass, and leaving so little disturbance.
one of these days- I will get a pic that shows the marsh out back-it is a very interesting ecosystem-beavers,otters,blue herons,egrets.
Hub has his kayak out there so he can cruise around.
and the last thing I want to do is beat near a weather shore
Wind is described by the direction it comes from because that’s the direction you want your sailors looking at all times. IE a minute or so into the future.
The weather shore is the upwind shore, the one the wind is leaving. If you break down or go out of control, you blow safely away from the weather shore.
The lee shore is the one downwind, that the wind is blowing onto. So to get away from a lee shore always requires beating, which is a hard way to have to sail in a strong blow, because you’re bucking both wind and seas to get clear. One breakdown or a false move, and you blow onto the rocks. Boats, like planes, generally do very well in their designed element. They usually have their worst troubles arriving or departing from the land.
I was reading last year of a category of rescue-oriented sailboats, possibly related to the double-ended Colin Archer types, that were so good at “clawing off” a lee shore that they were known to tow 2-3 similar or smaller sized distressed vessels off a lee shore with them. Unbe-frigging-lievable!
Yes honey- but I don’t want to have to beat into the wind to claw off. I understand all that. WE are old yachties here.
That is unbelievable–GEEZ– I guess what I was meaning was- I dont wanna be anywhere near any shore that I am not heading for without a damn good idea of where the channel is.
and that is WITHOUT heat index factored in.
And that is all I have to say.
(for now)
A Kos poster yesterday mentioned one of the political compass.
I took my score last night and Mrs. Gooserock just took hers this morning.
We both scored very strongly liberal on economics and fairly libertarian on authoritarianism.
Historic figures who scored close to us were Ghandi, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.
So now my 60’s mind starts asking whether it was CIA or Pentagon Psy-Ops that put up the site.
I just took the questionnaire. Here’s my score:
Economic: -6.75
Social: -6.72
I lost that bookmark but I think I was over there with Gandhi-in the left lower corner.
We probably walked farther today than yesterday. You see, there’s what I will now call “Brother Feldspar’s Death March” which takes in all the major memorials & monuments in one big loop. It was the pleasure of Supersoling, Military Tracy, Damnit Janet, and Damnit Janet’s brother (henceforth to be called Damnit Ryan) to undergo this trial-by-blister. CabinGirl and the CabinBoys were with us for a part of the early afternoon, at the Museum of Natural History.
In the “Mineral Hall” at the Natural History Museum I saw this sign — read to the last sentence to see why I took a picture for y’all:
A week and a half ago one of my best friends in Montreal died…
Last weekend our dog was run over by a car…
And in the “half good/half bad” category, my father goes in for surgery tomorrow… He should be fine.
I like Pastordan’s idea, in one of his recent diaries, of how to pay your respects:
No comments to this comment please.
Just say a prayer and move on. Or, if you are less religiously inclined, a good thought would be nice. Just keep it to yourself.
Thanks for listening.