Unknown Dog

Google has so many toys and gizmos that it is easy to get lost playing with all the different toys. [Google Maps] has satellite images of most of the US. While the resolution isn’t so great that most folks can pick out their house, larger landmarks how up pretty well.

One thing that shows up really well is the Ghost Fleet in the James River in Virginia. The Ghost Fleet is a group of decomissioned ships that are supposed to be a reserve fleet for the United States in a time of emergency. The ships are tied to each other in such a fashion that it is possible to walk from one ship onto the deck of another. The ships are leaking, rusting hulks. The danger is that the ships are full of toxic materials and old fuel. A hurricane or other disaster could easily tear the ships asunder and ruin the already fragile ecology of the James.

There has been an effort to get these ships removed and disassembled for scrap which has faced various roadblocks. That story in itself is interesting, as is the somehow romantic sounding term for dismantling a ship: shipbreaking. At least one ship was stripped down, taken to Florida and sunk to become the backbone of an artifical reef.

Google maps has a great satellite view of the Ghost Fleet of Virginia: [Google Maps Satellite view]

Virginia isn’t the only home to Ghost Fleets. There is at least one more- this one is in in Beaumont, Texas:[Beaumont Texas Ghost Fleet]

I recently took my digital camera and snapped some pictures of the flowers that are blooming in the yard. Snapped here being a stretch, though my digital camera does make a “chick-chick” sound like a shutter snapping.

Rather than upload the pictures here, I decided to try [Flickr], a photo sharing service. Flickr really is painless and straightforward. A couple of clicks and I had signed up for an account. A simple email confirmation, and I was ready to upload photos. Less than 10 minutes later, I had my photos uploaded and ready to show the world. Kudos to Flickr for making it so very easy.

My photos are on Flickr for the whole world to see: [Flickr: Photos from bturnip]. Click on the “What’s Blooming” link on the left side of the screen and you will have the option of watching the pictures as a short slide show.

My style, if there is one, aside from accidents of lighting and focus, is aped from my sister’s style of picture taking. One of her focus areas is flowers- I have written about her work on Unknown Dog before [here].

Interesting art, and fun site to play with:
hello

Got the scoop from Boing-Boing. Of course.

Bill Simmons says all that needs to be said about Game 5 in [ESPN’s page 2] editorial:

(That reminds me. We’re always too quick to demolish athletes who make dumb plays or screw up at the worst possible times, from Byner’s fumble to C-Webb’s timeout to poor Bill Buckner … but at the same time, I feel like ‘Sheed’s brainfart will somehow get swept under the rug in the afterglow of such an electric game. Let the record show that Wallace’s decision to leave a scorching-hot Horry to double-team Ginobili was the single dumbest play in the history of the NBA Finals. For sweeping significance and staggering inexplicability, it cannot be topped. I’m telling you.)

Hapland is a web-based game I stumbled across today. I actually found the sequel first, but decided to start with the first edition. Try them out:
[Hapland I]
[Hapland II]

I am happy to report that the game works just fine in both my Windows and Linux based machines using the Flash enabled Firefox browser.
Using Firefox but haven’t set up Macromedia Flash yet? No problem, try the [Firefox Support page]. Fedora Core users who use yum may want to have a look at the [Fedora FAQ].

If you start playing and get hooked, report back here on how long it takes to solve the puzzles. I am still working on the first one, myself.

The perfect companion to Vonnegut’s quote about the rich being able to afford their own drinks:

You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
— Colonel Adolphus Busch

I may be the last person to find out about this, but I think it is neat enough to write about anyway.

Google, the answer guru
Instead of pointing to a web site that has the answer to one’s burning question, Google sometimes will answer the question directly. If the reader has not experienced this before, try these searches in a Google searchbox:

how many acres in a square mile?
how many bytes in a gigabyte?
how many ounces in a ton?
how many ounces in a metric ton?

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A month ago, had I been asked to name some Dustin Hoffman films, I would have spit out “Tootsie”, “Rain Man”, maybe “The Graduate”. All older classic films. By what I first thought was sheer coincidence, within the span of a couple weekends, I happened to see 3 recently made movies which prominently feature Dustin Hoffman:

• I Heart Huckabee’s
• Meet the Fockers
• Finding Neverland

I don’t know why I haven’t been paying more attention to him as an actor. What struck me in my accidental Hoffman marathon was just how different the movies and roles were to each other. Fabulous, fabulous ability to shift into the different roles, effortlessly, judging from the films. Seeing him slip between those roles reminded me of how well he did playing the idiot savant in “Rain Man”. Great talent, and he seems to have an ability to pick up some good roles.

I thought that seeing him in so many relatively current movies was somewhat strange, especially in addition to the brief cameo appearence in the Lemony Snickett movie I also happened to see very recently. Turns out Mr. Hoffman has been very busy, especially as of late. Over the last 15 years, he has been in at least one, and as many as four movies, every year except 1993,1994, and 2000. [IMBD] even has him listed involved in four movies for 2006.

Busy guy, good parts. Never realized how much I like him as an actor until now. I will have to add him to my checklist for movies.