dancing in the streets

the web page for a gallery of photos called "dancers among us" says "BE passionate joyful sad euphoric angry intense desperate ecstatic intimate present ALIVE." makes me want to be a dancer, or at least have better balance and more strength...

almost planet sounio

today's APOD features a pretty incredible 24 hour mosaic taken by chris kotsiopoulos in sounio, greece. click to see full-sized image...

"Images taken at night compose the top half of the picture, with star trails lasting as long as 11 hours visible. Contrastingly, images taken during the day compose the bottom of the image, with the Sun being captured once every 15 minutes. The image center shows a Little Prince wide angle projection centered on the ground but including gravel, grass, trees, Saint John's church, clouds, crepuscular rays, and even a signature icon of the photographer -- the Temple of Poseidon. Meticulous planning as well as several transition shots and expert digital processing eventually culminated in this image documenting half of the final two days of last year. "

go to the APOD site and scroll over the image for more details of the image!

a plastic bag

this drawing by aron wiesenfeld feels old, but then there's the plastic bag glaring out as a modern beacon.

labyrinth

i remember playing this wooden labyrinth at my grandparents house as a kid. it was soooo frustrating!! i honestly didnt think it was possible to conquer it, but here it is... with two balls!! a.m.a.z.i.n.g!

flowing cars in queensland, australia

this is incredible. the footage after 5:15 shows the aftermath of the flash floods...



via tywkiwdbu

if you want to donate to flood relief: click here

understanding the space shuttles

as the remaining shuttles will be retiring soon, its interesting to take some time and really appreciate all that they are capable of and have accomplished. this 45 min video shows stunning photography as a shuttle engineer describes all the details of take off and beyond. really interesting information....



spotted by The MKX®

space

(via its called science)

sunday at shelly beach

the forecast called for rain, and how wonderfully wrong they were.

the morning looked a bit cloudy in my neighborhood, but i decided to grab a ferry for the coast anyway.

there was a volleyball tournament on the beach!

after a tasty brazilian feijoada for lunch, we decided to walk to that little beach off in the distance.

we spotted a big lizard along the way...

almost at shelly beach!

ahhh...

one thing i like about australia is that matters are not complicated by subtlety or suggestion. no, they are presented in an upfront and honest manner. for instance, when i first heard of shelly beach, my passing thought was that maybe it was named after a historic person named shelly who lived in the area and achieved something special.

and then i visited the beach today. as i walked into the water, i realized my feet were becoming quite sensitive because the sand went from very small granules to increasingly larger chunks of broken shells. i thought to myself "wow, there are a lot of shells here! oh right, shelly beach is... shelly!"

(shells photo credit: amanda gilligan)

when i lived in england, i felt like there was always some deeper, hidden, clever meaning to everything and i was constantly on the look out so as not to miss the subtle joke. the british take great pride in their humour, even moreso when people "dont get it." actually, i just found this quote about the english and their use of understatement from the "Humour Rules" chapter of Watching The English, by Kate Fox, which explains it all very well.

anyway, in australia, understatement is not commonplace. they call it like it is. shelly beach has a lot of shells. es ist wie es ist.

i like not feeling as though i'm always missing something!

we're searching for ET, but it's really hard to see

some clever folks recently made a parody of Ke$ha's hit song, "We R Who We R." i've never heard that song or seen the video, but i don't really feel that i need to after this. its almost a little embarrassing to watch, because of the ridiculousness of modern pop style, but the lyrics are actually really good and the background images are gorgeous!



those of you following the continuing debate about the potential for life to survive on arsenic, might take offense to the song's notion that the discovery expands the possible types of lifeforms that can exist.

i will leave you with some of the reasonable response from the makers of the movie:

We’d like to defend our honor just a little bit in regards to the arsenic debate. Certainly, we know it is a very contentious subject, but we felt we couldn’t really do the whole controversy justice in the context of this parody, so we went with the brief mention. Are we trying to say this is a comprehensive look at everything about astrobiology? Of course not, and we understand you weren’t implying that it was supposed to be. But if we can pique the scientific curiosity of even a few young people, and get them interested in pursuing this field, that’s a win for us.

partially eclipsed sun rising

the partial solar eclipse that occurred on 4th january 2011 was not visible from my part of the world, unfortunately. but many people achieved some fantastic photos of the event, including this shot featured on APOD today taken in austria by robert pölzl.

lucky for us earthlings, there will be another 3 partial solar eclipses and 2 total lunar eclipses in 2011! most of them are visible from rather remote places on the globe, but i'm sure some folks will venture to take photos for the rest of us!

the next total solar eclipse takes place on 13th november 2012 and will be visible from the very north of australia! i'll absolutely, positively be there! anyone else?

is it octopuses or octopi?

an associate editor at mirriam-webster explains the mystery...



video spotted by ze frank.

let's dance

i was hoping to find a live version of M. Ward performing his version of david bowie's let's dance, but alas, i could not. at least you can listen. this version has a much different feel than the original tune... it's an entirely different dance.

big bada boom - welcome 2011

sydney put on a pretty good show to welcome in the new year.

jupiter got in on the action.

so did the boats in the harbour.

happy 2011 all!

wireless

here's an excellent cartoon by jeff stahler, the editorial cartoonist for the columbus dispatch.

reminds me i need to figure out where the nearest library is...

fire and ice

spotted in NYC in december 2010:

a resolute new year

my new year's resolution is to run the city2surf race that occurs in sydney each august. city2surf covers 14 km (8.7 miles) from downtown sydney to the internationally known bondi beach. apparently, its the largest fun run in the entire world, having attracted 80,000 runners for the 40th race in 2010!

i decided before i came to australia that the move across the world would be a good time to start running again. i was reasonably active in england, but the pub lifestyle did not really compliment my physique. so i bought a nice pair of running shoes when i arrived in sydney and i've been running steadily for almost two months now.

at first, the running was so painful that i just did a combination of walking and running and walking and running. after i gained some strength and endurance, i managed to go for 20 to 30 minutes straight 2 to 3 times a week.

then i found a running group to join and last night i went for my first run with them. we started in my neighborhood, went across the harbour bridge, around the opera house, and back. i've been on worse runs before! the area surrounding the opera house is all decked out for the massive fireworks celebration tonight, which i've been warned will be insanely packed with people. cant wait :)

at 4 miles, last night's run was the longest i've completed in years, but i have to say i have no intuition for how long it takes me to run a kilometer - i still think in minutes per mile! the run was slow... but i completed it with only one little bit of walking! woohoo! the group was great and i estimate that the average age of the runners is about ten more than me, which gives me a bit of hope.

the craziest part about this new year's celebration is that i will be in an entirely different decade than most of you for almost an entire day! weird. but still...

happy new year!

serious snow

wow! this is part of the tateyama kurobe alpine route in the japanese alps. not sure why they bother digging out the road though!

via tywkiwdbi

the ashes

the ashes is a long series of cricket matches played between england and australia every 18 to 30 months (?). i dont understand cricket. i dont understand it so much that i have no idea why the ashes is actually a series of test cricket matches instead of just regular cricket.

i know the matches can last for days and i know that my friends in england, who care about cricket, are very excited that im in australia right now. apparently they feel i am somehow obliged to be happy (and brag?) about england's recent performance.

anyway, while i lived in england i was too excited by all the soccer games i could watch to bother paying any attention to learning the rules of cricket or rugby. notice how i called it soccer instead of football? thats because here in australia the word football could potentially mean like 3 different sports, so i've cut out all ambiguity and gone back to calling my favorite sport simply soccer!

i'm at a loss when it comes to popular sports in australia because there is rugby league, rugby union, cricket (and apparently test cricket), aussie rules football, and good old soccer. this SMBC cartoon summarizes my knowledge... just substitute any of the above for football except, of course, soccer.

antihydrogen

its nice to hear my old colleagues talk about interesting things! here the folks of sixty symbols talk about an experiment at CERN that is "trapping" antihydrogen.

cherpumple

meanwhile back in the USA, my cousin and her new husband introduced the family to the monster of all desserts, the condominium of cakes, the after dinner answer to the turducken, a confectionary delight that could have come from no where in the world other than my home country: the cherpumple.

yes, ladies and gentlemen, a cherpumple is a pumpkin pie surrounded by spice cake, topped with an apple pie inside white cake, topped with a cherry pie baked inside chocolate cake, all covered in flattering frosting.

truly astonishing! i seriously wish i could have witnessed this event and tasted the tower!

want to make your own cherpumple? watch this video.

thanks to my sister for sending photos!

if only in my dreams...

as the song says: i'll be home for christmas, if only in my dreams.

meanwhile, elvis sings of a blue christmas:

not everything burned

just for the record - i dont think it was a degrees F vs C issue, because some of the cookies came out alright - and even got decorated!

whats the opposite of a white christmas?

i have severely failed the first battle with my new oven. i have no idea what happened... the cookies were in for no longer than 5 minutes! apparently the temperature was a lot higher than where i thought i placed the marker on the dial.

::hangs head in shame::


so... what's the opposite of a white christmas??

a tan christmas!

...i'm heading to the beach :)

star wars christmas special

the folks of gamervision bring us this highly entertaining star wars christmas special. enjoy!

the land of giants

a design idea worthy of winning the 2010 Boston Society of Architects Unbuilt Architecture contest: these pylon figures are brilliant!

the best part is that they can each have unique designs!

eclipsed moon rising

i hope many of you got to see the total lunar eclipse which only rarely ever occurs on the solstice! i decided to enjoy the longest day of summer by heading to the harbour bridge and watching the rising of the eclipsed moon.

as the sun set behind me, i watched the shadow of the bridge extend over the neighborhood where i now live! you can actually see my new home in this shot, but you have to know where to look...

while waiting for the moon to rise, i watched boats flow past the opera house.

and then finally a tiny peak of the eclipsed moon!

there were only a couple other people on the bridge watching the eclipse, which kind of surprised me, but i guess it shouldnt. there were two ladies next to me taking photos of the opera house and they finally asked me what i found so exciting about the moon. it didnt look red, as it normally does during a nighttime eclipse, so i guess it just looked like a normal crescent moon to someone who didnt know it was supposed to be full tonight!

the moon slowly filled up as the sky grew darker.

and then the moon finally popped behind some clouds as it escaped earth's shadow and i reached the end of the bridge.

wish my camera was able to get a bit more detailed images of the moon, but it does a decent job for a little point and clicker.

happy solstice everyone!

galaxies, galaxies everywhere!

this is the sort of image that really makes me appreciate studying the universe every day.

on its own, the photo below shows a gorgeous image from the hubble space telescope that reveals incredible details of the spiral galaxy NGC 4921, which lives 320 million light years from earth. the fuzzy light from this galaxy is created by hundreds of billions of unresolved stars whose glow blurs together to produce the overall shine.

to create the above image, 50 separate exposures through a yellow filter and 30 more through a near-infrared filter were combined so that the total exposure times were approximately seventeen hours and ten hours respectively. thats a lot of telescope time on one galaxy! with that much time, you can see a lot of unexpected details in the background.

in fact, look at this zoomed-in bit of the image above... (click to enlarge)

nearly every single one of those small smudges is an entire galaxy harbouring hundreds of billions of stars and gas and dust and probably a supermassive black hole in the middle. incredible. there is SO much out there in the universe!! i'm very grateful that i can sit here in my earthly smallness and think about it and admire it.

monorail city cat

i feel dizzy... loco gato!!!

via crazy ivory at flickr