On the island where I live there is a great deal of military detritus laying around in various states of decay. There is a large Navy presence on the island, and there's all sorts of places to go exploring weird artifacts of past decades. A lot of these areas are tied together by a largely defunct railroad that goes from the very top to the very bottom of the island. The rails continue on the mainland, but the bridges are either long gone or hopelessly beyond repair.
The section of track that traverses the island has been converted into a tourist attraction, where you pay some amount of money to have a fancy dinner in the passenger cars while the train rumbles up the line and back. This past weekend a friend and I decided to explore a small side-yard down in the marina district to see what we could find. As an important sidenote, a lot of people take it upon themselves to vandalize these sites, but we're only interested in taking photos; we never damage any of the property we enter.
What we found was an old, abandoned school-bus that contained what looked like the entire set for a long-forgotten school play. There were even boxes of stage-lights strewn about, not to mention the giant cardboard battle-axe. We also found a train engine car inside a repair bay, fully unlocked and inviting us to play in the cockpit. Here are some of the photos:
Brenton Point, Newport, RI this afternoon. Holy McF**k was it blowing out. We saw a woman walking her tiny dog along the roadside, and although it looked like it was desperately straining against it's leash it was really just being blown away; the leash was the only thing holding it from flying off over the ocean! Here are some photos of the amazing waves:
Last night I went to a zombie party at Kendra's house. The food was awesome, vegan chili, squash soup, and all sorts of goodies that people made. I brought a projector to play horror movies on the wall, and all the fixings for Bacardi O Cosmos, including "gummy body parts" and drops of red food coloring to make the drink look super-gross. They went fast and I didn't get to snap any pictures, but I got a bunch of fun photos of the evening.
In order:
1) Night of the Living Dead on the ceiling
2) The Danzig Pumpkin
3) zombie makeup
4) sweet vegan chili!
Show us something dangerously cute.
Submitted by Indy Bunny.
This picture was taken on a roadtrip to North Carolina this past Christmas. What happens when you try to cook dinner in a house filled with 3 spoiled dogs and 2 greedy cats? This:
Books, movies, music; what's in your top 5 right now?
Books - The last book I read that I really enjoyed was "Storming the Reality Studio" containing works by various authors in the two genres I enjoy most: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism. I particularly enjoyed the pieces by Bruce Sterling and Veronica Hollinger, the latter of whom I corresponded with regarding the upcoming release of "Queer Universes, Sexualities in Science Fiction" which is at least unique in it's concept.
Also, while I haven't gotten too far into it yet, I am currently reading a collection of short stories by Alice Munro titled "Open Secrets", which is good since I rarely have time to sit down and read for any period of time. There is seemingly no particular theme to the stories, but I guess I will have a better idea once I finish it.
Other Reading - VOX! It's public release day today, woohoo! I'm super-excited about the fact that as of today support has been added for Firefox 2.0, which previously was causing all kinds of weird site errors. I came here from LiveJournal (another SixApart product) and I've all but abandoned it now, except to keep up with friends.
It's nice to see that there are still a few reminders of summer still fluttering around despite the fact that the end of October is drawing near. Found at Purgatory Chasm.
How many computers do you have in your house?
Submitted by Foomper.
I'm a network engineer by trade so it should come as no surprise that I had to sit and think about that for a minute. My main computer is a Hewlett Packard AMD X2 that I got late last year, and my old skool Pentium 4 frankenbox is sitting next to it, waiting for me to format it at some point so I can sell it on Craigslist.
Elsewhere in the room is an old Pentium 3 frankenbox that preceded the Pentium 4, and is now awaiting a format so I can donate it to charity. Another "book pc" frankenbox lives under the bed from a now-defunct project to put together a completely solid-state Windows system.
Finally, I have my trusty Dell Inspiron 600m laptop that I lug to school, the office, and various coffeehouses. It's probably the most used & abused of all of my systems, which is why I put in a schock-resistant hard drive to replace the sucky ones that Dell ship out.
The lovely Josh is down from Maine all weekend, so yesterday we went to the Norman Bird Sanctuary to explore the woods, since it's now that perfect time of year when the leaves are starting to turn and it is not yet too cold to be outside for long. We hiked about 75% of the trails there, and took a break to enjoy the view at hanging rock for a while before heading back to the car. Here are some pictures!
Take a photo of something in motion.
Inspired by Meg.
Discovered this on my trip to the Norman Bird Sanctuary yesterday. I wanted to snap a photo of some of the milkweed drifting in the wind and I found a cluster absolutely covered in this bizarre crawling mass of red bugs. It was fairly breezy out, so it was fortunate that the light was good enough that I could snap this shot without motion blur.
Do you listen to podcasts? Are there any you'd recommend?
Inspired by Alex.
I finally caved in to massive-scale peer pressure and bought my first iPod earlier this year. Originally housed in a 5gb Zen Micro, my music collection had finally grown to a whopping 8gb, and I was getting sick of constantly having to swap out albums depending on what suited my mood on any given day.
Best Buy was where I ended up purchasing the unit, and I was suckered into buying the extended warranty that I am almost positive I will never use, for I treat my little 30gb bundle of joy as if it were my firstborn child. At the moment I opened the package I placed the unit inside a leather case, as they are notorius for getting scratched up if you so much as look at it sideways.
Getting to the topic at hand, I recently looked at the massive amount of unused space I had to play with and decided to start hunting around for some worthwhile podcasts. So far for me it has been like searching for a needle in a haystack, with every well-produced show being buried behind 1,000 other horrible ones. This is reminiscent of YouTube in a way, but that's for a different post!
I started out searching for some interesting glbt-oriented podcasts, and so far the only one I remain subscribed to is RubyFruit Radio, which can be found at http://www.rubyfruitradio.com or in the iTunes store as a free subscription.
From the site itself, here is the description:
Rubyfruit Radio is all about playing the best in podsafe female indie artists. I believe that most music on corporate radio sucks and there are a lot of artists out in the world who are not getting the recognition they deserve. Please support these artists by buying their CDs, going to their shows and spreading the word about artists you like.
The show is run by Heather Smith, who lives with her girlfriend and pets in Atlanta. It's very well done, and it's exposed me to a lot of new independent music that I probably would not have heard otherwise. I'd love to hear recommendations from anyone with similar interests!
PS - I just got my Vox account today, so this is my first post. I'm liking the site a lot so far!
