OED DEFINITION: RHUBARB - 4. a. The word ‘rhubarb’ as repeated by actors to give the
impression of murmurous hubbub or conversation.
4. d. slang. Nonsense, worthless stuff.
Showing posts with label Random Geekiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Random Geekiness. Show all posts
One of the great advantages to living in Austin is that, even if you don't get SXSW badges and/or wristbands, there are plenty of great free events that also happen in Austin during that time. Last year, it was the NASA tent and the JWST model, this year, it was the Game of Thrones exhibition! They only allowed camera phones so these aren't the greatest photos ever, but I've uploaded the better ones to Flickr. The picture above goes to the full set. (Warning: there are spoilers in some of the photos!)
I've posted my photos from last weekend's trip to the Sherwood Forest Faire over on Flickr. I didn't get quite as many good photos from the joust this year since the area where I took up close photos last year (and got a face full of dust) was very muddy this year. No complaints though, we need the rain. I also managed, on a mostly cloudy day in a space mostly covered by trees, to get a little sunburned. Quite a talent!
While I was going through some old video transfers at work, I found the one I did of a video I shot at Enchanted Rock State Park back in 1998. I was out there to give a talk about meteor showers during special events they were having to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Texas Parks and Wildlife. I didn't get any video of the meteor shower, but I did get these shots of a nearby thunderstorm before sunset (things did clear up nicely for the meteor shower itself). The quality isn't great, but it was a fun test of the process and I was able to make a 20x version so you can see some of the movement of the storm.
Yes, that is a stormtrooper, in a kilt, in a rickshaw, at the Renaissance Festival.
I've finally posted my photos from this year's trip to RenFest at Flickr. I tried some HDR this time - all hand-held, since even the longest exposures were still short enough to not need a tripod. It was pretty windy at times so that was a challenge, and once I get better at getting rid of ghosting from motion I'll probably go back and add some more to the set.
As I sat down to watch This Week in Tech this Sunday, I realized that I had never written up anything or posted the pictures from the live show last month.
I got down to Momo's early enough to get a decent parking spot, but not early enough to get a table, so I ended up standing for about 6 hours. The whole experience was slightly surreal since I saw a lot of people in person that I'm used to seeing in a 640 x 480 window on my computer! After the Tech Guy radio show, Tech News Today and This Week in Tech live shows, I briefly went and chatted with Brian Brushwood, his wife, and Tom Merritt, all of whom were as nice in person as they come across on the net. :)
Leo Laporte creatively wearing his headphones during a break for the radio show. Full Flickr set here
I've mentioned on the blog in the past that I go to the Texas Renaissance Festival every year, and occasionally make a trip up to the Dallas-Fort Worth area to Scarborough Faire, but this past weekend I visited the Sherwood Forest Faire that opened near Austin just last year. And for a faire only in its second year, I was pretty impressed with what they've accomplished already. And it was really nice to visit a faire that only required about a 30 minute car ride, as opposed to 2 to 3 hours!
I think it is a common staple of faires to have a Royal Mint where they do demonstrations and/or make custom coins and medallions, and this faire was no exception. I was just casually glancing through the available designs to have struck into a medallion when a familiar face caught my eye - Elizabeth I! I then noticed the Tudor rose design and decided I had to have one made. I opted for the bronze with antique patina (they dip it in sulfuric acid and then polish) and you can see the final product below. I'm still sorting through the 250 pictures I took (we had really good seats for the falconry show, so I snapped a lot of pics - I love digital cameras!) and I'll tweet out a link when I get them all uploaded to my Flickr account.
I first caught wind of the awesomeness that is W00tstock through following Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage on Twitter (@wilw and @donttrythis) and kept hoping they would find their way to Austin eventually. I would say that Austin can hold its own as a very geeky city and was deserving of this celebration of all things geek. It took a year, but they finally made it! I was disappointed that Wil couldn't be here (he's been filming The Big Bang Theory and Eureka - and since I love those shows, I forgive him), but boy did Austin hit the jackpot with our guest 'Wil Wheaton' - we had Neil Gaiman! Although I still haven't read the Sandman comics, I've been a fan of Neil Gaiman's for a while now. I've listened to several of his works on audiobooks, including several that he has read himself. Having an author read their own works is sometimes hit-or-miss, but Neil Gaiman is a wonderful reader so getting to hear him read a couple of short stories live was a real treat!
I also got a picture of him wearing a monkey hat. Yeah, a monkey hat (you had to be there to really understand...):
(click for a larger version and to see the amazing number of views the photo has had since Neil retweeted me when I posted it to Twitter - major fangirl geek out moment!!)
And a short video of Neil giving an unenthusiastic pirate "Arr" with the monkey hat on - again, you had to be there to understand (including why he was pretending to be very put out to have to wear the hat and say "Arr"):
Needless to say, I had a wonderful time and I'm pretty sure I haven't laughed that hard and that long for quite a while! And it was sure a much better way to spend election night than sitting at home hearing the results come in.
This year I was involved in the planning of the watermelon drop, so I had a good opportunity to figure out how I wanted to film it. I decided for the "top-down view" this time:
Related to my post below: The Harry Ransom Center has started a campaign to raise money to help preserve the five costumes from "Gone With the Wind" in their collection, including the Green Curtain Dress pictured above. They are planning an exhibition for 2014 to mark the 75th anniversary of the movie that I'm already looking forward to! I donated $10 to the fund since I would love to be able to see the original costumes as part of the exhibit.
Update August 30: They reached the goal in three weeks! They have a cool map of where all the donations came from - my $10 is part of the 174 in Texas. :)
A week or so ago I finally made it over to the Harry Ransom Center's Making Movies exhibition. It's wonderful that I can see such great things on my lunch break by just walking to the other side of campus!
The HRC has had the Gone With the Wind collection for a long time and has acquired many other movie-related collections over the years, and a few years ago Robert De Niro gave the library a lot of items from his movie making-career. The exhibition featured a lot of items from their collection ranging from early scripts, to costumes, to a pamphlet from Mount Rushmore used as research for North by Northwest.
I only had my iPhone to take pictures, so I just grabbed a couple of shots of costumes. Below on the left is a dress worn my one of my favorite actresses, Deborah Kerr, in one of her signature roles - An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant (pretty much my all-time favorite actor). And on the right, the infamous "Red Dress" from Gone With the Wind. One thing that you can't really see in my picture is just how TINY Vivien Leigh's waist was. You can get an idea in the movie in the scenes where she's being laced up in her corset, but seeing it on a model right in front of you really puts it into scale. It was pretty amazing to be able to stand a foot away from that iconic costume!
A few photos from the excellent Star Wars in Concert that I went to see last Sunday. They had original movie props and costumes around the arena and they were, of course, mobbed with people. I did my best to get some people-free photos, as well as a few from the concert itself. You can see the rest of the photos in my Flickr set for the concert.
I've finally gotten around to uploading one of my hummingbird videos to You Tube! I have a few more I'll upload in the next couple of weeks, including one with sound where you can hear the bird chatter. This video doesn't have sound since I took it through a window and all you could hear was the tv.
Although I'm way late to the game with this, here is the newest offering in the Symphony of Science series - an incredible collection of music videos created from auto-tuned clips of famous scientists.
I was looking for a photo the other day and came across this one of my desk in my office at UT from around 1996:
And here is the same desk now:
There is actually a large CPU under the desk, which is what the monitor is attached to (it's not connected to my laptop). A BIG change from that old Mac II Plus!
A few weeks ago I was at an all-day retreat for the Staff Council (I represent Astronomy and McDonald Observatory staff) at the football stadium. We got to use some of the luxury boxes as break-out rooms, so I snapped a photo.
As promised, here are the screen caps from another Simpsons take on Tudor history this season. The plot of this one was basically The Simpsons' take on "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" with Selma as Elizabeth I, Homer as Sir Walter Raleigh and Marge as Bess Throckmorton.
