Corwin pictures: In The Pumpkin Patch, Or, A Boy of Some Standing

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jmadden/corwin/index.html

This set was taken mostly with cameras other than our usual digital camera, which had decided that it could only take one picture before deciding that it's out of charge (even when plugged in to wall current!) and auto-shutting down, and has been sent back for a refund. So we have some actual film pictures, including some with my Pentax K1000 (you know it's a good camera when they keep making the same one for 25 years) and Megan's camera, plus still shots from our camcorder, etc. It's an interesting hodgepodge, but I can't wait to replace our digital camera...among other things, I'd forgotten just how fast you can pay for a digital camera by not having to pay to get your film processed. Yiy.

On a related note, I'd like to send a big shout-out--preferably delivered via megaphone from about six inches away from either of their ears--to the ICS Support folks, who in their paranoia have decided that the designated grad student Unix machines should ensure that any time you create a file while logged in through them that its permissions will get munged to be accessible only to you...even if they're being created based on existing Unix files that have completely different permissions. Note that this is (fortunately!) not true of other grad-student-accessible machines on the same file system, so this is both annoying and ineffectual--my favorite kind of security precaution.

Corwin's still cute and the captions still attempting humor, though, so have fun checking 'em out.

various news articles

Courtesy of the NY Times:

A Doctor for the Future

A longish exploration on medicine, medical research, and the Amish and Mennonite communities. Fascinating stuff.

'First Man': A Walk on the Bright Side

A review of the authorized biography of Neil Armstrong. Told me several things I didn't know about Armstrong, and adds some interesting historical notes.

Location, Location, Location. Research, Research.

An article on the increasing availability of information on housing searches, including some tips for buyers and a few specific resources (PortlandMaps.com, PropertyShark.com, HomePriceRecords.com (yet another GoogleMaps hack...))...which also mentions that the housing market is cooling off. (*crosses fingers that this trend will continue for the next year*)

and, just for a bit of ecological humor:

And Sometimes, the Island Is Marooned on You

The island of Island Pond had it in for Andrew Renna.

Or so it seemed one Saturday evening a few weeks ago. In the middle of a pounding storm, Mr. Renna looked out across the pond, which borders his backyard.

"It was raining crazy," he recalled. "I said, 'That wind's going to blow that thing right over here.' Ten minutes later it did. When it moves, it moves pretty quick."

The island, about the size of a football field, made a beeline for Mr. Renna's house - crushing his three-foot chain-link fence, swamping his red-blue-and-purple flagstone patio, wrecking his dock, flooding his shed, hobbling his weeping willow, and drowning the oregano, cilantro, tomatoes and peppers in his garden. Then, with an insouciant shrug, it came to a standstill in Mr. Renna's backyard, an interloper squatting in stubborn silence.