Childhood Dream II

Tyranosaurus artAn imitation of cheap animation. A group of others and I are walking along to the left. We’re centered in the frame. Behind us, moving slowly from left to right is the silhouette of passing hills. Then the frightening part happens. The silhouette of a Tyrannosaurus Rex is moving between us and the hills. And the entire scene keeps replaying over and over like a film loop. We walk, the hills move slowly, the T-Rex creeps up, we run ahead; we walk, the hills move slowly, the T-Rex creeps up, over and over and over.

This may have been influenced by Scooby-Doo animation.

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Freeze Dried Fruit and Veggies

Freeze Dried Raspberries and StrawberriesI hate buying produce. Sure, fruits and veggies are good for you. They’re even tasty! But they turn bad faster than fresh zombies or vampires.

Frozen broccoli and Brussels sprouts are fine and store really well.  If you have time to cook them in the nucular wave oven. Don’t overcook them, though, or they’ll be nasty! The big problem is that you need two power consuming appliances to make frozen foods useful: a freezer and a cooker.

What if you could just reach into the pantry and pull out six month old food that required no preparation, and shove it straight into your mouth? But something more healthful than Cheezits! Something you could mix with your home-made yogurt or granola, or into your stew!! Something really handy and even lightweight!!! In case you go camping or it’s the end of the world!!!!

That’s the beauty of freeze-dried food. It’s always ready to eat. Not just the strawberries and raspberries. The corn and peas are swell as well, fresh out of the desiccant-loaded can.  Mmmm, crunchy peas!!! Where’s the wasabi?

So I’ve searched the ‘net over, and I’ve found three, no, TWO sites selling useful amounts of vacuum evaporated goodness.

I can’t decide which I like better, Honeyville Food Products (it used to be Honeyville Grains), or Emergency Essentials. I buy from both pretty regularly.

Honeyville seems to have more beans and grains. Emergency Essentials has  the widest selection of freeze dried fruits and veggies, but sometimes Honeyville beats them on the price.

Emergency Essentials has freeze dried ORANGE slices. Fluffy crunchy yummness! Like Cheetos, but citrus and with fiber that’s good for you. They also have boysenberry bits, asparagus, and zucchini. I believe that their selection of textured vegetable protein is unmatched. And they have a bunch of freeze dried meals and MREs. But always check them against Honeyville, which often has a better price.

And they both have freeze dried cheddar cheese, Gromit!

I call these places my End of the World Caterers. Folks planning to survive the apocalypse are these companies’ bread and butter (dehydrated, of course). Many religious orders require each household to store several months worth of supplies in their pantry. Survivalists and folks planning to take part in the final battle enjoy the comfort of the MREs. I like to think that I’m doing my part to help keep the Caterers in business long enough to actually fulfill their goal. And so can you!

To recap: Freeze-dried foods are handy, tasty, and last a very long time. They may survive the end of the world. Honeyville is cheaper, but there’s more to Essentials. It’s all good.

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They Might Be Giants, the Unavailable Movie

Pretty Trees All In a RowI hate it when my favorite movies are unavailable! Right now you can’t buy They Might Be Giants (the movie) from Amazon. Neither can you get the disc from Netflix nor do the Watch It Now deed with them. You’ll have to try to find it on late-night cable access.

It stars George C. Scott. He’s having fun being a little over the top, yet he gets to show some vulnerablility. The real acting job is from Joanne Woodward. She is sort of frumpy and depressed and pulls off this incredible breakdown as her roast fails to cook properly. It feels very real. I always get embarrassed for her.

It’s sort of a romantic comedy. He’s snapped and thinks that he’s Sherlock Holmes. She’s a shrink named Dr. Watson. It’s much more fun than it sounds. And not as goofy as you’d think. There’s even a food fight near the end… But done in a highly realistic way.

It comes from a play. You can tell. Although shot on location in beautiful downtown NYC, it feels oddly claustrophobic. Made in 1971, it is full of familiar character actors like Al Lewis the guy who played GrandPa on the Munsters, Eugene Roche (you’ll recognize him, he’s been in simply everything — & I think he played a plumber in a series of maybe Drano commercials), Jack Gilford (who was in simply everything too, but not often with Roche) as the Scarlet Pimpernel, and tons of others, including the mighty Rue McClanahan and some dude named F. Murray Abraham.

The title comes from Sherlock’s take on Don Quixote.  “He thought that every windmill was a giant. That’s insane. But, thinking that they might be… Well, all the best minds used to think the world was flat. But, what if it isn’t? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine.” Crazy stuff, huh?!

I should warn you: My Mom hated the ending of this movie. I think she would have preferred the “Love Conquers All” version. But sometimes love must surrender all. The whole movie is leading you to that point. I think that it’s very satisfying. And then you realize that the end title music has kicked in and and your heart just breaks, but in a good way. And it’s over.

Keep an eye out for this one. Let me know if you hear of its return to store shelves. It makes a great graduation or wedding gift. It’s a great way of looking at the future together.  And there are so many great characters with swell lines.

As you watch this movie, just keep saying to yourself: “I’m adequate.”

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Now with Photo-ey Goodness!

Flowers by the StreamBefore this post, there were no pictures in this blog. And now there are oodles of them. I snapped every single one. My fingers are still sore.

As an aside, if you want to use these photos for anything, just go ahead. As far as I’m concerned, they’re in the Public Domain. If you need a larger version, just let me know, and I’ll try to send it along. If you can, let me know what you use if for. I want to see how it turns out, if I may. (But I don’t have to…)

Any of the writing here is also Public Domain. As far as I’m concerned. According to copyright laws, only time can put something into the Public Domain. The creator cannot hurry it along, except by dying.

To combat this, the folks at the Creative Commons have come up with the CC0 license. It basically says that you automatically have an irrevocable license to use the work. Even commercially. So go right ahead!

If there’s anything that isn’t mine, like the CC0 graphic, I’ll try let you know about it so you won’t accidentally use someone else’s work without permission.


CC0

To the extent possible under law,

Lyle Verbilion

has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
From What I Can Tell.

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Panoramania

Pikes Peak Panorama

Back in 2002 I bought my first fancy digital camera. I researched it for months. It was the Minolta Dimage 7. What I like about it now is that it has a lousy Infra-red filter, so I can talk IR photos pretty easily. At the time it was one of the first affordable 5 megapixel cameras out there.

But it was a little crazy. It didn’t use normal color space to record its images. It used a proprietary color space with a more interesting gamut than standard RGB. You had to use the accompanying Minolta software to convert all the pictures into sRGB so they’d display properly. Otherwise they seemed pretty desaturated and colorless. One bad by-product of the software was that it tended to over-sharpen the pictures as well. But what could you do about that?

This guy named Max Lyons decided to write a program to translate just the RGB without having to change the sharpness. Of course, you could adjust that as well. He called it ColorFix. I think that I paid $17 for the chance fix my pix.

Max was interested in merging several 5 gigapixel images together to make a really big picture with lots of detail. In 2003 he created what I think is the first gigapixel image. It was made of up 196 photos of 6  megapixes each. It’s 2GB. The amount of detail is amazing.

He didn’t originally write the program that stitched all these images together. That was Helmut Dersch’s Panorama Tools. But Max did write a front-end to Panorama Tools to make it easier to use.  It’s called PTAssembler, and costs like $45. I believe that the current version isn’t actually based on Panorama Tools, but I could well be wrong.

It’s a lot of fun. Taking a row of panorama pictures by hand is just a little tricky. Then getting them all to fit together into something coherent and smooth is a little tricky too. It’s very satisfying when a panorama comes out right.

Once I get some photos up here, you’ll be able to see some of my attempts.

Check out Max’s website. He’s got other neat programs there too. Oh, and some pictures.

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Safety Razor

Safety RazorGlenn the Free Sleeper says that electric razors are the handiest way to shave when you’re living without a home. You don’t need water, soap, towels, a sink/basin or anything. Well, maybe batteries. If I ever start sleeping next to Walmart parking lots, I’ll definitely look into this. Really.

In the meantime, I’ve been experimenting with a mildly old-fashioned safety razor. I’m not talking about a completely old-fashioned  straight razor, like out of Sweeney Todd. Just your basic two-sided, mid-to-late 20th century implement of facial destruction.

I vaguely recall my dad using such things before switching to disposables. When I started shaving, they had things kinda like safety razors, but with multiple stacked blades that were very narrow and spot welded into place by freakin’ lasers.

Recently I traveled to the Amazon and ordered a Merkur Model 178 Classic Safety Razor. The handle is shorter than I was prepared for. And the business end of the thing is kind of heavy. Because there are opposing edges, the head is rather wide, and doesn’t seem to fit into every cranny of my face. But it handles all the nooks OK.

So far, I’m happy to report no major wounds. Well, there was that time on the top of my head, but that always happens. The blades seem to last quite a while without getting finicky, or peckish. When everything is lined up just right, it shaves about as close as you would dare it to.

I have no lid or case with which to cover the sharp part. So when I took a recent trip I used my old Gillete Sensor 3. It has a little case that it snaps into so it won’t rattle around and nick my tube of toothpaste. It’s weightlessness and nimbleness were amazing! And it felt so much safer, like I could never do any serious damage even if I tried. So that was really fun. If only the blade cartridges weren’t so inexcusably expensive.

So I went back to the safety razor. It seems more fun. Maybe that’s just novelty. Or maybe breaking a sweat while shaving makes it more of an adventure. I’ll keep you informed.

Back to you, Chet.

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Whatever Happened to Lullaby Baxter?

PatienceYou already know about Pandora, right? Not the planet, the web music thingy. I’m still disappointed that they don’t let me use set theory operators like intersection or union or maybe a logical XOR between different artists/songs. Where do Disney songs and Reggae overlap? Or all Beatles songs that are not like Paul McCartney songs? Heavy Metal Country Western anyone? Early on they promised me that they’d be working on that sort of thing. Apparently RIAA is charging too much for Pandora to afford the research…

Anyway, my best favorite discovery on Pandora is Lullaby Baxter! And you should too!

Unlike most Americans, I’m not naturally prejudiced against Canadians. I’ve spent lots of time in Canada. I even have some Canadien friends! Also, I’m pretty good at driving on the left side of the road!

I don’t really understand if Lullaby Baxter is a person, or some kind of post-20th century jazz band. (If the latter, then which one’s Pink?) What I do know is that the female vocals are smoothly great, dense like syrup but not cloying, light and crispy but not crunchy. There have been two albums so far, Capable Egg and Garden Cities of To-Morrow. The sound is different between the two. Angelina had a child in the meantime. Also, the 2nd album was produced to near over-perfection. You keep expecting the production to go too far, but it stays right there on the very edge.

Where are they now? I hope working on another CD. The website has been dormant for a couple years now…  Isnt’ that kid grown up yet?

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Childhood Dream I

What's Out There?There were still bars around my bed. I was that young. This isn’t really a dream, but a waking nightmare. In the summertime night, my bedroom window was open. I kept hearing the sound of footsteps outside, muffled. Kah-thump, kah-thump, kah-thump. Someone was walking around outside my window, some stranger. All my family was asleep. Who was this person, and what did they want?

I lay there in terror, until sleep finally overtook me. The next night, it was the same. And the night after that. And after that. Not ending for weeks.

Years later, I realized that the footsteps were the sound of my heartbeat as my ear lay squashed against my pillow.

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Kevin’s Kool Tools & the Best Tent Camping

Yellowstone LakeAnother website that I stop by every day is Keven Kelly’s Cool Tools. Once a day they post a review of some Cool Tool. Often it is something that I would never consider using in the whole wide earth. Sometimes it excites my baser consumer instincts, and I end up buying a hand-powered nose-hair clipper or some such. And every once in a while there’s a shining star of a thing, whose existence I had never imagined, and it’s just waiting for me to order one for my very own.

For example: The Best in Tent Camping guidebooks.  There’s over 2 dozen of them. Most cover a single state. Each contains descriptions of 50 camping sites. The authors tend to search for sites that are less hospitable to RV camping. I prefer remote and lonely camping, and the four books that I’ve bought have helped me greatly to find such places.

Other pages at kk.org seem to be updated less frequently. I browse through them semi-occasionally. There’s always something fascinating there.

I’ve yet to look to other books from Menasha Ridge Press, but I’m sure I’ll get around to it. I’ll let you know what I find out.

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He calls it Free Sleeping

Wheel Hub StarThere’s this guy, let’s call him Glenn Campbell. No, not the singer. This guy is some kind of expert on Area 51. But I don’t believe in Area 51 so I really can’t comment. He’s got a lot of websites. I recommend them to you.

One is his Homeless by Choice site. He talks about how it’s cheaper to buy a sleeping bag in WalMart, then sleep in the field next door and dispose of the sleeping bag next morning than it is to rent a hotel room. Only he makes it sound much more interesting and compelling than I do. He gives many examples. There’s only one story of being awakened by the border patrol with weapons drawn.

His main home page is a little busy, and connects to all the myriad other pages that he has. Since he doesn’t have a house, he travels around the country a lot. Occasionally he goes to other countries. There’s pictures. Travel advice. For instance, in the US sleeping outside on hopefully public lands is OK, but in Europe he suggests hostels. As for Bermuda, you’ll have to find out what he says on your own.

His Things You Don’t Need blog is a slightly different take on his philosophy. I believe that it was here I learned that when you watch TV, you are letting other people put their own ideas into your head. And you really don’t know where those ideas have been! Before long, maybe you won’t have any ideas of your own any more. That’s kind of like what that Lost Skeleton of Cadavra does to people.

He’s a twitterer. As Bad Dalai Lama he says all the wise ideas that you wish you could still have for yourself.

It’s funny. I feel like I know this guy. I don’t agree with all that he says. But even with the Area 51 aura and the hyper-Walden anti-materialism he doesn’t seem like a kook. From what I can tell, he is quite rational. I wish I felt that way about more people.

Maybe I’ll invite him to lunch some time when he passes thru this area again.

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