Yes, that’s a photographer joke (but not a very common or good one seeing as how I just made it up).

grilled bacon. bleu cheese.
hand picked roquette. blue mountains.
colorado spring.

Taking a break from the normal platypus Friday installment to give a quick update.

I’ve spent this week rather productively, turning my old, unused tv room into my new home office. Looking to warm up the room a bit, I went with a soothing chocolatey brown. Maybe I was subtly influenced by the brown Human theme that Ubuntu has been using forever. Aubergine and orange would have been a bit much, methinks.

My new CEO, Jane Silber, gave a nice interview describing Canonical’s business plans.

Robots are an acceptable substitute for platypus.

Beep beep! Happy Friday! I start work next Monday!

The people photos were much better than the bird photos.

If we all look like we were freezing, it’s because we were. It was damp and dingy all weekend, and I almost puked when a local claimed that the weather was nice. Colorado has spoiled me and I’m not the least bit ashamed.

Giant post ahead.

Guess you can’t use jawesome pervy glasses and binoculars at the same time.

The happy Nebraskan couple. You can still see their necks, so they must not have been living there very long.

He tried, folks, he tried.

Kim claims these grapes were flavorless.

Thinking hard about birds, I assume.

YT.

Busch Lite is the birdwatchers’ beer of choice.

Would you trust this man with… well… anything?

Let’s take a group photo because tell ya what, there ain’t no damn birds here!

Welcome to small town America.

Where anything is possible.

Rents are cheap.

Politics are confusing.

And love goes to die.

The annual sandhill crane migration is underway, and this weekend, I drove out to Kearney, NE to go check it out.

It turns out I’m not really built to be a bird watcher, which is to say, I’m not good at waking up early. Daylight savings time didn’t really help matters.

It also turns out that cranes really don’t like people. So I couldn’t get anywhere nearly as close as I wanted. The ideal situation would have been to go on a Rowe Sanctuary tour down to specially placed blinds to get you closer to the birds, but see earlier note about not waking up on time.

While the long 70-200mm lens truly helped, I’m still a little disappointed by the photos. What you see here is the best I could do with a long lens and for my first time, really taking advantage of the high resolution of my camera by cropping quite a bit. I estimate that the best of these photos was taken from a distance of 60m, and in most cases, much further than that.

Better luck next year, I suppose.

It’s Wednesday and changes are afoot. Things are coming up milhouse. Not really ready to reveal anything yet, so instead, let me distract you with pictures of cats.

Rawr!

Photographic spring cleaning.

I’ve been sitting on quite a few photos from various trips, etc. that I never got around to posting because it was just too painful to process them with an ancient Mac mini G4 with a mere 1GB of RAM.

Old Lijiang city in China was one of the best days of our tour because it truly felt like wandering around an ancient pocket of antiquity.

A delightful practice is still carried over from days of yore: using the stream flowing through the city as a natural refrigerator.

[As always, photos are clickable for larger resolutions.]

This is what I feel like after this particular week of employment. On the other hand, if my facial hair looks that amazing some day, sign me up. I may have to stop shaving for the rest of my life beginning… now.

The WSJ quotes Bernanke as saying:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke referred to mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a “platypus,” saying they were “neither fish nor fowl.” He suggested strongly that the companies should be privatized during his appearance before the Senate Banking Committee.

Yes, I too, agree that platypus Friday is becoming quite a stretch.

[As always photo is clickable for large resolution.]

Another great weekend in Gunnison, CO.

My talk was not as good as it could have been, but not as bad as it could have been either. Overall, it seemed to have gotten a good reception though, and audience participation was high, which is always gratifying as a speaker. I give myself a B+.

I spent Saturday skiing in Crested Butte with Jeremy (a fellow U of I alum) and Mike. I thought the conditions were kinda tough: flat light, lots of blowing snow, and due to personal stupidity on my part, I had marginal eyewear, making do with giant el cheapo over-the-glasses-sunglasses, which I called my Kim Jong Ills, since I’d forgotten to bring contact lenses along. Oops.

Still, it’s hard to have a bad day in the mountains, and that’s the truth.

On Sunday, John, Melissa, Katherine, and I went to Lake City (in Hinsdale County, one of the most remote places in the lower 48) to climb at their relatively new ice park.

I have to admit, after the first pitch, I had serious doubts if the sport was for me. Burning arms, battered knees, and a constant spray of ice chips in the face aren’t really my idea of a good time.

But the second time up was much more pleasant. Using a pair of lighter, leashless tools, and having a better idea of what to expect made all the difference in the world. I could see myself getting into this sport. Maybe. Probably the ice park version where you don’t have to wake up at 2am.

Happy president’s day!

[as always, photos are clickable to enlarge and see details]