moon phases

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]

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WRITER'S LINKS
Absolute Write Paypal donation button:

Absolute Write is one of the leading sites for information on writing and publishing, especially the scam versions thereof. It has a broad, deep online community with an enormous message base going back years. Now it needs help. See the details and discussion here
Preditors and Editors
Everything you wanted to know about literary agents
On the getting of agents
Writer Beware
Miss Snark
Writer's Net

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(and my Wish List)

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Bucolia in Tasmania; Bliss in Luna  
Seeing the set (see links below) about the 'reality' of the Windows XP default wallpaper screen background reminded me of my small project in Tasmania.


Bucolia Backgrounds – Tasmania 2005


Most of the Australian mainland had been in drought for some years & was fairly brown or straw-coloured where it had been green. Tassie, OTOH, had so much rain the potato harvest was in difficulty because the fields were too muddy to work. The bus route between Devonport and Hobart went through some absolutely classical green rolling hills & fields, which I named 'Bucolia'.

I formed an ambition to try and replicate the WinXP picture as I remembered it (didn't use WinXP) from Real Life, and spent some time taking pictures from the bus. These are a selection. The circumstances mean they're not the best technical quality, and I've standard-sized them down to 1024 x 768 pixels.

VVORK
www.vvork.com/ ?p=4534
“After Microsoft” by Goldin+Senneby. (Photograph “Bliss” by Charles O’Rear. The image was used as the default computer wallpaper for the “Luna” theme, which was included with Microsoft Windows XP).
After Microsoft (posted April 5th, 2007)
www.goldinsenneby.com/ gs/ ?p=81
On this hill grapevines had been planted. But in the early 90s a Phylloxera bug infested the grapes and made them unusable. The entire vineyard had to be pulled out. For a few years the hill was covered with grass

Serial Consign
serialconsign.com/ 2009/ 03/ desktop-deja-vu
Spotted on VVORK, After Microsoft (2006-07) by Goldin + Senneby revisits the site of the famous Bliss photograph by Charles O'Rear a decade later.

Labels: backgrounds, links, photos, pix, scenery, Tasmania, wallpaper, Windows XP

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 2:10 pm

 
Xeloda (Capecitabine) - Side Effects of Chemotherapy Drugs  
Xeloda and Capecitabine - Side Effects of Xeloda - Chemotherapy Drugs: "Xeloda �
Generic Name:�Capecitabine"
www.chemocare.com/ bio/ xeloda.asp

Hand-Foot Syndrome

Xeloda (Capecitabine) cancer treatment, side-effect: Hand -foot syndrome (Palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia or PPE) Skin rash, swelling, redness, pain and/or peeling of the skin on the palms of hands and soles of feet.
(see also www.chemocare.com/bio/xeloda.asp)

A mild version, the reddness doesn't show up very well. On the hands it is on the last joint of the fingers and thumb, with another patch where the thumb joins the palm. On the feet, it's on the bottom of toes and mostly the ball and non-arch middle section of the soles. Skin is peeling on some of the left (lymphodeomic) hand, the balls of both feet and some toes.

Xeloda belongs to the category of chemotherapy drugs called antimetabolites, subcategory "Pyrimidine antagonist". It is prescribed to treat Metastatic breast, colon or rectal cancer.

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, medical, medicine, pix, treatment

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 12:59 pm

 
Takin' a Trip  
My friends are looking out for me. They took me for a couple of days to the Southern Highlands of New South Wales — see Flickr set "Southern Highlands Visit, May 2008"

Panorama

(large image)

Labels: Australia, panoramas, people, pix, travel

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 2:31 am

 
Milky Way panorama (APOD May 3rd)  
APOD: 2008 May 3 - Alborz Mountain Milky Way: Snow-capped stratovolcano Mt. Damavand climbs to 5,670 meters (18,598 feet) near the left edge in this panoramic view above the Alborz Mountain Range bordering the Caspian Sea.

Labels: astronomy, panoramas, pix

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 2:48 pm

 
 
Cackhanded
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cac1.htm

NY Times - Health
A Disease That Allowed Torrents of Creativity
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/health/08brai.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/health/08brai.html?em&ex=1207886400&en=ea896328b745feea&ei=5087%0A
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Published: April 8, 2008

New York Times - Art & Design - PHOTOGRAPHY REVIEW
In Atta Kim’s Long-Exposure Photographs, Real Time Is the Most Surreal of All
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/arts/design/12atta.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/arts/design/12atta.html?ex=1310356800&en=758dc920ebfd80f1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: July 12, 2006

“Atta Kim: On-Air” at the International Center of Photography
His view of Times Square leaves all the stationary elements — buildings and such — in crisp focus, but reduces traffic to a shimmering haze, a ghost of motion. Other famous New York intersections get the same treatment...
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/07/12/arts/12atta_CA3.html

I, Corpuscle
Every once in a while, I encounter an image that precisely expresses something of the way I feel about life. This morning was one of those "once in a whiles". This image, from "On-Air", an exhibition of Korean photographer Atta Kim's work currently at the International Center of Photography, is one of those images:

That's a photograph, an eight-hour exposure, of the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, looking south, here in New York City. I've walked through that intersection I don't know how many times on my way to my dentist's office. I've stood on that very corner at the right of the frame. I may even be in that picture. I could be — no way to know unless and until I find out the date and time on which the picture was taken.

But whether I'm technically in that particular photo, I'm certainly in it spiritually.

Granted, this is not the first time we've seen this type of photograph -- a long exposure wherein all that is alive is smeared into irrelevance, and all that is not alive remains clear and solid. Naturally, if we increased the exposure time -- to 800 years, say, instead of a mere eight hours — what seems clear and solid in this photo would smear into irrelevance just like the car and foot traffic above. Which is pretty much the essence of my response to this image.

As I said, I could be part of that smear in the lower right hand corner of the image. I certainly see myself there. My life, looked at one way, is an irrelevant smear — and yet it never feels that way to me. I look at that corner and I recall all the times I've stood there, lost in thought, ear buds in my ears, listening to one of my (liberal) talk shows, waiting for the light to change so I can cross.

The irony is that the irrelevant smear of life in that image is the very thing that reminds me I am here, and that I am as clear and as solid as all that is clear and solid in that image. But I know that I'm only clear and solid in my own time scale. My time scale is as justifiable as any other, but that does not make it the only time scale there is.

I'm haunted by time. I know that I was burped up by time and that I will — too soon for my tastes — be swallowed by it again. That fact is right there in that image above. But what's also there is this: Being reminded I am merely a part of the bloodstream reminds me of my own, um... corpuscularity.
July 12, 2006 at 07:19 AM

Labels: links, pix

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 9:40 pm

 
cleek: Tricksey – jewel  
cleek: Tricksey Monday Cat Blogging (February 26, 2007)

Labels: animals, cats, pix

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 5:44 pm

 
Pocket Films Festival  
Pocket Films Festival: "Pocket Films Festival" a Japanese site for people who've made films on their mobile phone camera (www.pocketfilms.jp/en). Also available in French & Japanese. The mobile phone film festival started in France in 2005.

Here's an article from Excite News about it: . I don't know how long these stories stay available online.
Films Shot on Camera Phones Get Showcase
Dec 7, 6:15 AM (ET)
By YURI KAGEYAMA
apnews.excite.com/article/20071207/D8TCINMO0.html

YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) - Masked and demure, she speaks from the tiny screen of a cell phone like a thumb-size fairy forever trapped inside. "Welcome home," she says softly to the viewer. "Speak to me about anything."
The minuscule video is among the works on display at a film festival that opened Friday in this Japanese port town, featuring 48 movies - all shot on camera-equipped cell phones.
Hazy and raw but urgently personal, these pocket-size statements on film, like Yuka Kojima's five-minute "Thumb Girl," were selected from more than 400 entries in an international contest.
The works, streaming on monitors of cell phones strapped to tables, are filled with everyday shots, …

Labels: phones, pix, video

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 8:29 am

 
Firestorm  
William Strutt, artist. Black Thursday, February 6th 1851. Oil on canvas, 106 x 343 cm. H280049. La Trobe Picture Collection - No 75 Autumn 2005 - La Trobe Journal: "William Strutt, artist. Black Thursday, February 6th 1851. Oil on canvas, 106 x 343 cm. H280049. La Trobe Picture Collection"

Labels: history, pix

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 12:29 am

 
Annihilation: Black Hole  
'Annihilation', from the Latin word nihil, meaning nothingness, nothing, absence, zero.

Utter destruction: eradication, extermination, extinction, extinguishment, extirpation, liquidation, obliteration.
putting an end to: abolishment, abolition, abrogation, annulment, cancellation, defeasance, invalidation, negation, nullification, voidance.

In law: avoidance, extinguishment.

Images

www.spaceref.com/ news/ viewpr.html?pid=10345
www.djspiral.com/ images/ graphics/ BlackHole.html
www.spaceref.com/ news/ viewpr.html?pid=10290
www.bbc.co.uk/ derby/ unexplained/ unexplained_websites.shtml
www.cosmographica.com/ gallery/ portfolio/ portfolio101/ pages/ 131-BlackHole.htm
www.spaceprime.com/ blackhole.htm
www.thestarsareout.com
www.exn.net/ Stories/ 2000/ 01/ 13/ 57.asp

Sheer joy that Liberal Party is worried. I'm not sanguine about the result, though; many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, as the old saying goes. I do like the use of the word they so freely and without feeling or care liked to use to wipe out people from consideration being used repeatedly in the dictionary/thesaurus entries for the word they are worried about for themselves. (I used to carp and say they should use 'extinction' rather than 'extinguishment', because that might bring people up a little short and get them to think.)

Labels: astronomy, language, pix, politics, space

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 12:19 pm

 
Pyrmont Changes (v1): Photos old & new  
Something I put together, using both historic and my own still photos, for some older relatives who are living far away to show them some of what has happened, or is happening, to Pyrmont (in Sydney, Australia), where they grew up.



This is, at the moment, a filler to accompany some family photos I put on DVD for them to watch on TV. I'd like to one day put a better version together. It could use a lot more work, but am cutting off time for now, it's been delayed far too long.

Labels: Australia, buildings, history, panoramas, pix, Pyrmont, Sydney

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 1:42 pm

 
Quick News, plus Harbour Bridge 75th Anniversary  
Am working on a Family Photo DVD project, and trying to do some other non-computer-related things, so I haven't added stuff here.
Also got some more worrying medical news, there's a growth of some sort in one of my eyes. It might be a secondary cancer from the breast cancer, it could be a separate melanoma, or it may be a simple kind of mole. Having had this now diagnosed by one specialist, I am going to a more specialised specialist to try and sort that out. Desperately hoping that I won't have to get back onto the medical merry-go-round. See some links in a separate post.

Did do one nice thing — turned out even better than I'd hoped, and I enjoyed it a lot. Walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge as part of its 75th Anniversary celebrations, timed to coincide with the Aboriginal smoking ceremony around sunset. It was beautifully done, as was the lighting afterwards. The sunset hope didn't work out because it was a dull & overcast day, but the trip over & everything else worked well — in fact I'm wondering if I shouldn't have tried the ferry after all.

Here's one of the newspaper photos:


And some links about it:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/all-our-love-sydney/2007/03/18/1174152882293.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/2007/03/18/1174152858574.html

http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/2007/03/18/1174152887162.html

Labels: events, medical, pix

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 9:51 am