This webpage is linked to maps showing the density(or lack) of different races and ethnic groups in every county in the United States. It comes from census data.
Perhaps I am being too cynical. Maybe the cold I have or too much politics on TV. But at the moment, I can’t think of a good reason to use this data for anything but marketing, politics, or profiling.
Do you have any suggestions of how it could be used for good?
A sudden burst of black smoke mushroomed up into the air just as I pulled out of the grocery store parking lot. I picked up the phone and called 911 and headed in the direction of the smoke. It was only about four blocks from where I lived. The emergency operator let me know it had already been called in just as the police passed me by.
By the time I arrived, the police had already taped off the area. Fire engines were followed shortly behind. A duplex was burning quite rapidly and people from the neighborhood were gathering. I find it rather odd that the police were protecting the scene armed with shotguns, but regardless, I grabbed my camera, found a spot around the corner and started taking pictures.
I managed to talk to the occupant of the end of the duplex that was not burning. A mentally ill woman lived in the part that was burned up. As I stood there taking more pictures, I noticed the fireman getting a backboard from the paramedics on the scene. They weren’t in a hurry. That’s when I realized they weren’t rescuing someone but retrieving what was left.
I deleted the pictures and walked away.
* thought I would mention that meth labs are not common in around here.
Just another example of why things are so wonderful when the sun comes out here in Seattle
I always get a kick out of the July 4th fireworks on Lake union. This year was no different. I got what I think are some pretty spectacular pictures this time around.
I took about 400 pictures this time around of people, boats, and of course the fireworks display. Head on over to my flickr page to check them all out
This is an experiment in using mencoder and ffmpeg to create a time lapse video.
I simply put my camera on my tripod, hooked my remote up, set the camera to auto fire. All other settings were on automatic. It came out to 287 frames between the two views in the video.
I then resized the images on my linux box using the imagemagick “convert -resize” tool to 640×480.
I then used mencoder (which in turn uses ffmeg) to convert the jpegs into this short clip.
I would like to make a couple more but I need to figure out how to improve the quality. There are a lot of compression artifacts in the video that are not in the individual pictures.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
– Teddy Roosevelt
I was moved to tears tonight because I was so overwhelmed with pride while listening to my son sing.
Tonight he had the lead role as Horton in his school’s presentation of Horton Hears a Who. Out of 30 scenes he was in 20. He had 5 solos. Every one of them stunning.
I love fast cars. Sunday I spent the day out at Pacific Raceway enjoying all of the smoke, exhaust, and noise of cars having several hundred horsepower making their way down the track. I love it! I haven’t been to a track in close to 20 years. I think it was more fun this time than the last time I went.
Why?
Because you stand out.
Because you are special.
Because you are different from all the rest.
Photograph Taken by Debbie at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. April 19, 2008
One more for today. These little guys were under the trees in the previous post. It may not look like it, but there was no processing on this picture. They really were that purple and that brilliant!
I saw this on the way home from work today. That’s a single cherry tree almost wrapping completely around the fir tree. As I was taking pictures, I heard a “Thankyou!” from the building to the left.
It turns it was the owner of the building. Her and her husband had built the condo and had planted both of these trees 23 years ago. She this was the most beautiful it had ever looked. In my 10 years of driving this way, I can say I’ve never seen it like this.
Click on the picture for a few more taken of the same trees.
This is a photo I took last summer. Can you tell that warmer days are on my mind?
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
Over the next week or so I am going to finally break all of my old posts up into categories. Right now everything is filed under “General” which is the default that wordpress comes with. Going though some of my old posts made me realize how drasticly different the topics of the posts get. So in an effort to get a little more orgainized, I’m going to be trying out different categories and see what happens.
