At the London Science Museum, in the bathrooms, there are hand dryers that operate on the same principle as the drying element at the end of an automatic car wash. You push your wet hands all the way down, and then a very thin “blade” of hot air “strips” your hands of water as you pull them up and out. Not only cool in design, but unlike any other hand […]
Jet lag was the theme of the day. We all awoke much too early, a little after 5, thinking it was later because it was so light, all of us groggy and grumpy. Suzie and I managed to convince the boys that we all needed a little more sleep, which worked well, since when we woke up about 3 hours later, we all felt much better, at least for a […]
We had a long but uneventful trip, and I’m about to collapse into bed after being up for 32 hours straight, minus the fitful sleep (if you can call it that) on the airplane. Highlights and comments in brief. 1. The SFO International Terminal is wonderful. We are always way too punctual, so we had 4 hours to kill, and it was a treat to walk around a space so […]
We are on our way, finally. I’m posting this from the Airporter bus, lurching through traffic on 101. Nifty that Sonic.net provides free WiFi on the bus. We are exhausted and we’ve just started. We seriously underestimated the amount of time it would take to finish everything we had to do before leaving, which included not just packing, but also getting the house in shape for visitors. In my usual […]
Maybe the worst part of going away is the thought of being away from our dog for 6-plus months. So the kids convinced me to video her and post the clip on YouTube so we’d be able to see her if we got lonely for her in Paris. So eat your heart out other dog owners — voici le plus bon chien Elsie: You won’t want to watch the whole […]
Someone asked today for a link to the location of our Paris apartment. So here it is. You can of course zoom in or out and move the map around to see our location vis-a-vis more well-known Paris sites.
I have watched with fascination and repulsion as Hillary Clinton and her smarmy, thug-like spokesmen (yes, men; don’t you think it’s odd that all of her main mouthpieces are men?) continue to fight on and on and on in a cause that is almost certainly lost, apparently content to risk harming the Democrats ultimate nominee for an increasingly tiny chance at victory. If it wasn’t clear before, it is now […]
Barack Obama has to respond to Hillary Clinton’s continued assertion that her “experience” makes her a more suitable candidate for President. One way to do this is to examine her prior experience with one of the most prominent issues in this campaign, which is health care reform. As I remember it, Big Bloated Bill — newly elected and having a supportive Democratic Congress to work with — appointed Hillary Clinton […]
Warning, warning … very catty remark ahead. Those easily offended may wish to stop now. At the gym this morning I was half-watching CNN, without headphones, which meant that I was relying on the pictures and the subtitles for the deaf, so what follows may not be what actually was said. Hillary Clinton was at some rally talking about the one job that she thought really prepared her to be […]
One of my hobbies (of sorts) is photography. Although I don’t seem to find the time to shoot enough, and am not particularly creative either, the advent of digital photography allows me to combine photography with my techo-nerd side. Two wonderful completely free programs for imaging are the GIMP and a GIMP plugin called Mathmap. GIMP is a sort of open-source Photoshop. Mathmap is a program that allows you to […]