Wishing a belated happy birthday to Bekah ...

Thanks to her mom and dad for hosting a gathering today ...

Remembering the Rhine ...

I’m a sucker for photoshop filters, especially for saving shots that aren’t useable. Here’s a fragment of a panorama on the Rhine Rhine, from a bike trip in October 2008. Click for the full shot.

Take a yike ... Must be Kiwinese ...

Now for something entirely different ...

As Monty Python used to say. This blog is meant to teach me and reach you with notes of appreciation. But I’m going hedge this purpose once with this link to an article that sums up a lot of what I see around me politically. Thanks to Russell King. Let me add: I was raised by a mom who was a convinced and thoughtful conservative: a Buckley and Goldwater Republican with a sense of fairness and a sense of humor. Both are necessary to democracy and both are simply lacking today in that party.

Mashup of EU scenes ...

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Remembering Chris's old apartment ...

Chris hasn’t moved as yet, but we visited his Altstadt apartment for the last time. Many good hours enjoyed bathing in the cool northern light of Düesseldorf.

Picasa su casa ...

You can access all the photos used on this blog at my Picasa gallery. See link at right.

Will the real tablet stand up? ...

This year will tell the tale: Will tablets replace laptops? (And aren’t tablets the real laptops, while laptops are always used on tabletops, which means they are more tabl-ets than laptops?) My playing around with the “mini tablet” iPod Touch tells me they will. Once folks get a look at the astonishing apps available and a safe and simple touch-screen operating system and a larger screen, the game is over.

And replace printed books also? Amazon thinks so. Or at least it’s hedging its bets.

Stalking the wild Egyptian goose ...

We found this guy in the Hofgarten in Düsseldorf. Here’s the scoop.

Tracking the next great web trend ...

TOKYO, March 16, 2010—Canon Inc. announced today that it will begin the acquisition process for the top-level domain name ".canon," based on the new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) registration system.

Hinting at spring ...

The weather in France and Germany, where we visited, was cold. About all the spring we saw were these snow drops. And they look persecuted.

Playing with the Fountainebleau shot posted last week ...

This shot was a knockout. Can't take much credit: it was simply being in the right place with the right camera. I took it into Photoshop to pull out its details, preliminary to doing some cropping.

Loving this postcard image ...

Click to enlarge.

Remembering Menkaure ...

Finishing a lecture series on ancient Egypt, I remembered that many years ago at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, I bumped into a statue of Menkaure, an Old Kingdom pharaoh, and his queen. I was stunned by something you cannot see in this detail, which is her hand holding his arm. See this link. His sensitivity and her strength.

Writing home ...

Barb and I like to send goofy drawings on our postcards home. Fun.

A view of Fontainebleau

Click to enlarge. Accidental moment worth a ton.

Visiting Chris ...

We have arrived in Düsseldorf. Kinda like home. Pleasant day, pleasant folks.

Watching Tufte's "Geese Taking Flight"

Everyone one of these creatures would get top style points in a Geese Olympics.

Geese Taking Flight from Edward Tufte on Vimeo.