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Spotlight[Living]: The Rock at Boston College

  • Friday, November 09 2012 @ 11:51 am UTC
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  • Views: 2,629
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Becoming Captain
by

My father loves four things in the world: my mother, my sister, me, and his sailboat. He spent his childhood on the water of Buzzard’s Bay, Massachusetts in dinghies, kayaks, and sailboats, occasionally gaining or losing one with each serious hurricane. It’s fitting, of course, that he proposed to my mom on his sailboat, his first pride and joy. His attempts to teach my sister and I how to sail began as soon as we were finally old enough to swim and strong enough to help pull in the lines.

Every sunny Saturday during the summer, we pile into our green SUV, a large cooler full of turkey sandwiches, iced tea, and fruit wedged in between my sister and me in the back seat. When we arrive at the harbor, I become the first mate of our little inflatable dinghy. After zipping up my puffy, bright orange life jacket, I slide into the seat opposite my dad next to the motor. With a yank of the handle, the motor starts to sputter and the propeller churns up the salty water below.

I rest my tiny hand on the tiller, turning it from left to right to adjust the speed. My dad’s hand always starts out just beside mine to ensure that I have it under control. He uses big words and sailing jargon that have eventually become second nature to me, but at first seemed like a foreign language. “Pull up along the port side,” he instructs as he points to the left side of the sailboat when we approach the mooring. “Tie us up to this cleat – you know, the way I taught you,” he says, gesturing to the little metal appliance on deck and reminding me to wrap twice and then loop the line. “We’re just going to use the jib today; can you help me pull it out?” he asks, handing me a line attached to the sail at the bow of the boat. 

Once we leave the channel and let the wind propel us forward, I am my father’s reflection. He sits at the helm with his hand on the gleaming silver wheel, looking out onto the water silently as I sit beside him doing the same. Every so often he lets me take over, directing me which way to turn the wheel with a simple point of his finger. The loud, ceaseless voices of my mom and sister float along with the wind, yet my dad and I remain silent. Sometimes he points to a house on the water and tells me about who grew up there, what their parents were like, and how they used to play football in the middle of the street together. “You know that all the seagulls and cormorants flock to Bird Island because of the dead bodies buried there, right?” he even tries to convince me as we pass the little island with the lighthouse. I know by his gleaming eyes and joking voice to simply roll my eyes at him.

Please Read On...

Source: TheRockAtBC

Three Quarters of a Million for BlogDogIt

  • Friday, November 09 2012 @ 07:26 am UTC
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  • Views: 2,475
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Three Quarters of a Million Hits to BlogDogIt


Screen Grab Detail From Site Statistics Page

Thank you for visiting.

A very special thank you to all of the RSS subscribers and recurring visitors. I try not to obsess about statistics - honestly - but this one is hard to miss.  Incredible!

[tag:sitenews]

Oz - The Great and Powerful

  • Thursday, November 01 2012 @ 03:58 pm UTC
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  • Views: 2,204
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Oz: The Great and Powerful (2013)

Oscar Diggs (James Franco), a small-time circus magician with dubious ethics, is hurled away from dusty Kansas to the vibrant Land of Oz. At first he thinks he's hit the jackpot-fame and fortune are his for the taking. That all changes, however, when he meets three witches, Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz), and Glinda (Michelle Williams), who are not convinced he is the great wizard everyone's been expecting. Reluctantly drawn into the epic problems facing the Land of Oz and its inhabitants, Oscar must find out who is good and who is evil before it is too late. Putting his magical arts to use through illusion, ingenuity-and even a bit of wizardry-Oscar transforms himself not only into the great and powerful Wizard of Oz but into a better man as well. Written by m7

Source: IMDB

[tag:movies trailer video picture]

Back to qBasics

  • Wednesday, October 31 2012 @ 07:07 pm UTC
  • Contributed by:
  • Views: 3,555
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nATE iS cOOL

In those good old DOS days we used a device that we called a floppy disc on which we stored our computer files. It was somewhat like a hard drive only floppier. The ones we used were mostly the 5-1/4inch, Two-Sided, High-Density variety with 1.2 Megabytes capacity each. 

Flopper DiskyWhile we did access the dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs) it was primarily via the sneakernet that files where circulated. I would collect whatever random stuff I could get ahold of and save it on my bitchin' 10 Megabyte MFM hard drive until I had enough to fill a floppy disc and these I would call "booty disks." I would duplicate and share them with my 286 posse. They where liable to contain text files, gif images and/or everything in-between.

Pretty early on in my collecting days I came upon a game written in
qBasic called "NOMAD by PHLEGM GAMES." As luck would have it I had just converted to DOS v5 and had qBASIC in there waiting for me to figure out what to do with it.

At the command prompt I typed "qbasic" and a program opened on my screen that looked remarkably similar to the one that would start if I entered the command "EDIT" and it was not very long before it sunk-in that this was a programming language that was using text for commands and not that funky binary mumbo-jumbo (that nobody in their right mind could make any sense of.)

Navigating the FILE menu I was able to locate the .bas file and upon opening was greeted with the following:

'                              
'    PRESS F5 TO PLAY                NOMAD            PRESS F5 TO PLAY
'                                BY PHLEGM GAMES
'                                 P.O.BOX 1575
'                                HAILEY, ID 83333                   NATE IS COOL
'
'    

DECLARE SUB MAIN ()
CALL MAIN

' This here game has many neat little things
' Just try different things
' The object is to get the high score
' All you really need to do that
' Is get into the program
' And change some things
' Around

' The object is to get the high score
' All you really need to do that 
' Is get into the program
' And change some things
' Around

Really?? Hmmm... 
                                That is precisely what I set about doing...

[ Oh Please, Continue... ]

Unfurled Aurora - Phil Plait

  • Tuesday, October 30 2012 @ 03:22 pm UTC
  • Contributed by:
  • Views: 2,876
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Bad Astronomy Blog - Discovery Magazine

Unfurled Aurora by Phil Plait

Every time I think I’ve posted just the most sensational aurora picture I’ve seen, another one comes along that has me scraping my jaw off the floor. Check out this shot by photographer David Cartier:

[Seriously, click to enbirkelandate.]

I know, right? That spiral shape is fascinating. Aurorae are formed when charged particles from the Sun slam into the Earth’s magnetic field and interact with it. They’re channeled down into our atmosphere, guided by the Earth’s field, and the shape of the aurora reflects the underlying magnetic field lines. They take on fantastic shapes, including spirals like this, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen curled in a way so well-defined and crisp.

If you look carefully at the bigger version, you’ll see some familiar stars like those forming the constellation Auriga in the center, while the Pleiades are visible nestled in the spot right where the aurora starts to wind up. The bright "star" which is also reflected in the water is actually Jupiter. I had a hard time distinguishing it from the bright star Aldebaran in Taurus, but I think that’s lost in the brightest part of the spiral (though you can see it better in the water to the right of the stretched-out Jupiter reflection).

David lives in the Yukon Territory, not far from the southeast corner of Alaska, and I imagine aurorae are a fact of life there. He has quite a few devastating shots of the northern lights in his Flickr stream. Treat yourself and take a look. His shots of atmospheric phenomena are also incredible.

~

 

Source: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

 

[tag:pictures science strange blogs]

Spotlight[Living]: The Harlow

  • Tuesday, October 30 2012 @ 10:00 am UTC
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  • Views: 1,977
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The Harlow - All Facets of Human

THE TEMPESTUOS NANCY FOUTS

THE TEMPESTUOS NANCY FOUTS

Aren’t amazing Nancy Fouts creations? Her sculptures are designed on paradox and juxtaposition: on expectation of the unexpected. She combines objects and materials, linking ideas and common sense to surrealism and playfulness.  She basically recombines the meaning of everyday objects. Nancy Fouts, American born but Londoner for life, has pursued a career in advertising. She is either an image maker and a sharp artist. Surely a provocative and witty discovering.

~

See More...

Original Source: http://www.nancyfouts.com/

 

Source: http://TheHarlow.net/

 

[tag:spotlight living art fashion pictures historic]

 

 

 

The Matter by Faded Paper Figures

  • Sunday, October 28 2012 @ 06:19 pm UTC
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  • Views: 3,087
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The Matter | Faded Paper Figures

The Matter | Faded Paper Images

 

For several years now, Faded Paper Figures has been one of the best kept secrets of indie-electronic music, delivering gorgeous melodies, complex harmonies, and pop-cultural brilliance to a small and devoted fanbase online. With the release of their third album, “The Matter,” the band’s sound has matured into something more powerful and intense. Alternately sparse and epic, harmonic and grinding, pensive and playful, "The Matter” takes FPF beyond their electro-pop beginnings to create something even more sincere, epic, and profound. There are moments in “The Matter” that echo the band’s previous albums “Dynamo” and “New Medium” (all the glorious synth-blips, glitched-out riffs, and heartbreaking harmonies are still there), but a new sound has clearly emerged, with breathtaking orchestral scores, thick, powerful guitars, and more energetic, concentrated synths. Like the previous two albums, the lyrics glide with effortless sophistication through references both ironic and obscure. But there are passages here more intense, immediate, and playful. One moment “The Matter” conjures up images of traffic lights and factories, the next, soaring questions on the vast distances between galaxies--and always the intimate, vivid possibilities of love and pain. Given how powerfully “The Matter” astonishes with its daring energies and thoughtful lyrics, this electro-pop secret is going to be hard to contain in the months ahead.

 

 

Faded Paper Images

Source: http://www.fadedpaperfigures.com/

[tag:music video listen pop]

 

Spotlight[Art]: Upcycle That

  • Saturday, October 27 2012 @ 08:31 am UTC
  • Contributed by:
  • Views: 2,087
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Upcycling Ideas and Inspiration
 
Hello! We are Upcycle That and we love Upcycling! We curate and create the best upcycling ideas. Why? Because Upcycling is a great way to reuse materials and reduce our footprint. Look through our menus and browse by materials or end uses. To learn more about upcycling check out our about page. Get ready to think about that box of unused items a little differently.

Home Brewed iPhone Amp

We definitely “have a thing” for electricity-free iPhone amps, and this lo-fi solution is made of PVC and an old bike horn! This is the absolute bees knees.

iPhone amp horn

Upcycle That!

But wait, there’s more!

Source: Upcycle That

 

Spotlight[Living]: Codgertation

  • Friday, October 26 2012 @ 11:19 am UTC
  • Contributed by:
  • Views: 2,230
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Thinking while cycling: about my life and about your life; about the things that matter and things that probably don’t.

"Cycling about 100 miles every week;
thinking as I go and writing it all down"

Fun

A dumped fast-food chain's cup with 'thirsty fun' written on it. It is not fun.
This is not fun.

 

Brilliant fun; great fun; excellent fun – really, really, bloody good fun. Jolly fun. Damn good fun. Simple fun or, maybe, innocent fun. Good, old-fashioned fun. Even fantastic fun if alliteration’s your thing. Any kind of fun you can think of – a fast-food-chain’s cup with ‘thirsty fun’ written on it is none of them. This is ‘fun’ eviscerated. This is fun abused. This renders the notion of fun wholly, utterly and completely meaningless. This is desecrated fun; debased fun. If this is now understood by anyone as fun, whoever they are, however old or young they are, where ever they are, however otherwise deprived of fun in any sensible sense of the word they are, then they have been cruelly conned. If I was feeling forgiving, I’d feel pity for the foul, fun-free, fun-wrecking individual responsible, because somewhere along the line, someone was.

~

Source: Codgertation

[tag:spotlight living blogs pictures musing biking]

Spotlight[Film]: Benend's Basement

  • Monday, October 22 2012 @ 06:59 pm UTC
  • Contributed by:
  • Views: 2,191
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• Certified Classic • Must See • One Time Watch • Not Recommended •
• Waste of Time • Cinematic Turd •


Just another twenty-something film graduate who resorted to writing a blog! I love films and I use my blog (Benend's Basement) to air my many opinions on the new release, and older, films that I see.

Bachelorette

 
Director: Leslye Headland
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, Lizzy Caplan, Adam Scott, Rebel Wilson
Certificate: 18
Run-time: under 90 minutes

 
IN SHORT: An ill-conceived, offensive 'comedy' about three high-school bitches who never grew up. It's NOT Bridesmaids, more a failed female version of The Hangover with an alarming fixation on drugs and seemingly no moral compass.
 
2/10
CINEMATIC TURD

>>> SPOILERS SPOILERS <<<
 
At the moment, all I seem to do is *censored* and whine about films. Maybe I'm just watching the wrong ones? Or perhaps the studio's have lowered their quality control? Whatever it is, I'm back again with another damning review of a film that really doesn't have any redeeming qualities. It's hugely offensive, to the point where it actually affects your enjoyment of it, the storyline is muddled and the comedy is non-existent. The film is Bachelorette.
 
Bachelorette is an ensemble piece following Gena (Caplan), Regan (Dunst) and Katie (Fisher) as they meet up for Becky's (Wilson, or Kristen Wiig's 'English' flatmate in Bridsmaids) wedding. The girls have all known each other since high-school, although due to differing circumstances, they're not as close as they used to be. I believe the group referred to themselves as 'the 4 B's' or something to that affect. Anyway, it seems there are only 3 'B's in this film, as Gena, Regan and Katie are some of the bitchiest, most childish women I have ever seen in a film. Kirsten Dunst's character is uptight, incredibly rude and has a foul air about her. Lizzy Caplan is a drugged-up, unemployed skanky mess and Isla Fisher is a suicidal little girl who craves attention from everyone and anyone. They are unbelievably dislikeable characters and I consider it a plothole that anyone as nice as Becky would be friends with these people!
 

[tag:film movies critique blogs spotlight]

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