Tag Archives: Pictures

Where are all of the pictures?

I know many of you have been waiting patiently (?) for the return of the “Offspring” photo galleries. Unfortunately I’ve been really busy with work (and life)… and I’ve been spending most of my “geek” time doing music in GarageBand or playing the Wii (i.e. losing to Fletcher at bowling), rather than getting the new photo gallery stuff set up on the site.

Fortunately for you, we’ve taken almost no new pictures since Christmas, because a) the camera’s batteries are crapping out and b) the camera has been misplaced for several weeks. So, you haven’t missed anything, really.

One of the key points in getting this set up was finding a mechanism in WordPress to restrict access: in short, I want to know who’s looking at pictures of my kids. Now I’ve found a plug-in to manage access to individual blog posts, so that’s one more hurdle jumped.

Future posts in this category will require you to be logged in. Fortunately, it’s easy to register and once you’ve done it, you should never have to do it again. (At least, not until I decide to change my site entirely again. But I don’t anticipate doing that in the near future, if only because I’m not going to have the time to mess with it!)

MNDOT’s secret to reining in highway construction costs: Photoshop

I was just reading, in the StarTribune online edition, an article about the lane addition project that was recently completed on Hwy. 100 in St. Louis Park.

The article includes a map and “Before” and “Now” photos, which I found very interesting. Especially when I noticed that the exact same cars were in both pictures, just in slightly different positions (all, that is, except for the red truck that appears to have been parked on the overpass for the entire duration of the construction project).

Imagine the coincidence, taking pictures both before and after the project, and timing it perfectly that the same cars would be traveling that stretch. Man, some people’s daily routines really are rigid! (Also, the weather was exactly the same, the photo was taken at the same time of day, the autumn leaves on the trees were at the same stage of coloration, etc.)

Of course, I think what’s really going on here is that the “Now” photo is actually a Photoshop mock-up produced by MNDOT during the proposal phase of the project. Anyone with an eye for Photoshop techniques can clearly see what’s been done to the photo. Still, it’s rather amusing that the Strib — intentionally or not — is passing this off as an actual photo of the road as it appears today.

Addendum (October 27, 2006; 9:15 PM): I figure since I took this opportunity to call attention to the Strib’s gaffe, I also owe it to them to share with my reader [sic] the fact that I also emailed the Strib about this, and in less than 12 hours I’ve received two emails from them — including one from the Director of Photography — apologizing for the mistake, and they say they’ll be posting a correction tomorrow. (Therefore, I’ll also refrain from capturing the erroneous version to post here.)

Addendum (November 7, 2006; 11:35 PM): Since I’m not a crackpot, I will not be pursuing this any further. However, I feel it’s worth at least noting here that I’ve just checked the page and no correction was ever made.

Call it “Rush for Neophytes”

If you’ve been following my recent blog entries (or if you just care to scroll down the list of articles right now!), you’ll know I’ve been going through a bit of a “Rush Renaissance” lately.

I first got into these guys back in high school (of course), almost 18 years ago. My interest in them waned after I moved on to more obscure progressive rock bands, but by the early part of this decade, after I had bored of most prog rock, I actually found myself drawn back to Rush, and I’ve listened to them more than any of the other bands in this nebulous genre over the past five years. But something clicked a month or so ago, and I’ve rekindled an obsession with the band that may in fact be even stronger than it was at its peak when I was a scrawny teenager with a learner’s permit.

On Sunday, much to my surprise, I actually heard “New World Man” on KQRS. While it’s certainly not that unusual for Rush to be on the radio, I don’t believe I’d ever heard this particular track on the airwaves.

Inspired by this radio surprise, I started to think about what might go onto a CD of the band that I could use to introduce new people to their music. Personally, my first exposure was listening to the live A Show of Hands album in its entirety. Even though most prog maniacs generally consider the band’s 1977 to 1981 period (from A Farewell to Kings through Moving Pictures) to be its best, I think the end of that period, overlapping into the next, say, from 1980’s Permanent Waves through 1985’s Power Windows, is best for an introduction. The early ’80s songs are a bit more accessible to an unindoctrinated ear than what preceded, yet they are of higher quality than the weaker material of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

With that in mind, I’ve prepared a track list for a 79-minute CD spanning from 1980 through 1985 (with a nod to the earlier era at the end), that I think would serve as a near-ideal introduction to the band for a new listener. Here we go:

  1. The Spirit of Radio (Permanent Waves, 1980)
  2. Limelight (Moving Pictures, 1981)
  3. Subdivisions (Signals, 1982)
  4. Tom Sawyer (Moving Pictures, 1981)
  5. Distant Early Warning (Grace Under Pressure, 1984)
  6. Marathon (Power Windows, 1985)
  7. New World Man (Signals, 1982)
  8. YYZ (Moving Pictures, 1981)
  9. Freewill (Permanent Waves, 1980)
  10. Natural Science (Permanent Waves, 1980)
  11. The Enemy Within (Part I of ‘Fear’) (Grace Under Pressure, 1984)
  12. The Weapon (Part II of ‘Fear’) (Signals, 1982)
  13. Witch Hunt (Part III of ‘Fear’) (Moving Pictures, 1981)
  14. La Villa Strangiato (Hemispheres, 1978)

We start off with some of the band’s most accessible (and, once upon a time, popular) tracks. I’ve heard all of the first four tracks with some regularity on classic rock radio. Next we move into a few of the great but probably less familiar mid-’80s tracks. After a couple more “fan favorites,” I move into longer pieces that hint at what a new listener will discover if they go back into the extended late ’70s tracks, including the “Fear” trilogy that is rarely heard together in sequence.

OK, Rush fan(s). Let’s hear what you think!