interesting things along the road

On my way from friend Barry's near cleveland on Christmas eve,
saw this cool place near Chardon, Ohio.

A-1 Bed & Biscuit Pet Boarding Kennel Resort & Grooming Salons

Looks like a nice place!

foosball

here's a crazy thing.
foosball, or table-top soccer, has been a part of my life since college.
we even gave our family table away to my son's fraternity a few years ago.
probably eventually firewood. ;+)

a normal foosball table is for 4 players, 2 per side.
the wikipedia page on "foosball" has this image
of an amazing table built in germany for 11 players per side.

optic blind spot experiment

I thought most people knew about this. but lately found it not so.
Cover your right eye & focus on the orange on the right.
move your face toward the monitor until the apple on the left seemingly disappears.
as you move closer or farther, you'll see the apple appear & disappear again.
this illustrates the human optic "blind spot". that is the area of the retina where the optic nerve connects & there is a lack of visual input from that area. with 2 eyes, the human brain normally compensates.

i've always credited this to the fact there are normally 2+ stoplights at almost every US intersection (used to be one at many) & US automobiles went to a third taillight in the 1980's from just 2 prior.

human optic anatomy is truly amazing. from the single lens element eyeball that naturally focuses on images upside-down (brain decodes an upright image) to the optic chiasm that partially criss-crosses sensory nerve cell image information to opposite sides of the brain. something of a day-to-day miracle.

earth science picture of the day

one of the sites i try to check daily
is "earth science picture of the day".

they usually display cloud, atmospheric
or geological images. one of my favorite
was back on march 17 2004. it was
"Microscopic View of Frost on Blade of Grass"
by Eric Erbe at Scanning Electron Microscopy Laboratory
in Beltsville, Maryland.

interesting how the ice crystals form & stack
at a right angle to the blade of grass.

experiment

just a try at inserting a youtube element . . .
the Vince Guaraldi performance of "Christmastime is Here"
from the "a charlie brown Christmas" soundtrack.

Hallmark Cards' hoops & yoyo

if one has received many e-cards, then "hoops&yoyo" are probably familiar.

"hoops&yoyo" are the very creative animated cat & rabbit (along with sidekick "Piddles") that are stars of their own series of Hallmark e-cards.

my sister works with the *2* animators, adobe® flash experts & comedic geniuses at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. if you have never seen hoops & yoyo e-content, its definitely worth a look.

Buckeyes 14
Michigan 3

Final

Ohio State Buckeyes 2007 Big Ten champions!!

the greatest rivalry in sports

My prediction for today's game:

Ohio State Buckeyes 33

Michigan Wolverines 17

ghosts at The Ohio State University

OSU Lantern article details university's forgotten past

on rockline

had another few minutes of my "warhol's 15" a bit ago.
USA FM rock music radio has a syndicated program "rockline"
and they normally have rock musicians on. tonight, oddly, was artist Storm Thorgerson who's done a ton of well-known artists' album covers & arguably most notably, Pink Floyd's
"the dark side of the moon".

i got through on the phone to talk with him, on-air, US nationwide.


i have a signed & numbered print of his work "tree of half life"
& always thought his image of a tree in the shape of a human head was to resemble Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett. Storm said "no, not really" & shared a great anecdote about how & why he did the image.





one thing Storm said that i really liked - the cover he designed for 10cc's 1975 "the original soundtrack" album contained one of his top 10 favorite songs, "i'm not in love". Rockline host Bob Coburn did a great little summation of how the song's title is contrary to the real message.

great movie quotes

maybe my favorite movie quote ever:

"now I know I have a heart ...
because it's breaking"

- tin woodman to Dorothy Gale
in the 1939 film "the wizard of oz"

Craver likes Borat pumpkin & goose

Pilot Dog "Craver" raised from puppy for the last year in our home, poses with Lara's "Borat" halloween pumpkin and cement goose.

Craver due to return to Pilot Dogs soon for assessment & hopefully further training to be a seeing-eye dog for a blind person.

College friends

a very special treat this past sunday as friends George, Todd & Joel, in klumbis, ahya for saturday's Ohio State Buckeyes football game with ILLini, kindly stopped by rural WCH to watch pittsburgh steelers slap cleveland browns on sunday afternoon.

Todd brought his priceless scrapbook of images. funny listening to 4 guys try to recall specifics of 30-35 years ago. if the walls of bradley/patterson halls could only talk. but then, gotta be the same with most every college dormitory ;+)

Interesting how some friendships get better with age.

Space Shuttle Lands Safely

Good to see the space shuttle land today.

a female astronaut driving!

California Guitar Trio

Friend Barry from Mentor (near Cleveland)
drove all the way to Washington Court House
last Tuesday evening October 30 to pick me up
& we went up to Columbus to see friends
Paul Richards, Bert Lams & Hideyo Moriya
collectively known as California Guitar Trio
at tiny little Thirsty Ear Tavern.

These guys are so fun to see & hear.
They play a lot of classical pieces *and*
cover tunes like Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody",
Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" & Pink Floyd's "Echoes".

pizzamaking.com

found a cool pizza site

http://www.pizzamaking.com/

Bear Party at the Elk Horn

here's a fairly amazing image, especially for an easterner
like me & shot by my daughter in bondurant, wyoming USA.

Hazel, owner of Elk Horn Bar, Bondurant, Wyoming
sitting at the bar next to the bear she shot.
my question was, how many people did it take to carry
the unresponsive animal up to the bar.
Guess the Elk Horn regularly has this sort of festivity
during hunting season.

Thursday 25 October 2007 (been a while!)

forgot i started this back in march.
don't really read blogs & rarely have an opinion
strong enough to share.

my friend John in erie, PA shared Tom Degan's
"the rant" and suddenly i'll be trying to keep up
with his writings.

there's a cool webcam aimed at the ohio state university
main library renovation.

http://library.osu.edu/lazenby_webcam.php

user & pswd = guest

#2

"Craver", pilot dog

#1

nonsense