Now, I realize this is simply a brand name, probably inspired by the “pure” part of the slogan…but I can’t help but be reminded of the brief fad for clear products in the early 1990s. Remember Crystal Pepsi? Of course you don’t.
Saturday Night Live summed up just how unappetizing this fad really was in two words: Crystal Gravy.
Thankfully, Crystal Hot Sauce is not clear (as you can see!), and actually tasted pretty good.
Yesterday morning on my way to work, I looked over and saw the San Gabriel Mountains practically glowing with the morning light of the sun. A layer of cloud blocked the sun where I was, making the distant peaks look that much brighter. I stopped at a spot where I knew I’d have a good view of the mountain range.
It turned out to be a really interesting view, as you can see from the panorama below.
District Mountain Panorama
By lunchtime, the sky above was mostly clear, and clouds were bunched up against the mountains, completely blocking them. I was indoors most of the morning, but it seemed as if the cloud layer had just blown northward until it hit the mountains, then stopped.
Click on either image to go to its Flickr page.
Since Canon’s PhotoStitch no longer works on Snow Leopard, I’ve tried out Hugin again. It’s come a long way since I first tried to use it and spent hours just getting a panorama to break up spectacularly and went hunting for PhotoStitch on the disc that came with the camera! I can’t get it to automatically detect control points on Fedora, but it does a surprisingly good job even when I’ve only marked around 10 or so. The ability to customize things like which pieces appear in front of others, or which projection to use, has turned out to be useful as well.
As I walked out on the streets of Laredo,
As I walked out in Laredo one day,
I stopped in the mall just to visit the bookstore.
The bookstore was closed, it’s been taken away.
The only bookstore in Laredo, Texas, a city of 250,000 people, has closed. The nearest one is 150 miles away in San Antonio.
Bad idea of the day: “I’ll be back before the rain starts again. No need to bring my umbrella.”
I’m sure you can see where this is going.
I actually would have made it if I hadn’t decided to finish re-reading The Briar King. Three pages from the end — WHOOSH! Instant cloudburst!
So I finished the book, zipped the full-sized hardcover into my jacket, and proceeded to run from Coffee Bean to the parking structure, pausing under overhangs when I found them. There’s a surprising lack of shelter at the Irvine Spectrum, not counting the stores themselves. It wasn’t until I got to the structure that I realized I’d been running with a coffee cup in my hand.
Amazingly enough, even though I got soaked, I managed to keep the book dry!
(Reposted from LiveJournal.)
WTF?!? CNN reports: Tornado warning in effect for south central Los Angeles.
It turns out there’s a tornado warning in Orange County too. I can believe it.
Drove past Blizzard HQ during a thunderstorm. Saw a really nice lightning strike a few minutes later.
Got soaked walking out of the parking structure. Wouldn’t be so bad if the rain was coming straight down. Ducked into first restaurant I saw.
Oh, NOW the storm lets up while I’m INSIDE. Rain & sky are both lightening up, & I haven’t seen any lightning in at least 10 minutes.
Aaaand we now return you to your regularly scheduled California sunshine!
I glanced out the window while eating lunch at Johnny Rockets and saw this brilliant rainbow. I hastily told the server that I would be right back, and was just going to look at it, and left some of my stuff at the table while I came out and snapped a picture. A passing security guard remarked that he had the same idea, but didn’t have his camera. When I went back in, two of the employees were staring out the window at it.
Rain (when we get it) is usually silent four stories above ground, but today gusts of wind have been spattering it against the windows.
According to the USGS, the frequency of large earthquakes has remained constant over the last century. In a typical year, the planet has roughly 17 “major” earthquakes (measuring 7.0 to 7.9 on the Richter scale) and one “great” earthquake (measuring 8.0 or higher).
So, no, earthquakes are not increasing as a sign/symptom of the impending end of the world.
(via @2012hoax)
Update March 1: 2012hoax has a nice page showing how recent quakes fit into these statistics, including Haiti, Chile, and the one in Illinois a few weeks ago (which was really quite small — there are 130,000 quakes that size in any given year!).
