Beyond yay!
Singing with happiness!
I woke up 2 hours before my regular wake up and am now feeling like a little kid before a big party. America is hosting a party! whhhheeeeeeeeee
#29 - Ab_Normal - I also have celiac's and when my rice bread does not satisfy, I sniff good, warm aromatic other bread. I don't eat, just sniff.
Given that warm bread aroma is the best part, just smelling it is grand. Esp. a good sourdough.
#12 Language Hat - Thank you for such a new lovely word - chary.
I like chary, esp. when it comes to commenting on fora.
;o)
In October of 2007, I arrived at Heathrow on a very early flight, by the time that the Paddington Express pulled into Paddington Station it was 8am and the first rays of morning sun were hitting the fabulous Victorian iron tracery work of the back (trackside) window. I was enchanted.
After I got off the train, I looked back to the grand back window and the light streaming through the tracery was lovely. I put my bags down, got my camera out, and went to take a photo when I was stopped by two security officers (uniformed) who told me that photography was not allowed in the station.
I was operating on very little sleep, too much travel, and my brain just blinked. "What?" Security insisted that I could not take a photo as it could be used by terrorists. Brain continues to blink. Finally, I mustered up some words and said to the younger of the two guards, "But you know that there is already hundreds of photos in the 'paddingtonstation' flickr tags right?" The young guard blushed, nodded, and looked ashamed. The older guard said, "Please move along." I did.
Now, every time I go through Paddington (4x since Oct.) I have made a point to take photos while arriving, in the station, and of the trains and then moblog them to flickr.
Yesterday morning I arrived in London Paddington station after an all night flight from the States, it was just before 8am and the sun was streaming in from the big back arch. It was beautiful, really lovely with all the Victorian iron work.
I set my bags down, got my camera phone out, went to take a photo, when security told me to stop. I was astounded.
Me: "But it is truly beautiful. Look at the morning sun."
Very Young Security Officer: "Sorry, you cannot take a photo here."
Me: "Sir, look how lovely it is."
VYSO: Doesn't look. "Really, you can't take a photo, put the camera away."
Me: "Ok, but do you know that there are hundreds of photos on Flickr of this station? Are you going to ask them to take it down? Do you have a Flickr account?"
VYSO: embarrassed.
Me: Walks off and tries the shot at another angle. Camera phone does not do justice to the colors.
For the rest of the day, I asked my UK friends if they thought it was aiding and abetting the terrorists, if I took a photo at Paddington. They all referred to the above incident with the Japanese tourist and found it all ridiculous.
I am more distressed that beauty can't be celebrated in the name of protecting a train station that has been widely, widely photographed for over a hundred years.
My definitive moment of "getting" emo is when some friends invited me to sit on stage next to the guitar amps during an Alkaline Trio show and I watched the two front rows of teenage boys cry while the band played. Cry. Boys/young men aged 14-18 were crying.
I was stunned.
On Hard Drives and Backups: After my great "Airport Disaster of 2007" where my laptop took on a lot of water while on at the Philadelphia airport, I have been rigorous about backups. To that end, I back up to an external hard drive and to Amazon S3. I now have an account with Amazon S3, an ftp program (Transmit) that will access that account, and I back up all non-private data weekly to my S3 account.
Tiffany B. Brown on "Using Amazon S3 for hard drive backups"
It sounds like I am taking an extra step, but if I have another computer disaster, if my hard drive is "inspected", or if my house is broken into as along as Amazon has the service, I have access to my data, which for me is over 34,000 photos.
On What is Commercial: The DHS/TSA folks say that a musician is a commercial endeavor in a multi-million dollar business and that he went to the wrong check point for a commercial endeavor.
For those of us who write songs, write poetry, take photos, who are designers, developers, programmers, etc. and keep this data on our computers, are we "always" working when we take our computers with us on vacation or a non-busines holiday?
I think Mr. Milne's statement that his agents had not heard of Chris Walla, but as a musician he is commercial and thus his hard drive was subject to commercial search, to be troubling. Two weeks ago, I went through customs at Heathrow and was asked what I was traveling to the UK for. I answered truthfully, "a conference and a mini-vacation". I was asked what I do, "Web designer." The customs agent was very nice and stamped my passport and told me to have fun in London. Nice man.
But as I exited the customs hall, I realized that that conversation could have gone south very fast and how did he know I wasn't going to meet with clients at the conference or solicit UK business at the conference?
It brought up the absurdity of definition between commercial and non-commercial in the world of a creative or information worker. I can work wherever I have power and an internet connection.
TNH - My local market has had Buddha's Hand citron for the last few weeks, if you would like a couple, send me your preferred address and I will ship them to you.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 1 |
| 2008 | 5 |
| 2007 | 3 |
| 2006 | 1 |
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