American in Spain

Somehow we already have a wardrobe full of infant clothes, the vast majority with an undeniable feminine theme. Marga handwashed the set that will probably be taken to the hospital to clothe our daughter for the first time. Here they are drying in the sun. They don’t actually have black stripes on them, those are the shadows from the other clothes lines.
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It’s time for another close-up identification competition. The answer and winners have been posted on the previous post. The name of the game is to see if you can identify what the picture below is a close-up of. This one’s a little harder.
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One of the tricks my new expensive speed light (that’s snooty SLR-camera-owner-speak for “flash”) lets me do is strobe photrography: having multiple flashes in the same photographic exposure. For lack of a better subject, I’ve returned to photographing coins in motion, this time dropping them onto a hard wooden tabletop. Each of the photos below is a result of having the shutter open for 0.04 seconds and firing a flash four times at 100 Hz (one flash every 0.01 seconds). This being my first attempt, I am quite pleased with the result. I can’t decide if I like the blurring between flashes or not. The room was quite bright when I took the pictures. Repeating the experiment in a dark room would, in theory, remove those “between flash” bits. I’ll have to try that next.
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A couple days ago, in the Basque valley town of Mondragón, where my in-laws live, some notices were posted on the entrances to all residential buildings. It read more or less the following:

Over the next two months, we will be going house by house collecting signatures for a petition to the mayor’s office to release prisoners that are either gravely ill or that have already served their time.

Seems like a good cause, doesn’t it? Well…
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Nora, my dear, we’ve finally got your bed ready for you when you decide it’s time to enter this bright and chilly world. While you’re in there becoming a Kung Fu master (seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if you emerged with a ninja mask on), your mother and I are out here getting things as ready as we can for your arrival.

The first blanket you will sleep under in this house was a gift from your Abuela, Marce. It’s got three little bears and some balloons and is suitably adorable and infantile. And soft! I don’t recall things being so soft in my childhood. Science has really come a long way in the field of fabric softness in my lifetime.

Your first crib ornament is a giraffe that clips onto the side of your crib wall. It was a gift from your great aunt, Marga. There’s no doubt that she will be your favorite great aunt, as she seems incapable of curbing her addiction of buying you gifts. I doubt that, later in life, you will be able to recall a visit from her from your childhood when she didn’t have a present for you.
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Two weekends ago when we were looking for twigs for nesting, we stopped by one of the local malls, the Max Center in Bilbao. From the very entrance, there was a space exploration theme decorating the place which I thought was a little odd. But then in a central hallway I saw a very nice exhibit aimed at small children put on by the European Space Agency (that’s like NASA on this side of the pond). They had these two big cylinders, one for showing movies in and another that was closed when I was there, and lots of little kid-sized space suits, all under some huge dangling planets. From what I could tell, the kids would put on the space suits, enter the chamber, and learn about space exploration. Seeing all this pleased me immensely, as I am very much in favor of space exploration as a general goal for our species and to push the envelope of our understanding science. Getting kids interested in space travel is extremely important. Very cool. Go ESA!
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In the same vein as my Flickr Link Preview script, I’ve created preview Greasemonkey script for links to YouTube videos. Since YouTube provides three thumbnails for every video, it shows up as a little slideshow of the video’s three thumbnails. It’s pretty handy. Never be rickrolled again!

Watch the video screencast below to better understand exactly how it works. Here are a fewvideolinks for testing with once you get your plugin installed.
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Today I’m going to try a little blogging experiment. For a while, I’ve been considering some kind of quiz format where I take a picture of something, crop to just a texture or shape, and have you, my readers, guess what the object might be. Frankly, I’m not sure how fun it will be, but I figured we should give it a shot. If you are in favor of this idea, the best way to show your support is to participate by guessing. If popularity drops to only one or two guesses, then the idea might have to be discontinued. Let the games begin!

I will post the answer and the winner one week after the original WTCU post, with the chance of a possible clue mid-week if no one is close. (more…)

The mouth harp, also known as the Jew’s harp (despite having no connection to Jews) or jaw harp, is one of the weirdest musical instruments. How many instruments do you know of that depend on the vibrations of the musician’s skull to be heard? According to Wikipedia, the instrument dates back to at least the third century B.C., but the source they cite is just some guy’s blog, so who knows. My friend Dennis not only owns a mouth harp, but he knows how to play it! Here’s a video of a little jam session we had with my father, me, Dennis, and Merle on my trip to the States in February. I came up with a couple chords, strummed a rhythm, and Dennis – and his vibrating skull – matched the notes exactly. My celebration at the end is rather exuberant, but there was plenty of wine flowing and the performance really was quite awesome.
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Actually, if you google the phrase that is this post’s title, you’ll get a bunch of news and fashion magazine articles from September 2008 reporting the findings of a perception psychologist at the University of York who ran a study that suggests that horizontal stripes actually make you look thinner.

Having a near full-term Homo sapiens parasite squirming around in your uterus, however, seems to counteract the thinness illusion.
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