Blogging on and off since 2003
I’ve just started populating my photo gallery on grommit.com. (Thanks, Steve!) I’m beginning with three albums: my Sunday tour of Hyderabad, gliding in Boulder, and stunning pieces from an exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.
The permalink to my gallery can be found on the right, in The Basics section at the top of the sidebar.
[Steve: Any idea why a few of the thumbnails show up as “broken image” icons? I’ve used Gallery Remote, but I don’t have Image Magick installed.]
This evening, I finally got around to doing something that I’d wanted to do for eleven years: visiting my old colleague and friend Rick and his family in Boulder. Some background: Rick joined Sun back in 1986, working with me on the 386i workstation. He and his family moved to Palo Alto, and then to Boulder, where they built themselves a house just outside town on a 7000′ ridge overlooking the Front Range. That was eleven years ago, and despite my best intentions my travels never took me in that direction. Rick left Sun a few years ago, and we drifted out of touch with each other.
A few weeks ago, when I knew I’d be travelling to this part of the world, I contacted Rick, and this evening I finally made it. The house, and the location, are spectacularly beautiful (see sunset picture); what was even more delightful was that all of us slipped right back into our easygoing friendship as though it had been eleven days instead of eleven years. (I say “all of us”, though the two children I remembered have sprouted alarmingly, and have been joined by third.) And as the rest of the family retired to bed, Rick and I rapped on: about music, about Macintoshes (he has a 17″ PB, I have a 12″), about the computer business, about their amazing power system (imagine a five day UPS for your entire house!), and about old friends. And finally I took my leave, and drove down the narrow gravel driveway, to the dirt road with the wicked hairpin, to the canyon road, and then through Boulder and back to my hotel.
(But I shouldn’t have waited eleven years. Friends this good are worth staying close to.)
This morning I took the T to Harvard Square¹ to meet Kate and Tom for lunch, after which we headed over to the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Our immediate objective was the exhibit “Origins: Life’s First 3 Billion Years”, which is closing soon. (Good exhibit, a bit smaller than I expected, but worthwhile.) However it was my first visit to the museum, so we explored. The famous glass flowers were breath-taking; it was interesting that I found the extraordinary accuracy of tangled roots, stalks and leaves more impressive than petals and stamens. The dinosaur fossils were fun, as always, and the ornithological section was remarkably comprehensive.
But the exhibition that stole my heart was in the Mineralogical and Geological collection. I took quite a few pictures: here are some thumbnails:
¹ A very dangerous place: I discovered the philosophy books section of the Harvard Coop, which cost me over a hundred dollars. More on that anon.
Here’s that picture I took at Harwichport Harbor yesterday of what looks like a Common Loon (Gavia immer).
¹ From the size of the bulge above the bill, it’s probably a juvenile, less than a year old. This is actually cut out of a much larger image, which you can find here; even that copy is flattened a bit to get it under the 1MB limit I’ve set for uploads.
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¹Back in England Loons are called “Divers”; the Common Loon is known as the Great Northern Diver. This reminds me of a wonderful series of books from my childhood, Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons; the final volume was Great Northern?
After the snow finally abated, I went out to clear off my car before our ploughing service arrived. (Yes, we have a two-car garage, but my – presently non-running – Miata occupies my space, so my Cougar lives outside.) Opening the door revealed a nice drift to be dug out. The wind had been so fierce that some of the driveway was clear of snow, while other parts had drifts sculpted into sand-dune-like shapes. Fortunately, the town had done a decent job of ploughing the streets around here.
A little storm-related item: Boston.com just reported that the retired Boston Globe columnist David Nyhan died today, while shovelling snow. He was 64, and had left the paper (taken the package) at the time of the New York Times takeover. I always enjoyed his irreverence, especially his ability to get under the skin of Boston’s powerful religious lobbies.
I was wandering round the house this morning with my camera, looking for shots that might capture the feel of this snowstorm without actually requiring me to expose myself to the elements! 
I took a shot out of the front door – notice how the snow is drifting in the porch, and around the tree by the road. Then looking out of a side window, I saw this downy woodpacker, covered in snow, pecking desperately into a branch. I hope he found some food…. 
(As usual, click thumbnails for the full-size images.)
UPDATE: Just as I was finishing this blog entry, my wife spotted what looked like newspapers at the end of the front path, and prevailed upon me to go out to retrieve them. For some reason the lyrics from Al Stewart‘s song “Antarctica” drifted into my mind: “The hopeless quest of Shackleton, The dreamlike death of Scott”. Nevertheless I donned boots and coat and plunged into a snowdrift almost up to my waist, while my wife attempted to take pictures of me.
Another photo from Monday. Yes, I know that the closest blossoms are out of focus: I turned on macro and thrust the camera deep into the bush….
Monday morning, just after dawn, click for 1600×1200 version.
Photo of the day, from the fantastic collection at Airliners.net. (Other air-to-air favourites here and here.) Not mine – I wish….
