Category: Interesting

Stupid products

Items sold in “real” hardware stores, like Home Depot or Lowe’s, should be reasonable quality, right? The truth is often “no.”

These stores now carry doors with encased plastic blinds. Yes, “encased.” You never have to clean them because they are encased in the door.

I knew they were a pending disaster the first time I saw them. Plastic blinds are disposable, and, consequently, they break easily.

What’s the logic in encasing cheap blinds inside a door?

Apparently, little. Here’s a demo product at my local Lowe’s:

See any problems?

Camera Fun

On Wednesday, Sept. 28, a thunderstorm rolled through my area. The storm knocked the power to a lot of east Dallas out after it rolled through, and the outage lasted for 3 hours.

Since the power was out, I went outside and played with the camera. I am amazed at the kinds of shots I was able to create.

This is looking down my street at, get this, 8:42 PM at night. The sun had set around an hour ago. I got this much light with a 16 second exposure time and ISO-400 equivalent sensitivity. (I can automatically change the emulated film type on this camera.) Part of the brightness is lightning in the distance. It was all cloud lightning.

The clouds are breaking, and stars are showing through. Stunning. Same settings as above.

A neighbor’s car passes down a nearby street.

A few nights earlier, I got this shot of my son playing with one of those green lights. This was given to us by some of my neighbor’s family evacuated Hurricane Rita from Houston.

This is a 5 second exposure with a flash at the end.

Gloxinia

Last summer my mother in law gave my wife and me a gloxinia plant. This is a nice flowering plant that is related to the African violet.

The way you raise this plant is most unusual. After its flowering is done, the plant starts to die off. When it is done dying, you throw it in a closet and forget about it until next spring. In the spring start watering again, and you get another round of plant and flowering.

This is what I have growing in my office:

The flower is vibrantly colored and has a nice smell.

The broad leaves are fuzzy.

These are buds that should bloom in the next few weeks. This little plant will be a spray of color before it is finished.

Chernobyl motorcycle ride story is a fake

A purported motorcycle ride through the Chernobyl area, documented at http://www.kiddofspeed.com/, is a fake. It turns out that the lady took a standard tour that anyone could take. Details of the fakery are at http://www.uer.ca/forum_showthread.asp?fid=1&threadid=8951.

A great panoramic shot of Pripyat is at http://www.web-axis.net/~pulse/chernobyl/prypyat-panoramic.jpg.

This is a Dallas Summer?

It has rained so much in the past month that we’re enjoying Houston-like conditions: high humidity, highs in the mid- to upper 80s and the lows are around 70, and swarms of bugs and mosquitoes everywhere. This is nuts! Are we really in Dallas? Where’s the 110 degree summers?

Jennifer fertilized the yard this afternoon, and I didn’t bother watering afterward because I’m sure we’ll get rain within the next 24 hours.