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Imperial Leftovers

The survival into the modern era of random bits of the colonial/imperial era has always interested me.
Bagpipes are also kind of cool. When outdoors.
Thus, The Bagpipes of Palestine from the BBC. Amazing what survives against long odds, isn’t it?

Project Creep In Action

"The flying saucer originally started as a proposal for a raiseable platform."
Ladies, gentlemen, and the rest of you: The British Rail Flying Saucer (via Wikipedia).
Yes, really.
(hat tip to Corey for the URL).

Feb 12 1935: USS Macon crashes

…and on Feb 12 2010, 75 years later to the day, the US Gov’t declares the big dirigible’s wreck site a National Historic Monument.
The Macon and her sister-ship Akron were unique amongst dirigibles – they had an embarked air wing of six Sparrowhawk biplane fighters. This is pure pulpish awesomeness – flying aircraft carriers! Except [...]

Lucidity

There’s still search engines out there other than Google? Really?

Foggy Holiday

One photo and a photo-panorama from December 24th, just because I haven’t posted anything in a while…

The panorama was six photos originally, stitched in Hugin. The flat grey foggy background seemed to cause Hugin some issues – notice how obvious a few of the vertical join lines are in the centre of the image. Odd.

I [...]

Exciting Olympic Links, Round 2

Apparently the City of Vancouver and/or VANOC (the Vancouver Olympic Committee) are gunning for anti-Olympic graphics again. More links on that BoingBoing story, but the ongoing efforts of the BC Civil Liberties Association during this runup to the Olympics have been heroic.
This collection would cause VANOC to collectively crap themselves, especially the VANOC logo redone [...]

Seasonal(ish) Links

Tis the season, and all that…
The Big Picture started their 2009 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar back on December 1st. (I’m of the opinion that the Hubble Space Telescope is the greatest public art project ever undertaken. The science is a bonus.)
The HP Lovecraft Historical Society does excellent mock-carols on Cthulhuish themes. Here’s a Youtube [...]

First Winter Storm

Victoria Airport weather as of about forty minutes ago:
METAR CYYJ 190200Z 15028G36KT 3SM -RA BR FEW008 FEW016 OVC030 07/05
A2969 RMK SF1SC2SC6 SLP055
See that “15028G36KT”? That’s wind, lots of it. 28 knots is 50km/h, sustained wind speed, with gusts up to 38 knots, 70km/h!
Victoria Harbour – right down in the city proper, about 25km south of [...]

Nov. 11, Reprise

Just about the only photo of mine that turned out from the Remembrance Day ceremony downtown a few days ago. It was sunny, fairly cold, and well attended – the paper said seven to ten thousand. Lots of kids & families, which is good.

November 11th

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To [...]