Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
Whitney Frost cosplay by @CasualCosplayKatie@Instagram.com.
Google Photos reminded me that it’s been exactly 2 years since she was going to debut the cosplay at Long Beach Comic Con, but ended up not being able to go. We did a photoshoot anyway that morning, and she’s worn the outfit at several conventions since then, including the following year’s #LBCC
#cosplay #longbeachcomiccon #LBCC2016 #LBCC2017 #WhitneyFrost #AgentCarter
10th year of the con, still smallish but very comics & art focused (unlike other “comic cons”).
7YO was fascinated by the droid builders as always, and played a lot of laser tag. Wife cosplayed as Prof. Trelawney. I went to see Marv Wolfman & Christopher Priest talk about their careers as writers and editors. We bought some art cards, prints, toys & discount books.
Blog: https://hyperborea.org/journal/2018/09/long-beach-comic-con-2018/
Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kelsonv/albums/72157700841439474
#lbcc2018 #ComicCon
Spotted at the county fair last night:
Deep fried Twinkie dogs and Zucchini Weenies have been joined by triple-decker donut burgers, chicken-in-a-waffle-on-a-stick, and the donut chicken and ice cream sandwich. But for sheer “because we can” ridiculousness: deep-fried filet mignon. What a waste.
…
@janellecshane This is all I can remember seeing off the top of my head at other food booths:
Deep fried Oreo
Oreo Churros
Deep Fried Snickers
PB&J Sriracha Funnel Cake
Cinnamon Roll Ice Cream Sundae
Gouda, Bacon and Jalapeno Grilled Cheese
Ravioli on a Stick
Gouda and Ravioli Grilled Cheese
This popped up on a flashback post today. Back in 2009 I was exploring a disused railroad spur in an industrial park and found this 3.5″ floppy disk just sitting there.
The tracks have since been ripped out. This section was turned into a walkway for a commuter train station on the main tracks a couple hundred feet behind this spot.
#photography #tracks #floppydisk
Another of my #fotofails from the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. I’m terrible at holding binoculars steady, so I’ll take zoomed photos to see what’s in the distance. I think these were antelope or something, but the camera autofocused on the cables holding a balloon between the deck I was standing on and the open area below. For comparison, the giraffes at a similar distance are a lot clearer.
Pixel 2 vs. PowerShot SX710HS.
I’m only a hobbyist photographer. I don’t have a really nice camera, just a point & shoot that I picked mainly for its optical zoom. And I’m still astonished that I can often get better pictures out of the tiny lens on my phone.
This is from #WonderCon over the weekend, my wife’s #cosplay as Whitney Frost from Agent Carter. The phone picture is so much sharper, and the Pixel 2 finally gets the color balance better too.
Album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kelsonv/albums/72157694829944955
Photo taken at: Woodburn, Oregon
Back from Oregon & posting more #eclipse photos! We took a family vacation up to Portland & went down to Woodburn for the day of the eclipse.
Seeing a total solar eclipse in person was amazing. Photos just don’t do it justice.
For one thing the corona is really bright. Not harmfully bright, and not enough to block out stars and planets, but enough that it drowned out the shadowed moon when I tried to do full-sky shots.
The sky was dark blue like twilight, with a light orange band around the horizon. Where the sun would be was the solid black disc of the moon, surrounded by the streaming white corona, looking like a home in the sky.
It lasted a little over a minute. It felt like no time at all.
More thoughts & pictures at the link in my profile, in case you’re interested.
Los Angeles has a weird relationship with water. Most years there isn’t enough rain to support the region’s population, agriculture and industry without importing it from surrounding areas. Some years there really isn’t enough. And some years there’s so much rain that floods are a greater threat than drought.
The region’s flood control system is built around that threat, channeling storm water out to sea as quickly as possible. In many places, rivers are lined with concrete, typically with a narrow channel in the middle to keep it flowing during dry spells and a wider channel to prevent flooding. This stretch of the Los Angeles River in Studio City is a good example:
Other parts of the river are much nicer, even navigable at times, but this stretch really is just a concrete drainage ditch inside a bigger drainage ditch.
Unfortunately what’s needed in flood years ends up hurting us in drought years, sending too much of the rain we do get into the ocean instead of collecting it. In recent years they’ve been testing systems to recharge groundwater reserves, but if drought becomes more common — and indications are that it will — we’re going to need to revamp the system.
A few years back I saw a narrow hallway until you reached the right door.
The building dates to the 1920s, when offices had character and weren’t just boxes. The theater seems to be gone now, as it’s since been turned back into offices. Because apparently that’s something Los Angeles doesn’t have enough of?
todo: add more of this description to the live page.
Shooting the moon. It’s been going through cloud banks, fading in and out of view, usually only the brighter, uneclipsed part visible. We’re at an intersection at the top of a hill facing east, along with a lot of other people. Someone just pulled up to the stop sign and asked, “What time is the eclipse?” Response: “Now!”
Yeah, I know, it’s not quite what the prompt was going for, but sometimes a photo fits the name of the prompt so perfectly that you just have to use it.
This photo inspired a lot of discussion back in the day when someone grabbed it from my website and submitted it to one of the Cheezburger sites without my permission. Sadly, it was dominated by people who were convinced the photo had to have been faked, and cited a terrible misunderstanding of how JPEGs work as their “proof.” Even after I showed up to point to the original, high-res source, they were arguing that the compression artifacts in the small version were somehow proof that it had been manipulated.
Yes, compression artifacts. In the small version. *facepalm*
From that, I learned that people are cynical, but don’t actually know how to detect real fakery.
Alas, the sign’s been painted over with plain brown, so this paradox is now a thing of the past.
There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland cosplay out there, so here’s a feature post on my wife’s Alice costume from Comic-Con International.
She made the necklace and the vest, and beaded together two narrow belts to get the right look. Blouse, skirt, tights, belts and boots (plus material and beads) were obtained through shopping trips and online searches. Katie’s aunt helped adapt the pattern for the vest and do fitting. I helped with finding the pattern, sewing, transportation, and keeping our three-year-old son from melting down on those many shopping trips looking for just the right pieces.
Check out our SDCC 2014 photos to see pictures of her with other Wonderland characters, plus our usual collection of sightseeing and cosplay photos.
Two #night shots from after #WonderCon. The lower image is a #fountain outside the #Anaheim Convention Center. The upper is a corridor of the well maintained but nearly #empty Anaheim Garden Walk mall. The anchor restaurants at the front look like they’re doing fine, but behind them, the mall is barely occupied.
Lunar #eclipse mosaic, starting around 11:00 and finishing around midnight Pacific time, just as totality set in. #moon #stargazing #notaphone
Four views of the moon over the course of tonight’s lunar eclipse, starting around 11pm and running until about midnight. I actually got some shots at the second stage without the phone line in the way, but I liked the way this looked.
This week’s photo challenge is “abandoned” — kind of like this blog was for a few months. 😉
A few years back, I explored a disused spur of railroad tracks branching off of the main line into a light industrial area of town. In many places, the tracks had already been ripped out, leaving only gravel paths (and in some cases stepping stones, as seen below) between buildings that no longer needed freight access.
I found this floppy disk sitting on the track, and the combination of an obsolete data technology and what I thought of at the time as an obsolete transportation technology just struck me.
The funny thing is, trains in the form of light rail have made a resurgence in the last few years. Los Angeles’ Metro rail system, started in the 1990s, has expanded dramatically. I actually commuted myself along the Green Line at one point, and while normally that meant driving halfway there to pick up the end of the line, there were a few times I tried picking up a connecting (well, not quite connecting) train from Metrolink, at a station not far from this spot. In fact, the track in the first two photos has since been converted into a footpath connecting a shuttle stop to the commuter rail station.
TODO: Import to K2R, link forward and back to Obsolete (2009).
QUESTION: Import the original 2014 post (with suitable tag/link changes), or update the text and post it as new? Also connect to this Mastodon post (local archive copy)
Smoke plume from a wildfire burning northeast of Los Angeles. It hasn’t had time to diffuse through the whole basin yet, and the wind has cleared out all the smog, so the sky to the west is a gorgeous blue and the distant mountains and skyline are completely clear.
