EDITED: 20110318 @ 0955 EST5EDT. See end of article.
A few weekends ago at HacDC a small team of highly skilled hackers gathered to work on practical solutions to a problem which has risen its ugly head time and again in the past few months: a lack of connectivity. Most of the time, when your DSL line goes dead for a couple of hours it's no big deal. If your phone service is tied into DSL (e.g., you're a voice-over-IP customer or the line is physically damaged) it's a bit more of a problem if you don't have an alternate …
This is an hour's worth of accumulation, mind you. It started snowing when Lyssa and I were on our way home and hasn't stopped yet. While stopped at a light, we saw a bolt or two of lightning streak across the sky, and our return home was hearlded by thunder.
Yes, DC is known for occasional thundersnow storms.
I had a feeling that we'd be in for a bad one today - yesterday afternoon felt and smelled like snow and the air was crisp and cold. Last night I wasn't sure at first if it was raining or snowing. By the time I went to bed there was no question about which it was, though I must confess a little shock this morning when I discovered that the snow/sleet/rain last night had turned into a quarter inch thick rime of ice coating everything outside, from the bannister and front steps of my apartment building to the parking …
Inspired by the prose of Dr. Peter Watts, I bring you Conan the Bacterium (otherwise known as deinococcus radiodurans, "..the toughest microbial motherfucker on the planet, a microbe who laughs at hard vacuum and radiation hot enough to cook you to a cinder.")
Picture from the Wikipedia article on deinococcus radiodurans. Quote from Conan the Barbarian. Picture of Peter Watts from here, originally taken by Allan Weiss. Macro engineered with the GIMP and cheezburger.com.
I got up rather earlier than usual last Saturday morning (0600 EST5EDT) to get ready for another Spaceblimp launch by HacDC, this time from a location in semi-rural Maryland. I had just enough time to get Windbringer prepped, my doctor's bag packed, and the rest of the stuff I wanted to keep close by into my backpack when I got a phone call from Bjorn in the parking lot outside my apartment building, who would be driving the chase car this time around. We met up with Nick (who rode shotgun in the TARDIS last time) and then struck out …
Pictures taken at the Roger Waters concert at DC's Verizon Center in October. The zoom function of my camera really got a workout that night because we were up in the nosebleeds for the show. Certainly high enough up that looking down at the crowd (or even the seat in front of you) was enough to make one dizzy. Thus, I apologize for the rather low quality of some of the pictures, I had to make the most of what visible light there was.
I'd also like to point out that some of the funkier, most abstract pictures are of …
