Confessions of an 8-bit gamer.

I'm back on the Zaz kick, via Lights in the Dark. It gives me a "brand hook" to work off, along with available (read: free) images to use! I'm trying out the blog Flash panel here, partly because Wordpress doesn't allow it on their engine but mostly because you all are a great focus group. ^__^

Let me know what you think. Thanx!

Over the next couple of days I'll have some great live content posted on my space blog. Check it out.

Lights in the Dark: Around the World in 80 Telescopes

It's all-you-can-eat astronomy!

A few weeks ago, I was on the walking trail near my house and I passed an electrical transformer station that sits alongside it. It's surrounded by fences and the usual "Danger: Horrible Death by Electrocution" signs that one finds on such places. I happened to hear some squawking noises, different than the typical squawking noises that the local grackles make. Looking up, I caught a flash of green between the criscrossed grey beams of the station. I stopped, and looking more carefully, I realized that the green came from the tail feathers of what looked like a parrot. Which is exactly what it was. And it had friends.

Not the giant macaw parrots like they have at zoo shows, but little green ones, bigger than parakeets and budgies but smaller than macaws. And bright green. And noisy.

I was a little surprised, to say the least. Dallas isn't known for its exotic wildlife, this isn't the rain forest or some island paradise. Far from. And I don't believe parrots of any sort are indigenous. But there they were, about 6 or 7 of them, squawking and cawing and climbing around on the power station supports and wires as if there weren't a jillion watts of power coursing through them at all, and having a good time of it. Looking closer, I saw that they had in fact built a sizable nest up there too. Nicely supported by wire mesh that looked to be there for the purpose of keeping birds out of the beams.

 I guess they didn't spring for the anti-parrot kind. See what happens?

So last week, I walked down again, this time with my camera. I don't have a crazy zoom lens, but I managed to get some decent photos of the little guys. Here's a few, and there's more on my Flickr page. I don't know what kind of parrots they are, or how they got there....pet store prison break, misrouted from Guadelajara, wrong turn at Albuquerque, who knows. But they're definitely living here now. Probably on pecans and table scraps from the Chili's dumpster.

We're officially "tropical".

This is amazing....I've heard of dolphins playing with bubbles but I have never seen it. They can learn to make rings of bubbles and then they dance and play with them....this is their own thing, not something taught by trainers. Awesome.

Today is Peanut Butter Lover's Day. Show us something that is good with peanut butter.

Cheerios!

Step3

3 comments

If you haven't seen this bit yet, it's great. Louis CK on Late Night. He makes all excellent points.

He's performing in Austin in a couple of months. I think I need to go.

(Video embedding was disabled.)

I'd like to do a bit of promotional work for my cousin Christine...she's a talented author of many types of fiction, and her most recently published novel, The Last Stallion, is now available for download for $2.95. Check it out on her blog if you're into sultry supernatural romances. Eat your heart out, Sam Merlotte.

Also available as a Kindle download for $2.36.

A crazy good bargain for her talent.

I hope this proves to be a big success for her, especially considering I modeled for the cover.

To all Mac OSX users....

I'd advise against installing the Safari 4 Beta browser program, if you've seen it on the Apple site at all. It's slow, and it has issues with how some websites work....Facebook, Wordpress, etc. Let the boys in Cupertino iron it out first.

This was the worst version of the program I've seen. Should have never been released.

No, I'm not conducting orchestra or playing the leading role in our local repertory's rendition of The Music Man. Rather, I'm picking up where Bill left off with his Riding With Robots site, and making one of my own in similar fashion.

I'm pretty bummed today, as I found out that the Riding With Robots site will no longer be active. It's where I found most of the cool space photos I've posted here over the years, and it's given me and countless others a view from our desktops to the wonders of our planetary neighborhood through the efforts of the hard-working researchers and engineers around the world.

Thanks for everything, Bill. You've helped open a lot of eyes.

http://www.ridingwithrobots.org/Riding_with_Robots%3A_Signing_Off_.html