Darren Holloway

There seems to be something wrong with physics; specifically in my freezer…

Do I have a tiny little black hole sucking the water towards the top? Is the water trying to escape? Is it alive?

On the way back from Yosemite, I took a detour to the Castle Air Museum, in Atwater, California. I rate this place as “very cool for airplane geeks who have read too many Dale Brown novels.” :)

I found out about the museum late one night, when I was playing “1980’s Soviet Spy,” which is a game I invented where you use Google Maps satellite photos to try and find U.S. warplanes on military bases. I wondered if there were still any SR-71’s operational anywhere I could look for, and some googling told me no, but there was one on display at this museum about 4 hours from my apartment.

They also had a B-52 there (hence the Dale Brown reference.) I knew from books that it was big, but I didn’t know it was thaaat big! The little white blob under the nose is some random tourist posing.

However, the aircraft I found myself most in awe of was one I’d never even heard of before: The Convair B-36 Peacemaker. It’s the largest piston-engine aircraft ever made, and its six propellers face backwards.

There are plenty of other pictures up on my Flickr Page.

I went on vacation to Yosemite for a few days last week.

On my first day there, I walked around a lake and saw a bird standing on some rocks, fishing. I thought “Wow, this is cool” and I went back to my car and got my camera, telephoto lens, and tripod.

When I got back, the bird was still there. So I set up and waited to try and get some good pictures.

After 20 minutes it flapped its wings…

After 55 minutes, it caught a fish, but my hand was away from the camera and I missed it. It was at this point that I thought “I think I’ll just put the camera away and enjoy my vacation.”

I didn’t pull the camera back out until I drove out of the park a few days later and visited Mono Lake. I’d heard it was an interesting place to take photos.

It seems that back in the olden days, before Los Angeles started draining every body of water within a ten-zillion mile radius, there were underwater springs in Mono Lake. As they percolated water up, the calcium in the spring water formed underwater rock structures. And, as LA sucked all the water out of the lake, these tufta became visible.

Good for photographers, bad for the environment. Oh well.

There’s a few more photos on my flickr page, but not too many. It was too dang hot every day for me to want to haul around a camera and tripod.

Still to come: Photos from my side-trip to Castle Air Museum; there’s lots of those ;)

100 F°: The Canadian Point - The temperature at which expatriate Canadians finally begin to think “You know, perhaps snow wasn’t so bad after all.”

So I see in the news that SUV sales are down 55%.

Given that people were buying SUV’s as a status symbol, wouldn’t they be an even greater status symbol now, as they say “I’m affluent enough that high gas prices don’t bother me?”

One of my many bad habits is that I only check my mailbox about once a month. I’m sure the postman hates me.

In this months’ mail:

• A letter from my insurance company. It basically says “California law says we have to offer you earthquake coverage. However, no law says it has to be affordable.” Pass.
• A letter from the IRS that basically said “You did your taxes wrong. We fixed them. You get more money back.” I like this kind of mail.

I was looking at other people’s photos from Fanime on Flickr, and found a photo of me taken by CrashFaster! Fear my totally uninspired and lame generic Japanese schoolboy cosplay!

Oh, and 9 more photos sent to Flickr - It would have been more, but Lightroom decided to blow chunks all over its database and I had to restore it. Technology hates me this week.

I woke up this morning absolutely exhausted. I had my breakfast, and went so far as to lie back down in bed before I decided “No, I don’t want to go back to sleep - I want to go to day 4 of Fanime.

Today’s viewings from the fansub room:

• Ghost Hound: A supernatural mystery story. Looks interesting.
• Ichigo Mashimaro: Cute little girls doing cute things in a cute way. Too cute for me. Note, however, that I somehow never managed to leave the room.
• Goshuushou-sama Ninomiyakun: Boy helps a succubus overcome her phobias of people. Epic nosebleed comedy.
• Nagasarete Airantou: Boy gets marooned on island where the only inhabitants are girls. More epic nosebleeds :)

And, of course, more photos. I managed to edit about another 30 and add them to the gallery on flickr - I also changed the order so the newest ones are first.

I forgot to mention… Yesterday, seeing as the plaza in front of the convention center was full of people dressed up in costumes, some religious nut decided to bring his “worship Jesus or go to hell” sign and preach. The best part was, though, that we had a guy at the convention dressed up as Jesus, who went over and stood over said kook; the kook failed to fall down on his knees :)

I didn’t manage to get up in time to make it to the Clannad marathon, which was my other must-see of the weekend. But, seeing as it was a marathon that ran from 5:30 AM to 1 PM, I still managed to catch two episodes. In hindsight, it’s probably for the best: Clannad was made by the same studio as Air,, which was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. From what I did see of Clannad, if I’d watched the whole marathon, I would have been curled up in a corner crying for the rest of the day. If Studio Key’s motto isn’t “We’ll rip your heart out and feed it to you - repeatedly,” it probably should be.

If I’m going to be completely incapacitated for a day (or more, if it’s anything like Air was,) I think I’d rather do it at home that at a convention.

The highlight of the day was seeing two episodes of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensi 2, which was completely bizzare and absolutely hilarious. I also enjoyed Fullmetal Alchemist: The Movie. And remember how I said I didn’t find Prince of Tennis that interesting? Then why did I end up back in the fansub room watching more of it? :)

At 7:00, they had a Black and White Dance. Of course I brought my tuxedo. I even found a woman who knew how to Lindy Hop. Apparently, this is the second year they’ve had a formal dance, and this year the room was twice as big as last. And it was still too small; when I left at 9:00, there were about 200 people lined up to get in.

Photos: 250 today, but I’m having problems reading them into my computer right now - please please please don’t let the CF card be corrupted!

Update: Managed to get all but three photos off the card. Only took five hard reboots. Into the trash with you, evil CF card of epic failure!

I am really tired. Unfortunately for me, it’s only 8 PM. But the second “must see” on my list starts at 5:30 AM tomorrow morning.

I spent most of the day in the fansub rooms, where they were showing two or three episodes of a given series. Really brief notes:

• Spice and Wolf: Really enjoyed this one. If you ask me, there’s not enough TV shows combining the economic laws of supply and demand with cute fox-girl spirits. They were showing four episodes, but I came in late and only saw two. I went to the dealers’ room looking for it, but it’s apparently only out as fansubs online.
• El Cazador de la Bruja: Also really enjoyed the two episodes I saw of this. Everyone is a bounty hunter!
• These are my Noble Masters: Saw two episodes of this and it looks like a lot of fun. Harem comedy for the win!
• Prince of Tennis: Man, the room was packed. After watching two episodes, I was thinking “I can see why this is popular, but it doesn’t really inspire me to watch more of it. Unless there’s nothing else on.”

Since I was already in the dealer room, I figured I had to do my part to help the economy; that is, other than by donating my tax dollars to bailing out real estate speculators and investment banks. I bought The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which I’ve wanted for a while but have never been able to find all four DVDs together at the same store. Now perhaps I can learn that dang dance properly. :)

I started in on working on photos of today’s cosplayers, but didn’t get too far - I need to go to bed. Seven new photos on the Flickr page; many more to come.