• Kilauea eruption

    March 7, 2011 / No Comments
    via newsfeed.time.com

    I guess it’s volcano day today. Just after my last blog post about the Nyiragongo Crater in Africa, I read about a new eruption of Kilauea. Of course I had to find a map to see how far I was away from this eruption.

    Wikipeda has a nice little map, you can click it to embigen it:

    Hawaii_Volcanoes_National_Park

    The eruption was in the east rift zone by the Pu’u O’o Crater. We weren’t over there, but we weren’t too far away. We drove down the Chain of Craters Road all the way down until it was blocked by an old lava flow. We saw the Holei Sea Arch, which is a well photographed sea arch, and a scary cliff that I didn’t want to get too close to the edge of.

    It would be pretty cool to be in Hawaii today.

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  • Volcanoes are so cool

    March 7, 2011 / No Comments

    After experiencing a volcano close up, or as close up as a normal person can get, last summer, volcanoes have interested me. Last summer we hiked down into Halema`uma`u crater on Mt Kilauea, and we also got an even closer view of it in a helicopter ride. It was pretty amazing.

    Today I ran across some amazing pictures at The Big Picture of the Nyiragongo Crater in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I don’t think of volcanoes when I think of Africa, especially in central Africa where this one is, but man these are some gorgeous pictures.

    bp1

    Thanks to Phil Plait for bringing these amazing pictures to my attention.

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  • Joey Cape Doesn’t Play Well With Others

    March 5, 2011 / No Comments

    Doesn't Play Well With OthersYesterday I got a surprise package it the mail. It was the new Joey Cape album on CD and vinyl. For those of you who don’t know who Joey Cape is—well—he is a musician who has many bands, most notability, Lagwagon. I have been a Lagwagon fan since the early 90s when I was listening to a lot of Fat Wreck Chords bands.

    His latest album was a project he started in January 2010.  For the year 2010 he released a song a month digitally, and when the project was done you got the hard copies of the album too. Of course I was going to sign up for this. As I have said many times, I love supporting artists when I know they are actually getting the money. I love it when I can buy their stuff directly from them. It’s a pretty cool CD, and DVD package. The artwork was done buy his daughter who appears on the DC and DVD, and it’s pretty darn cool.

    Plus how cool is it to see the man himself packaging up his album to ship out?

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  • Unimpressed with the iPad 2

    March 3, 2011 / No Comments

    iPad 2So if you weren’t in a cave yesterday you heard about the iPad 2 announcement. Will I be upgrading? No. My iPad does everything I need it to do. Nothing in the update really excited me. I’m not one to upgrade to keep up with the Joneses. I love gadgets, but I don’t actually buy them unless I know I am going to use them a lot, and I don’t upgrade until I absolutely need to.

    The iPad 2 is the iPad they should have released last year. I think they purposely left out the cameras last year just so they would have something to add this year. Apple’s yearly product updates kind of bug me. They are always trying to make last year’s products seem old so you upgrade. I don’t know why any current iPad owners would upgrade. Sure it’s a little faster, a little lighter, and has cameras, but I have never complained that mine was too slow, or wish it weighed 0.2 lbs less, or even had a camera.

    To me the big news is you can now get a refurbished iPad for $349. That’s a great deal. I always buy my iPods refurbished, and may buy my next laptop refurbished. I am still rocking the 1st gen MacBook, and it’s working just fine despite a little yellowing, but the time for a new laptop is getting closer.

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  • Sick again

    March 2, 2011 / No Comments

    I am usually pretty lucky with colds. I very seldom get sick, but this year I am on my second cold of the season. Because I seldom get sick, I don’t always get a flu shot. Not because I am against them, mostly it’s just out of laziness. This year I did get my flu shot though. Many people would correlate getting sick twice proving that the flu shot doesn’t work, but remember correlating doesn’t always equal causation. I haven’t gotten the flu this season—and if I did, it would mean I just caught a different strain—just some annoying colds.

    I blame being around more people than usual this season as the cause. With my Mother-in-Law’s situation, I have spent much more time in hospitals and around family than usual, and I have spend time around a bunch of people making sandbags to help fight this years flood. Being in close quarters with other people is probably the number one way to get sick. Being sick more this year will probably just encourage me to make sure I get my flu shot next season.

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