PopsicleMud

Tulip Festival 2010

2010-04-11T11:02:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, Ruth and I celebrated the third anniversary of the day I proposed at the Tulip Festival:

Tulip Festival 2010

Sunny Day at Seahurst Park in Burien

2010-02-21T10:57:00.000-08:00

It was a beautiful sunny day Saturday, so we went to Seahurst Park, and I did this sketch while we were there.

I was young when the sea wall went up at Seahurst Park, and it's always felt like the park's dominant feature to me. My Dad would jog at the park regularly, and I would join him sometimes when he could pry me away from Saturday morning cartoons. I remember when the sea wall was new and the concrete pavers on the path along the top of the wall hadn't settled yet. They were musical because they would ring a little bit when we ran along the path.

Now I've heard that the northern part of the wall will be removed, just like the southern wall has been. It will take some getting used to. I'm still not used to how the southern half of the park has changed. I know it's all for the best, environmentally, and now the beach will feel like the dominant feature of the park when our family visits the park in the coming decades.

Link Light Rail Sketch

2010-02-15T15:22:00.000-08:00

Link Light Rail trains at Tukwila International Boulevard Station.

Hammering Man Sketch

2010-02-15T15:21:00.000-08:00

Hammering Man outside the Seattle Art Museum.

Burien Library and City Hall Sketch

2010-02-15T15:11:00.000-08:00

This is a sketch of the Burien Library and City Hall I did on February 15, 2010. I have to remember to use a different pen next time I combine ink and watercolor. The pen bled a bit when it got wet.

Lightning Pictures

2008-07-03T13:12:00.001-07:00

A big lightning storm passed by to the east last night. I managed to get some pictures of it from the west hill of Kent. The pictures that show multiple strikes are composites of several pictures. The picture with the most strikes covers a four minute time period. Each individual exposure was two seconds. I used a free program called Startrails to put the images together.

Lightning Storm - July 2, 2008

They might use one of my photos on APOD!

2008-04-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

The Astronomy Picture of the Day site is considering using one of my pictures from our Honeymoon trip:

Spelling with Flickr

2008-02-16T10:44:00.001-08:00

Lifehacker had a link to this a tool that lets you Spell with Flickr. I used it to create this:

Wise Words

2008-02-15T09:11:00.000-08:00

I saw the following on the Quote of the Day feed:

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks!
Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata, Animal Crossing: Wild World, 2005

This one caught my eye too:

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
Niels Bohr
Danish physicist (1885 - 1962)

Hot Fuzz: It's Not Quite Shaun of the Dead, but what is?

2008-02-13T18:00:00.000-08:00

Last week, I finally got to see Hot Fuzz on DVD. I had been looking forward to seeing it since it came out, but I just hadn't gotten the chance. I was worried that it couldn't live up to Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's previous film, Shaun of the Dead.
I didn't think it was quite as good as Shaun of the Dead, but I wasn't disappointed either. Of course the premise isn't as promising as a comedy zombie film, but they did well with it. Sgt. Nicholas Angel is the pride of London's police force. He would correct me here, and say it should be called the police service because "force" sounds too violent according to current language guidelines. That, combined with having an arrest rate 400% higher than the rest of the department, is why they can't stand him. He is therefore transferred to Sandford, Gloucestershire. It's an idyllic country village with no crime, where he becomes the Hollywood staple: The Fish Out Of Water. If that were the only joke, the movie wouldn't be funny very long. Fortunately for the audience, Sandford isn't as quiet as it seems. Although the crime rate is low-to-nonexistent, there is an alarming number of fatal "accidents." It doesn't require Angel's supercop perception to realize that there's something wrong in the village. Are the villagers and local constabulary really that dimwitted, or are they hiding something? You can probably guess the answer to that, but I doubt that many people would guess what happens after Angel makes that determination.
Hot Fuzz is definitely worth a rental. If you're the type who likes to re-watch movies like this which have so many details that you can't catch them all the first time, it's worth buying.