I had a major crash of The Baldheretic Gallery.
Slowly but (bill)surely I have been restoring it.
Got my European vacation shots and the good Los Skarnales and Adrian Belew pics back in place.
More to follow.
A grand experiment in tech radio
Aurora Losada
photo by Dwight Silverman
On the the show last night we took advantage of a special guest to try something new. We were joined in the studio by Aurora Losada, editor of the Chronicle’s Spanish-language publications. Dwight had told me that Aurora was a fan of Technology Bytes and I invited her to be on the program.
Hailing from Spain and fluent in Spanish, Aurora was a perfect candidate for us to try something I had been wanting to do for some time which was to take questions in Spanish, translate them, answer them and then give the answer back to the caller in Spanish. Aurora agreed and our foray into multilingualism took flight.
The very first call was from a listener named Carlos. It worked like a charm. The rest of the evening we had various Spanish speaking callers mixed in with our regular callers. I don’t know if it was technically “good radio” but it was a blast for me and the crew and the callers who spoke Spanish seemed to enjoy it as well.
To the best of my knowledge this is the first time a technology talk show has been broadcast attempting to field calls in both English and Spanish and to my mind, it was a HUGE success.
Thanks to Aurora for being such a good sport. As Dwight mentioned in his blog, when it came to all the good natured kidding around that we like to do, “She gave as good as she got.”
The “Tower of Babel” affect was achieved when Bill called in from Germany via Skype and spoke a bit in German.
All in all, four languages: English, Spanish, German and Geek.
Cynthia and the hummingbird
Cynthia and the hummingbird, originally uploaded by The Bald Heretic.
We sat quietly amongst the hummers and I got this GREAT shot.
Jay and the lemur
I finally made it to Adventures In Birds to replenish the dwindling supply of bird treats at the house.
I took some time to visit the show room and I was pounced upon by a free-roaming lemur!
They’re very cute but I think owning a pet with opposable thumbs would present it’s own unique set of problems we are not prepared to deal with.
When the rain comes
My best friend Jim has come over to ride out the storm with us.
We are starting to get some rain and wind. Jim and I decided to sit in the yard and play some songs.
The neighbors all got a real kick out of that.
There is a bit of a party atmosphere. We are all hanging out, drinking wine and beer. Telling jokes and marvelling at the sky.
Hurricane Rita Preparations
Water, flashlights, batteries, radio, propane, camp stove: CHECK!
Non-perishable food items: CHECK!
Freshly baked, homemade oatmeal raisin cookies: CHECK AND CHECK!
Hurricane Rita – Early warnings
Broke out the propane camp stove and sorted out the existing supplies like canned soup and so forth.
I went to the HEB to lay in some extra supplies. They are sold out of bottled water, most soups are gone, crunchy and fat free peanut butter is all the graces the shelves. People are still mostly calm but it’s jammed in the dry good isles. No one’s stealing from other people carts (yet). Topped of the gas tank in the Honda. Lines at the gas station are 2-3 cars deep.
It’s only Tuesday. If you are going to ride it out you should think about shopping soon.
We also took pictures of the house and our valuables as documentation for insurance purposes should the need arise.
More bird news
We were watching the hummingbird feeder this afternoon expecting to see our migrating little friends.
As I went into the kitchen Cynthia exclaimed loudly “Oh my god! What the heck is that?”
When I got to the window I did not immediately see what she was talking about but I spotted it shortly.
I had never seen one before and never expected to see one down here in Texas feeding at the hummingbird feeder, but there it was…
a Baltimore Oriole.
