Artist booth at the 2006 Bayou City Art Festival
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Camera: Sony Alpha 100
Lens: Tamron AF 28-75mm f2.8 XR Di
F-Stop: F/4.0
ISO: 100
Focal length: 50mm
Not just Friday the 13th – THE Friday the 13th
On this day in history – Friday, Oct. 13th, 1307
Jacques Demolay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, and and 60 of his senior knights were invited by King Philip IV of France and The Pope to Paris for a meeting. Under the ruse of this meeting Jacques Demolay and his knights were arrested and later tried and executed as heretics.
It’s a fascinating story.
Goodbye Texas Renaissance Festival, we hardly knew ye
As we are in the heart of the Texas Renaissance Festival season I must confess I am of two minds about not being hired this year.
One the one hand I have the entire series of fall weekends to myself. That means we get to play the Austin Celtic Festival and I can go to the Airshow and the Quilt Festival and do all those things I have been deprived of in the fall as a result of 15+ years of dedication and sacrifice to the festival.
But there are things I miss. There are some very good memories tied up in that experience.
I was poking round the Internets and I found some pictures someone took that time Istanpitta pranked us by dressing as us and parodying the Flu Pandemic a few years ago.
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Seeing Sahira dressed as Joe was about the most ridiculously funny thing I have ever had the opportunity to behold.
Geek Gathering
Last Friday’s Geek Gathering was a near miss for me. I completely spaced and almost forgot to attend the very event I organized. It’s not the heat, it’s the senility.
I arrived fashionably late to Tropioca to find a few gathered geeks. Groovehouse, KD5, Barrett and a few others scattered about. Glad to see it going on without me.
After a bit phliKtid showed followed shortly by Jamie who was on her cell phone and apparently being asked a technical question. Groovehouse and phliKtid came to her rescue with an Internet connected laptop.
There was much keyboard clacking and tongues clucking as information was relayed via the phone to Jamie to Groovehouse and phliKtid and then input into the computer. Answers were found and relayed back via the computer to human to phone to human interface.
Success!
I’m glad I managed to show up as we had a special guest come and hang out with us.
Long time friend, Fish fan and award winning Houston blogger Charles Kuffner of Off The Kuff fame.
It appears that technology and politics mix quite nicely over dessert and bubble tea.
Punk Rock!
I have no idea who these guys are. They were playing at the Continental Club Saturday night and I stopped to snap a few pics but did not stick around. You gotta love the hair.
I mean, seriously.
Turntable
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Sony Alpha 100
50mm 1.4 Sony lens
ISO: 1600
Complete XIF data
Heron
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Sony Alpha 100
Lens: Tamron AF 28-75mm f2.8 XR Di
Focal length: 75mm
Aperature: 3.2
ISO: 400
Full XIF datahere
Houston Zoo
Saturday the weather was being quite cooperative so we made and excursion the Houston Zoological Gardens.
Although we had recently been to the zoo for Cynthia’s snake encounter, we did not really see much else as it was VERY hot and, as a result, not conducive to hanging around for anything outside of the air-conditioned reptile house. This meant that I still “owed” Cynthia a trip.
I really like some of the recent changes/additions, especially the Meerkat exhibit.
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It was fun watching these guys. At one point they all dived for cover as a sparrow swooped into the enclosure. I guess they thought it was a hawk. That probably explains the look on one their faces as it contemplated a helicopter that was slowly flying over the zoo.