Sat 02.28.09 - My Mom and I decided to drive up and explore Lake Havasu City to combat "cabin fever" this afternoon, as we drove north on the Arizona Hwy. 95, I decided to stop at the Bill Williams Wildlife Reserve "scenic view" spot for photos. Scenic it was.
All photos taken with Ms. Jen's Nokia N95 and stitched together with Fireworks.
Sorry about the lack of updates the last few days, but we have gotten into a bit of a routine here in Parker, Arizona, and blogging from the computer has not been apart of it.
The Backstory: A week ago Friday, I drove out to Phoenix to see my Dad, Cam, in the hospital as he had had a bad work accident 2 days previously that resulted in 3 broken ribs & a ruptured spleen & a bruised lung plus scalp lacerations. Last Sunday he was released, and my brother Joe and I drove him back to his home in Parker, AZ, which is across the street from my brother's vacation place. My Mom joined us on Monday and my brother left on Wednesday. My mom and I have been filling our days with making sure Cam is comfortable, hiking/exploring, and cooking. Lots of cooking.
The Cam Update: After his naughty escape morning on Monday to go have coffee with a crony, Cam has been mostly sleeping and resting. His ribs and spleen are quite painful and he was quite weak most of the week. Yesterday was his first follow up appointment with his primary care physician here in Parker. Basically, he is on bed and other forms of no work / no activity rest for four weeks. Due to the nature of the fall that caused him to fall, he does need to have a follow up ultrasound next week at the local hospital.
All in all, Cam is slowly on the mend but is still in a lot of pain, esp. when he moves. He spends most of his time sleeping and lying down watching TV. He is allowed to walk short distances, so he has been walking across the street for dinner with us. Mom and I have been bringing him his breakfast coffee so that he is not tempted to go out and about again.
How long will we be here? We decided after yesterday's doctor appointment and how wiped out Cam was after returning, that we would stay for at least another 4 days and reevaluate on Tuesday, March 2nd.
As I noted before, I have no phone reception at my brother's place, so please either leave me a phone message and SpinVox will email it to me or email me and then I will call you back on Skype or I will walk about 1/2 a mile away in the Keys were I do have reception.
Thanks for your kind Tweets, emails, prayers, and thoughts. Y'all rock.
Mon 02.23.09 - The rear guard / back up troops have arrived... Mom and Scruffy pulled into my brother's place in Parker, AZ, around 5pm or thereabouts today. My mom kindly agreed to come out to Parker to help me keep Cam resting and taking care of himself.
Which is a very good thing, since when I walked out of Joe's house this morning to go across the street to my dad's place to check on him, I found my dad in one of his crony's trucks about to take off to go to have coffee. Grrrr....
While it seemed like a good idea after a night's rest, when Cam returned from the jaunt, he was much worse for the wear and more willing to go back to his bed and nap. When Mom showed up, she told him that if he didn't behave that she would get a electronic dog training collar for him and set up a perimeter. She was only half joking.
On the Vicksburg Rd from the I-10 to Parker, AZ.
In fabulously typical American hospital fashion, my Dad is being released this morning. Campbell gets to keep his spleen, which is good news, but it is still ruptured though healing.
Right now, Joe and I are packing up the hotel room, going to run a few errands, and then go pick up Cam from the hospital and drive him home to Parker.
I am going to stay in Parker at my brother's house there for a week or so to watch over my Dad and make sure he is sleeping, resting, taking deep breaths, and generally taking care of himself. My Mom is going to join me tomorrow evening and stay with me for the week.
Please do continue to pray for his healing, as it will be a couple weeks before Cam is able to resume daily life.
Also, email me if you want to get a hold of me rather than call, as AT&T wireless has little to no reception in Parker, AZ.
Sat 02.21.09 - Cam didn't want to eat his chicken pot pie.
Thanks to all of you for your support emails, phone calls, and DMs on Twitter! Y'all rock.
My dad is still in the hospital in Phoenix for observation. His spleen was ruptured in the fall and the hospital folk are watching to determine if the internal bleeding has stopped or if they need to remove the spleen. It is best to keep it if possible, given that the spleen is a necessary organ for blood filtering and the immune system.
The good news is that he was moved from ICU to a regular hospital room this morning. Yesterday, I had a small chat the nurse, but do to another emergency in the trauma unit, I was not able to speak to the doctor. The nurse was fairly confident that if several blood levels remained the same or lowered, that they would not need to remove the spleen and that Cam would be able to go home sooner rather than later.
Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.
My dad, Cam, decided to accidentally test his flying squirrel impersonation yesterday from a high ladder on to some concrete. Needless to say, it did not go well.
In typical Hanen fashion, he decided to see if he could wait it out and didn't call for help until this morning.
He is currently at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, AZ, with 4 broken ribs, a bruised lung, a bleeding spleen, and a cracked head. My brother and I are driving out to Phoenix tonight tomorrow to be with our dad.
If you are the praying type, your prayers are highly appreciated. If you are not the praying type, please do a get well dance for my dad in the location of your choice.
Update: Thur. 02.19.09 9:33pm - My dad is in Emergency ICU at Good Samaritan in Phoenix. I will be driving out early in the morning and my brother will follow later after a work obligation is over.
My dad and I have talked 2x today and he texted me once this evening, but the hospital will not put me through.
If you want updates, please watch my twitter steam.
Wed 02.18.09 - Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 while walking the dogs.
On the night of the U.S. Presidential Inauguration, Tues. Jan. 20, 2009, musician and hostess extraordinaire Kerry Getz threw an Inauguration party and House Concert at her place on Balboa Island. It was a lovely party and the music was amazing. I tried to get a round of the Beatles "Here Comes the Sun" going, but we didn't get very far, though all the musicians who played were delightful.
As Steve and Lobelia Lawson were playing their set, I video'd one of the songs with the Nokia N82 and one with the Nokia N85. I then took the movie files, unaltered, and uploaded them to Vimeo, and have now embedded both mobile videos above for you to watch and determine if the Nokia N82 or the Nokia N85 wins for best picture, sound, and all around video quality. I hand held both mobiles, there was no external microphones or lighting to aid the videos.
What you see & hear is what you get from the Nokia N82 and the Nokia N85. What do you think? Which mobile wins the video wars?
Mon 02.16.09 - A candle shrine inside La Placita Church.
Yesterday, I took Steve Marshall on a curated tour of Los Angeles; by curated, I mean sites picked by me as interesting, opposed the usual Santa Monica, Venice, Hollywood and Beverly Hills tour of LA. The most delightful parts of our day were visiting the La Placita Church and Union Station.
I have loved Union Station since I was a child, but yesterday was the first time I stepped into La Placita, the oldest church in Los Angeles. The interior reminded me of a smaller version of San Thome in Chennai, as both churches were fairly plain inside* and just as delightful.
From Explore El Pueblo de Los Angeles:
Directly across Main Street from the Plaza, La Placita Church is the oldest Catholic Church in Los Angeles. It was first established in 1784 as a chapel. Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles (Our Lady Queen of the Angeles Church) or Old Plaza Church as it is also known was completed in 1822.
19th Century Photos of La Placita from Wikipedia:
A photo of the church from 1869
A photo by W.H. Jackson from the 1890s
My Flickr photoset from yesterday's Photowalk.
Los Angeles - At least one facet thereof. Union Station.
All my photos from today are unfit for the screen, mostly photos of the dogs in motion and blurred. The day was mostly gray, so the photo taking possibilities were limited.
This weekend has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster and energy drain. I did have a lovely lunch today at Open Sesame in Belmont Shore with my sister, Allison. And I have been working on a project that I am almost ready to unveil but not quite yet. Maybe an hour or two away, but it won't happen tonight.
Thus, Happy Quiet Sunday. Tomorrow is President's Day.
Sat 02.14.09 - In the parking lot of the Lakewood First Baptist Church before David Andrew Golz's memorial service. Much love and big hugs to all of the Golz family.
Thur 02.12.09 - Or the Nokia N95 is back in action.
Wed 02.12.09 - The Nokia viNe project N82 has been decommissioned. I will be sad to see it go back to WOM World, as the Nokia N82 is my absolutely favorite camera phone to date.
I am back on my Nokia N95 until after SXSW, when I will buy my very own black N82.
Photo of Scruffy McDoglet guarding, very diligently, a plate of apple slices taken with a Nokia N82 on Tue. 02.12.09
A year ago today, I was taking a plane from Chennai to Bangalore and then having a good walk around Bangalore with Mohan.
Over a year ago, I signed up for Nokia's Sports Tracker in preparation for the Urbanista Diaries trip. I created a public account that would feed into the Urbanista Diaries web interface at the nseries.com website and then I used the same account for the Nokia viNe project, as well as all kinds of photo walks & drives in between Urbanista and Nokia viNe. I also have a private Sports Tracker account, also started a year ago, for tracking my walks around my neighborhood that for privacy's sake I don't want public.
About a month ago or so, when I tried to log into Sports Tracker, I was prompted to either merge my Sports Tracker account with my Nokia account or to create a Nokia account. So, I did. I merged my public Sports Tracker account with my public Nokia account. I also created a new account on Nokia for my private Sports Tracker account.
Much to my chagrin, I can log in to both Nokia's Ovi and Sports Tracker with my private account and I can log into Ovi with my public account but I cannot log into Sports Tracker or Nokia viNe with my public account.
A week ago, I used the feedback form on Sports Tracker to explain the problem and ask for help. I have yet to hear back.
I am frustrated on several accounts:
1) Don't ask me to merge accounts and then not let me be able to log in.
2) No, I am not going to make a new public account, as then I lose a year's worth (a YEAR!) of data, photos, and video that I can't log into and access or edit or delete or add titles to or... Yes, it is still readable and viewable, but if I can't log in & edit the data, then it is being held hostage on the Nokia servers.
3) Tomorrow I have to send the Nokia viNe project Nokia N82 back to WOM World and I have ALL of January's journeys trapped on the N82 mobile because I can't upload them to Sports Tracker or Nokia viNe, which means that I have downloaded the photos to my computer via the cable, but I have not been able to upload the geo-tagged paths/journeys to the server. This frustrates me, as I can take my 4GB micro SD chip out of the Nokia N82 before I ship it back, but when I put it into my old school N95, I still won't be able to upload the journeys/paths to the server, as the server won't recognize my login. This means no Punk Rock Bowling or the rest of January 2009 photos & videos on Nokia viNe.
4) If I an early adopter and someone who has been using the service for over a year can't log in to my account and can't get anyone to reply to my help request, what happens to all the new customers who Nokia wants to have use the Nokia web services? Nokia, please put a consistent, across all your web services, community support in place to help customers troubleshoot their problems that neither a FAQ nor forum can help.
Has anyone else been frozen out of their Sports Tracker or Nokia viNe accounts after merging the account with their Nokia / Ovi account? If so, please comment and let me know how you solved the problem. Thanks a big bunch!
Tue 02.10.09 - As seen driving on PCH, photo taken with a Nokia N82.
If you are like me, you have found your web browsing managed by a feed reader that alerts you when web sites, blogs, and other subscription based web spaces make an update. But not every web site out there in the big wide world of the web has a subscription or a feed available... Shock! Horror! How 1999!
So, I have a few bookmarked that I like to visit but for various reasons they aren't on my feed reader or don't have a feed be it atom or rss or rdf or feedburner.
My favorite non-feed web site that I check every day is the Interactive Global Composite Weather Satellite Images page from NASA. This page allows me to see the most recent set of satellite images from the Pacific and see what weather is coming California's way. It also allows me to see the Pacific Ocean and the nations on its rim as a whole rather than a set of disjointed far away places. Truly fun and lovely.
Best of all, you can animate up to the last 30 satellite images to see how the storms are tracking across the Pacific. The only sad thing is that due to various weather satellite agreements, most of Europe, Asia, and Africa are blacked out. Grrr... Give me the whole globe!
What websites do you go to every day that are not in your feed reader, so you either have them bookmarked or actually type out the URL old school style?
The year I lived in Ireland, for grad school, I had an account with Vodafone IE. The only thing that I really like about Vodafone IE, other than they had the best data coverage all around Ireland in 2005-2006, was the web based sms/text messaging.
Everyone who had a Vodafone account, be it a pay as you go or a monthly tariff, could log into the Vodafone IE website and send up to 300 texts a month from their web based account area free of charge. This was a win-win for both Vodafone and for the customer. A win for Vodafone in that their customers were logging into their web site daily, if not staying logged in the whole time they were at a computer. And a big win for the customer, esp. the pay as you go folks, as they got 300 free sms/texts a month if they were logged in to their account on the Vodafone website.
I wish AT&T in the US would have this. I hate texting. Really, I do. I hate sending texts and I hate receiving them. I mostly hate receiving them as it means I am obligated to reply. I am phone call and email kind-of-gal, but I have plenty of friends and family members whose first preference of communication is sms/text.
If AT&T would give me 300 free texts to any mobile phone, and not just another AT&T subscriber, a month if I was logged into my account on wireless.att.com, then as a person who is at her computer all day & most nights, I would send a lot more texts. It would be convenient to send them from a full keyboard and I wouldn't feel frustrated. AT&T could have the win of having my eyes on their site more than the once a month log in that I do now to pay my bill.
How about AT&T? Other than setting up the interface on the customer's account front page and having a link to the sms gateway set up, it would give ou all a big payoff. Plenty of us would run over our free 300 and then you would have another revenue stream. Right now you all have a half-assed send an SMS to only one another AT&T subscriber that is hidden in a menu, why not do it right, do it big, do it to any mobile phone? Or even allow more than one recipient at a time?
Skype now has sms/text that I can send from my Mac's desktop to any other mobile phone in the world for only 9¢, so why don't you?
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Sat 02.07.09 - Plus the nearly full moon rising, as a bonus to today's amazing turnaround from pouring rain this morning to very gorgeous this afternoon.
Sat 02.07.09 - Make Magazine's profile of sculptor Reuben Margolin's beautiful wave creations. More of Make's videos at their You Tube channel.
This week when the press was nattering on in headlines about Michael Phelps getting caught smoking a bong at a party, I thought, "Michael who?"
This shows you how much I pay attention to sports. It took me about 2 hours to remember that Mr. Phelps was an Olympic athlete. My next thought was, "Why does anyone care if he smokes pot? Isn't he like 22?"
I would be more concerned if he was shooting steroids to improve his athletic performance than smoking a drug that is known to make folks couch potatoes. Really, people, think of the headlines, "Famed Olympic Swimmer Caught on a 3am Run to Dunkin Donuts for a 24 Pack of Donut Holes." vs. a headline like "Famed American Male Swimmer Looking Oddly Like 1970s East German Women's Swimming Team."
While I do not like marijuana and I really don't care to be around anyone smoking it, as the smoke is a migraine headache trigger for me; and as the daughter of a parent who has smoked it for years, I don't tend not respect regular users, but... but... but...
Really, America, it is time to legalize and tax this stupid-making herb. If we allow Colt 45 to be sold at liquor stores and the state of California makes a tax off of it, then a dime bag of pot should also be sold and taxed.
Why do I think this? As long as this drug is illegal our prisons are full, our national parks are being raped by greedy drug farming capitalists, and we are losing tons of tax dollars to drug lords and cartels who are holding many cities north & south of the border hostage.
We have not set up Sequoia National Park to be a place for the Mexican Cartels to grow marijuana and trash the land, we set up Sequoia to preserve a unique biosphere on the western Sierras. When I first read in 2005 in the LA Times of the cartels slashing & burning oak forest to grow marijuana for the illegal drug trade, I was FURIOUS.
I was even more furious that the US government has known about this since at least 2003 (from the LA Times article), even though they chose to ignore it:
Sequoia Kings Canyon spokesperson Alexandra Picavet thinks the drug debate has kept the problem from getting traction. "People get blinded by the marijuana issue.... We don't want people planting asparagus on the land, either. This is agricultural assault on a national park, no matter what they're growing."Lawmakers say the issue is crowded out by more pressing matters. This year's federal drug-control strategy did not address pot cultivation on public land. And the Sierra Club acknowledges other priorities than drug bandits.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), whose district includes Sequoia National Park, called hearings on the marijuana incursion in 2003. He says the issue is under the radar for most lawmakers in Washington.
"They don't even know that it exists.... People don't think about it," Nunes says.
The pot growers are no longer the stereotype of hapless hippies. They are part of sophisticated criminal organizations schooled on the Colombian cartels' economy of scale, says Ruzzamenti. "They do things big. Even if you lose a little here, you'll make it up in the long run. They've taken this lesson to another level," he says.
Most of the ringleaders, say investigators, are U.S. nationals based in Southern California with connections to cartel families in Michoacán, Mexico; field workers are well-armed Mexican laborers.
"We've found AR-15s, shotguns, rifles, knives strapped to poles, crude crossbows," says J.D. Swed, chief ranger at Sequoia.
It is high time that we allow American farmers to legally grown the herb - let's help set them free from Monsanto & Number 2 corn - and for the US & various states to make a little tax money. Let's make it cheap enough that there is no incentive for drug cartels to rape our national parks and to be involved at all.
If folks want to get high, let them. Tax the shit and then change the DUI laws to include both alcohol and marijuana influenced equally. Take the tax monies and place it into education and health care. We tax alcohol and cigarettes, let's tax the herb.
We need the money more than the drug cartels do. As for Mr. Phelps, we put him up on the hero pedestal, let's not knock him down off of it for anything less than steroid drug abuse that will effect why we put him on the pedestal in the first place.
It is all Lux's Fault... As a way of saying goodbye and fair passing to Mr. Lux Interior, of The Cramps, I would like to confess that I was a good child with a permissive mother who only ever got grounded 2x in my whole life. First grounding in 1978 was all my sister's fault, and the second grounding in 1982 was all Lux Interior's fault.
The Nun's Story - On Sister Corita's design, art, and printmaking work and life.
Postopolis! LA - From Tuesday, March 31, to Saturday, April 4, 2009, lasting from 5pm to 11pm each day, in a location to be confirmed very soon, we're bringing art, architecture, music, film, design, planning, politics, sci-fi, special effects, geology, history, lost rivers, futurism, and archaeology to Los Angeles, that city of tar pits and movie stars, of beaches, landslides, and mountain lion attacks, of universities and parking lots, of real estate speculation and individualized automotive fractality, city of black magic, mass murder, and abandoned swimming pools, military simulation labs, Die Hard and plate tectonics. City of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, of ecologies, gravel pits, and infrastructure.
Rather than treat you all to my annual Groundhog Day's post or my annual St. Bridget of Kildare Day's post, I will say "Happy Birthday!" to my dad, Cam, and regale y'all with my totally lame film watching habits.
Yes, if you know me in IRL, you know that I live without a TV and maybe see a movie a year, until recently when I decided to get a Netflix subscription to watch on my laptop while I code and to ostensibly get caught up on the films I have wanted to see but never did. It is slow going, mostly because I receive the DVDs from Netflix, put them on a shelf, never open then, feel guilty about 6 weeks later, and then mail them back unwatched. Netflix, unrelentingly, keeps sending me more. Bastards.
Tonight, after finishing up work, and making dinner, I decided to actually open the "Amelie" Netflix packet and watch it. Amelie is every bit as delightful as folks have proclaimed it to be and more.
It is a perfect movie. A very singular vision. The color is beautiful. I love how stylized it is, in conception and in each scene. The story is delightful. I love mischievous heroines.
I may even watch it again before sending it back to the folks at the Netflix distribution center.
On the Groundhog Day's note: according to Punxsutawney Phil this morning, we will have another 6 weeks of winter. But NYC's Bloomberg biting Charles Hogg, is predicting an early spring. Regardless of winter or spring, California needs about 12 more weeks of rain and snow to get us out of the current drought. P. Phil, how is your rain predicting abilities?
Happy Candlemas | St. Bridget's Day | Groundhog Day!
Sun. Feb. 1, 2009 - It has become quite the thing to tilt-shift one's photos and make them look like architectural miniatures. Recently, I came across a tilt-shift maker and decided to try a photo or two.
Due to my style of photography, most of my photos were not successful, at least to my eye, when rendered in the tilt-shift mode. Except the above photo of a red white & blue curb in Kilkeel (or possibly Ballymartin - sorry I didn't geotag this photo at the time due to driving when I took it).
This photo was taken during the Around Ireland mobile / geo-photo project in the summer of 2006. I made many trips to Northern Ireland that summer, as I was attempted to suss out as much of the real NorIE from all the tales as possible.
Frankly, the Unionist towns CREEPED me out. They mean to. All that red, white and blue is meant to give the viewer a big case of the creeps. It is meant to keep you in line. It is meant to let you know who is boss.
The painted curbs and buildings, the Union Jack flags, the flags posted on light poles and painted on bridges in certain towns. It is all meant to send a sign. To the let the viewer and visitor know who rules this town.
Thus, the tilt-shift is perfect for this photo as the whole perspective becomes even more tilted than the drive by tilt already in the photo (taken at driving speed) and the tilt-shift technique blurs/focuses, and miniaturizes the objects in the photo. Just like sectarianism does for people's perspectives and lives.
Most of Northern Ireland is delightful. I have been back since 2006 to take my mom to NorIE, as her grandfather was from Ulster and much of my father's people were from Newry and surrounds. This is the land many of my people came from. I felt at home in much of the north. Except the towns with the red, white, and blue.
Fast forward to the recent U.S. election season. All the red, white and blue this election seemed darker and slightly creepy this past year, as if America was blurred and focused on a small dot, tilted in all the wrong places, and miniaturized in all the wrong ways. The emphasis on patriotism with out reflection, lock step to the party.
America, we have fought long and hard for our freedom, let's not fall down the dark, myopic hole of sectarian, partisanship. The flag is only a sign, a symbol, not an idol to worship. Let's take the opportunity of a new beginning to work together.
Original photo taken by Ms. Jen on 07.15.06 with her Nokia N80 while driving north in County Down on the Newry Rd to Belfast.
As a small note: I am neither Republican of the Irish or American variety, nor am I an Unionist of the Irish or American variety.
Sun. 02.01.09 - My cousin Katy at the Equine Affair at the Pomona Fairplex this afternoon.
