Author Archives: dr.hypercube

Earworm

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I first heard this song on the radio about a week and a half ago and almost drove off the road – alternately tapping out the beat on the steering wheel and laughing. The backstory is here on Wikipedia – I also guess from the dates on the wiki entry that this is a whole lot of no news for any readers on the other side of the Atlantic. Three things I love about this – the beat (yeah, I know, simple), the growl in her voice, and the tubular bells/chimes. Amy Winehouse sings Rehab:

Update – live version substituted – BIG hair & BIG voice!
Another update – added the music video version back – I missed the chimes and electrons are cheap (it’s YouTube’s bandwidth).

Photo dump

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… or more posts about buildings and food. Some pictures from a trip to Brooklyn my son and I took to attend a new student’s day at Pratt Institute. While in Brooklyn I reconnected with a good friend who I’d fallen out of touch with – we all went out for BBQ and had a good time. I’m sad that E and I haven’t talked in a long time, but very happy that the lull is over.

A couple pictures of what I think counts as the lower end of Park Slope:

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I liked the odd brickwork and 60’s vibe on this front:

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And some pictures from the Pratt campus. Great late 19th/early 20th century architecture and a ton of interesting outdoor art (who woulda thunk it – art school and all).

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Eggs

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There were (and are) people who collected eggs. Not chicken eggs, but eggs from songbirds, raptors, cranes, waterfowl, and they did not collect casually, but voraciously, obsessively. A friend and coworker inherited a collection and he displays it to inform people about the practice and it’s effects. I took a few pictures of a representative sample today.

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Shed a tear for Martha, the last of a very gregarious species, as she waited out her time in the Cincinnati zoo almost a hundred years ago. Not her’s, but it is a passenger pigeon’s egg:

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I’m prone to wax a little, well, obsessive over bits of nature and outdoor pursuits; I am relieved to report that this mania does absolutely nothing for me, except to make me sad and a little wistful. Others continue the chase – bah!

Light box

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Via the Make: blog, I discovered this great post on building a $10 macro photo studio. I liked the idea a lot; I have some gadgets I want to unload via eBay (good pictures help sell) and there are many other things – flowers, shells, bugs, etc. – that I’d like to take decent pictures of. I invested approximately $7, most of which went for a pad of tracing paper, and ended up with:

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It may not look like much, but I’ve already used it a couple time and even poorly lit (one compact fluorescent on a gooseneck) it does a surprising job. Stay tuned for a few pictures…