«Series Title Standardizations»

I decided to go back and edit the post titles of a few of my post series. It occurred to me that they were not in any way standardized.

• Caturday usually just had the word "Caturday" somewhere in the title.
• Cruise Ship Watch used a colon separator.
• Motivational Monday used a hyphen as a separator.
• Musical Taste had the longer name of "Insight Into My Musical Taste" followed by "Part #", it didn't even say the artist name in the title.

Now they are all standardized to use a colon as a separator, [Series Name]: [Post Name]. So I didn't need to change the cruise ship ones (because they were already organized that way). If you are subscribed to my webfeed, depending on what reader you use it might be all mixed up now. It happens when you update old posts sometimes. Not much I can do about it.

I had a hard time deciding exactly what I was going to use as a separator. I liked both the colon and the hyphen. What ultimately made up my mind is Blogger uses a colon to separate the name of the blog from the post title, so I figured I'd keep to that.

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«Spore E3 08 Trailer»

Spore E308 Trailer


Seems like it's taking September 7th a long time to get here...

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«Weather Warnings and Advisories Around Alaska»

Rain, wind... It's what the weather has been around here yesterday and today. Last night had some gusts that shook the house a bit. We had a wind advisory for yesterday.

So, can you guess what I did yesterday in the rain and wind? I suited up in rain gear and rode my bike about 30 miles. I rode to the end of the road South of town, out to the Beaver Falls Power House. That's about 15 miles one-way from my mom's place. It took me about 3 hours round-trip. I have now officially rode my bike from one end of the road to the other on this island. Just not all at once. There were a couple of times a gust of wind hit me and nearly stopped me dead in my tracks.

Out of curiosity, I checked to see what other warnings and advisories were around the state. Turns out there were quite a few. Most of the state is rainy and windy all along the coastline; from here all the way up and around to the Arctic Ocean. There were many small craft (boat) advisories, although it looks like we were the only area with a land wind advisory. There were a few flood advisories around and to the East of Fairbanks. Oh, and an ashfall advisory in the area of Dutch Harbor and Unalaska (Unalaska, Alaska has got to be one of the more unusual city names).

The ashfall advisory is because the Okmok volcano has been erupting since July 12th. When it first erupted it sent a plume of ash 50,000 feet into the air. By July 17th the sulfur dioxide gas from the initial eruption made it to Montana. It's continuing to erupt, sending ash up to 30,000 feet and there has been frequent seismic activity in the area. You never hear of all the volcanoes and earthquakes (at least 46 earthquakes yesterday, largest being 5.04) in Alaska because they usually don't occur near a populated area.

See the rest of “Weather Warnings and Advisories Around Alaska”»

«Motivational Monday: Teamwork»

That pretty much explains it...

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«Flight of the Pigeons»

On the 25th when I was out photographing a few ships, I happened across an empty lot where someone had thrown some bird seed out. I'm glad I had my camera. Needless to say, I had a little fun with the pigeons.

It's tough to photograph a mass of birds. They don't stay in focus very long and they are always moving and shifting. They really move more like an amorphous blob than individual creatures. I even named these photos, for whatever reason. You can use them as desktop backgrounds if you wish. Click an image to view full, they really are better when seen full size.

Flight of the Pigeons. I found out I could get a better picture of them when they were coming back to the seeds rather than flying away.

Blurred Amorphous Mass of Birds. I like how this one turned out, actually. It looks like it is a painting; you can almost see brush strokes in some of the wing feathers.

The Pigeon Gathering. They are all facing toward the center with their tail feathers sticking out. It reminded me of a rock arrangement I photographed for some reason.

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«Cruise Ship Watch: Tahitian Princess»

The Tahitian Princess is in today. Next year they're going to rename it Ocean Princess, to "reflect a more global theme". Just in the time it took me to walk back and get this posted, the sky has significantly clouded up. I can't see any blue anymore... Click the image to view full.

Here's the Tahitian Princess in Ketchikan, Alaska.

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«Caturday: Proceed to Bendin' My Brain»

I'm going to have to get more of these pictures pretty soon...

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«Cruise Ship Watch: Norwegian Pearl, Silver Shadow, and Westerdam»

By now I must be close to having every ship... I've got another one planned for tomorrow, I'll have to look ahead on the schedule after that one to see when the next ship I have to get is. Like a friend of mine said, it's about like a collectible game: "Gotta catch them all!" I wonder if this is what it's like to play that Pokémon Snap game...

Anyway, the ships I photographed today are the Norwegian Pearl, Silver Shadow, and Westerdam. Click an image to view full.

Let's start with the Norwegian Pearl, docked in front of the Ketchikan Visitor Information and Restrooms.

Here's a ship that's not here too often, the Silver Shadow. It has the highest space-to-passenger ratio of any cruise ship.

Here's the Westerdam, taken from the Thomas Basin boat harbor breakwater.

See the rest of “Cruise Ship Watch: Norwegian Pearl, Silver Shadow, and Westerdam”»

«YouTube Bike Thief»

So just how easy is it to steal a bicycle, even if it is locked?

bike thief


That's right. They stole their own bike, some methods were quite bold. The police, however, drive right past the thief and head for the camera man instead. The only concerned citizen helped, rather than reported it.

Granted, unless someone was specifically out to steal a bike they wouldn't be carrying those tools. And a lock is still better than nothing at all.

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«Cruise Ship Watch: Spirit of Endeavour»

One small cruise ship for today's Cruise Ship Watch, the Spirit of Endeavour (no wikipedia page). By one ship, I mean one ship I haven't yet photographed for the Cruise Ship Watch series. There were 5 cruise ships in total for today; the Golden Princess, Oosterdam, Statendam, and Sapphire Princess, along with the Spirit of Endeavour. Click the image to view full.

Here's the Spirit of Endeavour docked in Ketchikan, Alaska with the Golden Princess in the background.

See the rest of “Cruise Ship Watch: Spirit of Endeavour”»

«Premature Zombie Apocalypse?»

Response to Why?? on Escape Hatch. It is recommended you go read that first.

Ok, you're back and have read that post on Escape Hatch? If you didn't, that's your problem now...

I really need to pay more attention to the random little things and commit them to memory. It would make for more interesting blog posts. But here's a few "why's" I can remember...

Yesterday I received some Magic: the Gathering cards that I bought on eBay. The envelope they came in was about half covered with a bunch of random 4 cent stamps. It looked like it came from a foreign country (but really it came from Nashville, Tennessee). Why did the seller have so many 4 cent stamps laying around?

I bought 2 hot apple pies at McDonalds yesterday. There was a sticker on the back side of the receipt tape indicating I had won an "instant prize". I got a pretty good deal really: I spent $1.59 (after tax) and got the two hot apple pies I was buying, a couple of coupons for a free cheeseburger and free sundae (my "instant prize"), and an entry into a $50 drawing. Why, or more importantly how did they put that sticker on the receipt tape? Have you ever tried unrolling something like that and then tried to roll it back up perfectly?

Why does it seem like street lights always go out when you approach them? The night before last I rode my bike up to the cemetery. It's pretty dark around there at night, but there's one street light near the war veterans memorial. Any time I came near it, it would go out. After I passed it, it would come back on. I've had street lights go out when I passed them many, many times before; this is just the most recent example. Why do they do that?

Why do people find graveyards spooky at night? Do they really believe the living dead are going to rise out of the ground and begin the zombie apocalypse ahead of schedule? I mean seriously, everyone around you is long dead and six feet under. There's nothing to be afraid of except perhaps tripping on a tombstone.

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«The Problem with Bicyclists and Red Lights»

In all 50 states in the US, bicycles are legal road traffic. In the same respect, bicyclists by law have to follow the rules of the road. It's illegal in most states to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk, including Alaska (in a business district, anyway). This is a law that is not very well enforced or known about, as I see plenty of bicyclists on the sidewalks. Really, I don't know how they do it with all the trees and power poles in the way; there's places that you can't even walk on the sidewalk around here. Well I for one ride on the roads.

Anyway the point being, bicyclists should ride on the roads and are bound by the same laws cars are. The problem with that is the traffic lights do not detect bicycles. It's a bit unfair; we have to follow the rules of the road, but at the same time the road doesn't acknowledge us. There's a coil of wire embedded in the pavement that acts like a metal detector. A bicycle doesn't have enough metal to be detected, so the traffic light never changes for us. I can see this being a bigger issue in the future when car bodies are made of a nonmetallic composite, and engines are made of ceramic (and there will be cars like that someday).

Many times I've had to sit at a red light and wait for a car to come up behind me before the damn light will change. That can take a while at night. Sometimes I end up taking a right and turn around somewhere down the road. The pedestrian push-button is usually not within reach, but that works in the few intersections that it is. Sometimes I wish a bunch of bicyclists would sit over the sensors at a red light and just let the cars back up behind them. Maybe that would get the point across...

I grew up 14 miles North of town, so I didn't have any traffic lights or busy intersections to deal with. I'm getting a little more use to city riding, but I still have trouble with left turns. I'll sit there on the right shoulder waiting for a break in traffic in both lanes. I usually end up having to pass my turn and continue on to an intersection with a street light, turn onto a side road, turn around and go back to the light, and go back the way I came on the main road so I'm in the correct lane to make a right turn to my original destination. It's a real pain and sometimes can take me nearly a mile out of my way. I think I need to start getting more aggressive and pull into the center of the lane when I'm about to do a left turn, stopping traffic if necessary. I'm legal road traffic, after all. That's what hand signals are for.

Do any of you ride a bicycle in town or city traffic? If so, how do you deal with it?

See the rest of “The Problem with Bicyclists and Red Lights”»

«More of the Hopkins Alley Shack»

I changed some very minor things in the way lists (both ordered and unordered) display here. I fixed the ordered lists so they display ordered numbers as they should; before they were indifferent from my unordered lists. I didn't change the unordered lists much at all, just a minor spacing tweak so they'd line up better if they are used alongside ordered lists. I also cleaned up a little in my master CSS file: it's now a whole 1,001 bytes smaller.

I took a few more pictures of that historical piece of crap shack on Hopkins Alley yesterday, just for you... I couldn't just leave it at that single picture. I did a little digging and I found that in 2007 it was assessed at $15,100 (links to a pdf). There's no way it's gone up to $99,900 in value. Click an image to view full.

I scanned the ad I saw for that. I wasn't joking when I said the asking price was $99,900. I outlined it in red.

Here's a picture I took at about the same angle it shows on the ad.

Here's the other side of the shack. You can see how rotted and unstable things are.

And here's the [sarcasm]beautiful[/sarcasm] view the building has. Actually, it's usually not that good even, because the Kubota trackhoe isn't usually there. You know, I wouldn't have trusted the strength of the dock to support that thing.

See the rest of “More of the Hopkins Alley Shack”»

«Motivational Monday: Originality»

I wonder how he got the boot on his head that far?

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«Star Trek Experience Ending»

As the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was named: All Good Things... [...must come to an end.]

The Star Trek Experience in the LasVegas Hilton is going to close. There are no current Star Trek TV shows and interest is falling off. There is a movie due to come out in May 2009, but I don't have high hopes for it. Could this be the end of Star Trek?

I'm what you would call a Trekkie. It's sad to see this happening to Star Trek.

See the rest of “Star Trek Experience Ending”»

«Caturday: Hostile to Your Family»

Magic Missile is a spell from Dungeons & Dragons, if you didn't get the reference.

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«Tales of Mere Procrastination»

Some days are exactly like this...

Tales Of Mere Existence "Procrastination"

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«Clothes Hanger Bracelets (and Photos)»

There's a few pictures I took on the 14th of this month. Click an image to view full.

Here's a picture of the "historical" Hopkins Alley in Ketchikan, Alaska. The buildings are dilapidated and abandoned, the boards of the street are beginning to rot, and it's just plain ugly. But hey, I just saw an ad... You can buy that run-down shack on piling in the left of the picture for just $99,900 and own your very own historical piece of crap.

Gasp! Ok, who dented the billion dollar ship? Here's a couple of dents in the bow of the Sapphire Princess.

Random pigeon on a piling.

Miniature clothes hanger bracelets... Who would have thought?

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«Safeway Wind Power, Not in This Town»

Yesterday I was out taking a few pictures, and I happened to notice this sign on a Safeway fuel station.

Click image to view full

The island that Ketchikan, Alaska is on has its own separate power grid, powered by hydroelectric with diesel as backup. There are no wind turbines in the system, so it's impossible for their claim to be true that the station is powered 100% by wind power.

Just to raise a stink and see what they do, I emailed their Ethics Hotline, informing them of their misleading and false advertisement. I even included these pictures of the station and sign, to show them I have proof. The pictures were taken on July 15th, we'll see when or if the sign is taken down...

Click image to view full

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«Nostalgic Calculator Programs»

I wasn't sure that I'd get that Spirit of Glacier Bay Cruise Ship Watch posted yesterday. Blogger was having issues with uploading images; I kept getting internal error messages. I was ready just to call it quits and try posting it today as my main blog post for the day. Out of frustration more than anything, I decided to try it one last time... And it went through! So I got that posted on time.

Yesterday when I was downtown taking pictures, I ran into Catlin, an old friend I hadn't talked to since we were in high school math classes together (that's why I wasn't around for your lunch break, Trevor). Usually I don't mention names without permission on my blog, but I figured there's no harm with only first names.

You know I have to say, math classes were my most interesting classes in school. I could pretty much ignore the lessons taught in class and still ace the test. That gave me time to discuss theoretical astrophysics with Catlin. Or to write rather unique programs on our Ti-83 plus calculators. I still have a few of those programs. The interesting thing was, the math teacher was ok with what we were doing, he even got into it sometimes.

Heh, I remember one program that the teacher didn't know about... There was this girl that sat in front of us in class, and you could always see her underwear when she sat down. We wrote a program to predict the color of her underwear on any given day. Surprisingly, sometimes it was accurate. If I remember right, it worked off of a pseudo-random number generator. Each color was assigned a number. It would generate a random number, and give certain numbers more weight (more likely to be randomly chosen) depending on how often she wore the corresponding color. Interesting thing about a program like that is the more data you input, the more accurate it gets. So it would get better every day. No, that's not one of the programs I still have. I think we abandoned it when the seating chart was changed.

Now a-days, I don't even remember how to program on the calculator. I've moved on to greater things.

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«Cruise Ship Watch: Spirit of Glacier Bay»

This Cruise Ship Watch is a bit unique. Usually I combine all the cruise ships I photographed in a day into one post. Usually I get cruise ships when they're in service and have passengers aboard. Usually I just put up one picture per ship. This is the exception all-around. I present to you, the Spirit of Glacier Bay. Click an image to view full.

Spirit of Glacier Bay with the yellow oil containment boom.

This is the ship I spoke of earlier that ran aground, and it's here in Ketchikan, Alaska for repairs at the shipyard. You can see in the photos, they have a yellow oil containment boom surrounding the ship. It also must be taking on water still, because you can see that the bilge pumps are running.

Let me explain the reasons behind a few of the exceptions:

1. I had already posted the Cruise Ship Watch for July 14th (today) by the time I took these pictures. I try not to edit posts too much once I publish them.
2. I thought one photo wasn't enough to show everything I wanted to point out.
3. I wasn't sure when the next time would be that this ship would be in town and in service again.

Anyway, here's the other pictures...

Spirit of Glacier Bay, awaiting repairs at the Ketchikan shipyard.

Water from the bilge pumps on the Spirit of Glacier Bay.

See the rest of “Cruise Ship Watch: Spirit of Glacier Bay”»

«Cruise Ship Watch: Carnival Spirit and Sapphire Princess»

Two ships in today that I haven't previously photographed, the Carnival Spirit and Sapphire Princess. It's actually quite amazing how many ships go through Ketchikan. Before, I've always figured it was the same few ships over and over, kinda like the Norwegian Star has been this year. However, since I've been keeping track for this series, I've realized there's a ton of different ships that come here.

And yes, the Norwegian Star was one of the ships in today, again. Seems like that ship is always here. Click an image to view full.

Carnival Spirit, docked in Ketchikan and unloading passengers. It had just arrived about half an hour before this picture was taken.

Sapphire Princess in Ketchikan, Alaska.

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«Motivational Monday: Caps Lock»

ALL CAPS IS ANNOYING. DON'T DO IT!!!1111!!ONE11!
Oops, sorry...


Ever notice how the last part of license agreements and privacy policies are always in all caps? Why is that? It just makes it more difficult to read; and they don't need to be any more difficult to read than they already are.

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«Spirit of Glacier Bay Repairs»

Flooding Forces Grounded Cruise Ship To Reroute

The Spirit of Glacier Bay had to go to Wrangell for emergency repairs. It didn't even make it here to Ketchikan for repairs. It's a small cruise ship (like the Spirit of '98). Last week it ran aground in Glacier Bay, the place it was named after.

From another news article, it looks like they've patched the crack in the hull well enough to get it here. I had missed taking a picture of it on May 13th for my Cruise Ship Watch series; perhaps I can get a picture of it in the shipyard, lol.

See the rest of “Spirit of Glacier Bay Repairs”»

«Caturday: Laptop Pwitty Wet (200th Post)»

I don't know... I just don't want every Caturday to have the exact same title. Oh, buy the way, this is post number 200 for my blog.

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«Musical Taste: Evanescence»

Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

A series I started a while ago, I haven't forgotten or completed it. It's an on-going series. In it, I basically give example of music I like, one band at a time. (With he exception of number 8, I did that one a little different)

So this one is dedicated to Evanescence. The videos are official music videos.

Evanescence - Everybody´s Fool


Evanescence - Sweet Sacrifice


Evanescence - Lithium

See the rest of “Musical Taste: Evanescence”»

«Human Mirror»

Improv Everywhere, the same group that did the Frozen Grand Central and Food Court Musical have made a human mirror aboard a train. They had identical twins sitting across from each other.

Human Mirror

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«Search and Page Edit»

I've added a search box at the top of the sidebar. I'm using the Google Custom Search feature. I can include whatever sites I want, or the entire web. I chose to make it search only my site. I figured you can go to Google if you want to search the entire web. Before, if you wanted to search just my site, you'd have to type in the following along with your query in Google.

site:http://mastermarf.blogspot.com OR site:http://mastermarf.googlepages.com
 

Now, you can just type your query directly into the search box in the sidebar. If you think I should change it to search the entire web, feel free to say so in the comments.

On a different note, here's a nifty little thing I ran across, copy the code below.

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0
 

Now paste it into the address bar and hit enter. Looks like nothing happened? (Well, ok, the colors of links will change to your browser's default color, in most cases blue.) Try to edit the text anywhere on the page like you would in a word processor. Pretty cool, eh? You can do this on any web page. The site I found it on said it's been tested to work in Firefox and Internet Explorer. So if you are not using one of those it may or may not work for you.

Of course, you're not actually editing the page. You're not going to be able re-write my blog and expect others to see your version; unless you take a screenshot that is. All you're doing is editing the text in your browser's memory. When you refresh the page it will restore the original text. I had better not see any Master Barf screenshots now...

This just goes to show that you can't trust screenshots; even if they haven't been edited in Photoshop.

See the rest of “Search and Page Edit”»

«Noir»

One flash animation that seems to haunt my random thoughts is Mr. Happy Face. Oh, look... Someone put it on YouTube. So now it can haunt your thoughts as well.

Mr. Happy Face


There is an old series of flash animations I watched back in the day that comes to mind every now and then. Salad Fingers, set in a post-apocalyptic world after some "great war". The main character has gone insane (to say the least)... The first episode is a little off, at least more so than the others. They're not available on YouTube because of copyright infringement, but you can watch them from the website.

This one is one of my favorite flash animations, deep in the realm of noir. If you don't smile like the rest of the crowd, you're punished. There's a lot of hidden meaning in this video.

Smile!

See the rest of “Noir”»

«Cruise Ship Watch: Seven Seas Mariner and Ryndam»

Two ships in today that I have not photographed before for my blog, the Seven Seas Mariner and Ryndam. Click an image to view full (I wounder how many times I've typed that phrase now).

The Seven Seas Mariner coming in to dock. If you look closely, they don't even have any lines to the dock yet. You can also see a bit of turbulence from their thrusters at the rear of the ship.

The Ryndam docked in Ketchikan, Alaska.

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«Motivational Monday: Relationships»

So very true...

See the rest of “Motivational Monday: Relationships”»

«And That's Life»

I Guess You'll Do

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«Caturday: Said Curiosity is Inadequate»

Caturday in July, imagine that.

... but will have to do for this week.

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«Happy Independance Day»

For the rest of the world, happy Friday, I suppose.

The fireworks in town last year were canceled due to weather. They were going to fire them off on New Year's, but had to cancel then as well, also due to weather. Today it's overcast and drizzling. I think the wind is more of an issue than the rain, however. I don't know that I'll even be in town to watch the fireworks anyway, even if they don't get canceled again.

I'm not all that into the Independence Day celebrations. It's a bit crowded, and the parade sucks every year. They space out emergency vehicles throughout the parade and they blare their sirens. No shit: they drown out all the bagpipe players and other music being played, making the entire experience annoying rather than enjoyable.

My dad usually avoids town like the plague on the 4th of July. Although he's been talking about going downtown today, after the parade. Just to walk around and see what's going on. If he does, I'll be with him.

See the rest of “Happy Independance Day”»

«Cruise Ship Watch: Golden Princess, Spirit of '98, Statendam, Oosterdam, and Diamond Princess»

Like I said in the last Cruise Ship Watch, there would be 5 ships in today that I haven't photographed for my blog. Well, I decided to stay in town so I could get them. So here are the Golden Princess, Spirit of '98 (no wikipedia page), Statendam, Oosterdam, and Diamond Princess. Click an image to view full.

Let's start with the Golden Princess. You can also see the Spirit of '98 in this picture.

Here's the Spirit of '98 up closer, with the Golden Princess towering in the background. The Spirit of '98 is just a small ship, carrying only about 100 passengers.

The Statendam, you can see a couple of buses for size comparison.

The Oosterdam docked next to the Ketchikan Visitor Information center.

The Diamond Princess docked in Ketchikan.

See the rest of “Cruise Ship Watch: Golden Princess, Spirit of '98, Statendam, Oosterdam, and Diamond Princess”»

«Pictures From Tuesday»

I took a few pictures around town on Tuesday. The Volendam wasn't the only thing I photographed that day. I walked around on some of the more obscure boardwalks in Ketchikan. As always, click an image to view full.

Here's Edge Cliff Way. I didn't walk down it, but that dead end sign is for, you guessed it, the stairway.

I found this pattern in a landing on a brick stairway. Looks like a heart. It's at about the same location I was standing when I photographed the Volendam.

What ever happened to fire engine red, anyway?

Here's Main Street. Every town has a Main Street, right? What's that you say, not every town has a staircase for their Main Street? To be fair, there is part of Main Street further down that's for cars.

Speaking of staircases, check out the entrance to this house. I'd hate to haul a new refrigerator or furniture up to that house. Or just the groceries for that matter. Like I've said before, this town was built on the side of a mountain.

Here's a salmonberry. They're like raspberries, but more tart or sour. I ate it after I took the picture. These bushes are everywhere around here, quite invasive.

This picture was taken from an obscure boardwalk that overlooks the "Newtown" part of Ketchikan. It looked poorly maintained, and only went to the charred remains of a burned down house. I have no idea what the boardwalk is named.

See the rest of “Pictures From Tuesday”»