cyclotram

an ex-tulip

Taken at Riverplace, downtown Portland, late April '09.

Also featuring a second, soon-to-be-ex tulip:

renyming and other miscellany

If a.) you read this blog on a recurring basis (unlikely) and b.) you pay attention to the man behind the curtain (more unlikely), you might notice that the green profile box on the right has changed. The big deal is that I finally dumped the annoying old "atul666" nym, after mulling it over for quite a while. I recently realized I could just change the display nym, without having to figure out how to switch Blogger accounts or anything ugly like that. So it's done, and something similar has been done on the Flickr side of the house too. Its replacement is a bit, well, generic, and at some point I may tweak it again to make it more distinctive, just in case someone ever needs to refer to me by name.

The profile image has changed too. The new photo is of a Cyclotram, a fictional but very swoopy mole machine from the 1951 SF movie "Unknown World" (and this humble blog's namesake, obviously). I've wanted to use it here in some capacity, and since I was tweaking my profile anyway, I figured I'd just make it my new profile image. Although it comes out smaller than I'd prefer this way. And now there isn't a splash of yellow-orange in the upper right corner like there was with Evil Bendy.

Another item on my TODO list has been to move with the times and update this blog to a New Blogger template. I've held off so far because I've tweaked my current template rather extensively and don't want to lose my precious, precious changes. So what I just decided to do was create a shiny new New Blogger blog and tweak it to look as much like this humble blog as I can. Once I'm happy with the result, I'll do the upgrade on the "real" blog here and use the template from the test blog. So you probably aren't interested in looking at the test blog, and I don't intend for it to ever be very interesting, but it lives over at "cyclotram beta" in case anyone's curious.

A second experiment has a more uncertain future. I've long thought that the chronological view of things that Blogger gives you isn't the most useful format sometimes. In my case, it would often be more helpful to have posts displayed on a map instead. I've attempted to create just such a map via Google Maps, known simply as the cyclotram map, but it's still not quite what I have in mind. Maintaining it is a pain, and I still haven't added all my old posts to it yet. And, more importantly, it's all backwards. By which I mean, it's a map with points plotted on it, most of which target posts here. When what I'd really like is to have the posts themselves geotagged individually, and then be able to generate a map based on that geotag data. Blogger In Draft has a geotag feature that doesn't quite work yet, and maybe an auto-generated map will be doable once they've got the geotag thing sorted out. In the meantime, enjoy the tedious gruntwork version of the map for this blog. And if you don't see an entry for somewhere that you know I've covered already, I can only say that I'll get to it later, maybe, if I feel like it at some point. I mean, I guess you could always mail me and complain and see if that helps, but I'll probably just think it's weird if someone does that.

infrapink

as seen on the interwebs

A fun thing about putting your photos under a Creative Commons license is that you never know where they'll show up out on the Series of Tubes. You don't automatically know when this happens, so it's nice when people email you about it, but that's not required. And when that doesn't happen, tracking photo usage becomes a question of Google-Fu, and maybe Bing-Fu for the sake of completeness. I admit there's an element of vanity here along with the pure idle curiosity, and as a result I sort of feel the need to share what I've dredged up, not that anyone other than myself is likely to be even remotely curious. In any case, here's what I've found so far:

three flagpoles

giant enemy crab

Looks more like a lobster actually, but then it wouldn't be a slightly-out-of-date interweb meme, would it?

If I was slightly more cynical, I'd announce this was the Virgin Mary (possibly wielding the little-known Holy Crab Claw of Righteousness), and let pareidolia and Fox News do the rest. And soon I would have all the money, mwhahahaha...

The Revenge of "Next Blog"...

Way back in the mists of time, Google/Blogger used to do a thing where, when someone arrived at this humble blog via the "Next Blog" button (see the very top of this page, toward the left side), you'd get a chunk of referrer info so you could see where the visitor was at just before they came here. So over time you end up with an appealingly random list of other blogs out there, things you'd probably never run across otherwise. After a while, something changed either with Blogger or possibly with Sitemeter, and the Next Blog hits eventually dried up.

So just a couple of days ago the trickle of Next Blog visitors started up again. I'll probably never know why, or why it stopped earlier for that matter. But I do have a nice new list of referrers to pass along. So without further ado, and for good or ill, here's the list so far:

Updated: Actually it turns out here's the reason. They decided to make "Next Blog" nonrandom, supposedly, although the list here seems fairly random to me. They argue the change was needed because "your randomly chosen next blog could have been focused on sports, and written in Tagalog", as if that was a bad thing. I thought the whole idea was to pull you out of your comfy corner of the interwebs and show you something completely different. I dunno. Maybe I just appreciate randomness more than most people do. In any case, here's the list:

blue heron, westmoreland park

july infrared

Labels: infrared, portland

august infrared

Labels: infrared, portland

pearlhenge

Some construction photos from somewhere in the Pearl District, at the tail end of the condo bubble. I'm not sure which building this turned out to be; I haven't been paying close attention to the Pearl recently, and many of the new buildings aren't overly distinctive anyway.

It's almost a shame the bubble didn't pop earlier, leaving a forest of concrete slabs and bits in its wake. Grainy black & white photos of this scene in midwinter would've been Holga-licious.

On a related note, I ran across a fascinating video tour inside the unfinished Fontainebleau Las Vegas. Billions already spent, billions more needed and unavailable. Which in turn is oddly reminiscent of the Commie-era Palatul Parlamentului in Bucharest, Romania.

Not that I'm trying to suggest an analogy between Mayor Adams and Nicolae Ceaucescu or anything, no sirree. Although it is curious how so many people seem afraid to publicly criticize Sam for any reason. Why is that, exactly? What sort of hold does he have over people? What are they so afraid of, and -- more importantly -- should I be afraid of that too, whatever it is? Maybe I should stop talking about this now. Yeah.

reflected, autumn

This is the area around 3rd & Ankeny, going by the bit of the "Keep Portland Weird" slogan you can see here. Don't bother doing a pilgrimage this time -- in RL it didn't actually look very much like what you see here.

big pink in a window

A few more window-reflection shots, this time of the US Bank tower, a.k.a. "Big Pink". This sort of photo requires an empty storefront with butcher paper behind the windows, with a good view of something you want photos of. The worse the economy is, the more options you have for this.

As a result, you would be within your rights to assume that some sort of message or social commentary is intended, but there really isn't. Not consciously, at least, unless you count "Empty storefronts are kind of melancholy and sad". Which is more of a truism than a message, really.

Still, sometimes I like to play like this reflection stuff kinda-resembles the sort of photo they teach you to make in Art Sk00l. And in Art Sk00l (and beyond), one is more or less obligated to at least pretend one's work embodies various Important Truths, because that's a key part of the product, you see. This juices up the perceived value and desirability of the work, thereby enabling one to starve somewhat more slowly. So, in short, feel free to imagine I'm trying to say something deep and meaningful, if you like.

Hall & 14th

A few photos of the nameless city park at SW 14th & Hall, just across I-405 from downtown Portland. I've mentioned the place before, in these three posts, but I've never gotten around to doing a post about it. Quite possibly that's because it's not really that fascinating. It's a small triangle of land next to a bend in the freeway, and my guess is that it's a leftover scrap of land from when the freeway went in. There are a few flowers, some landscaping, some lights and benches, and a trash bin or two, and that's about it. The place was on my TODO list anyway because it's both obscure and close to home, but I still never got around to going back and taking photos. Then I realized I still had some photos from 2007 that I'd never used, and I might as well go with those. They get the basic idea across, at least.

View Larger Map

Via PortlandMaps, we learn that the triangle is designated "R246890". Which isn't much of a name, but at least it's unique. We also learn that the park comes to 0.53 acres, and the land technically belongs to the Oregon Dept. of Transportation rather than the city, although I gather the city (rather than ODOT) looks after it. This is not terribly surprising considering that it's right next to a freeway, and it may explain why the city's never gotten around to naming it, putting up a sign for it, etc.

I've already mentioned, in one of those previous posts, the sole news item I could find related to it, a 2006 change in the park hours. Assuming the policy's still in force, after 9pm you're still free to walk through the park, but loitering is verboten. I would hope that if, for example, you're walking through at 9:04, and you drop your car keys and stop to pick them up, you don't immediately get tased by Officer Friendly. But you never know. Chances are that the real-life policy is to hassle anyone who looks homeless, and convince them to go be poor somewhere else. The park is surprisingly secluded despite being wedged between a freeway and a somewhat twee historic neighborhood. It's down a slope from the street and only accessible from a couple of side entrances, and it's surrounded by trees on all sides. If you're homeless and just looking for somewhere to sleep and not be disturbed, this would seem like an ideal spot.

Note that I said "seem" there. I haven't actually encountered anyone living here, and I'm just deducing based on city policy. Maybe the freeway is just too noisy. I suppose if I was really dedicated to this whole blogging thing, I'd grab a ratty blanket and a 40 of Old E and go try it myself. But I didn't do that, and doing so only occurred to me just now, and it doesn't sound like a very good idea. However, if you're feeling more adventurous than I, and you decide to go try it, I'll be happy to link to you. If you try it, get tased by Officer Friendly for your efforts, and write a humorous or harrowing account of your adventure, I'd be delighted to link to you.

And if you actually live here for real, I can pretty much guarantee I'd link to you. Unless that would attract too much attention, I mean, since I do get visitors here from City Hall now and then. And in the larger scheme of things, a link from an obscure and obsessive little blog is probably not on the top ten (or hundred) list of things you really need, is it?

Labels: parks, portland