kitten playtime

The first time I posted cat photos here, I was sort of apologetic about it, as if it detracted from the otherwise serious and important subject matter (city parks, flowers, statues, travel photos, etc.). That was before I realized that other people have parlayed owning a cat and a camera into vast internet media empires, untold fame and riches, and so forth. And serious or not, I suspect cat photos are of far more universal interest than semi-abstract pics of yet another 70's sculpture on the Transit Mall would be, for example.

So right now the one area that may need some attention is the lens department. We don't get a lot of ambient light here on gloomy fall/winter/spring days like today, and getting non-blurry photos of a kitten with lightning reflexes means either A.) underexposing & trying to fix it later, or B.) redlining the ISO setting and accepting an ugly amount of sensor noise, or C.) both, which is pretty much what you're looking at here.

And then there's option D, which involves getting a faster pro-grade zoom lens. One site I looked at suggested using a 70-200mm lens, preferably f/2.8. I don't have one of those, but it seems that Canon makes several lenses matching those specs, such as the 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM , for instance. I do realize it's a big, heavy, $1900 lens. But if, hypothetically, I had a vast cat-based interweb media empire, the lens would count as a business expense. As, I suppose, would cat food and vet bills. So there's that. Plus I'm fairly sure there would be an incremental improvement in photo quality, and I'd prefer to think that's not just gear lust talking. So there's that, too.

The cat, you understand, has not yet been consulted on any of this media empire nonsense.

World's Awesomest Kitten

Pedants and naysayers will tell you that, technically, "awesomest" is not a word, and your spell checker will agree if it's anything like mine. I will go so far as to concede that it wasn't a word until now.

In case you're curious, he made his way to us via Twitter, after first being rescued by @alanpdx. It's funny to think that internet years are shorter than pet years -- will Twitter even still be around when the cat's older? There are probably more than a few cats today who found their homes on AOL, after all.

october wildflowers, tanner springs

turning leaves, lownsdale square

fallen leaves, lownsdale square

pod

rouillé-arrugginito

A picturesque relic of the Pearl District's old industrial days, outside what's now the Ecotrust building. FWIW, the title of this post is just "rusty" in French & Italian; since it's the Pearl, titling a post "rusty shutters" or something would be insufficiently upscale and simply wouldn't do, even if I went my usual all-lowercase route. Oh no, this is ultra-premium, exclusive Euro-rust, like you'd find on the Eiffel Tower, or the underside of your Lamborghini.



For that matter, the north of England has whole cities made entirely of Euro-rust. Well, Euro-rust and broken alcopop bottles. Or so I've gathered from various British news sites. It's possible their coverage is on the alarmist side, though. At any rate, we now have an example of our very own, right in the heart of the Pearl, because we're sophisticated like that.



To avoid an unforgivable faux pas, be sure not to say you can't tell the difference between Euro-rust and classic blue-collar Detroit-style rust. The rust snobs will snicker and gossip and make corrosive remarks about your plebian tastes, as is their wont. Deep down they all know you're absolutely right, but that never really seems to help much, socially.



I'm told that if you monkey around with these rusty shutters too much, you'll score an exclusive opportunity to experience Euro-tetanus. I'm not actually recommending that, but if you're going to get tetanus you might as well go to the Pearl and catch the fancy kind.

koin center, infrared

Crazy Girls, Riviera, Vegas

Back to Vegas again, folks, this time to the vintage Riviera Casino on the North Strip. The Riviera is a rare remaining slice of old-school Vegas, complete with a long-running topless revue called "Crazy Girls". Some years ago they parked the unique sculpture you see here at the casino's main entrance to help advertise the show. It's since become quite a tourist attraction in its own right; note that certain key parts of the dancers have been polished to a shine by the grubby hands of passers-by. For good luck at the slots, for a giggle, or just for an only-in-Vegas photo to show the folks back home.



A sorta-similar phenomenon occurs at many of the newer, more upscale hotels in town, except with "foo dogs" instead of scantily clad women. The idea here, as I understand it, is that much of high-end 21st Century Vegas depends on the whims of deeply superstitious, baccarat-addled Chinese industrialists, and you need a pair of these guardian creatures at the front door they can rub for good luck, otherwise the whales will freak out and take their billions elsewhere. Which would make Wall Street and the money guys in Dubai deeply unhappy. That's generally less fatal than making the boys from Chicago deeply unhappy, but it's still to be avoided. So as you might imagine, Vegas is a city where one can make a very comfortable living as a feng shui consultant. I'd have a go at it myself, except that I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face about it.

contrail rainbow

Saw this today on my way home from the office. Similar examples of the phenomenon here, here, here, and here. You might also enjoy my sundog rainbow photos from January 2009.



It's gotten so I'm always a little leery of posting contrail photos on the interwebs, as that tends to attract conspiracy netkooks. I'll never understand how some people can fixate on such an innocuous phenomenon and decide the only possible explanation is a massive government conspiracy that's gone on for over half a century without the truth ever leaking out. I've come to think that they just see the world in a fundamentally different way than I do, and arguing with them is pointless.

Having said that, Gentle Reader(s), let me take an informal poll: Team Double Rainbow, or Team Rainbow Conspiracy?