october leaves

Kitten Attack!

wells fargo tower, infrared

kittenface

Crystals, Las Vegas

Here we've got a few vacation photos of "The Crystals", the luxury shopping mall in the vast $11B CityCenter complex in Las Vegas. Except for the store logos out front, it's not at all obvious that it's a mall. If you have a ten figure pile of dollars to burn on a casino complex, and you'd like your casino complex to be a funhouse of unusual angles and striking shapes, one of the first things you do is hire a small army of famous architects to do your buildings. The retail segment went to Studio Daniel Liebeskind, best known for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and the master plan for the Ground Zero site in Manhattan. So doing a shopping center must have been quite a change of pace.

We weren't in the market for luxury goods at the time (which is pretty much always the case, come to think of it), so we didn't go inside. Although apparently there are a couple of unusual water features inside, so I wouldn't mind taking a look at them (by which I mean taking a few too many photos of them), next time we're in the area.

The vast media empire shrinks by one

I recently learned that Ask.com will be discontinuing Bloglines at the end of October.  If you aren't familiar with Bloglines, it is -- or will have been -- a web-based RSS reader, sort of like Google Reader before there was a Google Reader.  I used it all the time for a few years, but they kept adding new bugs and ignoring old bugs, all without adding any new features to excuse the bugginess. It became unusable, and I dumped it. I've since migrated to Google Reader, although reading RSS is a much smaller part of my interweb day than it once was.

So I was going to file this news item away as a historical trivium, right next to the demise of Geocities and the like, when I remembered that Bloglines also had a rather bare-bones blog feature, and this humble blog had a mostly-abandoned sibling over there that I'd hopefully named "cyclotram2" at one time, before quickly realizing there really wasn't much of a point to it.  Even less of a point than blogging generally has, I mean.  In any event, I realized that a chunk of my semi-sparkling prose was about to be deleted, and I figured I ought to go rescue it and repost it here for, uh, posterity or something.  I suppose I don't like the idea of something I wrote being deleted by anyone besides me, even if it sucks, which for the most part it does.

So without further ado, here are the complete, unexpurgated annals of the soon-to-be late and unlamented cyclotram2 blog.  A number of the links are now broken, so don't be surprised by that, if you haven't stopped reading already.  Anyway, here goes:

May 9, 2007
[keepalive, ct2 style]

So I haven't posted anything here since December. In a way that's sort of a good sign, since I usually post here when Blogger's having an outage and the mothership's unavailable, and those outages seem to have decreased markedly of late. I just posted again over on this incredibly humble blog's MySpace sibling, so I figured I'd post here too. And then maybe I'll post on the mothership saying that I posted here, or something. I'm leveraging proactive synergies within my vast media empire, creating new content out of thin air. Outside the box, of course. It's pure Web 2.0 magic, I tell you.

Posted on: Wed, May 9 2007 12:35 PM

December 12, 2006
Seasons'(ish) Greetings

Another page hit here, another post here. That's the official cyclotram2 social contract, and one I'm having no trouble at all honoring, given the sad, sad volume this thing gets. So here's a big shout out to this blog's mysterious new friend from the Mediterranean. Howdy. Also, happy holidays, etc., in case -- in the highly likely case, I might add -- that I don't post here again this year.

Posted on: Tue, Dec 12 2006 10:27 PM

October 3, 2006
Uber-Fiesta time here at cyclotram2

This humble blog here actually got a page hit earlier today. So I figured I'd post here to celebrate this blessed event. Yippi-ti-yi-yay! Ok, there, I'm done now. As you were.

Posted on: Tue, Oct 3 2006 10:40 AM

July 14, 2006
july @ cyclotram2

Ok, I haven't posted here for over a month. In general, nobody reads this thing except me. I've gotten a couple of hits here in the last few days for some reason, so I thought I'd do a new post here and just say a hearty "hi" to you guys, whoever you are, and however you got here. Just thought I'd point out a couple of other corners of my ever-growing media empire, including my outpost on (shudder) MySpace, including this blog's new (and sadly non-RSS-friendly) sibling "cyclotram3". I might be your friend there if you ask nicely. Quite honestly, my blogroll here is far more interesting than this humble blog. You can keep coming back here, or you can grab the whole thing as OPML (but be aware that it changes a lot), or (if you care) I'm also on SYO, although I don't have a unique url to hand out from there. Whatever.

Posted on: Fri, Jul 14 2006 1:28 AM

June 8, 2006
Bloggered

I'm posting here because Blogger is out of action yet again, this time supposedly due to a database migration. Bastards. So I took this picture this morning, and it seemed sort of appropriate. It's actually a photo of Mill Ends Park in downtown Portland. For those of you from out of town, Mill Ends Park is the world's smallest city park (allegedly), and you're looking at it right now. You're looking at it: The round asphalt bit right under the striped construction barrier. It's usually more photogenic than this -- it's raised, with a curb around it, and some flowers. But right now they're doing a bunch of construction work on Naito Parkway, and the whole street's torn up, so they moved the park somewhere else temporarily. Actually I'd like to quibble with that a little. They moved the park's contents somewhere else, but the park itself is still right here. In the background you can see one teentsy part of the Rose Festival Fun Center, er, Waterfront Village, but I won't say anything more about that, because the Rose Festival is more unhip than anything you can imagine, and if I say too much about it the cool kids won't have anything to do with me, and the popular kids will take my lunch money. But just to note for the record: That's the Rose Festival you see in the background, and yes, the pavement is dry. For real. I've never used Photoshop even once in my whole entire life. Honest.

Posted on: Thu, Jun 8 2006 10:30 PM

May 31, 2006
Bachelor's Button

A photo I took yesterday down in the South Waterfront area. I didn't go out today. It was raining, and I was too busy populating my feed tree.Coming soon, fun with OPML and/or XOXO, probably.

Posted on: Wed, May 31 2006 7:11 PM

May 24, 2006
Greetings, Technoratibot

Technorati Profile

Posted on: Wed, May 24 2006 2:52 PM

It's baaaack...

Ok, my 24 hours are up, and c2 here is now officially Yesterday's News. What we've learned is that the Bloglines "New Blogs" page got about 400 hits yesterday. Isn't that interesting? That's what I thought. I don't think so either, FWIW.

Posted on: Wed, May 24 2006 11:38 AM

May 23, 2006
D'oh!!!

I'd placed one of those Sitemeter thingys in the blog description, out of idle curiosity about whether ever reads this thing, and basically nobody was. And then this humble blog showed up on Bloglines' list of new blogs, including the blog header, sitemeter and all. So I was getting a huge pile of 'hits' from people who weren't actually visiting this page. Oops. That's clearly not what I was interested in. So I've pulled the thing back out, at least until things quiet down a little. It's all so complicated...

Posted on: Tue, May 23 2006 8:18 AM

May 21, 2006
OMG BOURBON PONY!!!

Ok, this is just cool. A My Little Pony with dreadlocks and a Wild Turkey logo on the side. Niiice. URL: OMG BOURBON PONY!!!

Posted on: Sun, May 21 2006 12:49 AM

May 19, 2006
Impeach Cheney First

URL: Impeach Cheney First

Posted on: Fri, May 19 2006 12:39 AM

May 18, 2006

Well, I already have a blog, cyclotram but they give you one for free here, so what the heck I humbly present to you "cyclotram2". FWIW.

Posted on: Thu, May 18 2006 6:32 PM

Sandy River Bridge, Troutdale

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This somewhat delayed installment of the long-running bridge project takes us back to Troutdale for another Sandy River bridge. This one carries the Historic Columbia River Highway over the river, and doesn't seem to have an agreed-on name of its own. I've seen "Troutdale Bridge" and "Sandy River Bridge", but there are other bridges in Troutdale, and others over the Sandy outside of Troutdale, so those aren't overly specific names.

The bridge dates back to 1912, making it the oldest extant part of the Gorge Highway. It looks it, too. I think they built it just barely big and strong enough to carry the occasional Model T, but today it gets ginormous luxury RVs towing ginormous luxury SUVs piled high with bikes and kayaks and sailboards and such. I mean, it's not actually falling down as far as I know, but I kind of feel sorry for the poor little thing. Except when I have to drive across it and there's oncoming traffic larger than a Vespa, in which case I'd curse its name if only it had one.

Walking across isn't so bad. There's a separate walkway on the south (upstream) side of the bridge. Granted it's made with extremely old wooden slats, and here and there you get glimpses of the river through gaps in the slats. So that part isn't so fabulous, really. But I've never heard of the slats actually giving way and dumping people into the river, although I suppose there's a first time for everything. In any event, once you're across there's no sidewalk along the Gorge Highway, and you'll need to walk on the shoulder to get anywhere, while avoiding the aforementioned ginormous luxury SUVs, so I don't think the bridge gets much pedestrian use. Bikes maybe, but not pedestrians.

It does, however, attract daredevils who jump into the river from here, on purpose, for fun, although getting back out of the river in once piece (or being found at all) is not exactly guaranteed. I won't spend a lot of time on this point, because a.) I've gone on about it before and already feel like I'm being a tedious scold and a founding member of the anti-fun police for doing so. And b.) I've found that when I write about places that get a lot of newsworthy, untimely demises (High Rocks and the Vista Bridge, for example), sooner or later there's going to be another one. Then the post gets a sudden flood of search hits, and I have to hurry and check it to see if it's reasonably tasteful under the present somber circumstances, which it quite often isn't.

Info about the bridge, from sources spanning the interwebs:

• Structurae
  
• Bridgehunter
  
• ColumbiaRiverHighway.com has an extensive history page about the bridge. It notes that the bridge was considered to be obsolete (and far too narrow) as early as 1930, and the bride deck system was replaced in the 1950s. Which I read as saying it's not really that special and historic, and could be replaced if money was available. They could always move it somewhere else, and/or turn it into a bike-only bridge, if people are really that attached to the thing.
  
• Two Waymarking pages
  
• City of Troutdale
  
• A moody Holga photo
  
• Wikimedia images
  
• Via Google Books, the April 4, 1912 issue of Municipal Journal and Engineer, with a line indicating Multnomah County was asking for bids on the project at that time. The line just above it, incidentally, is for the famous and historic Colorado St. Bridge over Arroyo Seco, Pasadena, California.
  
• Via the Washington State University library, a set of vintage photos (not online, sadly) with a reference to an "Auto Club Bridge" in Troutdale. Which may be a historical name for this bridge. Or it's some other bridge near Troutdale, past or present, in which case never mind.
  
• Intel's code names for upcoming products and technologies borrow heavily from Oregon geography. For example, the microarchitecture used in many of their current CPU lines is called "Nehalem", and its successor is codenamed "Sandy Bridge". But like everyone else, they don't specify which Sandy bridge they have in mind.
  

autumn leaves, jamison square

lion cub, chinatown

If you look closely at the guardian lions at Portland's Chinatown gate, you'll note that one appears to be nonchalantly crushing a smaller lion underfoot. I had a "Wait, what?" moment and took a few photos. I was about to go on about rooting for the underdog/underlion, and wondering flippantly what message it sends to kids these days and wondering where the public busybody outrage is and so forth. If Wikipedia is to be believed, though, the small lion is a cub and the large one is its mother, and there's nothing at all alarming about it, and who the hell are you to question the parenting skills of legendary mythological lions anyway?



So in short the whole original idea for this post is pretty much shot. I still had these photos though, and I thought for some reason they were still worth posting (in part because this humble blog got a writeup this morning at Dave Knows Portland, as a Portland blog you aren't reading -- although obviously you are reading it, or at least looking at the photos -- and my latest post just happened to be some fair-to-middling Vegas vacation photos, just my luck). Also, you have to admit it the whole thing (the lions, I mean) looks kind of peculiar even when you know what they're supposed to be depicting.

Union Bank of California Tower

A few photos of the Union Bank of California Tower in downtown Portland. It's a bit more obscure than the last few buildings I've done posts about, but it's one of my favorite buildings in town. That may be a minority opinion; I've heard more than one person go on about how ugly it is and how much they hate it. It's fair to say 1960s modernism is an acquired taste. And it's also fair to say that the building doesn't really exist in harmony with its surroundings. I think we can take that as a given. And if you evaluate it by the city's present-day urbanist ideals, it doesn't rate highly: It's set way back from the street, has nothing resembling street-level retail space, basically only has a street presence at all on the side facing Broadway, etcetera. That's not really in dispute either. But it's also an interesting building, and pleasing to the eye. To me anyway. Your mileage may vary.

Other tidbits from across the interwebs:

• The bank's previous (much smaller) location, aka the Bidwell Building, is nearby and interesting in its own right.
  
  
• Wikipedia's list of the tallest buildings in town puts it at #17, and mentions that it was once #1 for a very brief period in 1969-1970.
  
  
• Great post about it at Yamabushi mon amour. The post mentions that a short film was made about the building a few years back, but that film is apparently no longer on the net anywhere.
  
  
• Oh, and what's a post here without links to other people's Flickr photos?
  
  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
  

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Terrible's, Vegas

The top photo illustrates the dangers of having a bouncing taxi help frame your shots. This is part of the marquee outside the Terrible's Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, but -- despite the weird name -- babies are not on the menu as far as I know. Here's more of the sign:



So the casino's parent company began as a chain of gas stations, and we're told the name comes from this big scary terrible baby-eating cowboy who lurks in front of their various outposts. So it has some history behind it. On the other hand, the company's in the middle of Chapter 11 proceedings, and I have to wonder if giving the place a more appealing name might help attract a wider audience. I don't see how it would hurt, at any rate.


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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.