Happy As Kings

St. Louis City Museum

Last week we took the grandkids on a trip to St. Louis.  My sister and niece, who live within half-an-hour or so of the city, served as our tour guides.  Their destination of choice was the City Museum.  From their description, I expected a 'museum'-museum, with fascinating displays, but with the displays still being look-but-don't-touch.  

I couldn't have been more wrong.  

The museum is a wild and crazy urban fantasy fun park.  In Disneyland, the rides do all the playing and the people are relatively static.  In the City Museum, the displays are static and the people move, and run, and jump, and swing, and slide, slide, slide. The grandkids were having so much fun that we didn't bother going to another museum, but stayed there for hours.

If you have children and are near St. Louis, or stopping there, go.  Have fun.  Don't expect to leave soon.

  Sign out front

 

  Entryway sculptures

 

  The Puking Pig

 

  Kids in a whale

 

  3-photo vertical panorama of the 10-story slide

 

  Mesh climbing-tower on the 11th-story roof.

 

  Ferris wheel, also atop the roof

 

  Climbing cage with its slide underneath

 

  Inside the school bus
  

  The school bus -- on the corner of the roof

 

  The world's largest pair of underpants

 

   Hole-in-the-floor slide

 

   Aerial planes

 

  The parking lot barrier

 

We're going back.







  

Finding a blog subject in the era of direct social networking

I used to use this blog to share jokes, pictures I like, and interesting websites, as well as letting off steam.  Now, with Facebook (and potentially with Google+) I can 'talk' directly with people who are more likely to reply.  That kind of communication is more satisfying than random blogging.  Now I find blogging more suited to sharing impersonal information, which is at odds with my blog's name as those are things I'm seldom "happy" about.

I don't want to turn off my blog, but I'm having difficulty finding a use for it that is compatible with why I started it.

I could use it to give Snopes one more link.  (today's 'new knowledge' is how egg whites aren't miracle cures for burns)

Or I could use it for social awareness articles.  (unsafe abortions are on the rise because of cuts in funding for contraceptives)

Those uses make it a kind of inefficient Twitter.

Or I could put up more pictures.  I like that use.

Shadows at the zoo.  My daughter, my grandson and me.  I'm the one who looks like the fairy Merriweather in Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

Bedding burrito

This is just one of those nonsense posts.

I opened the dryer to get the bedspread and sheets out, and I found that they'd rolled themselves into a burrito.  Or maybe an eggroll.  Manicotti before the sauce?  (obviously, some kind of foreign food, the impression was probably influenced by me just having finished reading The Philsopher's Diet: How to Lose Weight & Change the World ).

In any case, it struck me as humorous.

Photos from beyond the trash can

The photo at John Scalzi's blog has me laughing like mad.  I've taken some like that of myself.  (using the self-timer is often the only way the photographer ever gets even a record shot of himself or herself -- mirrors are other handy devices)

Whatever, The Single Worst Non-Photoshopped Picture I've Ever Taken

Btw, sometimes the definition of a good photographer is someone who throws away all the bad shots.  If not for the humor factor, this is the kind that should definitely never see the light of day.

I'm still laughing -- with empathy.

Canon Pixma iP5000

My birthday arrives in 25 days, but my birthday present arrived today -- a beautiful new Canon printer.  Before the children scream about how Dad buys me all the nice toys, I have a very good reason for getting a new one:  the old printer exploded -- or somehow the ink cartidges did, ink all over the inside of the printer -- and I still have to copy and print all those photos for Grandma, so I had to do something.  And if you're going to spend the money, you may as well get something good. 

This printer is dreamy -- quiet, quick and it makes beautiful prints, such as the one I snapped in the passenger mirror of Granddaughter riding in her car seat (above), and Older Daughter's snapshot of Granddog #3 (below)

I've been having a very good time this evening trying to use up the ink that came with the printer, and my photo paper stash, all in one go.

I can still see the difference between these prints and good, large black and white prints.  But the ease of printing with a computer is so different than hanging over a fixer tray breathing hypo fumes after hours on your feet, and with clean up still to go, that it feels like cheating.  An 8x10 print in a mere minute!

My WWII Air Force photographer dad would be amazed.

And thank you, thank you to the Birthday Fairy.

The oldest and the newest

I had great fun this afternoon working on a project:  I made a camera obscura using two cardboard boxes, electrical tape and a sheet of white paper.

This is the camera, sitting on my dad's tripod and pointed at the sun.

I could see the sun on the paper (it's that white dot in the center of the 'focus screen'), but the image of the neighbor's trees was too dim to be seen in the light. 

I futzed around for a while with a Loden coat trying to recreate those black cape-thingies the really old time photographers used in order to see the focusing screen on the backs of their view cameras.  Man, must those things have been HOT!  And not in the hottie sense, but in the sweat-pouring-down-your-back, bring-me-a-pitcher-of-ice-water sense.  And then to have to develop the wet plates on-the-spot???  Those people were strong!

After looking like an utter loon in the backyard with an ankle-length Loden coat over my head in July and a white square poking out the neck of the coat (think Jason and Quincy), I remembered how Dad's old Speed Graphic had pop-out shields on all four sides around the focusing screen, and a bright idea light bulb went on in my head (which only added to the heat -- it was in the 90s again today).  So I unearthed a cereal box from the recycling and made my own shield.  It helped, but I still couldn't photograph the image I could see under the coat because there was still too much light.  So I made another shield for the 'mouth' of the initial shield, but with a hole for the camera's lens. 

The camera with the hood I 'developed.'

And, whaddya know, it worked!  Now I could make out the neighbor's trees along with the sun, and, surprise-surprise, the electrical cable to the house.  I hadn't expected to see the electrical cable.  All this was upside down in the same way all cameras without internal mirrors project the image.

For anyone with an interest, the camera was set on ISO 1600, f4.5 with an exposure time of 3 seconds.  That's how dim it was inside my little camera obscura.  But it worked, and I'm tickled pink.

The Sky in a Room

Link: The Sky in a Room.

Oh!  I so want to do this!

They say that . . .

. . . you're taller in the morning than you are at night.

Works for little ol' 5-foot me.