Blogging Has Been Unbloggable

I haven't been able to blog in January, because between the second day of the month and the end of last week, my computer was crippled by problems with the display.

My first step was to go to the local Apple Store, where I was told that my six-year-old computer is considered "vintage", which means that it is so old that Apple doesn't stock parts for it anymore.

And so, if you were wondering who that guy was walking around Pentagon City Mall forlornly clutching a laptop from the Sumerian era, now you know.

But some good did come from my this event, because a man saw me holding my ancient iBook, and asked me if there was an Apple Store in the mall, and I could tell him that it was "one floor down and kind of over that way".

And indeed even more good came from this event, because, despite not being able to repair the computer, the people at the Apple Store correctly diagnosed the problem. I was thus able to overrule the technician at the non-Apple computer store who did not correctly diagnose the problem, and wanted me to spend $350 on a component that I didn't need.

A Picture for the Last Day of 2011

Soon it will all be over. In a few hours, 2011 will be only a memory. The disappearance of 2011 makes me think back to 2001, and all the things that happened ten years ago that seem as if they happened ten months ago.

(The end of the year is a time for reflection, unless of course you are a vampire, in which case it is never a time for reflection. And since, as I mentioned in one of my Halloween posts, from the perspective of horseshoe crabs, humans are vampires, then perhaps it is not a time for reflection for any of us.)

A year ago I posted a picture that I took on the first day of 2010. Tonight I am posting a picture that I took on the last day of 2010. It shows the Old Town waterfront in Alexandria where the Charthouse restaurant is located. Every so often I take a picture that somehow just works, and this was one of them. But my enjoyment was somehow mitigated by the spammy comment that showed up under the picture on my Flickr page, just seconds after I had uploaded the picture, from someone named Nipuntantia7, calling it "Superb.........nice click....the perfect statement for why i love to be behind the lens" and asking that I visit his Facebook gallery.

Christmas Tree

It is Christmas Eve, and thus time to mark the occasion with a crudely-drawn Christmas tree, in the tradition of previous crudely-drawn computerized seasonal art.

Christmas trees are one of the easiest things to draw on a computer, as they can be formed entirely of simple geometric shapes. I was drawing crude Christmas trees on my Mac Plus back in the early Nineties.

Lizard (King) Video

When I embedded some lizard videos the other day, I found that it wasn't too hard (even though I had to edit the HTML). It got me thinking about videos in general. I don't want to turn into the guy who's constantly putting other people's videos on his blog. But there's one more video that I have to post, because it's way too awesome. It's Jimmy Fallon as Jim Morrison singing the Reading Rainbow theme.

I couldn't figure out how to embed it, but here's the link.

My only quibble is that the guitar sounds more like something from the early Beatles than the work of Robby Krieger.

I've been liking Late Night with Jimmy Fallon more and more recently. Fallon isn't as funny as Letterman was back in the Nineties, when Letterman was doing genius-level comedy, but Fallon's show is the one that I most enjoy in late night right now.

The Higgs Boson

Recently, there have been many news stories discussing the fact that scientists may soon confirm the existence of a theoretical elementary particle known as the Higgs boson. The headlines of these media accounts frequently call the Higgs boson by its nickname, the "God particle", which stems from the particle's great importance in certain theories of physics.

I have to wonder how many people who see these stories think that the God particle actually has something to do with God.

It's probably the same as the number of people who think that the Theory of Relativity is a defense of moral relativism . . .

. . . which would be pretty much everyone.

Lizard Videos

I am going to try to embed some videos. I had nothing to do with making them; I just like them.

The first has already gone viral. It shows a Bearded Dragon (Pogona) playing a video game. Well, really it's just trying to eat the ants depicted in the game.

The second video is one that I would like to see go viral. It shows skinks eating banana slices on a porch at Fort Story in Virginia. The source where I originally read about the video says that the skinks are Broad-headed Skinks (Plestiodon laticeps aka Eumeces laticeps). But I can't be sure, as I can't tell from the footage which of the three local Plestiodon/Eumeces skinks is actually being shown. No matter the species, though, this video is the first evidence of which I'm aware of frugivory in the skinks of eastern North America.

The Long, Dark Night Without Indentation

In an earlier post, I discussed how, when I started the blog, I couldn't indent paragraphs, until, just like magic, Blogger started letting me use the tab key to indent in my posts.

And then, just like magic, at some time between September 1 and October 13, just like magic, Blogger once again stopped letting my use the tab key to indent in my posts.