Today’s Top 200 Photos.

photo #186:

Sometimes when I was at functions with Danielle’s family (especially before Dina and Daniel started dating (others, not each other)), I’d get bored because everyone was speaking all Vietnamese, so I’d just grab my camera and wander around taking candid shots. And I’d often get gems like this one. After all, most people look better when they aren’t posed. By the way, this is Danielle’s cousin, Mai, and she’ll be featured a couple more times, I’m pretty sure.

Today’s Top 200 Photo.

photo #187:

What I love about this photo is that it captures two things that were key to the Cornell experience - passing out quarter cards (known as carding) and attending a Capella performances. It’s not far-fetched that the Andy character from The Office was in an a Capella group at Cornell. There were about six of them when I was there. Some were all male or all female and some were unisex. Pretty much every semester each of them had at least one concert. This group was called The Hangovers. Here are some other ways they advertised on campus:

Today’s Top 200 Photo.

photo #188 is:

I got my first digital camera over Christmas of my freshman year. It changed my photography forever. Since the photos were essentially free, I took my camera EVERYWHERE on campus. A lot of my photos, especially one of my favorite ones from my top 10, came from this impulse. I am able to look back fondly on nearly every single one of my Cornell memories because if something was going on, I probably had my camera there.

I’ve been using KDE since November of 2010 around the time that 4.5 was released for Fedora. Around the time of 4.4, the KDE folks, especially Aaron Seigo and the rest of the Plasma team, started really pushing activities. I kept talking to people on identica and I couldn’t quite figure out the point of activities. They seemed to be redundant in a world with virtual desktops. (And, as you can see in the comments of the article I’ll be linking to, most people feel the same way) The biggest reason I seemed to hear was that each activity could have a different set of widgets. But one weekened I was messing around with KDE system settings and found out that you could set each virtual desktop to have different widgets and not have to mess with any of these activities. So after that weekend I *really* didn’t understand the whole hassle of activities. This is how I configured my desktops:

Back to Cornell for this entry in Top 200 Photos.

photo #189 is:

This photo is from of the earliest batch of photos I uploaded to flickr.  I had just discovered Photoshop and was using what I learned from a book to create paintings from my photos.  After spending a good semester doing stuff like this, I realized I preferred straight photos much better than these bits of art.  It doesn’t mean I’ll never do it again, but I prefer for my photos to be photos.

I was born and raised in the USA, so I am not sure if it’s fair to call these songs racist, I think that racism requires malicious intent.  And, given that the US has a different and unique relationship with its non-caucasian descendants than Latin America, I’m not sure there’s the same level of maliciousness as in the US.  All I can do is view these songs through the perspective of an American.  The song that sparked this article is by La Banda Gorda and is called “El Negro Pega Con Todo” which means “black matches with everything”.  I’d heard it before, but I was listening a little more closely to the introduction this time around.

Here’s the latest Top 200 Photos entry.

photo #190 is:

This is from my 365 project where I had to take one self-portrait a day. In my quest to think of creative subject matter, I went with modern versions of scenes from the Bible. Here I am Adam, eating the fruit that Eve gave me. Nowhere in the Bible does it say it was an apple, so I went with grapes to be creative.

Bork, Bork, Bork! It’s time for another Top 200 Photos.

photo #191 is:

For the most part I was too young to catch the muppets on their first run. But Kermit was a reporter on Sesame Street when I was a kid and that resulted in my recognizing him when muppet movies were shown on TV. Eventually between reruns on TV and the web, I saw large portions of The Muppet Show and their various movies. The Swedish Chef was not my favorite character, but he was in my top 10. This photo was taken at the Smithsonian when they were having a pretty big exhibit of Jim Henson stuff. I usually consider it pretty dumb to take photos of stuff in museums (especially paintings), but I made an exception in this case.

A new city in this Top 200 Photos entry.

photo #192 is:

Danielle’s best friend was going to college in Chicago.  We’d never been to Chicago before, so we figured we could visit and see a new place and took off for a mini-vacation.  When we first got to Chicago, she had class or was otherwise occupied, so we went for a walk around the city.  We ended up at The Bean in Millenium Park.  (Official name: Cloud Gate) That’s why our luggage is in the shot.  Since the entire surface of The Bean is reflective, it makes for really awesome photos.  This is not one of those awesome ones.  I’m sure one of those will appear later in the list.

With the current revolution in Egypt I’ve been hearing a lot of speculation on NPR’s Talk of the Nation about who will come to power when the current government falls.  There’s been a lot of talk about the consequences of a government run by The Muslim Brotherhood.  The fact is that some key figured in Al-Qaeda were active in The Muslim Brotherhood.  Another fact is that Hamas is an off-shoot of The Muslim Brotherhood.  However, at least two guests have mentioned that in the last few decades the organization has sworn off violence. Wikipedia (caveats about Wikipedia reliability apply) claims that bin Laden has denounced the fact that The Muslim Brotherhood has denied violence and is participating peacefully in Egypt’s parliament.