In reading the New York Daily Photo Blog, I happened to come across a post about the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. I mentioned to my wife that I wanted to try and attend next time it happened. Being the awesome wife that she is, she kept her eye out for the date and let me know it would coincide with Father’s Day weekend this year. So we decided to get a two-for-one deal and go to NYC to see the parade.

Here’s the background for July. Sorry for going back to Flowers (for those who have complained), but I think this one is really nice.

[caption id=“attachment_3455” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“July 2010 Desktop Background for Square Monitors”] [/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_3456” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“July 2010 Desktop Background for Widescreen Monitors”] [/caption]

I was recently reading issue 15 of 125 Magazine and came across the following quote by Albert Watson.

[Americans] seemed to want fasion to be more of the people, more of the mass. Chairman Mao had all the Chinese dressing the same, and from a different base in America they arrived at something not to dissimilar. And you can take it on to looking at the success of companies like The Gap and others, where in the headquarters they make a decision that then rolls out across the country. Someone decides ’let’s do cargo pants again, we haven’t done it for a couple years….so this year we will put two buttons on every pocket.’ Then they proceed to make 16 million pairs of these … and they go all over the USA and all over the world. All the same but you can choose from six colours. there is a certain sense of Chairman Mao and his style for the masses in the American philosophy around fashion, if arrived at through capitalism rather than communism.

This latest photojojo entry focuses on a business trip I took to Hawaii last June.

Know that there are a lot of errors on upgrading. Some files are not updating correctly via SVN. I had to do a fresh install and copy in my config/plugin/theme files. Annoying, but it’s done. I probably won’t be upgrading my other WP sites for a while.

Looks pretty awesome. I’m about to switch over. Hopefully nothing breaks.

John Waters was on NPR to talk about his new book, Role Models.  In the course of talking to Terry, he mentioned dealing with people with Alzheimer’s.  He asked a friend of his, a nurse who works with Alzheimer’s patients - “People forget who their family is, what they did that day or even five minutes ago.  Do they ever forget if they are gay or straight?”  And the answer was “no”.  He surmised this meant it was built in versus a choice.  Because you could forget a choice you made.  While not perfectly conclusive proof, I think it certainly adds to the idea that it is inborn rather than simply a choice.

I finished off my 365 assignment with an eight part story. Here it is for you, my blog readers.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“333” caption=““Are You Ready to Perform?””] [/caption]

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“333” caption=““Where is the target?””] [/caption]

I’m writing this post two days before my 365 project ends.  It will be published morning upon which I will take my last photo.  I decided to end it with an eight-part story.  You can start here and follow the photos in the set “The Dark Assignment” which should be open on the right.  (Better than going directly to the set where you might end up seeing the end instead of following along) I’m not going to post my 365 retrospective now, that will come after I’m completely done.  But I haven’t blogged about my 365 project since last October.  So I wanted to share some of my favorite photos since then.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“If Bloomberg can ride the train, so can Batman”] [/caption]

Sometimes jokes can be very misleading to outsiders. For a few months after hearing jokes about how gamey it was that Joker’s henchmen lost track of Batman as soon as he went up onto a gargoyle I didn’t have any inclination to play the game. It just seemed like it would be too jarring to have enemies shooting at me and suddenly be unable to follow the fact that I went up onto a gargoyle. The truth turned out to be a good compromise. But it brings to light an uncanny valley of a different sort. As games become more and more realistic, how do you represent super heroes in a way that doesn’t destroy the video game?