Longtime readers will know that I’ve been trying for ages to get some sort of photo album system up and running. I’m most partial to Image Display System but I can’t for the life of me get it running correctly on this server. So meanwhile I’ve been playing around with desktop software that will build the albums for you in static html. I put a sample up of photos from a recent kayaking trip if you’re interested, which you can check out here:

6 29 2002 kayaking trip

The software I used is called Image Rodeo and it’s pretty good. I’d toyed with various packages on Mac and Win32, this is the first one I’ve found that I actually like.

Don’t mind the generic design – once I figure out how to get the template system running with Image Rodeo that should improve. And I’ll get those pictures of the Delaware River trip posted next, promise.

I’m on a morning schedule these days, but this heat is playing havok with it. It’s after midnight, I’ll be up at 6:15 or so, and yet I can’t sleep. So here I am posting more in one night than I have in a month to pass the time.

In case you were wondering why 😉

For the past couple of weeks I have been getting this occasional whiff of really bad stank in the kitchen. Now and then it’s lead me to quest for the source, but until this heat wave hit I had no luck finding it. Then it got hot. Really hot. And the occasional whiff turned into the omnipresent stench. So this weekend I tore the kitchen apart trying to find it. In the back corner of the cupboard beneath the sink I found a lovely example of rattus deadus stinkus (that’s warner brothers latin for dead stinky mouse) stuck to a mouse trap I put in there about 2 years ago. It wasn’t pretty. I almost took a photo of it to commemorate my solving of the great stink mystery but I figured I’d spare you 😉

Poor, poor me. It’s frigging hot this week, and I’ve been forced to abandon the upstairs and sleep on the floor in my living room.

A common meme here is just how frigging odd the japanese are, from a western perspective anyway. Case in point:

This little number

Featuring cute kitties that morph into penis heads, tanks with giant penis’s chasing terrified white men around, and other assorted oddness, all set to an oddly compelling little dittie. Oh, and all rendered as ascii art by the way. Well worth a look if you’re into the bizarre. I’d love to know what it all means.

I kid you not, the spam of the day had a subject line of:

‘smelly butthole juices’

Who the fuck would answer that? Normally I read the ones that make me laugh, but I did not want to know what that one was all about. People are frigging wierd.

I listen. Seriously. Daniel Schorr is my favorite commentator on NPR, in fact he’s my favorite news analyst period. I just thought I’d take a moment to give him his due. You can listen to his pieces on the npr website.

A woodchuck has moved into the neighborhood and has been visiting my yard occasionally. I finally managed to snap a couple of pictures of him. Unfortunately the picture’s blurry because I had to shoot through the screen. Still, pretty cool. The first time I spotted him was pretty amusing. I also have a family of chipmunks again this year. So I’m in the bathroom and I notice movement out of the corner of my eye. I look out, and the woodchuck has wandered into my backyard and is giving it a good sniff. One of the chipmunks, a youngling the size of a golf ball, senses the woodchuck, goes up on its hind legs, and lets out a big squeak. The hedgehog is the size of an small dog, and it hears the squeak and turns tail and runs off into the woods. It made me laugh, the brave little chipmunk scaring off the huge woodchuck.

I have a few other photos of the woodchuck I might post later. I managed to get the screen up and shoot a few but he heard me and took off, so they’re even blurrier because he is in motion. But maybe I’ll post them anyway.

…include rolling over in bed while reading and discovering that a wasp has decided to share the bed with you. My reaction went something like ‘oww, hmm whatzat, owww, ouch OUCH what the fuck!!!’ The little bastard only stung me once, and to be honest it wasn’t that bad. The pain was less of an issue then me becoming completely paranoid. For the rest of the night, every time the blanket brushed against me funny I went schitzo, convinced another wasp was under the covers. Tonight I’m attacking the attic crawl spaces, where I think the wasp came from, with my shopvac.

…include grasping the door handle to the bathroom when I leave and discovering that it is sopping wet. Eeeewww! What the person before me did I do not know. One hopes that they washed their hands and didn’t dry them.