Letters from the Log Cabin

Wow. Just wow.

2009-12-03T02:23:16Z

Isn't that so, by definition?

2009-12-01T16:21:09Z

Having a full moon on New Year's Eve only happens every once in a blue moon.

Really.

Stop using my country as a bad example!

2009-11-19T17:33:33Z

So, there I was, basking in the comforting glow of the idiot's lantern, when an ad appeared filled with misinformation and propagandist hooey.

http://www.uscitizensassociation.com/USCA_tv.html (the one at the bottom)

Complete with "Hymn to the Soviet" in the background, it uses my country, my beloved homeland, as an example of the horrors that could happen to the U.S. if they continue down this road...

I don't know what I feel more of: anger or just plain sick.

Writer's Block: If these walls could talk

2009-11-13T19:44:10Z

Would you rent or buy the home of your dreams if a brutal murder had taken place there? What if you got to live there rent-free? Would you think twice if neighbors warned you that it was haunted?

View 1001 Answers

Murder? Bad enough to draw tourists?

As for haunted, my place is haunted. No biggie.

And I live next to a cemetery.

Sad news

2009-11-05T20:32:57Z

Brother Blue has died.

He was my friend and teacher.

If it was not for him, I would not be what I am, today.

If it was not for him, I would not be able to do what I do, today.

Our world is now a little darker... a little colder... a little less wonderful now that he is gone from it.

But, because he was here in it, he left this world much brighter, much warmer and much more wonderful.

His death may go un-noticed by many, but for me... I weep.

Kings Landing in early November

2009-11-04T19:55:10Z

I dropped by the Landing, today, to pick up my duds and props. Here are three of the pictures that I took while I was there:

There really ARE two worlds

2009-10-27T14:38:59Z

A profound observation from the comments to this story on CBC:

"When a scientist engages in a fabrication he is held in contempt by his peers, his research is discredited and his career is basically terminated. Now on the other hand when a creationist makes stuff up out of thin air..."

Gwarsh, but I do love living in the current middle ages

2009-10-21T21:31:36Z

This is special because it is a total forgery. A fake. A fraud.

The text is from a lorem ipsum sequence.

The font is freeware.

The messy vellum is freeware.

Technique:

-put text into Open Office and format/size
-export to postscript
-open in postscript and do a screen copy to clipboard
-open image editor and past in, cut and clean up the text
-negative - add noise - over do the noise removal - soft focus
-bring in the velum and clip to size
-subtract text from velum
-perform the above but with another segment of text but:
--mirror it
--bleach it out (a lot)
--blur it (gaussian)
--this will provide the look of text bleeding through from the other side of the vellum
-resize to taste

...and it doesn't look half bad, in my opinion.

Stars in an October night sky

2009-10-11T00:54:14Z

Just got back from Thanksgiving dinner with family. After a chilly and wet day, the sky had cleared. I got home about 8:30. As I drove in the driveway, the shop light came on, lighting the trees from underneath. Above the trees were the stars and the milky way:

Remember, this is done using a sub-$100 consumer grade "point and shoot" camera (Canon PowerShot A570is), so I'm pushing the envelope a bit:

-two different exposures
--one with the light on, to expose the trees
---15 seconds
---dark field subtraction to remove the amplifier glow
---in the editor, mask off the sky
--one with the light off, to expose the stars
---64 seconds
---dark field subtraction to remove extreme amplifier glow
---non-linear contrast stretching
---motion blur deconvolution (since I didn't use a clock drive and 64 seconds turns stars into lines)
-then plop one onto the other... and that's pretty much what my eyes saw!

(And, yes, that is the milky way with the obscuring dust clouds. The bight "star" is Jupiter.)

Autumn at the Mill

2009-10-08T00:15:23Z

The sawmill at Kings Landing, taken yesterday. HDR with practically no enhancement (not too inspired, but pretty)

Moody Morehouse - another picture for my friends

2009-10-06T01:07:34Z

Taken today (5 Oct 09) at Kings Landing.

This photo is a five exposure HRD shot that has been heavily filtered, including:

non-linear contrast stretch (overall and selected areas)
canned "photo fix" filters
added noise then used noise reduction algorithm to get the "paint strokes" effect
negative then soft focus then negative (to get the dark halos around things)

Enjoy!

Moose strike

2009-09-16T22:17:35Z

In New Brunswick, car hits moose is not headlines.

There I was, sound asleep, and suddenly there was a house-shaking BAM! followed by the sound of glass showering about and the roar of a car engine.

The time is 4:35 am.

I climb down off the ceiling and go forth to investigate. I'm expecting to find a car accident, but there's nothing on the road. I go back inside and look around. My living room window is all smashed in, frame splintered, all glass broken. I go out in the yard and look: the tacky little "well" decoration is knocked over. I have no idea what happened, and I now realize exactly how alone I am out here in the boonies.

So I call the RCMP and request the pleasure of the company of one of its members.

After a brief wait (about 45 minutes) the Mountie shows up and we begin to quarter the yard by flashlight. It took a bit of looking around, but we found the "smoking gun". Footprints. Moose footprints. Many of them.

My house had been hit by a bull moose:

I can just imagine him trying to explain the bits of broken glass to his other moose buddies: "This house just ran right in front of me!"

It's 9-11

2009-09-11T23:33:55Z

One TV channel is running end-to-end programs about the terrorist attack of 2001.

Another channel is running an end-to-end marathon of "America's Funniest Home Videos".

I'm sure this means something, but I'm not sure what.

Three Little Kittens

2009-09-04T00:58:41Z

One of the Kings Landing barn cats decided that our theatre would be a wonderful place to set up a nursery for her new family. So today, before the show, I pulled out the camera and snapped this oh-so-sweet shot:

Another Fun Fact from Hring

2009-08-30T18:38:44Z

Did you know...

The Principality of Northern Shores is bigger (in area) than the country of Mexico!

Another one

2009-08-12T00:57:03Z

Folks liked the last one, so here's another to enjoy. It is the ruins of a mill (tub wheel grist mill) near where I used to live in Massachusetts.

Photo post processed by non-linear contrast stretching and enhanced by an edge preserving noise removal algorithm. "Frame" added in Paint Shop Pro.

One of the buildings at Kings Landing

2009-08-09T22:54:38Z

We had our staff party last night. Here's a photo of one of the buildings at sunset:

Hand-held 2 second with fractional flash, side lit by site flood lights, post processed by non-linear contrast stretching and enhanced by a noise removal algorithm. "Frame" added in Paint Shop Pro.

Rain, rain, rain

2009-07-01T00:39:22Z

It's been like this for weeks:

The only thing that changes are the highs and lows.

This has become tedious.

Musing on "groupthink"

2009-06-26T21:30:01Z

"Democracy" is a method to determine group direction.

"Democracy" is not a method to determine fact.

Fact is fact. It is not open to a vote.

Job opening: only persons of African descent need apply

2009-05-23T16:53:03Z

I live in a cave, somewhat sheltered (by my own choosing) from the brief and violent tempests of verbal raging that sweep across various fields of world thought. Despite this intentional cultural insulation, I am not entirely insensitive to some of the more fundamental social issues that exist around me and how much those social issues, while extant in Canada, differ in kind and in form from those that saturate our culture from the great media beacon that is the United States.

The issue that is causing me to actually stir up the cobwebs in my ethics room is Kings Landing's need to hire interpreters for the newly opened Gordon House. You see, the Gordons were Negro. I use that term on purpose, for that was what they were called in the 19th century. Now, one almost needs to duck and run when you say it... to say nothing of the consequences of uttering the other "N" word that is its derivative.

Yet we now have a house full of artifacts that were once owned by a "Black Loyalist" family, and we need to hire people to interpret it.

And, in this matter, race matters.

I cannot see how it would be at all possible to have some doe-eyed white girl interpret this house and still retain even the patina of verisimilitude. It would not only ruin the illusion, but we would have to face the inevitable question of "how can a white person possibly know what it's like to be black?" (And let's just ignore the question of how it would be possible for a 21st century black person to know what it would have been like to be a Negro in the mid-19th century in New Brunswick.)

But our hiring laws and practices are colour blind. And that's the way we like them.

Quick historical background: When the Loyalists were deported/evicted from their homes and lands in 1783, they moved mainly to British North America, where (in time) they founded the Country of Canada. Counted amongst their number were many black families: some slaves, some free. By 1820 all blacks in British North America were free and, although we had had chattel slavery for a short time, we completely missed the horror and excesses that plagued the U.S. in ever increasing ferocity and scope during the 1830-1860 period and that was so contributory to the issues that led to the war between the states.

So: the black experience in NB is different from the black experience in other parts of Canada. It is also very different from the black experience in the US. Interpreting these differences will be made more difficult by folks (both black and white) who are more interested in "political correctness" than "historical correctness". Face it: some of history is difficult to face. Bad things happened. But we must not just pretend that they didn't happen just to keep our visitors happy. And the issues surrounding the treatment of blacks in North America is a very hot button issue for a lot of people.

So the question remains: How, in an enlightened society, do you advertise for a job opening where the hiring will, by definition, exclude applicants on the basis of race?

The joys of selective quoting

2009-05-20T12:12:39Z

To selectively quote from this article:'

For homeland security, the bad people include drug runners and queue-jumping immigrants. But the baddest of the bad are Islamist extremists and most U.S. politicians

Middleground

2009-05-17T20:58:06Z

It was a wonderful event!

For those of you who weren't lucky enough to get there, here is a very tiny clip from the Tavern (Post-Revel) on Saturday night:

Finally... perfection!

2009-04-28T01:34:15Z

After a half century of turning oxygen into carbon dioxide (amongst other things of lesser import), I've finally happened upon what is, for me, the ultimate and most perfectest way to serve garlic:

boil potatoes
skin a couple of cloves of garlic
cut the cloves lengthwise and then into a few more chunks
arrange the garlic on the plate
drain the boiling water off of the potatoes
put the potatoes on the plate and cut them up
position the hot potatoes over the garlic
butter, salt and pepper to taste

The heat from the potatoes is enough to take the "throat catch" out of the cloves, but leaves the rest of the "Vitamin G" experience intact.

Utterly perfect!

A topic for discussion

2009-04-01T19:04:39Z

WARNING: This is not a proposal. It is just a whimsical idea that might make for the basis of an interesting discussion.

An extension to the role of Kingdom/Royal guilds in the SCA (East Kingdom)

Put simply:

Guilds chartered by the Crown (Kingdom) would have the power to submit to the Crown requests for guild members to be Granted Arms. Their charter would include a process by which these members would be selected (i.e. merit, polling, etc.)

The Kingdom would introduce a Grant level award to cover this. The name would be fluid but would be of the form (high mucky muck) of (guild name). (Replace "high mucky muck" with something better, such as "Doyen". The result, for example: His Lordship Robert Fitz Brenyan, Doyen of the Royal Guild of Brewers)

Discuss.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

2009-03-29T03:07:47Z

"ABC Family Original Series"

Original: arising or proceeding independently of anything else (Random House dictionary)

To read it, I would have assumed that the series had originated with "ABC Family".

But the series was originated by the CBC. In Canada.

I feel short changed.

(Even more so by the news, today, that CBC has canceled production...)