…and here’s the photographic proof!

For the anniversary of my special day, Mom sent me this photo of the day Mom and Dad picked me up at the airport.

Dad is carrying a Polaroid camera in a case that they borrowed for the occasion. Mom is carrying me, 5 months old to the day.

the day I came to america

click to embiggen

Tsuneaki Hiramatsu has taken some beautiful time-lapse photographs of lightning bugs in the wild. Lots more in the previous links.

I was woken up by the text from CU telling me campus was closed for the day, then couldn’t get back to sleep. So I laid there and pretended I was video blogging back to Earth from a preliminary colony mission en route to the moon. That’s normal, right?

To preface:

In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).

Read the whole letter here.

by bbyrd

I thought maybe the arc in the floor was for a big safety barrier to shield students from hem experiments. Nope. This blew my mind, but not as much as the guy sitting next to me.

Aurora Borealis

Aurora Borealis by Billy Idle

Over at McSweeney’s: In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.

[The warrior] accepted the quest and strode bravely across the beige shag carpet of the living room.

Deep, deep behind the recliner did the warrior crawl, over great mountains of National Geographic magazines and deep chasms of TV Guides. At last he reached a gnarled thicket of cords, a terrifying knot of gray and white and black and blue threatening to ensnare all who ventured further. The warrior charged ahead. Weaker men would have lost their minds in the madness: telephone cords plugged into Ethernet jacks, AC adapters plugged into phone jacks, a lone VGA cable wrapped in a firm knot around an Ethernet cord. But the warrior bested the thicket, ripping away the vestigial cords and swiftly untangling the deadly trap.

via Eric

In more Psychic Bunny/Lead Balloon news – the super-secret 360° shoot I worked on a few years ago has also been posted (probably awhile ago – apologies for not being more on top of this!). Social Animal‘s camera rig…was amazing. The SA9 has nine HD cameras pointed straight up at a mirrored rig, all connected to nine MacBookPros. It made for some pretty intense equipment moves/hides and cable wrangling, not to mention the challenges of directing actors in360°. It was a really awesome shoot and I’m glad I can finally talk about it!

You can watch the demo we shot, and a behind the scenes featurette at the Qualia site. Be on the lookout for me! I’m wearing a teal hoodie.