Hillside Meditations

Laura Lemay wrote a nice and vivid entry on hummingbirds in her garden to her blog these days. I had to smile when I read her description of what goes on around her humming bird feeder (I did not know there were special feeders for humming birds, seems quite usual from what Laura writes).
She put up some humming bird photos of hers on her Flickr page.

Unfortunately where I live no humming birds are ever seen in the wild, but I was reminded of a very special sort of moth or butterfly I sometimes find in my little garden on very warm summer days: the “Taubenschwänzchen”, ” macroglossum stellatum” or “humming-bird moth”.

I found a very nice photo of a humming-bird moth on www.srbild.de:

Does the moth not really look very much like a humming bird? It is about the same size and I was really puzzled, when I met the first one.
I do not have humming-bird-moth photos of my own - yet - this summer, if they come to my garden, I will try and take some.

humming, bird, macroglossum, stellatum, moth, butterfly, wildlife

• ttaglist: humming bird macroglossum stellatum moth butterfly wildlife

The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference — they serve a place of honor with all that is good.

George Washington

I came at this quotation via Joe Huffmann´s blog.

firearms, rigt, bear, arms

• ttaglist: firearms rigt bear arms, firearms rigt bear arms

Quite a lot of blogs, among them notably Shadow´ s and BigOrangeMichael´ s, make mention of “Dr. Who” (there seems to be a new TV series? replacing an old one??).
While having heard the title “Dr. Who” every now and then in the past, I have to admit that I do not really have an idea what is behind it: something “like” (surely not possible) Hitchhiker´ s Guide to the Galaxy? Is is a book, primarily, TV series or radio show? Science Fiction? Science Fiction Parody?

Yesterday I searched Amazon, there are one or two Dr. Who-books, but things have not become much clearer.
Dr. Who is something I seem to have completely missed (yes, I think I remember that many years ago there was a Dr.-Who-something on German TV), so if anyone cares to give me some information about it and tell me where I can learn more, I would be very grateful. Anything to update me effectively?

Same thing with “South Park” btw., which Cameron mentioned in his entry yesterday. another series (?) I seem to have missed.
ME - who has spent half of his life in front of the TV screen! Almost unbelievable…
Do enlighten me, will you?

Dr.Who, SouthPark, "South, Park"

• ttaglist: Dr.Who SouthPark "South Park"

…do not miss the miniblog on the sidebar. I think the miniblog-plugin is quite a nice and helpful idea.
Today´ s main miniblog post: entries from my ideas.list-textfile soon to be transported into erudite Hillside Meditations posts.

topics, blog-trailer, appetizer, miniblog

• ttaglist: topics blog-trailer appetizer miniblog

I have been collecting my emails (both those received and those sent) for almost 10 years now. Most of them lie in mbox-files in my ~/Mail-directory and I regularly back them up to my backup-server. At the moment du shows a total of 3 GB in my Mail-folder.
I can search them by grep and with the help of my MUA mutt and indeed often do, when I am looking for email addresses, phone numbers, or just in oder to go on a time travel to days of my past.
As a matter of fact my email collection seems to be the most valuable data on my computers to me.

An article on the BBC website in February 2005 dealt with the phenomenon of email databases, especially with regard to big-storage-space-providers like GMAIL.
Slashdot provides an interesting follow-up discussion on the BBC article, pointing out that the phenomenon of email collecting is not a very new one (as e.g. in my case), discussing different ways of dealing with one´ s email and discussing the data security aspects of gmail and the like.

The latter aspects seem very important to me - I would not leave valuable emails lying at a server not under my direct physical control.

email, storage, database, gmail, collect, process

• ttaglist: email storage database gmail collect process

Tonight I met with some colleagues of my homoeopathic study group. We meet regularly every four weeks, alternating between Regensburg and Deggendorf.
We talked about a very special form of homoeopathic case taking, the method according to the late Indian homoeopath Sehgal, which is based almost exclusively on symptoms of the mind rather than physical signs and symptoms. We studied some cases from the literature - it was an interesting and stimulating evening.
We usually have a room reserved at a local hotel, a small room (we were five collegaues this evening, sometimes we are six to seven, seldom more) and I was very grateful that we had never been asked to pay a rent for that room before - admittedly I had never actively inquired about the modalities, really, assuming that the bill for food and drink covered the room, as well. We have been there several times before.
Tonight, when I payed my bill, I was suddenly asked to step aside with the manager and presented with a bill of 50 Euro for renting that room - quite a lot for five people, in my view, though certainly justified for a room of that size.
I felt steamrollered ( as I admittedly feel very often) and refused to pay - no agreement on that in advance, no pay, sorry - and it seems to have been accepted that way; we parted “in peace”.
Nevertheless I wonder: what should I have done? Pay? Would that have been the graceful and honorable thing to do? Who was wrong - me or the manager? Living in a small town, will I be looked at as mean and stingy?
The situation was additionally complicated by my colleagues´ clearly watching and observing my reactions. I felt I had to prevail.
Feeling very unsure of myself just now….

stingy, steamrollered, fee, room, rent

• ttaglist: stingy steamrollered fee room rent

Via a CNN report on the upcoming Orson Welles DVD “F for Fake” I found this interesting site on urban legends with a very comfortable frontend:
www.snopes.com.
Snopes.com lists quite a lot of interesting TRUE legends, beside all the fakes.

urban, legends, fakes, Orson, Welles

• ttaglist: urban legends fakes Orson Welles

Via “A blog doesn´t need a clever name”(I think a blog should have a clever name, btw) I found this link on BBC.
For what it is worth, new research claims that excessive use of email and phone calls lets your IQ drop even more than smoking pot, makes you kind of attention-deficit-disordered.
So now, 17 years of email use and lots of phoning, where will I stand right now????
Scary, isn´t it?

email, phone, IQ, marijuana

• ttaglist: email phone IQ marijuana

It should be like that:

• as small as - or please, please, please, even smaller than - my present Sony Cybershot DSC P-120
• as quickly “online” as my present camera is - well, let us say, should have everything that my present camera has (I like the P-120 just fine)
• “speed” 800 ISO with little noise (instead of the 400 ISO the P-120 has)
• 5-fold optical zoom - instead of 3-fold
• an option to save my photos in RAW-format
• the possibility to leave the shutter open for a longer period of time - depending only on the capacity of the battery
• a cradle for external loading of the battery

That´s it. Perhaps more megapixel, but I am not sure I would need them (will only make the photos take more storage space). Perhaps some additional room for manual control (not sure I really need it). I would have 1 GB of storage medium instead of the 512 MB I have now (just to be SURE I have enough storage space, I am a storage hog, you know). And it should com with a contraption to burn my images on CD/DVD directly without the need of an intermediate computer (I know these appliances exist, I just don´t have one at the moment). And I could make use of longer battery life, no doubt.

digicam, wishlist, Sony, P-120, cybershot

• ttaglist: digicam wishlist Sony P-120 cybershot

Hello, having bought my own Flickr Pro account early enough I have been given two Flickr Pro accounts to give away for free (must be given before July 1st 2005).
If you want one, please let me know.

bonus, faithful, readers

• ttaglist: bonus faithful readers