Stray Hawkeye

Per Stray Hawkeye blog tradition (2008, 2009), here’s your yearly dose of Imogen Heap’s “Just for Now”. I don’t really have anything new to say about it from the last two posts, aside from I still love this song, and think it’s perfect for the holidays.

Merry Christmas.

Ever want to read the Karma Sutra, but were waiting until they came out with a video version that riffed on the Sci-fi classic Tron?  Well, you’re in luck – the mainframe brings you Tron-a-Sutra (everyone is completely clothed, but still really NSFW).  The pictures are amusing, but you need to watch the videos for full effect.  They’re really inappropriate, sightly disturbing, and have lots and lots of great sex/technology puns.

With the snow on Monday, I would say our winter total is already getting pretty close to:

Two feet of snow

Via Make

From what I can tell, the sculpture was made by G. Augustine Lynas, who has a bunch of other really cool sculptures, though unfortunately most of the pictures of them are really small and you can’t click them for bigger versions.

Maybe when the feet above grow up, they can warm up in a giant Red Wing Boots – though Red Wing will have to start working on making one for the other foot too.

You may have heard we had a bit of snow here in Minneapolis.  Enough, in fact, to collapse the Metrodome (pretty cool video there).  So, what does any sane person do when there’s 16 or 17 inches of snow on the ground, 20-30 mile an hour winds, and bitter cold?  Go for a walk and take some pictures of course!

Pretty average car in a parking lot

If nothing else, it's sort of a cool shape for a hatch back. Unfortunately the car underneath was a sedan.

Street parking wasn't much better.

This is on Hennepin, and was about as good as any road looked.

You can see the plume of snow blowing straight sideways off of this roof - it was pretty much constant like that. If you look at the edge of the roof, there's an overhang of snow that's built up from the wind.

This is someone cross country skiing on Hennepin - on the road. There were a few people doing this, and a few bikes as well. Also note the complete lack of moving cars. There was one stuck about every two blocks on just about every street though.

I just thought this was really pretty.

And if you happened to be watching the Weather Channel at about 6pm Saturday, while they were talking to their correspondent in Minneapolis, you can see me walking in the background.  That settles it, I’m famous.

Also, while I was walking home, I was helping push a car that had gotten stuck in an intersection, the third one in five blocks.  As it got some traction and started moving my feet went out from under me and I slammed down on my knee.  I got up, brushed myself off, and kept going.  Then I heard someone from behind me yelling in a very Nelson from the Simpsons manner, “Haha, wipeout!  Hey Wipeout!  Hey WIPEOUT!! hahaha”.  Ah, Minnesota, always someone there to kick you while you’re down.

So, once I got back to my place and finally warmed up, my knee started hurting, a lot.  And it had one big spot where I had hit it on the pavement that was starting to bruise and swell a lot.  So, as a final indignity, I had to pack it in ice for a while.

While I was laying there, I heard a plow going through the alley to make a first pass at clearing it out.  When I looked out, it was actually one of those giant end loaders – the kind where the cab is about five or six feet in the air and has three foot tall tires and you sort of wonder how it fits under the phone and power lines.  In the course of trying to plow through our alley, or the part of it I could see, it got stuck and had to back up and make a running start to keep going.  Six times.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go limp out into the sub-zero wind chills and start digging my car out of the piles of snow the end loader and the wind left, so I can hope to actually have it out by time I have to go to work on Monday.  My car, unfortunately, does not have three foot tall tires.

Could someone remind me why I live here?

Anyone?

Anyone at all?

In case you were planning to go to Tuba Christmas this year in the Twin Cities, it has been postponed due to the snow.  It will be held next Sunday – December 19th, with the concert at 5pm in the same place.  Full details from the organizer are below:

Due to the 17+ inches of snow from which we are all digging out, the TUBACHRISTMAS concert is postponed to Next Sunday, Dec. 19. with registration at 3:00, rehearsal at 3:30 and concert at 5:00. Note time changes are an hour later then previous. Location, the same is, Central Presbyterian Church.
See below for details.

TUBACHRISTMAS 2010

The 23rd Annual MINNESOTA TUBACHRISTMAS Concert will be Sunday,

December 19, 5:00 p.m. at Central Presbyterian Church, 500 Cedar St., St. Paul.

This year’s concert will be a memorial for TubaChristmas founder Harvey Phillips who died Oct. 20.

Audience Admission Free.

Free parking (see directions)

For directions and parking info see:

www.cpcstpaul.org/directions.html

To Play the Concert:

If you play Tuba, Sousaphone, Euphonium or Baritone you are invited to play.

All ages welcome. There will be over 100 players. (Players age range from 10 to 80+)

Registration:   3:00

Rehearsal:   3:30

Concert:   5:00

Registration fee is $5

Music book $18

Hats & Scarves available $15 each.

Head bands $10 each

Decorate your instruments.

Bring a music stand if needed.

I love this song by the Magnetics Fields.  It has been covered by everyone, their brother, and eight of their cousins, but none of the others are as good without the rich mellow bass-y voice and echo-y guitar.  I like the first two verses best, somehow ending with buying things (even if it is for marriage) doesn’t seem to fit for me.

In general the Magnetic Fields are great because they’re one of the few bands I can sing along with in my own octave and not sound terrible. Their song You Must Be Out Of Your Mind is also great for that, and I love the line “You can’t just go round sayin’ stuff because it’s pretty / And I no longer drink enough to think you’re witty”.

Kind of cool old-school snowmobile / tractor thingy:

Via Make

If you get bored, since it is a little slow paced, at least skip ahead to abut 7:25 to see the corkscrew things mounted under a car.  Somehow I imagine modern cars are a little less hacker friendly.  Also, at 9:20 or so, it shows it can run on dirt as well.

After watching that, I started to wonder why I’ve never seen anything like before.  It seems like it would be perfect for military use.  So, I looked around a bit and, low and behold, the Russians tried it out:

And, at least one modern company, Tyco, has picked up the technology (their version also goes on water):

Three pretty distinct takes on the same technology.

I eventually found a wikipedia article on the concept, and it sounds like the concept has been toyed with for a long time, but it’s not very good/fast on plain old dry land, so it doesn’t get used a lot.