marypcbuk

Note, if you will, not just the colour, or the 'tastefully' placed rhinestones but the appallingly bad pun (be sure to pronounce it as one word, for full effect).

Scared now...

We're going to the DEMO conference in a couple of weeks, which is in Palm Springs (well, at one of the gold courses that sprawl over what used to be desert). To see the real desert you drive to Joshua Tree and Twenty Nine Palms, which we did between PDC and WinHEC, and I was wondering if we would have time to do the same again when we booked our hotel, because it's beautiful.



This is Key's View; you turn off the main road through the park and follow a die road that curves and then begins to climb and goes inexorably up and up. You finish in a parking lot with a path that runs up at about a 45-degree angle but from the top you can see the San Andreas Fault and into Mexico on a clear day - we had beautiful haze as the sun rushed down the sky and we could tell by the thicker haze where Los Angeles and San Diego were. I couldn't see a Mount Keys though...

Places like this feel like the roof of the world, with all the kingdoms spread out before you like carpets in a bazaar; it's wonderful to get the sense of size and scale of the world after all the busy bustling cities we visit. The desert refreshes us for the irrigated world.

And then when we got home from a cold and wet journey the other night and I decided it was the perfect night for a hot bath, I grabbed a book to soak with. The Court of Last Resort is Erle Stanley Gardner's account of the investigations he and the rest of a 'board of inquiry' carried out for Argosy magazine into alleged wrongful convictions. The second or third case is that of Bill Keys - the first settler in that part of the desert, the man after whom Keys' View is named and a very American West character. He refused to sell when the golf courses and the tourists arrived and gained a neighbour who seems to have had one of those brain tumours that turns people into compulsive killers; the neighbour was unfortunate enough to be caught by Keys setting an ambush (on the road to Key's View), Keys was unfortunate enough to be convicted murder rather than manslaughter for shooting him and Key's View was renamed. Enter the Court of Last Resort: Keys was released after five years and went back to shooting the tails off ground squirrels and building dams and ranching - and eventually the vista was renamed back.

I cannot find the book itself through Google, just dramatizations, but I did find a book about Joshua Tree that summarises the case and you can read *that* online.

Spot the difference...

January 2nd. Betakin overlook, Utah


February 2nd. Putney.

January. Utah

February...Putney...

I had a nap this afternoon; did it take me a month back in time? ;-)

And I'm getting around to processing photos I took in January too. I like the way the Moo card images look just as a mosaic too...
( cut because the image may be a little wide for some )

I never did work out what the extraordinary and unique method of selling tiles might be. I might need a new tag for crimes against grammar.

This one is an in-joke for those associated with technology journalism and publishing in the UK. We spotted some gaily decorated deckchairs in Green Park recently and I photographed every one that didn't have someone sat in it (start here on flickr). And then I saw this poem on one of them...

And I walked round the back to see who wrote it...

And I thought of several good Felden stories...

I know icons need to be very obvious, but warning icons often make me giggle when I take them literally. In this case I'm sure the icon says 'don't dance on the edge of the canyon'...

The motel we stopped at in Mojave had a signed photo of the round-the-world plane in reception; and the same design is carved into the mirror frames, cupboard doors and bedsteads in all the rooms. Well, the runway is just behind the motel...

Flickr is aggregating the EXIF information from uploads to say what are the most popular cameras among Flickr users (or most used, which isn't necessarily quite the same); Canon, Nikon, Canon, Canon, Canon... for cameraphones it's only the ones that ID themselves. EXIF and photohosting as free advertising for the manufacturers and free review information for users.

I started a flickr group called Airport Art quite a while ago, because I love taking photos of the wonderful art, sculpture, mosaics and exhibitions I see in airports. I haven't added many of my photos there recently, but quite a few other people have and it's really nice to see the selection growing. There are things I haven't seen in airports I know well, airports I've never seen and quite a few better shots of art I've tried to capture.