Rice Paddy Art
From this:
to this:
and this:
These are amazing photos that demonstrate, once again, that human creativity knows no bounds.
You can see more of these wonderful images here:
August 13, 2008
July 24, 2008
(Almost) Done With Dotster
Update: As a result of this posting, I was contacted by the Customer Service Director for Dotster. We discussed the issues surrounding my situation and what they might do to help prevent this from happening to others in the future, such as allowing for multiple email contacts to be listed.
While I'm still unhappy that I had to waste a couple of hours on this, at the end of the day my primary domain is working and I'm very satisfied with Dotster's response to my issues. The fact they were able to refund my entire redemption fee didn't hurt, but neither did having a great customer service experience.
End Update
After a 10 year relationship, I'm considering breaking up with Dotster. Neither the best nor the worst domain registrar, and neither the most or least expensive, I started with Dotster around 10 years ago, as they were one of the best at the time.
So, why am I thinking of leaving after all of this time? It's because I lost 2 domains, including one I had owned for 10 years, due their lousy system for processing updates and sending notifications regarding pending renewals. They didn't auto-renew my domain, even though I have that setting enabled, and all of their renewal emails were flagged as SPAM. Interestingly, the dotster messages were the only false hits in the last 6 weeks; that tells me the problem is on their end.
It cost $99 to get one of the domains back, and the other one just isn't worth it.
Plus, even after I paid the ransom for my kidnapped domain, I had to make a 20 minute call to tech support, and get a bit huffy with them, before my domain was restored. They kept trying to tell me it would be 24 to 48 hours until my domain was active. Sorry, wrong. Today, a domain is usually active within minutes after being purchased.
To their credit, once I let the customer service rep know I knew what was going on, she escalated and within minutes, my domain was back on the air.
Then, when I called sales to let them know that the $99 would cost them that much and more due to the lost revenues when I move my domains, they transferred me to tech support. That wasn't so bad, as they were able to refund half of the ransom fees; ICAAN gets the other half.
In terms of my second domain, it's not worth $99 or even 1/2 of that, so I'll take my chances on being able to purchase it once it completely expires.
So, bottom line, I have issues with Dotster, but their customer support was pretty good and given the amount of effort to switch registrars, I'll probably just stay put ... and hedge my bets as well; the next domain I purchase will be from another registrar, likely pairnic.com, and we'll see how it goes with them.
July 16, 2008
Light Summer Fare
Too busy doing things that aren't really bloggable, so it's been pretty quiet around here lately. I have posted a couple of nice fireworks photos on my photo blog, luminosity:
http://www.allthepages.org/luminosity/2008/07/beautiful_fireworks.html
http://www.allthepages.org/luminosity/2008/07/fire_wheel.html
I still squeeze in some time for blog reading (via Google Reader, naturally), and that's how I found this quick little quiz from my friend Julie-Ann. It fits the bill for a quick, light summertime post:
Erase my answers, enter yours and repost. Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following. They have to be real places, names, things, nothing made up! You can't use your name for the boy/girl name question.
1. What is your name? Mike
2. 4-letter word: Meta
3. Car: Maybach
4. TV show: Mannix
5. City: Montreal
6. Boy's name: Mark
7. Girl's name: Moneka
8. Occupation: Mystic
9. Something you wear: Madras (shirt)
10. Food: Mozzarella
11. Something found in a bathroom: Magazine
12. Reason for being late for work: Moonstruck
May 4, 2008
Geode and Agate
We went to the McPherson Gem and Mineral show today and picked up a few interesting pieces. They had a pretty good selection of dealers, and only one had prices that were out of line.
Among the treasures found today was some never seen before Turritella agate from Wyoming. The agate is in the form of thin slabs, maybe 1/4 inch thick, and contain slices of sea shell fossils. Their flat nature lent the slabs to being "copied" on my flat-bed scanner.
Sheryl found a very interesting geode that had nice color and looked a bit like the classic Mandelbrot fractal shape. It was only 3 bucks, though it could use a little more polish; you can barely see the cut marks if you look at the piece just right.
Show below are 3 photos of the geode, and 4 of the Turritella agate. The geode is a bit under 2 inches in size and the agate about 4x4.5 inches.
You can visit Flickr and see more of each specimen, as well as larger versions, in our Mineral and Fossil set.
May 1, 2008
Northern Junco
Back in January of 2007, I posted an image of a junco that I had taken in our back yard. Earlier this year, Carol, a student at Johnson State College, sketched a great image of a junco based on my photo. She was kind enough to share it with me, and with her permission, I'm sharing it with you. Enjoy!
April 25, 2008
Toronto Sky Trails
Here's a fascinating time-lapse picture of the night sky, taken in Toronto last month.
There's also a wonderful video showing the image as it's built up over time, starting with a dark sky and then filling in with the plane, helicopter and star trails. You can click the image to see a larger version, which was taken by wvs and shared via the same Creative Commons license I utilize for most of my images.
February 17, 2008
Balloon Hats
I've spent time visiting our local nursing home since I was a young cub scout performing Christmas carols, and I'm pretty sure the residents of Bethany Home would enjoy a visit from the balloon hat man. His creations are so whimsical and colorful that it makes me interested in learning more about how they're done!
Until then, there's this video:
Thanks to Boing Boing for the link!
January 24, 2008
How Cold is It?
You know it's cold when the local temperature, measured in Farenheit, is far less than the temperature expressed in Celcius at your remote office locations:
And I thought it was cold when it was 6F in Lindsborg and 6C in Bristol!