Items I’m considering purchasing:
- Digital camera. I’m looking for something that can easily fit in my pocket, take good pictures, and record video. My PowerShot 80 was somehow lost last Fall, so I’m without camera. I considered getting a higher-end cell phone to take over my less important camera tasks, but I the cameras on the phones just don’t seem to offer the wide range of features I can get in a separate device. Right now I’m looking at the Panasonic DMC-FX07. A good way to evaluate a camera’s image quality is to look at images on flickr taken with that camera.
- Keyboard (musical, not computer). I’ve been wanting to do something musical lately. I have a couple of leads for bands in the area that might be looking for someone to play clarinet or saxophone, but I haven’t followed up on them yet. A keyboard would let me play on my own time without bothering anyone.

If you have any suggestions for either, let me know.

On Friday, Girts and I went to Yuri’s Night, a party at the nearby NASA base celebrating the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s orbit around the earth. They had science exhibits, food, drinks, music, art, and a lot of stuff that’s rather hard to classify. It was an odd combination of a party, a science fair, and Burning Man. It’s kinda amazing to think of a Soviet accomplishment being celebrated on a NASA base, too.

There were a bunch of people in outlandish costumes, plus some people who I’d think they were wearing a costume if I saw them on the street, but probably just look like that.

Some pictures:


(from LaughingSquid)

(from JasonUnbound)

Yesterday at work, I was walking to another building to pick up some tickets to something. On my way back, I saw a small group of people gathered around a woman who had been biking and hit by a car. I went over to see if there was anything I could do to help, even though it didn’t look like anything was going on at the time. She didn’t have any apparent external injuries (besides some road rash) and seemed coherent when I was there, but we weren’t going to try to move her from the side of the road until medical people arrived. Luckily she was wearing a helmet.. I didn’t see the accident itself, nor did I ask what happened, but I saw that her bike was relatively mangled. It turns out she was running the same errand I was, picking up tickets in the next building over, so I ended up getting the tickets for her and dropping them off elsewhere on campus. I biked for that errand, and luckily irony was kept at a minimum and I wasn’t hit by any cars. It’s a good reminder that the expected value of buying and wearing a helmet is completely worth it particularly if you’re biking near cars. I’m surprised I don’t see these things more often around here, to be honest, considering how many bikers and drivers there are.