Bridge...

I found this and it was cool.

Sweet Cuppin Cakes....

You should know thats a quote from Strong Bad. Hes working in Episode 150 right now!!

So Yesterday I was researching this and that on the internet and was thinking about how my bread had failed miserably. Infact it didnt even taste good, nor did it rise. So I found a recipe called the Moist Cinnamon Rolls and it turns out one can get all the ingredients, doesnt need a bread maker (which takes all the fun out of making bread), and is LOADED with sugar. They turned out good. In fact so good that while my mom was sick from food poisoning from the day before, I had singlehandedly subdued 75% of the pan of rolls. I almost forgot to take a photo before I ate them all. But I had one this morning and thats all I will have. Till the next one....

Sweet Tooth

Death of an insect....

Sitting here at my desk pretending to work, I notice this huge fly. Hes on the screen, and its not a fly fly but a big bee. It does a couple of tricky manuevers to get me but I evade and duck and dive. I scan the room for weapons that wont punch out the screen that it perched apon, and alas, the head wrapping scarf thingie catches my eye. After too long trying to figure out how to twist it up like a wet towel, I move in for the strike. A couple of gigantic failures leaving fuzz on the screen and go for the rewrap. I rush in for the attack and the bee is quick and nimble missing my strikes like peanut butter misses toast. It moves over to the adjancent window and poises for another attack, as I do the same. One shot, a miss... but I startled it. I go it for another snap, whack. Now I cant find that little bastard...wtf? So I examine the scarf and notice a little bloody residue, aha, perhaps win? A little more inspection of the area and I notice on the sill its big thorax sitting lonely and disconnected...thats weird I think? Where the .... Then I see it, like a windshield on an RV, the windowframe comes into view. There splayed on the white paint, my adversary, completely annihlated like he was going 80mph and smeared on the smoothness.

Touche, that was cool. I now have no qualms that towel whips can really inflict serious damage.

Funny ha ha....

So under the relevant light of irrelevant recent news I have found out that what arrived in my email today was engrossingly hilarious. Now I havent seen the movie that all the talk was about, and I really doubt its gonna show here, but this made me pee my pants, almost, well ok I had a diaper, ok I didnt. See for yourself...

The Fur Traders...you have got to be kidding me! And Jessica Alba keeps leaving notes that I dont return her calls, and she wants to know why?

Irrelevance...

So I’ve had enough coffee and the lighting is particularly interesting, I think we are ready to discuss the relevance or irrelevance of relevance or irrelevance. It can be a quite simple idea to figure out in the right mood but increasingly difficult under the wrong circumstances…

How relevant is irrelevance? I was thinking about this as I was walking around this morning… I reckon that they may both be one in the same. But I’m not sure how this works. It’s kind of like the argument in algebra that a = b and it goes on that you can derive 1 = 2.

As well, I just read about the newly found gospels according to Judas. You know he was the guy who sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver and then committed suicide. Well it turns out that there is more to the story than that. After some retrospect, beer, and the like, that original story is totally weird. Why would a best friend sell his best friend and the leader of their team to the Romans for the equivalence of new shoes? Well, it turns out, because Jesus asked him to. It’s like I need my best friend to kill me so that my family can cash in on my insurance policy. It was the final step of making Jesus what he is today and it couldn’t have happened any other way. And that made him feel horrible. That he actually killed his best buddy. See how the relevant the irrelevant is? Maybe?

I was also thinking about the …see now I’ve had way too much coffee and the thought is lost, only to be continued by one of you readers.

….To Be Continued, I hope…

Huge Success...

Midstride the porch monkeyness in my dusty day wear. Im feeling rather hungry...

I had, finally, a major breakthrough yesterday. In work that is... I was able to finish a vital part of the mapping last night and now comes the final classification... so I thought I could show you. All is super great by the way after I celebrated with four shisha and 8 or something tall boys... And I slept in my clothes. And I made the best mac and cheese last night, ever.

I dont know if you can tell from this image but the classification is presented in grayscale and represents important landformations in combination with solar aspect affecting the surface's moisture retention and temperature. Everthing is classed into this, dark to light:

valley flats
gently sloping toe slopes
gently sloping ridges and fans
nearly level terraces
moist steep slopes
moderately moist steep slopes
moderately dry steep slopes
dry steep slopes
cool aspect scarps and cliffs
hot aspect scarps and cliffs

Wireless...

Cocks aside, Ive been toying with the idea of setting up a wireless internet connection in the house with my mom's compy as the router. Well it was easier than expected and now I sit on the porch overlooking the nile, drinking a beer, listening to streaming radio and surfing the internet!! Yipee!!

Other news as I have exclaimated before was that I was able to get my terrain model to work with minimal errors and it looks tight! Essentially its a wetness index describing potential moisture due to topograghy ie. ridges are driest, steep slopes are dry and convergent drainages are moist and flater areas are moist due to expected saturation. This will be combined with Aspect to make north facing slopes wetter and south facing slopes drier due to solar exposure or insolation. Im not sure this will make sense so Ive included some reference images:

This first one is an elevation grid: white is high, dark is low

This is a hillshade, so you see the shape of the moutnains, imagine youre looking from above and the sun is at 4:30 on the sundial

This is a Landsat7 ETM+ image showing you an actual color of the area. By now you can notice the topright portion is mountainous and the lowerleft is a huge sandy washout. By the way this is a south western clip of the Sinai, the gulf of Suez is just out to the left.

This is the Wetness Index using a flow algorithm FD8 as modified by "Quinn". Notice that the color scheme is yellow-red-blue or dry-moist-more moist. I think its pretty sweetasaurus.

Next is to add a reclassified insolation grid and whabam!!

Cock...

So with the rise in bird flu and its victims spreading far and farther, I have come to the decision to stop eating barely fried eggs. Apparently things that arent cooked can get you in the end and the best part of an egg is the uncooled yolky bits for dippin the buttery toast into. No more.

On another side of the bird is this image and its portrayal of good luck and is actually part of a festival that started hundreds of years ago in japan to recognise the threats of sexually transmitted diseases, specifically syphilis, throughout the country. It is a much better way of dealing with sexuality than hiding it in the closet.

Touch it, everybody wins here...

Rant....Rave....

A Ranting....

Hangovers totally suck, and so does waking up completely dressed with a hangover.
The price of technical software, especially when you need it to work and you just got outta school, so you obviously have no money, just beer.
And an assortment of other things like taxis and huge urban cities that are unescapeable and stupid UNHCR people and the price of tea in china. These things piss me off. Theres more but I totally forgot them as I was writing this, I think thats a good thing, mumkin?

A Raving...

My work picked up dramaticaly last night, and I know Im a geek now or always was, but the missing pixels thing was frigging killing me.
I just found out that Im running a suite of $5000 software and it works great.
The people on forums searching for help with thier problems, and the folks answering them and me rock the socks off. Thanks Minnesota DNR and MDA Federal and my RS professor and the rest, you guys kick all ass.
To that very cute girl sitting at the UNHCR right now about to punch someone in the face, I think you should, and you rock AND whup ass at the same time, nonetheless, and thats fantazmagorical!
To the stupid DSL Im hooked into right now, Im glad you work, sometimes.
And all the rest but not the least, you should check out CANADA CLEANERS!!

Sharm el Sheik...

Really a strange assortment of events....but the Jenster and myself and the rest of her flat all went to Sharm for a little sunburn last tweekend. Jen's brother was in town and Rah-rah was all over that like peanut butter on toast.

So we missed the initial departure due my dumb ass and finaly caught the bus at 5 after waiting and drinking vodka and some jack and getting called out on the jack everywhere. Now I know... The cool part was that the whole weekend was ful of surprises:

1. The friends in Sharm had no idea that we were actually coming, so when we got there at 2:30 in the friggen morning, they had to have a drink with us and kinda sneak us in to say...

2. April Fools was coming up and Shannon had no idea that we actually made it there... so we used that to our advantage and played it up a bit, unaware of what was to happen on the first.

3. Making a story up, and the friends in Sharm in on it a bit, we texted and said that I had forgot my passport and never made it to Sharm, were detained in a someplace for awhile, got out and were seeking the number for the embassy, and trying to find an alternate route home minus our stuff and or Keith...we were very vague...

4. This is when Guy gets involved and actually had a friend locked up in said place and started getting nervous and making escape plans for us and making calls and about to contact the embassy and my mom....ahhh. At this time I was passed out on the bus back to Cairo and the phone was recieving about 14 calls and texts as to out condition and whereabouts...

5. The friends in the car on thier way back got owned by Guy, as he had one last chance to figure out what the hel was going on. So called and asked if they had seen us and that he had an agent on the move investigating our disapearance and any information would be most helpful. The agent had already started his mission and was armed and so on... Well to say that they freaked out and told the whole story might be an understatement, but the joke was told and now we were still sleeping on the bus.

6. As we pull into Cairo I find my phone and the messages and stuff and drop a text to Guy, "Hi". You know something simple and harmless as I now know that he has figured it out. His response was quite amusing: " Not as high as your nuts will be after I nail you to a tree.." Ooops.
7. So we got Shannon real good. And she even cleaned the house. Awesome.

Super Suck...

I like cars that are super too...

Golfin Paradiso...

There are a many things that are essentially wrong with greenscaping a desert environment. I dont even want to go there. But its wrong. Though, under the circumstances, it was already there when I got there, so I enjoyed drifting and skidding the cart around those perfectly manicured moguls. And I truely do suck at golf.

Mom and I hit a round of nine. Starting out with 20 balls and finishing with 12. I lost em all. I was on my forth ball at hole two. Though, a little later in the game I figured it out and was sending some super long and straight drives. Straight into the water hazard. But I kept most of em in the fairway and followed up with some sick approach shots and long putts. Four tall-boys kept my swing smooth and the laughter heckling.

We got passed on the first hole by a lady with two babies. Humiliating... or just funny. We finished up and headed to the 19th for a cure to poor golf. Asking the bartender if she had a good Bloody Mary, she responded it was great and whether we wanted it spicy or regular. Then came the immediate dissapointment as the two glasses of tomato juice and vodka were placed infront of us and a basket of salt and pepper, lemon juice and not-so-hot hot sauce. They almost had "warsher sauce", but didnt. So mixed it, stirred it, drank it, paid for it. I dont think the barkeep did anything?

But what a great day!

Taz-matic

Pez has a special place in our family. It makes me turn in my sleep.

I recieved this is the mail from the states, along with a special postcard that I cant explain.

A scheme is brewing...

Atkins Diet...

Apparently the diet has severe side effects from its lopsided meal regime. I just read this in the BBC News. Kidney failure and something like the opposite of diabetes, I think. Bad. But, to remedy this I suggest two chapers from a really good book: "Oh For Smart".

I suggest two things:

Chapter 1, and

Chaper 2...

Really easy yah!

And the Heavens made way forth thine coming...

I dont know what that means, I just made it up.

News: I have ADSL again, so Im rockin out over here. After hooking up the tunes I squeezed in to check my email and there it was; an old email with a photo from lake nasser during the christmas vacation. How sweet is this one. No really, I mean awesome is this dude! Sure hes a small fry, but after a diet of Nile perch the size of a golf bag Im sure he'll fill out a bit.

8 Bit Point of View...

So theres this funky little additional program that comes with the ArcGIS platform call ArcScene. Plug in the dem's elevation values with your image file and you suddenly have yourself a 3D semirealisitc portrayal of the earth's surface. Quite handy if you want to know what this mysterious place looks like that your driving to. Right now Im taking a look at parts of Lebanon and Canada and obviously all over Egypt. If you want a gander of somewheres, just let me know and I'll bust one out, ready by the year 2009 if you put your order in right now. And guess what...I have no pictures for this.

But what I do have is a photo of Sandia Labs in NM testing the destruction of packets of energy with electro magnetic fields. Notice the crazy electrical field coming off the metallic stairs....

...or maybe not? Maybe next time, but you can see it here along with an explanation.

The Shitty Nile...

This is a little or not so little but maybe bigger than what was originally intended today but a lot smaller than the whole story. Really.

So there’s this river called the Nile that runs down the center of the habitable areas in the desert landscape of North African Egypt. I have through the course of sitting on the porch drinking a bud come to the conclusion that it can and should be removed. A public service reminder that evolution is happening still: if you don’t use your appendix it will be removed for you or by you.

This so called life blood supporting the Nile valley is drastically underused. This is really noticeable when you go to places that have river systems and use them. Por Ejemplo: Amsterdam, Venice, Costa Rica, Iowa, and more… The only way people notice the importance and/or existence of the river is to stand on a bridge and look down. There are three kinds of boats in the Nile. One is the private half sinking fishing for nasty Nile perch fishing vessel. This one is propelled by rowing with railroad ties or pushing it through the mud. The second is the felucca which may have extremely loud music and kinda makes a donut pattern in a wide stretch of the river. Very annoying if you live within a four hundred kilometer distance of the river. The last one is a huge fat restaurant that was made to look like a boat and eventually was permanently docked in the mud after some low bridges prevented its escape or return to wherever these bulky bastards came from. They do have good food though. Occasionally you see a cargo hauler with nothing in it going somewhere and returning empty both times. Sometimes you just shouldn’t ask.

So what’s missing? First lets make a quick survey of the surrounding city if Cairo. The only potentially arable lands are near the river. They used to be fertile before the dam started collecting all the silt. This is happening with all dams. Eventually the farming is replaced with high-rise buildings and a paved lattice of the most fucked up streets and overpasses to ever be driven by the insane donkey whipper. This whole system is obviously aligned with the vector of the river, so to get to one part of town you follow the river and then turn off and away. So the part that is missing, and the part of culture that would be a really nice addition is the aqueous transport. River taxi at your service.

You’d never be stuck in traffic. Freshness of the river breeze in your face every morning on the way to work. It’d probably cut transport times in half.

Once you reach a neighborhood dock, you catch a taxi for 5 minutes and you’re there, or maybe link it with the public transport and trams and stuff. If Cairo was more democratic(?) this would have already been done. And what the hell happened to the vegetation on the stream bank?

After my visit to the lake Nasser I know what happened there: the water level fluctuation and the suns baking rays turn the shore into a ceramic crust. Only the most crazy plants are able to withstand it. Just last week the city came by and hacked the trees down that provide shade and habitat. But I don’t know why? And how they did it was ridiculous. Cutting 98% of the canopy off and leaving about 15 branches each with 3 leaves. The tree is a goner.

There needs to be some sort of natural filtration reintroduced, like a mangrove, minus the insect diseases and crap. The crocodiles should be reintroduced as a cleanup tool. The water might become clean enough to eat the fish and jump off the bridges. Then we might see more of that little guy, the Pied Kingfisher, and some other awesome natural wildlife that the scene is devastating.

Weekend Bender...

So to say that the end of the week was sober would be lying.

I had a fight with a whiskey and a cribbage game. The whiskey won both. I was playing with Dr. Evil. He didnt do 12 years of evil meidcal school to be called Mr.

Then later after the Ultimate game there was Mexican night that I could hardly wait for. Now in retrospect, I can barely hold it to get to the bathroom in time. Those refried are explosive. But I had a strange experience with family lineage and couple a germans and feeling that I didnt know where this story was going. Because I didnt know where the story was going. I had to do with me and my Danish name and the french and that damned cartoon. It all results in a ban of breakfast pastries. And that makes me sad.

Elsewhere I was researching some of the divesites in the South Sinai and came across a great pic of the Yolanda reef, where the Yolanda wrecked during a storm, dropping its load, and then falling off the reef wall to a depth of 600m. Ha, I said "load"...

Touche...

High Times at Bridger Bowl....

When I was Lebanon skiing I met a Kiwi who goes to the Bozone and Jackson every year. Weird I thought... but hes covered duct tape, helmet, just got out of acl surgery, all the classic signs of an addict.

Speaking of, I cant recall ever doing acid, which is funny cos I dont know if I would if I had or did. Mushrooms were a stellar hit in my world though... I recall times with Broodjie van Koodgie hanging out in the Ruskie getting messed and walking down streets with air raid sirens and hookers and a proper old english couple walking in front of us in the Red Light District.

Then theres the time in the Reichs Museum, the kid who was mugged up with a spoon, and getting lost in there. I then found a ginormous etching of a maritime conflict and came to peace with the world. I mean the artwork was at least 12 feet tall. If you get close enough you cant see anything else, which I think is the point, and it works.

I have now in my ultimate wisdom, learned, that a hangover (for me) is a product of the mixture of tobacco and alcohol. Just alcohol and Im in a great state. This is good to know because, because...

Now Im rambling... and theres no pics due to the slag of the web, slug, mug, bug, tug, beer.

"The Acid Problem is not confined to Ducks"

Attempt # 4 I think.... stupid server keeps getting cut off and new post goes drifting of to the distant nowheres.....

Anyway, Ive been trying to say that I have new visitors from all over the place like Germany, Croatia, and Singapore. Thats neat.

Speaking of this, which has nothing to do with what is about to come, I had the craziest dreams last night. Of course I dont remember them, but thats ok becasue Ive been drooling and wasting time looking at kayaks on the net. Ive been feeling that ice cream headache from rolling in frozen rivers. Or smelly and slimey pfds from tropical jungle moistness. The time on the Rio Pacuare when I almost sliced my neck open on rocks, but it turned out to be my shoulder instead. The two guys BOB and I taught to roll and kayak from Arizona, and their disaster at patado de mule...ouch. The bobber's beer drinking/roll trick, that I believe is farse. Seperated shoulders, concusions, dehydration, class 4 holes that suck your booties off, post action beers and actually having to load the truck there and back, twice. I remember the duckie kids who went through that strainer on the stillwater...ew. All of this means its spring time. I smelt (?) it yesterday walking to AUC. The angle of the sun, the breeze, the lightness in my step (cancelled out by the 46lb laptop in my bag) and the smell of fresh dog shit encircling the Gezira club like landmines.

You know jumping off the bridges here would be amazing minus the artery ripping of parasitic attatchment/detatchment in the wet.