Most of you are probably aware of the fact that there are currently 1,400 wildfires burning in the Golden State. It’s hard to believe there could be so many. Although the closest fire is many miles from here, we have been blanketed in thick smoke for weeks. This shot was taken in daylight - 7:06 PM, to be exact. Here’s the view on a less smoggy day.
Fans of the best movie of all-time will surely appreciate this Dude Action Figure - complete with a rug and a White Russian. I’m thinking a pair of Achievers would be just the thing for my desk. Better order soon - it seems Dude action figures go fast!
This reminds me - Lebowski Fest is being held in San Francisco this year! Maybe I can finally make it! There is a potential conflict, though, as the Fest takes place during Burningman. Hmm… Bowling and White Russians or dust storms and half-naked chicks. Tough call…
Hooray! The Mozilla folks took a page out of Opera’s playbook, and incorporated “Full Zoom”. Finally!! They also seem to have fixed their image rendering problems. So now, Firefox finally looks as good as my beloved Opera. And it’s incredibly fast! The speed difference is especially appreciated when using Gmail. I will miss Opera’s built-in single-key shortcuts, smooth mouse gestures and ability to quickly change proxies. (Yes, I know that some of these things are available as Firefox Add-ons, but upgrading broke one of my most-used Add-ons - SwitchProxy, and the Add-on mouse-gestures simply do not work as well as Opera’s native gestures.)
If page rendering speed and accuracy is important to you, I recommend you download Firefox 3 today!
I was looking at my server logs the other day, and noticed that the top search phrases that led people to my site are “Greenland” and “Diego Garcia”. As far as I can tell, this is because images from this site come in near the top of the list when doing a Google Image Search for these terms. There’s even an image of (a somewhat younger) thedude himself near the top spot. Ha!
Google image search for “Greenland”, “Diego Garcia”.
By the way, for some inexplicable reason, the number three search phrase is “chuckie”.
Scientific American published an article claiming that Blogging is Good for You! It seems that working on a blog “activates a cluster of neurological pathways”. Whoa - so that’s how I got hooked. Of course, it is possible to take this blogging thing to extremes. Not to worry. I’ll never work that hard at it.
My circle of old friends is getting wider. Yesterday I received a long e-mail from Troels Nørlem - another old pal from Greenland. What a thrill it is to hear from Troels - the official Thule Air Base Photographer! Sounds like he’s is doing well with his wife and two kids in what he refers to as, “the outskirts of the civilized world (Djursland, Denmark)”. These days he’s working as a photojournalist and sells photographic flash equipment on the side. That’s him on the left.
Way back in 1987, Troels and his friend Jesper flew to Germany in a 1953 Danish military aircraft to visit yours truly. The trip turned out to be a test of their endurance and bravery. The two of them managed a top speed of about 70 miles an hour in the old plane with fabric-covered wings and a back seat made of bare sheet metal. I remember Troels telling me how frustrating it was seeing cars on the Autobahn below speeding away from them. Not only that, but the plane had a very short cruising range meaning they had to land every two hours to refuel. I think it took them 8 hours to make the trip from Copenhagen to Pirmasens, Germany - a distance of about 500 miles.
I got a chance to fly the old plane - but only for a few seconds. I “took control” and immediately realized that if the pilot was to release his tight grip on the stick, (it took both hands to control) the plane would go straight into a nose-dive. Yikes! All I can say is that it was a very good thing that Jesper was able to take back control of the plane, as we’d certainly have crashed with me on the stick.
There have been more than a few occasions in my life when I felt that I was witnessing something that few people will ever see. You could say that everything that each of us experiences is by definition, a once-in-a-lifetime event. The thing is that in this case, I was smart lucky enough to have had my trusty Pentax ME Super and a fresh roll of Kodachrome in hand.
This image was shot in Thule, Greenland in 1985 or ‘86. As far as I know, it’s the only barracks fire ever to have occurred there. The devastating fire started very early in the morning, during Julemand - an annual fund-raising event occurring every Christmastime in Thule. (I have several fun photos from this fun event, and maybe I will get around to posting some one day.) Anyway, at around 3:00 AM, while photographing the marathon event at the Thule Air Base TV station, someone yelled, “Fire!”
The fast-moving fire completely consumed the living spaces of several Danish friends in about an hour. Nothing survived. All who lived in Barracks 204 lost everything.
The next morning, Erik discovered that his collection of walrus tusks - arranged neatly by size - looked as if it had somehow survived the inferno. But, although their shape had not changed, their composition had. The tusks had been baked into pure, almost weightless ash.
This photos-for-food-and-drinks deal we have with our friends at MoNO is working out very nicely for us. Yum!
Not all of my Danish friends in Greenland were this crazy - but Erik and Randi got this idea…
When you live in a place where the average temperature in February and March is -30 degrees Centigrade, it’s only a matter of time before someone will ask to have their picture taken in an unheated room wearing nothing but their underwear. It’s totally predictable, right? What else would you do after five months of darkness?
In case you’re wondering - yes, it was VERY cold in this unused section of some building on the air base. Don’t worry - the photographers dressed a bit more sensibly.
