Lollypop Favorites

I haven’t been on the internet much at home the last couple weeks. I don’t know, a lag, I guess. I’ve been trying to get a Wii, so I’ve watched wiitracker.com and amazon’s wii page. That’s been the extent of my surfing.

Anyway, I tried something new this Sunday at the shelter. I brought my external flash to change the lighting. I’ve noticed that a lot of my closeup pictures have a flash halo at the bottom, a shadow caused by the lens of the camera. Today, I held the flash to the side to get higher contrast pictures.

I like the way the pictures look, but it takes two hands. I usually take the picture with my right hand, and keep the cat in the cage with my left. Today I fumbled with two hands and three things to do. The pictures are worth the extra hassle,I think.

www.lollypop.org, My Flickr Lollypop Collection

Lollypop Favorites

 Here’s the inside of Cat Adoption.  Adopters can look at the cats through windows on the other side of the cages.  There are 60-70 cages depending on how many are connected to make cat suites.

 

 Good boy!  I reached over the cage door to take this picture of the German Shepard.  I almost got a really stunning perspective as he got up on his hind legs to check out the camera.  It was all fuzzy, so we’re left with this helicopter shot.  The left picture is from Cat Holding 2 (strays).  Whenever I go in the holding rooms, cats reach out to grasp at anything within reach.  I get stopped all the time as one or another grabs onto my camera strap and won’t let go.  Instead, I often get into a tug of war with a gang of kittens.

Lollypop Farm Home Page, My Flickr Lollypop Collection

The Daughter

 

“Daddy, why is there a moon?”

Ah, an old story.  In the beginning, Mother Earth stood among a throng of smaller worlds.  She was special, though, favored by grandfather Sun.  He shown his pride on her all the time.  The other worlds swirled around her and taunted her, jealous of her special place.  They even hit her, sometimes.  She was strong, though, and those blows only made her stronger and bigger.  One day, another large world became jealous of the place Mother Earth held in the solar system.  She was almost as large as Earth, why shouldn’t she get the favored spot?  So she thought to herself.  She swung close by once, shooting past the Sun, looking for any reaction.  Sun didn’t notice, he was still watching Earth.  As she came around for another attack, earth braced herself.  Her face reddened, and she heated up.  The two clashed, and a great spray of lava spewed from the wounds they inflicted on each other.  Mother earth staggered under the blow and almost broke apart.  She was just strong enough to hold her shape, though.  The other world, also close to breaking apart, turned.  Blinded by her anger, she attacked Mother Earth again.  This blow was nearly as great as the first, and both worlds lay broken.  A small part of each remained, though.  Enough to gather back together.  As they both brought their pieces back together, they realized that they had become one.  The Earth and this new world had joined, both were now made up of the same rock.  There was no way to tell which came from which.  Realizing that they could no longer fight, Mother Earth named her new companion the Moon.  They have shared the warmth of Grandfather Sun ever since.  Now, their fights are good natured, as one or the other will jockey for a momentary place in front of the other.

The Moon was created when another body in the primordial Solar System collided with Earth. Space.com link

Lollypop Favorites

I’m pulling out the cute cannon, the cat on the right is called “Figaro”. LOL

Here’s Cat Holding 1. that’s where the strays/lost are kept. They’re waiting for vet checks or a move up to the adoption suite. Taking pictures here helps owners find their lost cats again. Cat Holding 2 is for cats that are surrendered by their owners.

This guy is my favorite for this week. He wasn’t on the list of cats I had to take pictures of, but he was so friendly, that I decided to let him out for a few minutes. He climbed all over me, kneeding with his front paws and purring all the while. the last two pictures are how I left him when I left for the day. Very hard to walk away, but Twitch won’t abide other cats in her kingdom.

http://www.lollypop.org/

Winter

 

Fall

 

FAIR Program

My County Executive has proposed a new way to close the Medicare gap in the county’s budget. Mrs. Brooks is proposing to take away schools’ share of sales taxes because New York state increased aid to schools last year. the program is called FAIR. It’s an acronym for Fairness, Accountability, Innovation, and Results. 29 school districts affected by this program are suing the county to reverse the Fair program.

The increased funds from New York state have been specifically assigned to certain programs. Schools can’t use that money for their regular budget needs. By taking away the schools’ share of sales taxes will just squeeze budgets that are already tight. We had a meeting last week in our department to discuss the changes we’ll have to make because of the fair program. New computers that teachers were depending on will have to wait. we’ve already stretched our computer cycle from 3 years to 5 years. Now, that 6 year old computer in the english teacher’s room will have to last two more years. I’ve found that a 5 year old computer will get ignored in a classroom. It’s just not fast enough to run the software they use. Now, how does denying technology to classrooms wind up being Fair or Innovative?

http://www.monroecounty.gov/?q=node/3833 Monroe County Description of the FAIR program

My School district’s response

Lollypop Favorites

 These two were priceless.  the tuxedo was really friendly, and the buff tiger has really blue eyes.  Cool pair.

 The beagles looked a little lost, I guess they just got to the shelter this week.  the 6 toed tuxedo was fun, he had a big mouth   I like the way the picture of the black and white kittens came out.  In cat holding, the cages are three levels.  On the lower levels, I open the cage, stick the camera in, and snap the shutter.  If I miss the shot, I delete the picture, and try again.  the rooms are narrow and it’s sometimes awkward to take pictures through the viewfinder.  I have to shoot quickly because most cats will try to escape if the cage door stays open too long.  Each cat has its own delay before bolting, but almost all will run eventually.

 

http://www.lollypop.org

Religion Quiz

Which is a statement from a real Baptist church, and which is from a parody site?

 

“God makes it even clearer that the former Pope is burning in Hell by allowing John Paul to send a horrifying Halloween warning message to deluded Catholics around the world!”

“God has ZERO Tolerance for Wicca!”

“America chose to spit in the face of their Creator, instead of heeding WBC’s warnings, and now it is too late to pray for this nation. “

“These girls were killed by God Almighty like any other typical raised-for-the-Devil, American whores.” re: 5 High school girls killed in Fairport, NY

The first two quotes are from Landover Baptist Church, a religious parody site. The last 2 quotes are from The Westboro Baptist Church.

Nano Imprint Lithography

Here’s the server rack at the high school. It’s all based on the most precise printers on the planet. Prints of new processor designs are exposed onto a platter of silica. Layer by layer, the processor is exposed onto the platter. Billions of transistors can be bunched together onto incredibly small bits of the platter. There is a limit, though. These are essentially the smallest wires that we make. The closer they get, the more chance there is for them crossing over and shorting out. The most advanced printers can make lines about 120 nano meters apart. the process has a built in error of about 20 nano meters. So, if the exposure process bleeds 20 nanometers on either side of the line, the smallest we can get with this process is about 80 nanometers. We’re getting close to the limit of our chip production precision. If the cost of improving the technology from 80 nano meters to 20 nano meters is so much that companies can’t afford it, the cheap computer boom will fall flat on it’s face. Instead of getting cheaper, computers would start to get more expensive. here’s how close we are to the limit. Texas Instruments is building a chip plant in Singapore that costs more than the GDP of 3/4 of the countries on the planet.

There are several proposals to break the price escalation of chip manufacture. I watched a video about one of those proposals last night. Nano Imprint Lithography proposes to do away with the exposure process. Instead of shining light through a mask to etch the surface of the chip, Grant Wilson etches lines onto a stamp with an incredibly precise electron beam. He thens presses the stamp into a polymer. Shining light on the polymer solidifies it. He’s been able to create lines as small as 40 nano meters. there are still some problems with his technology, as there are with the other proposals for sub 80 nano meter impression technology.

Here is the link to the Grant Wilson talk at MIT: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/483/

Update:  I’ve just been browsing Intel’s site, and they claim to have a 45 nm chip in development.  Cool!