Erratica Reduex

This week I have been in a mood. Practically a state. Today not even a long whirl on the stationary cycle improved things, so I did something I don't do nearly often enough; I went for a walk.

Today the destination was a local park that while practically in walking distance I haven't been to before, because they charge for parking, and truthfully it didn't look very interesting. So I parked on a side street, walked through the parking lot, and entered. To my surprise, it was much larger than it appeared on the inside, with paths leading down to a hollow surrounded by young redwoods. The noise of traffic was muffled there, and it was shady, wet and cool. I explored for a while, seeing the small amphitheater, the children's museum, and the old miniature railroad tracks that were disused now, covered with dirt tree litter. And then I went through a gate, and there was the Japanese Friendship Garden. There was a series of large shallow pools, small islands, and a waterfall tumbling down a small cliff of artfully placed boulders. Going up some nearby steps, I found another large lake, an island, a Japanese-style bridge going nowhere...and cherry trees. The trees were in early blossom, so I wandered in and around them. The trees were surrounded by bees, intent on the first thing to bloom near them.

And so I took some pictures. Here are a couple of the better ones (The rest will end up on my DA account):


( A picture of the upper pond. )


( Some not-so-good pictures of the trees. )


( I do like this close-up. )

All of this put me in a much better state of mind, ready to face my evening's client. It's interesting how quickly I forget in this highly urbanized area how much a walk outside in quiet nature heals my moods. I think I'll remember that from now on. And I also think I'll learn to use that nice camera I was given.

I've found one thing when taking pictures on my Blackberry- two if you exclude the "the focus on this thing is broken, or the lens is smudged" realization. 

But in this case, it's "Taking a sepia picture of a black cat on a yellow cat post in front of a yellow wall really doesn't accomplish much.

( See? )

I have something interesting here: Mark Witton's Flicker Photostream. Well, interesting for anyone who likes dinosaurs, which should be everyone, right?

I've linked to Mark Witton's work before; he's the one who has done the brilliantly rendered pictures of giant pterodons like Hazegopteryx as shown here:





And of course with a better size comparison here.  I love the SIZE of these monsters!:





The whole site is filled with brilliant dinosaur artwork. It's worth reading as well, because he discusses a lot of his work as a pre-doctorate researcher who is focusing his grad study on, you guessed it, pterodons. This tells you a lot about the life of a paleobiologist, including the eccentricities required.

I some respects, I'm not sure if Mark Whitton is pursuing his career, or being pursued.

You see?

The Artist Adam Hughes for some big comic promotion thing drew a number of female characters from a certain comic company, evidently dressed up for...I dunno, a photo-shoot, or a wedding, or something.  Not just to be cheesecake, oh no.

The question is, who is who?

If you can, put your answer in spoiler tags.   I guarantee a big...well medium...make that a really tiny prize for anyone who gets them all.

For Sandpanther, more or less.



I was fiddling around with the motivational poster generator to find something to send to the immense RPG Motivational Poster thread at rpg.net, and couldn't resist doing something based off of a snarky comment sandpanther used to make about a character in Samurai Troopers who had a repeated problem with gravity.  I honestly tried a long search for a picture of Ryu falling, to no avail, so I finally used the best falling themed poster I could find. 

It's a little blurry, but oh well...