Diversions

Photography News

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Item 1: Microsoft’s new photo-search technology looks like a big deal.

 
 
 

Item 2: This is great. A guy puts a small digital camera, cleverly modified to take photos at one-minute intervals for 48 hours, on his cat. The cat wanders off and returns with photos of all kinds of things his owner never knew were going on.

A cat is perfect for this experiment, because it is big enough and has a wide enough range of behavior for its travels to be interesting, yet also small enough that it can be allowed to roam. I assume it’s only a matter of time before people start putting cameras on birds and even smaller animals.

The Nights of The Iguana

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Three days ago, I spotted something unusual lying on the gravel walk of my small garden. Grey, heavy … a yard or more of dead iguana, which is quite a lot. I don’t know where iguanas usually go to die, but I’d never come across a dead one before and was quite shocked.

It was dusk, so I thought if I said out loud, “I believe in magic!” it would be gone on the morrow. And indeed, it was! The next morning, gone!

The niggle was, having noticed the previous day that its head had been eaten, I was pretty certain it hadn’t woken up and ambled off. I also noticed my cat Anand, a tall, thin cat, sitting on the path, self-consciously regarding his claws.

I was gripped by a sudden memory of the episode in Fawlty Towers in which a guest dies in the hotel. In order not to upset the elderly permanent residents in the lobby by taking it down to the front door, Basil, the waitress and Manuel temporarily hide the corpse in an empty room. Unwittingly, Basil’s wife,on the front desk, assigns the empty room to a guest and the rest of the episode is Basil, Manual and Connie running around Fawlty Towers shifting the corpse in a panic.

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Victory at Sea [Updated!]

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Many thanks to Dan from Madison for his kind hospitality in inviting me to go fishing with him last week. I can tell you now that Dan is a very nice guy*, not to mention that he was willing to commit himself to spending six hours on a boat with a complete stranger**. He is also a great sportsman, as befits one of Madison’s foremost bloggers and Chicago Bears season-ticket holders.

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