confusion

Rome, Italy, November 2007

Post date January 6, 2009

I originally drafted this post in May ’08—more than 5 month after the trip—and now it’s January ’09. So not only am I a slacker, I’m a world class slacker. But without further sarcastic self-deprecation here is a brief overview of Candice & beggs adventures in Rome [wikipedia.org]!

Rome was the last big stop on our delayed honeymoon trip to Italy. The Eternal City deserves to be the icing on the cake. I mean, this was home to Julius Caesar [wikipedia.org], Cicero [wikipedia.org], a whole list of other famous Romans [wikipedia.org], not to mention The Roman Republic & Empire [wikipedia.org]! Few places rank this high on the history scale.

As with everywhere else we went in Italy the choice to go in November was a bit of a cramp—sun sets too early. But most of the big sights in Rome were within easy walking distance of our hotel on the forum side of the Quirinal Hill [wikipedia.org]: Trajan’s Forum [wikipedia.org], the original Roman Forum [wikipedia.org], The Colosseum [wikipedia.org], The Trevi Fountain [wikipedia.org], The Pantheon [wikipedia.org], and a ton of other things too numerous to mention let alone visit in the short time we were in Rome. (Add to that the Vatican which will be separate post and the amount of sightseeing you can do in Rome is awe inspiring and mind numbing.)

Two slightly annoying things; the Spanish Steps were covered in scaffolding. And, the number of people was amazing, I can’t imagine visiting at the height of the tourist season if late November is so crowded!

On the non-sightseeing side of things; we stayed in a very nice hotel, great view of the tops of the building leading down the Quirinal Hill to Trajan’s Forum. It was the best hotel we stayed in while in Italy, save the best for last. Most expensive too. We found a couple of brilliant places to eat, great Italian food and we at Euro-infected Chinese food at a small place near the Trevi Fountain, but off the beaten path.

Rome is definitely a city I could live in for a long time and not get tired of; the food the sights! Oh man, and the people are not as obnoxious as the Parisians. But I think Florence just beats out Rome in my list of dream cities to live in. Just walking around the streets in Rome is amazing, the palpable history and the wonderful feeling the mix of buildings give you is amazing.

You can see the whole Rome, Italy, November 2007 photoset on Flickr [flickr.com].

ranting

I’m going to hell…

Post date January 5, 2009

And here’s today’s reason why:

I███: Mornin. Is sunday busy in little india?

beggs: Yea.

I███: Thanks man. Opted for red dot and sleepy arab 1/4. Which reminds me, you given any further thought to full beardiness? Mullah Beggerly has a certain ring to it.

beggs: Haha. You have to clear it with the wife—but I guess being a mullah means the wife does not get a say.

I███: sure enough.

beggs: I could be Mullah beggs the militant vegetarian atheist.

I███: As a career move i think we’re on to something. allow me to offer my services as your agent. Motivational speaking at weddings, bar mitzvahs, beheadings, etc.

beggs: given the current economic situation I’ll have to seriously consider it.

Of course I don’t really believe in hell so… I guess it’s like going to beautiful northern New Jersey—I don’t believe in it, it doesn’t exist, you can’t go there.

photography

Red bells

Post date December 24, 2008

colophon

License Update

Post date December 24, 2008

I have updated the License for all the content on this site to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported [creativecommons.org] license. Have fun.

goodies

Oldies but goodies

Post date December 23, 2008

A blast from the past; images I created for my desktop when I was living in London long ago. Not so amazing when I look at them now but maybe someone will find them interesting. Long ago they were available here on Confusion for download. Now they are back. So, here you go, with the original explanations too… ‘Cause like I said ‘the internet never forgets‘ [confusion.cc].

Remember that everything below is from 2002… exercise extreme caution when trying to wrap your brain around anything I said.

Nebula

This was the first set of backgrounds I made, the “nebula” image is actually a color inverted cutout from a NASA image take by the Hubble Space Telescope. (The original image is here [oposite.stsci.edu]) Personally I think the first background is the best, the puzzle idea is cool, but I could not get it to work the way I wanted…

Dead link. You can find the image of the center of Centaurus A here [hubblesite.org] on the current Hubble site. Specifically, this is the source image [hubblesite.org].

Anomaly

I was just playing around with the “render” filter one day because I was board with the background I had and these three are the results. Kind of based on a “analysis” of deep space anomaly you would see on some computer screen in Star Trek. (The code in the images is some Lisp I wrote for a school project.)

Plasma

This set is fairly simple, using the “render ➔ clouds ➔ solid noise” filter and a little color manipulation. The second image then uses the “distort➔ whirl and pinch” filter, I think it needs a little something more, but it’s nice. The third picture is another “analysis” type idea—a patterned gradient and a little text.