Here's a Photoshop Phriday for you

Perhaps this has been done before, but when I saw the cathedral at Cologne, Germany, I thought it looked very evil. Impressive, but evil. Kern concurred, and thought that Sauron would live there. Hence, a little editing later:



This is the cathedral as viewed from the Rhine. Perhaps if I were more ambitious, I'd submit it to one of those sites that do these things often.

Eye of God

There are some very pretty pictures of spacescapes on NASA's web site. A few of them look like eyes. There was one that I'd seen before referred to as the "Eye of Heaven" (actual name: "Hourglass Nebula"), which was pretty impressive, but this one beats that one. Of course, if this is the eye of God...


Helix nebula -- click for big version

Then this must be the hand of God:


Part of Keyhole Nebula -- click for bigger version

Toby the First and Toby Jr

I didn't mention it here at the time, but earlier this year my dog Toby died. She was a great dog, friendly and loyal, and perhaps a bit too clever for me to leave food unattended on the kitchen counters, because she'd often find a way to get it. She once grabbed a whole new stick of butter that I had just put on the butter dish when I wasn't watching, and ate it. Here's a picture of her -- it's a fairly old one, taken with a primitive digital camera (apologies for the poor quality) when she had both of her legs:

Another time, I had set out a big loaf of my favourite sourdough bread to make a sandwich, but left the room briefly. From the other side of the house, I heard the door to the garage open (she knew how to open it from either side), and I heard her enter the kitchen. There was a thump sound from the kitchen, and I yelled "Toby!" and got in there as fast as I could, to see her tail slipping back out the door, and my loaf of bread was gone. I chased her outside and she was running around with the big loaf sticking out of her mouth. It was a funny sight despite the loss of my bread. ^^ I liked to call her "Tobi-kage" sometimes. Just a Japanese term for some kind of ninja trick that stuck in my mind.

Later in her life, she developed cancer twice, which resulted in the loss of one of her front legs, but she was still energetic and could get around pretty well. But the last time I visited back home, I could tell that it was probably the last time I'd see her, and it was. So rest in peace, Toby.

It's been some months since then, and Mom has adopted a new dog, male this time, who she's named Toby Jr. This dog had a playmate that met a tragic end, which is the point at which Mom adopted him. Here's a picture of him. Looks like a charmer with the lady dogs, I'll bet!

42

Upon reflection, after seeing the teaser trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie, it seems they're promoting it wrong. I know full well that every iteration of the story has had differences, from radio to book to TV to computer game to comics, etc. But if I were to describe the story (any of them) to someone, the phrase "the most astonishing adventure in the universe" doesn't come to mind.

I've always thought of it primarily as a comedy with adventure elements. The comedy comes from several places, but since visual adaptations don't have the benefit of DNA's (Douglas Adams') wordplay, what we're left with is primarily the concept of bizarre occurrances being dealt with in a sedated British everyman style. This can be done well and successfully, as seen recently in a different genre with the British film Shaun of the Dead, so it's quite possible that the movie itself does this, but the teaser trailer is trying to market it at a different audience. We shall see.