Great for light gathering, but not so portable
A
story alerted me to this Santa Monica kitsch/art, with a photo from
Wikipedia:
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The winner of the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor, Gehry has won international renown, but always he kept coming home to Los Angeles, where he launched his career with Victor Gruen Associates.
His contributions to Santa Monica and the surrounding areas include Santa Monica Place, the 25-year-old indoor mall Downtown, which has been slated for redevelopment, and the Chiat/Day Office on Main Street in Venice near the Santa Monica border. The building is graced by 45-foot tall-black binoculars designed by artist Claes Oldenburg.
Gehry’s style reflects a distinct Southern Californian flair, which can be traced back to the funky-coastal communities of Venice and Santa Monica he haunts. In his Pritzker acceptance speech in 1989, Gehry compared designing structures to creating sculptures or painting a picture.
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Peeping Mommy
You never know what ordinary people will
admit to doing:
For a couple hours the other day I was a voyeur. With a pair of binoculars, I could see right into the front door of two neighboring houses. This wasn't just idle curiosity. For one thing, they're both awfully noisey households. (Not nosey - that's me!) And another thing, I think they're hiding something or someone in there. I've noticed almost constant comings and goings. What are they up to - are they manufacturing and selling crack cocaine?
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Leica digital camera - spotting scope combo
A story from
Tech Digest describes the new Leica D-Lux 2 digital camera:
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Leica created the first 35mm camera - and it looks like they've gone back to their early days for this stylish and unfussy retro design. The camera itself features a 2.5-inch display with a high resolution,. which should give you a bright and sharp display when you're out and about. The D-Lux 2 is Leica’s first 8.4MP digital camera, providing the option to reproduce unlimited images in the 16:9 format. It also features a wide-angle 4x zoom lens.
...
And here's a niche selling point - Bird watchers can pick up the new Leica digital adapter which connects the camera to a Leica Televid spotting scope to capture nature pictures at a long focal range.
Outsourcing hits outdoor gear
It seems Bushnell acquired Michaels of Oregon and is
sending the jobs overseas:
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Michaels of Oregon is a leading manufacturer of hunting, shooting and law enforcement accessories. The company is headquartered in Oregon City, Oregon and has a plant in Meridian. It produces brand names like Uncle Mike's and Hoppes.
According a press release, Michaels of Oregon was acquired by Bushnell last August. It did not mention if employees would be let go, but workers we talked to say their jobs will now go oversees.
"We were promised we would not be outsourced and go oversees, and of course that is obviously not what is happening. We were told that yesterday they are outsourcing our product, they are going overseas," said employee Shane Martin.
It's shocking news for more than 200 employees who would like to continue making the companies products in Idaho.
...
I can't say this is much of a surprise, for Chinese and Russian products are coming in as a huge wave. I'm sad to see it happen but have no answers for the bigger issues.
Spotting scopes and shooting
A story in the Dallas Star-Telegram
discusses the use of spotting scopes in shooting matches:
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For each shooter, a spotter uses a scope to tell the shooter where the preceding shot hit.
"As far as I am concerned, the spotter is at least half of the match," Yager said. "When I was shooting rams [at 547 yards], I had to make as much as a three-minute correction because of the wind changes. The spotter reads the wind and the mirage and gives you corrections accordingly where you are hitting on the animal.
"There are flags out in front that the spotter uses and he reads the mirage through his spotting scope to see how the mirage is running. The mirage can make your target move around. All the shooter does is be able to see the target and squeeze the trigger. The spotter is the man who says what and when."
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Earning customer loyalty no matter the cost
From
AME Info Online:
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Carl Zeiss, the world's largest lens maker, made another type of offer to flood disaster victims in the eastern part of Germany. Carl Zeiss offered to replace any Zeiss equipment -- yes, any -- that had been damaged by the floods, even Mr. Smith's 80-year-old binoculars, no questions asked.
How would you say this influenced consumer perception of the brand?
Building brands is about so much more than controlling colors, fonts, the design of your Web site, and the language of your press releases. It encompasses everything that affects the emotional tie between your brand and its customers. All experience to date shows time and again the most effective way to build brands is to combine traditional communication channels with alternative forms of communication. The latter is exemplified in the Carl Zeiss story.
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No comment, but I'll keep it in mind!
Spotting Scopes: The new way to meet people
A
story about an eagle nest near a road shows what a little initiative can do:
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At times no one is watching the nest, but as soon as someone sets up a spotting scope, the looky-loos start lining up.
On March 26, Jack Seileman of San Diego was on a retreat in Mesa Grande with his men's club. He told his five buddies he was taking them on a “magical mystery tour.” So he drove out, set up a spotting scope, aimed it at the nest and told the men to get out of the vehicle and look through the lens. His only requirement was that each not tell the next what he saw.
One by one, they all looked. Mark Adams didn't tell Ed Maupin, and on down the line to James McKeen, James Yunker and finally Skeet Frazee.
Who needs the Discovery Channel when there's a live show like this?
Report on the eclipse
Here's an
awestruck report on the recent eclipse:
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Then my mind was brought back to the present by the cheers of my fellow onlookers. First contact had occurred at 11:20am. Right on time, I started taking my pictures - once every 5 minutes or so as to give me a good series of photos to show off to my friends back home, and to give me a good record of what really happened just in case I failed to witness a visual for myself.
The moon ever so slowly kept covering the sun, first one quarter, then half and then three quarters. I made sure to keep a cool head and do everything right, just as I had practiced in my mind so many times before. And then it started to happen. I noticed the sky started to turn a dark blue; the shadows on the ground were more vivid than I had ever seen before; the birds that I had noticed chirping were silent now; a little chill had filled the air as I put on my jacket.
I was so excited by that point that I could hardly stand it. I felt like I was in my own little zone. Even JoAnne, my non-astronomer partner, was getting exited. And then, just before totality, I heard someone yell out, " There is Venus!"
It was getting so dark out that you could actually see the planet Venus along with some of the other bright stars twinkling in the middle of the day. This is not normal, I was thinking to myself, even though I knew it was going to happen.
And then, like some supreme being had intervened, at 12:38 pm the sky turned black, the sun disappeared behind the moon, and this bright haze around the two combined bodies, known as the "suns corona," shined brightly like some hazy atmosphere.
I was just in awe. I know no other words to accurately describe the sight or how I was feeling. It was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen, even if it was for only 3 minutes and 56 seconds.
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Birdwatching over the web
From the
Vancouver Sun:
When Doug Carrick retired to live on his secluded Hornby Island property, he had no idea that a pair of nesting bald eagles would bring the world into his backyard.
That happened last week when a website showing live video images from the eagles' nest brought the birds' every move onto computer screens around the world.
"It's captivating for everyone," said biologist David Hancock, who helped get the images on the web after seeing Carrick's videotapes from a camera he had set up in the nest.
"People are blown out of their mind to see the eagle at nest level."
Hancock said the website, which began operating March 27, has already had a big response: Bloggers have picked up on it, and there have been calls from Venezuela and the U.S. from people wondering about using similar technology to watch other birds.
The eagles are oblivious to the camera, making website visitors bystanders to the birds' daily routine.
The images show the birds interacting, changing places over the eggs, and the wind blowing through their feathers.
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Visit the live cam at:
www.hancockhouse.com
