By Tom Bridge
At long last, Dr. Sketchy’s is coming back to DC this Sunday at Palace of Wonders in the Atlas District. $5 gets you and your sketch pad in the door where you can hang out with Rev. Loveseat for Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School.
It’s actually a big weekend at the Palace, with the Olde City Sideshow coming on Friday night ($10) and the ladies of the Gilded Lily Burlesque performing on Saturday night ($10) as well.
Palace of Wonders
1210 H St NE
Washington DC
By Don
I figure if Warren Ellis can call Comicon “Nerd Prom” then it’s only fair to call the annual Otakon in Baltimore Nerd Prom East. It’s not 125,000+ in attendance but the announced 26,000+ for this year is nothing to sneeze at either.
As I wrote last year, no matter how little interest you might have in animation or sf/fantasy, the pictures from Otakon and the costumes people put together are simply amazing. If you search for everything on Flickr with the word otakon with a date after Aug 1, 2008 (so you get this year’s shots) you end up with just shy of 6,000 shots. Fire up PicLens – thanks for turning me onto this program, Max! – and rather than spending that hour working like you should have, you can think “wow!” and “I bet that’s heavy,” “why is Jesus there?” and “are you old enough to be walking around in public in your underwear?”
Some of my favorite pics from this year after the jump. Continue reading
By Max
20080713L1000014 by furcafe
‘Tis the season for barbecuing, the time to gather up your friends and family, fire up the coals, and throw down some of your favorite meats and vegetables. It’s also a great opportunity to toss back a few cans of beer or your favorite blueberry drink of choice. But be careful, DC. When you mix an open fire pit with alcohol consumption, you may very well set the neighborhood on fire.
This brings up a good question. Last year it was discovered that at least 25% of DC’s fire hydrants were out of order. So what state are our hydrants in now? Have they all been fixed? Are we down to 5%? I know the hydrant across the street from my house still has an “out of service” collar on it which is not exactly a comforting feeling. I have to say, from the Georgetown Library fire to the recent one in Mount Pleasant, DC should also be known as the “fire capital” of the United States.
Photographer Chris Chen (furcafe), an omnipresent “man on the scene”, did a great job of capturing the spirit of a backyard barbecue in this shot. While you’ll normally see him with a film camera strapped around his neck (and please note that I have never seen Chris without a camera), this photo was captured using his digital Leica M8.
By brownpau
I’m a big fan of the National Park Service’s webcams, especially the Washington DC cam viewing the Mall area from the Netherlands Carillon on the GW Parkway. Having a windowless inside office I like to keep this cam (among other outdoor DC cams) open in a separate browser window to provide an outside view through the course of the work day. I’ve also used it for at least one time lapse video.
Checking the cam tonight brought an especially cool treat: a long exposure shot catching a plane making the River Visual approach to landing at National:
Webcam captures plane
(Here’s how that approach looks from a pilot’s perspective aboard a small plane in daylight. More here.)
Update: Oh nice, check out brianmka’s incidental capture of a landing plane at night from right near the same webcam.
By Don
Yesterday’s WaPo article on bees was serendipitous for me. I’d recently seen a bee smaller than any other bee I had ever seen by far – much smaller than a pea – and it made me wonder how many varieties of bees there were. Growing up in Miami I’d only noticed one kind of bee, and it wasn’t till I moved up here that I saw my first bumblebee. I didn’t even realize it was a bee at first – the big fat thing that looked like a black and yellow flying jellybean did not resemble the bees I was used to in shape, size, color, or behavior. I can’t speak for anyone else, but their lollygagging pace makes me feel far more comfortable around them than other bees. It’s almost impossible to imagine those Orson Welles of the bee world attacking you.
Now, if you’re more insect-educated than I am – and it’s easy to imagine that – you scoffed when I said I’d only ever seen one type of bee. After all, there’s over 3,500 species of indigenous bees, a fact that Adrian Higgens’ article introduced me to, so the chances that I only ever saw one kind is unlikely. Since facts are, for me, like potato chips – you can’t consume just one – I looked up a few of the resources that Higgens provided, including the mention of the Xerces Society and the publication Farming for Bees, which can be downloaded in PDF form from that link. While I had better luck finding bee-attracting plants in the appendix of the UGA document “Bee Conservation in the Southeast,” I did find some other information about our area in the F4B document.
On page 19 is a case study of how Pepco has handled the land under some of their transmission lines. There’s more information on Pepco’s right of way program here but for my money you can’t beat a writeup about a power company program called the Butterfly Enhancement Project. I’m still trying to figure out where the devil that 5 acre stretch is, though I get the sense that it may not be accessible to the general public.
Until I figure that out and can take some shots there, why not content yourself with the collection of Flickr pictures tagged with ‘bee’ in our immediate area? And if you happen to know what that other bug is in my shot, sing out, would you? I’ve never seen a black and yellow beetle before.
Bug harmony, courtesy of Me
By Tom Bridge
World War I Memorial by oberonindc
Hidden away from the Reflecting Pool stands a Doric-columned white marble dome, inscribed with the names of 499 men and women from the District of Columbia who never made it home from fields of Ypres and the end of The Great War. The monument, dedicated on Armistice Day, 1931, by President Hoover, was built to fit The President’s Own, and John Philip Sousa lead the band on the occasion. Playing The Stars and Strips Forever, the Band dedicated the memorial to those lost in combat abroad.
The memorial, granted by Act of Congress in 1924, was built with $200,000 in private donations, given by citizens of the District. Architect Frederick H. Brooke designed the edifice to be built using Vermont Marble from the Danby quarry, and the committee planted a grove of hardwood trees to surround the memorial.
By Tom Bridge
Middleburg Benches by compulsion
An hour outside DC, in the middle of hunt country, is a tiny little town called Middleburg. I’d been meaning to get out and explore it, and this summer’s CSAdventures have given us just the opportunity. Our farm, in Bluemont, and our friends’ dairy farm, encircle a 100-mile circuit with Middleburg at the dead center, perfect for a lunch. Driving the gently rolling hills and winding scenic byways has become a real joy for us each weekend. The ancient stone wall fences that surround so many of the country estates and farms of the hunt country are iconic, throwbacks to a time long passed.
The town itself sits on the John S. Mosby Highway (Route 50), halfway to the Blue Ridge. It’s only about a mile wide, and certainly no wider than a few blocks, but what’s contained therein is an impressive collection of prosperous businesses. Restaurants, Beds & Breakfast, Country Inns, this is the perfect little hamlet for escaping to the country for a quiet weekend away.
By brownpau
“Couth, courtesy, and common sense” — iMetro’s three personal values whose deficiency makes Metro that much more unpleasant to ride. (Strictly speaking, though, “couth” is more adjective than noun, generally used as ironic foil to “uncouth.”) He follows up with a few photos demonstrating said unpleasantness. I’m especially WTF-ing at the jacket on the other side of the tracks and the rocks on the glass canopy. And next time I see someone doing chin-ups on the overhead bars I might just pull down his pants. Or at least tut-tut sternly.
More fun Metro ranting at WTFMetro.
By Ben H. Rome
In Traffic, courtesy of magandafille
And so it begins.
The like-it-or-not High-Occupancy Toll lanes are now a step closer to reality – at least in Northern Virginia.
So what are these HOT lanes, exactly?
These are specialized lanes that will reside on the ‘inside’ of the Beltway (specifically, a stretch of I-495 in NoVA) where carpools can use them for free and individual drivers looking to ditch the rest of us pokies will have to cough up some money. But there’s no actual ‘tollbooth’ to deal with. Continue reading
By Don
![Photo courtesy of [phil h]](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/28/67301719_8cdbbf60e3_m.jpg)
Commenter Mary pointed out a link to the Slashdot story on the CLEAR data breach over here, and I’d been pondering whether to mention it or not. It’s not really DC related, but we did just write about the program and its express lines at DCA and IAD.
As it turns out, however, there is a DC related angle I wanted to point out. Namely the WaPo coverage about this loss of the personal data of 33,000 customers of Verified Identity Pass… headlined as “Missing Laptop Keeps Firm From Registering New Fliers.” Run on the very last page of the business section.
It’s a wire story from Bloomberg, so WaPo can’t be faulted for the ho-hum reporting of VIP losing the data of over 15% of their customers, but who felt this was such a non-story that they’d bury it on the back page and give it such a misleading headline?
It’s funny – just last night over dinner I caught some flack for beating up on the Post and I said I really do like WaPo, it’s just that I expect better from them. This is a perfect example.
By Tom Bridge
Skins Fans Lovin’ It by search-evangelist
Congratulations to brand-new-Hall-of-Famers Darrell Green and Art Monk. I know several of my friends who believe that the Hall’s snub of Monk for so long is one of the great injustices of the world to date, and it’s nice to see it finally resolved. Of course, Kissing Suzy Kolber had the best version of Monk’s acceptance speech, which actually made me choke on my coffee with laughter.
Of course, what made the rest of the weekend so sweet was Jim Zorn’s first pre-season victory, a 30-16 effort over the Indianapolis Colts. Rookie Colt Brennan looked good in the second half with a pair of TDs behind center. Of course, it’s still the pre-season, but any win is a good win over the Colts, even if they were short 7 of their starters. But, of all the words in the press this weekend, Wise’s are wisest: “Until they win like [the 80s/90s Redskins] again, the compare-and-contrast game will never end.” So, here’s to the Skins, may they again rise in glory. But what of the Nationals?
By Jonathan
In a previous post I talked about signing up for the Clear lanes at Dulles airport. After much waiting, my card came today – just in time for my flight to our annual conference. Being a total gear head, I wanted to try it immediately.
It’s hard not to love this service. Even after the sticker shock (yes, it is $128.00 per year), I now know it is worth it. On Friday during rush hour it took me – wait for it – all of 300 seconds to clear security. 5 minutes. That’s right. Including biometrics, taking out the laptop, doing the X-Ray machine, everything. I was in a line of exactly two people. And then I was through. Continue reading
By Max
WTOP is reporting that the main runway at DCA will be moved 300 feet south and made longer in order to keep planes from ending up in the drink and to comply with current FAA rules. That sounds simple enough, especially since they have until 2015 to complete the job. Yep, 7 years to move a runway 300 feet south. Clark Construction could build two or three stadiums in that amount of time.
By Tom Bridge
The overturned vehicle we mentioned this afternoon on I-395 in DC? Yeah, it was a WMATA van, transporting disabled passengers. They’re having a bad month over there at Metro, what with the Escalator issues, a Multi-failure Day, a busted Yellow line, and many other issues we’ve all talked about here.
I wonder, is there any place we should send our condolences for their rough month? What exactly do you get that friend that somehow manages to screw up every part of their core competency in just a few weeks?
Many professions and art forms have festival events, where the up-and-comers try to get noticed, get to mingle with the Big Names, and where enthusiasts for that particular art form or profession get to geek out to their hearts’ content- Defcon, Cannes, Dragon*Con, at heart, they’re all about the same thing- people who love something getting together to celebrate it. Comedy is no different- there are multiple comedy festivals each year, days-long binges of laughter where comedians get to perform for each other, talk about the craft of comedy, and educate one another. Toronto, Las Vegas, and Aspen are the most famous, so you may not know that here in DC, we have our very own comedy festival that draws some serious talent while showcasing some of our own finest local comics.
The DC Comedy Fest starts next week and the schedule is packed with sketch comedy, standup comedy, panel discussions, and classes. Their site has the full listing, by performer and by event, as well as tickets for individual shows, passes by venue, and a full-festival pass. They’ve got shows downtown, shows on U Street, shows in Arlington. There’s really something for everyone, but here are my picks for particular highlights:
By Max
I was buzzing around the Internets today (as I do), looking for interesting photos, reading up on celebrity gossip, browsing through drink recipes, Googling people’s names – you know how it goes. Little did I know that when I clicked on one of my RSS feeds I would be slapped in the face by what seems like a brilliant idea: Scramble Intersections!
By Tom Bridge
Due to an overturned vehicle on 395 through the District, with two lanes o westbound 395 and one lane of eastbound 395 closed. Paramedics are on the scene, but if you need to come through the District today, use surface streets, not 395. I would bet that they’ll still be cleaning this one up going into evening rush tonight, so start looking at alternate routes.
By brownpau
If you’re like me, you probably wake up every weekend morning thinking, “I’m tired of seeing only pigeons, sparrows, seagulls, starlings, and other parasitic and invasive avian species in this urban environment! But I don’t have a car! If only there were Metro-accessible places to see more diverse species of indigenous birds in the DC area!” Well, despair no more! John Beetham of the DC Audubon Society has posted Birding By Metro, your guide to bird-spotting locations easily accessible by DC public transportation.
Birding By Metro. Go do it. Seriously. Bring back pictures.
By Jonathan
Security lines suck. There is just no other way to describe it. Imagine any other location where you are dragging luggage behind you, trying to juggle papers, and then have to take your shoes off to get somewhere. If Metro started enforcing rules like that, there would be a riot in most of DC.
The biggest problem with TSA security is how long it takes. (I’m going to ignore the “gigantic” problems for now – I’ll hold my TSA ranting for later.) Arriving at an airport is a crap shoot – you could fly through security, or you could wait an hour for a single lane. And, as a frequent traveler, that drives me crazy. It’s a lot of time I could be using doing something useful – like blogging.
So, after seeing the Clear Lanes expand in to Dulles, and then working my way towards the $128.00 fee (most of which is paid by my company), I decided to take the plunge and find out how much faster this new system is. Continue reading
By Max
Sunflower Sunset by Mark Anderson
Some of you may know that I like flower photos. You may also know that I like sunset photos. So it may come as no surprise that I fell in love with this shot as soon as I saw it, not only because it involves flowers and a sunset, but also because it’s perfectly executed.
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