2008.11.18

Life Photo Archive

This is so amazingly wonderful. From the Google Blog:

We're excited to announce the availability of never-before-seen images from the LIFE photo archive. This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s

Via Waxy.org

2008.11.17

The Definition of a Slow News Day

I could go all defensive about this piece on Valleywag about our extravagant Disneyland trip, but I won't. Instead, I'll be gracious and help Owen during these troubled times for Valleywag. Here's a couple of story ideas based on a few photos from our weekend. Enjoy!  

Flaunting Wealth

Treasure

Piracy

Maniacal Mother

Mouse Ears

Space Mountain Snob

Dream Killer

Tinker Bell Scandal

2008.10.31

Last Chance to Help Children!

Today is the last day of the DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge. While I missed a couple days of posting daily, I think I did a pretty good job to sticking to my promise

Please take the time to donate to the projects I've picked to support. Any amount helps!

2008.10.29

Member is Just Another Word for Loser

Stumbling upon this piece on abcnews.com about frequent flier programs during these hard times reminded me of just how frustrated I am with United Airlines. I know what you're thinking: " Voicing your frustration about an airlines? Hey that's what Twitter is for!?" The airline/airport bitch is a cliché, but here's why I don't fly United anymore -- in more than 140 characters.

I flew quite a lot from 2003-2007. Getting over my fear of flying was aided by the notion that I could treat it like a competition and earn points and by 2006 I was flying 100,000 + miles per year. These were work-related trips, so by the time 2007 rolled around and I was pregnant/new mother, the air travel ceased abruptly. Here's a breakdown of my United status (the status is earned the previous year):

2004 - Premier Executive
2005 - Premier Executive
2006 - 1k status
2007 - 1k status 
2008 - Member! 

"Member" is the ultimate blow. It's the airline equivalent of the points you get for getting your name right on the S.A.T. Collecting miles was my addiction and I went from being on the ultimate high to quitting cold turkey. 

But that's the thing that frustrates/confuses me about United. With the loss of my 1k, they completely loss a customer. Not because I think it is unfair and am protesting, but because I have absolutely no incentive to fly with United anymore. I'm not going to work on next year's status because the experience of traveling to earn that status is just so damn poor. How hard is it for them to grant some sort of emeritus title for a year and see if I build it up again?

Considering that they now charge for baggage and water, my elitist rant about their loyalty program is the least of their problems.  Besides, I'd rather fly coach on Virgin America than deal with United full-stop. And yay* for Virgin for finally launching their own loyalty program.

*And another yay for Virgin America's awesome customer outreach on Twitter.

2008.10.28

Barack Obama, Friend to Three-Legged Dogs

Three items (and a photo) that may be of interest to those who might still need to be persuaded to vote for Obama. [1]

While we've endorsed hundreds of congressional candidates for election, both Democrats and Republicans, we've never before endorsed a presidential candidate. We have members on the left, in the center, and on the right, and we knew it could be controversial to choose either party's candidate for the top office in the nation. But in an era of sweeping presidential power, we must weigh in on this most important political race in the country. Standing on the sidelines is no longer an option for us.

Best Friends Animal Society (my favorite animal-centric charitable organization) recently started a petition to get the Obama family to adopt a rescue animal. After 50,000 signatures, Michelle Obama confirmed that they would be adopting a rescue.

Obama-and-baby

Finally, the poodle pictured in the photo with Obama is Baby. She was rescued after ten years in a puppy mill and is the subject of this book. Obama's political mentor -- Dick Durbin -- is the author of a federal bill to stop the practice of puppy mills. Obama appears in the book as a supporter of Baby and this cause.

[1] Yes, this post is for my mom.

Breaking the Law, Trott-style

Up until last Sunday morning, I had only been pulled over by a cop once in my life: I was sixteen years-old and had forgotten to turn on my lights on my way home from my pizza-parlor job. My reaction to being pulled over (pure panic) prompted the officer to ask me if I had been drinking. Of course I was incredibly naive at the time and said: "I'm sixteen -- it's not even legal for me to drink!" And I meant it, too.

On Sunday, *I* didn't get pulled over -- Ben did. We were in traffic going into Golden Gate Park and didn't have the foggiest clue what Ben could have done wrong.  It turns out that we didn't have an updated registration sticker on our car -- it had expired in July. I've been driving around with expired plates for more than 3 months and had never noticed or been stopped. 

Since our registration was current -- we were just stickerless -- Ben got a infraction ticket without any fine or marks on his record.

But the story doesn't end there. Twenty minutes after being pulled over, we were pulled over again! By a different cop! 

Officer: It looks like your registration isn't current...
Me: We know. We already got a ticket about it.
Officer: Ok, when did you get this ticket?
Me: Umm. Like twenty minutes ago.
Officer: Really? 

He then looks at the ticket and tells us to have a nice day.

Later, we saw a woman pulled over for the same thing. We were on foot so we could hear their conversation. So either Sunday was a SFPD expired registration tag scavenger hunt or there was some quota in serious effect.

That said, both officers were very nice to us. I think having a cute baby in the backseat helps a lot.

2008.10.23

Pen on Ocean Beach


Penelope and Sand, originally uploaded by mgtrott.

Today was Penelope's first trip to a beach, courtesy of a warm October day in San Francisco.

She's a very generous little person and will pick up things and bring them over to people. Then, she makes a little sound that sort of means "here." She started doing that with grains of sand. She'd pick up a pinch of sand and then bring it to me. What totally delights me is how she would take time to pick just the right grains out of the billions out there.

I'm sure that there is some lesson to be learned from this baby's action and that it would make some great sort of Zen parable.

Turn of the Century Autochromes

Pair It's amazing what a little color can do. Take these vivid color photographs from the 1930s-1940s available from the Library of Congress collection. Or these photos from turn-of-the-century Russia. It's the presence of color that make these folks look like they aren't that far removed from modern times. (Actually, he's not like anyone I've met lately.)

Here's a collection of color photographs (actually, autochrome) that is new to me. Found via The Commons on Flickr, these autochromes are from the George Eastman House.

What's an autochrome, you may ask?

The process used a screen of tiny potato starch grains dyed orange-red, green and violet. Dusted onto a glass plate, the dyed grains were covered with a layer of sensitive panchromatic silver bromide emulsion. As light entered the camera, it was filtered by the dyed grains before it reached the emulsion. While the exposure time was very long, the plate could be processed easily by a photographer familiar with standard darkroom procedures. The result was a unique, realistic, positive color image on glass that required no further printing.


I also love these photographs because they're obviously the result of experiments with a new toy. 

You've got the requisite flower portraits reminiscent of a modern-day photographic ritual: when trying out a new camera, who doesn't take a couple of pretty pictures of nearby flowers?

Fruit

And then there are the staged portraits that imitate the only real color "photographs" these photographers would have had as a point of reference -- oil paintings.

Dolls

But my favorite is this photo of a baby in a high chair from c. 1915.

2008.10.21

Bring On the Sexy Amish Costume!

Guard Perhaps most men won't agree, but the state of women's Halloween costumes has probably hit an all-time skanky low. Since when did every costume out there have to be sexy? Strike that. Sexy would be fine -- I'm talking straight-out slutty. And it's not just the expected sort of costume: nurse, French maid, Playboy Bunny. I'm talking about utterly absurd costumes to be sluttified.  

Here are my top ten costumes that should not exist:
  1. Sexy Palace Guard
  2. Sexy Mental Patient
  3. Sexy Border Control Agent
  4. Sexy C.S.I. Agent
  5. Sexy "Sloth" [1]
  6. Sexy Defense Attorney
  7. Sexy SpongeBob
  8. Sexy Puritan (Garters for Teens!)
  9. Sexy Leprechaun
  10. Sexy Freddy Krueger (thank you Mule Girl
[1] Sexy Sloth would have been so much cooler if it was "Sloth" from the Goonies or even a tree sloth. 

2008.10.20

Cute-O-Matic

Want to see the saddest and/or greatest Halloween costume ever? Penelope models it over at my other blog, Nested.

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