Category: Photos

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I saw quite a few Flash T-shirts in San Diego this year (more than I’m used to seeing at Comic-Con, actually), but only two people dressed as the Flash. Interestingly, both were women.

Kelson meets the Flash Another Flash

While all four of the major Flashes have been men, DC has published a number of female speedsters, including several alternate-reality Flashes and two who have worn the Flash symbol in-continuity: Lady Flash and Jesse Quick.

I also found it interesting that both costume designs incorporated sunglasses, reminiscent of one of Jesse’s later costumes and of the Kingdom Come version of Iris West II.

Update August 3: Wallyoeste and West both pointed out CBR’s 3rd Photo Parade, which includes two pictures of a couple in Flash costumes. Part 4 has a picture of a DC group with a fifth. This brings it up to at least 5 Flashes at the convention: 3 women and 2 men.

Update 16 years later: the CBR photo galleries are long gone, and the Wayback Machine didn’t catch any of the images, so I’ve removed the links. But I still have that Nightmare Before Christmas T-shirt!

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Lining up for the iPhoneSince I was going to the Irvine Spectrum for lunch anyway, I figured I’d drop by the Apple Store and see how many people were there for the iPhone launch. I walked by around 1:50pm, about 4 hours before the event, and sure enough there were a bunch of people lined up all along the shops.

You can see some lawn chairs and umbrellas. The campers are sort of hidden in the shade, which is why I upped the brightness on the second picture. Of course, I’m sure everyone waiting in line appreciated the shade. Those shadows will only get longer over the course of the afternoon, and while there’s a nice breeze once you get out into more open areas, the corridors of the mall are better at channeling people than wind.

Looking toward the Apple StoreWhen I walked by the first time, I only noticed the line running to that corner you can see at the end, maybe 3 storefronts down. About 10 minutes later, after stopping at Kelly’s Coffee, I saw that they were wrapped around that corner, almost the entire length of Forever 21, and stopped at the edge of the patio for the restaurant next door.

Not a huge line—I’ve waited in much longer lines for movies—but bigger than I expected for a phone.

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Found these posters advertising the opening of a new 24-Hour Fitness gym:

Poster showing partying women and text: Reason #5 of 24 · big fat honkin' party · grand opening · food, fun and prizes! · enter to win a big screen tv! · win a $2000 vacation voucher · 24-Hour Fitness

Wait, something doesn’t fit. A “big, fat honkin’ party?” Last I looked, this was a fitness center, not a fatness center!

It doesn’t help that one of the prizes is a big-screen TV. I didn’t realize “couch potato” fell under the category of “Ultra Sport.” 😀

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Friday was the first rain we’d seen in over a month. By evening, the trailing edge of the storm was starting to cross central Orange County, and I actually drove back into the cloud cover to pick Katie up from work. We ended up stopping for dinner, and got back on the road around sunset.

Rainbow at sunset.At sunset, there were clouds above us, rain in the east, and clear skies to the west, showing a bright orange sun. We looked to the east, and saw a huge rainbow. It was extremely high—it looked like it ought to be an entire circle, even though I knew it couldn’t be more than a semicircle. That doesn’t come through in the one photo that came out, since it’s a matter of perception: neither of us had ever seen a rainbow centered at the horizon before. It was also faint (I had to increase the contrast on this photo), and very red.

Sunset behind a blimp hangar.

Google Images pulls up some nice pictures when you search for rainbow sunset. I particularly like this one at Flickr, which also shows spoke-like rays. Atmospheric Optics’ rainbow section is also worth a look, especially for some of the odd kinds of rainbows that aren’t often seen.

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It’s been a dry year for California. Water districts all over the state are geared up for drought conditions. The hills in the Orange County area are still golden-brown in mid-April. Last year at this time, they had finally turned green for spring.

Here’s a shot from the Irvine Spectrum area from April 6, 2006:

Street corner, facing a vacant lot covered with green grass, in front of green hills with a clutch of houses to the right.

That’s not a lawn behind that hedge, that’s a vacant lot. You can see it’s just as green as the strip of maintained grass along the sidewalk. Now here’s a picture taken about half a block away, taken last week, on April 6, 2007 (no, the timing was not intentional).

Same lot, from a different angle, all dry brown stubble. The hills in the background, a bit fuzzy, are also light brown.

This year, only a few weeds and flowers have managed to take hold in the vacant lot. Meanwhile, the hills are their usual golden brown. Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to see much in the way of wildflowers this year. Continue reading →

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Katie and I seem to do vacations in pairs. We’ll go somewhere on a trip, then a year or two later come back and do all of the things we discovered but couldn’t find time for the first time around. Last April we went to Las Vegas for an extended weekend, did some sightseeing, saw some shows. This year we came back mainly for the shows, and did the trip during the last week of March, driving out on Monday and returning Friday evening.

Standard Rio RoomWe stayed at the Rio, which has very nice, huge rooms—even if we didn’t spend much time there. The casino floor is also surprisingly easy to navigate, unlike some of the mazes on the Strip. We’re probably the only people to stay there four nights and not to see the “Show in the Sky” (some vaguely Mardi Gras-ish production they do with floats that run on tracks in the ceiling).

Of course, it is a bit off the Strip:

View of the Strip from our hotel room

But at least it wasn’t as far off as the last hotel we stayed at.

We managed to catch Spamalot (which replaced Avenue Q at the Wynn), Cirque du Soleil’s O (the one with the water), Penn & Teller’s magic show, and Jubilee! (a traditional-style Vegas extravaganza, and yes, the exclamation point is part of the title). Continue reading →