St. Mary's in the Mountains

St. Mary's in the Mountains,
originally uploaded by d20.

St. Mary's in the Mountains, Virginia City, NV. The town where 'Mark Twain' started writing. Taken Dec. 28, 2004, Virginia City, NV.

Found on the discount rack.

Last year I bought several identical calanders, sometime in February or March (very late in the calendar-purchasing season) at the grocery store we usually shop (I'd say 'frequent', but who 'frequents' a store these days?).

Each calendar contained landscape photographs of mountain ranges, rushing high country rivers and such. Since it was already 2004, these were in a box way in the back on the 'cheap' rack, next to expired granola bars and half-opened packages of hair dye. At 99 cents each, they were just what I was looking for. Of the three I picked we sent one to a family friend in Michigan, my wife took one and I was pleased to hang the last on in my office for the rest of the year.

It expired this month and was time to pull it off the wall.

Tossing it seemed a waste of some beautiful imagery, so I put it aside. This morning I picked it up, ready to discard it once again when I noticed the calendar had been self published by a photographer named Larry Burton and printed in Missoula, Montana. Having been born in Missoula, I was curious.

I googled his name. Turns out he died last August of prostate cancer at the age of 65.

From The Missoulian:

"Burton started college at the University of Arizona, then transferred to Northern Arizona University, where he earned bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and physics, and a master's in pure mathematics."

"Geshell said Burton was a year short of his doctorate at the University of Montana when "he decided he'd rather be outside photographing, than inside next to a blackboard."
Burton was also well-known in skiing and mountain-climbing circles, she said".

According to the article, Burton stood in for actor Robert Redford in scenes for the movie "Downhill Racer," and appeared as a skier in a James Bond movie.

Burton spent countless hours hiking in the nearby Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains, fly-fishing with a bamboo rod his father gave him.

He used the same fishing rod for half a century.

His ex-wife, Sylvia Geshell, was also his (then) current business partner.

Sure enough, the calendar I own was written by Sylvia Geshell. How one partners for business after de-partnering a marriage is a feat, I think.

Burton is survived by his mother and three sisters. And a photo collection of approximately 125,000 images. No childern were mentioned.

He seemed an interesting person; someone whom I might have liked to be. Or like to think I could still be. I love my children, and often reflect on how they have changed and enriched my life. But after reading this obituary, I was shocked to realized that I may actually be 'survived' by someone whom is not my wife. That some legacy other than photos, friends, a fishing rod (or in my case a hunting knife, thanks dad) or debt will carry on past my time.

The things you can find on the discount rack.

A fine hour

A fine hour,
originally uploaded by d20.

My son and I share a kodak moment.

Running 3 Marathons

Bungie, creator of Halo and Halo II, just released the original set of ground breaking games: Marathon, Marathon II: Durandahl and Marathon Infinity, as freeware.

I cut my computer gaming eye teeth on two games; Cyan's Myst (late 1993) and Bungie's Marathon (released late 1994), both released first for the Macintosh platform.

Myst is a classic. Seeing this game on my old Mac back in the day was the reason my very good friend JS3deuce became a gamer.

It was a few months later I bought this new sci-fi game called Marathon. Where Myst was a contmplative, mysterious, painterly (for the time) puzzle solver, Marathon was a 'twitch' game full of blockbuster-style action. PC gamers at the time were caught up in Doom and Castle Wolfenstein; which were of the 'just-kill-what's-around-the-next-corner' genre. Marathon had that, but also had better graphics and a deep, compelling story line.

Marathon came on 6 (wow, 6!) floppies and this cool story with illustrations remeniscent of Gygax's old Gamma World pen and paper game: tentacled aliens in space suits and a mirror-visored quasi military hero taking on the alien attackers mano-e- er...alien, no one around to help on a disabled colonist ship, with not but his wits and a trusty side arm to save Earth. A hack story now, but Marathon was the original.

This game rocked the gaming world. Marathon II was released for Mac first, then PC. Marathon Infinity was Mac-only from the start. The success of the Marathon series was a double edged sword. Halo had been under development for the Mac and PC platforms for 2 years when MicroSoft stepped in and aquired Bungie, moved them from Chicago (Chicago?!) to Redmond to shift gears and release the multi-multi million dollar Halo franchise for the then brand new XBox. Mac lost a big-gun game developer, but the world got Halo.

If you don't already know it, Halo is credited with makeing the XBox a success, and Halo II is currently one of the biggest selling console games ever.

I just downloaded Marathon Infinity. Tonight...I live a low-res version of the good old days.


For more, check out this 1-Up article on the Marathon freeware release

Official History of Bungie

Cyan home page

BitTorrent killed the TV network star

BitTorrent stands to render the TV network as we know it unneccessary, much the way blogs are changing the way we get our news.

Have you seen the now famous Jon Stewart appearance on CNN's Crossfire from just before the presidential elections? The one where he calls the hosts 'political puppets' refuses to 'be their (comedic) monkey' and calls Tucker Carlson a 'dick'? Chances are if you have, you didn't catch the original broadcast, but downloaded the now famous segment off the web, like I did just last week.

Get this; according to the January issue of Wired magazine, CNN's Crossfire audience is 867,000. At time of publications, over 2.3 MILLION people downloaded the clip via iFilm.com, and an estimated hundreds of thousands more (perhaps many, many more since clips downloaded using BitTorrent are not easily tracked) used BitTorrent to grab the clip imediately after the airing.

This means three times as many people saw the Stewart clip online as on CNN itself.

According to Wired, "Analysts at CacheLogic, an Internet-traffic analysis firm in Cambridge, England, report that BitTorrent traffic accounts for more than one-third of all data sent across the Internet."

We are getting our news and entertainment in different ways now, and BitTorrent technology (and philosophy) is making the change easier for us.

'The BitTorrent Effect': complete Wired article.

Jon Stewart on Crossfire : at iFilm.com

http://bittorrent.com/: BitTorrent Homepage

Happy new year - short jury duty

Happy new year!
Jury duty today. Made the first cut, second cut and then was axed by the defense. I am remarkably dissapointed; it was a criminal case concerning possesion with intent to distribute cocain and methadone. The only witnesses were 3 cops and a forensic specialist. The question that probably took me off the jury was if I knew the difference between "falsley accused" and "incorrectly accused". My response was that this seemed like splitting hairs since if either was the case, this would introduce a resonable doubt and the defendant would be found not guilty.
Doh.
While my response may have been accurate, I should have simply answered the question asked. My answer implied I care little for small distinctions...something the defense most likely would rely upon when trying to discredit 3 police officers.

Two bright-side items: I had an interesting conversation with a fellow jurors candidate who is a multimedia design student at DU, and a Xbox gamer. Apparently networked games of Halo 2 are alive and well in the DU dorms.

Also, a friend of mine 'starred' in the introduction video we all had to watch in the jury selection room. She did well, and you can see her blog here, and demo real here.