Thank you.

(embedded video – Cup of Brown Joy by MC Elemental)

Fancy a cup of tea? :)

by Owen Gatley

A splendid little animation about life on earth.

Ooooh! Look what found it’s way into my inbox this morning. It’s a new They Might Be Giants song. YAAAAAYY! Looks like the new album, titled “Here Comes Science” is scheduled to be released Sept 1. And! They also have a bunch of new tour dates up as well. Double YAAAAAYY!

This a wonderful take on the song Clementine. Plus, the animation in the video is just as charming as the song. Enjoy! :)

Video by filmmaker Jesse Dylan. Find out more about this video and Creative Commons licensing at the Creative Commons Website.

Since we had traveled up to the Seattle area April 4th for Scott Sigler’s Book Tour, we decided to make the most of the trip and go diving Saturday morning. Being lazy divers, we went up to Edmonds Underwater Park in Edmonds, Washington, just north of Seattle.

A hardy breakfast was acquired at a little cafe called the Red Twig. Très yum.

After that we grabbed some tanks at the local dive shop then miraculously found a parking spot at the park. Normally the place is packed on the weekends. Fortunately for us, it was overcast and threatening rain, which seemed to discourage the normal swarms of park goers.

This was the second time I dove with our compact digital camera. The first time I was so smitten with the video function, I didn’t take many photos. This time I remembered to take some photos. However, my obsession with video took over again when I came across fish. I do regret not grabbing a few still shots of the cabezon’s as they let me get relatively close. Ah well, there’s always next dive.

I have discovered that underwater photography is a bit trickier than land photography. If the surge and current wasn’t enough to contend with, around these parts there isn’t a whole lot of light at 30ft. Also, kicking up sand and sediment is also a problem. I found that gently drifting down to the sea floor helps with many of these setbacks. I still have a ton to learn, though. And since I don’t have a small fortune to spend on a nice underwater camera with macro, big lights, and stabilization, the learning process is going to be a bit challenging. But you know what? I think I’m OK with that. I say, bring on the challenges. :)

Technical Details (Anemone Photo)
Aperture Value: f/3.4
Focal Length: 6 mm
Exposure Program: Auto
ISO: 100
Shutter Speed Value: 1/100 sec
Camera: Casio EX-V7

Friday, April 4th, the Future Dark Overlord™ himself visited the downtown Barnes & Nobel store in Seattle, WA. As luck (or fate) would have it, I had some floater vacation time that I gladly cashed in order to head up north early that day. AND, Andy was also free that day. Score.

So the plan was to head up early, but after sleeping in, watching TV and whatnot, it was close to 1PM before we were comfortably on I-5.

We were completely prepared to hit a wall of traffic around Olympia, WA, but as luck (or fate) would have it, there really wasn’t any slow traffic all the way into downtown Seattle. However, the same couldn’t be said for southbound traffic. Ick.

I did get some reading of Infected done on the way up. As I’m a fairly new Sigler junkie, I missed out on the initial release of the Infected podcast. By the time we arrived at our downtown hotel I was mostly done with the book. I did, however, make sure to snag a copy of the PDF when it was released, so I was already halfway through the story prior to the car ride.

Since we made it to Seattle in good time (three hours from Vancouver, WA) , it was only around 3PM and so we had plenty of time to wander around before the reading at 7PM.

We hit Pike’s Place Market, and several of the shopping centers before hunting for a good place to have a nice dinner. We decided on trying out The Taphouse Grill (between Pine and Pike St. very close to the bookstore). It turned out to be a resounding success. The restaurant itself was down below street level and boasted a staggering selection of 160 beers on tap. It took Andy a long long time to figure out what to sample first.

The food and service was wonderful as well. We started out with the happy hour serving of some tomato bruschetta. I got the seafood linguine and Andy got the Guinness beef stew. I would highly recommend going to to his place if you are ever in Seattle. However, it looked like it was a fairly popular place, so the earlier you get there the better.

After dinner we wandered over to the bookstore and browsed a bit until the reading started. After wandering in the sci-fi/fantasy section, I literally stumbled upon where the store had Sigler setup. I found Andy then grabbed a seat in front.

Scott read from the prologue and the first chapter of Infected. Afterwards there was a Q&A session which I grabbed some video of per a request from a friend on Twitter that was going to miss out on all of Scott’s tour locations (as he lives in England).

I don’t know how long the Q&A went on for, but it was a while. I wasn’t able to record the entire thing, but here are the highlights of what I was able to capture before my little camera ran out of memory.

After the reading, we lined up for the signing. At the beginning of the reading, there was only about twenty of us. However, by the signing, our numbers had swelled to more than double. I ended up being towards the end of the line as I took some time to extract my copy of Infected from my bag of holding.

During the signing I gave Scott a 8.5x11in print of the Secret Lair Comic #0003 (which he seemed to appreciate). After receiving a nice personal signing from the FDO™, we gathered with the rest of the group. Shortly we received instructions on how to get to the chosen pub crawl bar. Most of the group took off right away (moving cars and whatnot), a couple of us stayed behind to follow Scott to the bar.

Unbeknownst to us, this bar was approximately five miles away… uphill… in pouring rain. Maybe I exaggerate… but not by much. ;-) At least we were in good company for the walk and we got to chat with Scott along the way.

The “close to the bookstore” bar was called the Comet Tavern. First impressions weren’t good. Come to think of it, second and third impressions weren’t that good either. In any case, we ended up commandeering the back room. Scott regaled us with tales, both good and disturbing (Note: do not ask Sigler about the Second Life Dragon*Con panel). People got to ask more questions and everyone seemed to be having a fun time.

As the night wore on, the band that we paid a $6 cover for at the door, started playing. That pretty much killed our party. However, Scott made sure to take some photos with the folks that weren’t wearing officially sanctioned FDO™ swag. I think there were four of us. Two were representing J.C. Hutchins and two (including myself) were representing Mur Lafferty. After saying our farewells, we all took off shortly after.

Additional Information:

Scott Sigler’s Website

Official Infected Novel Website

Buy Infected – Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s

Infected Flickr Group