Springtime: when a young man's fancy turns to robots

After my last two posts, which consisted entirely of words, a certain unnamed co-contributor to this blog informed me that I am to be seen and not heard. In that spirit, I'll go back to my usual role of providing pretty pictures. However, in my own form of civil disobedience I'm going to show only the most saccharine, nauseatingly cute pictures this post. Take that.

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First on the block is a young robot, Gordian "Gordie" Knot. He looks sinister but don't let that fool you, he has a heart of gold (That's not strictly true. His heart is actually a muon-catalyzed cold-fusion reactor, but his emotion simulation unit has gold plated leads).


Gordie and Earl are basically inseparable now, as evidenced by this soft-focus, vomit-inducingly cuddly bit of portraiture.


Ok, I have to stop posting photos of Gordie and Earl now. It's as bad as, possibly worse than, girls who blog about their cats.

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My big development in the last couple of months is my shiny (actually matte) new Pentax K10D. After a hiatus, I'm getting back into the world of SLRs. This isn't a total switch from my trusty FZ-50. The FZ-50 is still my camera of choice for kayaking photography, given its small size and the versatility of its lens. However, the Pentax provides absolutely wonderful picture quality if you're willing to do the legwork. Unfortunately, I haven't had a whole lot of subject matter recently, but here's a good example of what the K10d can do with a 43mm F1.9 prime.

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Finally, I'd like to end this incoherent rambling with yet more incoherent rambling. Today was "Bike to Work Day." This meant that on my morning ride I probably saw about 5x as many people as normal on the trails and streets. This is good. However, I'd like to ask the question, "Where are these people every other day of the year?" I suspect it boils down to one of two possibilities:

1. All of these people normally bike to work with some regularity. They just made a concerted effort to bike to work today, creating the illusion that many more people than usual are biking to work.


2. "Bike to Work Day" creates a false dichotomy in peoples' minds. May 18th = Bike to Work Day. Every day that's not May 18th = Drive to Work Day (I bet I can think of some corporate sponsors for that).

My general cynicism tells me that the latter is more likely the case. Biking to work one day a year is good. Biking to work more than one day a year is better.