I personally have never had any inclination to get a tat and nobody in the immediate family has one — that I know of — but I do have a funny story to tell.

I was standing in a slow-moving line at Walmart with my three-year-old grandson to get a cold drink. An middle-aged man in line ahead of us was wearing a tank top and walking shorts. Nearly every square inch of exposed skin was covered with old-style dark blue/black tats in a well done line-art style. For my grandson the ones on his legs were at eye level. I saw him looking at the tats and knew a question or comment was coming and I was trying to figure out what my response was going to be. After a few minutes he looked up at me and announced in a disdainful tone, "Papa, that man drew on himself."

I just said, "Yes, I know. He decided he wanted the pictures on his skin all of the time and they won't wash off." Silence followed for a bit while he pondered my response, then another question . . . "Not even if he takes a bath and uses soap?"

I answered, "No."

Still more silence, but never any comment about the fact that at his eye level, filling the side of each calf was a very good full-length drawing of a very well-endowed naked women!

If the man heard the comments and my answers, he never gave any indication.

My first thought was, "Mind the Lorry."

My first thought was "Mind the lorry."

-----

Working with glass takes a lot of skill and the heat can be oppressive. The larger the piece the more physical strength it takes to manipulate a 10# or 20# glob of molten glass on the end of a 5-foot blowpipe. With small pieces, the artist can manipulate the pipe and the shaping tools but as the pieces get larger, two or even three workers may be involved. Chihuli is no longer a young man so many of the pieces are beyond is physical strength. However, his vision for each piece is conveyed to those with younger bodies who are able to do the physical work as he watches and directs.

I've made many trips to Arizona. My in-laws were missionaries on the Navajo Reservation for 35+ years and dad was made an honorary member of the tribe for his service to the tribe -- emergency transportation to medical care by plane and pickup in the early years and continued assistance with mechanical/mechanic issues and his skill running a Cat to build dams for livestock water, level home sites, and repair the one-line road up the side of Black Mesa that was originally built by the CCC in the 30s.

I didn't have to walk far from the mission compound at Rough Rock to find subjects for my camera. Especially memorable are the trips to Canyons de Chelley (pronounced "de shay") and del Murto. That included the long trail down to the canyon bottom to the foot of Spider Rock and over to the White House ruins. In the early days the White House ruins were a favorite subject but more recently, the cottonwood trees have grown up to the point that there aren't really any very good angles to take photographs from close by.

Some visits also included trips up on Black Mesa where dad took us to locations where there were markings on the rocks that long predated the Navajo and also a pre-Navajo pottery making site where there were thousands of pot shards. Always fun but it also took some care because some of the best photography vantage points were also favorite spots for rattlesnakes.

They still do . . . .

http://www.magazine-agent.com-sub.info/Arizona-Highways/Welcome

You are correct -- although the projection of the map makes the northern part of the US larger in proportion than it would be on a globe.

According to Wikipedia, Arizona has 113,990 square miles. New England has 71,991 and Pennsylvania 46,055 for a total of 118,046.

It's actually "pasteurized" — named after the inventor of the process — Louis Pasteur, who originally used the process of heating to kill bacteria to keep beer from spoiling quickly. It is now most widely associated with dairy products, however it it used on many foods.

The terms PPI (Pixels Per Inch) and DPI (Dots Per Inch) are often confusing because they are interrelated and often misused. Pixels most correctly refer to discrete units as in individual receptor cells of the CCD chip in your camera (how many of the cells are placed in a lineal inch (PPI) and the overall size of the chip determine the megapixel rating of the chip. The same is true of video displays.

The term DPI usually refers to the resolution of an output device -- an inkjet printer, laser printer, or printing press. Big numbers are impressive in specifications or advertising, but often you have to dig a little deeper to find out what really is happening. An inkjet printer may have a specification of 9600 dpi, but did they get that number by multiplying actual number of dots per inch by the number of cartridges in the machine? So we may already be down to 2400 (per color). Then does the printhead have the ability to print a dot in every one of those positions in one pass, does it take multiple passes, or are there limitations like printed dots no closer than every third position or more. Then, how many different sizes of dot can the inkjet physically produce? The math can get complicated and explains why a change in quality levels can change the output speed immensely.

I've been in printing for over 50 years, so am very familiar with that form of output. Nearly gone are the days when a photograph made from a negative was photographed through a screen with a graduated grey pattern to convert it into a "halftone" negative to make plates for letterpress or offset printing. The presses only print one color of ink from a plate, but the various sizes of dots allow for changed of tone from a solid color to very light tints of the solid color. Overprinting properly made plates in Yellow, Magenta, Cyan and Black (CMYK) allows for the vibrant color printing we know today. The final product hasn't changed, but now the plates are made by digitally controlled lasers instead of photographic methods.

This brings me to the "300ppi" mentioned above. What isn't specifically stated is that usually means 300ppi per inch of lineal dimension of the final reproduction. So for a 4" x 5" printed photo, the digital image would be a minimum of 1200 x 1500 pixels; an 8" x 10", 2400 x 3000.

The vast majority of commercial printing is done with 133, 150, and 175 dots per inch (DPI) of printed screen resolution. Each of those dots may vary from 100% ink coverage down to 0%. Those dots are usually created at a resolution of 2400 dpi and up which allows for a 256 or more sizes of dots which results in that many possible shades of the color being printed. Multiply that by the four process colors used in printing and you can see how millions of shades of color are possible.

With an original at 300 ppi and an output at 150 dpi, the computer would average a 2x2 pixel area in the original file to determine the size of the printed dot to represent that area in the final print. Larger files will work but it just takes more disk space and computer time to use a larger sample of original pixels to determine the size of the dot on the plate.

In describing typestyles, "roman" can mean two things.

1) "Roman" styles as used for English and most European languages as opposed to Greek, Chinese, or Arabic styles of lettering.

2) Or as in the Times case, a style of letter that has distinctive weight variations to various strokes of the letter, The vertical strokes are usually bracketed at the top and/or bottom with "serifs" and thus are known as "serif fonts."

This as opposed to "sans-serif fonts" (without serifs) that are geometric in structure with little or no differences in the weight of the strokes. Commonly used fonts in this category are Ariel, Helvetica, and Univers.

Good luck on your research.

My Accutron has a funny back story. At the time I had a printing job that included hand feeding a printing press. This involved hours of repetitive back and forth arm/hand movement. It seemed that no matter if the watch was a cheap Timex or a more expensive model, the movement just wouldn't withstand the constant jerky back and forth movement and would die in anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. (We won't discuss why it never dawned on me just to take the watch off and put it in my pocket when I was running the press!) I was in the local jewelry store to buy another watch and openly commented about wondering how long this one would last. The jeweler, who I'd known for years, pointed to the Accutrons in the case, and said, "If you can tear one of those up, I'll refund your money." The Accutrons seemed horribly expensive (I was in high school with a part time job) and not having the money at the moment, I bought another Timex -- but started saving my money. When the Timex died I bought an Accutron.

It quit about two weeks later!

So, I took it back to the jeweler. He asked to let him check it out and asked me to come back a little later. When I went back, he said he couldn't find anything wrong with it, but that it had been running since he put it back together. Never a problem with it until the battery needed to be replaced.

Several years later, when I went in for another battery change, he confessed that he did take it apart and could find nothing wrong with it, but was so perplexed and frustrated by it stopping -- and the fact that he had made a promise to me -- that without telling me he had replaced the movement with another one and all I had of the original watch was the case and the band! It ran for many more years and when it did need servicing, there was no longer local service, so it just went in the drawer until recently.

I have and Accutron that I purchased in 1964 or 1965 and a few months ago I decided to have it repaired rather than just continue to collect dust. I checked with a friend who I knew had had some work done and it was by "MyBob." I inquired and discovered that I have a fairly scarce model -- it's the first one shown in his online "museum." White gold with an asymmetrical dial and case shape. All of my questions were answered promptly (by phone and emails) and now I'm "saving up" to have the repair done and get a replacement band. It's just like wanting a new lens that isn't in the budget!

http://www.mybob.net/

Barring major differences in lens design (both lenses designed for the same camera/format), changing the focal length is a pure mathematical function. e.g. A lens with a focal length of 400mm will produce an image twice as large as a 200mm lens.

In the original request the comparison was 300mm vs. 400mm. So, the larger lens is 100mm longer. 100 is one-third of 300. So the image of the 400mm will be 1.333 times the size of the 300mm image.

Oregon also has companies named "Honey Bucket" and "Shultz-Clearwater" -- I've chuckled over both. I've never seen a "Best Pot."

My experience over the weekend had a different twist. We were traveling up I-5 in northern Washington and were notified by message board that the highway was closed about 25 miles ahead due to a serious accident. So we pulled of the freeway and had a leisurely dinner. Following dinner the road was now "open" but we were on the tail end of a miles-long traffic jam that was still clearing. After passing the scene of the accident it was raining and we were traveling in the moving mass when the cars in front of us started hitting their brakes. We an empty box on the side of the road and something small strewn all across the lane for quite a distance. In the rain and dark it was impossible to tell what was in the road, but with the traffic it was too late to avoid it.

We proceeded a few miles to our destination with no problem, but Saturday morning the left front tire was flat. I just got out the compressor, pumped up the tire and drove down to the tire store, told them that I need the tire checked, and went to get myself a cup of coffee while I waited.

Shortly, one of the techs came up and said, "You were on I-5 last night weren't you?" Seems that a truck spilled a contractor-size box of 7/8" roofing nails on the freeway and we "found" 13 of them! Four were in the tire that went down and the other seven were in the other three tires. There was evidence that we had hit several others but they did not puncture and stick but one did damage a sidewall. Some news reports said their were multiple boxes but we saw only one empty box.

We were one of the lucky ones -- I just got to buy new tires. Others had multiple flats on the freeway and had to be towed in. WDOT ended up closing the freeway again while they cleaned up the mess.