This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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 Last night we changed the water in one of the tanks. It had gotten so dark green it was hard to see the tadpoles. I was afraid some had died because of the lack of water change. But we changed it out and suddenly they were all swimming around again.
Then, this morning, I went out to look, and there was a tadpole hanging onto the glass on the side of the tank, but ABOVE the water line! Concerned, I went to look further, and indeed, it had little newly developed legs! It was still and not moving, but it had legs! A bit later just to be sure it was OK, I poked it with something, and it hopped back in the water and swam… but pushing with it’s legs, not the tail!
I got this shot, which was a bit blurry, sorry, the lighting wasn’t good… but you can clearly see the legs! (It does still have a tail too, which is harder to see in this picture.)
So far, this is the only one I’ve seen that has grown feet. And surprisingly, it is one of the medium sized tadpoles, not one of the big fat ones. There are still a few little ones around too. The variation is a bit surprising given that they all went into the tanks at about the same time.
But anyway… we have feet!! (And legs!)
 Must have. Must have. Must have. Even if there is no Mac software yet. Must have. Must have. Must have. Um, well maybe after about five dozen other things higher than this in priority. But I’ve wanted something that did this for years. SlingBox. (Mentioned on like every gadget or PVR site on the web last week when it became available.)
Ivan, since you are almost always the first to try new AV gear, I expect a full report from you by the end of next week. You can watch and control your Tivo at home while you are in your hotel room in Brazil. You know you want that. You know you do.
 I didn’t get home from Atlanta early enough (not even close) to do our usual weekend Doctor Who at the normal time, so we did it about 24 hours later instead. It being a holiday weekend and all.
First one up was The Aztecs. You can see a summary and all of the details at the link. The short summary is that the Doctor and his companions land in the middle of an Aztec temple, and have a little adventure as they try to escape and perhaps influence the fate of the Aztecs at the same time. This originally came out in 1964, so the flavor is just a LITTLE different than the new ones we’d been watching.
Black and White. Essentially non-existant special effects. Much slower paced. I fully expected Amy to fall asleep. We were planning on watching the first two of the four 25 minute episodes this week, and the last two next week. But at the end of the first two (with a quick break to play in the pool and watch fireworks being set off by the neighbors) she was insisting on seeing the rest. Right NOW. So we did. :-)
I’ve never really been able to get into the first Doctor. He is OK. But I kinda doubt I would have stuck with the show if he was all there was. Well, perhaps when I was a kid, which is of course the target audience. The best part was just laughing at some of the really bad effects and overacting. Always enjoyable.
Anyway, the disk is back in the mail, and we should have another by next weekend.
Of course, at the moment we have three other Netflix disks out, one picked by each of us, and we’ve had them for a long time. I’d like to get to those sometime too.
A few hours ago, I gave the introduction for my mother at an awards ceremony where she was given one of two annual awards given to distinguished women clergy in her denomination. (I blogged about her winning it here.) In the picture are myself, my mother, Rev. John Thomas (the president of the UCC demonination) and Barbara Brown Zikmund (the other 2005 winner).
Here is the introduction I gave:
Hello.
They told me not to just recite the bio, since you have it here in the pamphlet. So I thought I would just mention one brief thing.
While I was in college, my mother was teaching in a seminary in Mozambique in Southern Africa. One summer during that time, I was able to visit her. Aside from unremembered times from early childhood this was my first real opportunity to see her in that kind of context. In my early 20s coming directly from a fairly sheltered academic life, I must admit I was not fully emotionally prepared for everything I saw and heard. Not only a visit to the third world, but to a location at the time still dramatically affected by an ongoing civil war. The culture shock was extensive, and I still regret today that I was not a little bit older, wiser and better able to appreciate that trip at the time.
But that visit did leave an overwhelming impression on me. Not as much of the place, but of my mother. Here she was, and not for the first time, taking several years of her life, and leaving the familiarities and safety of home, going to a place that was sometimes dangerous, and at all times challenging. Rather than shying away from the difficult things, she has over her life embraced them, and thrived upon them. Brave. Strong. Compassionate. Needing to help those who needed help. Needing to comfort and support those who needed comfort and support. Needing to help in the struggle for justice, where ever it might occur. Above all, her deep love and commitment to the communities she becomes part of, both at home and abroad.
This is the essence of my mother. Throughout my life I have seen this pattern in the choices she has made. Either overseas during her various trips, in a variety of roles earlier in her life, or today as a pastor of a congregation in Massachusetts and a member of this denomination’s national organizations. She makes herself an integral part of the communities to which she is drawn. Her deep faith grounds her, gives her strength, drives her ministries and moves her to fulfill the missions put in front of her, even when they are extremely difficult.
I am very proud today to be see her receive this award and am greatly honored to introduce my mother, the Reverend Ruth M. Brandon.
It had been a while since I had last done public speaking other than in small groups. A conference I presented at back in 2000 I believe. I was much more nervous this time. Last time was me talking about some general principles of content management with regards to organizing an intranet. This time I was talking about my mother, and it was personal. And it was in front of about 500 women clergy. Or something like that. I was preceeded by a speech from Rev. Dr. Yvonne V. Delk who is quite the orator I must say. Really got the croud going! I was a tad nervous. I was a bit shaky, and stumbled over a word or two, didn’t make proper eye contact with the audience, etc. And a couple times I had to pause for breath to keep from getting too choked up. (Cause I was talking about my mom after all!) And I think toward the end I spoke a little faster than I intended.
But never the less, I got a lot of comments congratulation me on my comments and thanking me and saying they were very well done. Including from my mom, which was of course most important. They are probably being nice to a degree. I know I wasn’t as polished as the professional speakers, but hey, I don’t do it for a living!
I do like it though. Making speeches is fun! Even short 3 minute ones!
And I was indeed especially honored to be able to introduce my mother. I’m very glad she asked me.
They refused to play it on any US TV network, but of course there are other ways to see such things. Since the new Series of Doctor Who started on March 26th in the UK, we’ve been watching it together as a family every Saturday night, exactly one week after it aired in the UK. (OK, usually a week plus a few hours to be exact.)
Both Brandy and I had watched the show when we were younger. And Amy was hooked with the very first episode of this new series. It is after all designed to be one of those shows that is aimed at kids first, but with lots of stuff thrown in for the adults so they can watch and like it too. For the last 13 weeks, it has been one of the few constant things that we know EVERY week we sit down and do together. It has been a lot of fun. We watched the last episode of the new series last weekend.
I was worried about this return of the Doctor. It might have been like the Doctor Who TV movie from 1996. Passible. A few good things about it. But missing a lot of the flavor that was appealing about the show in the earlier years. Basically they tried to Americanize it a bit, and in the process just made it not quite right. But no, they did it right. This new one updates the old series in some good ways, but retains all the right stuff that made the show fun to begin with. Yes, I could nitpick about certain things here and there. But almost without exception I had FUN watching the episodes and enjoyed them. So it succeeded.
There have now been 173 Doctor Who stories made for television (of different lengths both in time and episodes.) That is spread between 9 doctors and over a 42 year timespan. Wow. Even taking into account no new TV stories from 1990 to 1995 and again from 1997 to 2004, that is a long time for a TV show. It of course beats that lame old Star Trek thing. :-)
Anyway, the BBC sucks, and has only released a small portion of those 173 stories on DVD so far. (Unfortunately, of the 173 stories, 27 do not exist intact any longer since the BBC destroyed a bunch of “worthless old stuff” in the late sixties and early 70s. Damn them!) Anyway, BBC has only released a small portion, and some of those are only available as European region DVDs. Of the ones available in the US region without a region free DVD player, Netflix has 28 available. 28 out of 173 total (or out of 146 that actually fully exist) is pretty deficient, but hey, it is something.
(The Netflix search I linked to has 33 rather than 28 because it also includes a few disks with bits and pieces of the “lost” stories, and also the 1960s movies with Peter Cushing which everybody agrees don’t count.)
So we are continuing the Saturday Doctor Who thing with Netflix. I filled up an extra personality in Netflix with all the Doctor Who they had and put it in order by when the stories aired. (Then the Cushing movies and stuff after everything else). And so off we go, starting with Story #6 “The Aztecs” with the First Doctor which originally aired as four 25 minute episodes from 23 May 1964 to 13 Jun 1964.
I am guessing Amy won’t be quite as enthralled by these old episodes. Especially from the first and second Doctor when they were in black and white. And the special effects were of course MUCH WORSE. Just plain bad in most cases! And also the pacing was quite a bit different than the fast paced 45 minute episodes of the new series. So she may well fall asleep. We’ll see! They just have a handful of first and second Doctor episodes though, so in a few weeks we’ll be in color again.
And that should see us through until Christmas time when the first episode with the 10th doctor will be airing in the UK. I am a bit wary, as it is a “Christmas Special” and the producers have said there will be reindeer and everything. That just does not seem like Doctor Who to me, and they better not screw it up! Especially since it will be the first full episode for a new Doctor! (He got a few seconds in the last episode of this series.)
Anyway, it has been fun revisiting my childhood (well, my late pre-teen and early teen years) by watching this for the last 13 weeks. And having Brandy and especially Amy into it as well has been great.
Looking forward to the 10th Doctor in a few months! In the mean time though, bring on the old black and white episodes from the 60s!
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