Posts tagged with Automattic
19 June 2009 - Burning Embers
The burning embers of a bonfire glow brightly in the chill Arizona night.
Taken in January 2008 when Automattic visited Arizona. Here’s another shot of that fire!
3 November 2008 - A Cabin in the Rockies
A small wooden cabin or hut sits in a car park near the houses Automattic stayed in at Breckenridge in Colorado. The original shot can be seen in my Flickr stream or in the Automattic group there. This version has been extensively dodged and burned to bring out the contrast between light and dark.
Late posting of today’s photo because of the camera club tonight. It was model shoot night and I got a few shots but I’m not very comfortable directing so I’m undecided as to how well the photos came out.
27 October 2008 - Pumpkins For Sale
Pumpkins for sale in the local store in Breckenridge, Colorado. I post this today because Dunnes Stores are selling pumpkins and they’re only half the size of the large pumpkins pictured here!
Does anyone actually eat pumpkins? They’re a new sight in Irish shops, and are only ever for sale in the large chains around Halloween.
20 October 2008 - Breckenridge Sunset
The sun sets early in Breckenridge Colorado, well slightly earlier than in Ireland anyway. Myself and Anthony were working on one part of our secret project, and Mike Adams was working on the other bit, when Michael Koenig jumped up and went outside on to the balcony. I looked up and saw gorgeous red clouds and followed him with my camera. This is the result.
Tall evergreen trees outside the house, and snow capped mountains on the horizon. The sun set behind them in a blazing ball of glorious colour. Beautiful.
22 August 2008 - Tall trees in Oracle
These tall evergreens planted in front of a set of small houses in Oracle were almost gone before I saw them. The scene looked bizarre. Tall trees, tiny houses. I wonder who lives in them?
Here it is on Google Maps. Try the Street View, you’ll see two cars pulled up in front of the same house as in my photo. Spooky.
14 August 2008 - It even rains in Arizona
If you’re living in Ireland, you’ve no doubt noticed that this summer hasn’t been great. Actually, I haven’t. I work at home and looking out my little window at the rest of the world is some days the closest I get to the outside world (almost!)
Well anyway, this is to console you if you’re suffering through yet another flood, or a downpour. It even rains in the desert. Of course, it was late January, and the shower was a light one that lasted about 20 minutes but it’s the thought that counts, right?
In other news, I’ve just released Tweet Tweet, a plugin for WordPress that archives Twitter conversations. It’s been a nerve wracking experience as I’m using a few technologies that I haven’t had much call for before.
10 July 2008 - Biosphere 2 Lung
As Biosphere 2 is a self contained and airtight structure the air inside would expand and contract on warm and cold days which could cause the building to explode or implode!
Two lungs were built to cope with this effect. One of them is pictured above. As the air in the building warmed up the black lung would expand and the roof of this room lowered. When we were there they opened an outside door to ventilate the room and the roof slowly fell. It was quite a sight to see and the draught out the door was enough to make it hard to be heard over the whine.
More on the Biosphere 2 lungs here and here.
Biosphere 2 needed something like a bellows, a lung!7 July 2008 - Biosphere 2
Biosphere 2 would heat up like a greenhouse and cool during the night and during cold, cloudy days. The expansion and contraction would subject the rigid steel and glass structure to enormous pressures as the air inside expanded and contracted. On a hot day, pressure would push out. On a really cold day, Biosphere 2 might implode.Bill Dempster, Director of Engineering Systems, had an inspired solution, and in time Biosphere 2 got a pair of lungs, or “variable expansion chambers”. The two lungs took the form of graceful hemispheric white domes which protected the liner from wear and tear of the Sun. Both domes, 150 feet away from Biosphere 2 had underground air tunnels connecting them to the main structure. Inside each tank and connected to each tunnel, a gargantuan synthetic rubber membrane with a circular metal top moved freely up and down on a cushion of air.
As air inside Biosphere 2 expanded from the Sun’s heat, it flowed through the tunnels and into the lung, raising its top. As air cooled, the lungs deflated.
Biosphere 2 lies in the dusty hot desert in Arizona. It was originally designed as a self contained “world” where scientists stayed for an extended period of time. After going through the tour, there’s no way I’d volunteer to spend my time inside. It must have been very difficult being cooped up in one building. The Wikipedia page on the project has a lot more detail about what went on there.
Anyway, the building is very striking to look at, especially as the day was fine and interesting clouds added to the scene.
12 June 2008 - Monotone: WordPress Photoblog ThemeMonotone is a pretty cool photoblog theme for WordPress that’s been around for a few months now. Unfortunately it was only available on WordPress.com, and through the Automattic Subversion repository as reported by Jeff on Weblog Tools Collection.
Noel Jackson, the author of the theme, recently revealed that Monotone is now available as a .zip download on the Monotone demo page above. Now it’s easier for self hosted WordPress blogs to try it!
What’s so great about Monotone? It displays a large image in each post like Pixelpost and other photoblog themes, but it does it in a neat way. WordPress allows the blog author to upload and attach images to their posts. It’s then up to the author to insert the image into the post and tidy up the html. Monotone takes this one step further. There’s no need to insert the image into the post at all. The theme takes the first attachment and displays it at the top of the post, with the post content below.
I’d love to use it, but unfortunately I have several years worth of posts that would need to be modified because I used Flickr to host my images until recently. Then I used my own site, but inserted the right html into each post, so they’d all have to be modified unless I hacked the theme to ignore old posts.
RSS feeds display the image too, although I discovered that the feed for the demo site includes some huge images. Probably just an oversight when Noel was uploading images.
Judging by Noel’s comment here, it probably isn’t completely straight forward to install. You probably need the GD library and a hefty server with enough RAM to load and manipulate your images. Anyone tried it? Use my theme tester plugin if you want to test it on your blog without upsetting your visitors!
9 April 2008 - How very phallic of you
A desert plant growing near the ranch we stayed at in Arizona.
I only thought of the title after seeing this image in b/w, but err, it suits doesn’t it?
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