Picture Monday, March 30, 2009; Notgeld #15

This particular issue of Notgeld is from Rudolstadt. The Obverse of each note has the Coat of Arms in the center, a bell in the upper two corners, and the denomination in the bottom two corners. The bell must be important, perhaps from the bell tower of the Stadtkirche in Rudolstadt. This image is repeated on the reverse of one of the 50 Pfg. and one of the 100 Pfg. notes. The Stadtkirche also appears in several of the notes. The first series is the 50 pfg. notes. The obverse is the same for all 4 of the 50 pfg. notes.

The next set of notes is the 75 Pfg series. Again the obverse of each 75 Pfg. notes is the same.

Finally, I have the 100 Pfg. notes. There are only 2 of these notes. I am note sure if they made more or just these two.

It is interesting to note that the serial number on the obverse of each note is the same (3044o).I am not sure of the significance of this and why all 10 notes would have the same serial number unless they were provided as a set this way.

Remember to visit my other Notgeld posts. Go to the left sidebar and scroll down to find the links to my other Notgeld posts complete with pictures.At this point I have obviously made 14 posts with pictures of Notgeld. This has been approximately 5 pages out of my 40 page collection. As you can see, I will be at this for some time.

© 2009 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

Photosynth

Microsoft has a really interesting way to share and display your photographs. It is called Photosynth. Microsoft says this about Photosynth:

"Photosynth is a potent mixture of two independent breakthroughs: the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet.

Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point each photo was taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos. Photosynth was inspired by the breakthrough research on Photo Tourism from the University of Washington and Microsoft Research. This work pioneered the use of photogrammetry to power a cinematic and immersive experience

Providing that experience requires viewing a LOT of data though—much more than you generally get at any one time by surfing someone’s photo album on the web. That’s where our Seadragon™ technology comes in: delivering just the pixels you need, exactly when you need them. It allows you to browse through dozens of 5, 10, or 100(!) megapixel photos effortlessly, without fiddling with a bunch of thumbnails and waiting around for everything to load.

More information on the history of Photosynth is available here.

I have experimented with Photosynth this past weekend. You can see the result by going to the Photosynth web site and typing SNAPDRAGONS in the search box. When the results appear click on the Synth titled Snapdragons and enjoy the results of my experiment and my snapdragons.

© 2009 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

Picture Monday, March 23, 2009; Notgeld #14

This week our Notgeld comes from Hildburghausen. I have 4 separate notes this week; two 25 Pfennig and two 50 Pfennig notes. It is interesting to note that all four notes carry the Coat of Arms of Hildburghausen on the obverse.

© 2009 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

Saturday Trip To The Shale Pit

On Saturday the family took a short excursion to The Shale Pit at Lake Waco. The shale pit was formed when the Corps of Engineers used it as a source for fill dirt in construction of the Lake Waco Dam. Back in the early 70's my best friend, Mark and I would venture to the pit and explore and look for fossils. Thirty plus years ago you could go to the pit anytime you wanted and explore. At the time I imagined that the surface of the moon must look like the pit, desolate and barren. As I grew up, entered college and began a family I never went back to the pit. In the intervening years it changed. It came under stricter control of the Corps of Engineers and life started to blossom in the pit. I would occasionally think of the pit and recently even drove out to the area only to find that it was fenced off and gated.

Then , last week Julie announced that she wanted to go to the Shale Pit at the lake. It seems that she had been there before with one of her college classes. So she contacted the Corps and got the necessary permits and away we went on Saturday. Julie, Scott, Jess, Jace, Chris, and myself piled into the truck and went to the pit.

My how it has changed in the last 35 years. There were cedar trees, grasses, flowers, cattails, water, and wildlife. I never saw them but I found tracks for deer and raccoon. We found skinks, frogs, crickets, and minnows. There was even a waterfall, probably from recent rains. What an amazing transformation for the apparent surface of the moon in my eyes 35+ years ago to something that appears to be teeming with life.

I loved it.

And to think that my daughter discovered the very place 35 years later that Mark and I had discovered oh so many years ago.

Below are a few pictures that I took of the day.

From Lake Waco Shale Pit

From Lake Waco Shale Pit

From Lake Waco Shale Pit

From Lake Waco Shale Pit

For more pictures visit my slideshow of the trip at Visions of My World.

For more interesting reading concerning Lake Waco and the dam visit the Waco History Project: Places in Time page and click on Lake Waco.


© 2009 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

St. Patrick's Day 2009

Animations were provided by

ARG! Cartoon Animation Studio - thousands of FREE original animated GIFs... check it out!

© 2009 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

Picture Monday, March 16, 2009; Notgeld #13

I have a new scanner which makes the process of scanning and working with the images much easier. We are now using a Canon Pixma All In One. The scanner tools are much better than the old Lexmark. I am now able to manipulate the number of pixels in the scanned images which should result in much better scans.

The notes for this week are a set from the Universitat Jena in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. Jena is near Erfurt, which is where my grandfather was born. These notes are very nice. The 1st of three 75 Pfennig notes show Goethe and Friedrich Schiller at the the University of Jena. Schiller taught at the college and Goethe apparently lived in Jena for a while. One source states that Schiller and Goethe co-founded the Weimar Theatre. The 2nd note shows Ernst Haeckel, who studied at the university. The 3rd note shows Ernst Abbe, who also taught at the University.

An interesting side note is that while Ernst Abbe was working at Carl Zeiss's microscope works he introduced the 8 hour work day. Way to go Ernst!!!

The next set of notes are 50 Pfennig notes. One note shows the Fuchsturm (Fox Tower) in Jena which is the oldest mountain inn in Jena. The 2nd note shows the Church of St. Michael in Jena. And the last note shows a scene at the University of Jena.

The 10 and 25 Pfennig notes are smaller in size.

The 25 Pfennig note below, I believe shows a scene of students or fraternity members caroling near a monument on campus. I can't quite be sure though.

Below the 10 Pfennig note is just good looking.

© 2009 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

The Answer????

I suppose I have the answer to my own question.

I did a Google search on the term "Sick em". The most prevalent result I got was in reference to a Seattle based punk rock band whose name I won't mention here. I did find a blog post using the term "sick 'em". When I read it they were referring to Baylor University and why they did not attend; apparently because of the cheerleaders ???) and the fact that Purdue pasted the Men's Basketball team in the 2008 NCAA tournament. Still I didn't think that was the proper usage.

I continued to search.

I started consulting online dictionaries and various etymology sites. It was a little hard to find. However, I learned that "sic' em" has its roots in the term "seek 'em". And has evolved or devolved (Take your pick) into it's current "sic' em" meaning "to attack or incite to attack".

And yes, I learned that "sick" is a variant for "sic". It still just doesn't look right.

SIC' EM BEARS!

(Number 2 in the 2009 Big 12 Tournament.)

© 2009 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

Is This "Sick" or What?

Earlier today I went to the HEB in Woodway to buy groceries. On the way home I drove by the Taco Casa in Hewitt. As I drove by I read their sign out front. I had to stop and look at it.

This is what I saw.

"SICK EM PANTHERS"

What does that mean?

Addendum-April 10, 2009

I never thought of posting a link from this March 13, 2009 post to the March 15, 2009 post. (After all, it is 2 days in the future.) The March 15 post contains the probable ANSWER to my post title question. The link is in the word ANSWER since it links to the post The Answer????.

© 2009 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

BOGO Logos: B&W & Color

I was watching TV last night. It was hard to find anything to watch. This is what I found.

The last NBC logo is supposed to be "rare". I don't know why. it looks the same as the first NBC logo (#8 on the play list). I kind of miss the old logos. Especially the old NBC Peacock. I was really sad when they quite using the Peacock. You can watch the Peacock below.

I remember many of these, except the DuMont. DuMont was before my time or I was after their time.
© 2009 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.