Who Owns Congress

Who Owns Congress: "

A seating chart of the Senate and House, organized by who they have accepted the most campaign contributions from. The person by person descriptions are interesting.

"

Ciao Firenze - going to Roma

I loved the Ponte Vecchio shops' 'closing up' - whom ever does woodwork in this city does a great business. Between this kind of stuff and the *HUGE* doors to every building...

Had a great time in this ancient city of Florence. So much we didn't get to, so much we did see and still want to see that we will definitely be back.

Luckily the weather was simply perfect - we hope to get this lucky in Roma, perhaps with not as much heat as I think we will find. This shot of the Ponte Vecchio was from the Uffizi gallery - we enjoyed it *somewhat*, a tad bit too much 'Madonna and Child' for my taste but several Michelangelo's worth seeing.

We highly recommend going to the Cappelle Medicee - first, for the several Michelangelo sculptures and second - to see a burial site you will *never* see the likes of anywhere else.

Simply beautiful.

As it was our last night here - and is my tradition to attempt - we went up to Piazzale Michelangelo after sunset to capture a few night-time city shots.

PS - Maddie also highly recommends the 'blood orange gelato' but it is very hard to find...

More Italy

This first photo is the restaurant Vinanzio on top of the 'road' - a wild ride up!

Fantastic day out with some new friends and a guide, Marco. We drove up into the mountains of Carrara and then even further after seeing the marble being extracted - went to Colonnata and had the *best* lunch @ Ristorante Vinanzio (a 2010 Mobil Guide choice, which if you saw just how far you have to go to 'find' this place, is a amazing feat unto itself!)

We past a road side of a quarry and 'souvenir' shop where they had all kinds of marble items for sale. The quarry

was actually working while we watched. Could not see down

into the 'hole' but could hear all the hammering and such and then the crane moved some slabs up.

After the ride to the top we ate wonderful home made pasta, drank some chianti (1990 Ruffino Reserva) and *then* we had a limon sorbet for desert. This was the lightest, fluffiest sorbet you can imagine. As Maddie said on her first bite: 'its like a melody in your mouth'!

Beautiful countryside, lovely company of Sandy and Kay and a great guide in Marco made this a lifetime memorable day here in Italy.

Che bella giornata! Thank you Sandy and Kay, glad we bumped into you at lunch yesterday.

London, Paris and now Venice - done

London (was work related) so skipping that - Paris was a weekend and we hit our normal spots (Cafe Deux Magots) and then some power shopping (shoes for Maddie - Louboutin, where else) - then Maddie started getting 'sick'. Some sort of dizzy-vertigo nausea inducing 'thing' that lasted all Sunday - air sickness (!) - on easyjet no less.

(Note Bene: Easyjet is the southwest airline of EU - even worse than Ryan air. I highly recommend paying for 'speedy boarding' as this alone will be worth every euro they charge. Otherwise you are getting on the plane with the entire 160++ folks - literally at the same time!)

I went into Venice (Venezia) alone Sunday evening - ate some pizza (about as good as Pizza my Heart) and learned the ins/outs. I highly recommend staying in Mestre - in fact, I *HIGHLY* recommend the Hotel Plaza, directly across from the train station in Mestre. Again, pay for the 'upgrade' to the executive room - 30euro more per night but a very nice room, highly worth the upgrade. I did compare it to the normal room and they simply don't compare. Our room was very recently upgraded - while the normal room was likely 15++ years old. Our room had a lovely sized bathroom, with lovely marble and limestone and great working everything. Even the door locks were extremely modern with proximity sensor to 'unlock' the door.

(taken *from* the train station - its close but clean/quiet inside!)

Ok, so 1euro and maybe 15 minutes train ride into Venice and you are *right there*. Get to an information center - buy the 2,50euro map which has all the 'street' names. Its a must. Using Fodor's "See it Italy" guide book, we followed its recommendation for 'shopping' @ Bevilacqua - (Fondamenta della Canonica, San Marco 337B) an ancient store that makes Venezia tapestries and fabric for the past few centuries ~1700. We ordered a custom table runner - can't wait to see how it turns out. Absolutely terribly hard to choose a fabric. All made on the same looms since 1700, many patters are obviously exclusive to them.

We also visited La Fenice Atelier (Calle dei Frati, San Marco 3537) - purchased some amazing table linens - literally tailored linens (100% Italian linen) for our future table. Let's see - first a custom runner, now some placemats and napkins - oh yeah, we need the table now for sure!

Also ate an incredible pizza prosciutto and lasagna and then later an amazing gelato - chocolate from another universe and coconut - both tasted like pure flavor, creamier than your tongue knows how to 'taste'. Look for a gelatario marked 'artigianale' - they make it there and is not some commercially made stuff.

So far - Italy is amazing - and that is from our view of the amusement park meets carnival town of Venice - can't wait for Parma tomorrow - fresh cheeses and parma ham - gonna be incredible!

Patio Shade

Patio Shade: "

This diagram illustrates a design problem I’ve wondered about for many years.

"

Original Pac-Man sketches

Original Pac-Man sketches: "

Dutch gaming magazine Control has a humbling look at the origins of Pac-Man: Toru Iwatani's initial sketches for the game that arguably launched the arcade era.

Iwatani toont originele schetsen voor Pac-Man

(via Kottke)

• Play Pacman on the Google home page today


• Heat maps reveal Pac-Man in the moon


• Mario v. Pac-Man animated short film


• Pac-Man and Star Trek cufflinks


• Luxury designed Pac-Man Italian stools Gadgets


• Pac-Man Hoodie


• Roomba Pacman


• Edo period-style Pac-Man fanart Gadgets

"

'Avatar' - you got that right - the title anyway

So its been a while since I posted here, sorry to all my loyal follower out there (yes, singular is correct).

Just saw 'Avatar' today and after all they hype and comparisons to 'Pocahontas' and 'Dances with Wolves', it struck me why people are avoiding the obvious: Jim Cameron plays 'World of Warcraft'!*

C'mon - the blue people are the Draenei from WoW. He is a warrior/hunter - fine. Level 10: you get an upgraded bow. Level 40: you get a flying mount, I mean c'mon people- he took a raid party to go find his first flying dragon. Level 60: made a special tribal member.

Level 70: you get an upgraded uber-mount. The total immersion in the CGI 'world' - all from WoW. In fact, there were so many parallels in this especially long movie - I expected to get home and find I had leveled in the game personally! Three hours is a long time to not gain any experience for the effort. (Other facets pulled from WoW: Machinegun toting Mechs, riding sabercats, fluorescent plant world)

It was a fine movie - and if I were 12, perhaps I would think of this as a seminole moment like 'Star Wars' was for me, but I doubt it. At least Star Wars had some story that I hadn't seen (not like I saw 'Hidden Fortress' before seeing Star Wars) and characters with which I could relate.

'Avatar' on the other hand was a regurgitated plot in the most simplest of methods but dressed up all very pretty. And I will give you that - outside of some physics problems I have with complete CG worlds (that aren't going to be fixed anytime soon WETA and ILM, no matter how much you spend) - it was very nice to look 'at', but it didn't show me anything new.

Over all - it's still an A- for me but with a note of caution: its only worth seeing if you don't mind 3 hours of a slow story line and you just want to skip to the finish line with your butt intact. (slow because you are three steps ahead the whole time - Jim doesn't mind fore-shadowing the hell out of the smallest of points and making it painfully obvious). But it is pretty - did I say that already?

Maybe next time I can send my avatar into the theater for me - I could use the leveling time...

*right before publishing I found this link that nails it down quite well (so there goes *my* original blog post :-(