Boston’s [Museum of Science](http://www.mos.org/) has been running a series of free, public lectures called “Lecturology”. These are sort of popular science lectures, designed to be accessible to a wide variety of individuals. I have attended two such lectures this week; one was good, the other, not so good.
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Zakim at Night|ppp|fff
On Tuesday night I attended a lecture at the [Museum of Science](http://www.mos.org/). The lecture itself is a topic for another post, but before the lecture started, I went up to the top of the MoS parking garage and took some night-time photos of Boston. Some of them came out really well, others not so good. You can check them all out [here](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2005/boston_at_night/).
You may remember that a while ago, I believed I had photographed U2’s Bono as he rode through Boston in a limo. I later [discovered](http://prwdot.org/archives/2005/10/bamboozled.html) that it was actually a look-alike who had been hired to promote their upcoming concerts. Well, I later posted that [photo](http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterwood/48993813/) on [flickr](http://www.flickr.com/), and wouldn’t you know it, just a couple days ago, the Bono look-alike himself [left a comment](http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterwood/48993813/#comment18760866)!
Isn’t the Interweb a wonderful thing?
Becky used a plastic bag clip to do up my hair, then I had her take [a photo](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/etcetera/grab_bag/P1060003.JPG.html). This is all practice for the inevitable hair-play that will come with having children. Apart from being extremely attractive, the hair clip also serves to keep my forehead clear of my rather oily mane.
There was also this one crazy night a while ago, when we were making grape juice, that I decided to try a few new hair styles. Thankfully, none of them really worked for me. The album is appropriately named [Grape Juice and Hair Styling](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/craftiness/grape_juice_and_hair_styling/).
Enjoy!
Thanks to the “bargain matinees” at Loewe’s we’ve seen two movies during the last two weekends.
First, Harry Potter. If you’ve seen it you know what you think of it.. if you’re going to see it I don’t want to spoil it and if you’re never going to see it you won’t care what I say. So, no big review for you. Sorry. I’ll just point out the things I liked… Ron Weasley’s new ‘R’ sweater, Snape’s ‘study hall’, Neville Longbottom (especially the ‘shoes around the neck’ scene). Neville has always been my favorite, so it was nice to see him grow and become his own person.
Rent. Did you see the play? Yes? You’ll probably like the movie. No? Maybe not. I loved the play in ’97 and the movie didn’t disappoint. They cut some songs and such which I was sad about, but the main plots/characters/songs were all there. I had a very hard time not singing along…too loudly.
What I did notice is that 80% of the theater that afternoon was comprised of teenagers. Kids who are 10 years younger than me. When I first saw Rent 8 years ago I thought that it was the most cutting edge, poignant, dangerous thing I’d ever seen. The topics of AIDS and homosexuality were so new to a sheltered country gal like me. The kids in this theater, however, laughed at this movie as if it was a comedy. I was shocked. They just didn’t seem to get the point. In today’s world those hot button topics from the eighties and nineties just seem mainstream today.
Well, now that I sound like an old curmudgeon…go see the movies and tell me what you think!
[Apple](http://www.apple.com/)’s latest [iMac G5](http://www.apple.com/imac/) comes with a piece of software called [Front Row](http://www.apple.com/imac/frontrow.html). This software is a pretty interface to the various types of media on your computer – movies, music, photos, and DVDs. The iMac G5 comes with the software pre-installed, and also includes a wireless remote so that you can control your Mac from the couch. But those of us who don’t have the new iMac can’t take advantage of this feature. Or can we?
Enter [Front Row Enabler](http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/19947), a bit of software hackery that will allow users of Macs other than the latest iMac G5 to use Front Row. I downloaded it and installed it today on my Sawtooth PowerMac G4/450 (quite an old machine), and it actually works really well! Of course, I don’t have a remote, so I have to be sitting at the computer to use it. But it’s still pretty cool. Who says you can’t teach an old Mac new tricks?
I have set up a [Frappr!](http://www.frappr.com/) guestmap for World Wide Wood. Frappr uses [Google Maps](http://local.google.com/) to let our site visitors show us where in the world they are! So head on over to the [guest map](http://www.frappr.com/worldwidewood) and make your mark! The guestmap link can always be found on the left side of our pages under ‘Quick Links’.
Go to it!
I haven’t formally announced it until now, but for about a month now we have been running our photo gallery on [Gallery 2](http://gallery.menalto.com/). Our old gallery [still exists](http://gallery.prwdot.org/), but we won’t be adding anything new to it. We will just be keeping it around so that links to the old gallery still work.
The new gallery is linked from our sidebar, or you can simply reach it from [http://prwdot.org/gallery2/](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/). To the user, it will look more or less the same as the old gallery, though we have restructured and reorganized many of the albums. Rather than simply migrating the old gallery, I went back to my source photos and re-uploading everything, making some improvements and fixes to photos along the way.
For our family members, your accounts from the old gallery should still work with the new gallery. The biggest difference is that we don’t have a separate gallery for family photo albums. The family albums are now sprinkled in with the rest of the albums, but they are invisible until you log in to your account. So if you’re a family member, and you can’t log in, can’t find some photos you’re looking for, or don’t already have an account, please let us know!
The biggest shortcoming of Gallery 2, so far, is that it doesn’t have any RSS functionality built in. There was a module developed as part of [Google Summer of Code](http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html), but it hasn’t made it into an official release of Gallery 2. From what I’ve heard, it isn’t even built on the latest Gallery 2 code, so I probably won’t be using it for a while. Of course, according to [Feedburner](http://feedburner.com/), only six people are subscribed to our old gallery’s RSS feed, so maybe it’s not worth it anyway. Would anyone miss it if our gallery’s RSS feed went away? ( Did you even know it was there? Did you know about our [other feeds](http://prwdot.org/feeds.html)? )
The other disappointment is that Gallery 2 doesn’t have automatic notification of new comments to the gallery. So I have to go through manually and check to see if anyone has commented (so far it’s two comments from [Michelle](http://mikao.blogspot.com/) – thanks!).
Other than that, the software is great from an administration and customization standpoint. And it still works with [iPhotoToGallery](http://zwily.com/iphoto/) – a must!
I hope everyone enjoys our [new gallery](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/)!
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Corey builds a thatched roof gingerbread house|ppp|fff
So. My baby brother is a quarter of a century old. We had a nice time celebrating with him over Thanksgiving.
Happy Birthday, Corey!
Becky and I are out in Townsend at her parents’ house. There is a lot of cooking going on in the Lowe family kitchen… [Corey](http://corey.prwdot.org/) brought a 30 POUND TURKEY that he got at [work](http://www.solidworks.com/)! Yikes! There are only going to be eight of us, so… there are sure to be plenty of leftovers. There is lovely snow falling outside, the house is starting to warm up inside, delightful smells are filling up the kitchen, and we’re enjoying a nice relaxing day with the family.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Update
I’ve put up photos from [the past couple of days](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/events/2005/thanksgiving/). Enjoy!