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In the first of many entries to come, I introduce to you my Random Acronym Image Discovery project. Oh! I just typed that out and it makes a nice acronym of it’s own, RAID.

OK, here’s the skinny. I’ve been obsessed with Google’s Image search ever since its release. I got to the point that I would just type in random letters to see what I got and to my surprise, I ALWAYS get results. And I mean real matches too. There seems to be an in-use acronym (most of the time many of them) for every single random array of letters I can come up with. Of course this only holds true for a certain amount of characters. There’s not going to be a use for “GYSDRWMQQWR”.

So anyway, I decided to start sharing this exercise of randomness with all 3 of you who read this blog. So with no further ado, I give you…

HNFT – I’m actually a little disappointed in this one as my first entry, but I promised myself that I’d type randomly and go with whatever came up. In some cases, I come by some obscure society or some scientific study that fascinates me. But in this case, I just came across some odd images on sites that I couldn’t understand because of the language barrier. I didn’t even find a true acronym for HNFT, so this is a real failure of sorts. Next time will be better, I swear! No new discoveries today, but a few odd image gems nonetheless.

Today’s images start with a few crazy little cakes with wrestling dudes and lions and such. We then find ourselves looking at the goofiest looking trees I’ve ever seen. I’m guessing that they are tortured during growth to produce these effects. We then get a beautiful (that’s sarcasm people) horse cake. HNFT must have “something” to do with cake in another language. We finish off with a close-up of a bug and two animated GIFs; one of some anime girl dancing in a mirror and one of She-Ra, Princess of Power! Booya!

So there you have it, a grand idea that has fallen flat on its face on the first attempt. But I will NOT give up that easily! I will try again and prove to you that there are some really interesting things out there to find in the Image Search Engines. I’ll probably even try some other than just Google.

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These HNFT images were brought to you by Augiewan with the help of Google Image Search and these fine sites who have supplied me with these random image findings… (hope they don’t mind!)

Part 1 was the photos I took of some of the buildings downtown, so now you get to see the Art Institute (just a few shots) and the candid shots around town.

The evening we arrived, the Chicago Art Institute was offering free admission after 5:00, so we happily accepted. I hadn’t been inside in a long time and had forgotten how great it is. I’m only upset about the fact that I didn’t think to take any pictures until we were almost done. The furniture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the high points for me.

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Even with all the great art and architecture around us, we did take a few pictures of each other too!

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So there you have it, our trip to Chicago in pictures. Oh, but there was one more picure I took. I saw this guy with a rat stuck to him and I followed him with the intention of letting him know. But the more I followed, the more I realized that he not only knew it, but he actually seemed to like the little rodent… :p

I’ll try to write a little more about the trip later tonight or tomorrow and add some more candid shots. These are just some pictures I took that I think show off how awesome Chicago really is…

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I still remember this argument back when I was caught up in it. It was me and my best friend. I was the proud long-term owner of a Texas Instrument 99-4A with practically every add-on and upgrade you could attach to it. He was the proud new owner of a Commodore 64. I loved that TI. I had learned to program in Basic on it and darn it, it would always be the best computer you could own! But then he got a modem and the world changed. The boards, ah yes the boards. I won’t bore you with the details, but when it came down to it, his Commodore was better at certain things than my TI (and faster!). My TI was still easier for me to use to accomplish other things.

It’s a matter of apples (no pun intended) to oranges people, and the sooner all the eternally devoted, the sarcastic, and the bitterly nasty people out there understand this, the better. Out of the box, Macs are much better than their counterparts in some environments, especially with many creative fields such as advertising or design. Period. Out of the box, Windows based machines (as well as Unix, Linux, Solaris, etc) are much better than Macs at things that businesses (specifically medium to large businesses) need to accomplish. Period.

The argument that Macs are just over-priced well marketed toys is just stupid. You tend to get what you pay for in this world. The average Mac is more expensive than your average PC. The Mac also tends to be a bit beefier on average, and comes with a lot of software that is very useful to much of Apple’s target market. They’ve also done a lot in the past 5 years to make them more applicable for average home use when business isn’t the primary function. Flip that and give a die-hard gamer the same money you just spent on that Mac and they’ll build one kickin’ PC. And you guessed it, it will be tricked out and ready to do what THEY want it to do best. Flip again and give that money to a developer (of any affiliation) or business power-user and they’ll get a pretty sweet machine as well with the software they need to do THEIR job.

You can purchase extra hardware and software to make either “better” at what the other does, and in some cases it makes sense. In most cases it doesn’t. Why does a company need to be a “Mac House” or a “Windows House”? Again, it’s apples and oranges, so why can we have the whole fruit basket?

Most of the time the issue comes down to prejudice and/or ignorance getting in the way. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard of someone trying (or even personally tried) to get a Mac in use at a company that runs a Windows shop. The IT guys act like whiney crybabies or just stuck-up brats. “I’m not helping you get that thing to work”, “I don’t support that stuff”, or my favorite, a nice simple, “Have fun, you’re on your own”. We had an Admin years ago who went out of his way making sure the Macs never played well on the network. He in fact spent multiple times the hours working against the idea than it would have taken to simply do his job, support the computer environment.

I do understand to some degree though, the animosity. Apple and the Mac base has made it a pass-time trying to figure out how to unfairly compare what Macs do well to what PC’s generally aren’t geared to do. Then in turn, they like to point out every time Microsoft trips over issues that Apple has never been in a position to falter at. The sidelines are always an easy place to criticize from. I doubt any of that type of Mac user has an inkling of an idea what goes in to creating and maintaining a corporate network with file sharing, databases, e-mail & communication systems, and all the layers of security needed to make sure every user can get their job done while securing everything so that malicious activity doesn’t occur.

It really irked me when I saw the first “Hi I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” about the Vista release. They had the gall to make fun of Windows for releasing an operating system that not all software and peripherals would be compatible with. Talk about hypocritical! This was the same company who just a few years back released OSX. A great step for them, I admit, but they left EVERY Mac user in the lurch on that one. All the software needed to be upgraded. I know, I was running one at work at the time.

Neither system is ever going to be the silver bullet answer to all computer needs. I’d just like to use them both in peace for what they do well. The arguing always feels like politicians going at it. Different versions of the same imperfect, problem ridden blah blah blah, too wrapped up in their dislike of the other side to ever open their eyes and look at their own faults.

Things for the record:

1) I’ve used both Macs and PCs over the years. At work, I currently use an HP laptop running WinXP and I hate it. It’s slow as snot. I had trouble logging in to domain this morning. I’d love to have one of the Macs that the folks across the hallway use because that would mean I get to play with graphics and video all day. An over-simplification, yes I know. But you know what? I’d have a nice fast machine that isn’t capable of doing half of the tasks that *I* do each day. So I use the tool need.

2) I bought an iPod. It was a cheap piece of junk. The first one died after 10 months. The brand new replacement they sent me died a year later. I think I’ll go back to a Rio. Not everything Apple makes walks on water…

3) I lived through running an IT department during the Win XP release. I don’t plan to even consider Vista for at least another year. MS has never gotten this “new OS” thing right, and I doubt they will this time.

That’s all! Whew, I like this ranting thing…

After quite a while without the cams (yes there use to be 5 different ones that caught me throughout the day) I’ve purchased one new camera that will be stationed in my home office. That means during the evening, you might just catch a live shot! Ooooh! Aren’t you excited???

The cam page is here.

Here’s the latest image…

What a dork!