What are your jeans doing today?

[ThinFinn]

my jeans went out for some shooting today!

...

[Gilangaditya]

Hem my Fire Element

Union Special for Hem

Pegasus F32 36

in Action

navy !

[-Z-]

crazy foggy here the last few days, all of our snow is gone, for the most part at least, and things are beginning to feel like spring, for now...

picked up my friends from their apartment and headed out to uptown to have a few beers and catch up, had some other friends at the T-wolves game and was meeting them in downtown minneapolis for drinks later in the night.

walking back from the bar in uptown, great neighborhood to hang out in, as long as you stay away from the newer areas, too many d-bags in one place makes for a pretty lame night out...

went on my way downtown by the Target center, which is only about 5 minutes from uptown...took a few shots on my way to the Loon to meet up with some lady friends.

had a beer at the loon and hit up a few more places before we called it a night....me and the girls heading down 1st.

oh, same exact place, actually its a block down, but really close to where surly posted this pic during the day...just to give you an idea of where we're at...same town and all.

more continued.....

[-Z-]

some great weather so the little sprout and i went on a nice long 2 hour walk yesterday. she loves exploring, and we did a bunch of that. its fun to bring her out doing stuff like this now, she hated it last year...hah.

some of the stuff we looked at along the way...

she thinks graffiti is bad. she kept asking me why other people got to write on the walls, when she does she gets time out. she kept telling me we needed to find them and put them in time out...made me laugh.

this one looks kinda creepy but i like it

yes i hate spot-coloring photographs, but this one actually worked pretty damn well for it...

and our denim...

have a good night / morning everyone!

[surly]

-Z-, great pics! Wish I could've spent more time downtown and enjoyed the weather. Would rep if I could.

Bobby, that place looks like it'd be right up your alley. heh, sorry the shirts worked out so well so I won't be selling them. Thrift some sickass shit in Tulsa for me. Sorry, can't rep.

[robbie]

great stuff the last couple pages, shirt fits well surly, must spread.

Drove home to Oklahoma yesterday, we didn't leave until about 3pm so most of our trip was boring and un-picturesque. That being said, we did stop at a soda fountain we didn't really even knew existed about 40 miles from our house.

'green river' phosphates

ice cream sundae

and I saw this cool sign

The rest of our trip included podcasts and boring Kansas.

[simon626]

I love food.

I bought some Filet Mignon steaks the other day. Ate a steak for lunch with a friend and still had two steaks left over. Decided to make them into burgers haha. Here are the photos.

I diced up portabello mushrooms and onions and then mixed it with the meat along with a whisked egg to help it hold. Also added herbs and spices and stuff.

After cooking the meat i put it on a toasted sesame seed bun.

I also like eggs with my hamburgers and sharp Cheddar cheese.

The Californian in me wanted avocado with it all.

Topped everything off with some spread on the buns and medley of veggies (along with the avocado) tucked into a folded blanket of lettuce (so that nothing falls out).

Delicioso.

[-Z-]

My Eternals are a few whiskey's deep listening to this on repeat all night until i pass out.

[Denton]

^disappointed slightly? I was. four years wait for eight tracks? I hope some more new music is around the corner

[ranonranonarat]

the new album is too progressive for me. the last one that i could actually still listen to was hail to the thief sadly. the albums after that were pretty much downhill.

[Denton]

whaaaaaat. philistine. in rainbows is excellent.

then again that took a while to crystallize or whatever for me so hopefully this is the same way

[beatle]

thanks for posting, Z - don't know why but I am slacking at keeping track of new releases - and Radiohead is the bomb. gotta go get it

[dkatz]

Yesterday was voting-day for the Ugandan presidential elections. The last elections were widely known to be massively rigged in favor of (now 25-year) incumbent Yoweri Museveni, and were pretty violent. By comparison, at this point it seems like things were much calmer this time around.

I've only ever take one Ugandan or American public holiday off in the 1.5 years I've been here, so I was also thrilled to take my first ever Ugandan public holiday off!

Passed a polling place in Bukoto in the morning

Arrived at a friend's house for an all-day cook-and-eat-and-drink-athon

kitenge

ROYxCone

army boot-sneakers

In the midst of cooking, eating and drinking... an impromptu game session. Homegirl and I learned how to play (one of the apparently million varieties of) a popular East African game that resembles Mancala.

It probably took us 45 damn minutes to finish that game 'cause neither of us knew any strategy

FOOD. Everything turned out pretty damn phenomenal, despite most peoples' experimental bent

Grillin', chapatti-in' and beerin'

This was the one failure of the day, by my standards: supposed to be a "Breakfast White Russian" - milk infused with frosted flakes + chocolate milk + vodka + bacon for a swizzle stick

goat-cheese eggplant rolls

We then made the admittedly questionable decision to watch the votes be counted at a nearby polling station when polls closed at 5. Changed into a more neutral shirt

5pm on a Friday, and Kira road is EMPTY. Weird.

[part two momentarily]

[dkatz]

Voting finishes up at a polling station in Kamwokya

Voters would register with the guys seated at the right, then take the three ballots (president, member of parliament and woman member of parliament) to be filled out in a bucket. Theoretically the bucket shields the voter's selection from on-lookers. A big problem, though: the ballot paper is pretty long and the incumbent is at the very bottom while the main opposition candidate is at the very top, so it's pretty easy to tell from the voter's body position who he or she is voting for. Slick.

At 5pm, the people with the voter registers count how many people came through. Each polling station was supposed to have 800 registered voters. Some, like this one, split those 800 into two sub-stations alphabetically.

This station wound up about 600 voters - pretty damn impressive turnout by American standards.

This was definitely a necessary expense by the Electoral Commission.

Thanks to the German government - among others - for the donation of 3m Euros for Uganda's elections.

The sorting begins. There is one plastic bin for each ballot. Sorting at this station began with the Woman MP. One official representative for each candidate stands by the Presiding Officer (see the few guys standing behind the dude with the ballot), who then holds up each ballot one-by-one for public viewing, and hands the ballot to a candidate-representative according to who the ballot is for.

Not a quick process, but remarkably transparent - notice how many onlookers are actively watching.

The other two bins to the right are for MP and President

Significant police presence. One cop is in the polling station, and one or two outside, the entire time. Other police passed by at different times, and at one point a truck carrying 20ish cops in full samurai-armor looking riot gear passed by. Gotta love intimidation!

The other half of the alphabet. I love how many people turn out just to watch the counting!

Also a good proportion of the onlookers were... hammered-ass drunk.

You know who would have won the presidential race here, no problem?

Once the ballots had been sorted, the Presiding Officer would go through the ballots held by each candidate's representative, one at a time, and hold each up as he counted aloud. The crowd counted along.

One man I stood next to for a period of time was very closely watching and counting. As soon as the counting finished, he noted the results on his hand and speed-walked away, immediately pulling out his phone. I'm thinking he was a representative for the opposition, submitting his report to the opposition's parallel counting-center

[part 3/3 in a minute...]

[dkatz]

Once counting for a box is completed, the ballots are put back in the box and the lid fastened with serial-numbered zip ties (but how easy would it be for duplicate zip ties to be made and a box still to be opened, emptied and re-filled with different ballots en route to the electoral commission?)

I'm always amused by random dudes (okay, "security guards") with large weapons cruising around in public - even at something as tense and sensitive as a polling post

Kids across the street while parents watch the counting...

Shoes that look better with age?

Another couple guys kept their own score - I love how many people took it upon themselves to do their own counting and reporting.

The polling station police officer shows that the box of clean ballots is empty - nothing around to stuff a box with!

The crowd. I was chatting with a Local Council Chairperson for a bit who told me that this has historically been a pretty violent polling place (I swallowed hard) - he was thrilled with how smoothly everything was going this time around.

Finally as it started getting dark, we headed back to my friend's place for the grand finale of food... LAMB.

My meat-inclined and epicurially-talented buddy marinated and skewered it, then hung it in the chimney of a clay oven

Eaten with tzatziki, it was terrific.

And the nigh ended with some clay-oven bread baking... and a lot of booze.

So far, with about 50% of polling stations reporting, preliminary results show Museveni with ~70% of the vote and Besigye (main opposition) has ~24%. There's only been one large incident of violence that I heard of - out in Sironko - and mild other cases of uncleanliness. One candidate - Otunno - refused to vote yesterday and has come out saying he will not accept the results of the election, calling it a "sham". Besigye has yet to make any comments, but is supposed to be holding a press conference momentarily.

I was overall impressed by the degree of transparency, but it was not hard to think of a number of ways to rig things, even in this system. More importantly - as a friend mentioned - it's clear that most of the "rigging" happened long before the ballots even landed in Uganda: ministers and voters being bought, mechanisms for opposition-oversight being prohibited and a massively partisan Electoral Commission refusing to be replaced.

Official results will be announced tomorrow, so we're not out of the woods yet. Besigye has stated that if the vote was (in his perception) in any way not perfectly clean & clear, he will not appeal to the Supreme Court - he will instead appeal to "the court of public opinion", intimating that he would do his best to start public upheaval or even start another bush war (as he and Museveni did to oust Obote 25 years ago). So we continue to wait and watch and listen.

[FabGeek]

some good old fashion family fun..yes i've put on quite a bit of weight. Whatevs lol

cool stairwell we came upon

cool stairs by txvdub, on Flickr

<3 by txvdub, on Flickr

he keeps giving me mean eyes!

? by txvdub, on Flickr

dork by txvdub, on Flickr

[roy6]

They went to MOMA SF & the Chinese New Year parade.

[surly]

Had a belated birthday party with a few old buddies yesterday. Wore my new SC work shirt and LVC 47s

We didn't feel like making cake, so we made birthday brownies

We went to the Mall of America to go to Underwater World

The jellyfish room was crazy

Saw some turtles doing it

Then we went on a roller coaster, played mini-golf, and went home. Lots of fun!

[OmpaOmpo]

-Z-, those pictures are great.

Sorry if its been asked, but what camera/lenses are you using?

[hollowsleather]

Did some experiments with full moon and long exposure shots at my woodland hideout.

[morse9443]

[-Z-]

-Z-, those pictures are great.

Sorry if its been asked, but what camera/lenses are you using?

nah its cool, Canon 5DmkII + 17-40mm f/4L for the day shots, 50mm f/1.4 for the night shots.

hollows looks like you're loving the Pen? its got really clean imaging, i like the look of the shots. what lens for you, the pancake?

[hollowsleather]

nah its cool, Canon 5DmkII + 17-40mm f/4L for the day shots, 50mm f/1.4 for the night shots.

hollows looks like you're loving the Pen? its got really clean imaging, i like the look of the shots. what lens for you, the pancake?

I have the 14-42 that comes with the newest Pen. I'm too much of a camera noob to know if I would prefer the pancake that the previous Pens came with, aside from the fact that it makes the whole thing more compact. I may try one out in the future.

For now I just want spring so I can get out and experiment with it more, but we both know that ain't happening soon. I look forward to your shots of this latest snow dump.

[theotherchrislewis]

Went to the Chinese Lantern Festival in Albert Park on Sunday night, twas packed - as every year. Seems they recycle about 60% of the lanterns so is worth visiting every year for the few new ones and to try a couple of new random tasty Asian treats.

1/ Year of the rabbit display (the poor tiger lantern got shunted out to the 'fringes').

2/ There was something striking about this simple black & white zebra

3/ This was the best part of the show! Kids in inflated balls crashing into each other in a massive paddling pool - hung out by this for ages trying work out how I was going to bluff my way into one but to no avail.

4/ Always been a fan of this traditional style pottery.

5/ One of the most detailed & intricate lanterns on display.

6/ Some cool Asian rockers (not sure of their name but they had the crowd pumping).

7/ And a fireworks finale to wrap it all up.

[josh mullen]

Fine work.

My Eternals are a few whiskey's deep listening to this on repeat all night until i pass out.

I too had an extended King of Limbs listening experience that included whiskey -- the scotch variety, laphroaig. I'm definitely pleased with it, but to that other guy's point, I believe there is more to come in the near-ish future.

[riff]

Catching up on some slices of life…

We had one day of false spring… Unbelievably warm - everything was melting, sidewalks were flowing with water. If it hadn't been for a very brisk wind, it would have been t-shirt weather.

There's all kinds of construction everywhere - mostly broken water mains & hydro stuff - mud & machines…

That evening though, temperatures dropped, and winds were hitting 65mph, knocking down phone lines and causing quite a bit of damage in some areas.

By the morning, all that meltwater had flash frozen, and it was like a skating rink. Then we got more snow, of course!

Did a lot of the usual stuff: hikes with the pups.

More birds

Snow boots!

Some Toronto scenes

By the roundhouse

Inukshuk on the lakeshore

[riff]

The shower shack - locked for the winter

Colourful flotsam, frozen in ice

We really wanted to explore this place , but 3 security guards, and barbed wire were a deterrent, especially having the pups with us...

Random waywt

Had dinner with friends at a great little Hungarian place. Tiny and kitchy lol, but the food was awesome. No pics of that - we ate so fast!!

Now the long weekend is done… Back to work….

[-Z-]

I too had an extended King of Limbs listening experience that included whiskey -- the scotch variety, laphroaig. I'm definitely pleased with it, but to that other guy's point, I believe there is more to come in the near-ish future.

yea i'm hoping its a Kid A / Amnesiac situation, two albums from the same recording sessions released one after the other.

[superbeveridge]

i like it, hope the same, i have a feeling these guys have been listening to a lot of beta band lately

[mackie]

this thread is always a such a pleasure to browse through--thanks all for posting so much cool isht.

relaxing hungover morning at friends' place in Kensington, BK. after a few blessed days of false spring, we got a very pretty dusting of snow in the night.

drove up to PS1 in Long Island City. this is from Feng Mengbo's Long March: Restart, a gigantic, room-sized 8-bit fully functional video game where you play a red army soldier who throws exploding coke cans at Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter-type baddies in various communist China styled settings. absolutely amazing, but no decent pics, as I was gently encouraged to put my camera away.

PS1 has all these lovely pieces in the stairways. this is from one by William Kentridge.

waywt (on the right)

hip dumpster--humpster?

a few blocks away is the East River waterfront. the whole thing is covered in heinous new condo towers, but there are still a couple old gantries hanging out. and you get a fantastic view of midtown.

happened upon this incredible garage on the way back to the car. vroom vroom!