I am the proud new owner of tapiocaworldtour.com (just in case I ever need to expand the tapioca line of domains) and bubbyhelicopter.com (inspired by what DD & I once envisioned as an excellent band name). Both currently redirect to this site, so don’t think they’re cool yet. However, we have some hopes for bubbyhelicopter.com:

1. Aerial photography, based on a remote camera strapped to helium balloons which we carry around, and/or a remote-control helicopter.

2. User-controlled Savin Hill webcam, featuring CatFood Software’s interface: anyone can find the stream online, and queue to control the camera for about one minute. I would love to mount a security camera on top of our house for the live feed, but some negotiations with our landlords might be in order first. Stay tuned.

by Czeslaw Milosz

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

Wilno, 1936

No wind today. None.
On the train, our words flow out,
then fall. We move on.

Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages
Washington Post

By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2009; A01

If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking. More…

Thanks to JH for the photo…