Presenting: The best picture on the internet. Today.
The Candyman:
As we were rushing through the crowded streets of the bazaar, suddenly I saw that one of the shops had many barefoot children pressing around and pointing and handing a man money. As I got closer, I saw that the store had many american candies… there was a pyramid of gumdrops two feet high. As I passed, I turned and snapped this shot. Fortunately his bright fluorescent lights and my 50mm 1.4 worked together to bring enough light to the scene. It’s one of my favorite candid shots I’ve ever taken.
Lost in the Hebrew Sector:
I took this shot on the run through the bazaar. Something about the strong silhouette and the worried faces spoke to me. Turned out much better than I thought it would.
Today is my twenty second birthday. Normally I would post a selfie today, but right now we are involved in helping with the relief effort after the tragic tornado that ripped through Alabama. We have fifteen extra people in our house right now, and I’m about to leave to help clean up. Please pray for all the folks who have lost homes and loved ones.
Aaaagghh… I want one right now!
Seriously folks. Welcome to the news.
Praise the Lord. Looks like we are safe now. Quite an end to my last day of college classes.
No one blocks this disabled woman’s way. NO ONE.
I don’t even…
Song of the Day: Over the Rainbow by Eva Cassidy
This is my favorite rendition of this classic.
My current development config (clockwise):
Inside full screen iterm2, Vim, a custom git history view, vim split with an custom ack TODO search.
Working on a C++ project related to openGL, this works pretty well for me. I will make inside vim or in the right pane, sometimes GDB replaces the git hist.
99 problems…
The Old Section:
This panorama looks out towards the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock. The city of Jerusalem isn’t that big… its still bounded by the old walls to a large degree.
This… is awesome.
The View from the Tower:
This is one of several panoramas I took from the summit of that clock tower. This view looks down on the top of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the right, the bazaar and part of old town in the mid ground.
Be sure to press “L” to view large!
Claustrophobia:
In one of my more ambitiously adventurous actions of the trip, I paid 75 cents to climb the bell tower of an centuries old church. Like many other medevial towers, this tiny stairway was barely a foot wide, and spiraled up counter clockwise. I had read a long time ago that all castle style stairways spiraled counter clockwise so that defenders coming down the stair could have the free use of their right arm, while attackers coming up the stair wouldn’t be able to wield their weapon effectively.
While I wasn’t worried about armored knights stopping my ascent, there was always the problem of other tourists. If I met one coming down, the only solution was to back up or down a few flights to one of the arrow ports, where there was room for an archer to draw his bow, or for a medium height photographer to squeeze against the wall and let someone else by. There were a total of six flights, and the higher you went the narrower the stair. It took around ten minutes to get up, mostly because of all the passing we had to do. I was petrified I would get trapped behind someone who had broken their ankle or something.
All the way up the stair, I prayed that the view from the top would be worth the trouble. Stay tuned tomorrow to see if it was worth the squeezing and the knee pain. :-P
