The husband and my mother-in-law took an early morning trip up to the wildlife refuge at Land Between the Lakes recently. They lucked out.

( Buffalo and Elk, oh my! )

Sunday afternoon, we went for a walk at the park to check on the baby cygnets, among other things. It's amazing how fast they are growing. While at the park, not only did I take photos of yet more birds, I experimented with my camera's video recording capabilities, trying to capture some of the interesting bird behavior I saw.

( Bird pictures and videos, and cuteness )

I promised Chinese snuff bottles, didn't I?

Snuff bottles were originally made as portable containers for finely ground tobacco mixed with aromatic herbs and spices, known as snuff. Chinese snuff was intended to be inhaled, which caused not only a nicotine 'rush', but also sneezing and a clearing of the nasal passages. The Chinese believed snuff could cure headaches, lockjaw, stomach disorders, coughs, asthma and many other illnesses. Originally brought from the New World by European traders, snuff, and all the accoutrements necessary for 'snuffing' became extremely popular during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). European missionaries, particularly the Jesuits, used snuff, and presented it as gifts and as part of their tribute to the early Qing emperors. The emperors, in turn, had their workshops fashion snuff bottles out of precious materials both for their own use and to be given as tokens of imperial favor....

quote from NOMA placard on the collection of Chinese snuff bottles
( Snuff bottles )

This last Saturday, Becky and I went visiting the New Orleans Museum of Art. (NOMA) As usual, I ran out of steam before seeing everything, so I'll have to get the Egyptian glasses and the medieval Italian paintings some other time.

( Faberge, Orientalist paintings, Japonisme and Snuff Bottles )

Mom, also point Jeff & Russ & everyone at this entry.

Books & DVDs
- Go straight to Amazon wish list
- Steve, wishlist at your Webscriptions account.

Clothes & stuff
- Comfy slippers
- Spiffy t-shirt. Size XL, prefer pretty pictures to clever sayings.
- sweatshirt, size XL, with pretty pictures. Southwest Indian Foundation has some I really like.

Food & Drink
- specialty decaffeinated teas and herbal teas.
- specialty decaff coffees, too.

Gadgets & Widgets
- a new crockpot, somewhat larger.
- Tivo or other DVR.
- new wireless optical mouse for my laptop.
- a new desktop computer, with at least 4GB RAM, DVD burner, good graphics card, 22" flatscreen monitor.
- a nice, sharp, long-bladed letter opener.

House & garden
- some low-light, neglect-tolerant houseplant for my cubicle at work.

More to be added as I think of it...

Other people's wish lists
- Becky's Amazon wish list
- Steve T-shirt size: XXL, Tall.

Yesterday, Becky and I visited the New Orleans Museum of Art. (I will be posting pictures later). I took pictures of things that interested me, and some stuff that Becky wanted reference images of. Among the things I took pictures of were two paintings by the French Orientalist Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Though many of Gérôme's paintings are on the web, I was surprised to find out that the two Gérômes held by the New Orleans Museum of Art were not--in fact they weren't mentioned at all as even existing, so I uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons.

• Turkish Bashi Bazouk Mercenaries Playing Chess in a Market Place
  
• The Snake Charmer (Not the famous one that is all over the internet, but a different painting of the same name).
  

Just to clarify things, all photographs, videos and audio tracks that are created by me and posted here on LiveJournal to this account are licensed for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Yesterday was a very nice day, so we went for a walk in LaFreniere Park. We brought stale bread and were looking for a swan and her little cygnets that we saw grazing at the edge of the canals last time.

This time, it took us quite some time to find the swan with the cygnets, as she was 3/4 of the way around the lake in the opposite direction that we started walking. On the way, we saw (and fed) lots of other interesting critters.

( Nutria and cygnets ahoy! )

New Zoo trip, part 1
New Zoo trip, part 2
New Zoo trip, part 3
New Zoo trip, part 4
New Zoo trip, part 5
New Zoo trip, part 6
New Zoo trip, part 7

This is the last of the zoo pictures.

( We haz foxes! )

New Zoo trip, part 1
New Zoo trip, part 2
New Zoo trip, part 3
New Zoo trip, part 4
New Zoo trip, part 5

Some of the Audubon Nature Institute's more unusual exhibits are the white alligators. The nest was found over twenty years ago in the swamp with the baby white alligators just hatching out. We have no idea if they breed true, because all the hatchlings found were male--and these are the only white alligators that have ever been seen. They are leucistic, not albinos.

( No, they are not plastic )

New Zoo trip, part 1
New Zoo trip, part 2
New Zoo trip, part 3
New Zoo trip, part 4

On my previous zoo trip, I managed to get a few pictures of otters. This time I got quite a few more.

( Otterses! )

New Zoo trip, part 1
New Zoo trip, part 2
New Zoo trip, part 3

Swamp houseboat



Today's episode is about wild black bears (American Black Bear, Ursus americanus). Yes, we have them in Louisiana, particularly Honey Island Swamp. Yes, we have them in the Louisiana Swamp section of the Audubon Zoo.

( On to the bears! )

New Zoo trip, part 1
New Zoo trip, part 2

First, have some fungus:



That log was laying on the ground outside the wild dog pen. I thought it looked interesting.

( Off to the wild dogs )

A couple of weeks ago (Aug 16), we went to the zoo again, and I took lots more pictures.

( First, the birds )

Well, I was going to post zoo pictures from this last weekend tonight, but when I got to processing photos from my camera's directory, I found some photos from back in April that I completely forgot to post. So Lafreniere Park instead of Audubon Zoo, this time.

( Did I say chickens? )

Yes, I really do have a website and it's not utterly dead. Just woefully out-of-date.

One out-of-date page is my Palm E-docs page. Alas, the Palm is no longer the mainstream ebook reader, and the venerable Aportis-Doc format isn't exactly an industry standard anymore. As for the proprietary iSilo format--has anyone even heard of it anymore?

These days the most-used formats are MobiPocket, HTML, PDF, and EPub, as far as I can tell. I personally loathe PDFs for reading, so I'm not going to go to the trouble of making them or hosting them. HTML is not so much an E-book format as a standard markup format that can be easily converted to any format you want. Besides, it's handy for reading on your computer.

So, my thoughts are that my old Palm E-Docs page will turn into a new E-Books page, and Palm-DOC and iSilo versions of my fanfics will be replaced or updated with:

* zipped HTML for offline reading (already exist, but need updating)
* MobiPocket (useable on Kindle, and easily converted to other formats)
* EPUB (useable on Sony E-Reader and several others)

Have I missed any major formats that people need to read on the device of their choice? Please let me know.

On May 15, 2009, my daughter graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Louisiana State University.

( Of course we have pictures! )