Deliberate.Serendipity

Flickr is running a charity auction as part of its 3rd birthday celebrations. As such, they asked for submissions to the Flickr 333 group pool from which 20 photos will be chosen to be printed/framed and auctioned. The Flickr Blog had a map showing group submissions. But, where am I? Where is New Zealand? I feel like I’ve fallen off the side of the world.

This weekend’s project over at Utata is “Utata Opposites“. Here’s the one I used as an example for the theme:

I really need to get some new shots for this one, though.

This week, two of my former professors at Penn are in the news… one sad and one happy.

Alan MacDiarmid, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, died on February 7th. Way back in 1982, while he was in the midst of his Nobel prize-winning experimentations, he taught me freshman chemistry (Chem 2). I remember that he was very enthusiastic about his work and also about teaching us, the lowly freshman, rather than just his graduate courses. I thought he had an odd accent, which at the time I put down to his being “Scottish or something” based on his name MacDiarmid. It wasn’t until years later, when his Nobel Prize was announced, that I discovered that not only was he a New Zealander, but he was born in Masterton, where I now live.
I had the pleasure of meeting him on his visit “home” and told him that I had sat in the 4th or 5th row of the lecture hall in Penn’s Chemistry building way back in 1982. He was amazed at our connection and wondered at the odds of meeting a former student in little ol’ Masterton.
Also in the news this week is Drew Faust, just appointed as the President of Harvard University. Dr. Faust taught American Civilizations at Penn; I was in her 1993 class of AmCiv 7: The American South. It was one of my favorite classes at Penn… one I looked forward to every Tues/Thursday. She is a brilliant lecturer and very enthusiastic about her chosen subject of study. I wish her much success in this new endeavour.

I’m watching the leadup to the 2008 US Presidential election and am keeping my eye on Barack Obama. I was impressed with his speech during the 2004 convention. It will be interesting to see how well he does.

Flickr announced a few days ago that all remaining “old skool” members must begin using Yahoo IDs to login starting March 15th. What a kerfuffle that caused.

Bobbie Johnson over at the Guardian (UK) pretty much sums up my feelings about the whole thing.

Flickr stalwarts aggrieved at Yahoo merger
By Bobbie Johnson / Internet 01:45pm

No, that’s not a headline from two years ago when Flickr – the popular photosharing website – was bought by Yahoo. It’s the result of a teacup-sized tornado that was caused when the minority of Flickr’s users who have not yet streamlined with a Yahoo account were told that they must do so in the next month.