This is so incredible. There is no way I’d have believed anyone who said the S&P 500 would endure a nearly 200-point trading range today. To put in perspective, this chart (where I used the new Windows 7 “snip” feature — why do they still not allow typing?) shows today’s massive drop as compared to each of all the days of the year. We erased months of gains in only about 30 minutes, before an astounding rebound without which would have made today one of the most memorable stock market crashes in history. As it was, that 30-minute period was perhaps the most dramatic in all of stock market history.

Click picture for larger version. Sorry for the crappy mouse-penmanship.

I have added a new photo category, called appropriately enough: Autumn.

Dozens more from this October here.

Well, the summer sunset season has come to a photogenic close.  Click here to see them all from the last few months, all here in Marshall, MI.

A few pix from my wanderings around town while there for Lollapalooza.  Click here for the full gallery, also click here for the Lollapalooza pix, and I’ll soon be adding many of these to the Chicago section in the photos menu above.

Click here for the entire collection.

… or so it has felt this week here in Central Michigan.

Here we have Lollapalooza:  I had the live music phenomenon of my life a couple weeks ago in Chicago, at this very amazing festival.  The city and Perry Farrell did an extraordinary job; a fantastic weekend.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jane’s Addiction,  Ben Folds,  Snoop Dog,  Other Lives,  Fleet Foxes,  Cold War Kids,  Thievery Corporation,  Manchester Orchestra,  The Decemberists,  Andrew Bird,  Of Montreal,  and Santigold!

A few of the many bands I heard for the first time, over only three days.

For me, it was Jane’s Addiction that really catapulted what was an already-astounding festival into something truly rare.  Perry Farrell (creator of the festival back in 1991 as the Jane’s farewell tour), showed tens of thousands of stunned spectators how true performance art is delivered, as he resurrected their famous music with fresh authenticity — and utilizing all the band’s original members!  This powerhouse of rock gods, whose work has spawned countless other “projects” like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Porno For Pyros, featured near magic with the likes of David Navarro and the others.  At one point, a helicopter circled low over the huge audience, lit oddly to resemble a true unidentified object, as it shined intense, ultra-focused spot beams down into the crowd.  This and so many other nuances made the 90-minute show one of the more significant events I’ll probably see.

A great summer for sunset photos here in central Michigan.  The “sunset season” began with these photos, and here are some more.

Excessive indeed.  Like 7,607 excessive.  But, done nonetheless.

If you were to ask me how I spent this lovely Michigan summer Sunday afternoon, I would reply, “eating and programming.”

I did something I’ve wanted to do for years, which is build an RSS script for my photo database on this site.  As of today, there are 7,607 trivial, ridiculous, unnecessary, and embarrassing photos on this web server, less than 10% of which have actually been discussed in this blog and featured in the Photos menu above. The rest are simply… excessive.

But, they are there all the same, placed slightly out of the way so as to not draw too much attention to themselves.  They are available with a little poking around, but not paraded out on display in the prominent links above.

In looking at the server logs, though, it is apparent that some people seek them out on occasion, to see what drivel has been uploaded in recent days.

Actually, they serve more as a depository for family photo albums, and are usually shared just among close friends.  But regardless, it was silly there was no RSS feed (what is RSS?) for the constant stream of photos that eventually find their way home to this little site.

So today, partly to satisfy my once-every-six-months programming urge, I happily went about the task to design the feed that pulls from my hack database an RSS-compatible xml page that should be accessible by most blog reading programs. I’ll unabashedly admit I’m proud of the small achievement.

You will find this feed on the RSS page (linked from the blog menu above).  Note that this new feed does not in any way replace the content already available in the Photos and Travels feed category.  It merely sends out updates of literally every single photo gallery that is uploaded to this site, whether it is compelling enough to blog about or not.  And there are quite a number of them.

So, this should satisfy a couple of you, and even if it doesn’t, it satisfies me.  So there.

Cheers.