Kansas City Zoo Slideshow

I took tour of the Kansas City zoo recently and took a bunch of photos, here are some of those photos edited below into a slideshow for your viewing pleasure. All Images are property of Ed Tajchman ©2008, all rights reserved.

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Julio Castillo Should be Banned For Life

What happened in a minor league class A baseball game between affiliates of the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs on Thursday really sickens me. Midwest League president George Spelius better think long and hard about what he wants to do about what happened, if he wants to keep his job.

During a first inning brawl/melee, Peoria pitcher Julio Castillo launched a ball at an opposing player and ended up hitting a fan who was hospitalized. This player’s major league baseball career is over before it even began. He should never play again, I have never seen anything has disgusting as this in all my years of being a sports fan.

This makes the Ron Artest incident with the Pacers a few years ago (where he climbed into the stands  during a game)  look like a peace rally. Castillo hurled a fastball upwards of 100mph, it ended up hitting and hospitalizing a fan. You can see him launch it with full knowledge of what he was doing, with a deadly calm force and intention; it is very obvious. Seriously man I am not just trying to stir controversy, this is just horrible. A 100mph fastball is a deadly weapon. He should be charged with attempted murder.

Note to the fan who got hit and the fan’s family, call a lawyer and get Castillo and the midwest league for everything they are worth. Well Castillo is probably not worth much, considering he’ll never play baseball again. Or at least he shouldn’t anways, how disgusting and horrible. Makes me sick. Prosecute the man, sue him, and ban him for life. PERIOD.

Two Paintings; One Older, One Brand New

Today I’m showing you two pieces, one a few years old but never published until now, and a brand new painting. Let me tell you about the first piece; about two years ago I started a project where I was painting lots of very large acrylic paintings on unstretched canvas. Just now I am coming back to some of these (about 20 total, all of them larger than 30 x 40″); and finishing them, photographing them, etc., (and someday stretching them).

This one I actually worked on over various periods for 4 or 5 years, (sometimes I’m slow like that). It’s  34 x 50″ in size and done in oil and acrylic paint on canvas (I know you’re not supposed to mix oil and acrylic but it’s okay they don’t overlap much). I really like the feel of the piece, and the white that I left upainted I think helps make for a good composition, I also like the rough but sometimes refined edges in it.

Rhythmic Color by Ed Tajchman, oil and acrylic on canvas, 50 x 34" (© '08 all rights reserved)

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The second piece I’m going to share in this post is a much smaller piece, and it’s brand new. It’s called Blue #3 (it’s third in a series of monochromatic blue watercolor paintings). The first two in the series are much larger, (22 x 28″) this one is only 8.5 x 11″, but I really like it. It will be matted and framed and available for sale sometime in the future. Feel free to tell me what you think about either piece.

Blue Number Three, Ed Tajchman, 11 x 8.5", watercolor, © '08 all rights reserved.

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Budweiser is now a Foreign Beer

Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser) accepted a $52 billion offer from Belgium based InBev this week. That’s awesome; I love Belgium beer, well and also Guinness, German Beer, and many other fine imported beer. That’s also awesome because I have always hated that old nationalistic outcry against foreign beer, (let’s be real Europeans have been brewing beer 3 or 4 times longer than we have been a country). That lame old redneck cry of ‘drink Bud not that foreign crap’ can no longer ring true! Ha ha ,  all you foreign-beer hating Americans, your precious Bud is now a foreign beer! In your faces. Of course my favorite beer Is brewed right here in the States though; Rogue Beer from Oregon. I’m not saying our American beer isn’t good, I’m just saying that I never appreciated that old kind of overly-nationalistic attitude.

Ghost Hunters International Season Premier Review: Larnach Castle

Okay I was mildly impressed with the second season premier of Ghost Hunters International, (Wed.’s on Sci-Fi) the spin-off from Ghost Hunters  (the TAPS team – The Atlantic Paranormal Society). I thought they did a much better job of being professional than they did last season, I mean at least no one was running around screaming or performing  other antics that Barry, Brian, and Donna pulled last season. The best part was the return of an original TAPS trained member – Dustin!

Good ol’ Dustin,… He brings a lot to the table, his down to earth and scientific approach is a refreshing change. You can see him irk some of the other members with his hardcore evidence review, but that’s good, his TAPS training really shows. Professionalism is what propelled the original Ghost Hunters to it’s current status, I mean have you ever seen Jason or Grant (founders of TAPS) running around scared, or claiming to be mediums? NO! And so I’m glad that Ghost Hunters International is making an obvious effort to be more professional and scientific in their investigations.

I liked Dustin investigating with Donna, they make a good pair, Dustin toning down Donna’s fears and emotions. Robb and Andy were always pretty good. Brian especially I thought was much more focused and down to earth than he was last season. Barry I don’t think I will ever really dig as a paranormal investigator, he was one of the main instigators of the -’let’s run around and act stupid’ debacles repeated episode to episode from last season. Dustin though was a vast improvement over last season’s investigator Shannon.

Now to the evidence they supposedly caught: they supposedly caught a ghostly face in a photo that Barry took, but I really couldn’t see it, maybe firsthand you can see it better. They also caught some evidence that the castle representative  told them happens, the rattling of plates in the kitchen. When they focused a camera solely on the plates they did indeed capture footage of the plates moving, with no one around. And even when they jumped right next to the plates they couldn’t get them to rattle. Now that’s definitely something to consider. You can also hear other  items in the kitchen making noise, but there is no other camera except the one on the plates.

Like I said, GH original is popular in my opinion because of the extreme professionalism of Jay and Grant, so all around I was much more impressed with GHI than last season. They went out of their way to debunk certain events that were supposedly happening and told the representative of the castle that. I always enjoy seeing their faces when a lot of the ‘evidence’ they supposedly have been experienced gets debunked with natural causes. It’s smart for GHI to get back to that TAPS formula. After all that’s what separates Ghost Hunters, and now GHI from other much more lame ghost shows on channels like the travel channel. So my rating of this episode (out of 10) = 8.5.

OH NO! I Got Virtumonde!

Okay I am writing this post to tell everyone who might need to know, about how I got rid of a virus in my computer. It’s called ‘Virtumonde’, (different spy-ware programs might call it different things). And even though I used programs like Spybot S&D-Resident and Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware to remove a lot of the virus, other ones keep popping up, they have to be related to Virtumonde. (Note: all the programs listed in this article are free, some offer paid upgrades, but the basic service is free.)

So even though I deleted it, (virtumonde.dll) it has other viruses now named other things popping up and still being found. This is so frustrating. I tried VundoFix and VirtumundoBegone, but like I said; most of it is gone, so what about this new problem of leftover friends of the virus? What seemed to work for me is re-running Anti-Malware and Spybot and rebooting, and after no infections were found I used this program called CCleaner, to erase and clean the memory and registry of my computer. So now, not only is my computer (seemingly) Virtumonde (and friends) free, it’s a little faster too.

So basically what worked for me is – download Spybot and Anti-Malware, (links above). Update them and then run them and they will remove 90% of the problem. Keep running the two programs and rebooting your computer (should only be neccesary a couple of times).  Then run CCleaner and you should be good to go. If you need a good anti-virus real-time protection program, download Avira AntiVir Personal.

Those programs mentioned above, together, should completely remove the virus and all of it’s friends. Oh but wait; one more tip – even if you’re computer is completely virus free, make a restore point on a regular basis. This makes it so much easier to clean your computer when you do get infected.

Digital Doodle: “line-face”

I am not big into doing digital art, (I’m a die hard, detail by-hand-oriented abstract painter) but this was an interesting digital doodle that I did one day. I rather like it; it’s called line-face. It’s just a quick sketch in a sepia tone, comments are welcome! Of course digital imaging gives us infinite amazing images, but I like the idea of digital brushes as simple sketching tools. 21st century doodling if you will. I have a question for you readers; does anyone use a graphic tablet drawing pad for their pc that they really like? and Who makes it? Anyways, here you go:

©2008 Ed T, all rights reserved

Wimbledon Doesn’t Like the Williams Sisters?

Is anyone else watching the Wimbledon’s women’s semi-final match between Dementieva and Venus Williams? Every time Dementieva does anything right, gets a point, etc. the crowd cheers wildly. Also, even if just one of Williams’ shots goes out of bounds they cheer wildly. Meanwhile anytime Venus gets a point the crowd falls into a quick hush with quiet disappointment being heard. It gets quiet like a funeral happened, like it’s the worst thing they’ve ever seen.

What blatant disrespect, WOW! Wimbledon I lost some respect for you and English tennis in general. You should be ashamed of yourselves. This goes far beyond backing one opponent over another, there is no sportsmanship here from the Wimbledon crowd. There’s not even a spark of “well, we don’t want her to win but good match.” Not even a shred of that kind off attitude. Just a stark contrast between the crowd’s reaction to everything that Dementieva does and everything Williams does.

This is obvious if you are watching the match, no ifs ands or buts about it. So if you want to comment, make sure you were or are watching the match. Because if you are there is no getting around the blatant almost racism of Wimbledon fans. (If you didn’t watch the match and want to comment don’t bother I’ll just delete it.) I just sat for ten minutes again to watch to make sure and…. YUP… blatant disrespect. No denying it. English tennis fans you can go to bloody hell.