Jahled

Hahahahahaha Utterly hilarious Eagle! What is that from? I wrapped it up in tags though dude, cause 790kb is a bit large. I don't want to come across a pedantic on the image size thingy, but I've watched it happen elsewhere, where every other post has a meg within it, quickly crippling and subsequently killing threads, and thus visits to websites.. As a rule of thumb virtually all of mine are within 200kb. I know you said you found it, but it doesn't hurt to right click the properties and check the file size! Part of me is feeling a bit daft though, given I can hardly type though given I am still laughing from seeing it! I can feel I might try and do something with that..

I may have missed something here, Rob, but 'to broad a subject?' From a professor? Is the guy insane? Rather than you researching something that is truly dead in the past, he dissuades you from investigating some the most exciting stuff in the history of humanity, that may I hasten to add, is ongoing, and uncovering incredible breakthroughs seemingly by the week! If putting a human being in space wasn't ground breaking enough, putting one on our moon several times was more incredible still. Because of the space race our mobile phones work the world over, we have instantaneous communications, a greater understanding of vast areas of physics, are taking photographs of planets orbiting other stars, and increasingly seeing so far into the distance of the universe, it will not be long before we'll capture the initial moments of it's creation. And you chooses Alaska?

Unless they were repeats Tex, you rarely have some years on you! My 'childhood' had two phases that stand out way before anything else. First (and ongoing) was Star Wars; from many happy hours playing with Hasbro bendy figures by myself lost in imagination (only child), and SW comics. And when I gave up throwing bendy Stormtroopers around my bedroom, along came Dungeons & Dragons, which I embraced with complete zeal. aged ten or so. Even when not actually playing a game I was the child who would watch TV armed with a pencil scribbling away some character stuff, creating a new monster, drawing a dungeon map, etc. It dominated the latter part of my childhood.

Hahahahahahahahaha WTF!! That doesn't even looked shopped!

Hahahahahahahahahaha I actually have a degree of sympathy of 'it' Yo

Grand! It works! http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/9805/1188676314/monkeywars.gif

Both of those are ace Tofu! Some tasty shopping there! I give you: http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/9805/1188916081/moreharrypottershite.jpg I also give you: http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/9805/1188673517/bun.jpg I think I must have wanted a banana when I made these..

Luke first tried bargaining with Jabba, 'a straight swap' he presumed.. http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/9805/1188944774/Lukebargins.jpg Alas, this early plan was doomed from the onset, given how pissed he was.. http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/9805/1188939548/lukeale.jpg Ben, virtually gave up from the onset.. http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/9805/1188917304/lukesbanana.jpg

Given up on the military dude? Sure, look me up if you're in London, i'll show you around; where I work for starters.

A banana you have? http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/9805/1188669845/Yodey.jpg Eagle: London Zoo is an off-shoot of the Zoological Society of London, which has been around since 1826. I work in the library of the Society which holds around 200,000 books and journals since it's founding. So I spend a lot of my time helping the society's scientists obtain research material from this collection. The other half of my time is spent in Photoshop repairing photographs so we can sell them and raise money for our conservation projects. Bit of a cool job really! Most of the zoo-keepers who look after the animals have MA's after their names these days; ie: highly educated and into research, as opposed to simply tossing gibbons the odd banana!

*Glees* Enjoy dude, and carefully

We're insured to the hilt E, and there are two buttons to press simultaneously that alert the Police in an emergency; never far away from when I have the time to post gibberish here! But I just wish my rather scatty boss had explained to me quite the value of some of the stuff i'm handling! It's sort of unnerving to suddenly realize i've been in a lift with more value than my house, fetching stuff from from the strong room for the academics and scientists who use this stuff for research! I was completely blown away earlier today. No more pics on this front in future chaps, the paranoia has just set in!

I think the value of our collection is dawning on me... and there is no way on earth I was going to photograph anything 'as evidence,' or even link the abebook site as to what i'm referring to, but I had half a million pounds worth of books on my desk this afternoon. ~$1,000,000. In four volumes. Yes, four volumes. That's four books. Four books. (ok, they were rather large) Two, volumes one and two, each were listed as £200,000 on that book website, an Italian book for £64,000, and the other brought up the remainder. After being gobsmacked, it actually began to dawn on me the financial status of what i'm working with. Obviously our collection is priceless to science as a collection, but I had no idea of the financial implication of what I was a custodian of. It's almost frightening! La_Forge needs to give me a crash course in being a Ninja!

Greedo shooting first brings certain things to life. Han was not a scoundrel who only cared for himself, his wookie, and his ship. He was a lucky son of a gun. The chances of Greedo missing Han at that range are ridiculous. Greedo shooting first is pretty much a death sentence to Han. However, by some ridiculous miracle, Greedo misses, and Han returns fire. The Han Solo from ANH was a low life, and for him to fire first (in such a sneaky way) is perfectly acceptable given his character. Greedo shooting first just undermines Han. I just don't see what Lucas saw. What kind of image came to him in his twisted dreams that made him do something so...pointless. I mean, I can see the added Wampa scenes, and the added Jabba scene in ANH, and even the ridiculous musical number in Jabba's Palace in RoJ. Those are things that he changed to (in his mind) make the movie appear...fresher for a new audience. But having Greedo shoot accomplishes nothing but soil the great character who is Captain Han Solo. Hang on a sec, even in the original, original, I mean original version of A New Hope, Han says 'Over my dead body,' to which Greedo replies, 'that's the idea!' So Han shoots first to preserve his life and kills him. What is the problem? That's a perfectly reasonable excuse to kill someone with a gun pointed at your chest, or am I missing some extreme-liberal agenda whereby you actually have to allow yourself to be killed before you can react?

Heh.. stick with those studies Tofu and I can assure your adult life will be sooo much more interesting. I did it the hard way, leaving school with not much to show and wasting my time in the transport industry doing this and that during the nineties, all of which got me nowhere other than being bored out of my brain. It's taken me until my thirties to discover my calling in life, namely conservation and a genuine realization I really give a damn about wildlife, for me to at last feel content and mellow after a day's work, given such efforts, besides balancing biscuit tins on books valued at $50K, actually have some effect in preserving the beauty we have left, be it simply helping scientists locate research material, or Photoshop images back into a state of repair. Keep that brain active fella, study hard, and when you'll be my age, life should have every chance of being a thoroughly interesting breeze. That and the coffee will be served to you..

Cool Rob, it's nothing but a pleasure to work with books that have quite frankly shaped modern history. The bonus our the finds i've been coming across, i've posted here for you guys! That book by Roosevelt, the one by Napoleon's brother, and the one the one on Japanese Fishes that would have completely passed me by unless I noticed it's date, 1852, and it's subject reference, Commodore Perry, where upon my knowledge of military history kicked in. Holding a book in your hand writen by a member of Commodore Perry's expedition to wake up Japan is incredible when you consider what happened next. Fifty years later Japan was industrialized enough to sink and entire Russian fleet in 1904, and in another fourty years attack Pearl Harbour and rouse a sleeping giant.. ..and to think the guy was drawing the fish he was seeing, with detailed accounts as this history was taking place! You're not wrong Rob! I'm seriously glad I went for this job as opposed to the governmet chauffeur service one I was juggling with. I had two scientists who work in the institute of zoology actually ask me to take their pictures with that first edition Origin of the Species, when I asked them if they would like to see it; one of whome said she would be sending the picture to her mother in New Zealand. No probs I replied.

Surfing adult stuff I suspect K, we are dealing with a fiendish, rapscallion squirrel here! http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/9805/1188315448/flop.gif http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/9805/1188218455/mysteriousducks.gif You can observe here something went a bit wrong with this duckling's development. Note how mother-duck tried to teach it the ways of the Force! ..but how she failed! FAIL!

To be fair, it was rebound many decades ago, and is in good condition. It's a myth you need white gloves to handle books from the nineteenth century for example unless you are handling colour plates or their condition really has taken a turn a turn for the worse. The printing press was well established by the time that book was published, to the extent that most books published prior to the introduction of the paper back were/are far more durable than their modern paperback relations. Our strong room has two machines on constantly to protect these marvelous old books, a dehumidifier and of course something to keep the place nice and cool. So that book has a lovely home, when i'm not balancing biscuit tins on it. I actually had no idea of it's financial value when I took that, it was only I asked my colleague how much a first edition was worth, and we investigated online, did our respective jaws drop. Ok, we appreciated it's value to science, but for that to be reflected financially for a book so recent was a revelation! To quote AbeBooks though: "First Edition of the single most important biological book ever published." I can't tell you how much respect that little book was afforded by me afterwards.. If it was a cat it would have purred when I carried it back to it's shelf.

I had forgotten that one!! It still holds, I guess! Quite so! My! I love votes of confidence! Say in other news, today I went to the Zoological Society's Strongroom today to fetch a certain First Edition book: Click for bigger (103KB) We were curious how much it goes for on the market place: http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/ListingDetails?bi=830758309 Yes, you read that right, £25,000!!! I had a biscuit tin lent on it to keep it open!!!

I had forgotten that one!! It still holds, I guess!

Hahahahahahahaahah Some of those are unbelievable! The best desrves a shrine in it's homage, it's four or five down, couldn't possibly comment here!

I have never understood any of the Han/Greedo controversy, ever. This makes me quite happy.

I read this a couple of days ago, but failed to note they were going to release the thing into the void! What was said above, why? It's of much more value to us lot on earth as something to cherish as movie memorabilia, surely? For a lot of us the original saga is etched in our hearts by now, despite our age differences. Just to burn up in orbit? What a waste.

Happy Birthday Thrawn!

Have some squirrels: http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/9805/1188238711/nawtrysqwirrel.gif http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/9805/1188305262/slowly.gif