We're pleased to announce the availability of the Netflix API. The team has been hard at work on this and we're glad we can finally let people see what we've built. The Netflix API allows access to data for over 100,000 movie and TV episode titles on DVD as well Netflix account access on a member's behalf. The Netflix API gives developers the ability to create new and novel applications using Netflix data for Netflix members or movie fans in general. This API is free to developers and commercial uses are allowed.

Why are we doing this? Because we have limited resources and we can only work on so many items at once. We hope that by opening up our APIs we will enable the creative desires of other developers to make a variety of wonderful applications. We expect to see different movie finding approaches, queue management tools, mobile phone applications, social network applications, the integration of Netflix information and capabilities into a variety of other applications, and more. And that, in the end, will further delight our members and other movie watchers in their quest to find and watch movies they'll love. For more detailed information, see Michael Hart's API blog post on the new Netflix API Developer Portal. You can always reach the developer portal by clicking on the "Developers" link in the footer of any Netflix page or by going directly to http://developer.netflix.com.

The economy may be in the toilet right now but if you're a fan of the Wendy's Frosty there's a little sunshine headed your way.With Halloween just around the corner, Wendy's has once again begun selling coupon books for 10 FREE (as in market) Junior Frosties.All you have to do is 'donate' a dollar to Dave Thomas' adoption charity to get the book.I suppose you could hand out the 10 coupons to

I've noticed lately that as they age, the one really noticeable place people gain weight is in the face. Even athletes, whose job it is to stay in impeccable shape. Just look at Tony Perez's Super Veterans card in 1983 Topps; he almost looks like two different people.

I bring this up because the more I look back through all these cards of Fred McGriff, the more it appears that he didn't gain face weight. Can that be right? His helmet looked comically oversized even late into his career (whereas someone like Tony Gwynn filled out under his helmet).

It's always shocking when you see an old retired athlete (take Larry Bird for example), because usually the first thing you think of is Hey, he really let himself go. And yet, take a look at this photo from a dinner in 2007. McGriff doesn't look like Rickey Henderson, but he also doesn't look like he stopped working out occasionally.

Anyway, I didn't really want to talk about face fat. I wanted to talk about good old National Packtime. Take a look at the lineup of this little set from 1995:

Alex Rodriguez
Barry Bonds
Cal Ripken
Ken Griffey Jr.
Tony Gwynn
Frank Thomas
Mike Piazza
Will Clark
Juan Gonzalez
Jeff Bagwell
Kenny Lofton
Fred McGriff
Deion Sanders
Matt Williams
Jose Canseco
Bob Hamelin
Tim Salmon
Raul Mondesi

You know, for all the future Hall of Famers and on-the-cusp guys in the set, the guy I was most excited by was Raul Mondesi. (You want to read something interesting? Read Mondesi's wikipedia page.) I still feel like Mondesi could, if he wanted to, get back into playing shape and make an impact on a team like Pittsburgh or Seattle. And I bet that with a few rigorous workouts, that face fat will leather itself taut. (Scroll down to the bottom of this page to see what Mondesi looks like now.)

You know, I want to be excited by this. It looks like they even got Marvin from Pulp Fiction. You know, the guy they accidently shoot and have to call Harvey Keitel to mop up the blood. Well, I don't see a credit for Back on Topps on his imdb.com page, but that really looks like him.

I also like the reference to the "cocaine out of a bread truck," though if we remember back to last year, I believe it was a Mr. Softee truck out in Jamaica, Queens, where the driver was selling cocaine on the side. (His trick? Double-cupping the sundaes. Ingenious.)

So yeah, I want to get excited. But you know what would really get me jazzed on this series--and yes, I just said 'jazzed', which hopefully came across in a completely non-sexual way, though now that I've taken the energy to explain probably does come across as sexual--?

I think you know...

That's right: a re-occurring character who either appears in a dream sequence or within the wacky corporate world of Topps HQ who also happens to be on a mini Allen & Ginter card (or 1975 Topps Mini). Or is Lil' Kwame Brown.

This character would best be played by a real-life athlete, with his character name simply his real name with 'Baby' or 'Lil'' in front of it. Like "Baby Rafael Furcal" or "Lil' Dmitri". Actually, that last one's not bad. Get Dmitri Young on the phone to play the Topps egghead archivist (who expounds on his love of gem mint cards and also happens to be trapped on a mini A & G card).

An illustration I made for an exhibition in the city of Leuven. Take a closer look on Flickr.

Hornworm


Corn earworm, maybe?


Genista

I've been seeing loads of mature mantids lately, mostly at the arboretum, but a few around my house, too. I don't know why I keep taking pictures of them. Sometimes even I feel like if I've seen one, I've seen them all. But all to soon they will be gone, so I still say "hello" to every one I see, and take their picture if I have a chance.


Here's a male S. Californica that came to my porch light.




This Iris oratoria nymph is well camoflauged. This species predominates at the arboretum right now, and the next few pictures are all Iris.














Also at the arboretum, S. limbata (I think) male and female encounter one another. They spent at least a couple hours checking each other out. By the next morning, the female had retreated under a leaf, but the male was still nearby. 2 days later, the male was still hanging around, but I couldn't see the female. I'm wondering if she was still there and I just couldn't see her, otherwise why would he still be there?


A pair of S. Californica mating in a clump of grass. The 2 males in the picture below were on a structure nearby, probably wishing it were them.





Meanwhile, back at my house, this fellow was not so lucky. I mean, he still got lucky, but lost his head in the process.

So often when I approach a mantid up close, it will turn its head and look right at me. Such was the case this time as well, and she gave me such a look, I had to caption it.

I get my fair share of camera-shy bugs. Today was no exception. Usually I try to get nice full-body shots, or maybe a good close-up. But often, they see me coming, leaning closer with my camera, and they will scoot behind the nearest leaf or stem. I decided to go ahead and post these photos of bugs trying to hide from me.







When will they learn, you just can't hide from the Buglady.

Buck up, all you lowly Mets fans lurking out there, tonight's the first night of the off-season. And you know what that means: it's time to fire up the old hot stove. Last year you guys found the marble in the oatmeal and got to drink from the fire hose (ie, kept Johan Santana away from the Yankees and Red Sox), and next year you'll get your new stadium. So thinks aren't all that bad, right?

I mean, in 50 years who will remember how your team choked down the stretch not just once, but two years in a row? And I think it's safe to say that history will forget how Carlos Beltran took a called third strike to knock the Mets out of the playoffs that other year, right?

Lederhosen Lucil - You Suck
Koufax - Roll the Dice


NEW to The Baseball Card Blog: MP3 files to sum up the mood. Links to MP3 files will be active for a limited time and MP3's are meant for review purposes only. I encourage you to support these artists and purchase their music.

Predators abound on the milkweed plant.


Voracious ladybug larvae





This guy* is a size bigger now. He can eat more aphids.



Momma lacewing knew exactly what she was doing when she planted her egg-stalks on this leaf.



Underneath the leaf, aphids are unaware of the trouble to come.


* I don't know if it's really a "guy" I just use the male gender by default.

Looking for quality, independent writing about baseball cards and card collecting? You're in the right place. I felt it was time for a layout revamp. This template's a little ugly, but it gets the job done. Three columns should work, and yes, I'll be adding more links over the next few days. If there's something you'd like me to add, let me know. I'm currently figuring out how to get the old header image in there. That one may take a few days.

I hardly ever see these butterflies standing still. But this one kept pausing for a just few seconds, laying eggs.


See?

Little baby stinkbugs, I think.


Huddling together,


but they must soon go their own separate ways.





Last one out is a rotten egg!

I've been having trouble managing my photos. Part of the problem is I have too many photos. Another part of the problem is that I have a hard time concentrationg for long enough to get things cropped, organized and uploaded. I have been going back and forth between Nikon software, Picasa, Photoshop and Flickr. It's just hard for me to figure out what I want to do, and which of the above listed products I want to use. My husband and my kids can sit for long hours in front of their computers. I just can't sit and look at all this stuff for more than 15 minutes or so at a time. And when I get up and go do something else for a while, it makes it harder to just pick up where I left off. Oh well.

Hi everyone. This is just a quick status update regarding the "Authentication Required" message that is appearing when you load the page. Please simply click "cancel" and continue to visit. I'm consulting some tech friends to figure out how to solve this.

If it hadn't been for Pear Tree Cottage, we might have had a very disappointing couple of days in Queenstown. The time we spent wandering around town was time spent being irritated by people whose sole reason for being in town was to be seen. Queenstown has morphed into something that seems spectacularly un-Kiwi. It wasn't like this when we first visited three years ago, but it is now the New

Audio

M.I.A. – Paper Planes – XL
TV On The Radio – Golden Age – 4AD
aXXo – Silvah Bullett – Killtone
Marlon Asher – Ganja Farmer (remix) – War
Claro Intelecto – Harsh reality – Modern Love
Unknown – Injustice – Hate
Alla – Una dia otra noche – Crammed Discs
Karen the Lonely Drifter – Passengers of the night – Crammed Discs
Annie Bandez & Paul Wallfisch – I still haven’t found what I’m looking for – Durtro Jnana
Deadbeat with Tikiman – Babylon correction – Wagon Repair
King Cannibal – Badman near dark – Combat combat
Grievous Angel – 1985 style – Elektrik Dragon
Dennis Wilson – Mexico – Epic Legacy
Solomon and Socalled feat Michael Alpert - alt.shul Kale Bazetsn - Rough Guide
Orhan Haklamaz - Ham Cokelek - Rough Guide
Sara Lowes - I Wish - Red Deer Club
Lettie - What you get - Outerworld Records
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Come Saturday - Fortuna Pop
Mercury Rev - Senses on Fire - V2
The Reveries - I Let my Mind Wander - Rat-Drifting
Barnyard Drama - I'm a Navvy - Barnyard Records
Mysterious Mr O Pubahs DJ Mix

Back in 2003, the popular rumor in Boston was that the Red Sox, White Sox, and Rangers were going to put together a three-team trade that would send Manny Ramirez to Texas, Nomar Garciaparra to Chicago, and Magglio Ordonez and Alex Rodriguez to Boston. Nobody knows for sure what would've happened had that trade gone through, but for a minute or two there I could see A-Rod and Ordonez in Sox uniforms.

There have been other players whom I thought would end up on the Sox one way or another (Todd Helton is at the top of that list), but one guy I never saw on the Red Sox was Fred McGriff. Maybe it's because I was raised on the Lou Gorman-led Sox ("What would we do with Willie McGee?"), but the Sox already had Mo Vaughn at first. What would we have done with Fred McGriff?

My grandfather grew up in a small town in South Dakota. His sisters were the switchboard operators for the town, and his father the postman and local semi-pro baseball team manager. He likes to tell the story of how, towards the end of one season, his father lured a star pitcher away from a rival team. And then, instead of pitching him in the big games that followed, kept him on the bench. When asked why he would do that, my grandfather laughs and says that his dad had the luxury of not using the star pitcher--as long as he wasn't pitching for the other team.

And when the A-Rod and Ordonez trades fell through, what did the Yankees do? Did they say "Why do we need A-Rod when we already have Derek Jeter?"

This is one of those little things that we with the Lou Gorman mindset never figure out: having Mo Vaughn at first and Fred McGriff, be it at DH or lounging on the bench, perhaps could've pushed the Sox closer to the pennant. Instead we defensively scoff at even considering the possibility.

This afternoon I sat by the side of the road, waiting for the crosstown bus. I sat there for what seemed like forever, but was probably no longer than 20 minutes. I finally got so impatient that I crouched next to the bus stop sign, counting the seconds between a car appearing around the bend and it passing me. I also got to thinking... If I can't hardly wait 20 minutes for the bus, what's it like to wait six years from the time you retire to when you first become eligible for the Hall of Fame?

What's it like, the anticipation? Part of me thinks 'waiting for the bus' is a good analogy here. Sometimes it's on time, sometimes you have to wait a little longer, and sometimes it never comes at all.

A lot can happen in six years. Whole lives can change (but there's the Hall of Fame ballot announcement date, circled with permanent marker on the calendar in the back of your mind). For some guys, it's a given that the Hall will call (hey, that rhymes). Guys like Rickey Henderson, Greg Maddux, Craig Biggio--these guys don't have to worry.

But is too much emphasis placed on being an inductee in the first year of eligibility? It took Duke Snider eleven years of voting to make the Hall of Fame (first appeared in 1970, inducted in 1980), Joe Cronin ten years (1947-1956), Don Drysdale ten years (1975-1984), and Bob Lemon 13 years (1964-1976). And those players are just four examples. There are plenty of others.

It's guys like Jim Rice, David Concepcion, and Dale Murphy who get their hopes up, only to have them crushed year after year. And I guess I'll probably have to add Fred McGriff's name to that list in a few years. McGriff becomes eligible next year (for 2010 enshrinement), and while I'll be pulling for him, these days 493 career home runs don't seem to be enough to hang your legacy on.

I let Michael borrow my camera last weekend when he went on a desert field trip for school. He brought me back a picture of some grasshoppers I've never seen before. I looked through 100 pages of BugGuide grasshoppers before deciding to call it a night. (they have over 200 pages of grasshoppers!) I'll update with an ID when I get one.

From Fred McGriff's entry on wikipedia.org:

"In 2000, the production company Rocco's Jobbers produced a pilot for a television series based loosely on McGriff and the "Crime Dog" nickname. The concept of the series revolved around a professional baseball player who moonlighted as a crime-fighting vigilante named "The Crime Dog". The project was a major creative and financial disaster, failing to get picked up by any networks. It is believed that McGriff himself has the only surviving copy of the pilot episode, which was given to him by his friend and former teammate, David Wells. On casting sheets used to promote the project, the comedy-action series was described as "Major League meets Blade", referencing two successful movie franchises. Kirk Jones, who played the titular character in Blade: The Series in 2005, was cast as The Crime Dog in the pilot.

McGriff has appeared in commercials for Tom Emanski Baseball Training videos on ESPN since 1991, which are still aired to this day on the network (one of television's longest running commercials ever). Because of the frequency and longevity of the Emanski commercials, ESPN analyst Kenny Mayne coined a second, less used nickname for McGriff, "Baseball Superstar", as he was referenced in the commercials as "Baseball Superstar Fred McGriff."

That's a lot to digest, but one thing's for certain: my admiration of the man just grew ten-fold. Like every other sports fan trawling late-night ESPN for west coast scores, I was aware of the Emanski commercials where McGriff walks stiffly across the diamond while juvenile automatons field an endless series of soul-crushing grounders.

I was not, however, aware of the failed pilot. I need to see that show. Should I make it my goal to a) get McGriff to acknowledge the existence of The Baseball Card Blog and b) get him to send me a copy of the tape?

Um, yes. Definitely.

Contrary to what Donruss would want you to believe, Fred McGriff never won an MVP award. Did he ever deserve one? No, probably not.

But so what? Teams need players like McGriff to be successful. In a similar vein, someone recently said that teams wouldn't win with a whole roster of Dustin Pedroias. Why not? The guy has over 200 hits, 100 runs, he hits for average, he's a good fielder... what's not to like? Is it because he's short? Scrappy? Prematurely bald? Is it because he does that weird thing with his mouth and eyes before every swing? The same could be said for Fred McGriff. Could a team win with a roster of Fred McGriffs? Who wouldn't want a bunch of guys consistently smacking 35 homers, driving in runs and hitting for average?

Though until recently Pedroia had been putting together an MVP-like season, guys like Pedroia and McGriff aren't really MVP-caliber players. They're complementary guys. They're guys who make a lineup formidable. And though they're not a given lineup's heavy hitter, they're guys pitchers don't want to face in any situation.

They're like Thursday night. It's not quite Friday, but you're almost there.

Two of David Attenborough's career highlights, as mentioned in this Mirror article, are his visit to Komodo back in the 50s and his famous encounter with the Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda for his Life on Earth series.

We went to Indonesia in 1957 to find the Komodo dragon, which had never been filmed.

Today you can get to Komodo overnight, but it took us three months.
[...]
I had no intention of getting close to the gorillas. I was crawling along preparing to turn round then suddenly this thing appeared and put his hand on the top of my head and put his finger in my mouth. Then two baby gorillas came up and took off my shoes.

A lot of it wasn't filmed. The director told me afterwards he thought: "God, the gorilla's going to tear his head off... and we're only half way through the series."

Chris Garrity from the Netflix communications team here to announce the Netflix Movie Watching World Championship. Starting October 2nd, Netflix will host eight competitors from around the globe in New York's Times Square in an attempt to break the existing world record for continuous movie watching. The 8 competitors include the current record holder, Ashish Sharma of Mathura, India. Mr. Sharma will be on hand to defend his record of 120 hours and 23 minutes. Netflix has also given the public a chance to participate in the contest by submitting video auditions at the Netflix Movie Watching World Championship page on Facebook. For more information on the event, become a fan of the facebook group and receive up-to-date information on the competition including contestant videos. Enjoy the enclosed promotional videos for the event.

Here's a short video of a Komodo Dragon baby hatching from a parthenogenetic egg at the Sedgwick County Zoo from earlier this year.

Whenever I find the time I love to go 2D, as a break from my usual 3D stuff.

More at Sevensheaven.nl

(AKA: Pluchea odorata)

These plants are sporting a nice variety of insect life right now.


This little caterpillar has covered itself with little bits of dried flowers to help it blend in with its surroundings. According to my research, it is Synchlora, the adult of which is a small green geometrid moth.


A tiny California firefly. Sadly, this variety does not glow.



There are lots of little pollinators. If you look closely, you can see this one is being watched by a hungry mantis.



There he is.


There are assassins about, too. This one looks like it has been finding plenty to eat.