Kathleen and Lawrence Charters

U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial at Night

Officially, the Memorial at the edge of Arlington National Cemetery is the United States Marine Corps War Memorial. Virtually everyone on the planet, however, refers to it as the Iwo Jima Memorial. Cast in bronze and dedicated in November 1954, the Memorial depicts the rising of the Stars and Stripes over Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945, during the Battle of Iwo Jima, by five…

Colorado gets a boost from Google Photos

Google Photos has recently been greatly revamped, offering “unlimited” storage of photos in “high quality,” or up to 15 GB if you upload original photos. “High quality” is pretty darn high, so I experimented by dumping a bunch (several thousand) photos into my account. But that, as with many things Google does, isn’t all. Google also has an “assistant” that does things like automatically creating…

Tesla sells electric cars. These are not hybrids, with both a gas and an electric engine, but a pure, electric engine car. Traditionally, electric cars were limited to commercial operations in and around warehouses and other short-distance operations, or in locations where the exhaust of a gasoline or diesel engine could harm or kill people. A few people purchased electric cars for short-haul…

Alan Turing’s Birthday

Thanks to the movie The Imitation Game, Alan Turing (June 23, 1912-June 7, 1954) is probably better known today than any time in history. A mathematician trained at King’s College, Cambridge, England, he was fascinated with the concept of formal proofs in mathematics, and formulated the concept of hypothetical devices that could solve any computational tasks. These hypothetical devices are now…

University of Maryland Women’s Basketball and 2015 NCAA Tournament

The University of Maryland women’s basketball team are seeded #1 in their region, and began the 2015 NCAA tournament with a game against New Mexico State University at Xfinity Center in College Park, Maryland. It is unclear why Comcast decided to rename Comcast Center as Xfinity Center; we know who you are, we know you are opposed to Net Neutrality, bills that make sense, reasonable charges,…

Sights on the way to Washington, DC

Traveling to the nation’s capital from distant Silver Spring, Maryland, was a journey through a single timezone and a distance measured in subway stops. Along the way there were many wonders, such as this Transformer attempting to sneak toward the capital disguised as, ah, a Transformer? Transformers may have originated in Japan, but this one seems to have mastered at least a few letters of the…

It is early in the school year and you’ve reluctantly concluded that the thousands of dollars you spent on clothing, fees, supplies, and whatnot failed to cover every expense. Reluctantly, you drag yourself to Costco and get: A computer? Nope, got that. A tablet? Nope, got that. A smartphone? Nope, got that. Still more clothes, since the kids seem to have grown two inches in a month? Nope. What…

Joshua Bell at Union Station

Joshua Bell returned to Washington, DC, to attempt another concert in a train station. Since it was during lunch hour, and in a train station, why not take a train to see one of the greatest violinists in the world? It was more successful than his first attempt. Photos and commentary on Joshua Bell at Union Station Joshua Bell, in a medium blue shirt under the center pillar in the distance.

For the first time, the National Book Festival was held inside the air-conditioned confines of the Washington Convention Center. In recent years, the Festival was held on the National Mall, at the height of summer, in various hot and humid pavilions. The National Park Service thought that these and other events were causing too much damage to the Mall, and have asked event organizers to pick…

Codes, cyphers, and the National Cryptologic Museum

Located at the edge of Fort Meade, Maryland, in an old, nondescript motel, is the National Cryptologic Museum. Admission is free, and with that admission you can explore how the worlds of communications, mathematics, and security intersect in cryptology. Photos from the National Cryptologic Museum Hebern Electric Code machine, built around 1918, was one of the first U.S. developed modern coding…

These photos of the Washington National Mall were taken on June 16, 2014, on a very hot day.  Photos include the Jefferson Memorial, White House, Vietnam Women’s Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, World War II Memorial, and the United States Holocaust Memorial. My grandfather died during the Japanese invasion of Wake Island…

National Aquarium in Baltimore

Perched at the end of two piers in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, the National Aquarium opened in 1981 as part of the city’s massive downtown redevelopment. At one time, the National Aquarium in Baltimore was associated with the older National Aquarium in Washington, DC (established in 1873), but the Washington aquarium closed in 2013 during a major renovation project to the Herbert C. Hoover…

Fort McHenry, Baltimore, Maryland

Fort McHenry celebrates the 200th anniversary of the defense of Baltimore in 2014. This defense, immortalized in a poem that evolved into the national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, saved the most important seaport in the United States at the time, and helped the nation recover from the embarrassment of the burning of Washington, DC. Photos of Fort McHenry, Baltimore Maryland Posing atop the…

Gettysburg National Battlefield Park

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is a lovely small town surrounded by farms. The area is awash in green, rolling hills, and is almost stereotypically serene and peaceful. This was not the case during July 1-3, when two massive armies collided in and around the town in the costliest battle in U.S. history. The Confederate retreat on July 4, combined with the surrender of Vicksburg to Major General…

Historic Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

Founded as a town in Virginia, Harpers Ferry endured fluctuating economic conditions, Civil War, and floods that carried away the apostrophe in the town’s name but still left a spectacular natural and man-made landscape. Closeup of a stone wall at Harpers Ferry. Much of the original construction is unmortared, with stones fitted in based on size and shape. This photo makes a great high-security…

WordPress via their iOS App

Works quite well. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wordpress/id335703880