The Birds...

When Alfred Hitchcock made his famous film, he could have come to Austin in the autumn for the sound effects. The noise these migrating black things make is incredible. There are quite a lot here but last year we saw carpet layers of them in one of the mall parking lots one evening, coating cars and trucks as well as the ground. It was amazing and rather scary, maybe because of their obvious powers of psychic communication...  ¶ posted by alice at 9:46 AM  4 comments

  cloudy sunset drama

More stormy weather- not long after I took this, it started raining, and as (nearly) always when it rains here, that means the full Texan lightning, thunder etc, for a good long while. This picture has a bit of sunset in it too as you can see, and also if you are near the shoe store there (in the Hancock shopping center) has a really good sale on all their shoes right now.  ¶ posted by alice at 2:10 PM  1 comments

  Cannon

In the December of 1842, Sam Houston ordered the archives moved from Austin. Angelina Eberly discovered this, and shot a cannon into the General Land Office Building, alerting the town. The people of Austin fought with the officials, and because of this woman firing the cannon, Austin is still the capital today. And this statue has been placed in Angelina Eberly's honor, which we managed to get a picture of as we wandered around the downtown area.  ¶ posted by The Strange Little Geek Girl at 3:12 PM  2 comments

  sky over the school buses

Here is another in what is turning out to be a series of sky pictures the last few days, due to the rainy weather- a stormy sky over the yard where they park the school buses. It did rain a few minutes after I took this one, for about fifteen minutes, and afterwards the air was very warm and very humid.  ¶ posted by alice at 4:36 PM  3 comments

  big sky, big weather

Being a complete amateur, I love accidental photographic effects, like when something gets in the picture you weren't expecting and so on. Here, the top of the car windscreen the picture was taken through is a yellow shade for sun protection, which adds to the already impressive cloud colours. As for the dramatic skyscape, it's the sort of scene where you expect a big face with a long white beard to appear any moment and start talking to you in a booming voice, don't you think?  ¶ posted by alice at 7:09 PM  5 comments

  rainbow

I do love a good rainbow... this was in the sky over a road. We've had a couple of rainstorms the last few days, which is always a fairly unusual event, and a rainbow in the Texas sky is especially beautiful because we have such a huge, empty, often bright-blue sky. Here we got fluffy white clouds as the rain was going and the bright blue was on its way back. To remember the colours of the rainbow in order at school, I was told to remember the name of "the famous pop singer, Roy G. Biv" (which stands for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). As you can see, it worked in my case. Wikipedia suggests the alternative "Ring Out Your Granny's Boots In Vinegar"- but apparently a lot of people don't bother with indigo at all any more! Amazing.  ¶ posted by alice at 8:45 PM  6 comments

  very Texan impressive doorway

Here we have a very fancy chrome and glass doorway to the Guaranty bank on Congress. Impressive, yes? You can see how big it is from the size of the little tiny people reflected at the bottom. These big impressive bank buildings make Lilliputians of us all. There is probably a moral in that, so please feel free to make it up if you are so inclined.  ¶ posted by alice at 10:56 PM  2 comments

  a downtown scene

Arrgghh... this is what happens when you have three people who are all supposed to be running a blog and obviously need better communication skills... no photo yesterday. Happily, the other Daily Photo blogs manage to get it together better than we do.

This is a city scene and and it shows you what it is like to walk or drive around in downtown Austin. It is nice to post fascinating scenes but the reality is usually more mundane, which I think is lovely too :)

And now I am going on a trip round some other Daily Photo blogs. As a global citizen (trendy new phrase, but nice anyway) I really love roaming around the world via pictures, and getting to chat to people on the way as well, and only wish I had more time to do this every day. Later on I'll come back and link you to some of my favourite pictures in an update.

And here is the update!

Beijing Daily Photo has some lovely shots, I don't seem to have been there fore a while as my favourites are scrolling down a little way. Interesting brief summary of what wushu is (we saw Jet Li's Fearless recently, and I hadn't heard that term before).

Another Alice, this one in Brittany, France, has a lovely fishing boats and houses scene today.

Shanghai Daily Photo has a completely gorgeous sunset photo, I think it is absolutely beautiful (and Jing's comments are always so lovely too).

I'm interested in Jewish history, so enjoyed seeing this sobering but beautiful picture from Kris in Hungary.  ¶ posted by alice at 10:35 AM  3 comments

  Coca-cola truck

There's a lot of glass in this photo... I will explain. Last week, Si and I went on a big downtown Daily Photo collecing mission, and we paused for victuals at Schlotzky's cafe. While Si enjoyed a pizza I snapped away through the window onto the street. So (taken through the window, which is why the street looks watery) you can see our cafe-building reflected in the windows of the building opposite. You can also see some of Si and my belongings at the bottom there, for luck. But the star of the picture is of course the Coca-cola truck. It's so... red!  ¶ posted by alice at 4:40 PM  4 comments

  downtown tacos

One of the things I love about the downtown area of Austin is that half of it seems to look like a bomb site. I do not know the explanation for this, but it almost certainly is not bombs. The other half (to be fair more like 85%) of the downtown area of Austin looks like a cross between London, Dallas and Geneva (in my humble opinion): buildings from the last century mixed up with modern shiny extravaganzas. Behind this taco van you can see one of the latter. As with all great cities, the main thing is the contrasts.  ¶ posted by alice at 12:34 PM  5 comments

  Starbucks window

I doubt this is unique to Starbucks (didn't check). Outside the windows of their downtown store these door-knob type things decorate the marble window ledge that might otherwise have provided a sitting place. Whether they were trying to deter any particular kind of person or wildlife I do not know, but having people leaning against big sheets of glass is perhaps not the best idea, so I can see the point. Sort of.  ¶ posted by alice at 2:30 PM  0 comments

  Sunset over Central Market car park

Central Market is our favourite grocery store and it is truly fabulous. We wandered over there the other night for gelatos and there was a lovely sunset when we came out. Apparently Italian ice-cream is less fat-orific than the American kind, although we were more there for the flavours than the health implications: strawberry, creme caramel and chocolate chocolate chip for me, and Shadrach had tiramisu, Irish coffee and "something else coffee-ish".  ¶ posted by alice at 10:34 PM  2 comments

  Marching band in the sun

This is the marching band of James Bowie High School, which was rehearsing one weekend near our local farmers' market. I hope they don't mind that I snapped them, but we had to stop and listen and watch for a bit, and they were fantastic.

It is difficult to explain to foreigners (like myself) what the whole American high school marching band phenomenon is all about, but basically there are at least a hundred people here (maybe two hundred?)learning their notes and their steps through endless repetitions. While we were there they were performing the same eight-seconds of their routine over and over until every single person was in just the right place at the right time playing the right note (or in the case of the dancers, carrying the right flag). When a band like this comes onto the field before a football game the effect is very powerful and inspiring for their team and the supporters. And they are all volunteer teenagers. Awesome.  ¶ posted by alice at 7:50 PM  6 comments