Friday, February 28, 2025

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

The first mass tank attack

The above video covers the first mass tank attack during the battle of Cambrai in WWI. It focuses on one tank, named Deborah, that was involved in the attack and met its end on the field of battle. I suppose you could call it the first combined arms operation. However, like the first of anything it didn't work as well as hoped; there were coordination and technical issues that caused the attack to fall short of its goals.

 

Sunday, February 23, 2025

Street food vendors

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These are paintings of carts, stalls and trucks that serve food from the side of streets. Hotdog carts, taco trucks, and all manner of small enterprises that serve treats and meals.  

As an aside, my son, Ambi Jr., at one point in his varied career decided he was going to operate a food truck. He bought a truck and spent some time adding all of the facilities inside it. He opened it and a week later the covid lockdowns started. Needless to say, that put a dent in his business. However, all was not lost, he kept working his regular job and his partner survived the lockdown on take-out business from the truck. 

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Priorities

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Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

   

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Chairs and sitting

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Aside from the times we turn them into tables by randomly piling objects on them, chairs are made for sitting. And sit in them we do. These are paintings of occupied chairs as well as empty ones. So, as you sit in your chair in front of your computer, or relax in a chair with your phone, scroll through and enjoy the pictures.

Friday, February 14, 2025

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Casting a centrifugal pump body

Once again, we head to the sub-continent to visit an industry. This time a foundry casting a pump body. As usual, safety standards seem to be lacking. The two guys wearing sandals as they carry a cauldron of molten metal across a debris littered floor is particularly harrowing.     

 

Sunday, February 09, 2025

Jacques Carabain

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Jacques François Joseph Carabain (1834-1933) was a Dutch/Belgian painter known for his paintings of street scenes. However, while many of his paintings featured markets it was the architecture and not the people were the focus of his paintings. He stopped painting 26 years before his death. Because of that, and because of some motifs repeated in many of his works, I suspect he painted mainly for commercial purposes.

Jacques Carabain

Friday, February 07, 2025

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

Transiting the Panama Canal

A couple on a circumnavigation pass through the Panama Canal on their catamaran to get to the Pacific Ocean. Aboard they have their parents and a few hired locals to help handle the lines. They also have a pilot to help them navigate the canal. It is an interesting up-close look, from the deck of a small boat, of the passage through the locks and waterways of the canal.

 

Sunday, February 02, 2025

Farming

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These paintings focus not on bucolic images of farms, but rather on the farmers who work the farm. There were very few images of current farmers, I guess they are out of favor in the modern art world, so we see farmers laboring in older times.