This page is a collection of things that have captured my fancy in one way or another but that don't have much to do with the main thrust of the site ...

Here is something completely different: a diary of alligator, manatee, and other sightings in our local park.

Here is a plot of prime interest rates over the last 45 years, with annotations of who was in the White House plotted along the time line; it was created as part of a recent effort to shed some light on the Savings&Loan bailout debacle.

Incidentally, if you're interested in the processing used to produce this gnuplot graph, drop me an email.

Here is some information about the typical small graphical elements used on these pages, which were created using Gimp, the GNU Graphic Image Manipulation Program.

• If your browser can render simple animations, have a close look at the company name at the top of this page; it's done with a small, fast loading image file.

• The big red "Hi, Mom!" below is an example of an image made by running some plain text through a GIMP script and then adjusting the color and brightness. Once you've got a basic style set up, it's fairly easy to produce whole batches of these in varying fonts, sizes, and colors.