Our Dear Sweet Winnie, 1999-2009, originally uploaded by andycarvin.

This morning, we had to put Winston, our dear sweet orange tabby, to sleep.

Not long after we adopted him at the age of two, they told us he had an enlarged heart and would probably never make it to five years old. That was eight years ago.

We came very close to losing Winnie a year ago and knew we were on borrowed time, so the last year has truly been a blessing. That doesn't make it any easier, though; when we woke up this morning we thought it was going to be just another day. But at it turned out, it wasn't.

This picture was taken about three weeks ago. It was the very last picture we took of him at home. It really captures how sweet and loving a kitty he was. We'll always remember him like this.

Right now we are simply devastated, but know we've been blessed to have him a part of our family for the last eight years. He was, and will forever remain, a member of our family. He was one of our boys.

Goodbye Winnie; we love you.

Dizzy and Winnie, Best Buddies, originally uploaded by andycarvin.

It took us eight years to get a really good dual portrait of the cats, but we finally got it.

Shriner on a Segway, originally uploaded by andycarvin.

The Shriners were in full force at the 2009 Alexandria St. Patrick's Day Parade today. Some of them were in little cars, but I wasn't expecting to see any of them to be riding a Segway. If the Dead Kennedys ever get back together, they'll have to use this one for an album cover. :-)

And yeah, I know it's not St. Patrick's Day yet. I think they do the parade the first Saturday in March. -andy

I was hoping to take a Gigapan panorama photo of the Inauguration but unfortunately my credentials weren't good enough to set up a tripod. Fortunately, photographer David Bergman had the right credentials, and took this extraordinary photo:

The entire photo is nearly 1.5 gigapixels in size. Be sure to zoom in closer and closer to experience the full effect. Learn more about how David took it on his blog or check out the full screen version on the Gigapan website.

Congratulations on getting the photo, David. I'd really hoped to do it myself so I'm glad at least one other Gigapanner got to do it. -andy

As Israel's ground troops enter Gaza after more than a week of bombardment, it's worth spending a moment getting a sense of the geographic scale of the region, particular for those of us in the US who aren't used to the scale of smaller countries.

First, here's a map of Gaza and Israel. Gaza is in the bottom left corner of the map, surrounded by the small red border, and Jerusalem is near the top right. The larger red border on the right side represents the demarcation between Israel and the West Bank. The image was taken in Google Earth at an altitude of 125.19 kilometers.

Next, let's look at the DC-Baltimore area at the same scale. DC is near the center of the map, while Baltimore is near the top right of the picture.

Last, we've got the greater New York City area, also taken at the exact same scale of the Gaza and DC maps. Manhattan is in the center left, while the western end of Long Island dominates the rest of the image.

I took this 370-megabyte panorama photo of my backyard today using the Gigapan robotic camera mount. Click the picture to keep zooming closer and closer to see the full resolution.

Gigapan photo (360 megapixels, give or take) of my backyard, taken straight upwards, among some of the 20 trees on our property. Taken just before a storm came in and removed the vast majority of leaves that were still remaining on the trees. Zoom in by clicking on the picture and try to identify each tree by its leaves.

Here's a high-res panorama photo (250 megapixels) I took of the Newseum's 9-11 Memorial. Because the panorama is taken as a series of dozens of photos that later get stitched together, it causes an eerie effect, with people moving around within the photograph. Click the picture and zoom in - you can actually read the headlines on the newspapers in the background.

I just streamed a live 15-minute tour of NPR's election studio with NPR election producer Tom Bullock. Here's an archive of the video in case you missed it:

It's Sean!, originally uploaded by andycarvin.

Yeah, it's a bit out of focus, but it's a real cute pic of him nonetheless. -andy

Mixed Messages from Starbucks, originally uploaded by andycarvin.

While having coffee at a Starbucks with a couple of NPR colleagues today, one of them noticed that the cardboard jacket holding our cups was from Seattle's Best. We swear we didn't stage this.

I'm sure there's a lesson in it, particularly in the midst of the financial meltdown, but I'm not sure what it is. What do you think? -andy

Sean, Susanne and Andy, originally uploaded by andycarvin.

Our son Sean David Carvin was born today at 1:40pm. He weight 7 lbs, 8 oz and stretched an even 20 inches. Susanne and Sean are both doing great, though she'll have to be in the hospital for a few days to recover from the c-section. Tomorrow, we'll bring in Kayleigh to meet her new baby brother. -andy

Atlas Moth, originally uploaded by andycarvin.

The Atlas moth (Attacus atlas) is one of the largest moths in the world. This one, which I photographed at the Brookside Gardens Butterfly Pavilion in Wheaton, Maryland, has a wingspan of approximately 10 inches. Each wing was just a little larger than my entire hand.



This was as close as I could get to the moth without disturbing it. If my hand had been adjacent to it, each wing would have been a little bit larger than my hand. It's the largest type of moth in the world.

I was hoping to get through August without interrupting my self-imposed summer blogging siesta, but circumstances have changed. As you probably know by now, Hurricane Gustav is en route to the Gulf Coast, and thinks are looking pretty bad right now. Given all the work we did organizing online information in the hours after Hurricane Katrina struck three years ago, I figured it would be much more productive if we could get organized at least a couple of days before Hurricane Gustav came ashore.

Right now, I'm juggling a number of activities, and could use your help in both promoting and volunteering with content production.

For coordinating online volunteer efforts, I've set up a social network called the Gustav Information Center. I'm hoping it'll work like Katrina Aftermath, with aggregations of content generated by the public, news orgs and govt agencies, but the social networking tools will allow us to use it as a place to coordinate volunteer activities - who's working on what project, etc.

We're also setting up a wiki called GustavWiki.com, built off the wiki we organized for Katrina. Essentially, we've taken all of the pages from the Katrina wiki and moved them to the new one, so the first thing we need volunteers for is going through each page and making sure all the info contained is accurate and relevant to Gustav. Please go to the wiki to-do list discussion on Ning if you want to volunteer as a page editor. If you want to edit a page someone else is working on, contact them through the wiki or Ning so you can coordinate directly with each other. Once the pages are verified, we can then concentrate on building new pages from scratch.

On Twitter, we have several new accounts running. GustavAlerts is already sending out official government notifications from a number of sources. GustavNews will feature news content, while GustavBlogs will feature blog discussions. They're still being tweaked, though, so it may be a few hours before those two Twitter accounts are useful.

I'll post updates as I can, but most of my activities will be in the Gustav Information Center, so please join the conversation there. -andy

NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday conducted an interview with Arianna Huffington and Matt Stoller at the Personal Democracy Forum conference earlier today, and I tagged along to shoot a live mobile stream of it. Here's the archive of the interview:

My notes from Arianna Huffington's talk at the Personal Democracy Forum. -ac