The word "pixel" was first published in 1965 by Frederic C. Billingsley of JPL(Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California), to describe the picture elements of video images from space probes to the Moon and Mars. However, Billingsley did not coin the term himself. Instead, he got the word "pixel" from Keith E. McFarland, at the Link Division of General Precision in Palo Alto, who did not know where the word originated. McFarland said simply it was "in use at the time" (circa 1963). The word is a portmanteau of picture and element, via pix. The word pix appeared in Variety magazine headlines in 1932, as an abbreviation for the word pictures, in reference to movies. By 1938, "pix" was being used in reference to still pictures by photojournalists. The concept of a "picture element" dates to the earliest days of television, for example as "Bildpunkt" (the German word for pixel, literally 'picture point') in the 1888 German patent of Paul Nipkow. According to various etymologies, the earliest publication of the term picture element itself was in Wireless World magazine in 1927, though it had been used earlier in various U.S. patents filed as early as 1911. Some authors explain pixel as picture cell, as early as 1972. In graphics and in image and video processing, pel is often used instead of pixel. For example, IBM used it in their Technical Reference for the original PC. Pixilation, spelled with a second i, is an unrelated filmmaking technique that dates to the beginnings of cinema, in which live actors are posed frame by frame and photographed to create stop-motion animation. An archaic British word meaning "possession by spirits (pixies)," the term has been used to describe the animation process since the early 1950s; various animators, including Norman McLaren and Grant Munro, are credited with popularizing it. A pixel is generally thought of as the smallest single component of a digital image. However, the definition is highly context-sensitive. For example, there can be "printed pixels" in a page, or pixels carried by electronic signals, or represented by digital values, or pixels on a display device, or pixels in a digital camera (photosensor elements). This list is not exhaustive, and depending on context, there are several terms that are synonymous in particular contexts, such as pel, sample, byte, bit, dot, spot, etc. A megapixel (MP) is a million pixels; the term is used not only for the number of pixels in an image, but also to express the number of image sensor elements of digital cameras or the number of display elements of digital displays. For example, a camera that makes a 2048×1536 pixel image (3,145,728 finished image pixels) typically uses a few extra rows and columns of sensor elements and is commonly said to have "3.2 megapixels" or "3.4 megapixels", depending on whether the number reported is the "effective" or the "total" pixel count. Remember when we thought that was a totally awesome camera? Cell phones have better cameras now!! So, for TM and Bobbie: For Cynthia and Annette: Thanks for playing - see you all next week!! Nancy.

Toni: The plant in the second photo is Euphorbia bupleurifolia x susannae. I was lucky to find it at my local greenhouse in town. An interesting little plant, indeed. Christopher

Hurlee, I sure hope the sun comes out here in Okie. I need to do the same things, and the grass needs mowed and paths need trimmed. Everything is too wet now. All my plants are lush and heavy with water, so they are bowed way down - on the verge of snapping off. I have shrubs to prune back and reshape...what a mess! I need a little sunshine, myself. I am feeling a mite soggy too. Your description in your other post sounds absolutely delicious! Hope to see some pics of all that lusciousness! I love the one you posted in Memo's topic on Lilies. ~Annie

INHERITED WEALTH usually has more color that that. But not this year. It is just too hot and no rain for weeks and weeks. I don't remember it rolling back that much last year either. You just can't go by the color this year. Look at the picture of FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS. It is a dark purple daylily. Not as dark as RICH IN MERCY but certainly not anywhere near a light purple daylily. In fact before this oven baking heat spell it was bloomings its normal color. Not now. A visit to Melanie Masons sounds like great fun. She does grow many of the Culver intros there but not anywhere near all of them. I get my Culvers from Melanie in the early spring as I put in my orders for hers and Bryans then she gets them at the Can-Am and brings them back. Then she ships from her place upstate. Works great, I have gotten them like that afew times now.