cyclotram: etc

Showing posts with label etc. Show all posts

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Sunday, November 15, 2009

If a.) you read this blog on a recurring basis (unlikely) and b.) you pay attention to the man behind the curtain (more unlikely), you might notice that the green profile box on the right has changed. The big deal is that I finally dumped the annoying old "atul666" nym, after mulling it over for quite a while. I recently realized I could just change the display nym, without having to figure out how to switch Blogger accounts or anything ugly like that. So it's done, and something similar has been done on the Flickr side of the house too. Its replacement is a bit, well, generic, and at some point I may tweak it again to make it more distinctive, just in case someone ever needs to refer to me by name.

The profile image has changed too. The new photo is of a Cyclotram, a fictional but very swoopy mole machine from the 1951 SF movie "Unknown World" (and this humble blog's namesake, obviously). I've wanted to use it here in some capacity, and since I was tweaking my profile anyway, I figured I'd just make it my new profile image. Although it comes out smaller than I'd prefer this way. And now there isn't a splash of yellow-orange in the upper right corner like there was with Evil Bendy.

Another item on my TODO list has been to move with the times and update this blog to a New Blogger template. I've held off so far because I've tweaked my current template rather extensively and don't want to lose my precious, precious changes. So what I just decided to do was create a shiny new New Blogger blog and tweak it to look as much like this humble blog as I can. Once I'm happy with the result, I'll do the upgrade on the "real" blog here and use the template from the test blog. So you probably aren't interested in looking at the test blog, and I don't intend for it to ever be very interesting, but it lives over at "cyclotram beta" in case anyone's curious.

A second experiment has a more uncertain future. I've long thought that the chronological view of things that Blogger gives you isn't the most useful format sometimes. In my case, it would often be more helpful to have posts displayed on a map instead. I've attempted to create just such a map via Google Maps, known simply as the cyclotram map, but it's still not quite what I have in mind. Maintaining it is a pain, and I still haven't added all my old posts to it yet. And, more importantly, it's all backwards. By which I mean, it's a map with points plotted on it, most of which target posts here. When what I'd really like is to have the posts themselves geotagged individually, and then be able to generate a map based on that geotag data. Blogger In Draft has a geotag feature that doesn't quite work yet, and maybe an auto-generated map will be doable once they've got the geotag thing sorted out. In the meantime, enjoy the tedious gruntwork version of the map for this blog. And if you don't see an entry for somewhere that you know I've covered already, I can only say that I'll get to it later, maybe, if I feel like it at some point. I mean, I guess you could always mail me and complain and see if that helps, but I'll probably just think it's weird if someone does that.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The Revenge of "Next Blog"...

Way back in the mists of time, Google/Blogger used to do a thing where, when someone arrived at this humble blog via the "Next Blog" button (see the very top of this page, toward the left side), you'd get a chunk of referrer info so you could see where the visitor was at just before they came here. So over time you end up with an appealingly random list of other blogs out there, things you'd probably never run across otherwise. After a while, something changed either with Blogger or possibly with Sitemeter, and the Next Blog hits eventually dried up.

So just a couple of days ago the trickle of Next Blog visitors started up again. I'll probably never know why, or why it stopped earlier for that matter. But I do have a nice new list of referrers to pass along. So without further ado, and for good or ill, here's the list so far:

Updated: Actually it turns out here's the reason. They decided to make "Next Blog" nonrandom, supposedly, although the list here seems fairly random to me. They argue the change was needed because "your randomly chosen next blog could have been focused on sports, and written in Tagalog", as if that was a bad thing. I thought the whole idea was to pull you out of your comfy corner of the interwebs and show you something completely different. I dunno. Maybe I just appreciate randomness more than most people do. In any case, here's the list:

Monday, September 17, 2007

still technically summer

...although you wouldn't know it by looking outside. Autumn is fine and all, don't get me wrong, I just wish it hadn't started back in early August. Well, that can't be helped now, so we might as well make the best of the new season. Which means another round of that September-November mainstay, photos of Leaves Changing Color and subsequently Fallen Leaves. If you find a good example of either and take a halfway-decent photo, people will read all sorts of things into it, like they do with flowers budding out. I'm not sure whether this is because the subject matter is inherently deep, or because it strikes a chord in the human psyche, or simply because it's cheating somehow. I'm inclined toward the latter explanation, because a.) I'm a cynic, and b.) it's just too easy for it to be transcendent, or deep, or meaningful. You just point the camera at the leaf and press the little button, and poof. Anyone who says there's anything more complicated going on is trying to sell you something.

Every year about this time I find myself feeling oddly energized and restless, as if I ought to be out frantically gathering acorns, or chopping firewood, or filling the cellar with hearty root vegetables. Mmmm.... potatoes.... tater tots.... But I digress.

It's possible this humble blog will metamorphose again in the near future, as it tends to do every so often when I get to feeling restless. I have this nagging feeling I've been too carefree and frivolous for the past, oh, I'm not sure quite how long it's been, but the last few months have been pretty heavy with the flowers and waterfalls and so forth, and I feel as though I'm creating the wrong impression. In my heart of hearts, I know this is quite the serious, intellectual blog I've got here, but I admit that fact has rarely been in evidence of late. So we'll have to see. I may try another Logical Week of Monomedia, seven consecutive posts with no photos, videos or whatnot; the previous one wasn't entirely successful, so it looks like a challenge. I like a challenge, now and then, but I've never been very good at living within arbitrary restrictions, even self-imposed ones.

However, the semi-promised metamorphosis isn't happening just yet. Energized or not, I'm still too lazy to take up that particular challenge at the moment. This is the point in this post where I search around for filler material, since I have more photos than I have paragraphs. And this time I really don't have very many photos, by recent standards. So to stretch the material a little, why don't we call it a paragraph and move on to the next? How about it?

Ok, here's that next paragraph I promised you, and I have high hopes for it. The above & below photos are of leaves gnawed by... something. They aren't precisely Leaves Changing Color, much less Fallen Leaves, but I thought they had a certain appeal about them, and here they are. Well, that's about it for this paragraph, and I really think it turned out well, all things considered. So I think we can call it a day after a few brief closing remarks or something.

... hmm... Safari locked up on me while finishing the last paragraph, and I had to kill -9 it, and now I've lost my train of thought, and I no longer have any idea whatsoever about what kind of closing remarks I had in mind earlier. So I think I'll end this like a art French film, since I'm trying to elevate the tone of this humble blog and all:

FIN

Friday, May 25, 2007

This post NOT titled "Photo Friday"...

I didn't feel like going for a hike today, or doing a lot of research, or coming up with intelligent opinions about the issues of the day, or anything difficult like that, because it's a 3-day weekend. Expending any more effort than absolutely necessary would be unpatriotic. Everyone knows that. So instead, here are a few more photos from the archives.

Top two photos are from Skidmore Fountain, at 1st & Ankeny downtown, in the middle of where Saturday Market runs on the weekend. Yes, I realize you knew that already, but I get a lot of out-of-town visitors here, and I like to give 'em a helping hand. They might decide to come and visit and spend tourist dollars (or euros) or something. So let's try to create a positive impression, shall we?

You in the back, stop picking your nose. Yes, you. You didn't realize this thing is two-way, did you? Serves you right.

Some pink flowers from last month. It's been long enough that I've totally forgotten what they are or where they're from, but I thought I'd share the photos anyway. Enjoy.

A seagull in Lincoln City. You can't really tell from this photo, but it's perched on a ledge 10 stories above the ocean. Although I suppose that's less of a concern if you have wings, which I don't.

And a shark from the aquarium in Newport. Photographing fish in low light is harder than I thought. Everything comes out green, or not at all. This is one of the few that I thought turned out ok. FWIW.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

misc. assortedness

The first two photos (above) are new, and the next two are old. Hmm. I'm not sure I detect a lot of improvement over the last year. I guess there's always next year, unless I get sick of flower photos by then.

And now for something completely different. I haven't done one of these assorted-stuff-from-the-interwebs posts for a while, and there may be a good reason for that. But it escapes me at the moment, so here's a new one. I'm kind of out of practice with these, though, so if it's something less than a broad spectrum of uniformly fascinating items, well... At least it didn't cost you anything, other than those few seconds of your life that you spent here that you'll never get back. Sorry about that.

Flickr's page full of all public photos tagged 'echidna'. It's like Cute Overload, except really spiny.

Somewhat less spiny, and more colorful: crocheted echidnas. Kewl.

And from the real Cute Overload, yet another cute kitten. Awwwwww....

Meanwhile, the koalas are in trouble.

The Galapagos Islands are in trouble too, including the tortoises.

Thatch, Portland's shiny new 60's-retro Tiki bar, is now open for business. The piece doesn't mention it, but I'm told they've got a bunch of doodads salvaged from the late, semi-lamented Jasmine Tree, the place I wrote about a while back.

Like many of you, I've never seriously considered owning an octopus. If you're still on the fence, here's another reason it might not be a bright idea.

The Bad Astronomer asks the age-old question: "Do phone psychics know it’s you before you call them?"

Some mildly funky cloud images from Venus Express.

Portlanders: Karl Rove is lying about us. Yes, I'm shocked too.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Jesus Sighting in Albany

My wife found this in the Albany police blotter a couple of weeks ago:

Jesus sighting -
Police responded at about 2:45 p.m. Tuesday to a report of a man dressed like a sheik or Jesus throwing things off the Santiam Highway overpass.

According to a police dispatch report, an officer contacted the man, who was wearing a "Jesus outfit" and holding a sign that said "Jesus saves". He told the officer that he had occasionally waved at cars on the freeway, which might have been mistaken for throwing things.

So now when we're driving along the freeway and see someone on an overpass, one of us is bound to exclaim "Look, it's a sheik or Jesus!"

I guess you'd probably have to be there.

The same paper also had an item from the Corvallis fire department. Old electric blanket overheats and sets mattress on fire in sorority house. Sorority sisters scream and cower in fear, until a team of hunky firefighters shows up and saves the day. And then out of nowhere a funky bass line starts playing, and there's a few lines of bad dialogue, and then everyone gets naked, and... wait, I'm not so sure about the last part. That might've been from a movie or something.

Oh, and remember that dream Disney wedding I mentioned the other day? The one that was going to have wall-to-wall coverage on Entertainment Tonight? (Not E!, as it turns out; I got the two confused, I can't imagine how that happened). The one a certain relative of mine was attending? So far as I know the happy day proceeded as planned, but tragically it didn't make the tabloid shows. Preempted by Anna Nicole. Hell, on Thursday it was preempted by Anna Nicole and a piece about a really gross 1000 lb. man. I guess that'll be a fun story to tell the grandkids.

In any case, this week I spent more time watching celebrity tabloid news than I have in decades, probably. I don't think I'm exaggerating there. If only I knew who half of those people were, I might've gotten more out of the experience. As it is, it's just five hours out of my life that I'm not going to get back. Someone owes me much beer.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Reason #687 why anonymity is a Good Thing

I would never admit to this if I used my real name here. If you've been paying attention, and I hope you haven't been, on Valentine's Day there's going to be this sickly-sweet "fantasy wedding" at Cinderella's castle at Disney World, involving a local couple from the Portland area. They won the all-expenses-paid 50 guest bash in a bridal magazine essay contest. A close relative of mine is a friend of the happy couple, and will be attending the joyous event. Among other things, this will involve the musical stylings of Michael Bolton (not the one from Office Space), and posing for the ever-roving E! network cameras. I gather it's pretty much going to be part wedding, part mini-reality show. And said close relative is quite excited about the whole thing. I mean, a wedding, and free tickets to Disney World too. Could it get any better than that?

Eeewwww. Cringe. Shudder. Gag. Anonymity means people who know me in RL can't connect the dots and make fun of me in person. And they would, too, simply for sharing some DNA with someone who voluntarily danced to Michael Bolton. Anonymity also means that if this relative (who I do like, except for the occasional lapse in good taste and judgment) runs across it, he or she won't know it's me, or at least won't be able to prove it. I mean, hurting people's feelings isn't the point of this, not at all. I'm just saying I wouldn't have gotten married at Disney World for any reason, for any amount of money. And if I'd so much as suggested it, my wife would've immediately called the whole thing off, and she would've been right to.

Oh, and while I'm reveling in being anonymous, another close relative has a small Measure 37 claim in the works. I think this particular claim has a certain amount of merit, but if I said so and signed my name to it, I'd have pitchfork-wielding Pearlies and bike fascists and such showing up at my door waving torches and demanding blood. And I'm really not up for that, quite honestly.

Monday, January 29, 2007

surly mondayism and assorted crabbage

Ok, see if you can tell whether I'm in a bad mood or not. You have 20 guesses.

Candid photo of our Glorious Leader found via Trelanea. In a just world, this pic would show that someone has mad Photoshop ski11z, but in our world it probably appears exactly as it happened. I read somewhere that you're no longer required to eat a live kitten to join the Republican Party. But some diehards maintain a stubborn devotion to the Party's age-old rituals. It's sort of like their version of celebrating Mass in Latin, or so I'm told.
You probably haven't noticed, and you probably wouldn't care if you had, but I'm still using the Old Blogger. I keep seeing glowing reports about New Blogger, and you'd think that as a professional tech geek I'd be really big on the whole early adopter / bleeding edge thing, but I'm not. Trailing edge all the way, baby. I'm basically convinced that if I hit the "upgrade" button, Blogger will lose every word I've ever written, and furthermore, I'm basically convinced that would be a bad thing.

Also, I'm still deeply suspicious about all this newfangled CSS and JavaScript business -- for all we know, it may still turn out to be a passing fad, and we'll all go back to good old 7-bit ASCII text, monospaced font, preferably green on a black background, with a blinking cursor. Hey, it could happen.
An update on what's become of Stephanie Pierce, the woman who used to run our fair city's Church of Elvis. It's a sad story. Everyone says they loved the place, everyone babbles on about how wonderfully quirky it was, but when the proprietor falls on hard times and gets a bit too quirky, well, then what? Are longtime CoE fans rushing to her side? Well, no. Not so far, anyway. That's classic Portland: If you want to walk the tightrope, we'll all cheer for you. We'll let you bask in the spotlight, and we'll squeal with glee at your every move. We'll do that for years, well after your 15 minutes are up everywhere else. But we won't, under any circumstances, put out a safety net for you. Because in the end, as Portlanders we don't want to spend any money, and we don't want to get involved.
Remember a few weeks ago when I was gloating about saving my employer a big pile of money they were about to blow on a dubious outsourcing scheme? Well, they spent the money, and it's turning out exactly as dubious as I said it would be. 50% cost overrun so far, and they don't seem to have written any code yet, after endless email threads and constant teleconferences and design documents, and on and on.

I haven't done a lot of gloating around the office, though. In the business world, one is generally not rewarded for saying "I told you so". Oh, nooo, this is the point where we all shrug and act sincerely perplexed and agree that none of us saw the damn iceberg coming, and really there was no way anyone could've guessed it would turn out so badly, etc. I know that isn't true. Hell, probably we all know that isn't true. But nobody's going to go out on a limb and say so. Oh noooo.

It's one of life's little mysteries that we can all be perfectly decent people on an individual basis, but when we form groups over a certain size we always end up with soul-killing bureaucracies. If I had any insightful theories about that, I might have a bright career in philosophy, or maybe management guru-ism. But sadly, I don't.
I didn't go to the big tram grand opening party, because a.) I've already ridden the thing, and b.) There is nothing lamer than a government-sponsored party. Balloon animals for the kiddies. Yay. The same 4 or 5 musical groups that someone at city hall has on speed dial every time there's a big event. Yay. Politicians making speeches. Double yay.

Besides, it's no fun riding on the thing when everyone gets to ride for free. Me, I've got my employer-provided monthly TriMet pass, so I can go ride the damn thing as much as I want. For whatever my share of the $60M comes to, I think I deserve to ride it a few times.
Speaking of that, I'm rather fascinated by the news that OHSU's selling a block of precious South Waterfront land to build an ultra-ritzy old folks' home. They're stoked about this because, apparently, they'll have all these well-heeled geezers right there at their doorstep, all of them potential test subjects.

Call me crazy, but if I was that age, and looking for somewhere to spend my golden years in uber-upscale urban bliss, I would immediately cross this place off my list. Sure, they'll probably offer a wealth of fun vanity medical treatments, so (for example) you and your beloved Weimaraner can get botoxed together in a luxurious spa-like setting. But in the end, that's not why they want you to live here. The whole time, the medical folks will be eyeing you greedily with their beady little gimlet eyes, just waiting for you to fall and break a hip or something equally lucrative.

In a way, this is a very, very old idea. We may be returning to the 1700s medical model, in which modern medicine existed to palliate the vague ailments of the rich and fashionable, and everyone else could go get stuffed. Typically one would go spend the social season at a fashionable and luxurious spa town (Bath, Carlsbad, etc.), and the staff would fuss over one's every minor ache and pain, and wring their hands melodramatically over one's nebulous feelings of ennui and/or Weltschmerz. Meanwhile, entire villages of common folk were regularly decimated by cholera, smallpox, and other such ailments, but no matter.

If this sounds like fun, our Glorious Leader's new health care plan may be the plan for you. What it boils down to, as far as I can tell, is that big business has decided that their employees' health care is just too damn expensive and they don't want to have to pay for it anymore. They've tried HMO's, they've tried employee wellness plans, they've tried everything, but the costs keep increasing well over the rate of inflation, and now it's time to just throw in the towel and be done with it. Nobody wants to be the first big company to dump health coverage, because there might be bad publicity, but everyone wants it off the balance sheet. If that means casting everyone adrift, to sink or swim as they may, so be it. So the Bush plan provides political cover, giving everyone the "right" to buy individual health coverage, in the unlikely event they can afford it.
On the other hand, the local TV news coverage of the tram opening mentioned something about the entire 9th floor at OHSU (i.e. the "main" level, where the tram docks ) being turned into an upscale retail/restaurant complex. It's an age-old cheap shot that most doctors only got into the business to fund their real estate and golf hobbies. I'm starting to think the real estate thing has become an all-consuming passion for the guys who run OHSU. I'm starting to wonder whether they wouldn't prefer to dump all that boring medical crap altogether, and just be greedy developers 24/7. I mean, now that the tram's up and running, Marquam Hill is seriously prime real estate, with amazing views and everything. There are plenty of people out there who'd pay millions to have a view like this. One might argue the land's going to waste being used for a mere hospital.
Oh, and on top of everything else, the Hubble Telescope is broken again.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

mildly therapeutic edition

This blog is typically not the most personal of personal blogs. That's by design; the only thing less interesting than reading about me is writing about me, therefore I don't, usually. Right now I don't have anything more to add beyond what was in the previous post, and I'm not at home to tinker with the ol' Sun box right now, but I'm still feeling kind of rattled, and blogging itself can be a nice distraction. I haven't done one of these "misc. items" posts in a long time, and I haven't been inclined to, but it feels like it's time.

First, the photos are just some pics I took when I wandered out on my lunch hour. Nothing all that special, but it's fresh material, not just stuff from the archives. So whatever.

Anyway, here are the misc. items for the day:

In somewhat the same vein as my photos, a couple of cool pics of yesterday's morning fog, over at Sellwood Street.
Russ at Portland Metblogs has ridden the tram, and here's his report. The cool kids can call 'em the "twinkies" all they like, but to me they'll always be crucial bits of male anatomy. When you see the tram cars, there's usually just one, hanging in midair all by itself, its partner nowhere to be seen. So my wife's named one of them "Lance" (Armstrong), and I recently decided the other is named "Tom" (Green), in honor of two prominent mono-testicled minor celebrities. If they hurry up with the naming business, they might still be able to get one or the other guy to show up for the dedication, since neither one really has much of a career at the moment.
A fascinating post about Col. Summers Park, in inner SE Portland.
A cool sunrise-over-downtown photo at Amanda Fritz's blog, via ZehnKatzen Times.
At Stumptown Confidential, two posts about the 50's potboiler film Portland Exposé, with plenty of vintage stills. I'm a big fan of really crappy old movies, and this baby's #2 in my Netflix queue right now, so it's very likely I'll post about it in the near future.
A short film about downtown's Union Bank of California Tower.
You probably haven't been wondering why I've been silent on the demise of Gerald Ford. Well, Jon Swift has chimed in already, and I have nothing to add. In your heart, you just know he's right.
Japan's greatest hits of 2006, courtesy of Pink Tentacle.
The Brew Site has Part VII of the ongoing "50 Beers to Drink Before You Die" series.
Meanwhile, Loaded Orygun discusses our fair city's recent micro-distilling boom. Mmmmm.... Liquor....
Elsewhere in the universe, Pat Robertson is at it again. You really can't make this stuff up.
Even more photos of echidnas: rockclimbing (sort of), meditating, being surprisingly furry, looking depressed, making friends, charging, lurking in the underbrush, reading the future in a pile of woodchips, going out on a limb.
And a happy 3rd birthday to the Spirit rover. At least it isn't in the hospital on its birthday.

Happy hospitalized freakin' birthday...

Right now, as I'm writing this, my brother's in surgery up at St. Vincent's. He managed to pick up a case of diverticulitis, a fun intestinal malady. I understand what they're doing is usually a routine procedure, but they had to run some tests first to see if he's got this exciting blood-clotting condition called "Protein S Deficiency" (more technical article here), which can obviously make surgery more complicated. It's a rare condition, but it's hereditary and a number of close relatives have had it, so . Some years ago, an uncle went in for similar "routine" intestinal surgery, had PSD-related complications, and died, when he was just a few years older than I am now. So I'm rather curious how my brother's test turns out, to put it mildly. Oh, and did I mention it's my brother's birthday? And this is how his new GF gets to meet the family for the first time?

It's strange how, even now in 2007, so many guys won't go to the doctor no matter how bad they feel. It always requires a great deal of hassling and cajoling from someone of the female persuasion before they'll go, like it was still freakin' 1955 or something. That's what finally got my brother to the doctor, and I remember my dad behaving the same way a few years ago, and I've done it before as well. I came down with a spot of bronchitis a few years back, and it was literally weeks before I was persuaded to go in and have it looked at. A couple of antibiotic pills later, I was good as new, which really ought to convince me to go without being told next time, or at least to go without being told repeatedly. And I know I probably should, and I'd hope that I would, but I can't say with absolute certainty that I will.

On the other hand, I'd like to sing the praises of another stereotypically male trait, the ability to compartmentalize things and simply choose to think about something else for a while. Medical stuff grosses me out, and thinking about it worries the hell out of me, so it's good to just set it all aside for the moment and think about something I can actually do something about, like puzzling out how to netboot a Sun Ultra 30 from a Mac. I picked up this el cheapo Sun box last week, and everything seems to work except for the SCSI CD drive. The OpenBoot firmware on the Sun box doesn't even see it. The cables look ok, and it has power, but the drive doesn't appear to spin up when you insert a disk, so I think the drive itself is broken. Sure, I could just go looking for a new SCSI CDROM drive, but this netboot stuff is way more l33t. I haven't quite gotten it all working yet, but the process works something like this:

Client (Sun box) sends out a RARP request, asking what IP address it should use. On the server side (OSX box), rarpd needs to be able to map the client's MAC address to an IP addy, which you configure by editing /etc/ethers
Client then grabs a bootloader from the server via tftp. Tftp is usually disabled on OSX, so you need to edit /etc/xinetd.d/tftp and hup the xinetd daemon if it's running. The filename the client asks for is based on the IP addy you just gave it, so that you can have different bootloaders for different machines, if you need to.
The bootloader asks the server where to find the rest of the OS. I haven't quite gotten this step sorted out, but it can involve either bootparamd or dhcp, apparently. In any case, the response is the name of an NFS share where the netboot OS image lives.
When you share stuff from the Finder on OSX, you aren't setting up an NFS share, so you have to do this on the command line, or with a 3rd party tool like SharePoints. Setting up a Solaris boot directory on a Mac seems to be rather complex, so right now I'm trying to get NetBSD/sparc64 to start up, and hoping it'll see the Solaris UFS partitions and be able to mount them read/write without trashing anything.
Then do a "boot net" at the Sun's 'ok' prompt, and away we go, if we're lucky.

Alright, I guess I omitted the details of how to get an 'ok' prompt when you have a headless machine like this one. There's a null modem cable, and therefore a USB-to-serial adapter on the Mac side, connecting with serial port 'A' on the Sun side; knowing to send a 'break' character in lieu of the Sun keyboard's 'Stop-A' to drop to the 'ok' prompt; changing the nvram's "auto-boot?" variable to false so the machine doesn't boot off the internal HDs for now. There's probably something else I'm forgetting at the moment.

The Sun box already has Solaris 8 on it, and all I'm trying to do right now is boot enough of an OS so I can reset the root password. Once I do that, everything else should be a breeze. Hopefully.

So you see, being able to compartmentalize is a sanity-saver at times like this. Good luck, and get well soon, bro.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

collected tidbits, 11/28

I've been neglecting my RSS-reading-and-aggregating duties for far too long. Sorry about that. Here's the latest in my occasional series of tidbits found on the interwebs:

The very latest fascinating post over at Cafe Unknown, full of local history and trolleys and bygone bridges and such. I try to do a reasonably thorough job when I cover local history and oddities and related topics, but I'm a total piker compared to the Cafe Unknown guy.
The Champagne of Blogs posse visited the Oaks Bottom pub recently, and they had the good sense to take plenty of food photos. In particular, they have a beautiful photo of a nice plate of totchos. Totchos? You know, like nachos, but made with tater tots. Mmmmm.... Tater tots..... Mmmm.... beeeeer....
Also, this year's Holiday Ale Festival is nearly upon us. When you see the tree going up in Pioneer Courthouse Square, you can be sure that roasty sudsy tipsy holiday goodness is never far behind. Mmmmm... beeeer....
The Guilty Carnivore has a great piece bashing the soulless, corporate Chipotle Mexican Grill. I mean, some of my best friends are accountants, seriously, but they don't know jack about how to run a good restaurant.
Goddamn that rat bastard Dan Saltzman. On top of everything else, now I can't wave my numchuks around in public parks anymore. Anywhere. In the entire city. We have tons of off-leash dog areas; why aren't there any designated areas for those of us who don't have dogs but want to be irresponsible anyway? I hereby propose a citywide system of Amateur Ninja Zones (clearly marked, of course), where the city just isn't legally responsible for anything people in the zones do to themselves or one another. Poke yourself in the eye with your own ninja star? You saw the entrance signs saying "Caution: Amateur Ninjas! Enter at own risk!", so you've got nobody to blame but yourself. People can be stupid to their hearts' content, and the city has no liability when the inevitable happens. Everybody wins!
Also at the Mercury, plenty of photos of cute cats, complete with fun captions.
From Pink Tentacle, covering all sorts of weird stuff from Japan, a rather scary mall security robot, and a gallery of dekotora, or decorated trucks, which are sort of Japan's answer to the lowrider.
Less weird but cool in a transit-geek sort of way is the "dual mode vehicle", which can run on rails like a train, or on the street like a bus. This might be a great answer to all the nonsense the city of Portland is preparing to do with the downtown transit mall in the next few years.
Finally, an amusing cartoon about matrix transforms. Thanks, xkcd!

Today's thrilling echidna roundup:

A baby echidna at a wildlife rehab center.
Three Zaglossus (long-beaked echidna) pages at Wikispecies, for Z. attenboroughi, Z. bartoni, and Z. bruijni.
A bit at TheWebsiteOfEverything about Z. bruijni.
On Flickr, echidnas digging, ignoring tourists, showing hedgehogs who's the boss, snacking, waddling in the underbrush, and playing "cute puggle".
Elsewhere, more echidnas all rolled up, sharing a meal, sitting in the middle of dinner, visiting (unwillingly) with tourists, and sucking ants out of a PVC pipe
A cool robo-echidna made out of spark plugs. Where do I buy mine?

Friday, October 20, 2006

surly & unmotivated

I realize I promised to make the next post (i.e. this post) weighty and serious, with no photos. I think we're going to manage the lack-of-photos part just fine, the rest I'm not so sure about. As the title indicates, I've been in a surly, unmotivated funk of late, and I think I'll just sit here and complain for a while, if you don't mind.

As a geek, I tend to think in terms of bullet-point lists, as readers of this blog or its geeky sibling have probably noticed by now. So here are a few things that I'd like to register a complaint about.

Outsourcing overseas: This isn't an abstract rant against the basic idea of outsourcing tech jobs to low-wage countries. In RL it looks like my employer's going to contract with some company in India to build a small-ish software component for us. And it's going to be my job to interface with these guys. So far it's been several rounds back and forth, trying to explain that, no, we don't need a whole new network architecture for our product line, and no, we never said anything about wanting a mobile phone-based administration package. What part of "no thank you" don't you understand? Sheesh. Oh, and stop babbling about JNI. JNI is an abomination. A useful abomination, sometimes, but an abomination nonetheless.

I guess I can't fault these guys for being hungry, nor can I fault them as engineers for generally wanting to build stuff. But c'mon, already. How about you guys go read our requirements doc a couple more times, compare that with your proposal, and then get back to me?
Blogging malaise: I think I've fallen into a rut here. I don't feel like I've produced anything terribly useful on this blog for a while now. Well, there've been a few interesting photos lately, but as I mentioned before, posting too many of those is unkind to my vast legion of faithful Gentle Reader(s) with dialup connections. Yes, it wasn't very nice to either of you guys, and I humbly apologize. The streetcar stop down at South Waterfront opens tomorrow, so I'll probably get a post out of that, but that's not exactly uncharted territory for this blog.

I also feel guilty because I still have a sort of sense that this ought to be a political blog, but usually it isn't. I have a sense that this thing would be more "worthwhile" somehow if I talked about the great issues of the day a bit more. Hey, I got a few posts out of the Foley thing, but I'm still not convinced that counts.
The tyranny of usefulness: I've been spending more and more time lately posting over at SNR rather than here, since (understandably, I guess) a lot more people are interested in the SCO saga than in play "follow the bouncing Markov chain" with me. (Which is a fancy way of saying this blog is full of mostly unrelated crap, and I bounce from one thing to the next with very little rhyme or reason. If I hadn't eternally perma-banned the phrase "random musings" from this blog, that would be the phrase I'd use.)

So anyway, right now I'm getting more positive reinforcement posting there than I do here, even though SNR is much more narrowly focused and really not as rewarding to work on. People actually thank me for writing the other blog, and I don't get much of that here. I mean, not that I'm feeling needy or insecure or anything, I'm just saying that providing a "valuable public service" can be kind of addictive, even when it isn't all that much fun. It's a problem.
Govt. aggravations: So yesterday I got a grand jury summons from Washington County. Luckily for me, I haven't lived in Washington County for about a year now. Actually I guess I shouldn't say "luckily"; I've never had jury duty, and I've always said it's an important civic responsibility that people shouldn't try to weasel out of, plus it even might be an interesting experience. Everyone should do it at least once, and my number hasn't come up yet. I mailed back the flimsy little postcard where one checks the "not a resident" box and gives one's new address, and I have to say it looked like exactly the sort of thing that gets lost in the mail without a trace. Well, if it does, and they send a nice man with a badge around to look for me, he'll be knocking on the wrong door, and the new residents are in for a bit of excitement, I suppose.

Meanwhile, I've also got to renew my vehicle registration again. I could swear it seems like this happens every 6 months or so, even though the calendar says 2 years. And I realize it isn't reasonable to complain about something everyone with a car has to do, but I feel I have certain extenuating circumstances. For starters, my car is nearly 30 years old, and is extremely small. There was a time when under state law, cars over 20 years old were excused from having to pass a DEQ emissions test, but they changed the law back in the early 90's and now the cutoff is fixed at 1974, supposedly forever. The DEQ inspection stations measure emissions in one of several ways, based on the age of the car. Mine, I think, has to go on the dynamometer stand, so that they're measuring the exhaust created when the car is in gear and rolling. The latest generation of equipment simply clips into a connector under the dash and reads an engine code or two. I haven't seen any concrete numbers on this, but I strongly suspect that there are so few cars from the 70's on the road anymore that it's hardly worth it to maintain the testing equipment, and their impact on overall pollution rates is virtually nil. So really, I don't think I should have to take the thing through emissions testing. Since moving downtown, I barely even drive the thing: Maybe once or twice a month, tops.

But as usual, the state isn't listening to reason, and so I have to find a nearby garage that works on MG's. I used to take the car to a place out in North Plains, and I was quite happy with them, but since I've moved that location's become very, very impractical. I think I've found a place to try, assuming they do DEQ work. We'll see.
Ted Kulongoski: I finally got a Kulongoski flyer in the mail today. I was surprised, since his campaign's been remarkably invisible so far. The guy's the incumbent governor, with money in the bank, and he's not getting his message out. I called the guy a hopeless bozo and voted against him in the primary, but I was prepared to admit he was a pretty good campaigner, if a complete washout for the next 4 years afterwards. I'm starting to think he's a hopeless campaigner, now, too. I don't actually want him to lose to Ron Saxton, despite all the Ted-bashing I've engaged in, but I'm starting to worry that he might. Now, in a year that's supposed to be a disaster for Republicans (although I'm taking a wait-n-see attitude on that point), Teddy's on the verge of losing to one. Most newspapers around the state seem to be endorsing Saxton, and they aren't doing so because of the guy's positive traits, but because of their disappointment with ol' T.K.

It woudn't be reasonable to blame Ted personally for the fact that the flyer was st00pid. It, and the strategy behind it, are no doubt the product of some clueless, faceless political consultant. It seems that Ted's people have decided immigration is a big issue in the election. I really don't think it is; at least it isn't a huge hot-button issue for me. The fun bit is that Ted's handlers are trying to steer him to the right of Saxton on immigration; he's for rounding 'em up and shipping 'em out, basically, although he hasn't actually been doing that the last 4 years. Saxton himself made some unconvincing anti-immigrant remarks in primary season to keep the Republican primary wingnuts, er, voters, happy, and that was the last we heard from him about immigration. And Saxton's also perceived as vulnerable on the issue since he had a farm for a while and may have employed illegal immigrants. So I think the plan is to play the populist, protectionist card, and paint Saxton as one of those nasty business Republicans who value cheap labor above all else. Hmm. Maybe that'll work, and maybe it won't, but it has the strong smell of a clueless campaign grasping at straws.

Now, Saxton isn't a wingnut himself, or if he is, he hides it quite well, so a Governor Saxton would probably not be the end of the world. I tend to look for more in a governor than not being the end of the world, so I'm not going to vote for the guy myself, but I'm not so sure I'm going to vote for Ted, either. I'm still mulling this one over.
Congressional Democrats: Why, you might be wondering, would I complain about Democrats in Congress right now, right when they're maybe on the verge of taking over. Aren't they on a roll?

Well, for starters I'm still not convinced they're about to take control of either house. There's still plenty of time before the election, and George and Karl still have plenty of dirty tricks up their sleeves, and that's if the D's don't manage to shoot themselves in the foot unassisted first. It's a do or Diebold election for the R's, and I can't even begin to imagine what they might try to pull if their backs are up against the wall.

And if they do win, I'm really starting to worry that they'll blow the opportunity and alienate the public through gridlock and sheer pettiness. As much as the R's deserve it, and as much as I'd personally enjoy watching it, the theme for the next Congress should not be "Payback Time". That means doing genuine oversight and holding Bush's drones accountable, but not fast-tracking the impeachment thing, at least not from day 1. And it's probably not wise to retaliate against R's in Congress who were so mean and unfair in the years after 1994, as much as they have it coming. Or at least, wait a while after the session starts up before really putting the boot in. If the public decides the D's are about nothing but revenge, 2008 isn't going to be a fun election.

None of this has happened yet, obviously, but I have a persistent bad feeling about it, and complaining makes me feel better (temporarily).

Ok, well, that's what I've got at the moment. Actually I've got several more things I would happily go off on a tangent and complain about, but I've reached the limit of what I feel like doing right now. Did I mention I've been feeling unmotivated lately?

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

...wherein I repent, but not just yet...

A chair under the Fremont Bridge. This chunk of land kind of looks like a city park, but it's owned by the Oregon Department of Transportation, and they don't much care for pedestrians. The place is covered with signs ordering you not to step off the sidewalk under any circumstances, because if you do, you're probably one of those icky homeless people who live under bridges or something, or at the very least you've violated the Law, and therefore it's off to Guantanamo for you, buster.

I actually stepped off the sidewalk a bit so I could take a few photos, although I was legal (I think) when I took this one. Ultra-candid admissions like this are one reason I use a pseudonym when trolling the interwebs.

I'm usually extremely lenient if people want to use photos of mine (in the rare cases where this happens), since I don't plan on making any money off of 'em anyway. But if you want to use this photo for your latest shoegazing indierock album cover, I'm going to need a cut of the proceeds. Thanks.

A discarded "nonpartisan" voters' guide in a trash bin on Lovejoy near one of the streetcar stops. By taking this photo, I got into a long conversation with an older gent who regaled me with tales of crooked politics in Philadelphia. For the first 5 minutes, it's great to find someone else who understands the Electoral College, and after that it's kind of tiresome.

Speaking of politics, here's another great reason to remember to vote in November.

The Fremont Bridge from the new Riverscape development, on Naito Pkwy north of the bridge, between 14th & 18th Avenues.

I've always wished I'd been in town in 1973, when the bridge was built. Seems the whole huge central span was constructed off-site and then barged in and installed as a unit. Call me an engineering geek if you like, but I really would've liked to have seen that.

The pedestrian path at Riverscape, and some of the townhouses. The area actually had a slightly bleak and empty feel to it, but maybe that's just because it's extremely new, and the path doesn't actually connect to anything to the north or south. It almost connects with another greenway segment that's part of the Fremont office complex just south of the bridge; the two pieces are separated by about a block or so of vacant lot, which I think is owned by the city as part of the "Big Pipe" project.

The "Fountain for a Rose" in O'Bryant Square. I risked life and limb for you, my Gentle Reader(s), and walked through the square rather than skirting the edge. You may be surprised to hear this, but I didn't see a single discarded syringe, nor did I see anyone who looked likely to discard a syringe in the near future. Maybe that's because it isn't dark yet, or it's the wrong day of the week, or the square's supposed legions of druggies all saw me coming and all hid somewhere. Or maybe the place just gets an undeserved bad rap from people who haven't been there in years.

Updated 1/18/2011: I snipped the first couple of paragraphs off of this post, which didn't add anything and referred to an allegedly "weighty" post I supposedly had in the works and never quite got around to writing. Here they are, for posterity or whatever, mostly because they help explain the title of this post:

It was unsubtly brought to my attention that my recent posts have featured far too many "dull" photos of flowers and fruit and plants generally. This is probably true, quite honestly. Certainly it's true that this blog hasn't been very dialup-user-friendly of late. I promise, the next post will be about a weighty topic, with no graphics whatsoever. More than likely it'll be about North Korea, and perhaps I'll even explain exactly how the current situation ought to be solved, if I figure that out between now and then.

But that post isn't quite ready to go yet, and I'm not quite ready to get on the wagon just yet, so here are a few more photos. No plants, though.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

wellness, perchance

I still have that damn cold, but I've heard that alcohol is a great antiseptic, and I'm currently experimenting, trying to figure out what the required dosage might be, using the participant-observer methodology. In the meantime, it's been (mildly) interesting exploring what it's like to be a stupid person. In the event that I survive, I'd like to thank the nice folks at Girardet and Bendistillery.

So I've got a few more links to dump. If this turns out to be a posthumous post, or the last post before they shipped me off to the State Home for the Extra-Special, well, this probably isn't much of an epitaph. Oh, well. I tried. Honest.

Whomp Power has yet another take on the Great Hops Apocalypse of 2006.
It's like a bird, but made out of butter. Mmmmm.... butter.....
BBSpot asks Which OS are you?. I turned out to be PalmOS, same as Snabulus. Which isn't so bad; I wrote a few k3wl Palm apps back in the day, and it's good to have the occasional reminder to not assume an int is at least 32 bits, plus coding for a Palm (the last time I did it, anyway) is like coding for a Mac circa 1986, so it's like deja vu all over again.
BBSpot also asks what programming language I am, and I am C++, which is basically true, except for the occasional Java foray, and the too-occasional longing gaze at Ruby. Oh, and Objective-C is niiiice too.
Speaking of Objective-C, AAPL is tweaking the language for MacOSX 10.5. They ain't sayin' just how just yet, but here are some clues.
What, you haven't already given up on Orson Scott Card? Masochist...
More evidence that the Daily Show is just as useful, or just as useless, as the traditional evening news.
NEC has a shiny new chip that supposedly can play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. Wake me up when that hits the market. Until then, I'm boycotting both, just to teach the bastards a lesson about the usefulness of industry standards.
Turns out that being an unlawful combatant has a bright side: You get to have all sorts of fun drugs. On the other hand, if Dubya commits the country to another stupid war based on some random assclown's bad acid trip, I will be very, very unhappy.
At least we're fortunate that our Glorious Leader is an artistic soul at heart. Here's his rendition of John Lennon's Imagine.
A bit of nautical fun with spare change up in the San Juans.
A bit on Web 2.0 security risks.
New near-IR pics of the asteroid, er, dwarf planet Ceres.
The very latest from the eternal cult of Amiga.
And the latest coolness from Saturn, in case you aren't sick of all that coolness just yet.
Meanwhile, in Japan, it's giant jellyfish season again.
A few not-so-recent Guardian pieces about difficult British topics: food, dogs, and the Boer War.
One great fringe benefit of having OSDL in town is that we figure in people's naming schemes. The latest example: Portland 1.0 is supposed to be the Grand Unification of GNOME and KDE. So we'll see how that turns out in RL, but I like the name, anyway.
Some fun with Google code search.
Looks like Hans Reiser may be an evil murdering scumbag. Don't give the guy any sympathy just because you like his filesystem, any more than you'd give OJ extra sympathy because of what he did on the football field.
I know lots of guys who will drool themselves silly over this. You know who you are, so I won't name names.
And I knew all along that those rubber duck derby events were a terrible idea.
And last but not least, today's crop of cute semi-cuddly-wuddly echidnas: catching some rays, strolling on the beach, nibbling on some ants, also eating ants, avoiding people, hanging out with the French, and eating ants. Oh, and waddling about on video, of course.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

tuesday miscellany

This latest passel-o-links post is at least mildly organized; the links are arranged into a few broad categories, including one solely about echidnas. It's not a classification scheme your average librarian would be happy with, but hey. It's what I came up with, and rearranging all the links now would be way too much work. So enjoy, or not...

Sci+Tech

Slashdot on (maybe) high-temperature Bose-Einstein condensates.
The Panda's Thumb wonders about all that cutting-edge Intelligent Design research that's supposedly going on.
That's the problem, though: The fundies can never quite decide if ID is supposed to pretend to be science, or whether it's the heart of their culture war they're waging against the rest of us.
This year's Nobel in Physics has been awarded for research into the cosmic microwave background, a remnant of the big bang. The creationists would be outraged, if only they understood a single word of this stuff.
I've already mentioned the first pics from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, so that's not news, but here's a side-by-side comparison of pics of the same crater taken by MRO, and by Mars Global Surveyor, which until now was the keenest eye in the Martian sky. Wow. Just... wow. That HiRISE is some kind of camera, that's all I can say.
Like having nightmares? Check out this gigantic deep-sea isopod. Clearly, Tokyo is doomed.
At Pharyngula, PZ lists the top ten reasons religion is like porn. My favorite items:

5. You want to wash up after shaking hands with any of its leaders
4. The costumes are outrageous, the performances silly, the plots unbelievable
Some related research, which ought to make a lot of people (especially guys) happy.

Politics

The latest alarming signs of the times at Cosmic Variance.
Tom Tomorrow looks on the bright side.
Kip Hawley is an idiot.
See also Wikipedia on Security theater.

Local

alt.portland introduces a valuable new public service, a guide to gas stations in/near downtown. Sure, sure, gas is evil, we all know that, but sometimes it's a necessary evil, and a scarce one at that.
Happy new (water) year!. It hasn't rained yet, and we're a full couple of days into the new water year, so I expect the local news to start screaming about a drought any day now. They usually do.
This year's crop of GABF medal winners from Oregon. Mmmm.... Beeeerrrr...
The latest "address nerd" post over at ZehnKatzen times, with a rare example of one of the city's old-style street signs. I know I've seen others like that around, but I can't recall where, or when. I may have to try this Pizza Baron place he mentions. I'm a sucker for old-style 70's-80's pizza parlors, and they've nearly vanished from the earth. More than once I've driven all the way out to Hood River for a Pietro's fix, which is an unreasonably long way to go for pizza done the old-school way.
Up in Yakima, WA, a horrible, horrible fire has destroyed 4% of the US hop harvest. Nooooooooo!!!!!!
It's that time of year again: the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, at the Hollywood Theater this Friday thru Sunday.

Echidnas

Accounts from someone who's looking after an orphaned baby echidna (they're called "puggles"). Seems that orphan puggles need to be fed a concoction known as "I Can't Believe It's Not Echidna Milk".
An article about echidnas, with lots of photos.
And still, nobody can answer the eternal question "Why did the echidna cross the road?".
Four more photos of echidnas.
Ok, just one more

Random Coolness & Weirdness

Another four reasons to love Oktoberfest.
How to make your own Discworld cake. This is obviously the most excellent cake ever.
Less edibly, here's the latest advance in breakfast junk food technology: Jimmy Dean Chocolate Chip Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick. Glurrrghh.....
Treehugger tries a foray into math via heirloom tomatoes. I can't make head or tail of what they're getting at, and I detect a strong smell of bogosity.

Friday, September 29, 2006

another friday link farm

Ok, let's try this again. A few days ago, I started yet another pile-o-links post and never got around to hitting 'publish', primarily because it would've been like the third or fourth in a row, and it just felt wrong somehow. Now it's been a few days, and Firefox is full of tabs I can't quite bring myself to close, so I figure, what the heck.

So to start out, here's the original list, followed by a list of new items.

If you like cute echidnas as much as I do, and I realize you probably don't, here are four more echidna photos for your enjoyment, or at least for mine.
This is a very, very fat squirrel.
The development community seems to have fixed its great flaming eye directly on the Hawthorne area. Here's the latest about the stupid parking meter thing that they just refuse to drop.
A bit about the recent John Kerry / beer bong photo. I sure do miss Democrats running the show.
A new multi-year low for SCO: $1.66 per share, closing at $1.69. Awesome.
A ligher shade of umbra
Eek! Jesus Camp! Run away!

Today's link farm:

Another cute echidna. Seems there's no shortage.
Music from a French electronica act known as Echidna (also see here.)
Our Glorious Leader, as translated by Little Richard. It all makes sense now.
The latest snarkiness on the Pacific Northwest Food Scene (TM). Everyone said they loved that Hebberoy guy until his restaurant empire imploded. Now the knives are out. Ah, fickle fate...
An Oktoberfest update from The Brew Site.
The Bad Astronomer posts about a new lobbying group called Scientists & Engineers for America, set up primarily to oppose the Bushies' ideological meddling.
I wouldn't be so fast to join up, though, if I were you; very soon, Dubya's going to have even more draconian powers to drag people off the street and imprison them without trial, purely on vague national security grounds.
Another piece on the same issue. How did we get to a point where everyone knows the bill is a disaster, everyone knows it's un-American, undemocratic, and uncivilized, and yet nobody can stop it. The only people with the power to do so (Congress) all believe it's political suicide to oppose Bush on any issue, at any time. Even now, after everything that's happened over the last half-decade.
Here's a cabbie from Uganda who's probably on George's evildoer list now, too. Read what he has to say about Idi Amin back in the 70's. Eerie, isn't it?
And as usual, there's nothing on Earth more completely freakin' useless than the "Democrats" in Congress. All they do is keep on keepin' the powder dry, and going along with whatever the R's want with barely a whimper. Pathetic.
The next war: Kazakhstan? Well, maybe not, but still, everyone says this Sacha Baron Cohen guy is the ultimate comic genius, brain the size of a planet and all that, but do we really need to go around spreading even more ignorant stereotypes about Muslim countries? What makes that such an ultra-smart idea, exactly?
See, that last bit was a half-joke, because everyone knows the next war is with Iran. Maybe I'm cynical, or paranoid, or just pessimistic, but to me it's felt like a done deal for a long, long time now.
After 95O+ sols of driving on Mars, the Opportunity rover's arrived at Victoria Crater, sending back some fairly dramatic photos. The folks over at UnmannedSpaceflight.com are completely geeking out over it -- and I mean that in a good way.
And here's the first hi-res image from the newly-aerobraked Mars Reconaissance Orbiter. Coolness.
Maybe, just maybe, the city isn't selling off chunks of Mt. Tabor Park after all. Or at least they backed down very quickly. Probably the latter, in which case I'd like to take full credit for the about-face. You're welcome.
Excerpts from yet another hardline Bush speech. He's not quite using the 't' word yet, but it looks like he's edging ever closer.
In Bob Woodward's new book, we learn a couple of things we knew already: Rummy is Clueless and Bush is Increasingly Removed from Reality. Still, the new book may go a small way to redeem Woodward after his last two books fawning over Dubya. I'm sure it must've seemed like a good idea, or at least a lucrative idea, at the time...
So these days we've got a handle on the incompetence side of the Iraq equation. And here's another bit about the corruption side of things.
I hate to end on a down note, so here are some cute cats on Flickr.

Updated: Ok, ending with cute cats after all the political nastiness just isn't working. Here are three more pieces about echidnas:

a closeup photo of echidna spines

"Free the Echidnas!"

"You can't pull an echidna backward through a cardigan."

Friday, September 22, 2006

...wherein I seek my lost relevance...

Another day, another semi-random link dump. I seem to have fallen into a blogging rut: When I'm not posting amusing riffs on misc. news items I've run across, I'm posting riffs that try to be amusing but fail miserably. As I've mentioned before, I often feel guilty that I don't cover weighty political topics more often. We live in in the midst of a global crisis, no, crises, and nobody can afford to take things lightly, but I do anyway. I shouldn't, but I do. I try to justify it by saying I live by the old H.L. Mencken quote:

The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by such learned dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe--that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power, and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

While we're talking about Mencken, I'd like to recommend his essay "Gamalielese", if you can find it. I don't see it on the net anywhere, so I suppose it's still under copyright. Search your local library. It reminds us that Dubya wasn't the first brain-damaged wingnut to occupy the White House, although Warren G. Harding was merely stupid and corrupt, and he didn't actually go around starting wars in every corner of the globe and then bungling them. In lieu of the actual essay, perhaps you'll enjoy this post about ol' Warren G.. In a similar spirit, you might also enjoy James Thurber's take on Admiral Byrd exploring the south pole and claiming large chunks of Antarctica for the grateful US taxpayer, but that may be even harder to find. (And again, nothing on the net anywhere.)

On an unrelated-but-serious note, the photo is of the never-used cooling towers for the cancelled Satsop nuclear complex, part of the ill-fated WPPSS (pronounced "whoops") project. If you're driving to the Olympic Peninsula, you can see them near the town of Elma, on US 12 between Aberdeen and Centralia. I realize they were never used, and there's nothing radioactive about them, but I still get a case of the creeps every time I see them.

So anyway, I don't really have anything original to contribute on the political front right now, but I've interspersed a few serious-ish items amongst all the frivolity, just to break up the rhythm a little. So without further ado, let the links commence:

Happy birthday, Bilbo & Frodo.
Every day, a new haiku about beer. Finally, poetry that doesn't make me cringe.
Today's cute echidna.
Audio clips and quotes from Tron, the best SF movie ever. Don't even try arguing the point with me. Sure, the plot's corny, but Metropolis is much, much cornier and far less coherent, and everybody forgives it because the visuals are so great.
Tron may have to give up the crown soon, though. Turkish Star Wars 2 is on its way. With genuine CGI and everything, apparently.
Local businesspeople don't think the downtown retail environment is doing very well. Funny how the same urbanist types who freak out whenever a business opens in the 'burbs don't bat an eye while their beloved Pearl skims off the top end of the retail trade downtown.
OTOH our local craft brewing industry just had a great first half of '06. I'm happy to say I've done my part to help out with those numbers. Mmmm.... beeeer....
The very latest in local Republican sleaze.
The Guardian informs us that, like the Northwest, the UK has its share of bike Nazis and creepy nuclear bungling.
Friday's cephalopod pic from Pharyngula.
Microsoft is thinking about a free web-based version of MS Works. I didn't realize there even still was such a thing as MS Works, but then, it's been about 10 years since I've bought a PC with Windows on it, so maybe I'm just not up on this stuff. On one hand, I think MS considers Works their cheap-n-crappy alternative for home users who can't afford MS Office. On the other, I seem to recall that it does most of what an average home or office user might need to do, without all the dancing paper clips and cryptic toolbars full of esoteric options and whatnot. Still, what you really want is OpenOffice.
Mars Express has taken some new pics of the notorious non-face on Mars. The Bad Astronomer marks the occasion by making fun of that Hoagland asshat. I've been rolling my eyes at Hoagland since his "alien spaceship in Saturn's B ring" days (what ever happened with that, btw?), and it just never gets old. The BA story's been linked to by Slashdot and Fark, and now by me as well, so Phil's pretty much hit the trifecta here. (Ha, I kid! What is this 'Fark' of which he speaks? I bet there's no such thing.)
Jesus appears to the faithful in ever-more-mysterious ways.
Well, nothing else is working, so maybe this will save the world. It's worth a try, anyway.
From World-o-Crap: Batman vs. the Nazis. They just don't make movie serials like they used to.
Preemptive Karma and Empire Burlesque cover Dubya's recent "Third Awakening" creepiness.
But there's plenty of religious ickiness to go around: Two more PK bits, covering Der Pope and Ahmadinejad (and the fundies who fear him).
And a deeply scary and unsurprising WashPost story about bungling and cronyism in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Ideology and blind loyalty win out over basic competence. Film at 11.
Willie Nelson getting busted for possession is another "film at 11" item, but check out the photo of his stash. Dang. I never touch the stuff, myself, but even I'm impressed. Free Willie!
Grandpa Simpson, I mean, Bojack wonders who Storm Large is. It's one thing not to be hip to that noise the young'uns are jiving to these days. I fall squarely in that category myself. And I never saw a single episode of Supernova. But not even knowing who Storm is? That's just... unpatriotic.
Olbermann is at it again. When's he going to learn how to cravenly suck up to power, the way real journalists do?
Suddenly, the wingnuts love the International Criminal Court. Some of the time.
The latest mission update for the DSCOVR (nee Triana) probe: Still gathering dust in a warehouse.
On YouTube, a snippet of the famous "Turkey Drop" WKRP episode. But be warned, the period hairstyles are most alarming.
Another movie I'm afraid to see. Radioactive carnivorous flying brains are one thing, but red state true believers are another thing entirely. Yikes!
SCO hit a new 52-week low today. $2.01. That's still overpriced by about $6, but it's a good start.
Karen Armstrong has a piece in the Guardian about anti-Islamic prejudice. Sure is too bad that "religion of peace" (as in any religion) is an oxymoron. And that comes on top of being false, and anti-rational. I try to take a pragmatic position here: if it's false but Mostly Harmless, I'll let it pass without serious criticism. But when people devote their lives to murdering one another to appease some imaginary Bronze Age desert boogeyman in the sky, well, I just sort of have to draw the line.
And yes, it is possible for a religion to be Mostly Harmless. Fundies tend to have a cow about pagans and call them all sorts of ugly names, but if you add up the body count over the last 2000 years, the Christians hold an insurmountable lead. As far as I can tell, the worst offense our fair city's local pagan community has to answer for is some truly dreadful amateur poetry.
Lately I've been waking up to Lebanese coffee from Cafe Najjar in Beirut. I found a packet of their vacuum-packed, ground coffee at a stall in Pike Place Market last time I was in Seattle. I've used up nearly the whole packet, and so far the coffee doesn't appear to contain any WMDs. If you're shocked by that, or you think I'm being brave or foolhardy by "risking it all" here, well, I feel sorry for you. Truly. It's your loss, not mine. The other ground coffee in the house right now is French Market Coffee from New Orleans.
A few Flickr links that're about to spill off the 200-photo limit, while I dither over whether to buy the "premium" account: [1] [2] [3] [4].

Updated 9/14/2013: I was working on an art post about Cobbletale and vaguely remembered I had an ancient 2006 photo of it, and I wondered where I'd used it. Turns out the only place I'd used it was in the "A few Flickr links" item above, where I merely linked to the photos and didn't even bother inlining them. Not sure why I did that; it's possible we still had dialup back then, I'm not entirely sure. In any case, I'm fairly sure that any reasons I may have had then are obsolete now, and I'm going to go ahead & inline those photos, dammit. So here they are, in all their circa-2006 point-n-shoot glory:

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