As a result of the large number of lovely UK people on #filkhaven, there’s often a bit of discussion about the latest cricket matches. I wondered idly today if people raised on cricket understood why Mad Magazine’s 43-Man Squamish was supposed to be funny, or if they thought it made perfect sense and looked like fun.
Month: June 2004 Page 2 of 3
You know how the Chinese give names to their years. Like, the Year of the Dragon, and the Year of the Monkey, and so forth?
This is the week of the Raid Failure.
Got a page this morning, waking me from what had been a fairly restless night, so I was none to happy at being dragged out of bed half an hour before I was due to get up. It was one of the network engineers, who wanted me to know that the server on my workbench was beeping loudly and was there anyway to make it stop. I had him log in on the console and shut the box down, as it’s not in production and could stand to be switched off until I got to the office.
After my morning meeting, I came back to my desk and fired it up to see what was up. As soon as it got to the SCSI initialization phase, it started wailing. I had a sinking feeling I know what that meant, so I escaped into the RAID controller’s config screen to see. Yep, there’s a bad disk. This box only has three drives, so it actually has no spare to pull in in case of disk failure; when you lose one, it is automatically in degraded mode.
I started a rebuild, and will now have to see about getting a replacement drive before I can wrap this project up. My only consolation is that at least it failed today, rather than this time next week after I had shipped it to the customer’s site in Kentucky.
Apologies for all the work stuff this week, but it’s what’s consuming most of my attention the last few days. (Well, there’s some non-work stuff, but I’m not ready to talk about that yet. <G>)
Seen on the newsstand on the cover of the ever reliable Weekly World News:
GAY ALIENS FOUND IN UFO CRASH
I didn’t read the article to find out if they were travelling from their home planet in order to attempt to get married in Massachusetts
From the Portrait Unveiling Ceremony at the White House today:
“You know, Most the people I’ve known in this business, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, were good people, honest people, and they did what they thought was right. And I hope that I’ll live long enough to see American politics return to vigorous debates where we argue who’s right and wrong, not who’s good and bad.”
–Former President Bill Clinton
Amen.
fairestcat points towards a primer on having sex on a motorcycle, which is aimed at fanfic writers, but really isn’t this good information for all of us to have?
The other day, the following popped up in my random mp3 playlist:
“You Can Go Your Own Way” (Cranberries cover of Fleetwood Mac)
followed by
“Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine” (Bob Dylan)
I think we’ve been more out and about the last 48 hours than the rest of the previous two or three weeks combined. 🙂
My birthday is coming up later this month (June 25), but I’ve already gotten my present from kitanzi. For a long time, I’d been wanting to get a really decent digital camera. I love taking photographs, but I’ve never actually owned a good camera. For the last year or two, I’ve been using a Kodak DC210 on loan from eloren, which was a fairly spiffy camera in its day, but its day was 5 years ago.
For a brief while, I flirted with the high end 8mp cameras that are just starting to come out. I had looked at the Sony DSC-F818 at Circuit City while browsing for something else, but the reviews of it were not stellar. The Canon and Olympus models were forthcoming, and I thought I might wait on them. But the more I thought it over, the more I decided that I didn’t need that much camera. More to the point, it violates my long-standing principle of always trying to be “in the curve” on technology products. The question wasn’t whether an 8mp camera was worthwhile.for my needs, but whether it was worth paying the exorbitant price for the latest and greatest product. (Yes, I know there are /seriously/ expensive cameras out there aimed at the professional, but I was limiting my research to consumer and prosumer cameras only, since my budget doesn’t extend to spending that much money on what is at best an idle hobby).
Having realigned my expectations, I asked “What are the requirements I can’t live without?” Since my primary interest in a camera is taking concert and convention photos, the two things I wanted to be sure of were a good shutter speed for taking action photos, and a good optical zoom for getting close to the action without having to be on the lip of the stage. Having defined my needs thusly, I did a fair amount of research, and finally settled on my desired choice: The Minolta DiMAGE Z2. The Z2 is a 4mp camera, features a 10x optical zoom, and was rated very highly on shutter speed and responsiveness for action photos: As an added bonus, it can be set anywhere from fully automatic to fully manual, depending on what kind of shots you’re trying to take. It’s been way too long since I used a manual camera, but it’s kinda need to have the option if I want it.
When I mentioned to kitanzi that I’d finally decided which camera I wanted to buy, she said “Well, it’s your birthday this month, go ahead and order it.” Three days later, a nice UPS man brought it, and I’ve been happily snapping random photos with it ever sense. I’m still getting used to how it responds, but on the whole, I’m really happy with it.
Friday night was my first chance to really give the camera a shakedown. kitanzi had gotten a work reward entitling her to leave work a half-hour early, so we took advantage of this to go and see the Middle Eastern Music and Dance night at the Red Light Cafe, featuring some dancers from the same troupe we saw at the Renassaince Festival. Kit actually got out of work an hour early rather than a half-hour, due to the unexpected slowness of the day, and so we arrived at the venue in plenty of time, and got a good table right in front of the dance area. Unfortunately, although we had been led to believe the show actually started at 8pm, it was 9pm before the first part of the entertainment began. The lead act was a Greek band named Tesserae. While this isn’t the sort of music I listen to on a regular basis, it made for a nice bit of variation and they were very good at what they were doing. My only real complaint was wishing I understood the language so I could get more of what the songs were about.
Once the dancing began, I really got to put the camera through its paces. On the whole, I’m very pleased with it. I did go through afterwards and throw away a number of shots which were either blurry or captured the subject just AFTER what I wanted a picture of, but that’s a risk you run in dance, especially dance with as much kinetic activity as this! I still ended up with 77 pictures that I thought were worthwhile for one reason or another, out of about 110 frames. Of those 77, maybe 5-10 are truly outstanding. I’m especially happy with this photo, which really captures the exuberance and joy the dancer was getting out of her performance.
There’s a fair amount of redeye, which is always a problem with flash photographs (and the Z2 has quite a powerful flash), so i spent some time looking at software aimed at combating that (since I can’t afford a bounce flash just at the moment). I found a rather remarkable piece of software called Red Eye Pilot, which has a demo that is fully functional other than allowing you to save your manipulated photos. After using it on several of the photos from Friday, I’m convinced that it will be well worth the $30 investment, but I haven’t actually purchased it yet. Once I do, I’ll probably retouch several of the photos from last night. I probably need to find a primer on post-processing photos if I’m going to get really serious about that. Right now, though, I’m just having fun.
Saturday morning, we got up, and decided to go see a movie. For whatever reason, Kit and I don’t go to the movies that often, but there’s actually several films out we wanted to see. We decided to head over to the Medlock Crossing 18 for the first showing of Shrek 2.
Shrek 2 was absolutely marvelous. I adored the first film, and was a bit wary of a sequel, fearing that they’d not be able to capture lightning in a bottle again. I need not have worried. Shrek 2 is at least as good as its predecessor, and in many ways is more satisfying. There’s a certain amount of emotional depth here that the first film lacked, and it satisfies a desire I think most of us have had to wonder what happens AFTER the fairy tale. (Paging telynor. telynor, please pick up the white courtesy phone…)
The Giant Tub O’ Popcorn was plenty of food for both of us, so we came home and decided to work up an appetite in the pool. We spent an hour or so splashing around, bouncing the Big Blue Ball around, much to the delight of several of the neighborhood children. Once tired and hungry, we left the ball in their care and set off to Cheeburger Cheeburger to enjoy a decedent lunch. I ate the portion of my lunch that wasn’t Too Much Food, and unfortunately set in on a good portion of my lunch that was too much food, but it was all so good, even if afterwards I felt bloated. Obviously, a nap was in order, so we came home and slept for a bit. I spent the rest of the evening catching up on LJ while Kit watched Iron Chef, and then we both watched the latest episode of Coupling Season 4, which I had downloaded on Thursday.
Tomorrow, we’re planning to go see The Prisoner of Azkaban. We’ll see what other mischief we can manage after the movie is over.
Ronniecat on rec.arts.comics.strips, on the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.
The lack of cultural interpretation or advice the administration seems to be receiving is appalling. I remember when the statue of Saddam was pulled down, and all the men were beating it with their shoes and slippers. Commentators on the news were laughing at this (the slipper thing). Anyone with the smallest knowledge of Arabic culture understands the very strong significance of what they were doing – and it wasn’t funny to them. (It is, for example, the traditional way one punishes a servant [or daughter-in-law] who one is displeased with; it is laden with class ramifications. It is in the domestic sense an ultimate act of disrespect.) It was a political statement. (One which a President getting good advice would’ve worked into a message to the population and capitalized on: “Now, the Iraqi people have beaten their former master with a slipper, as he deserves; now the Iraqi people are masters in their own house…”)The fact that several of a pathetically small pool of US military Arabic translators were fired shortly after September 11 because they were gay speaks volumes about the administration’s priorities as they prepared for their “war on terror”.
The bottom line is, it doesn’t make one single bit of difference what Jed in Ohio thinks of the prison abuse scandal in the long run (Bush can, after all, only serve two terms); it matters what Ahmed in Basra and Hussein in
Riyaad think; and Ahmed in Basra wept with shame in his living room when he saw those pictures of his fellow Iraqis before he went out onto the street in his dirty soccer jersey and sign scrawled in Magic Marker on a torn piece
of cardboard that said, “Amercans are TORTRERS worse than SADAM!” And he and his son will hate America forever and will never, *never* forgive them; and Hussein will send his two sons to a secret training camp and write a cheque
that will eventually end up in Al Qaida’s hands; and Jed in Ohio will snicker at Ahmed’s dirty soccer jersey and stupid misspelled sign on CNN tonight and call Hussein, who he knows only in the abstract, a fucking raghead.THAT’s the problem with the apologists’ reaction to Abu Ghraib.
(Posted with permission from the author)
Boy, it’s been a long time since I updated my reading. The main reason for this, unfortunately, is that I haven’t been reading much for the last couple of months, as I’ve been caught up in other pursuits. So a couple of weeks ago, I started carving out a bit more time for reading.
- Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb
This is a book that people in fandom either adore or despise, depending on how comfortable they are with being poked fun at. While McCrumb’s caricatures are, in most cases, over the top, and in a few cases unfair, this is still an amusing romp. And I still love the moment when touring Scottish folksinger Donnie McRory discovers the filkers, starts to play “Wild Rover” for them, and after hearing the first line they belt out, stops and exclaims with outrage, “What’s all that rubbish, then? Have ye been monkeying about with the words??”I read this book when it first came out back in 1986 or so, and still enjoy revisiting it from time to time. It has a sequel, Zombies Of The Gene Pool, but unfortunately there are further books about Jay Omega after that one that I am aware of.
- The Legion Of Super-Heroes Archive Volume 1 (DC Comics)
The Legion Of Super-Heroes Archive Volume 2 (DC Comics)
The Legion Of Super-Heroes Archive Volume 3 (DC Comics)
The Legion Of Super-Heroes Archive Volume 4 (DC Comics)When I was a kid, Legion of Super Heroes was one of my favourite comics. Of course, this was in the early 80s during the Levitz/Giffen period when I started reading the title, and it was only through the occasional reprints that I ever saw any of the early days of the group.
Recently, while I was over at khaosworks apartment to bring him to Atlanta in preparation for his flight home for the summer, I asked him if I could borrow some of his Legion collections, and he loaned me the first six volumes of DC’s Archive editions. These contain all the Legion stories from their introduction in Superboy back in 1958 up through about 1968-69 or so, i believe. And I’ve slowly been working my through them.
To be honest….as much as I love what the Legion became, and as much as I can see the flashes of that future here and there…a lot of these stories are terrible. Maybe I’d have felt differently if I was a kid in 1963 reading them for the first time, and maybe my adult taste for the sort of thing that Vertigo comics publishes have spoiled me from more innocent Mort Weisinger fare, but gosh…
Most early Legion stories fall into one of four broad plots:
1) Someone attempts to join the legion but is rejected, so they vow horrible revenge for being spurned.
2) Someone attempts to join the Legion and his accepted, but is secretly working to destroy the group.
3) A member of the Legion behaves in a totally out-of-character manner for some reason (often inadequately explained), leading to conflict within the group.
or
4) A mysterious villain appears, possessing just the right sort of powers to counter and disable every single member of the group, even though each of them has a distinctly different power.Sometimes, just for fun, 2 or more of these 4 basic plots were combined together.
To be fair, these were written over 40 years ago for an entirely different sensibility (and for a much younger prospective reader). Some of it is just typical Weisingerian melodramatic nonsense that grates on my nerves in large doses. And of course, these stories were backup features in Adventure comics and spread across several months originally, and suffer a bit for being read in large chunks anyway.
And even though I pick them apart, and shake my head over them as I read them, they’re still a lot of fun, because I know that about 15 years from the time these were written, they will turn into the comics I read and loved when I was 10.
Very enjoyable if you’re especially interested in the early history of the LSH, or just like reading Silver Age comics.