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)
Category: Blog Page 96 of 141
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.
Waves of Mourners Honor Reagan in D.C.
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
(snip…)
Donna Hand of Ashburn, Va., waited five hours to see the casket and spent
about three minutes inside. “It was a very moving experience for me. It was
very solemn,” Hand said. “It made you feel patriotic.”
(Pointed out by Brooke McEldowney on rec.arts.comics.strips. The AP has apparently corrected the text in the story since it first went out.)
On the way over to the data centre this morning to check on an ailing server, I heard the following on the radio traffic report:
“Backups on 75/85, where the HOV lane is blocked due to a medical emergency. a pregnant woman is in labour.”
And I thought to myself, “Gee, some people will do anything to get to use the HOV lane…”
Autographedcat: And now, here’s Robert Plant, David Gilmour, Jack Bruce, and Neal Peart, who have formed a supergroup called “The Hideaways” to perform their cover of ABBA’s “Fernando”
JTW RCCC: ROFL
JTW RCCC: You’d never make it to the end of the song…there’d be too many bass solos
JTW RCCC: You know Gilmour would play bass too, just to fit in 🙂
JTW RCCC: Eventually Plant would leave and see what Craft Services had on the spread
autographedcat: Well, I put together a singer, a lead guitarist, a bassist, and a drummer, so that’s a band 🙂
JTW RCCC: I’m telling you, Bruce would play too many bass solos 🙂
autographedcat: oh, definitely 🙂
autographedcat: and, with Gilmour producing, it would be on the album as:
Fernando, Part I (the intro)
Fernando, Part II (the first two verses)
Fernando, Part III (Jacks’ bass solo #1)
Fernando, Part IV (the next two verses)
Fernando, Part V (Jack’s bass solo #2)
Brand New Key
Chevy Van
Fernando, Part VI (Jack’s bass solo #3)
Fernando, Part VII (Dave’s guitar solo)
Fernando, Part VIII (the last verse)
Fernando, Part IX (drum solo and outro)
JTW RCCC: ROFL
JTW RCCC: I’d give anything to see Robert Plant sing Brand New Key 🙂
I normally eschew this type of meme, but I couldn’t help but admire the sentence:
If there is someone on your friends list you would love to have an epic, sweaty, damn near legendary, 12 hour, nitrous infused, wake up the neighbors, loud, hair-pulling, squirting, soul wrenching, exploratory, tongue up the ass, pile o boobies, pounding, body slappin’, oh My God, explosive, cuddliscious, I’ll even make you breakfast, fuckathon with, post this same exact sentence in your journal.
(In deference to my friends list, I will only post this once, and not once for every person on my list for which this is true. I think the people for whom this applies know who they are.<g> )
Ever since I officially got promoted to a more managerial position at work, it’s has become painfully obvious to me that I needed some sort of external brain to keep track of all the things I need to be tracking. I can keep notes on paper, but its hard to keep everything organized, and my PC is easy to keep organized, but not portable. The solution was obviously to replace my long-abandoned Palm Pilot.
Back in 2001, i got a free Palm m100 when I bought my cell phone. It was a Best Buy promotion, and it was attached the phone I had already researched and wanted to buy anyway, so I regarded it as a curiosity. It was a useful address book and calender, but with only 2mb of memory it really couldn’t do much. It was also large and bulky, and I eventually stopped carrying it around. Eventually, I gave it to telynor, but soon after that it stopped syncing up and became officially useless.
kitanzi and I had decided to get telynor a replacement Palm for her birthday in time for her to take it to London with her, so I had already done a significant amount of research on what was available, and I ended up buying for myself the same one I selected for her: a Tungsten E. The T-E really does have the best price/performance ratio of any of the units out there. (If the Zire 72 had Wi-Fi in addition to it’s 1.3 mp camera, it might have been worth the extra $100. But at $200, the T-E is hard to beat.)
I had everything working beautifully at home, but at work I had a small problem: I don’t run Windows, and Palm doesn’t officially support Linux. But all I really need to have working here is the Calender and Tasklist, and Evolution will do that. All I had to do was get my Debian Linux box to talk to the Palm, and I should be in good shape.
Step one was finding out that my current installation had no USB support. I still had the kernel source from when I had to recompile it to enable multi-processor support, so I figured it’d be a fairly simple process. (Especially since I had great instructions from fleetfootmike on how to accomplish that). Unfortunately, the newest version of gcc appears to not like the 2.2.20 kernel source.
Well, I’d vaguely been thinking of upgrading the kernel anyway. Not that I had a pressing need to do it, but it was something I honestly had never really done, and horizons are for seeking. So I downloaded the newest non-development kernel, 2.6.6, and set to work.
I had a few rough spots, as I kept finding stuff that I had left out that I needed, but this morning I was able to boot, and a couple of recompiles later I got back networking and serial communication. 🙂 Finally, after searching, I found a great website specifically aimed at demystifying what bits were needed to get my Palm device talking to Linux. One more recompile later and I was able to set up my Palm and sync it with Evolution. Yay!
I’m inordinately impressed with Debian’s kernel management process. The last time I had do this, it was a much less painless procedure, which is one of the reasons I’d been putting it off for so long. Yet another reason I’m glad we’re moving towards it as a platform for our work servers as well.
This was a pleasing way to start the day.
Ok, so everyone has probably heard William Shatner’s…..um…..”rendition” of the Lennon/McCartney song “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.
If you thought that it couldn’t possible get more surreal….well, you were wrong:
Some folks produced a video. Available in Quicktime or Windows Media.
Enjoy.