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![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) wcg |
| 2008-09-07 14:01 |
| Where Eagles Dare |
| Public |
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Michael Yon has a wonderful story out today of a joint operation in Afghanistan to put a hydroelectric turbine into a dam and get power out to about a million people. It's a great story of a military and civil affairs success in the war more people should be paying attention to.
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http://www.badave.com/sounds/SquealGood.mp3 A parody of Gorillaz "Feel Good Inc". This one is a personal favorite parody and recording.
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| madfilkentist |
| 2008-09-07 13:17 |
| A step back is a step forward |
| Public |
| Con from Argo |
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A couple of years ago my Yamaha PSR-410 keyboard started acting strangely, emitting bursts of noise. I bought a used PSR-540 and put the 410 in the garage.
The 540 has better speakers (and is correspondingly heavier), but otherwise has been frustrating to use. Its features are badly deployed, so that many common actions require obscure button combinations, while useless thing like auto-accompaniment are easy to start by accident. Worst of all, any settings that I store in it get reset to the default at random times; I don't know whether this is some obscure feature or a physical defect. However, transposition is always preserved when I turn the keyboard off. This means that if I play something transposed down a step, turn the keyboard off, and turn it back on a week later, it's still transposed. This has resulted in some interesting discussions: "That's too low for me!" "But I'm playing it in D minor! You always sing this in D minor!" (Though that's still not as bad as an older keyboard I had whose pitch bend wheel went bad and would randomly detune the sound.)
I'd lived with the limited features, but with the work I'm doing on Metropolis, I really would like the ability to store setting and know they'll stay there. So on a hunch, I brought down the PSR-410 and tried it out. It seems fine as long as I have a firmly plugged-in power supply and fresh batteries. It also weighs less. I may stick with it for a while.
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I bought a new calendar today and, to my surprise, among the candle-lighting times on each page it lists Pittsburgh. (Usually we don't make the cut.) While looking at this I noticed that sunset in September is moving by about 12 minutes per week, but that in March it only moves by about 8 minutes a week. Shouldn't it be symmetrical? (The delta for sunrise and sunset changes over the course of the year, with the widest swings being at equnoxes and the smallest ones at solstices. I grok that; I don't grok that they don't match.)
Friday night I saw something unusual at services: a man lit candles and a woman made kiddush and there was no special occasion dictating that. For all that egalitarianism is a core principle in my movement, I don't think I have ever seen a woman make kiddush in our sanctuary before, unless there were special circumstances (sisterhood service, a bat mitzvah, etc). Gee, maybe there's hope that someday I will be offered that honor after all. (There's still another barrier: there is a strong meme of giving that pair of honors to a couple. This was violated this week, too.)
Yesterday morning after services our newest rabbi (hmm, I need a shorthand notation for him -- the others are "senior rabbi" and "associate rabbi") talked with the group about adult education. He wanted to know what we want to learn, when we want to learn it, and how we want to learn it. It was a good discussion; I wish im luck in distilling down feedback that, in aggregate, meant "all of it". :-) He seemed a little surprised by the idea that, actually, we'd love to learn on Shabbat -- ideally right after services, but late afternoon leading into havdalah would be acceptable to some. I hope that idea bears fruit. (Of course, he was asking the group of people who self-selected to stay around after services for the discussion... but every option doesn't need to appeal to every congregant, only to a critical mass. And we also discussed the idea of giving the same class multiple times, in different kinds of timeslots -- a teacher's dream, but for some reason we don't tend to do it.)
At the end of the discussion he said something interesting, so after it broke up I asked him "did you just imply that you're available for individual study?" and he said yes. Heh. I'll be in touch.
Short takes:
I assume that everyone has by now seen Jon Stewart on election hypocrisy. You might not have seen Language Log's discourse analysis on Karl Rove.
(I have not posted about the election; it's not because I don't care, but because there's so much as to overwhelm and lots of other people are already posting good, thoughtful pieces.)
I recently found myself in a discussion about internet discussions and used the phrase on the internet nobody knows you're a dog. I later went looking for the cartoon; it shouldn't surprise me that it has a Wikipedia entry, but it did surprise me a little that Google suggested the phrase after I'd typed only "on the internet". That real-time search-guessing thing is good sometimes. (I also went looking for a recipe for a dish I ate last night at Ali Baba's, and when I'd typed only "mujdara" it offered two completions, "recipe" and "calories".)
Speaking (sort of) of internet discoveries, this article from Real Live Preacher taught me about the Caganer, a figure we don't often see in nativity scenes these days but apparently quite normal in times past.
This article on using the internet for identity theft (link from Raven) didn't have anything new for me, but it's a good summary to give to people just getting started. It did remind me how annoying I find the canned security questions used by most banks -- things like "mother's maiden name" and "city of your birth" were way too easy to crack even before the net was ubiquitious. (And the ones that aren't tend to be non-deterministic, like "favorite color".) Fortunately, in most cases your bank doesn't really care about the answer; it's just a password. So lying adds security at little cost, assuming you can remember the lie. (What do you mean my first pet wasn't named "as375m~@z"? :-) )
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A friend of mine has recently set up a fanfiction archive. You can post all your stories there... so far categories include: Nightmare on Elm Street, Batman, Burn Notice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and I'm assuming by extension Angel), Doctor Who/Torchwood, Harry Potter, The Lone Gunman, Smallville, Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, Supernatural, and Teen Titans... I'm sure many more fandoms will be added, and I'm going to talk to Techie about possibly separating the Torchwood and Doctor Who categories, and maybe adding in Sarah Jane Adventures.
Inkspill and Quill
I hope this is helpful to all you Doctor Who fic writers... another place to display your work.
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| mamadeb |
| 2008-09-07 12:49 |
| I am unemployed |
| Public |
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This was not a surprise - I've been waiting for the job to end, as the business was doing VERY badly - boss had mortgaged his house to support it.
And I do appreciate that they let me enjoy the vacation before, well, extending it.
I'll get unemployment, I could use the time not working before Yom Tov (wasn't planning on doing much paid work during Elul), I have another project in the works. It will be fine. Plus Joel said he'd write me the highest recommendation, and I believe him.
I will, however, give up comic books (not a sacrifice - I've been losing interest) and start doing my own laundry. :)
And, who knows? Maybe I'll write a bit more.
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| slipjig |
| 2008-09-07 12:15 |
| Let's say I kick this trash can. *BWANK* |
| Public |
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| Rock me, rock me, rock me sexy Jesus.... |
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We went to see Hamlet 2 yesterday.
I am telling you this as fair warning, because I'm going to be quoting this thing for months.
Seriously. I measured how close I came to literally landing on the soda-drench theater floor from laughing so hard, and it was a matter of three inches. There is so, so much wrongness here, which is a deep and resounding compliment (we're talking about a movie where the line, "They can suck a bag of dicks" is coming from an ACLU lawyer). Granted, there aren't too many opportunities to work the phrase "hot buttered love spackle" into casual conversation, and Dana's reaction to the bad review of his two-person stage adaptation of Erin Brockovich wouldn't go over well under most circumstances. But I'm still rocking out to "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" a day later, so I'd say I'm fairly well doomed. Oh, and soon as a still is available, I am totally making an icon of Dana's slack-jawed stare at the computer screen: "Writing is so hard."
And it hurts to say this, since I know it's an impossiblity, but somehow, some way, I need to bear Steve Coogan's children.
This has been my report. Thank you. "My life is a parody of a tragedy."
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Remember: comments and credits are love.
NO HOTLINK, PLEASE!
- 42 icons
TEASER
HERE @ lere8
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Requet for HD (large and really good quality) screencaps from both of these episodes :O
I've not found the specific cap I'm looking for in any of the linked placed :(
( Read more... )
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As many of you may the house has been totaled by the insurance company. So, we're going to be packing up the house and putting it into storage next weekend (Sept. 13-14). Any and all help would be appreciated in the moving process. We would especially like trucks and such to help with some of the stuff. We'll probably have a moving truck, but the more vehicles the better. If you want to help pack up the house during this week, let us know as that help would be appreciated as well.
Thanks to everyone for their support since the storm.
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I know I've said this before, but just because a change is good doesn't mean it's not stressful, or that it's not going to be a lot of work. This one's no different.
Some of the work it involves is explainy work, so here goes.
Early/mid May, John and I finally managed to conceive. We're expecting our firstborn in mid-February, which means I may well not make it to Capricon this year, though if I'm feeling well I'll do my darndest. The gestation is going very well; my 'worst' side-effects and symptoms only rise to the level of annoyances, and I certainly do know how rare that is. For those of you who like the numbers, this is Week 17.
For those of you who read this entry back here, this may confuse you -- I am still a transsexual. I mentally identify myself as male, and intend over the next several years to take medical steps to make that my legal identity as well. However, I still have a working uterus and ovaries, and John and I want kids, so the medical steps will wait until after we're done with that.
However, the first legal steps on that journey will be happening SOON -- I will be changing my first name from Eloise to Elliott on my paperwork, even with an F in the gender marker.
This is because I consulted with Lambda Legal's free-advice helpdesk, and discovered that Illinois is bound and determined to never change parent-name information on a birth certificate. We intend to cross international borders with our kids (at minimum to visit their grandparents in Toronto!), and homeland security may well get pissy if the parental names on our passports then do not match the parental names on the kids' birth certificates, so it eases the path if I change my name before it goes on a birth certificate.
All y'all can keep calling me whatever you're most comfortable calling me; I certainly don't expect my (increasingly vague) grandmother to keep it straight, she's known me too long under my old name.
However, since my dad (and other family members) are going to be coming to visit me while I'm in the hospital, and they'll be looking under the wrong name if I don't tell them I've changed it, it means the 'coming out' conversation has to come rather sooner than I'd been expecting it too. Oh well. Drama now puts off legal problems later, I suppose. :->
On the plus side, it means for future transcript purposes, my HWC records will have the right long-term permanent name on them.
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| leiacat |
| 2008-09-07 10:53 |
| A viticultural note |
| Public |
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While in Buffalo last weekend I was pleasantly surprised to discover a new local attaction.
It is no secret that I am a sucker for New York-produced wines. In fact, a part of the reason for my visit was to stock up at the fabulous Premier Liquors store, wherein among multitudes of other things we bought out the entire stock of the mead that we had at our wedding. (Alas, their stock was a paltry 9 bottles).
Well, it turns out that in the past couple of years the nearby town of Lockport, previously hardly noteworthy, has acquired quite a respectable wine trail. We explored approximately half of the trail in an afternoon, and had a lovely time of it. As usual, that region's whites turned out to mostly be a bit more interesting than the reds, there was a pleasant selection of fruit wines, lovely luxurious dessert wines, semi-sweets that were sweet, semi-dries that were semi-sweet, and dries that were pleasant.
And then, there was the most curious Warm Lake Estate, which specializes exclusively in Pinot Noir. While this is not necessarily the wine that I think of that I think "New York", evidently there turns out to be a particular locale that's the perfect locale for it, both the climate and the soil evidently very similar to Burgundy, France.
The visit was perhaps one of the most educational wine tastings that I've had in quite a while, since it offered with no distraction a study in contrast of the same grape not only between two years, but also with the difference of a mere half a block of geography. One of the offerings was single plot, 'over there down the hill'. Another was the same year, similarly processed and aged, but blended from grapes across the whole property. Both were quite pleasant, but I was astonished by how very different the two ended up. (We did not get either, but we did pick up a couple of travel-sized bottles of the fortified version of the estate variant, allegedly a bottler's mistake).
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