Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

Tsunami Early Warning System

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(Mom sent this to dad and me, with the following note attached: “My boss’ mailbox was full and I had to remove some items, which means forwarding them to my computer.  This was among them the ones I forwarded.  I thought my guys would appreciate this.”)

After the massive destruction of the south Asia tsunami, the Red Cross has decided to distribute FREE Tsunami Early Warning System/ Earthquake Detectors.

Earthquakes can be dangerous.

Especially at beaches where Tsunamis can occur.

Know the signs to watch for of a nearby earthquake!

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Fanfic

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There’s a short article in Wired today about fanfic, with one bit that jumped out at me…

As befits its beginnings, the genre is planted firmly in pop culture’s nerd division. The films most often given the fanfic treatment – The Matrix, X-Men, and Pirates of the Caribbean – wing straight out of dork central.

Well, chalk me up as a pop-culture nerd living in dork central, as my one — and so far, my only — foray into fanfic so far has been a short piece called ‘Glitch‘…and yes, it’s Matrix-derived.

“This is useless, we’re wasting our time here. Let’s go.” I stood up, letting my chair roll back a couple feet behind me. “Dan?” Dan looked up at me, then nodded, getting up from his chair too.

“I don’t think leaving will be quite as easy as you expect,” said our host. He reached out and pressed the button on his intercom. “Could you come in now, please? We’re having some…difficulties…in our negotiations.” The door to the conference room opened, and the two thugs that had ushered us upstairs came in and took positions in front of the door.

Dan glanced at me and rolled his eyes, then shrugged. We’d had to fight our way out of rooms before — it’s not our preferred exit strategy, but sometimes there just isn’t an option. “You know this is pointless, Rourke,” I said. “You can’t hold us here indefinitely. Even if you tried, we’d already called in to the precinct before coming in here, so when we don’t report in, more police will be on the way.”

Rourke leaned back in his chair, tapping the table with his pen. “Maybe,” he said, “but you don’t play this game as long as I have without taking a few risks when necessary. We have a little time, at least, before your superiors start to get restless. So may I suggest, gentlemen,” — the pen stopped tapping as he leaned forward again — “that you sit back down.”

Okay, while it’s not likely to win any awards, it’s not too shabby, either. Feel free to give it a look if you haven’t seen it before.

Which fireworks display?

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Two out of the past three years, I’ve gone down to Gas Works Park for the annual WaMu Family Fourth fireworks display. However, seeing as how Seattle is blessed with two major fireworks shows, I’m considering switching over to the Fourth of Jul-Ivar’s event at Myrtle Edwards Park.

The biggest reason is simply convenience. Much as I’ve enjoyed the displays at Gas Works in years past, I have to bus out to it from where I live, and trying to get home afterwards can be a nightmare, with buses packed to capacity and traffic slowing to a near standstill.

Myrtle Edwards park, on the other hand, is an easy walk from my apartment, and it’d be far easier for me to get there and then back home afterwards. Besides…fireworks are fireworks, and no matter which park I head to, there should be lots of opportunities for good shots over the course of the day.

Has anyone local to Seattle been to both events (on different years, I’m assuming)? And if so, is there a definite preference for one or the other? Or does anyone have a house atop Queen Anne Hill for me to invade that would let me get a clear view of both? ;)

Office Depot bootlegs

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I stopped by the downtown Seattle Office Depot on lunch to do some coveting, and had to wonder how customers were expected to compare the quality of the various LCD displays when they were all playing a highly-compressed (crappy) video — possibly a VCD — of music videos taken from CMT‘s broadcast stream (complete with a “Ripped by…” banner that popped up every few videos).

I halfway considered saying something to the one employee on duty, but as he could barely manage to grunt a greeting at me as I walked by since he was so engrossed in watching a (highly-illegal) bad quality (overcompressed and the wrong aspect ratio) bootleg of Star Wars Episode III — yeah, the one still in theaters — I didn’t think that it would be worth it.

iTunes “Four Sticks” by Rollins Band from the album Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin (1995, 3:31).

Podcast 03: Difficult Listening Hour 04

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Number three of my old collection of mix sessions that I’m putting up for download and podcast. The keen-eyed might notice that we’ve jumped straight from DLH02 to DLH04. There is a DLH03, but I’ve decided to hold off on posting that one just yet as, quite honestly, the mixing in the current version of DLH03…well, it sucks. Very train wreck-y.

I was hoping to be able to re-mix DHL03 last night so that I could continue posting these in order, but I’m still figuring out the mixing software I have and, well, apparently I didn’t do something quite right.

In the meantime, though, this one’s in good shape. It’s also the longest of the mixes I’ve put up so far, very nearly a full hour and a quarter.

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: Difficult Listening Hour 04 (1h 14m 27s, 85.39Mb). Tracks included are:

  1. God Within ‘Raincry (Submerged)’
  2. Jaydee ‘Plastic Dreams’
  3. Snitzer & McCoy vs. Humate ‘Oh My Darling I Love You (Heavy)’
  4. Basco ‘The Beat Goes On’
  5. Lo Fidelity All Stars ‘Lazer Dip Sheep Funk’
  6. Freestylers ‘Drop the Boom’
  7. Freestylers ‘Don’t Stop’
  8. Len ‘Man of the Year’
  9. Toxic Twins feat. The Dust Brothers ‘I’ll House You (Toxik Acid Vybe and Phunky Bass)’
  10. Cirrus ‘Back on a Mission (DJ Dan)’
  11. DJ Supreme ‘The Wildstyle (Klubbheads)’
  12. Kornholio ‘Friction (Hot Tracks)’

Just a coincidence

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I’ve updated my original post to reflect this, but just to be perfectly clear, it does appear that North Shore’s “I’m just here to get laid…” shirt is nothing more than a coincidence, as I knew was possible.

From what I can tell from a couple quick Google searches, my I’m Too Sexy… shirts (“I’m too sexy for my blog” and “I’m too sexy for your blog“) are still one-of-a-kind, available only from my site and (sigh) CafePress.

Wo0t!

iTunes “Chickasuarus” by Pigface from the album Preaching to the Perverted (2001, 5:04).

OpinionOutpost comment spam

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Note: On 10/27/2005, I received an apology e-mail from the person who left the comment that originally prompted this post. I’ve accepted his apology, and have removed his name and contact information from this post. Mistakes happen, but Opinion Outpost does appear to be on the level.

[redacted] —

Today I received the following comment on my weblog. The comment was posted to an old entry (a technique often used to “hide” information, as it is less likely to be noticed by site owners), had nothing to do with the subject of the entry, and was nothing more than an unsolicited advertisement — in short, it was spam.

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Shiny!

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Just a quick note of thanks to Bryan, Dori, Shelley, Tvindy, Jacqueline, Johan, and probably others that I’ve forgotten. All of you have, at one point or another, either personally or through your weblogs, recommended Firefly. I just finished watching the last episode tonight…

…and damn if I’m not as excited about Serenity as the rest of you are.

Two quick questions (spoiler-free answers, please):

  1. I couldn’t find Book anywhere in the trailer. Am I just missing him, or did they not put him in for some reason? I’m sure I’ve read that all of the primary cast came back for the film.

  2. Isn’t Kaylee just one of the cutest/sexiest women ever? Admittedly, part of that may be that she’s about the closest thing to a “clone” of an earlier Whedon character (Willow, of course) who was consistently my favorite on Buffy…but even if I hadn’t had a silly fanboy tv-character crush on Willow, I’m pretty sure I’d have one for Kaylee.

Anyway, thanks for mentioning this show often enough and with high enough praise that it caught my eye. It was well worth it.

Now to see if I can get Prairie to watch the series before the movie comes out…

Imitation, Flattery, and All That Jazz…

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If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then I suppose I should consider myself flattered — either that, or there’s a rather surprising coincidence going on. Update: Coincidence! See the end of this post for more…

In October of 2003, I dreamed up my “I’m just here to get laid” t-shirt and put it up on CafePress, where it’s sold a whopping…um…five. Maybe.

One of the things about CafePress I’m not terribly fond of is that they don’t offer white-on-black merchandise, so for my birthday on May 3rd of this year, I had a white-on-black version of the shirt custom made. Since then, I’ve worn it around town from time to time, both to the Vogue and to the major festivals (Folklife, Fremont Solstice, and Pride), where it’s gotten a lot of good laughs.

Earlier today, thanks to a comment in Brandon’s LiveJournal (where I’m described very accurately and amusingly as “the kilt wearing skinny dude”) that North Shore Shirts (an offshoot of the local weblog Then You Discover) is selling a shirt that looks very familiar (aside from using a different font and ending with an ellipsis rather than a period). According to the store weblog, their shirt was introduced on May 30th of this year.

Admittedly, my first reaction was to get a little peeved — but then, I’m also running on about three hours of sleep today, and my temper can flare up pretty easily — but wasn’t too long before I just thought it was funny. Now, it is entirely possible that it’s nothing more than a remarkable coincidence that another Seattle weblogger would come up with a near-duplicate idea…but if it isn’t a coincidence, then I’ll settle for flattery.

Besides — they obviously have the ability to actually create and sell these things without resorting to CafePress or the like, which I don’t have the ability to do. A pity, too…after the number of compliments I’ve gotten on the shirt, I was starting to poke around various shirt printing sites to see what it would take to make a batch to sell myself. Looks like North Shore beat me to it!

So — if you think the shirt is funny, and would be satisfied with a fair-to-middling quality black-on-white CafePress version, pick one up here and I’ll get a whole dollar (ooooohhhhh…) for each one ordered. On the other hand, if you’d prefer a high-quality (I’m assuming) white-on-black version (and cheaper than CafePress, to boot), you can pick it up from North Shore Shirts, and I’ll get…um…the satisfaction of helping them out with their sales. Yeah. That’s it! ;)

(Oh, and North Shore…if this is all coincidence, then I like your sense of humor. If it isn’t coincidence, is there any chance I could get an “idea by…” or “inspired by…” link on that shirt’s page?)

Update: Word from Mikey at North Shore is that, as I said was very possible, it’s just a coincidence. She also pointed out that there are at least two other variations of the idea floating around out there.

Guess I’m not as creative as I’d like to think. ;)

Hopefully there’s no hard feelings left behind (I did recommend their shirts over mine, after all)…