Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Goth Pride fundraiser

by

Last night I made a rare mid-week visit to the Vogue, as they were having a fundraiser for the local goth community’s entry into this Sunday’s Pride parade. It gave me a chance to play a little bit with low-light photography, experimenting with various shutter speeds to see if I could get anything decent at the club.

Bad JuJu Lounge and The Vogue, Seattle, WASome shots worked better than others, of course (trial and error will do that). I brought along a monopod, which allowed me to me to go for two- to four-second exposures without too much camera shake. A tripod would have been better, but it would have been a lot bulkier and a lot more difficult to adjust quickly. The resulting shots aren’t my greatest, but I’m not unhappy with them at all — it was fun to try, and I’ve got a better idea of what settings to use the next time I get a chance for something like this.

Burlesque, Goth Pride Fundraiser, The Vogue, Seattle, WAThe one bummer was that as the actual fundraiser part of the show started late (scheduled for 10:30pm, they didn’t get going until about 11:15pm), I only got a chance to shoot three of the burlesque dancers before I had to leave. By the time I had found settings that were working pretty well (half-second exposure, front-curtain flash, focus fixed at just over two meters), the three of them were done and I needed to be getting home.

Still, it was fun to experiment with, and I got some time to bounce around on the dance floor for a bit. I’d been missing that, as the past two weekends have been too busy for me to make it out on Saturday night, and I don’t think I’ll be making it out this Saturday, either. Sunday’s the Pride parade, and Prairie and I will be heading up to watch that along with Rick and Kirsten and her husband; and on Saturday we’re planning on heading out to the Utilikilt Anniversary picnic.

The Vogue, Seattle, WA

Looks to be another busy weekend lined up. Yay for summer!

iTunes “Believer” by BT from the album Go (1999, 5:11).

Rules and Regs, Section 8: Noise

by

My apartment building just transferred to a new management company, and along with the letter alerting all the tenants to the transfer, they also gave us a copy of the new rules and regulations for the building (which, as far as I can tell, is the same as the old rules and regulations). For those of us that weren’t home when they distributed these, they left them taped to our doors.

So, since my next door neighbor hadn’t emerged from his apartment to grab his copy yet, I grabbed a big red permanent marker and circled section eight on his copy:

NOISE: All Residents and their guests shall have due regard for the peace, comfort and quiet enjoyment of other Residents at all times. Musical instruments, radios, television sets, laundry facilities, etc. must be kept quiet from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. All noise shall be confined within the walls of Resident’s own apartment.

I doubt it’ll make much of a difference — he hasn’t shown any indication of caring one whit about those of us on either side of him — but it made me feel a little bit better.

iTunes “Misery Machine” by Marilyn Manson from the album Portrait of an American Family (1994, 13:09).

More old Gig’s photos

by

I’ve updated my photoset of old photos from Gig’s Music Theatre with shots of a lot of my friends from that time period. I’d held off on uploading those, as I don’t have a way to contact most of those people to be sure they won’t mind, but tonight I figured that as most of the shots have been on my archived Gig’s Music Theatre site for years now — and had been donated to me for public use — that it would be okay.

Of course, if anyone finds them and says “Hey! Get me offa there!” I’ll oblige. Hopefully that won’t be the case, though.

www.flickr.com

iTunes “I Showed A Caveman How to Rock” by US3 feat. Def Jef from the album Flintstones, The (1994, 5:19).

Fremont Favorites

by

My top three favorite photos from yesterday, in reverse order:

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA

“Butterfly Girl,” as we ended up nicknaming her. She rode with the naked bikers, though she chose to stay dressed. Quite pretty, and I love her mask.

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA

One of the floats had a group of people dressed in bride and groom costumes, running around and “marrying” anyone who asked. This green-haired bride ended up as my second favorite shot.

My favorite shot, as often happens, was pure luck. I was trying to get a picture of one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as they walked by. My camera was being a little slow, probably having a tough time auto-focusing on moving people and trying to adjust exposure all at the same time. I wasn’t sure quite when it was actually going to take the shot, so I just stayed crouched down to the ground, aiming the camera as the Sister as she walked past me, hoping that something useable would come out.

What I ended up getting floored me.

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA

So much better than what I was expecting to end up with, or even hoping for. Hooray for luck!

As before, the rest of my shots are in the Flickr photoset.

www.flickr.com

iTunes “Peace, Love and Grease (Hot Tracks)” by BT from the album Roadkill 2.19 (1997, 6:48).

Free Wi-Fi for my apartment?

by

Last month, the City of Seattle launched a program to bring free Wi-Fi access to several prominent areas around Seattle. The initial launch was in Columbia City and the University District, but other parks planned to go online include downtown’s Westlake, Victor Steinbrueck, Occidental, and Freeway parks.

Progress is obviously being made, as today on my way home for lunch I saw a work crew installing one of the Wi-Fi antennas on a lamppost on the 8th Avenue bridge over Freeway Park. Now I’m starting to wonder if my building just might end up with free Wi-Fi access provided by the City of Seattle. Here’s a look at the local layout:

Freeway Park Wi-Fi

Freeway Park is (roughly) outlined in red. The antenna I saw being installed is marked in yellow (I’m sure there must be more scattered around the park), and my apartment building is outlined in green. Now, I don’t know quite how much coverage beyond the borders of Freeway Park the antennas will provide, but just eyeballing it, I’d say that there’s at least a chance that my building might be covered.

Of course, the downside is that none of my computers are Wi-Fi enabled, so it wouldn’t do me any good. Still, I have a few friends with iBooks that occasionally stop by, so this might be a good thing for them.

iTunes “Now That I Have You” by Information Society from the album Hack (1990, 5:03).

Offshoring

by

Some things from last night’s Weblogger meetup that just popped into my head.

While Jake was interviewing Chas and I, the topic of offshoring came up. I then decided that the next time I go on vacation, I’m going to turn guest-blogging duties over to one of my regular readers that lives overseas. That way, I’ll be offshoring my blog.

Later I was standing outside with Kristin and Ian, and they commented on my Daring Fireball t-shirt, saying that they needed to make their own (their own site t-shirts, that is, not make their own bootleg Daring Fireball t-shirts, though that got some laughs). They figured that they could probably pay local kids a dollar a shirt to do some nice ghetto-style silkscreening. This led to a mix of child labor/sweat shop/offshoring jokes, culminating in my declaration that, “We only abuse local children!”

Politically correct? No.

Funny?

Definitely.

iTunes “B-Boy Stance (Freestylers Revenge)” by Freestylers feat. Tenor Fly from the album Plastic Compilation Vol. II (1997, 6:50).

June Meetup

by

Fun conversations and gadgetry at the Webloggers Meetup last night.

Apple eMate, June Webloggers Meetup, Ralph's Grocery, Seattle, WAPhillip Torrone brought a bunch of old and new hardware, gadgets, and toys along, including an Apple eMate, a Newton, and his cell phone — which is actually an old rotary phone that he’s hacked the cell phone hardware into. Pretty impressive!

Chas and Pops and I spent some time talking about Podcasts, and the possibility of my turning my dj mixes into a podcast stream. I’m still not entirely sure if I’m going to move that way, but I’m at least running it around in my head.

June Webloggers Meetup, Ralph's Grocery, Seattle, WAJake was wandering around interviewing anyone who’d sit still in his vicinity for more than a minute, and tossed a few questions my way. Look for some rather brainless-sounding pauses, “um”s and “aaahh…”s from me in an upcoming podcast from him at some point, if he doesn’t edit me out completely. ;)

As things were winding down, I spent a little time chatting with Kristin and Ian, both first-time attendees. Much enjoyed were the possibilities of answering Jake’s “What tech issue would you ask your state representative about if you had the chance?” question with “Teledildonics“, and Kristin and Ian’s picture outside the local Department of Homeland Security office.

A walk home afterwards, accompanied for a while by Jake and Chas until they went off their respective directions, and the evening was done. Not bad at all.

iTunes “My Weakness” by Moby from the album Play (1999, 3:37).

I can dream…

by

Today, one of Seattle’s newspapers (I don’t remember which) had a huge headline across the top of the page:

JACKSON FREE

My first thought on seeing that was wishing that it was a declaration of content, not just a news story. I’d be thrilled if everything I read was “Jackson Free”.

Maybe now that the trial’s over, we’ll get a bit closer to that oh-so-happy day.

iTunes “Mr. Angry” by µ-Ziq from the album In Pine Effect (1995, 5:36).