On This Day: Mar 20

Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 28 posts previously published on March 20th

  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2022
    • 🎥 West Side Story Some parts I like as much as or better than the original, other parts the original still wins out.
  • 2021
    • 📚 13/2021: The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee 6/6 Very much enjoyed this one. From chasing cryptids to speculative evolution, with parallel worlds and spacefaring trilobites, and a good dose of humor and good old British stiff-upper-lip.
  • 2020
    • Can I simultaneously respect the people willing to give their time, energy, and skills to voluntarily sewing masks to donate to hospitals, and the people who refuse to do so because it’s a request/expectation for more unpaid skilled labor in a traditionally feminine area?
    • From a friend on Facebook: “Drive-in movie theaters need to come back.” Social distancing while still participating in a social activity, watching first-run films on a big screen, theaters and studios still able to function during pandemics…. Doesn’t seem like a horrid idea.
    • On This Day: Mar 20 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from March 20
  • 2019
    • Book twenty-five of 2019: Gemini, by Mike W. Barr. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 🖖 📚
    • Just one month to Norwescon 42! (For me, at least, since I show up on Wednesday. Other staff members show up earlier, the con itself formally starts on Thursday. But for me, just four weeks to go!)
    • Love Death + Robots I watched all of Love Death + Robots on Saturday, and while much of the animation was impressive and parts of it were interesting, and I enjoyed a few of the episodes, as a whole, it was rather ‘meh’.
  • 2017
    • Came home from work, and Prairie had made really good Indian food (a coconut pineapple curry and a masala), and baked apple pie for desert! The house smelled so good…and dinner tasted incredible. I’m so spoiled! :)
  • 2016
    • Got my first badge ribbon, and #nwc39 doesn’t even start until Thursday! (80/366)
  • 2014
    • Summer of 1990 at Schloß Neuschwanstein in Germany, during a six-week trip through Germany, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, and Greece with the People to People organization. #throwbackthursday
  • 2007
    • I am so smart…S-M-R-T… See that bit, third line from the bottom? I made the **Dean's list**! Okay, so for many people this wouldn't be a big thing, but while I've never doubted that I've got a couple brain cells to rub together, good grades have _never_ been a common occurrence in my life.
    • Satellite I've updated djwudi.com (which I'm using to highlight my photography) to use Satellite. Since Dreamhost has a few security measures in place that needed to be worked around, I'm detailing my changes to the source code under the jump.
    • A little tense… The nonconfessions inspired William Schneider, a political guru here, to note a few years ago that Washington had contributed a new tense to the language. 'This usage,' he said, 'should be referred to as the **past exonerative**.'
  • 2005
    • Mayan Horoscope Where I'm apparently fairly bull-headed in both the standard Zodiac (Taurus) and Chinese (Ox), according to the Mayans, I'm a Serpent.
    • It’s official: Flickr now part of Yahoo! The rumors were true, as it turns out, and the official announcement was made today on the FlickrBlog: Yahoo actually does acquire Flickr. While I'm sure this is good news for both Yahoo! and Flickr, I have to admit that in some ways, I'm a little less than thrilled that Yahoo! is the winning buyer.
    • Gnomedex comes to Seattle It appears that Gnomedex, one of the big blog/tech/geek/pick-a-descriptor conferences is coming to Seattle this summer, and Julie's going to be speaking. Congrats, Julie! I'd love to go, but it's out of my budget this year.
    • Git yer meat on! My brother Kevin is in town for the weekend to hang out with a couple old friend of his, and I was able to get together with the three of them last night for dinner at the Ipanema Brazillian Grill downtown.
  • 2004
  • 2003
    • A day of protest My work was kind enough to let me call in and take a personal day today, and I spent the entire day at the 'Day of' protest in front of the Federal Building in downtown Seattle. I'm home now — tired and footsore, but very happy.
    • Nighttime beauty Trying to find something nicer to look at than the constant barrage of news, I spent some time last night experimenting with taking nighttime shots of some of the flowers in the Convention Center Park by my house. Since using the 'macro' (closeup) mode of my camera gives it a very shallow depth of field, by shooting at night I was able to get nice deep blacks behind the flowers, while the flash brought out the colors of the petals. On some of the shots you can see the evening dew hanging off of the flowers.
  • 2002
    • MovableType 2.0 I've just upgraded the backend for my site to MovableType 2.0, which was just released today. New toys are always good! Front page changes being the most visible, I'll address those first.
    • Explaining Enron A quick primer on the Enron scandal (courtesy of A Boy and His Computer): Explaining the Enron collapse through simple financial terms.
    • I’m organized, really The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers on their desks, because they haven't yet sorted and filed the ideas in their head.
    • 9/11 slang The phenomena itself shouldn't be a surpise, but the Washington Post has a good article about teenagers adapting Sept. 11th buzzwords into modern-day slang.

On This Day: Mar 19

Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 23 posts previously published on March 19th

  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2020
    • Proxyman – Modern and Delightful HTTP Debugging Proxy on macOS: Proxyman is a native, high-performance macOS application, which enables developers to observe and manipulate HTTP/HTTPS requests.
    • On This Day: Mar 19 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from March 19
    • 📚 fifteen of 2020: *batteries not included by Wayland Drew ⭐️⭐️⭐️ I had vague memories of the film, but as it turns out, very vague: other than the tiny flying saucers, none of this was familiar. A pleasant enough bit of fluff to distract myself with, but not much more.
  • 2017
    • Book twenty of 2017: Bones of the Coast, edited by Shannon Campbell, Jeff Ellis, and Kathleen Jacques. 🌟🌟🌟🌟 #Kickstarter
  • 2016
    • Sprawled on a hotel bed, watching X-Files. Not a bad Saturday evening, really. (79/366)
    • Forgot my photo yesterday, so here’s another stupid Snapchat filter as penance. (78/366)
  • 2014
    • An end-of-the-day “almost forgot today’s picture” shot.
  • 2007
    • Christina’s Candyman As I said above, the rest of _Back to Basics_ didn't grab me, but those three? I'd definitely say it's worth spending the three bucks to snag 'em off of iTunes. And don't worry, I won't tell anyone you're listening to Christina Aguilera if you don't want me to. ;)
  • 2004
    • Legal pornography? So…anyone know why, on the new Google Local search, when you do a search for 'porn' and your zip code, you get a bunch of results for lawyers?
    • Rev. Karen Dammann I just found out about this from a headline yesterday, and hadn't had a chance to look up any of the information until just now, but Bothell, WA has become the centerpoint of what could be a precedent-setting event within the Methodist church, as Rev. Karen Damman is in the midst of a church trial that could end up stripping her of her ordination — because she is a practicing homosexual.
    • Just curious I sometimes wonder how people would react to a Biblical film cast entirely with actors from that area of the world.
  • 2003
    • It begins After holding back for a whopping 90 minutes after Bush's 48-hour deadline, cruise missiles started falling on Baghdad about 45 minutes ago.
    • 10 minutes The fact that I can do a countdown to when the bombs could start falling is probably one of the single most freaky and surreal things about this whole mess.
    • Getting active Until recently, I've never been overly politically minded, or even very politically conscious. I knew my general outlook leaned toward the liberal side of things, of course, and I'd occasionally make random grumbling noises when I saw or heard about something that I found excessively stupid or aggravating, but that was generally about the extent of it. For all too much of my life, I lived in something of a bubble of my own creation — I had my world, and my friends, and most things outside of that bubble just didn't get much thought.
  • 2002
    • You are being lied to! You Are Being Lied To acts as a battering ram against the distortions, myths, and outright lies that have been shoved down our throats by the government, the media, corporations, organized religion, the scientific establishment, and others who want to keep the truth from us.
    • Neuman sells out An interesting piece about Alfred Neuman's product endorsements. William Gaines is probably rolling in his grave about now....
    • Jesus on skis? I'm sure these were made with the best of intentions, but somehow these 'Inspirational Sport Statues' are just disturbing.
    • Beck’s iPod Cool ad from Apple on the back page of the Sunday NYT Magazine, which had an ASCII-art sillhouette of Beck's head made up of the names of all the songs on Beck's iPod, with some marketing copy explaining that Beck has a ginormous library of MP3s from which he loads 5GB at random onto his iPod every day.
    • Iroline Too much irony in your life? Try Iroline!
    • Better days Some good news from NewsWeek, after the past couple years or so of dot-com ex- and im-plosions: according to their cover story this week, Silicon Valley is alive and well, and there are brighter days ahead.
  • 2001
    • Drugs are bad Wintel users often start when they're young and experimenting...before he knows it, your average Wintel user has spiralled into an insidious pattern of expensive aggravation, lost time, and severely declining fashion sense.

📚 fifteen of 2020: *batteries not included by Wayland Drew ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I had vague memories of the film, but as it turns out, very vague: other than the tiny flying saucers, none of this was familiar. A pleasant enough bit of fluff to distract myself with, but not much more.

On This Day: Mar 18

Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 20 posts previously published on March 18th

  • 2024
  • 2020
  • 2014
    • Mmmmmm…CUPCAKE! :)
  • 2007
  • 2006
  • 2005
    • Loose Change I was trained to count change back to a customer change first, up to the amount they paid. These days, cashiers just drop the money in my hand with the change on top of the bills, making it difficult not to dump the change all over the floor. When did this start?
  • 2004
    • In my world… …the Cheesecake Factory would be decorated entirely with 1950's pin-ups.
  • 2003
    • Exploring Bush's global ineptitude Two excellent articles have popped up over the past couple days examining Bush's mind-numbingly, painful inability to actually work with the global community to accomplish his goals, putting America in a position of being the agressor 'rouge state' that the rest of the world fears.
    • More on Howard Dean Gov. Howard Dean has been crossing my radar more and more recently. As it turns out, in addition to his official site, his campaign has an official weblog active (the first time a Presidential candidate has had any form of weblog, as far as I know), and there is also a privately run 'Howard Dean in 2004' weblog active.
    • Useful bookmarklets A ton of useful (and fun, in an extremely geeky sort of way) bookmarklets for digging into the code of a website to figure out just how it all works. I've snagged the first two listed already ('Show and label divs with ids' and 'Show and label divs with classes'), and will be checking out more later on.
    • India vs. New Zealand Ever wondered what would happen if an English sports writer lost it while posting to a live website while covering a cricket match?
    • Peaceblogs Peaceblogs.org is a site devoted to making connections between bloggers who oppose the impending war against Iraq. Regardless of your ideology or political affiliation, your nation of origin, or the size or scope of your site, if you oppose the war and use your weblog to express that opposition, your site is welcome among our listings.
    • Blogroll updated I spent a little time tonight updating my blogroll (on the right, just underneath the WudiVisions icon) to more accurately reflect the sites that I check on a daily basis. It automatically sorts by how recently they've been updated, so the most recent bits will always be towards the top, with sites that have been updated within the last six hours bracketed by hyphens. Lots of new reading there — enjoy…
    • I hope this is a joke I really, really, really hope this is a joke, but the website looks all too serious. In a move even more mind-bogglingly stupid than the call to rename the second Lord of the Rings Movie, 'The Two Towers,' due to post-9/11 trauma, a guy by the name of Josh Wander has posted a petition to give the Statue of Liberty back to France.
  • 2002
    • Boy meets girl… Before next date, girl does a Google search for boy's name, and finds his blog -- commenting on her lack of ability to kiss and his disappointment in not getting more frisky. Boy finds out about public disclosure of his comments when he starts getting e-mails and comments on his blog.
    • A history of Arthur Andersen A good in-depth article from the New York Times detailing the history behind Andersen's part in the Enron/Andersen scandal. I'm no legal or financial expert, but I can't say that things look good in the least.
    • CIA anthrax connection So -- would the BBC reporting that the CIA may have been involved in the Anthrax scare be a major scoop of hard-hitting investigative reporting, or merely conspiracy theories spilling over into mainstream media?
    • The American brand Having conflicting views about the U.S. -- admiring its creativity, for instance, but resenting its double standards -- doesn't mean you are 'mixed up,' to use Mr Olins' phrase, it means you have been paying attention.
    • Britney Underground Apparently New York wasn't too keen on the Britney Spears posters dotting the subway lines. Britney Underground shows off some of the graffitti decorating Britney's ads.

On This Day: Mar 17

Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 22 posts previously published on March 17th

  • 2024
  • 2022
  • 2020
  • 2017
    • Out at the Merc to get my gothystomp on on a drizzly St. Paddy’s Day evening!
  • 2016
    • Blue skies and low 50s today…quite nice for my afternoon walk. (77/366)
    • Security Here’s what I’m set up with at the moment, in case anyone’s interested. I’m also open to suggestions for other possibilities.
  • 2014
    • I don’t have much green in my wardrobe, but I’ve got some nice bright green Chucks to wear for today!
  • 2013
  • 2010
    • Dark Loyalties A couple weeks ago, I posted a survey and asked for respondents from the local Seattle Gothic, or seagoth, community for a research project I was working on for my Law and Justice Research Methods class. For those of you curious about the final results, I've published the entire report. You can watch the presentation, read the report on the site, download the prettier .pdf version, or even download the .pdf version along with all the data files in case you want to do your own number crunching.
    • Links for March 12th through March 17th Sometime between March 12th and March 17th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • Get Mac-Like Scrolling and Gestures on a Windows Laptop • It's not a bargain if you don't need it • Norrie First Registered Sexless Person • Frommer’s Now F’Ing Both Freelancers and Photo Enthusiasts! • WA Legislature Toughens Cell Phone Driving Law
  • 2009
  • 2006
    • More Reunions I love watching stuff like this go on -- and I'm _very_ willing to put up with the occasional bout of comment spam in return for being able to watch old friends reconnect thanks to Google and some random piece of babble on my site.
    • Vice Versa 'Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.'
  • 2005
    • Top o’ th’ mornin’ to ye! So hit the pub, hoist a Guinness, do your best (or worst) brogue, wink at a pretty lass -- and if you find that pot o' gold, toss a piece or two my way, would you? ;)
  • 2004
    • WüdiVisions Since all the recent babbling about cameras (and the lack thereof) has had photography back on my brain recently (not to mention rebuilding my iPhoto library), I've spent the night resurrecting my WüdiVisions photoblog.
    • More conservative hijinks Two things pointed out to me in the comments for my last post that, while likely to increase your blood pressure, are worth knowing about:
  • 2003
    • Ack! When did it get to be 3 A.M.? I've gotta get to bed...
    • Damn straight …to ensure that our postwar policies are constructive and humane, based on enduring principles of peace and justice, concerned Americans should continue to speak out.
    • Random downtime fixed Technically, this is a little less secure, as there is now a direct line between my webserver and the world, with no intervening firewall for protection, but OS X is fairly secure, and I'm willing to take that slight risk if it allows my sites to have better uptime. The Linksys does still protect the PC, however. Somehow I just can't justify leaving a Windows box open to the world, even if I think I've got it locked down. So much for 'trusted computing'.
    • The speech follows no logical pattern The entire situation is reminiscent, as someone pointed out on Atrios, of the old Star Trek episode 'Patterns of Force' (in which) Federation history professor John Gill becomes the drugged leader of a Nazi planet.
    • 48 hours 48 hours for Saddam to step down, or the US goes in with guns blazing.

On This Day: Mar 16

Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 24 posts previously published on March 16th

  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2020
  • 2019
    • A Digression on Gilliam A collection I've wanted for a long time, and finally completed: All of Terry Gilliam's films (except for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which isn't out yet) are on my Plex server in HD. He's just the sort of gloriously weird that works well for me.
  • 2016
    • Book twelve of 2016: Marvel Comics’ Battlestar Galactica adaptation. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (76/366)
    • 2015 P.K. Dick Award Nominee Rankings My ranking of this year's Philip K. Dick Award nominated books, from least favorite to my top pick for the award (which, historically, has yet to match the actual award winner, so don't put too much stock in my ranking).
  • 2014
    • Turns out today is a cranky day. Ah, well. Some days are like that.
  • 2009
    • The P-I is dead. Long live the P-I! The writing's been on the wall for some time now, but it's just been made official: tomorrow's print run of the Seattle P-I will be its last.
    • Kent at High Flood Risk I'm glad we're not on the ground floor of our apartment building -- as we live here in the Kent Valley, within about a five-minute walk of the banks of the Green River, we're smack-dab in the middle of the area of South King County at high risk for flooding.
  • 2006
    • Garth Brooks is a Gateway Drug I've often noticed when talking to people that, if they have even a little bit of country in their collection, there is a pretty good chance that Garth will be in there somewhere, if not the sole representative. Which leads to the realization that Garth Brooks is a gateway drug.
  • 2005
  • 2004
    • HR 3920 – Good God, no! On March 9th, Representative Ron Lewis (KY) introduced bill HR 3920 to Congress, titled the 'Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004'. The official title gives a better idea of the intent of the bill, though:'To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court.'
    • Lego porn! Hidden in a miniature Washington, D.C., at Legoland California, among thousands of characters living frozen lives, a businessman moons a presidential motorcade.
    • Go Tony! Good news from the frozen north — Democratic Senatorial candidate Tony Knowles has issued a statement strongly in favor of gay rights issues.
    • Iraq on the Record This rocks: Iraq on the Record, a report and associated online database presenting the results of an investigation of the misleading statements, falsehoods, and outright lies presented to the American public during the runup to the Iraq war, as comissioned by Representative Henry A. Waxman.
    • 404 PDF While on lunch, I saw a license place with the combination 404 PDF. I guess that's the code Cirque du Soleil would use when they can't find one of their performers?
    • Yesterday’s Trek, today’s tech Fun little article, though somehow I'm very unsurprised that so many of today's electronics are designed by geeks that grew up on Star Trek. Seems only natural to me.
  • 2003
    • Building 42 If you are ever driving past [the Microsoft] campus on 156th Avenue, you can spot the exact Redmond/Bellevue city border by seeing where an otherwise normal, professional looking building suddenly changes height.
    • Anti-war summary Wasted Irony has a good concise rundown of why a war in Iraq is a bad idea.
    • Candlelight Vigil at Green Lake, Seattle I was just starting to go through my regular online reading tonight when one of the first posts I read was Shelly Powers' post about the candlelight vigil she was planning on attending. I checked the MoveOn page where the vigils were being organized, and found that there were many planned for Seattle. The largest was being held at Green Lake, so ten minutes later I was on a bus out to Green Lake.
    • Evergreen student killed in Gaza Strip I have to admit that I've always found the idea of 'human shields' to be naïvely optimistic, at best, and quite possibly downright suicidal at worst. You're placing yourself in an extremely volatile and dangerous situation, between two factions that have repeatedly shown very little regard for human life, be it military or civillian. As horrible as any resulting deaths may be, I can't see them as unexpected or surprising in the least. If you're going to stand in between two warring sides, you're knowingly taking the chance that one or the other (or both) is going to end up killing you.
  • 2002
    • Engrish spoken here DANGER! A dangerous toy. This toy is being made for the extreme priority the good looks. The little part which suffocates when the sharp part which gets hurt is swallowed is contained generously. Only the person who can take responsibility by itself is to play.
  • 2001
    • Bueller’s giant rabbit gladiator Three additions to the collection today, as it was a pretty decent paycheck from Suncoast this week.
    • Good tunes Over the past few years, I've been spending much of my time around women who listened to a fair amount of country...and I suppose that can only last so long before it really starts to sink in.

On This Day: Mar 15

Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 26 posts previously published on March 15th

  • 2025
    • Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente 📚 16/2025: I love Valente's near stream-of-consciousness style and descriptions that draw very well deserved comparisons to Douglas Adams. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  • 2024
  • 2020
  • 2019
    • Book twenty-four of 2019: The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1953 Hugo Best Novel Psychic police are now something of an SF trope, but this was apparently one of the first to use this idea, and its implementation (both in plot and typography) is still effective.
  • 2016
    • Book eleven of 2016: (R)Evolution, by PJ Manney. ⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee. (75/366)
  • 2014
    • Relaxing in the library on a nice sunny morning.
  • 2008
    • Medieval Fanfic Robert Henryson, a 15th-century Scottish writer, went so far as to write a sequel to Chaucer's earlier work, Troilus and Criseyde, in which he punishes Criseyde for all the things Chaucer had her do to poor, noble Troilus.
  • 2007
    • Flickr: User Interface Overload On the one hand, I really like the new collections organization structure that Flickr just added. It's not perfect, but it's nice to have more control over organizing my photos. However, the interface is getting...well, cluttered is about the nicest way to put it.
  • 2006
  • 2005
    • Cards, anyone? I got a nice compliment from mom on one of my recent photos earlier today: 'You sure have some beautiful photos. You could open a side business (in your spare time) selling them for cards.' Hmmm...might this be a viable idea?
  • 2004
    • Music and personality Interesting article in the Seattle PI looking at how your the content and organization of your music collection can give indications of your personality type.
    • Size Matters This is actually fairly amusing now that I stop to think about it, but I think I've finally figured out why, no matter how good they are or how many features today's pocket-size digital cameras have, I still can't ever stop lusting after the bigger, fancier (more expensive) cameras that are out there.
  • 2002
    • I got my keys! Just got back home from picking up my keys for the new apartment. Pictures were taken, I'll have them posted as soon as I can. Yay!
    • Geeks or Government? My response on reading the question that headlines this article -- Should Geeks, or Governments, Run the Net? -- was 'Why is this a question? Geeks!'
    • Brief bits on my actual life! In the midst of replying to an e-mail from my mom, I realized that while I've been putting a lot of links up, any content actually dealing with my life has been pretty sparse recently. End result -- a veritable plethora of ways for people to leave my website, but not much to make them stick around.
    • Writing is good Could blogging and its reliance on the textual news and sources help reclaim the importance of the written word and lessen our reliance on television as the disseminator of all information?
    • Nose picking So...do you pick your nose?
    • Lots of music links I need to remember to come back to a MeFi thread -- lots of links to online remix sources and radio stations.
    • Dubya needs to get laid! We, the undersigned, in the interest of international harmony and seeking an end to all violence in this world, do hereby call on the president of the United States, George W. Bush, to find a fully consenting adult intern to service his sexual needs.
    • Mutant space bugs! Science-fiction becomes reality? Space-mutated metal-eating viruses that caused problems on Mir may now be at the bottom of the Pacific ocean. Reassuring, no?
    • Soundbugs look cool Yay for new toys! I may need to pick up at least one of these little gadgets -- Soundbug turns flat surface into speakers.
    • iMacs in the movies Most of the computers in movies for several years have been Macintoshes, maybe because the Mac is the only computer that doesn't look like every other computer and therefore benefits from product placement.
    • Powered armor CNET is reporting that MIT will be researching Nanotech body armor for the Army.
    • Bomb your hometown Not paranoid after Bush yammers about keeping nuclear weapons a possibility? Use this page to get an idea of what a nuclear bomb would to do your city.
    • Pig Roald Dahl's disturbing short story, 'Pig', with illustrations.

📚 fourteen of 2020: The Last Best Hope by Una McCormack ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A direct prequel to the Picard series, detailing the struggles, triumphs, and travesties of the Romulan relief effort. Also the most politically & socially currently relevant Trek novel I’ve ever read. 🖖