Also…
Links for July 16th through July 18th
Sometime between July 16th and July 18th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- ‘The Case of the Disappearing Orwell’ Is Not as the Blogosphere Would Have You Believe: "The idea that's spread through the Internet like wildfire is that this was an action at the behest of this publisher, who decided on a whim that they didn't want to publish it through Amazon any longer, and that Amazon caved and did what they asked. That's just not what happened, and it's rather unfair to Amazon for people to continue to spread the misinformation that says it is."
- Seattle Gay News: Vogue Night at Neighbours Underground: "'A hidden gem on Capitol Hill.' That's the way a patron dressed in black describes Vogue Night, an '80s, new wave, goth, and industrial night of dance at Neighbours Underground. The party is authentic, fashionable, and very sexy"
- Michael Jackson in 2000 in 1985: "What Ebony, in 1985, Thought Michael Jackson Would Look Like in 2000" Apparently, like Billy Dee Williams in Empire Strikes Back.
- NASA Releases Preview Partially Restored Apollo 11 Video: "To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, NASA released partially restored video of a series of 15 memorable moments from the July 20 moonwalk. The source material for the restoration project is the best of the available broadcast-format video. Lowry Digital, Burbank, Calif., is significantly enhancing the video using the company's proprietary software technology and other restoration techniques. The video is part of a larger restoration project that will be completed in September and provide a newly restored high definition video of the entire Apollo 11 moonwalk. The completed restoration will provide the public with the highest quality video of this historic event."
- Unidentified Biological "Goo," 15 Miles Long, Creeps Down Alaskan Coast: "A gigantic smear of gooey, black biological material is making its way through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow in Northern Alaska. Eyewitnesses say it's definitely a living entity, though unlike anything they've seen before. The blob was first spotted last week, floating in Arctic waters. Big chunks of it – some as much as '12 miles long,' according to the Anchorage Daily News, are drifting through the sea. A helicopter tracked the spread of the goop for 15 miles and saw no end to it."
- Literary Mashups Meet Tentacles. Has All of Western Literature Been Leading Up to This?: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters: "As our story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. While sensible Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon. Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rogues to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles that are forever snapping at their heels?"
Amazon Kills Pocketpedia
For a while now, I’ve been using Bookpedia to catalog Prairie’s and my book collections, and DVDPedia for our movie collection. One of the handiest things about the system was the ability to sync our libraries to my iPod through Pocketpedia and have them available at my fingertips whenever we were out and about. No more trying to remember whether or not we’d picked up a particular book from a particular author or series, just check the iPod. It was one of my most-used iPhone apps.
Unfortunately, that’s not an option anymore: Amazon recently changed their API Terms of Service, and included the following clause in section 4(e):
You will not, without our express prior written approval requested via this link , use any Product Advertising Content on or in connection with any site or application designed or intended for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device.
Since the update to the TOS, Amazon has been aggressively enforcing that clause. I saw the writing on the wall a couple weeks ago when Delicious had their iPhone app pulled, and now Pocketpedia has been killed as well.
This morning we received an email from Amazon requesting the immediate removal of Pocketpedia from the App Store since the program is in violation of their license agreement. (A clause we’re pretty sure didn’t exist when Pocketpedia launched with the App Store in June last year but TOSBack only tracks Kindle and MP3 music service terms of use.)
We’ve logged a request with Amazon that Pocketpedia be exempt from the mobile clause (this is stated as a possibility in the license agreement) but it seems others have tried this before and were shot down so we’re not holding our breath for a favourable response. Hopefully the future will bring a positive change in their policy and we can all go on competing in the App Store.
Unsurprisingly, I — and a number of other previously-happy customers — are none too thrilled with Amazon about this. I’m hoping that some workaround can be found, and that Pocketpedia can continue on (even if that means gutting it to remove all data ever retrieved from Amazon). All I can do now (aside from dropping Amazon a quick complaint e-mail, which I’ve already done) is wait and see what happens next.
Update: Hooray! As of today, Nov. 10th, 2009, Pocketpedia is back! You can download the new, Amazon-free version right here.
A Goodbye
A few years ago, I posted one of my fondest memories from my days in the Alaska Children’s Choir. At the time of the performance mentioned there, the choir was under the direction of founder Renda Horn.
The founder and director for many of the years I was in the choir was Renda Horn, a wonderful, energetic woman with more life bottled up inside her than most other people I’ve ever known. She had a great love of both music and children, and was able to use these to corral a bunch of children into an internationally award winning children’s choir — and those of us in the choir were as fond of her as she was of us.
[…]
We sang a short selection of the pieces in our repertoire and, as had become standard, ended with “The Rhythm of Life”. We were all arranged on the steps in front of the altar, and as the song progressed, the clouds that had been obscuring the sky that morning parted, sending warm golden light through the windows of the church. The church building itself seemed to be acoustically perfect, taking our voices and wrapping them around us and the congregation and on up into the rafters and beyond. Renda’s smile grew wider as she watched “her kids” give the performance of a lifetime that day. Her eyes started to glisten, and soon started to overflow with tears of pure joy in the moment — and by the end of the song, most of the choir had joined her (and I’m not at all ashamed to admit that nearly twenty years later, I’m getting a bit misty eyed reliving the memory as I write this down).
We got a standing ovation that day — no small feat, given the stereotypical British reserve combined with our performing in the midst of a C of E service — and while the choir has received many standing ovations over the years, in my mind that has always been, and always will be, the standing ovation.
Some time after I posted that, Janet Stotts (who was co-director at the time, and later took over when Renda retired) saw the post and left some kind comments, and a little later, Renda did the same, which was a joy to see.
Just a few minutes ago, I received a note from Janet letting me know that Renda died on Monday in a small float plane crash in Canada. Her husband Steve, who was piloting the plane, survived.
Renda brought a lot of joy into this world, both through her many years of music and work with the choir and just by the simple virtue of being herself. My heartfelt condolences go out to her family, many friends, and the many, many kids and parents whose lives she touched. She’ll be missed.
Back To the ’80s!
Chances are you’re either going to love me or hate me for posting this. Personally, I think this is great — my tolerance for cheezy pop is really high — but there will be no hard feelings if you blame me for wanting to brillo pad your brain clean after watching this. :)
Links for July 14th through July 15th
Sometime between July 14th and July 15th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- Why America Is Flunking Science: "The experience of CERN is, more broadly, the experience of science in our culture today. It is simultaneously admired and yet viewed as dangerously powerful and slightly malevolent — an uneasiness that comes across repeatedly in Hollywood depictions. As science-fiction film director James Cameron has observed, the movies tend to depict scientists 'as idiosyncratic nerds or actively the villains.' That's not only unfair to scientists: It's unhealthy for the place of science in our culture…. To begin to counter this problem, though, we need to wake up to a new recognition: Fixing the problem of science education in our schools, although very important, is not the sole solution. We also have to do something about the cultural standing of science — heavily influenced by politics and mass media — and that's a very different matter."
- Psychotic Letters From Men: Customer Disservice: "Every woman who's ever held any type of service or sales job knows about one of the major inherent hazards associated with their chosen profession. Namely, the unavoidable encounters with creepy fucking dudes." Oh, my lord. As if the posted stories aren't bad enough, there's all the stories in the comments. So, so, so many disturbing guys out there.
- How to Scan a Cat and Other Subjects: "MetaFilter became that rarest of online creatures: a booming online community that's mostly intelligent, mostly civil, and mostly functional. It's not just a good read, and it's not just popular and lively, but it actually makes one feel slightly better about being human. It might be the best site on the Internet. The trick is trying to explain why it happened." Happy 10 year anniversary, MetaFilter!
- Pinboard – Antisocial Bookmarking: Interesting looking Delicious competitor just getting started.
- Spectacular Dream Yachts to Set Sail: "So often we're teased with amazing renderings of things that could be but never will because they lack a bridge between blue sky and real world. The latest virtual tease, a pair of futuristic yachts rapidly rising in virtual visibility, breaks that convention. Designer Kevin Schöpfer plans to set sail in three years." If I were a mad James Bond villian, I would totally have the Infinitas as my base of operations. That's a gorgeous yacht.
Links for July 10th through July 14th
Sometime between July 10th and July 14th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of All Time: "What do murder, pedophilia, suicide and a baby tiger have in common? They have all been used to sell stuff in these amazingly disturbing vintage ads! These are real, untouched advertisements from the good old days. It doesn't matter if it's lovely ladies or adorable clowns, somehow these old-time ad wizards found ways to traumatize us while pedaling everyday products."
- Top 10 Myths about Mythbusters:: "There's a rumor going around that Jamie is a human being. This is plain wrong. The show admits this one itself. Several episodes refer to the fact that Jamie is a robot — I mean, how else can he keep his shirts so well-cleaned and his moustache so well-trimmed? But believe it or not, there are people out there who are convinced that Jamie is in fact a human — Homo sapiens, just like you and me. This one is surely busted."
- Watchdog Group: Dozens of Active-Duty Troops Found on Neo-Nazi Site: "It is Facebook for the fascist set, and the typical online profiles of its members reveal expected tastes. Favorite book: 'Mein Kampf.' Favorite movie: the Nazi propaganda film 'Triumph of the Will.' Interests: 'white women.' Dislikes: 'anyone who opposes the master race.' But there's one other thing that dozens of members of newsaxon.org, a white supremacist social networking website, have in common: They proudly identify themselves as active-duty members of the U.S. armed forces."
- The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: A Round-Up: "After you have read these, ask yourself: what wouldn't Sarah Palin lie about if she felt she had to?"
- DateLine: "DateLine is a small, simple app which displays a linear calendar on your desktop in a transparent window. It provides easy access to iCal by double clicking on a day. The background and text colors are customizable with support for transparency."
MiniBreak: Corvallis
Two weekends ago, Prairie and I headed down to Corvallis to visit my brother and his family. Emily, my sister-in-law, is just finishing her doctorate in oceanography, and has accepted a position doing post-doc work at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, associated with MIT. Great news, of course, but it does mean that they’re all moving across the country to Falmouth, MA. Since that’s going to be a lot harder to visit than Corvallis, OR, we wanted to make sure to get a visit with them in before they left.
The full set of photos is on Flickr, here’s a small sampling…
Noah, on day two without training wheels on his bike!
Me, Noah, Kevin, and Paul swimming at the campsite Prairie and I stayed at.
Noah, Prairie, and Paul coloring.
Me reading Noah a couple chapters of some of his current bedtime story (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe).
We’ll miss being close enough to take a weekend to drive down and visit, but it’s a great opportunity for them and for Emily, and we wish them the best.
Official Norwescon Photographer
As most who pay much attention to my ramblings know, I’ve spent three out of the past four years wandering around Norwescon taking pictures (29, 30, and 32). A couple of weeks ago I got an invitation from the Norwescon 33 publications director asking if I might be interested in the con photographer position. I, of course, said that I was very interested, and we agreed to meet at today’s Volunteer Appreciation Picnic.
So, today I showed up at the picnic, chatted with Adrienne for a bit, and signed on as photographer for Norwescon 33! This will be pretty low-key for most of the year, getting shots of various meetings and Norwescon promotional events as they happen, and then be pretty intensive (but fun!) during the con itself, adding getting official shots of key events (the opening ceremonies, panels with the guests of honor, the Masquerade, the Fetish Fashion Show, etc.) as well as the usual candids and hall costumes that I’ve been doing on my own. I’m really looking forward to this, it’s a great way to combine interests and have a lot of fun doing it!
So that’s my little happydance for the day. Woohoo!
Links for July 8th through July 9th
Sometime between July 8th and July 9th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- Mythbusters to Test Star Trek’s Gorn Cannon: "Finally someone is going to put the Star Trek cannon to the test (that is 'cannon' with two n's). Mythbusters, the Discover Channel show that puts urban legends (and TV & movie magic) to the test, is finally going to take on Star Trek. Specifically they are going to test the feasibility of the cannon that Captain James T. Kirk built to defeat the Gorn in the original series Star Trek episode 'Arena'"
- "Harry Potter" Stars Felt Pressure to "Ace" Kiss: Dan Radcliffe's reaction to seeing his kiss with Bonnie Wright (as Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley, respectively) in HPatHBP is great: "'I saw the film again a couple of nights ago at the premiere and … my God, my lips are like the lips of a horse, kind of distending independently away from my face and trying to encompass the lower half of hers,' Radcliffe, 19, said. 'So I apologize for that.'"
- Ritz Camera, Parent of Wolf and Waxman, Plans to Sell Remaining Stores: "Ritz Camera Centers Inc., which has been struggling to reorganize and save roughly 400 of its more than 800 stores, says it no longer has enough money to purchase fall inventory and continue operations. Beltsville, Md.-based Ritz Camera, which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, says the lack of funds now forces it to auction off its remaining locations by the end of July." Wow, not good. Good luck to everyone I know at Ritz/Kits!
- Paste Without Formatting by Default: "Here's something I know affects plenty of users out there. Have you ever pasted text in a document or email message, only to have it formatted differently than all the text around it? Irritating, right? There's an answer, thanks to the Keyboard & Mouse pane in System Preferences." Thank you! Mac OS X's default 'paste with the source style' has been driving me up the wall for ages — I honestly can't think of a single time recently when I've wanted to work the way the system does by default. One of the weirdest, most brain-dead UI decisions in the Mac OS.
- Marvel Wants to Help You Look Stylish!: The latest in costume fashion from Marvel: Boys! Be The Hulk! Or Captain America! Or Iron Man! Or Ghost Rider! Girls…um…girls? Oh, girls. Here, have some lip gloss.