Fame

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Last night when I went down to check my snail mail, another of the residents in my apartment building was checking his. I was heading back to the elevator when he spoke up. “Hey — aren’t you Eclecticism?”

Turns out he’d stumbled across my site a while ago looking for pictures of the Jensonia Hotel fire, and has stopped by from time to time (recently enough to have seen some of the Fremont Parade pictures), and recognized me from my photos and my kilt.

Pretty fun, actually. So far, that makes the second time someone in the “real world” has recognized me from my site (the first being one of the regulars at the Vogue). I’m famous! ;)

More old Gig’s photos

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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).

Downtown Excitement

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I wondered why there was a helicopter hovering over downtown as I came back to work after picking up a job outside of the building. Now I know why…

  • Seattle Times: Man shot at federal courthouse in Seattle

    A man who walked into the federal courthouse in downtown Seattle today carrying what appeared to be a hand grenade was shot, police said.

    Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said the man walked into the building armed with a hand grenade that appeared to be real. After a 20-minute standoff, Seattle police officers fired several rounds. The man, still clutching the grenade, collapsed.

    Kerlikowske said the man appear to be dead, but was being attended to by medics.

  • Seattle PI: Shooting at federal courthouse

    It was not known whether the man had made any threats or said anything to the officers or courthouse personnel. Kerlikowske said the man may have been known in the neighborhood but offered no suspects.

  • King5: BREAKING NEWS: Police shoot grenade carrying man in Federal Courthouse

    The suspect was seen entering the courthouse shortly before noon, carrying a yellow backpack strapped to his chest, raising suspicions by police and courthouse guards.

    Around 11:30 a.m. a woman cleaning windows in the lobby saw a middle-aged man enter the building. He was acting oddly, she said. “Usually you don’t wear a backpack in front of you.” He drew the attention of security officials when he tried to sneak around the security gate.

    She described what happened next when they told him to stop. He responded, “don’t come near me don’t come near me, I’ll blow it up!”

Wow.

More Solstice Parade pictures

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Other sets of parade pictures I’ve run across…I’ll add more as I find them:

There’s now a list of galleries on the Fremont Arts Council blog (who very kindly have linked to both my photoset and this very post) — I’ll let them take over from here.

(Sorry to hit your RSS feeds one more time, but as this is currently my most popular post, I figured it’d be a good idea to add in a link to my photos as well. Regular readers will be bored of this by now, but it should be good for the visitors.)

www.flickr.com

Fremont Favorites

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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?

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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).

Flickr Badge in Weblog Posts

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Flickr recently introduced a new badge generator with a lot of new features, including the ability to restrict the photos displayed to a certain set or group pool.

I started experimenting with whether it was possible to place badges into my weblog posts where appropriate. For instance, a post about a specific event could include a badge displaying photos from that event’s Flickr photo set or group pool.

My first attempts met with some trouble. The code that the Flickr badge generator creates comes in two sections: the CSS for style, and the HTML code for the badge. Unfortunately, the CSS block was causing issues, breaking validation (under XHTML Transitional, you can’t have a block inside a element) and doing something else that resulted in a random string of characters displaying instead of the badge.

After trying a few different forms of badge, though, I found that as long as I kept the same color and background choices (in step four of the HTML badge creator), the CSS code always stayed the same, and it was only variables in the Javascript call to Flickr that determined which photos were displayed.

So, I chose the style options that I wanted, created a badge, and put the CSS code into my stylesheet. I then took just the HTML code, dropped it into a post, and bingo — everything displays fine. As an example, here’s a random selection of images from the Utilikilts group pool:

www.flickr.com

Other advantages — because the CSS now lives in the stylesheet, you can create different color combinations for different stylesheets (if you use a stylesheet switcher), and your Flickr badges will blend in with the rest of the design no matter which design you choose.

Not a mind-blowing tip, sure, but could be useful from time to time.

Pride leaving Broadway?

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Interesting bit of controversy going on in Seattle’s gay community right now, as the annual Pride Parade has grown so much that organizers want to move it to downtown and the Seattle Center for next year.

This year’s gay pride parade — happening a week from Sunday — may be the last on Capitol Hill, the traditional center of gay life in Seattle.

For more than 20 years, the colorful march has made its way along Broadway and culminated at Volunteer Park, where a festival takes place. A co-chairman of the Seattle Pride Committee, which runs the events, said yesterday that the festival will relocate to the Seattle Center next year.

While the committee hasn’t made any final decisions, the procession also may make its way along a new route through downtown Seattle in 2006.

[…]

To some, the move signals the advances gays and lesbians have made in society. Holding the festival at the Seattle Center — where more traditional celebrations such as Bumbershoot and Bite of Seattle take place — can be seen as a sign of mainstream acceptance and an acknowledgment that gays are part of the entire city, not just one neighborhood.

Still, many find the idea of the gay pride festival being anywhere else but Capitol Hill hard to fathom.

Protest signs have gone up in many storefronts along Capitol Hill’s main drag proclaiming, “Keep the Pride Parade on Broadway.” Dozens of people have signed petitions that have appeared at stores such as Broadway News and the Panache clothing store.

I can see how many of the people in Capitol Hill would be bummed about this, but I also think that having the extra space and possibilities of the Seattle Center would be a good thing. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Either way, though, I’ll be there this year, and next, and most likely, any other year I’m in Seattle.

iTunes “Speedfreak” by Secret Hero from the album Lit Up (1999, 7:07).