Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Congratulations to Matt on turning WordPress into WordPress, Inc. — and to [Jonas](http://www.jluster.org/ title=”Jonas Luster”) for being the first hire at the new company!
I haven’t met Matt, but he was kind enough to contribute one of the “pink” themes for this site, and I got to hang out with Jonas some time ago when he came through Seattle. Congrats to you both!
Yesterday I realized that while my Flickr Pro account allows me up to 1Gb of uploads each month, I haven’t been using anywhere near that much — so I decided to fix that. :) I’ve started digging into my iPhoto archives and adding photosets from past events, working my way backwards.
Last night I managed to get three four sets up, all from 2004: Bumbershoot, the Gay Pride Parade, the Fremont Solstice Festival, and the Folklife Festival.
“Baseball Dub (Cheeky All Stars)” by Faithless from the album Irreverence (1997, 2:42).
I know I’m not going to have time to really go as much into this as I’d like while I’m on my lunch break, but I found an interesting little online quiz through Subzero Blue: Which religion is the right one for you? Here’s my results:
You scored as agnosticism. You are an agnostic. Though it is generally taken that agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve in God, it is possible to be a theist or atheist in addition to an agnostic. Agnostics don’t believe it is possible to prove the existence of God (nor lack thereof).
Agnosticism is a philosophy that God’s existence cannot be proven. Some say it is possible to be agnostic and follow a religion; however, one cannot be a devout believer if he or she does not truly believe.
| agnosticism |
|
79% | |
| Satanism |
|
75% | |
| Islam |
|
58% | |
| Buddhism |
|
54% | |
| Christianity |
|
50% | |
| atheism |
|
50% | |
| Paganism |
|
46% | |
| Hinduism |
|
38% | |
| Judaism |
|
38% |
Some points before I head off to work, some of which I might come back and expand on later:
I come from a strongly religious background, specifically the Episcopal faith. Having grown up with that, Christianity forms the base for many of my beliefs.
That said, one of the things I’ve always felt very fortunate for is that my parents never had any problems with the fact that we’re a pretty bright family, and have a tendency to question, poke, and prod at things. Christianity was never something that had to be accepted at face value — it was okay to ask “why?” when things didn’t seem to make sense. In fact, if I’m remembering the story correctly, my father was at a point where he found either Christianity in particular or religion as a whole to be fairly hokey, and first sat down to read through the Bible with the avowed goal of finding every problem, every issue, and every inconsistency so that he could point them out to mom…and while he certainly found a fair amount of all of those, he also discovered along the way that there was a lot of really good stuff in there, too. He’s since devoted a fair amount of time to theological study, and is currently in the long process of getting ordained as a minister.
Over the years, I’ve found plenty to question when it comes to religion, which came into play as I was answering the questions on this test. While I wouldn’t say that I am entirely without faith, I certainly do question things, and I often have difficulties when it comes to my concepts of both God and the afterlife. I tried to be as honest as possible when answering the questions, and these doubts certainly pulled my scores towards the middle of the spectrum.
I’m also not entirely happy with either the questions or the scoring system on the test — there were a few where I felt that having to pick a point on an agree/disagree scale didn’t really do justice to the question, or truly represent the answer I wanted to give. Still, I did the best I could with it.
I am rather amused that my second-place score was Satanism, though. Make of that what you will.
Lastly — why do all of these quizzes produce the most god-awful HTML when giving you the code to post your results? Normally I clean them up, but this one was too complex for the little time I have on my lunch hour. Ick.
“Skin” by Oingo Boingo from the album Best o’ Boingo (1990, 4:40).
I have no idea what the status of this is, how close to completion it may or may not be, or whether it will actually ever see the light of day — but there’s a live action version of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (previously produced in animated form) in production.
In theory, this could be a very good thing — though I must admit, I’m a little more excited about the live-action version of C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe — apparently the first in a planned seven-film series covering the entire set of books, with special effects by the crew of Weta (you might have heard of them — they did the effects for a little series called The Lord of the Rings). Apple has a short look at Weta’s work on the film and another on director Andrew Adamson.
“I Love Saturday” by Erasure from the album I Say I Say I Say (1994, 4:02).
An official letter of complaint regarding my neighbor has been sent to the landlord. We’ll see what happens next…
Just to follow up on my whining on the last post, I didn’t fall asleep until sometime after 3am — and my alarm goes off at 6am. Most days I just smack the snooze until 6:30 or 7, but I knew that if I started hitting the snooze today, I’d likely end up just falling back asleep and waking up hours late for work (and as I’m the solitary staffer at my position, that would be a Bad Thing).
So now I get to run the entire day on something less than three hours of sleep.
This is not going to be terribly enjoyable.
Background info: this is a regular problem with my neighbor, and this is the first time it’s happened to me with any neighbor in this building. The building itself dates from the early 1900s, and the walls are thick — actually hearing anything from my neighbors has generally been a very rare thing, and the few times I have, it’s been muffled and easily ignored. Until this guy showed up.
I don’t know if he works at all, but if he does, it must be on some swing or graveyard shift that has him sleeping through the day. Afternoons, evenings, and long into the nights and mornings, he consistently has either his television or his stereo absolutely blaring, and when it’s the stereo, he’ll often have one single song on continuous repeat.
Knocking on his door (which I tried a couple weeks ago at 1am when the volume went up suddenly on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, again that same Sunday morning at 5am, and last night at about 2:30am) is pointless, as he never answers. I know he’s there and awake, as in addition to the noise you can often hear him moving about the apartment if you’re in the hallway (the doors in this building aren’t as thick and soundproof as the walls are), but he will not answer.
I complained about this a few months ago ago to the building’s residential manager, and things got quieter for a short while, but lately they’ve been getting louder again. I talked to the manager again a couple weeks ago (after the futile 1am and 5am attempts at getting my neighbor’s attention), and it turns out that my neighbor is something of an odd duck anyway. The manager also has problems getting this guy to answer his door, and apparently when he talked to him about the noise issue last time, this guy accused him of harassing him. Later on, the manager was going through the building with the maintenance crew to check on leaky pipes and such, and when my neighbor opened his door and saw the manager with two husky guys, he accused the manager of bringing along “muscle” to intimidate him.
Bizarre guy. So, now I just need to start keeping a record of nights like last night and get everything in writing so that there’s a documented trail of issues that the management can use if it gets to the point where they feel the need to evict him (which, at this point, I would not be complaining about).
Someday I’m going to get out of the apartment living thing, not have to deal with neighbors on the other side of every wall, floor, and ceiling, and it is going to be so, so nice.
And now, I’m off to yawn my way through my day.
Whee!
“Pride (In the Name of Love) (Techno Remake Club)” by Clivillés and Cole from the album Pride (In the Name of Love) (1991, 7:59).
I’ve been using and recommending ecto for quite some time now (as well as its predecessor, Kung-Log), but as long as Adriaan’s starting to run a weekly “ecto powered blog” showcase, I figured I might as well make it a little more obvious and pop a “Powered by ecto” badge into my sidebar. Who knows if he’ll ever actually showcase me, but it’s worth a shot, right? ;)
(And on a totally unrelated note, take a brief look at the timestamp on this post. That’s what happens when I lie down for a short nap mid-day and wake up four hours later and have a neighbor who insists on keeping the volume on his TV loud enough that it actually wakes me up — and that’s not an easy thing to do. Complaints have been made, but progress hasn’t. This sucks.)
“Eye on the Gold Chain (Cut Chemist)” by Ugly Duckling from the album Journey to Anywhere (2002, 4:05).
I may not believe in Astrology, but that doesn’t mean it’s not occasionally interesting. Nitallica posted a Mayan Horoscope, which I’d never seen before. Where I’m apparently fairly bull-headed in both the standard Zodiac (Taurus) and Chinese (Ox), according to the Mayans, I’m a Serpent.
The Moon of the Snake – La Luna de la Serpiente
2 May – 29 May
This animal comes across in the collection of Mayan animals in the same fashion as that of the fox. It doesn’t have any of the negative connotations that has been given to it in the West. Quite the opposite, it represents the redemptive spirit that illuminates the mind. They like to live well, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a strict and unwavering ethical code. Always refined and exquisite, the snake won’t give its love to just anyone. It is very intelligent and convenient to have it as a friend rather than as a dangerous rival.
(The rest of the descriptions are behind the cut…)
The rumors were true, as it turns out, and the official announcement was made today on the FlickrBlog: Yahoo actually does acquire Flickr.
Holy smokes, SOMEBODY out there is bad at keeping secrets!! Yes! We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp. Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks!
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. While the Flickr post assures us that “nothing will change”, that’s the mantra we get every time there’s a merger of this sort, and I just hope it’s true.
My main concern is simply that I’ve never been overly impressed with Yahoo’s Mac support. The main offenders are Yahoo! Messenger — admittedly, a downloadable program and not a web-based offering — and Yahoo! Chat. The Mac version of Yahoo! Messenger has perpetually lagged years behind the PC version in terms of what features it offers, and I’ve never been able to get Yahoo! Chat to work reliably under Mac OS X.
Flickr, on the other hand, has worked flawlessly for me from day one, I quite happily paid to upgrade to a Pro account some time back, and was just recommending them to my brother last night when he and I were talking about how horrendously slow the family photo gallery hosted on my server can be (I can only afford so much bandwidth, after all).
Still, I’m not about to entirely write them off — as I’ve said, Flickr’s ben great so far, and I’m hoping that the acquisition by Yahoo! will be primarily a case of Yahoo! getting to add an incredible set of services to their system, and not one of Flickr being forced to dumb things down to coddle the lowest common denominator of Yahoo! subscribers.
Besides, I’m very curious about this section of the post aimed at those of us who have already paid for Pro accounts:
I liked Flickr BEFORE you even heard of it!
You shall be recognized for your discerning taste in web sites!! I bet you also liked the Flaming Lips before they appeared on Beverly Hills 90210, and for that we salute you. Pro account holders will get super mega bonuses, to be announced soon.
Super mega bonuses, huh? Gotta like the sound of that!
(via Jonas)
Update: Yahoo!’s Jeremy Zawodny has some encouraging things to say about the merger:
The first time I used Flickr, I knew it was something different and something important. It took me a while to figure out and try to articulate exactly what that was, but I took my first swipe back in September when I called it a Next Generation Web Service.
[…]
Since then a lot has happened and I’ve had the chance to meet the Flickr team a few times. That has only convinced me even more that they have what it takes to really change things. Combining their mix of tagging, communities, syndication, open APIs, and interactive UI with Yahoo’s services and millions of users will lead to even more great stuff.
As Caterina wrote, this isn’t about just throwing millions of users at Flickr or bolting Flickr onto Yahoo! Photos. Think more deeply about it. There are many parts of Yahoo that will be Flickrized in the coming months. And with more resources available, Flickr itself will be able to grow like never before.
Sounds like the concerns I’ve brought up are rather well-known in the Yahoo!/Flickr camps, which is encouraging. Time to just sit back and see where things go from here.
(via Stewart in FlickrCentral)
“Medusa Bitch (cry.on.my.console)” by Prodigy, The from the album Always Outsiders Never Outdone (2004, 2:37).
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’ve got to admit, I’d love to be able to go to this thing. While I’m hardly one of the “big players” in the blogosphere — heck, most of the people who are going to be there probably would only know me because of my adventures at Microsoft — I think it’d be fascinating to be able to meet some of these people, get an idea at what it’s like to be part of one of these conferences I read about from time to time, sit in on the sessions, and generally absorb the atmosphere and see what all goes on. Besides, while I may not be one of the movers-and-shakers in the tech world, I’ve been tracking and using many of the technologies that these people have come up with and influenced over the past few years, and it would be neat to see a little bit of the “insider’s view” of everything.
The downside, of course, is that the registration fee for the conference is a bit out of my reach at the moment ($399). Technically, I could probably afford to sign up (though it would be tight), but that’s a big enough chunk of money with my current operating budget that I just can’t justify spending it on the event — that’s money that would be put to far better use for food, paying off bills (which I’m finally starting to get a handle on…it’s slow going, but progress is being made), and other such day-to-day sundries.
Note: This isn’t a complaint at all about the cost — I’m under no illusions about how much it might take (both financially and in the actual work itself) to put one of these conferences on — merely a reflection of my own current state. :)
Maybe I’ll just grab my camera and head down there every so often during the conference weekend and play the role of the blog world’s geeky-fan-boy-cum-slightly-freaky-stalker.
“Hey…guys…don’t look now, but that weird guy in the skirt is following us again.”
;)
“Bridge is Over” by Boogie Down Productions from the album Hits From The Vault Vol. 1: The Pioneers (1981, 3:26).