Third time’s the charm?

by

This is getting insane. Hurricane Frances is still working its way across Florida, and in the last paragraph of one article about the storm comes word that a third hurricane may be on the way.

Meanwhile, in what is being seen as an unusually active year of hurricane activity, the fifth hurricane of the season, Hurricane Ivan, formed in the Atlantic about 1,900 kilometers east of the Lesser Antilles. Forecasters say Ivan could threaten the islands of the Caribbean and the southeastern United States later this week.

Someone in Florida sure ticked God off!

Bumbershoot 2004: Saturday

by

Another year of Bumbershoot is off to a rousing start for Prairie and me. Lots of good music and peoplewatching today, and more to come. This rundown will be a bit abbreviated, as I’m pretty tired, but I wanted to get as much as I could out of my head while it was still fresh.

Bakra Batá

We got to the Seattle Center just a little after noon, right at the beginning of the day, and settled right down at the Bumbrella stage to watch Bakra Batá, a steel drum, percussion, and masquerade ensemble that’s been in Seattle since 1984. I’d actually run across them before, at the Seattle Folklife festival last May, but this was the first time I actually knew who it was I was watching perform. Really excellent stuff — a strong island flavor, of course, but with a fairly wide range of other influences also. Very danceable, and it wasn’t long at all before they had a good portion of the audience up on their feet.

The Foghorn String Band

From there, we wandered over to the Backyard stage for the Foghorn Stringband, very old-timey Americana bluegrass. Things like this are a large part of why I enjoy Bumbershoot so much — just a few minutes to walk from Caribbean-style steel drums, past some good blues, and over to traditional bluegrass. We sat back and ate some of the snacks we’d brought along while watching the band, and when I got up to dump our trash into a trashcan, the lead singer decided to inform the crowd that, “nothing goes better with a black Utilikilt than one of our t-shirts!” Apparently I’d gone and gotten myself noticed…

Rock Garden

Right near the Backyard stage this year is a rock garden, constructed of rocks painstakingly balanced on top of other rocks. Okay, so that description doesn’t make it sound terribly interesting, but I’d hate to be trying to pull off the balancing acts that the people constructing this thing have managed to do. Far more patience and steady hands than I’ve got, that’s for sure.

Bagpipes

With some time to kill before the next act we were planning on checking out, we started wandering the grounds, and ran across some more men in kilts — this time, though, these were men in traditional kilts, playing bagpipe and drums. They got a laugh out of my shirt, and we stood and watched for a while (me for the bagpipes, which I’ve always liked, and Prairie both for the bagpipes and to admire the man playing the bagpipes, who she highly approved of).

Vamola

Not long after that, we ran across the Vamola drum and dance troupe on one of their many daily parades throughout the grounds. They’re always a lot of fun to watch — pretty girls in skimpy clothing dancing to really good percussion. I’m all for that!

Nancy Sinatra

Our next stop was to see none other than Nancy Sinatra. Her show was great. She started off with ‘Bang Bang’, which I’d first heard in Kill Bill, and went through a fair amount of her catalog. She had a cute little segment in the middle where she sang against a backdrop of scenes from the movies she’d starred in back in the 60’s and 70’s, and then eventually finished off her set with — of course — ‘These Boots Are Made For Walkin’‘, coming down and walking through the audience and greeting as many of her fans as she could.

AllGoRhythm

Once Nancy was done, we spent a little time with AllGoRhythm, an modern Indian group. By this point in the day, though, things were starting to get a bit chillier as the sun went down, so we took a break for a while to make a run home and grab some dinner and another layer of clothing before heading back for the evening.

Pedro the Lion

Once we got back, we didn’t have anything in particular planned out, so we started perusing the evening’s schedule. I noticed Robyn Hitchcock and remembered hearing something from him that I’d enjoyed in the past, so we decided that that was worth a shot. We headed over to the performance hall, and ended up getting in early enough to catch the last half-hour or so of Pedro the Lion‘s set. While I recognized the name, neither Prairie nor I knew anything about Pedro the Lion, but we both ended up enjoying what we heard a lot. Being entirely new to the music, I couldn’t tell you at all what songs we heard, but we’ll both want to look into that a bit more.

Robyn Hitchcock

A little while after Pedro was done, Robyn took the stage. While his first song — sort of a cover of the Beatles’ ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ — was a little odd, his second song happened to be one that I knew, ‘Balloon Man’, which I have on an old MTV 120 Minutes sampler. The rest of the show was quite enjoyable, including a quite amusing tidbit about how if you’re at a concert while the artist is tuning his instrument, the vibrations from the tuning will settle in your spine, and when you get home and go to bed, as you relax those vibrations are released. Should you have a rodent of any type for a pet (gerbil, mouse, rat, rabbit, etc.), those released vibrations will crank up the libido of said rodent, and you’re virtually gauranteed to end up with little rodent babies before too long (assuming you have two un-neutered rodents of opposing sexes, of course). I’m not sure it made a lot of sense, but it was quite amusing.

And that was that. With Robyn done, we wandered back up the hill, made a quick run to QFC for water and for more batteries for the camera, and then back home…and now that I’ve got this done, it’s time for bed. Much more tomorrow…

Update: All my pictures from today are now up in the family photo gallery. More will be added as the weekend progresses.

iTunes “Balloon Man” by Hitchcock, Robyn and the Egyptians from the album Never Mind the Mainstream (1988, 3:34).

Off to Bumbershoot

by

Prairie and I are heading off to Bumbershoot today. Possibilities for places we might end up:

  • Seal
  • Nancy Sinatra
  • AlGoRhythms
  • Bakra Bata’ Music, Dance and Masquerade Ensemble
  • The Foghorn String Band

Then, of course, there’s anything else we happen to stumble across that sounds good, all the various art exhibits, and other general mayhem. Whee!

iTunes “Dangerous (Sensual)” by Depeche Mode from the album Personal Jesus (1989, 5:25).

Olympic Commentary

by

Many, many thanks to Tim for finding this one.

Sometimes, the best part about the Olympics isn’t the events or the athletes themselves, but the commentary…

  • Weightlifting commentator: “This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing.”
  • Dressage commentator: “This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother.”
  • Paul Hamm, Gymnast: “I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.”
  • Boxing Analyst: “Sure there have been injuries,and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious.”
  • Softball announcer: “If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again.”
  • Basketball analyst: “He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn’t like it. In fact you can see it all over their faces.”
  • At the rowing medal ceremony: “Ah, isn’t that nice, the wife of the IOC president is hugging the cox of the British crew.”
  • Soccer commentator: “Julian Dicks is everywhere. It’s like they’ve got eleven Dicks on the field.”
  • Tennis commentator: “One of the reasons Andy is playing so well is that, before the final round, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them…Oh my God, what have I just said?”

I’m an iTunes Affilliate

by

Single of the Week

Earlier this week, I tossed a link to my linklog to Apple’s new iTunes Affiliate program, but didn’t write up anything more about it, as at that point, I didn’t really know much at all. While I was there, though, I went ahead and tossed in an application…and what do you know, last night I got my e-mail telling me that I was accepted into the program (a little amusing, as they turned down my favorite online soap opera, As the Apple Turns!).

So far, it seems to be fairly straightforward. Basically, once you’re accepted into the program, you’re given a selection of Apple-approved and created text links and banners that can be placed into web pages or e-mail messages that have a special ID in them, so that any sales initiated by a click on one of your links sends a few pennies your way. So far, so good — rather like the Amazon Associates program, in fact.

The one aspect of it that I haven’t figured out yet is how to make links to individual items or searches within the store that tie to my Affiliate ID. Either that part of the program isn’t active yet (since this all just started up this week), or I just can’t find the information on how to do it anywhere. Linking into the store without an Affiliate ID is already easy enough — right-clicking on items in the store gives you their target link, and there are ways to link to iTMS searches — but neither of those includes my Affiliate ID to track the sales.

Once I figure out that part of the process, then it will be extremely similar to the Amazon Associates program — any iTMS link on my site that prompts a sale will send a few pennies my way, and every little bit helps. For now, even though I’m not able to set up links directly to individual items, I have added an iTunes logo in the lower right of the sidebar, and small iTunes links to the “what I’m listening to” line at the bottom of posts. Hey, I may be selling out to The Man and including advertising on my site, but I’m at least making an effort at making it as unobtrusive as possible! ;)

One minor criticism, though (hopefully nothing that’s going to get me rather suddenly dumped from the program): as a web geek, it really bugs me that the provided HTML code to create the links is a little dodgy. No width or height arguments in the img links, un-escaped ampersands, and for some reason, the img tag is capitalized (as IMG), even though all other tags are correctly left lower-case. Nothing that’s terribly difficult to fix, of course, but it is a minor little grumble.

Anyway, that’s that. Should you feel like going shopping at the iTMS, I wouldn’t complain at all if you kicked off your shopping spree by clicking through one of my links…

iTunes “Last One” by Days of the New from the album Days of the New (1999, 4:42).

Frances: the satellite view

by

Okay, this is just all sorts of freaky-cool.

A while ago, I started using OSXplanet, a nifty little application that puts a map of the world on my desktop that lightens and darkens with the position of the sun. One of the options the program has is to include a current cloudmap as an overlay, taken from satellite data, and kept current to within three hours. Since it makes the picture more interesting to look at than just the world map, I turned that on.

What with Hurricane Frances being in the news right now, I got curious, and took a look at my desktop…

My desktop with OSXplanet

That’s my current desktop picture. If we take a close look at the area I’ve got marked with a red square…

Frances approaching Florida at night

And just to make it even more clear, since it’s nighttime on the east coast right now, a little bit of brightness adjustment…

Frances approaching Florida (adjusted levels)

Wow. Sitting here in my apartment in Seattle, I can watch a satellite’s-eye-view of Hurricane Frances approaching the Florida coastline. Cool and scary, all at the same time.

iTunes: “Run to the Sun (Amber Solaire)” by Erasure from the album Run to the Sun (1994, 10:14).

First Charley, now Frances

by

When Hurricane Charley hit Florida, my grandparents had to be evacuated to a shelter for the duration of the storm. During their time there, Grandpa suffered a fall, ended up in their retirement home’s hospital (more, more, more) after they returned from the shelter, and was just able to come home to Grandma on Friday.

Now, however, with Hurricane Frances bearing down on Florida, word has come that it’s highly likely that they will have to evacuate again.

Hello Everyone –

It is with a heavy heart that we are watching Hurricane Frances bear down on the East Coast of Florida.

We are in full preparation for another evacuation to our hurricane shelter. We feel that it is more prudent to be prepared and not need to evacuate than to be blindsided. I’m sure that each of you has been in contact with your Mom or Dad and have been given an update from them as well.

The last update from our meteorologist indicates that Frances will make landfall somewhere between West Palm Beach and Vero Beach after dusk Friday night. In Ft. Myers we can expect sustained winds between 40 and 70 mph from Friday night through Saturday. Due to the damage caused by Hurricane Charley twenty days ago we feel that to remain in King’s Crown for the duration would be risky.

Please rest assured that we will make sure that your parent’s safety and security is our utmost priority. We are asking that calls to our main number be limited so that we may focus all of our attention on hurricane preparation.

I also expect that we will be without phone service and e-mail capability for an undetermined amount of time before, during and sometime after the storm. Please be understanding if there are things that we were working on for your Mom or Dad that will need to be postponed until after the hurricane is passed.

Should we not need to evacuate I will send out a follow up e-mail to let you all know. Until then, please send us your prayers for our state as we brace for another round of bad weather!

Stacey Furbay, RN, BSHCL
King’s Crown

Hurricane Frances

I was afraid something like this was going to happen as soon as I saw this graphic of the storm’s approach that BoingBoing linked to yesterday. According to their post, as of yesterday, conditions were “favorable” for the storm to become a Category 5 hurricane — the strongest on the scale.

As before, thoughts, prayers, and good mojo are always appreciated — and not just for my family, but for all the people and families in Florida who are going through this.

iTunes: “Aboriginal” by Pigface from the album A New High in Low (1997, 3:09).

Bumbershoot tips

by

A re-post from last year — some rambling from me on how best to approach this upcoming weekend’s Bumbershoot festival (which, unfortunately, I’ll only be hitting two days of this year, due to my workplace not closing down for Labor Day).

Some general tips and approaches I use for getting through the weekend:

I carry as little as possible, so I don’t wear myself down with a big bag or anything. Camera, wallet, a book to scribble down what I’m doing and seeing so the pictures make sense, and that’s about it.

The Bumbershoot guides published in the Seattle Weekly and the Stranger are godsends. Before each day starts, I browse through to find anything that sounds like it might be interesting, whether or not I’ve heard of the artist, and mark it on the schedule (last year I found that the Seattle Weekly’s guide had better rundowns on the acts, but the Stranger’s single-sheet 4-page schedule was easier to keep in my pocket). Then, when I’m wandering around, I just see what I’ve marked off, and randomly choose one for whatever time it is to check out. If I like them, great, if they don’t quite hold my interest, then there’s plenty of other choices.

Don’t be afraid to deviate from your plan, though. There’s so much good stuff out there that it’s impossible to see it all, so you shouldn’t stress about missing an act — and there’s likely to be something worth seeing that you wouldn’t have picked up on just from reading about it. Not being a big reggae fan, I never would have planned to stop by Jumbalassy last year, but hearing them as I walked by sucked me right in.

Take the time to just wander around and explore all the nooks and crannies. I almost completely missed the Jazz stage last year — it’s up some stairs, kind of tucked away in a corner. I keep forgetting how big Seattle Center is, and how easy it is to lose bits and pieces of it when you’re focusing on getting from a specific point A to point B. Follow your nose. :)

Don’t forget to peoplewatch! This goes beyond just trying to navigate through the crowds — see who all is around you, pay attention to them, keep an ear out on what they’re saying. I’ve discovered some good shows that I might have missed just by hearing some random stranger get all excited about whatever band they’re heading off to see. A small crowd of people gathered somewhere might be nothing more than a momentary traffic jam, but it might also be a street performer worth watching — I discovered one of my favorite local artists this way the first year I was at Bumbershoot. Saw a crowd and decided to see what was up, ended up picking up a couple CDs and have been a fan ever since.

And most importantly — have fun! Enjoy the music and the sun, browse through the craft booths, go play in the fountain, or wade in the pool. We’re blessed with a huge festival with a ton of things to do on a gorgeous weekend — don’t let it go to waste!

iTunes: “Peach (Cut.Rate.Box)” by Beborn Beton from the album Tales From Another World (1999, 4:43).

Kids’ ideas about sex

by

Sex columnist Dan Savage recently asked his readers to submit letters detailing their childhood misconceptions about sex. The resulting two columns are hilarious…

Part one — the boys:

I was about 10 or 11 when we visited my Aunt Edie. I’d already had “the talk,” and I had a fairly good idea of what “adult” meant. Adult movies. Adult videos. Adult magazines. I was told that my Aunt Edie now lived in an “adult community.” Now, my aunt was a good 80 years old by this point, and I’d met her wrinkly ass at a few family gatherings, so when we got to the (clearly labeled) adult community, I got really creeped out. I asked my parents if they were really supposed to bring a kid in here, and upon more questioning explained my reasoning. After laughing so hard my dad had to stop the car, they cleared everything up.

Part two — the girls:

I went with my dad to visit his best friend, who bred Saint Bernards. While there, I saw this large wooden contraption and asked Dad what it was for. Turns out it was a breeding support, so the dog (who is usually well over 150 pounds) doesn’t hurt the bitch. My dad explained what a mommy dog and a daddy dog do to make puppies. He explained as accurately as a 4-year-old could understand, and I seemed to get what he was talking about. Later that day, we came home and I ran up to my mother. “Mom! Guess what I learned today!” I then proceeded to give a fairly detailed description of what a mommy dog and a daddy dog do to make puppies, followed by the exclamation, “You and Dad should do that!” You see, I wanted a puppy.

(via MeFi)

iTunes: “Dreams” by Cranberries, The from the album Alterno-Daze: 90’s Natural Selection (1995, 4:33).