How do I do this?

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Okay, so I’ve got this new toy to play with, and I do need to make sure to play with it. I just need to figure out how to play with it.

Possible options:

  • Duplicate my posts: Copy and paste so that what I’m posting here also shows up on The Long Letter, and vice versa.
  • Keep both blogs active: Put some posts over here, and some posts over there. But which ones where?
  • Move over here: Put The Long Letter on hiatus for a bit, and just use this as my primary blog.

There’s pros and cons to each of the options, of course. Hmmmm…

Greetings, Earthlings

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Just something cool: a weblog from space, written by NASA Science Officer Ed Lu from on board the International Space Station.

At night, the dominant thing you see when you look down is thunderstorms. Lightning lights up the clouds in sometimes spectacular displays. At any given time at night, especially over the tropics, you can see one or more lightning storms going on. The lightning flashes illuminate the clouds from within, and ripple through the storm systems. I enjoy turning off all the lights in the docking compartment, and watching thunderstorm systems at night through its sideward facing windows. The southern Indian Ocean is a great place to watch thunderstorms.

As we near Australia, if you look towards the horizon southward you can see the aurora. The aurora look like glowing green curtains which move upwards from the top of the atmosphere. The curtains intersect the atmosphere in a curved line, which appears as a bright green line south of Australia. There are times when we actually fly through the aurora, and you can look downwards and see the green glow below you. Sometimes there are traces of red along with the predominant green. We’ve taken some time-lapse movies looking towards the horizon as we fly past the aurora.

(via Craig Suchland)

TypePad beta testing!

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I got a surprisingly cool e-mail when I got home today — I’m a TypePad beta tester!

I can’t really say much more than that, as is to be expected with something such as this, but one thing I can do is point you to my TypePad weblog: Eclecticism! There’s not a whole lot there yet, I’m still more or less randomly poking around and getting the hang of the new digs, but more will appear before too terribly long.

Now I just need to figure out how I’m going to manage keeping two weblogs current and up to date, without letting either one languish too much. Should be interesting. We’ll see how I do. ;)

Marc, Laura, and a 12-egg omelette

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Caffeine? No, we don’t drink caffeine! Why do you ask?

Rick, Laura and Marc

Friday there was one topic of conversation among my friends and me — where the heck are Marc and Laura? We knew they were supposed to be coming down for the Warped Tour out at the Gorge, but nobody’d been able to get in contact with them or figure out what the deal was. A little disconcerting, since Rick thought he was supposed to be picking them up at the airport, but we figured that if they really needed to get ahold of us, they would. Then we crossed our fingers.

Sunday, though, all was explained. I got a call around noon from Marc — as it turns out, he and Laura had arrived from Anchorage safely and were staying with Laura’s “other mom” out in Lynwood. They’d gotten ahold of Rick on Saturday, the three of them had made it out to the Warped Tour, and now they were back in town and ready to go play. Rock on! First stop — the Hurricane Cafe.

Marc and his 12 egg omelette

Couldn't eat it all!

The Hurricane is famous for its 12-egg omelettes — absolutely huge amounts of food. Laura had promised Marc that if he could finish off his omelette, she’d pay for it.

She didn’t have to pay.

He did, however, give it a valiant effort. We’re estimating that he probably got through around 9 of the eggs or so — far more than any of the rest of us would have been able to do!

Much fun was had sitting around, talking, and catching up on our various lives. Once we were all fed (and we’d given Marc a chance to let the eggs settle in his stomach), Rick and I took Marc and Laura out to the Underground Tour here in Pioneer Sqare. The Underground Tour is one of my favorite “touristy” things to do here in town, and I like to take it about once a year or so (no two tour guides ever come up with quite the same set of stories to tell), so I was about due, anyway.

Unfortunately, we failed to convince the two of them to Ride the Ducks (sigh). Someday…

Marc and Laura

After the tour, we spent some time just wandering around downtown Seattle and enjoying the sunshine. I even managed to get one picture that can be used as evidence that Marc and Laura actually like each other — though Marc, I’m sure, will strenuously deny that every chance he gets. He’s just sweet like that. ;)

Once they all decided they’d had enough sun, we came up to my apartment to hang out for a couple hours, then Marc, Laura and Rick wandered off to find food and get some rest. They’re in town until next Saturday, though, so hopefully I’ll have another chance to get together with them before they leave. Besides, I’ve got to get their mailing address before they leave — I fully intend to subscribe them to the Stranger so they know exactly what they’re missing by continuing to live up in the frozen wastelands of Alaska instead of moving down here like any sane person would!

Oh, and one last thing — just in case you were curious, this is what happens to Alaskans who spend an entire day in the summer sun of the Gorge without bothering to use sunscreen. I don’t recommend it. ;)

Sunscreen would have been a good idea...

They Might Be Monitors

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Help raise money for Amnesty International and sponsor me for Blogathon 2003! Looks like TMBM is going to be keeping an eye out on all the various Blogathon participants, compiling a live-as-we-go “best of” list. Should be interesting to see what pops up as things progress!

They’ve already found a few ‘concept’ projects: one site will be focusing on Harry Potter, and another will be posting in haiku. I’m thinking about focusing on some of the music I listen to that isn’t overly well known, especially now that I can let people listen in, but I’m not entirely sure yet. Still have a couple weeks to plan!

Presidential Candidate Selector

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There’s an interesting online quiz that, for once, is actually a bit more serious than the standard “What [fill in the blank] are you?” quizes that float around fairly often. This one is the Presidential Candidate Selector, which uses a series of questions about how you feel on various issues to determine which candidate’s views are most in line with your own.

I ran through it, and here’s my results:

  1. Kucinich, Cong. Dennis, OH – Democrat (100%)
  2. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT – Democrat (83%)
  3. Sharpton, Reverend Al – Democrat (83%)
  4. Edwards, Senator John, NC – Democrat (79%)
  5. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol IL – Democrat (79%)
  6. Gephardt, Cong. Dick, MO – Democrat (78%)
  7. Kerry, Senator John, MA – Democrat (78%)
  8. Lieberman Senator Joe CT – Democrat (69%)
  9. Graham, Senator Bob, FL – Democrat (66%)
  10. Libertarian Candidate (44%)
  11. Phillips, Howard – Constitution (6%)
  12. Bush, George W. – US President (1%)
  13. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. – Democrat (-7%)

Overall, it seemed to do a fairly good job. I’ve known I’m not 100% in line with Dean’s views, but being 100% in agreement with a candidate is far less important to me than the combination of agreeing with most of what they have to say, and their viability as a candidate. I’ll probably want to take a closer look at Kuchinich — to this point, I’ve only given him a fairly cursory glance — but from what I know right now, I’m definitely sticking with Dean as my candidate of choice.

(via Robert)

About Howard Dean

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There’s an excellent overview of Howard Dean in today’s Washington Post. It’s been getting linked to on quite a few sites, with quite a few different pull quotes used, but here’s part that made me laugh:

On a hot Sunday afternoon at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles, the California Teachers Association was nearing the end of a two-day conference. More than 800 delegates sat in a ballroom with the stuffy, bottled-up feel of an airplane. They were ready to go home. But first, Dean was going to speak.

That in itself was unusual. The 333,000-member union, the largest in the state, is stingy with invitations to politicians. But Dean, the only current presidential candidate invited to speak to the association so far, had generated a buzz. Some union officials had heard Dean speak in April at the state Democratic convention in Sacramento, and they wanted to hear him again. Others, who hadn’t heard him, wanted to know what the fuss was about.

Dean came on like Beethoven, capturing the crowd with his first four notes.

“I taught eighth-grade social studies for three months,” he said, “so I can personally say that I am the only person running for the presidency of the United States that knows what it’s like to stand up without being able to go to the bathroom for five hours.”

Bingo.

After 15 minutes, Dean told the audience he was going to wrap it up.

“Awwww” pulsed through the ballroom.

“That’s the first time I’ve seen that ,” said Wayne Johnson, who was the union’s president until the end of June. “No one in all the years I’ve been with this organization, no speaker, has ever had that kind of reaction.”

(via newsguyatl)