Thanks to a clever little hack by Adam Kalsey, all comments and TrackBack pings that I receive are displayed as a single list on each entry’s page, sorted by the time they were received. Much nicer visually than having two seperate listings of responses to one of my posts.
geek*muffin
Ladies and gentlemen (or, given my readership, mayhaps that should be lady and gentleman?) — please stop by and welcome my good friend Kirsten to the weblogging world.
I give you: [geek*muffin]!
This describes the beginning of geekmuffin. I am the flawed, the utterly imperfect, screwy wannabe-god of this blog, a nearly-clueless fucking idiot trying to make something that at least works, sort of.
bear with me until i graduate from idiot to underling, and this place won’t look so pre-made.
(Now I just have to hope she doesn’t smack me upside my possibly well-deserving head for jumping on this so quickly….)
Desktop images from Columbia
There are some gorgeous images taken by the crew of the Columbia before it broke up on reentry, courtesy of NASA. I’ve taken two of my favorites and turned them into 1024×768 desktop images, which you can grab here if you like.
On the left: “STS107-E-05697 (26 January 2003) — A quarter moon is visible in this oblique view of Earth’s horizon and airglow, recorded with a digital still camera aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. (NASA caption)” (Original high-resolution version)
On the right: “STS107-E-05070 (18 January 2003) — The bright sun dissects the airglow above Earth’s horizon in this digital still camera’s view photographed from the Space Shuttle Columbia. (NASA caption)” (Original high-resolution version)
(From lies.com via Dave Winer)
Creative Commons
There’s been a fair amount of discussion recently in the weblog world about the Creative Commons copyright licensing system. The CC meme spread like wildfire after it was introduced — spread, in part, by the recent Eldred vs. Ashcroft court decision that extended copyright terms. Today, Shelley wondered if she and Jonathan Delacour — who have both decided to forego the CC licence in favor of the more traditional “all rights reserved” copyright — “…can be the only two people who want to have some control over how our work is used. We can’t possibly be the only two people who believe this. Can we?”
Well, other people have already chimed in, but I can too — no, you two aren’t! I took a look at the CC licences when they first appeared, and considered adopting one of them for my weblog, but in the end, also decided not to. At the bottom of every page on this site, you’ll see the standard copyright line, and that’s how I intend to keep it.
Now, I sincerely doubt that anyone would ever go to the trouble of abusing the copyright I’ve claimed. Little of what I write here would really be publishable in any form other than that of a weblog — short comments, the occasional witty-in-my-head comment that very likely falls flat when read by anyone else, and the occasional long, rambling blather about my oh-so-(un)interesting life. However, whether or not it’s something that is of a quality to “deserve” copyright protection isn’t really the point — everything here that I’ve created, I’ve created, and I have every right to determine the ultimate fate of my creations (even if that fate is nothing more than getting lost in the great bit bucket of the Internet).
So — this space, such as it is, is mine, and copyrighted as such. Quote me if you like (preferably with a link back to me — I could use the traffic!), just respect the copyright and don’t steal from me. That’s all I ask. Simple enough, isn’t it?
Tired of the 'renovations'
Grrrrrr…. I woke up this morning to find a note slipped under my door telling me that the power to the building was going to be cut off again today, due to the construction/renovation work currently going on. Fat lot of good that note did me, though, considering the power was already off when I woke up. I’m just glad I didn’t oversleep, since I didn’t have my alarm to get me up!
Then, when I come home, there’s a note on the front door of the building letting us tenants know that the water will be shut off during the day tomorrow.
I’m getting so sick of this. Our building hasn’t had working laundry facilities for three months now, so we all need to try to find time to truck our laundry up to the nearest laundromat (open only until 9pm, and charging \$2 per wash). We had a full month without reliable hot water, which ended with four days without any hot water. The heat has been an on-and-off thing. Water is apparently still an on-and-off thing. We keep getting told that they’re “almost done,” that the construction work will be done “any time now.” We’re all sick of hearing that, and quite a few people have left the building because finding a new place was less of a pain in the ass than putting up with everything here. Ugh. Time for this to be done. Finito. End of story.
Anyway, if you’re a regular or semi-regular visitor here, and couldn’t get through, that’s why. No power to the building, no power to the computer, no website. Bleah.
Hopefully this really will all be done with soon. I’m more than ready for it to end.
Space Shuttle Colombia lost
My heartfelt condolences to the families of the seven astronauts of the Space Shuttle Columbia, which was lost today during reentry.
Seven astronauts were killed today when space shuttle Columbia broke up about 38 miles above Texas on its way to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
President Bush said in a news conference Saturday that the news had brought “great sadness to our country,” but pledged, “Our journey into space will go on.”
CNN: Seven astronauts killed as shuttle shatters
I sincerely hope that Bush is right here. I’ve always felt that one of the most unfortunate repercussions of the 1986 Challenger Shuttle loss was the crippling effect it seemed to have on NASA. In the space of the few seconds of the explosion, we went from a country still intent on pushing the boundaries of our world out into space, into one apparently too scarred by the loss of the Challenger to try for anything beyond what we’d already accomplished.
One hundred years ago, in 1903, the Wright Brothers became the first humans to fly. 66 years later, Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon. But then, over the next twenty years, as the cold war ramped up, space exploration became less and less of a priority, and the explosion of the Challenger seemed to take the wind out of what was left of NASA’s sails.
It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve felt like our space exploration programs were really starting to get moving again, and I’d hate to see this accident tie us back to earth again.
(On a side note, I also think that Bush needs better speechwriters. The best soundbite I can see in his press conference from this morning is “Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on.” Not nearly as good, or as likely to be remembered, as Reagan’s quoting John Gillespie Magee, Jr.’s poem “High Flight” when he said that that the Challenger astronauts had “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God” in his address after the Challenger explosion.)
Anyway, enough rambling pontification. My best to the astronauts, their families, and all at NASA working to determine the cause of this accident.
The Hanscom Family
Today brings the debut of a project I’ve been working on for the past week or so — The Hanscom Family Weblog! This is (will be) a collaborative weblog, by and for the various members of the Hanscom family. From my introductory post:
This is a project that I started thinking about a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been running my own weblog for a while now, but the idea of doing a “group weblog” had always bounced around in my brain. Suddenly, the idea hit me — why not make one for my family?
The Hanscom family members tend to be a wonderful combination of intelligent, opinionated, and locquacious, the combination of which seems like a natural wellspring for content. We’re also scattered across the United States, and currently the globe.
So, last week I sent an e-mail out to mom and dad, asking them to forward it along to the rest of the family, sounding out what they thought of the idea. So far, mom, dad, and Susan have all expressed interest, and I’m hoping that everyone else will join in the fray.
As things are just getting off the ground, at present I’m the only author, though that will change as soon as I get passwords assigned, e-mails sent out, instructions…instructed…anyway, all that fun stuff. In any case, we’re up and running!
Time to get nekkid!
[![First Annual Nude Blog Awards]]
[First Annual Nude Blog Awards]: https://michaelhans.com/eclecticism/graphics/2003/01/graphics/nudebloggies.gif {width=”88″ height=”31″}
Here I’ve been doing my best to keep this weblog of mine fairly solidly PG-rated, with the occasional slip into PG-13, and now I find that if only I’d shown some skin, I might have been eligible for the First Annual Nude Weblog Awards!
The really funny thing, is that I’ve had a few people over the years comment that given my thin/slender/wirey/anorexic (pick one) frame, I’d probably make a very good nude model. I’ve occasionally toyed with the idea, and wouldn’t mind giving it a shot at some point (thinking more along the lines of some decent black and white photography), but the opportunity’s never presented itself. Who knows, though — maybe next year, I’ll have a shot? ;)
Boy, wouldn’t my parents love seeing that pop up on the screen when they checked my page!
Vonnegut weighs in on Iraq
Author Kurt Vonnegut (whom I really need to go re-read, it’s been years) has some good comments on the current brouhaha in In These Times:
Based on what you’ve read and seen in the media, what is not being said in the mainstream press about President Bush’s policies and the impending war in Iraq?
That they are nonsense.
My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we’ve lost reason to hope?
I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”
How have you gotten involved in the anti-war movement? And how would you compare the movement against a war in Iraq with the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era?
When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.
And so it is with anti-war protests in the present day. Then as now, TV did not like anti-war protesters, nor any other sort of protesters, unless they rioted. Now, as then, on account of TV, the right of citizens to peaceably assemble, and petition their government for a redress of grievances, “ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit,” as the saying goes.
(Via MeFi)
Which OS am I?
I stay away from a lot of the “Which [random entity] are you?” tests floating around these days, but this one made me laugh: Which OS are you?
(Via Phil)