This is it. I've had enough.
See you at Loscon, Anime Los Angeles, maybe Anime Expo, outside possibility of either WonderCon and/or Dragon*Con. SDCCI has officially gotten too big. And as such, it has quite obviously jumped the shark.
Today has been a day of outages.
All today, we have had NO hot water, and for most of the day we have had NO WATER AT ALL.
The stereotype about geeks is that we don't bathe. Thing is, I do, daily. I sometimes bathe more than once on hot sticky days. Like this one. I am miserable. The water just came back on...finally.
I know I don't give my Blogspot blogs much love anymore, because too many of my friends are on LJ and I seem to update my LJ more frequently. Well, I can't bitch about the water outage today, because thanks to mystery power problems in San Francisco my LJ is down. As is everyone else's.
And tomorrow I go to Comic-Con. Hopefully there won't be an Amtrak outage.
...go Akihabara crazy! Yes! Great thirst justice in Otaku Paradise!
This video speaks for itself. This is blatantly unfair. This is also why I left IT.
OMG WTF LOL BBQ!!!
Hello Kitty Airplane...and it's flying for EVA Airlines!!!
My big questions:
1.) Who's at the controls: Shinji, Asuka or Rei?
2.) Who's responsible for this: NERV or Seele?
3.) Are you more susceptible to Angel attack if flying on this plane?
4.) Does this plane fly on jet fuel, or A.T. fields?
5.) Does this airline fly to Japan? If so, I think this officially qualifies as the ultimate Otaku experience. Particularly if one is flying in for Comiket.
Wow, I had a real blast at the California ScienCenter. There were a lot of old friends and a few I only knew online until now. Amazing turnout. I figured out how to transport my costume on three buses and one subway train without killing my back. That took some doing, but basically entailed rolling up the garment bag and stuffing it into my book bag I use at Woodbury.
I have the start of one helluva patch jacket now, including a huge LP-sized Rebel Legion logo for the back, a smaller RL patch for the front, a patch given to me by Singaporean 501st Legion guys who I ran into the day after New Year's in my local Sith*Mart...they were looking for SW toys they couldn't get back at home...and a few other random patches either I have now or are coming to me via eBay or RL sources. Since I really don't trust iron-ons (I lived through the 1970s, iron-on patches have a tendency to get lost after a while) I'm using the iron-on stuff as substitute for basting before each actually gets sewn on.
Anyway, I love these guys. Geeks are good folk, and these are good geeks. Even the ones who carry red sabres or wear white armor. Imperial or Rebellion, we really are family. At least here in LA. I hear tell it's different elsewhere.
Looks like the YouTube vs. Viacom lawsuit is going to get laughed out of court if the judge isn't a total freaking wuss. Viacom owns iFilm. iFilm has copyrighted material from companies other than Viacom or CBS on the site. iFilm hasn't pulled any of it so far. Therefore, Viacom is asking YouTube to do what it is unwilling or unable to do on iFilm. Which means Viacom has unclean hands.
Looky here, HBO! Some infringing material on iFilm! Soprano killing spree! Get it while it's hot! Get it before Viacom wakes up and whacks it! Hey, isn't HBO/Cinemax the arch-nemesis of Showtime/TMC? Go get 'em! I caught them with their pants down!
Anyway, here's more about the situation.
And of course, here's what I think about YouTube and their spinelessness.
Another 7am run to the ScienCenter. There's going to be a Padawan sabre making workshop tomorrow, so I'll be in on it. It will be my first event as an official member of the Rebel Legion International...I've been part of Sunrider Base since last Comic-Con, but this will be the first event I will be an official RL member.
Doesn't that look kewl? Wait, there's more...
So sweet. I really want a couple of real lighted sabres, eventually. They have to be purple. They just have to be.
I didn't cosplay at Anime Los Angeles...too much stuff to sweat between making sure that my partially-sighted friend Donald was OK and my hubby was being treated right at City of Hope. The latter part was no cause for concern at all: CoH treats their patients like gold, up to and including medicines that ounce-for-ounce cost way more than that. And Donald is pretty amazing with his ability to get around autonomously in spite of his visual challenges.
However, tomorrow I'm going to be part of a huge throng of costumed folks at the California ScienCenter. Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination will be in full effect. However, I have no illusions about actually enjoying myself there: we will have work to do.
There will be 60 of us Sunrider Base Brightsiders there, which means that there will probably be twice as many 501st TK Units there as well. This is going to be hella big...bigger by far than Santa Monica.
Since I am not cosplaying a "face character" I will likely not be getting a great deal of love from picture-takers. I'm sure there will be plenty of people out there wanting pix of Darth Vader, Stormtroopers, Anakin, Luke, etc. Hell, usually in a situation like this the Padmes get short shrift, never mind that theirs are the most eye-popping costumes of all.
Hopefully I'll get to roll copious quantities of tape and take plenty of pix. I doubt I will be able to get a look at the exhibit. I should wait until some Friday when I'm feeling bored and caught up with my school work to do that.
I have to be out to wait for the bus at freaking 7am. Target time for arrival: 9:30am.
The Force had BETTER be with me tomorrow. :P
This is the video YouTube does not want you to see.
So yeah, apparently now I'm Persona Non Grata there. Whoopee! Oh well, Ning is just fine by me.
Update: this is up on YouTube as well. They are finally showing a little scrotal matter.
This was done with my Mac, and is a tongue-in-cheek look at what makes a scary ident scary. I'm putting all my stuff up on ning.com from here on out. YouTube might be more known but they are also prone to be overzealous when they get rid of material associated with Big Media companies. They will get rid of parodies and fanfilms at the same time as they get rid of copyrighted stuff.
Like I say at the end of this video: YouTube should grow a spine. Big Media should grow a brain. Sites like YouTube do not allow downloading, and could conceivably block the tools that people in the know use to download .FLV content. Sites like these give absolutely FREE PUBLICITY. If anything, Big Media should be THANKING YouTube for providing people with a way to find content that promotes their products.
Keeping on top of school and Richie stuffs and so forth means my blogs don't get much love no more. [sigh]
I will update here soon. I promise.
As Richie and I deal with Richie's life-threatening condition, I finally hear (4 days late) that Robert Anton Wilson has taken his final voyage, mere days before his 75th birthday.
Here's the message I left on RAW's blog, tagged onto his last post:
93, 31, 23, 5, hike!
I don't know what kind of clever thing I can say. I hope your passage was like your friend Tim Leary's. Reportedly his last words were these: "Why not? It's beautiful."
I hope you had a beautiful passing. I hope you saw whatever beatific vision Leary did.
You were so optimistic about our future as a species, that we were on the way to evolving, that if you saw the world getting better and better you were getting smarter, and if you saw the world getting worse and worse you were getting more stupid.
Of course, you wrote those words before America elected George W. Bush not once, but twice, and California elected Arnold Schwarzenegger twice as well. I think perhaps DEVO had it more accurately: as a species, we are devolving. Of course, that shouldn't stop those determined to evolve. And that was your determination throughout life.
I wish we would have gotten to that optimistic, brave new world you saw in your mind's eye in your lifetime. I wonder if we ever will in my lifetime, or in the lifetime of those who are the right age to have been children of mine if I had decided to have children.
I suppose we just have to keep hoping.
I suddenly have a craving for pasta tonight.
Arrividerci, mi amici. Pax vobiscum.
93
93 93
Michelle
What was one of the reasons why the Lord of the Rings movies didn't suck? Peter Jackson. What's the reason why the upcoming Hobbit movie will probably suck? Absence of Peter Jackson.
According to New Line Cinema co-chair Bob Shaye, Jackson is now persona non grata at New Line. What horrible sin is Jackson guilty of that Shaye would disassociate from him? He simply wants to get paid his rightful share of the profits that are due to him for the three movies, that's all. No Hollywood "creative accounting" chicanery. None of that bullshit. He wants his share. And that's only fair.
This is an age-old story. This is why I have nothing but contempt for the MPAA and the Four Families of the Record Industry. I don't see Universal Studios crying over what they made from Jackson's surprisingly good remake of King Kong.
All I can say is that this makes Shaye look like a dick, and Jackson look like a hero.
Just wishing everyone a happy new year, and a very geeky Otakushogatsu.
Here's my card.
Ever since Wednesday night I've basically been living through a nightmare...my husband Richie is in the hospital and nobody exactly knows what's going on. They are testing and testing and so far nothing conclusive.
However, you try to find the good whenever and wherever you can. And this is good.
I finally have the MacBook where I want it. 2GB of RAM. It does make a difference. 1GB is great, but 2GB is better. Way better. Richie was able to get some nap time in as I took the boxed Micron RAM to the Apple Store in Northridge to get it put in. Yeah, I know I could have done this myself...but what if I screwed it up? It's considered a "DIY" fix, but still...Apple gets kind of funky when home-done repairs go wrong.
Anyway, maxing the RAM on a MacBook makes it...MIGHTY. Things tend to move fast, even when Rosetta is involved. w00t.
I want to experiment with Parallels now. However, I have more important priorities to think about, so those experiments will probably be tabled for a while. Richie's health, and the next semester at school, have to take priority, in that order. Geeking around must be third on the list at best.
I know not everyone is happy about this, but dammit, I think Time made an excellent choice when they chose John and Jane Q. Internet User as Person of the Year.
Yeah, in a perfect world Dr. Howard Dean should have got it for winning most of the US back into the Blue column with his "50 State Strategy." But in a perfect world Ah-nuld der Gropenfuhrer would be on his way back to Fucking Austria and we'd be preparing for the inaugural of Governor Phil Angelides. Or maybe the inaugural of Governor Warren Beatty because maybe only a movie star could dislodge another movie star from the California State House. OK, at least we have Secretary of State Elect Debra Bowen to celebrate. Time to throw those Diebold DRE machines into the same shredder they used to turn the EV-1 into metallic mincemeat.
Anyway, just when it looked like Big Media and Big Telecom was going to turn the current Internet into a frontage road for their super toll road, in rides the Googleplex to bring the democracy back to the Internet. Maybe they don't do 100% of a good job "doing no evil" but still they do a hell of a lot of good for a company that's gotten so big so quick. And it's not just the Googleplex. AOL is beginning to look like they ain't so bad now that they've almost given up the ghost on their stand alone system and joined the Free Generation. I've parlayed my AIM account into 5GB of encrypted storage for my stuffs that might have gotten lost in a disk crash. That came in handy. And it was free.
Yeah, probably Web 2.0 is going to bust up just like v1.0 did in 2000. This time I don't have a dog in the fight like I did when I was working for Onyx Networks in their quest to become the UUNet of the Pacific Rim. I'm just going to watch and enjoy it while it lasts, then hope that I'm not taken down in the undertow in some indirect way.
I'm now finding out what my likely grades are for this semester...well at least on one class, anyway.
Would you believe...STATS 1????!?!????
SPSS test went off with no hitches, the "statistics concepts test" was way easier than I thought, and even though I need to do a rewrite on my paper the current paper was graded an A. So I am likely to have an A. Amazing. Freaking amazing.
It's been asked many times before, I will ask it again. Pirates or Ninjas?
I stand four-square on the side of Ninjas.
Here is a synopsis of the controversy.
I will leave you with a picture, from an Iga-Togakure associated dojo. Does this chick not look like she can kick ass, take names, and chew bubblegum? Does this chick not look like she's out of bubblegum and in the mood to kick even more ass?
(you can click it to get a better look.)
Well?
Why is it that people are opting for USB2 drives over FireWire while most computers have a FireWire/IEEE 1394/iLink port? The USB2 protocol is inferior, requiring an intelligent host, while FireWire runs without any intervention by the computer. This is why you see FireWire ports on DV cameras: you don't have to build smarts into a DV camera to handle a data transfer. You can't use USB2 drives for video geeking, because it robs CPU to do data transfer.
Because of this, good inexpensive FireWire drives are hard to find, and Apple no longer includes FireWire ports on the iPod. That is SO wrong. Is FireWire an endangered species? Do geeks have to start a "Save FireWire" movement? Just a thought.
