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I Shall Think Of It As Winnipeg Southport

  • Jul. 7th, 2009 at 3:34 PM
trombone
I can't make it to the Winnipeg Folk Festival this year (imagine a very sad le_trombone at this point). I'll miss the great people (yes, even you Dave [you know I had to say that, right?]) and great music and the "mugging".

I'll even miss the border inspections.

Fortunately, the Duhks are playing at Schuba's Sunday. That'll make up for it.

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Two Things

  • Jul. 6th, 2009 at 4:58 PM
trombone
  1. Yahoo does strange things to embedded PHP code in web pages. This took the better part of a day to determine.

  2. I actually appreciate the amateur efforts at fireworks on the fourth, but good lord how do you wind up with leftovers to play with on the fifth?

I'm Just Not Bicycling Enough

  • Jul. 4th, 2009 at 10:46 AM
trombone
I think the number of times I've been on my bike this year is in the single digits. I tend not to bike when it rains, and recent events have conspired to keep me off the road, but I finally got out last night and biked down to Navy Pier. I was a little late for the fireworks, but it was very nice biking down the lakefront park, watching the firework's peek over the buildings.

On the other hand, good grief people, I'm willing to overlook the crowds on the bike path last night, but will you please learn to walk on the right?

Oh yeah, and you guys with the brakeless, lightless, and rear reflectorless bikes on the path? You suck.

I also tossed a couple bucks to a group of probably-teens who were probably road-tripping and scrounging money by busking. What can I say, I'm a sucker for fiddle and banjo, no matter how well its played.

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trombone
The "Advanced Search" doesn't really allow me to do advanced searching under the best of conditions, but now I find that even the fields in its own form aren't necessarily valid:

Error text that you don't need to see unless you're technically inclined )

I mean, c'mon. If you're going to set up a selection on your database, get the column names right.

It turns out that the correct item to choose is "title type", but I'm not really inclined to give them points for obscuring the features that do work.

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trombone
It's going to be an important category

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs.

I'm disappointed that it's only one minute 54 seconds long.

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No Comment

  • Jun. 30th, 2009 at 2:15 PM
trombone
Ayn Rand was a fan of Charlie's Angels, and wanted Farrah Fawcett to play the lead in an adaptation of Atlas Shrugged.

Okay, one comment. I try to distinguish bad writing from bad acting. If the script's awful, no amount of talent can make bad lines sound good. Fawcett was a better actress than one would expect from Charlie's Angels, but most people wouldn't know that because CA was the only reference that they had.

So either Rand was a perceptive viewer, or she liked junk TV and latched on to her favorite character on the show.

A Minor Observation

  • Jun. 30th, 2009 at 8:38 AM
trombone
Getting rear-ended on I-294 by a driver who completed her cancer treatment a week ago, and who told me she had to slap herself to stay awake as she drove yesterday isn't nearly as interesting as it sounds.

On the other hand, this would be why I used the seat belts to secure the coffee maker. Neither it nor I left our seats.

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Think Galacticon 2009

  • Jun. 24th, 2009 at 11:45 AM
trombone
I don't have the draw that others have, being charismatically impaired, but I don't think that I actually drive people away, so:

Lefty Science Fiction Convention To Be Held In Downtown Chicago This Weekend.

Feel free to come on over and see what's what. Fortunately, there will be people far more interesting than me there that you can to talk to.

Delayed On Account Of Weather

  • Jun. 19th, 2009 at 11:39 PM
trombone
Heavy rain? Check.
Multiple lightning strikes? Check.
Wind blowing rain horizontally? Check.
Quarter-inch hailstones (in 70°-plus temperatures)? Check.
Flooded streets? Check.

And this went on for hours.

I did not turn on my computer for a while. I did not leave the building for a while. And it's very humid right now.

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This Is Why You Should Subscribe

  • Jun. 18th, 2009 at 11:29 AM
trombone
This little gem is one of the many pleasures that [info]mobylives_feed brings me:

As [children's book author Alison] Uttley hadn’t bothered to listen to a word I’d told her, she was completely unprepared for this. Dimly she perceived an overwhelming mob running at her and with British pluck she unhesitatingly grabbed her duck-handled umbrella and waded into the attack, felling infants right and left.

The kiddies paused, briefly regrouped, then broke up and ran off, screaming in terror. Uttley strode among them, lashing out freely.


And I thought Roald Dahl had issues...

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Barrel Monster!

  • Jun. 18th, 2009 at 10:12 AM
trombone
Remarkably awesome sculpture made out of orange traffic barrels.

Alas, they weren't the artist's barrels. He is being prosecuted.

Look, links! Each with a picture of the sculpture!

The Smoking Gun has the court docs.

Some reactions to the art and court situation.

Joseph Carnevale's blog entry.

I wonder if he's an SF0 player?

Initial impetus from [info]theweaselking

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Bloggers Have No Privacy Rights

  • Jun. 16th, 2009 at 3:43 PM
trombone
In England

From The Times Online, Ruling on NightJack author Richard Horton kills blogger anonymity.

It should be noted that it was The Times that was trying to reveal his identity in the first place. Even if we assume an attempt at journalistic neutrality, that should be kept in mind when reading the article.
Read more... )

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Yep, New Toy

  • Jun. 12th, 2009 at 1:00 PM
trombone
Wordnik.


So, naturally I had to test a word that I happen to like:

Quiddle

Century Dictionary (3)

1. To spend or waste time in trifling employments, or to attend to useful subjects in a trifling or superficial manner; be of a trifling, time-wasting character.
2. One who quiddles, or busies himself about, trifles. Also quiddler.
3. To quiver; shiver; tremble; creep, as live flesh: as, the fish were still quiddling.

Webster's Unabridged (1913) (1)

1. To spend time in trifling employments, or to attend to useful subjects in an indifferent or superficial manner; to dawdle.

I'm either the third person to look it up on that site, or there were three people before me to look it up. Hard to tell.

Via [info]antickmusings

A Sign The Apocalypse is Receding

  • Jun. 11th, 2009 at 11:00 AM
trombone
Futurama to be brought back.

This almost makes up for the craptacular "Family Guy" (yeah, I know, turn off the TV). Almost.

Watch The Skies

  • Jun. 10th, 2009 at 12:17 PM
trombone
In results presented on June 9, 2009 at the 214th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, astronomers (including Charles H. Townes, Edward H. Wishnow, Dale D.S. Hale, and B. Walp) reported that Betelgeuse appears to have decreased its diameter by more than 15 percent since 1993...

(www.solstation.com)



Poll #1413944 Betelgeuse Boom
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Betelgeuse will go supernova...

View Answers

In 10years
0 (0.0%)

In 50 years
0 (0.0%)

In 100 years
0 (0.0%)

You do know what the implication of "430 light years away" means, right?
4 (100.0%)

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It Was A Very Good Play

  • Jun. 9th, 2009 at 9:54 PM
trombone
Back in December, I wrote briefly that you all should see the then-running play "Jon", based on the George Saunders story.

You have another chance. "Jon" has been remounted at Theatre on the Lake, 2401 N Lake Shore Drive. Shows are on June 17th to the 21st.

It was a terrific combination of tech and theater, and I think I'll see it again myself.

Echidna

  • Jun. 8th, 2009 at 8:01 PM
trombone
In most mammals, a single set of XX chromosomes signifies a girl, a set of XY specifies a boy. For reasons that remain mysterious, monotremes have multiple sets of sex chromosomes, four or more parading pairs of XXs and XYs, or something else altogether: a few of those extra sex chromosomes look suspiciously birdlike.

Natalie Angier, 9 June 2009 New York Times

Any mention of monotremes surviving in Australia in Y, The Last Man?

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It's Time To Confess To My New Addiction

  • Jun. 8th, 2009 at 7:12 PM
trombone
Kenken. Oh yes.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/crosswords/kenken.html.

Ooooh, the on-line edition has 8x8 puzzles.

Sudoku is dead to me.

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A Note To The Word Purists

  • Jun. 5th, 2009 at 4:01 PM
trombone
Even before the panic over influenza A H1N1 (swine flu) hit the headlines, pandemics were becoming unavoidable in popular culture as both an ever-present threat and a metaphor for collective hysteria. But this was not always the case. In the first recorded use, in 1666, the English physician Gideon Harvey used “Pandemick” interchangeably with “Epidemick” to mean a malignant disease that “do generally…haunt a Country”. Interestingly, although Harvey was writing just a year after the Great Plague, the reference came in a tract about consumption. For Harvey and his contemporary Samuel Pepys, the plague was merely a “pestilence”.

The Lancet, Volume 373, Issue 9679, Page 1939, 6 June 2009

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