Category: general

Here are a bunch of t-shirts I want to buy. This post is mainly organizational (my blog is more accessible to me than, say, a text file), but I figure it’s also good advertising for the makers of the shirts, so hey.

Shirts by Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content:

Aerodynamically Curvaceous

TEH (ladies’ lilac)

Irony (heather grey)

Shirts by John Allison of Scary Go Round:

Manowar (No, not the band. I’d really prefer a shirt with Shelley on it, but whatever…)

Shirts by Carson Fire of Elf Life:

Well, I would buy that Evil Baughb shirt, except the store is gone. :P

Shirts by Scott Kurtz of PvP:

Han Shot First (because I used to own the original design…sniff sniff)

Shirts by Brian Clevinger of 8-Bit Theater:

Black Mage Ladies Tee

Shirts by R Stevens of Diesel Sweeties:

I Am 10 Ninjas Babydoll

Sis’ Heart Babydoll (red)

Shirts by the Mac Hall guys:

MacDonald Hall Australian Indoor-Rules Quidditch

Shirts by Aeire of Queen of Wands:

Image Not Found (yes, I’m a dork)

Shirts by Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade:

Tycho Babydoll

Gabe Babydoll

Mr. Period Ladies Ringer

CTS – Obey The Tube

Wombat Babydoll

Rogues Do It From Behind (yes…I’m giving in)

It’s not my fault Penny Arcade has the best shirts!

So, it looks like I need to wait for the t-shirt fairy to visit…or something. There are plenty of other webcomics I’d like to support by buying t-shirts, but they either don’t have t-shirts, or don’t have designs I like. Alas!

At any rate, check out those designs, and if you think they’re cool, you can buy them too! Then we can be SHIRT BUDDIES!

Yesterday, after having a nice lunch with someone who is entirely too happy (which is cute for the first few hours or so ;>), I went over to 2go-Box to hang out with Audrey and pick up my check for a recent project. I decided to deposit it at the Washington Road/Davis Road Wachovia so I could get a smoothie at R. Gabriel’s. Then I decided that hey, since I was right down the street, I’d go take a look at Springhouse.

Here’s where our apartment used to be!

And here’s how it looks from the front. That sidewalk led to the breezeway and the staircase.

According to the sign, the demo was done by…Home Depot. Yeah, I didn’t know they did that kind of thing, either!

Here’s a side view.

There are two different heights because the floors in the building were staggered. You can tell how it worked by the doors in the building that apparently didn’t have to be demo’d.

There were some high security storage bins sitting in the parking lot. I held out hope that they had debris in them and I could somehow get inside and rummage and find my hard drives (yes, I am pathetic), but ultimately I discovered that they were unlocked and empty.

See more pictures of the post-demolition Springhouse in the fire gallery.

Six years old today :)

(Remember this?)

Yesterday I headed over to the Augusta Canal trail for some biking. I rode from the headgates to the pumping station without stopping at about 12 mph average, then relaxed on my way back, stopping frequently for pictures.

I was interested to see that the construction at the Waterworks is done. Now there’s a nice paved trail above the paved parking/work area for the pumping station. It looks pretty nice.

I tried this time for some interesting depth of field (DOF) shots by using the manual focus. I was marginally successful.

The headgates waterfall was barely a trickle, and the river was low. There was a woman standing out on the exposed rocks, fishing. I got a few pictures of her.

I also took the opportunity to take some nice pictures of Yuuri.

All in all, I’m fairly happy with these photos. I’d been feeling lately like I’d just been phoning it in, so on this trip I took my time and seriously tried to get good shots. That the pictures didn’t all turn out the way I’d hoped just means I have more to learn :)

This is awesome. And it was done without CGI! From the About page:

In an age when CGI is commonplace, this makes the commercial all the more extraordinary. Every single frame was shot over two days – with the main sequence involving a 23-man camera crew and only one chance to get it right.

An entire block was closed off and special compressed-air cannons shot the balls into the air, while earth moving equipment poured thousands down the street. Not that you’d know it from the finished product, but these balls can do some damage, so all the cars were props and crew members went so far as to having protective shields and crash helmets.

But when you get it right, you get it right. The goal at the beginning was to deliver a “really simple, visual celebration of colour”. We think you’ll agree the results speak for themselves.

Via BoingBoing.

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough: Harry Potter’s “flying” car is stolen

Come on, it was never Harry’s car. (And really, when you become intelligent, can you truly belong to anyone?)

Good for him. (Via Kirkie)

Is it bad that I still, to this day, get Sulu and Chekov confused? :>

I know I didn’t.

Driver swerves to miss cat and hits 36 kids, one adult in Shizuoka

No lie:

The driver of a passenger car dodged a cat and the vehicle crashed into a line of nursery school children in the city of Shizuoka on Thursday afternoon, injuring 36 children and an adult looking after them, police said.

That is nuts! I’m just glad no one was killed!

The Kitty Hawk is pretty old; it’s past time to decommission her. The main reason she’s stayed at Yokosuka for so long, or so I understand, is because she’s diesel. The Japanese have historically refused to allow nuclear vessels to dock, due to fears of leakage. Indeed, this new agreement with the US includes some specific guidelines:

“Japan believes that the continued presence of the U.S. Navy … will contribute to Japan’s safety and … stability in the Far East,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Friday.

He said the agreement would not threaten the safety of Japanese residents, who have long been wary of a U.S. nuclear presence because of radiation leaks.

“The U.S. side has told us that it will maintain safety … and take strict (measures),” he said.

Hosoda added that to ensure safety, the carrier will stop its nuclear reactor while anchored at a base in Japan and conduct no repairs while in Japan.

This reticence towards allowing nuclear vessels is probably not indicative of a general resistance to all things nuclear, as I had previously assumed. The Japanese have had their own nuclear power plants since the 1960s. The fear of leakage likely stems from an awareness of the very real danger of nuclear radiation. Japan has had nuclear incidents in the past, most notably the Tokai-mura incident in 1999.

So, in other words, the fact that they’re letting us park a nuclear aircraft carrier at Yokosuka is pretty big news. It’s a huge demonstration of trust.

I imagine there will be quite a few unhappy citizens.

[Edit 4:35pm:] I told you!

Asahi.com: U.S. Navy plans nuclear-powered aircraft carrier at Yokosuka; city outraged

The U.S. Navy said it will station a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, starting in 2008, drawing immediate outrage and bewilderment in the city.

[…]

Yokosuka Mayor Ryoichi Kabaya said the city definitely opposes the plan, and criticized the way the decision was handled.

“The fact that the announcement was made without any prior word makes us wonder if the feelings of our city were taken into account,” Kabaya said. “Anxieties that residents of the city and Japanese as a whole have toward anything nuclear remain strong, which we have emphasized to both governments.” The Navy made the announcement Thursday, apparentlyspurred by the agreement reached by Japan and the United States the day earlier on realigning U.S. forces in Japan.

The mayor seems to be invoking Hiroshima and Nagasaki there, doesn’t he? At least, I’m sure that’s what people will think of when they read his statement, rather than the Tokai-mura incident, which, for example, I had never heard of until I read about it last night.

Via BoingBoing’s post “Hanging Halloween dummy wasn’t“, this article.

The apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween decoration, authorities said.

The 42-year-old woman used rope to hang herself across the street from some homes on a moderately busy road late Tuesday or early Wednesday, state police said.

The body, suspended about 15 feet above the ground, could be easily seen from passing vehicles.

State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham and neighbors said people noticed the body at breakfast time Wednesday but dismissed it as a holiday prank. Authorities were called to the scene more than three hours later.

Ewwwwwwwwww.

Oh dear. Just when I thought Penny Arcade had gotten me good, Scott Adams (of Dilbert; I don’t read it either, I found this via Andy Gray) goes and writes this:

When I see news stories about people all over the world who are experiencing hardships, I worry about them, and I rack my brain wondering how I can make a difference. So I decided to start my own blog. That way I won’t have time to think about other people.

People who are trying to decide whether to create a blog or not go through a thought process much like this:

1. The world sure needs more of ME.
2. Maybe I’ll shout more often so that people nearby can experience the joy of knowing my thoughts.
3. No, wait, shouting looks too crazy.
4. I know – I’ll write down my daily thoughts and badger people to read them.
5. If only there was a description for this process that doesn’t involve the words egomaniac or unnecessary.
6. What? It’s called a blog? I’m there!

The blogger’s philosophy goes something like this:

Everything that I think about is more fascinating
than the crap in your head.

The beauty of blogging, as compared to writing a book, is that no editor will be interfering with my random spelling and grammar, my complete disregard for the facts, and my wandering sentences that seem to go on and on and never end so that you feel like you need to take a breath and clear your head before you can even consider making it to the end of the sentence that probably didn’t need to be written anyhoo.

If that doesn’t inspire you to read my blog, I don’t know what will. You can find the Dilbert Blog at

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/

:D

And here I thought I always identified with Tycho. Oh well!

Time Magazine has a list of “the 100 best English language novels from 1923 to the present”. Em listed which of the books she’d actually read…so I thought I’d do the same!

1. All the King’s Men (read for an English lit criticism class in college)
2. Animal Farm (read sophomore year of high school)
3. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (read on my own sometime when I was in middle school I think)
4. Beloved (read for “The Woman Writer” class in college; best Toni Morrison book I ever read)
5. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (read on my own when I was in grade school)
6. Lord of the Flies (read senior year of high school)
7. The Lord of the Rings (okay, technically I’ve only read Fellowship and the first few chapters of Two Towers)
8. 1984 (read senior year of high school)
9. The Sun Also Rises (read for an American Lit class in college)
10. To Kill a Mockingbird (read freshman year of high school)
11. Wide Sargasso Sea (read for “The Woman Writer” class in college)

Yeah, I need to read more. College forced me to read loads of good books. Too bad I don’t have that kind of motivation anymore. (Also too bad I don’t have my books anymore…)

Scott Kurtz has thrown his two cents in concerning the ever–hilarious Jack Thompson vs. Penny Arcade fiasco. Kurtz has gotten a hold of Thompson’s latest effort to involve third parties in the fight he’s obviously too incompetent to win on his own. I’ve retyped the letter below:

John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law
[address blacked out]
October 18, 2005

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman,
The Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter

Justice League of America Watchtower
asynchronous orbit
The Moon

Dear Justice League of America:

My name is Jack Thompson and I too am a crime-fighter. I am currently on a crusade against video-game companies who are using mind-control devices to turn the youth of our country into their own personal army of murder-teens. I’ve been doing my part, dishing out my own brand of two-fisted justice in the battle against these nefarious villains.

Now, there is a new evil and it’s coming from a Seattle company known as Penny Arcade. I can provide details directly to your justice computer, but basically this company has been using, I believe I can show, their Internet site and various other means to assist the Legion of Doom to poison the city’s water supply.

I’ve been in contact with Penny Arcade and informed them of the following:

1) That their days of crime would soon come to an end.
2) That they could do whatever they wanted to me, but leave the girl alone.
3) That they would never get away with this.

I need the help of the Justice League to stop the evil forces of Penny Arcade. I will warn you that it’s possible that they are in the possession of Kryptonite. I can’t confirm that, but these vile fiends are not above such diabolical means.

Please contact me via the usual means. Either a large searchlight with a logo on it, floating outside my upper-story window, or popping out of the darkness surprisingly when I turn around.

Regards, Jack Thompson.

Calling in the big guns, isn’t he? Who do you think would win in a fight: Superman, or Gabe? Batman, or Tycho?

In the episode on right now, Kim’s grandmother, Nana, is under mind control by Dr. Drakken. Drakken’s gloating and telling Kim how Nana studied kung fu and was the first woman to complete the Navy SEALS training program.

Drakken: Your Nana is one bad. grand. mother—
Kim: Shut your mouth!
Drakken: I’m just talkin’ ’bout Nana.