the thoughts and experiences of Heather Meadows
This is fantastic!
On Kim Possible, Ron’s visiting a rich old man at his mansion–a man who happens to be voiced by Adam West. Just as I realized that, Ron found a red button inside a bust, pressed it, and slid down a pole into the “Ferret Cave”…!
The music is very fitting, too. :D
I love Adam West!
Edit 2:06pm: There’s some neat trivia about this episode over on the imdb :D I remember Will Friedle from Boy Meets World, myself.
Found this great list over at Joe Stump’s blog. He got it from The Drunken Lagomorph, who got it from Random-Abstract, who got it from a Craigslist posting. (I just like following links, mmmkay?)
If not, go. Go, my children!
I can’t wait until November 18!
Apparently traffic bottlenecks at Butt Bridge (I imagine it does, it’s an old two-lane bridge with zero visibility, but I wouldn’t know firsthand because I never seem to go that way when I’m downtown). It’s gotten so bad that the bridge was going to be demolished and replaced. History buffs (and people who, like me, love the name Butt Bridge) protested. After some serious wrangling, a compromise seems to have been found.
The eventual compromise, which required – literally – an act of Congress, authorized Augusta to use its $15 million allocation for a series of road improvements that would improve traffic flow by other means and leave Butt Bridge intact.
Yes, the only reason I quoted that was because of the line “which required – literally – an act of Congress”. Yes, I am a dork.
If you’re wondering what Butt Bridge is:
In 1914, President William H. Taft visited Augusta to dedicate Butt Memorial Bridge to his aide, Maj. Archibald Butt, who had perished aboard the Titanic in 1912.
CNN: Study: Fewer wars, less deadly
A study issued paints a surprising picture of war and peace in the 21st century: Armed conflicts have declined by more than 40 percent since 1992, and genocide and human rights abuses have plummeted around the world.
The only form of political violence that appears to be getting worse is terrorism — a serious threat but one that kills markedly fewer people than open warfare, it said.
Who needs wars when we’ve got Mother Nature?
Seriously, does this mean that more people are content with their lives than ten years ago? It seems to me that you have to have a lot of discontented people before you can get a full-blown war. Is a general sense of complacency the reason some people turn to terrorism?
Professor Andrew Mack, who directed the three-year study, said there has been a shift away from the huge wars of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s where million-strong armies faced each other with conventional weapons.
“The average war today tends to be very small, low intensity conflict, fought with ill-trained troops, small arms and light weapons, often very brutal, with lots of civilians killed — but the absolute numbers of people being killed are … much, much smaller than they were before,” he said.
Armed conflicts have not only declined by more than 40 percent since 1992, but the deadliest conflicts with over 1,000 battle deaths dropped even more dramatically — by 80 percent. The number of international crises, often harbingers of war, fell by more than 70 percent between 1981 and 2001, the report said.
There’s plenty more interesting stuff in that article. I am, of course, interested in the whys. I don’t know enough about history to make very good guesses. What might have caused the violence to go down? Better and faster communications? A desire not to repeat history? Improved standard of living?
Anybody out there care to speculate?
Yesterday, in a chat window, my brilliant nephew typed the following:
we can play and run and eat and
Unfortunately he didn’t type that to me (Mom pasted it), so I have no idea who he was talking to or what he was talking about. But look at that spelling!
He can also type his name :)
There’s another Art Lad up. As you all know, I adore the writing of children. (I rather wish Connor had a blog, but you know.) This post had me oohing and awwing like an absolute ninny.
What made it especially fun were the Magazine Man references that only people who read MM can truly appreciate. Par exemple:
Dad writes all day and sometimes all night. He says it is the only thing he is good at and he tells really good stories. He says people gave him money for writing and that’s how he bought our whole house and everything inside it except the stuff Grandma and Papa send us.
That was totally precious. But then I got to the end…and one of the best in-jokes ever.
Want to see more?
I will tell you later…
(Dad said to put dots at the end. That means you have to wait)
Bye!
Evil! Evil! I about died laughing.
Kathy B. Steele, who lives in Augusta, has published her first novel–though it isn’t the first novel she’s written. Rocks That Float
I always love it when people write mock news. (I wrote a fake job posting a week or so ago, but I guess nobody thought it was funny.) Today finds the Cynical Traveller combining the delight of satirical news with one of the highest forms of humor: self-deprecation.
Love it.
(Don’t miss the hilarious picture captions! The vending machine is my favorite.)
Here’s an awesome story about a woman whose life was saved because she happened to have a popular webcam set up in her horse stables.
People from Germany, the United Kingdom, France — all over the world had phoned the Charlotte Rescue Squad. When the emergency services arrived 45 minutes later, they were very confused about why they had received calls from all over the world about me.
I don’t know what would have happened if it wasn’t for the Web cam. I damaged my knee and my leg very badly. My temperature had dropped and I was in body shock by the time help arrived.
When I read the story, I have to admit that I wondered if she would have been in danger if she’d checked the webcam herself before going out to the stable…
Jakob Nielsen has written a piece entitled “Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes” (via BoingBoing). (If this was Japan, he could sue me for using his headline!) In the article, Nielsen discusses (amazingly enough) ten mistakes bloggers make. Not just any bloggers, mind you, but bloggers who are trying to be professional or who want a large audience.
His suggestions are good, and I thought I’d take a little time and use them to evaluate my own journal. Here goes:
1. No Author Biographies
I have a biography…sort of…okay, not really. There’s information hidden away here, and then there’s my Blogger profile, but my best biography is here. It’s buried in the archives because the Blogger profile couldn’t hold all that text. I’m unhappy with it for other reasons; it should be easier to read, with headings and maybe even (gasp) bullet points. Maybe someday I’ll tidy it up and link to it from the main page.
2. No Author Photo
HA! I’ve got that one covered…
…except I don’t have it covered directly. You have to go to smugmug to see pictures of me…and there’s no indication on the blog that there are pictures of me on the photo site.
Two strikes…
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
Oh, lord. Guilty, guilty, guilty. How many times, for example, have I entitled a post “Blah”?
Sometimes I do write descriptive titles…and sometimes, as with my previous post, I write titles that match in a story sense. (Should I use a descriptor, a la Magazine Man’s “random anecdote”?)
4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go
Okay, this is one of my own pet peeves…both because of the reasons Nielsen mentions, and also because links, especially news articles, expire. I was bad about not describing things adequately in the past, but I’m working on not doing that anymore.
5. Classic Hits are Buried
Oops. Yeah, I should have a section in the sidebar or somewhere (a la Magazine Man’s “The Ones Everyone Asks About”) highlighting some good posts.
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
Ha, I don’t even have a calendar.
But yeah, the point isn’t lost on me. I don’t have categories because I use Blogger, so people can only find posts through the chronological listing or through a search. (I use the search a lot.)
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
I think I’m okay on this one…I typically post every day, and often several times a day. Lately is an exception. I’ve been a little out of it since the fire. I don’t have a standard place to write anymore. Back at the apartment, I left my computer on 24/7, so any time I was home I could walk in there and do any of my myriad Internet hobbies. Not so now. Even if I leave the laptop running (or in standby), it won’t necessarily be in the same place. I can’t, for example, use the ottoman like I’m doing now when the others are home, because the living room is typically Reid’s relaxing area, and the TV is usually on, which makes it difficult to concentrate. And I can’t use the patio furniture if it’s too cold out (it’s kinda chilly today) or if it’s raining. There’s always the bed, but I find that horribly uncomfortable, so…
At any rate, I think I post reliably enough under the circumstances. I think a greater issue would be whether or not I post anything worth reading.
8. Mixing Topics
I used to strongly believe that I should be able to post whatever I wanted here, regardless of content, regardless of whether or not it would be remotely interesting to anyone but me. I didn’t want to have separate blogs for separate purposes. I wanted to keep all of my stuff right here on pixelscribbles.com.
I’m starting to understand that that’s impossible–I will write things elsewhere, there’s just no getting around it–and that it’s not user friendly. Without categories, visitors here have no choice but to wade through my whines and my rants to get to the occasional interesting piece about Japan or life (or whatever).
I’m still mixing topics, but at least I know that it can be a bad idea.
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
…yeeeeeaaaaah. I’m more careful about this than I used to be. I used to say a lot more than I should have about work. And those posts are still there…
I’m an archivist, so I’m leaving all my posts up. I have mellowed in my old age, though, so if someone wants me to, say, remove their name from all posts that mention them, then I can do that. (Although if a lot of people want that done, maybe I will just come up with pseudonyms for people I write about. And I have to remind them that even if I change it now, if the post’s been up for years, there’s probably an archive of it with the original name stored somewhere.)
In any event, yes. I used to call watching what I said “self-censorship”, but now that I have half a brain I call it “not being an idiot”.
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
Yay, having my own domain pays off once again!
So, there you have it. I’ve got plenty of stuff to work on, but I think I’m at least thinking about moving in the right direction.
Do those of you readers with blogs pass Nielsen’s tests? Do you agree with his assessments?
Oh hell, none of you are going to answer this unless I tag you. So I tag Mari, Derik, Goei, Em, Miklos, and (what the hell) Magazine Man. Answer on your own blog, or here in the comments :)
Edit 10/19 10:41pm: I would like to retroactively tag Brooke. :D
This is kind of scary. (Via Japundit.)
The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper was awarded compensation from a small Internet firm that used its news headlines without permission, in a first-of-a-kind ruling in the country.
The Intellectual Property High Court, a special branch court of the Tokyo High Court, ordered Digital Alliance Corp. to pay about 237,700 yen (2,000 dollars) to the Yomiuri.
The court said the use of news headlines by Digital Alliance was illegal. It is the first ruling in Japan giving protection to news headlines.
But presiding Judge Tomokatsu Tsukahara said that headlines were still in a legal gray area as they are not mentioned under Japan’s Copyright Law. He did not order Digital Alliance to pull the Yomiuri headlines off its website.
There’s also a little note at the bottom:
Agence France-Presse has sued Google for copyright infringement, saying the Internet search engine was displaying its news and photos without permission.
The article was written by AFP.
Conceivably, I could be sued for quoting the article in my post. There’s always been that danger, which is why I don’t post the full text of any news article here. I typically try to keep my quotes short, and make sure to link to the original article. (This is problematic because news sites often don’t keep archives, so years down the road it’s sometimes impossible to tell what I was talking about.) I’d like to think that fair use applies for quotations, but that would ultimately be up to a judge. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of such a case.
As you know, I’ve been thinking about UFOs and aliens lately. How convenient, then, that this should appear on BoingBoing: a Google hack that superimposes UFO sightings onto a map of the US. Did you have any idea there were that many sightings every month? I sure didn’t…
Tim: Dad, please! You’re a rocket scientist! Can’t you do something?
Dad: Well, I could put it in geosynchronous orbit, but I’m not sure how that would help.
Remember back when I was going to be a rocket scientist? ;P