Fast Fiction

I blogged a bit on Blogging.la earlier about the trip out to the Red Lion Tavern and Beer Gardens. But what I forgot to include was that we saw a coyote on the way home. Not that it’s unusual in Los Angeles to see a coyote, but it is unusual that I happen to have my camera handy.

I found this via hyperkinetic.org and thought it was a great link.

So, here is where I’ve been in the United States. I didn’t include airline stopovers, as I don’t think that really counts. Any state represented here in red is one that I spent at least a night in. Or maybe drove through. Like Indiana. I’ve driven though that state at least two dozen times. Eaten there ... so that counts, right?

I’m going to do my best to compile the best of April Fools on the ‘net today.

A good compilation of other hoaxes is found at National Geographic and The Museum of Hoaxes lists the top 100 of all time.

My first comes from Actor’s Access - they’re casting for CSI: Middle Earth.

StarTrek.com has changed their homepage content for the day. Be patient, they’re getting gobs of traffic so it may not load on the first try. Stories like Klingon Eye for the Straight Guy, a new Xindi species on Enterprise, the Xindi-Brady (Cindy Brady ... get it?) and an announcement that Paramount will be building new Star Trek theme parks called TrekLand.

ThinkGeek has posted a new product! The PC EZ-Bake Oven ... it fits into that unused 5.25 bay in your tower PC! Mmmy, with fuzzy logic ...

Google is posting a job opening for their coming expansion to the Moon.

Travelers can get more information on Molvania, the land untouched by modern dentistry through their brochure. There are pictures too!

The Globe and Mail reviews the hottest new PC game.

More to come ...

I’ve got a lot of stuff on rotation at the office here. About 1,000 songs in my jukebox, mostly trance and electronica stuff.

I just digitized a lot of Air in the past few weeks, as The Man has a special fondness for them and bought a few recently. So I’m digging Walkie Talkie.

A few moments ago I’m listening to “Surfing on a Rocket.” I’m trying to sing along, but I haven’t heard the song enough times to know the lyrics, so I’m guessing.

I’ve got it so wrong. Starting with the title - I think it’s “Serving all the World Cake.”

Let’‘s face it, Googlism isn’t gonna know the whole me, but it knows cybele.

cybele is a goddess
cybele is the anatolian mother goddess
cybele is a professional impersonator
cybele is a joy to have in my home and is the most affectionate and loving dog i’ve ever owned
cybele is associated with thursday
cybele is also represented by a large black meteorite
cybele is otherwise unparalleled
cybele is within easy reach of johannesburg
cybele is the internationally acclaimed author
cybele is perched on a hilltop
cybele is the more abundant of the two species
cybele is the ideal date
cybele is always accompanied by two lions
cybele is located in the heart of the forest on 300 acres of well kept gardens
cybele is out conquering the universe right now
cybele is an odd little person that likes to generally sit around listening to music
cybele is a professional marilyn monroe impersonator
cybele is nutritive
cybele is telling her story
cybele is now being used in a major nasa program; cybele is now available opensource and has been downloaded by 240 persons/organizations
cybele is now being used in a major nasa program
cybele is accompanied by two lions
cybele is designed for total relaxation
cybele is known for its flower filled gardens
cybele is not nearly as notable
cybele is halted and delayed due to heavy earthquakes
cybele is fluent in mandarin and english
cybele is poison ivy
cybele is an unusual choice

[I know, I’m not usually one to post such things, but I was taken with the line that I’m the most affectionate dog ever and thought it was something you should know. Let’s face it, that last post about TMI was a really downer.]

Today is the 25th anniversary of the nuclear mishap at Three Mile Island. In the wee early morning hours of March 28th, 1979 a faulty valve caused a partial meltdown of reactor two and the venting of radioactive water and steam into the area surrounding the island in the middle of the Susquehanna river, within view of the state capitol.

We lived in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. At mile 12 or so on the government’s little map of the area, we were not within the official evacuation zone. But my mother sensed that this little “venting” was a big deal early on and she pulled me and my brother and sister out of school that day and shut us up in the house. She then went out and bought bottled water and canned goods. We sat in the house for two days (drinking soda and eating pudding snack packs which was quite a treat for us) until Mom decided to take us out of state for the duration of the crisis.

For me, TMI always meant, and always will mean Three Mile Island. A period of unease, general distrust of the government and the NRC. TMI has always meant be wary of any possible cancers that can be traced back to that exposure.

By the time I moved to Humboldt County, the Humboldt Bay Nuclear Powerplant was shut down because it was found to lie upon a large and relatively active fault. (And when I say upon, I literally mean it’s right there, cuts right across the facility.) Though the plant was no longer in operation, the spent fuel was still there onsite, still to hot to move for another 20 years.

Seven years and one month or so after TMI, Chernobyl blew up in a far more devastating failure. This accident killed 30 people in the explosion and fire. No one knows for sure how many others will die as a result of the radiation exposures. The city of Chernobyl was abandoned. The radioactive plume drifted around the norther hemisphere. In Humboldt County I for several months after the accident, every evening along with the weather we would get a report as to the number of pico-curies found in that day’s milk at the local dairies.

It’s a sobering thought that today we’re more worried about dirty bombs.

Quick thoughts about last night’s blogger get together. I picked up Will and Susan at his place. My car makes me carpool. We parked on the roof of The Grove parking structure, because it has a kick-ass view.

I got to meet Doug Welch. I read his gardener’s notebook and he promises to help me identify some of the strange things I find in my back yard.

I met fellow blogging.la peeps. Jay Bushman, whom I find I have a lot in common with, what with the playwriting and all. Then I finally got to meet Sean, who I find lives in the neighborhood. I complained to him about how he hadn’t posted my bio on blogging.la ... so he’s changed it. There was Spencer (5000!) who gave me the promised robot sticker (yay!).

Joe, a transplanted yinzer (can I call you that, Joe?), lives in Koreatown now.

Susan from 2020Hindsight sparked the conversation about Sandra Tsing Loh and public radio.

Lonewacko sat next to me for a few, but we didn’t get to talk. Michael Bowen (Cobb) who has the best blog cards ever. I’ve gotta have some of those made.

There was karaoke afterwards. Thanks to Jonah for setting it up. I never realized there was such a nightlife at the Farmers Market.

That’s really it. The whole entry is just yay!

It’s a beautiful day. I picked some flowers from the back yard.

Whee!

So I’m cruising around the ‘net, finding new blogs to read and going back through their archives. And wouldn’t you know, I stumble across a bad link. It’s no longer for an article in a once-reputable niche magazine, now it’s some porn loop that I can’t out of. There is no escape, it wants to download things, it shows me things (I have to admit, I actually learned things that I’m afraid to share) and as I’m trying to click out of all of it (trying not to click any dialogue boxes, just right click on the toolbar, I know their dastardly tricks).

Well, it’s no use, suddenly my browser shuts down and reappears with an all new toolbar. The nefarious program has also disabled my ability to disable it ... I go to the folder and take it out of my plug-ins and it just puts itself back.

Grrr. An hour on this I spend.

No matter. I go and download a spyware catcher… that’ll show those bastards. First I downloaded Spybot. It was good. It found lots of things that were hinky, unfortunately, it was not able to sucessfully uninstall that damn toolbar. So I went out and got the other highly recommended free program called Ad-Aware. Bless its little heart, it found the pluker right off the bat and that bugger is outta here. So, I’m so jazzed, I might have to send those pups some money.

The first 45 I ever bought was Blondie’s “The Tide is High.”

I bought it at Woolworth’s. The Woolworth’s in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. It was on the corner of Main Street and Market Street. Catty-corner from the bank, and across the street from the drug store that still had a diner with soda fountain in back. I rode my Schwinn (green, Voyager which I also bought there) downtown to buy it. I parked my bike out front (we didn’t lock our bikes back then). I paid with change. It was that kind of town.

In the summers we got pool passes and spent our time swimming and putting pennies on the railroad tracks and playing ball in the back of the cemetery where they still had acres of extra space. It’s all filled up now.

I had that kind of childhood: spent riding bikes and visits to the library and tubing on the creek, there were popsicles and lemonade stands and water balloon fights. Paper routes and babysitting. Flip-flops and calloused feet and stubbed toes, bug bites and skinned knees. What did we do with ourselves?

Okay, I watch Adult Swim. I like Futurama and Family Guy. I can watch them over and over again. And I do. Well, I haven’t seen all the episodes of Family Guy, so there’s a wonderful sense of anticipation to see if it’s one I’ve missed.

They’ve got these promos. That I admit I watch. Which I don’t usually do. Because I have a DVR. I eschew (read skip) commercials.

The promo they’re running now is “Who would win in a battle between a flying shark and a flying crocodile?”

Now, I’ve looked over the pictures of the shark and crocodile (cartoons, granted). Has it occurred to anyone that a shark is fish? He needs to breathe in the water ... water running over his gills and all that. The croc is gonna kick his ass because the shark is gonna pass out from oxygen deprivation. Jeeze ... it’s so simple people.

It comes up from time to time, what I do for a living. Well, how I make my wages, it’s not really a living because I don’t consider my job a career. It’s just something I do to make money. And I love it for many reasons. It’s not difficult, there’s very little bull involved. The hours are very regular and I have a swell office all to myself with a kick-ass computer set up and all the software my little heart desires.

I’m not sure of my title. Sometimes I’m called Digital Asset Adminstrator and sometimes Webmaster. But I do other stuff that has little to do with file management, like writing biographies and synopses. I create some graphics, but it’s not really in my job description, I just do it sometimes because it’s easier than hiring someone.

I work for an entertainment company, and we distribute TV shows and features and telefilms. I control all of the content for a couple of websites. (Maybe I’m a Content Adminstrator.) Anyway, the first website I run is a business-to-business fullfillment website. Our clients, all over the world buy our products. And then they want to promote them. So I get the high resolution photos from the shows and movies and I name them (in a convention that was set up by a committee so that all files have unique names and somehow relate to whatever they are and aren’t longer than 16 characters - we’ve got about 15,000 so far, so you can see that it is a little struggle sometimes). And I upload them to the website and I associate information with those files (called metadata) so that folks can figure out what they are and what they want. Then, like a store or something, they put them in little shopping carts and download them in huge batches. Some of our files are just documents - biographies, synopses, fact sheets, etc., so they’re not huge. But others are 600 dpi 8x10 photos, so you can imagine that we have a great webhost and stuff like that for this kind of throughput.

The other website I work on is for buyers of our materials and it highlights just what we have in our most recent catalogue. And around this time of year we promote stuff we’re thinking about offering, our pilots. I try not to get too involved in this, because the majority of them never come to fruition, and so I never have to do anything with them. But while they’re still in the planning stages we use the site to disseminate info to our teams around the globe.

The fun part of the job is our archive. We went digital about three years ago and the only time we send out physical slides and printed materials is when we have old inventory. If we’ve run out, then that title goes into the queue for digitizing. Some of the titles are huge shows that were on the air for a dozen years and have hundreds of episodes. Some are movies-of-the-week and others are feature films. Some are completely forgettable and others are little gems that make you want them to put the show back on TV. So, I sit here with my cool slide scanner and plug away at the piles of slides in my inbox. Each one gets a bit of retouching and color correction and then gets uploaded to our site.

I like to think that I’m doing my part to save the planet. By reducing physical press kits we’re eliminating the reproduction costs associated with them (photography makes some nasty waste products) and the shipping. Then I look at the increase in quality ... our clients get stuff on demand and in a format that’s better than the duplicates they would get and already in a form they can use. It’s pretty cool and I’m rather proud of it.

In the rest of my life, there is no such thing as perfection. But databases can be perfect and I take great joy in that; I can do something everyday that can be held up and praised as well done. Face it, we all like a pat on the back every once in a while.

Is anyone else as bugged with audio on the web as I am?

If I’m browsing a newspaper online or maybe IMDB, I do not want something PLAYING AUDIO. I don’t want to hear a trailer going on. I’ve got my streaming radio or my jukebox playing what I want to hear. This is the equivalent of magazines having perfume samples in them. Please only assail one sense at a time. The web is for stuff I can see. Go ahead, have your ads on the page. I understand this is how I enjoy free content. But please do not have the auto-run audio, jeeze it’s as bad as pop-ups. If I wanted to watch a damn trailer for Deadwood, I’d turn on HBO or go to their website or click on the damn ad. I do not want it playing.

The LA Times seems to be the worst of the bunch. They’ve got this damn western themed Eclipse gum ad ... pops up in front with the audio on. It’s got a mute button. Hell, it’s got a close button too. But if you’re a pixel off, you’ve just “clicked” on the ad and it’ll pop something up.

Is there some setting I’m not aware of that will keep my browser from playing audio content? It used to be when you went to a site that had midi audio or something like that, you just hit escape and it’d stop. (Tip, that still works for stopping animated gifs.) I know most of these audio ads are in Flash or something. I can’t very well uninstall Flash.

I still hand-code my blog.

Yes. I do. Whenever I wanna put something new on my list o’ links, I go into my blogger template and hand code it. I don’t use those spiffy things like blogrolling, and if I wanna ping, I have to go manually ping blogrolling.com and for some reason weblogs.com (why doesn’t blogger ping?).

I have no idea what other bloggers do. I’ve never used moveable type, since I don’t have an actual website. It’s odd that someone who makes their living as a “webmaster” has trouble with simple FTP on a regular basis.

But it’s true.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to keep hand-coding my template. It keeps me from changing my mind a lot and I think it keeps things simple.

Sometimes I think I’m an idiot and the people that employ me must be bigger idiots.

But my job is not about coding, it’s about content. And I can generate oodles of high-quality content.

I digress. I know some bloggers look down on Blogger.com. I like them. It’s easy. And everyone’s Blogger.com blog looks the same. My biggest beef with Blogger at the moment ... why isn’t the word BLOG in their dictionary? I spell check (which is a feature I love) and it always flags blog. Sigh.