Unbecoming Levity

Attention Moron Spammer

Abacquer — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:35:00 -0400

Comment moderation is now turned on. Your spam comments will never grace the pages of this blog. Have a nice day.

Oh Yeah. I Have a Blog.

Abacquer — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:58:00 -0400

What I don't have is interest. There's a lot going on in my life, and I'd rather get on with it than write about it. Besides I doubt anybody really wants to read about it. So I've been neither writing in my blog, nor really reading the blogs of others. I check in on Aces Full and Pandora's Tea Room every now and again, but that is pretty much it. I post on MOTL every now and again, but not too frequently now that the werewolf games were cancelled due to people taking them too seriously.

What's been occupying my time is my photography business. It seems to be picking up, which is great, because I simply love this work. I did a school dance in February, and a photoshoot for an aspiring actor. In May I did a costume shoot for a dance school which is the first shoot I've done where I can unequivocably say that I made pretty good money.

June's been hopping. I did a graduation shoot for a relative (no money, but I did some networking at the school while I was there that might turn into business), and a graduation party for the same relative. This past Thursday night I shot the dress rehearsal for a stage production of a dance interpretation of Peter Pan. Friday night I shot the eighth grade dance of a middle school in southeastern Massachusetts. Then Saturday I shot the 1PM and 7PM performances of Peter Pan (42 Gb of pix in one day... yowza!)

I wrote about this a little bit on a message forum, so I figured I'd share that here.

June 12, 2009 11:01 AM

Last night's shoot went well but I am exhausted. I took a chance and produced a 36" x 24" (poster size) print of the main cast (with some added text) and it came out GREAT. I was amazed. I expected at that size the image would be very fuzzy--you know "stand a few feet away and it will look fine". Nope, it was nice and sharp. About 90 minutes of post production and cost about $50 to print, and I gave it to the dance school director as a gift.

She went positively gaga over it and hung it immediately as a poster for her show. The kids loved it too.

Of course I had a couple totally unrealistic parents come up to me after the show asking if I "had any extras" or would "give them one". "These are quite expensive to print. Of course I can have one made and shipped to you but it would cost $100." "Oh forget it then." LOL. It's so hard to make money in this business unless you are doing weddings or products. For the costume shoot I spent 8 hours shooting, and 50 hours in post production. My total profit after printing and shipping was $800--that's $13.75 per hour and no matter what price you charge people think it's too much.

Anyway the dress rehearsal shoot went great, apart from the 580 EX burning though batteries like there's no tomorrow. 4.5 hours of shooting, 1,105 pictures, 30 batteries eaten. I picked up a digital frame and loaded it with a bunch of work I've done over the last couple years and set that up next to the fliers--that got some attention. I had a number of people come up to me after the show and tell me how much they loved my work, which is always nice. We'll see if they still love me when I raise my prices next year.

So tonight I have a middle school dance to shoot, and then tomorrow I have to shoot the performances that I went to the dress rehearsal for. Busy few days!

June 13, 2009 1:55 AM

Tonight's Middle School Dance shoot was exhausting but fun. These kids were different that the kids at my daughter's middle school--they were a lot stiffer... nobody danced for like the first 90 minutes. I was like WTF? Heck I wanted to put the camera down and dance myself. The DJ was great, all the tunes were current.

This was an 8th grade dance and soon the kids will all be going off to different highschools so there was a lot of emotionality... a lot of kids were crying toward the end... that doesn't exactly make for a nice photo.

Kids at my daughter's art school are also more hammy for the camera, these kids pretty much constantly ducked and hid whenever the camera showed up. This behavior drives me nuts, I'm being paid to shoot the dance, these kids are bawling that they're not going to see their friends again, and they're not going to have pictures of their friends to remember because they're too busy responding to the camera in the way they've been trained to respond "ooh don't take my picture I look ugly". You just want to say "Jesus, grow up already." Sometimes I say to them "this may come as a surprise, but we can all see you... we already know what you look like." No matter, I just switched to the 200mm and shot long... you get nice closeups that way and the kids don't know who is being photographed.

All in all I think it went well. Two big shoots tomorrow... man am I beat.

June 13, 2009 9:44 AM

Fell out of bed about 8:20... showered, shaved, and will be heading out for the third and biggest of this weeks three shoots. What an exhausting time this has been! No flash today ('cept before and after) so I shouldn't need a frickin' gross of AA batts...

June 14, 2009 7:37 PM

Yesterday's shoots were positively EXHAUSTING! But I think it went well. At the end of the afternoon performance I knew I was in trouble tho... I had shot 20+ Gb of pictures, and I only had 22 Gb in CF cards with me. I had time before the 7PM performance so I went to best buy and purchased another 20 Gb of CF memory (1x 8 GB, 3x 4 Gb). During the second performance I shot the entire remaining 22 Gb. For the after photos I had to switch from RAW to JPG, and pull out my old "emergency card"--a 512 mB card that I've often questioned why I still carry it. Thank heavens I had it!

But 42 jigglebytes in a single day is some outrageous shooting. About 3,500 pictures. Sorting through this is going to be fun. Lightroom is chewing on them now and probably will be until tomorrow.

Emma was able to perform as Peter Pan, which was nice, though she had to hold back and give a slightly more subdued performance to prevent further injury to her ankle. It was nice seeing her dance at all though.

The "movie poster" was a big hit. About 700 people filed past it and every time I went out into the hall to shoot candids there were people looking at it and my digital frame (yay!). The thing I liked best was when I caught the dancers looking at it, they really liked it and it made for some nice photos. Have I mentioned how much I love this work?

I got more compliments and requests on Saturday, some people looking to buy the poster print. I added it to the show gallery and enabled large format printing options (and T-shirts, which my lab has begun to offer).

So now begins the long slog of post processing. But with so many pictures to choose from I should be able to come up with some that are sure to please. And the post work should be hella easier than the costume shoot was.

Gonna be a lot of busy nights tho... but not today, today I am recuperating... 12 hours of driving over the last 3 days, getting home every night after 1 AM, sore as heck from shooting...

(Good news, I had two orders today from earlier galleries. Yay! Only $70 but I'm taking it as a good sign.)

Wow am I beat. But it's a good kind of beat, when you feel like you accomplished something.

On a quick run through the performance photos I found a nice little series. Peter Pan was not on a wire, so she got about by making beautiful acrobatic leaps. I managed to snap a series of leaps (on the tail end of the leap as she was coming down) as she leapt around the dancer playing the part of Wendy Darling. In the series it looks like Peter is flying... Sweet!

90+ Articles in 24 Hours

Abacquer — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:42:00 -0500

Sheesh! Time to get back to work. Talk to you guys later today. I'll keep checking the outstanding states and senate seats.

Election: Can You Help Unbecoming Levity?

Abacquer — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:15:00 -0500

If you are a US citizen and planning to vote I could use your help. During each presidential election I run a blogathon and one thing I like to do is publish "polling station reports". Basically I have friends and acquaintances drop me an e-mail after they vote to tell me about their experience at the polls. I'm looking to do the same thing this year, and I'd love to get poll reports from any of my friends or readers who are interested in helping out.

Though my blog is very opinionated, the poll reports are not intended to be partisan--I'm not asking who you voted for or why. The sort of info I would be looking for is:

1. Where did you vote (City/State--even if you voted absentee):

2. What date and time of day:

3. What were the conditions like? (i.e. was it crowded or deserted, chaotic or organized, did you have to wait a long time, were the staff professional, were they nice or rude, what kind of location was being used for voting--i.e. gymnasium, school, post office, church, etc.)

4. If your station used voting machines, did they seem to be working or were they out of order? What sort of machines were they (hole-punch, optical scanner, touch-screen, etc.)?

5. Were you the subject of (or did you witness) a voter challenge? If so what was that like?

6. If you voted early or by absentee ballot, how did that work out?

7. Anything else you want to add.

This should basically boil down to a few lines in e-mail. Doesn't matter if you cover all of the points above--basic idea is to say where you voted and what it was like. I will likely edit/digest reports I receive for grammar and clarity before posting them to my blog.

If you are interested in helping out, please drop me an e-mail with your poll report after you vote on November 4. Poll reports should be sent to: pollreport@plastereddragon.com. That e-mail address will be disabled on November 5. All reports should be sent on November 4th (or earlier if you voted early/absentee)--the idea is to log things as they happen.

Comment Moderation is now On - Thank the Asshole

Abacquer — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:06:00 -0400

Friends and readers, ULev has acquired its own troll. I should feel flattered I guess, but this coward is such a scumbag he's not above leaving anonymous comments insulting my daughter. What does this mean for everyone else? From now on once you post a comment it will be sent to me for moderation. This means it will not appear on the blog until I approve it. I apologize for the delay. Thank the asshole.

Andrew Meyer's Shocking Performance

Abacquer — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:06:00 -0400

It's funny that James wrote about this today, because I wrote about it last night on a discussion forum. I'm pleased that James and I saw the same videos and came to the same conclusions. If you haven't heard, a young man (Andrew Meyer) caused a disruption at a John Kerry Q&A forum and finally was removed by the police. During his removal he became more combative and resisted the officers which ended up getting him arrested and finally tasered as it was the only way to get him to stop shouting and remove him from the hall. Predictably (I suppose) people have seen an editted version of the video that makes Mr. Meyer look like more of a victim than he actually was and the most outspoken conclusions I see on YouTube basically boil down to "he asked a question 'they' didn't like so he was tasered and arrested, wake up America, we are living in a dictatorship". *yawn*

Anyway, here's what I wrote on a discussion forum where someone had posted the editted version of the video under the heading "A Most Terrifying Video":

The video was editted to make the kid look more like a victim than he was. There is a more complete video with commentary that makes the kid's behavior easier to see through and makes the cops behavior more understandable:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1na1hcGQCHg

I'm a liberal and I believe in civil liberties. The kid was totally in control of that situation, he WANTED a big scene and he got it. He was totally playing to the cameras.

The cops were standing behind him because he had a reputation for causing trouble at public events. The moment he took the mic and began speaking one of the college officials went to the police and said "he's a troublemaker, watch out". This made the police suspicious of him. At one point a police officer told him to finish his question and let Kerry answer, he responded rudely (through the mic so everyone could hear) and continued. As Kerry tried to answer the boy's first question, he ignored Kerry and launched into his second question. It was clear at that point he was there to talk not to Kerry, but to the crowd.

Well it's cool if you want to talk to a crowd. You can put a video on YouTube, or you can schedule your own rally and see who shows up, but you can't just grab the mic, take the floor, and talk whatever crap you want as if it is your show. It's not your show and the organizers are going to eject you if you won't play nicely, which they attempted to do at the end of his THIRD question which is the part you got to see. No surprises there.

All this boy had to do is say "sorry officer, I'll cooperate" and in all likelihood they would explain to him why they were ejecting him the moment they got him out of the room. Which by the way, they did, except you don't get to see that because the video that was posted at the top of the thread doesn't include it. Heck, if he had cooperated they probably would have let him go at the door.

This video does show his detainment once they get him outside the room:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7NWukZhsiBw

Watch that video where he reveals by his own behavior just how much of a neurotic nut he is:
"They're going to give me to the government! They're going to kill me!"
Those of you who think its actually okay to scream HELP HELP and WHY WHY when a police officer has decided to detain you should take heed: when the police arrest you, they are allowed to hold you and don't have to charge you with ANYTHING for 48 hours. That is the law of this country. If you don't agree with it, please contact your representatives and work to get the law changed. If a police officer tries to escort you out of a building, you DO NOT have a right to know why. If a police officer chooses to arrest you, you do not have a right to be told immediately why you have been arrested. If a cop tells you "stop shouting, and stop resisting me or I am going to arrest you (or taser you)" and you choose to continue shouting and resisting, well duh, do the math.

The rights you do have upon arrest are read to you in long form, or in the abbreviated form:
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to be speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense."
Did you see "you have the right to know why you are being arrested" or "you have the right to scream loudly and resist arrest"? Me neither. That's because we don't have those rights.

It's a shame this boy provoked the police into tasering him by repeatedly refusing to cooperate. I'm sorry he got tasered, but freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to disrupt a political rally. Watch the full video and pay attention to the commentary, and watch the second video that shows what happens outside, how he keeps craning his neck so he can shout to the cameras... because he's all about the cameras.

1. http://youtube.com/watch?v=1na1hcGQCHg

2. http://youtube.com/watch?v=7NWukZhsiBw

I'm trying not jump to conclusions (paranoia is unhealthy). As far as I can see, this boy orchestrated what happened to him through his own behavior and could have put a stop to it at any time.

There are a lot of affronts to free speech in this country, serious ones that we should be concerned about ("free speech zones" for example: http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/08/04/hilden.freespeech/index.html), but this nut and his bad performance art does not qualify. He should have been ejected, and he was.

Commonplaces RSS Feed

Abacquer — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:55:00 -0400

BTW, the "Commonplaces" album has its own feed if you want to follow it:

http://unbecominglevity.blogharbor.com/blog/Photos/Commonplaces/index.xml

Aces Full of Trouble

Abacquer — Mon, 21 May 2007 15:42:00 -0400

Those of you that enjoy the thoroughly wonderful blog Aces Full of Links (which is written by my friend James) have probably noticed it seemed to be down for most of the day today, and now although visible is not available for commenting. James is having server issues and asks that you please bear with him while he gets things back in order.

Here's to you Aces Full. Get well soon!

How Much Do We Do Without Thinking?

Abacquer — Mon, 21 May 2007 11:58:00 -0400

So the other day I was commenting on a blog where the authors were working on a new layout. I spotted some strange wrapping issues and uploaded a screenshot of my browser window for them to look at. Repeatedly, whenever the screenshot was on the screen, I caught myself trying to click the browser's back button in the screenshot. Needless to say, each time I did this was followed by a disjointed moment of confusion where I wondered why it wasn't working. Is my browser locked up? What's going on? After a second or so the realization would come. You dummy, that's not your browser, that's a picture of your browser.

I think it served as a reminder of how much we do automatically once we've "learned" to do it. The entire metaphor--hand to mouse, mouse to cursor, cursor to back button, click--all automatic and interpretted by the brain as "go back".

Anyway, next time I upload a screenshot of the browser, I think I'll leave the menu and toolbar out of it.

I've Been Stumbled Upon

Abacquer — Sun, 20 May 2007 13:49:00 -0400

Well apparently somebody really liked my "Why I am an Atheist" post yesterday because they linked me up over on StumbleUpon.com. The end result? Last night my blog had over 3,700 hits on that article, and 860 hits on another article I linked to from within that article. Total bandwidth consumed 319,389,696 bytes. That's about 304.5 Mb, or a tenth of my monthly bandwidth.

Not that I mind! I'm excited that my hits have temporarily tripled... always nice to have readers. (Hopefully we'll get some new regulars here at ULev.) But I was a little worried about my bandwidth, so I ordered up another 5 Gb from BlogHarbor just for this month, just in case. In all likelihood I probably won't need it, but better safe than sorry.

The last time something like this happened was when I entered a submission to one of FARK's photoshop contests. That time the graphic I had linked to got so many hits I had to delete it... like 9,000 in the first hour. Crazy!

ULev Joins Planet Atheism

Abacquer — Sun, 20 May 2007 12:52:00 -0400

As of a couple days ago, Unbecoming Levity has joined Planet Atheism as a contributing feed. You might have spotted the new link in my sidebar under "Badges and Doodads". Planet Atheism is a feed aggregator for a large number (75 at present, and counting) of atheist-themed blogs. This makes it a very nice source for catching up on atheist bloggers and seeing what's going down in the non-believer blog-o-sphere.

ULev regulars will no doubt be thinking that people reading Planet Atheism will not want to hear about my new teeth or the funny thing my cats did the other day. I agree. That's why there's a new topic in my topics sidebar called "PlanetAtheism". The Planet Atheism aggregator only subscribes to that topic, so not every article on ULev will be dumped onto Planet Atheism's feed (much to their relief I'm sure!) This is possible because Blog Harbor offers category-driven blogs, where each category can have its own RSS feed.

Belonging to Planet Atheism has already caused an uptick in my hits, and brought new commenters to Unbecoming Levity, for which I am very grateful. I encourage anyone who has an atheist themed blog (or a category-driven blog with occasional articles of interest to atheists) to contact the proprietor of Planet Atheism and see about inclusion. (If you're curious, here's their FAQ.)

Even if you don't, at least drop the Planet Atheism feed into your aggregator (Google Reader, Bloglines, whatever...) and you will never run short of articles of interest to atheists.

New Interesting Articles Sidebar

Abacquer — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:58:00 -0400

So as long as I am stealing ideas from James, I might as well go for broke. Aces Full of Links has a great sidebar where James can list links to articles he's recently read, would like to share, but might not have time to write about. This is a feature of Google Reader and it is very slick. While reading articles in the reader, there's a button one can click to share the article, and this causes it to immediately show up in a "clip" you can install on your blog.

I really like this idea, so I'm stealing it from James. Unbecoming Levity now includes a new sidebar called "Interesting Articles I've Read". It appears at the bottom of the sidebar on the left, right beneath the blogroll.

I often come across something I want to share but just don't have the time to write an article. I used to use some third party sites for this in the past, but got tired of my blog failing to load because the third party server was down. I have a feeling Google would be a lot more reliable, so I'll give it another shot.

New Pictures Up

Abacquer — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:57:00 -0400

Added a few random pictures this afternoon:

In the Car Pictures album, a couple nice snaps of a slick looking two-tone PT Cruiser I spotted on the way to work. (1, 2)
In the Spring 2007 album, some pictures of budding trees, cherry blossoms and dandelions. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
And finally in the Miscellany album, a picture of my lunch... hey I just post the pictures, I don't explain why.

So Long Bloglines

Abacquer — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:26:00 -0400

I am giving up on Bloglines. It's still a halfway decent feed aggregator, but the outages are annoying, and as of a few weeks ago, they performed an update that essentially broke the Bloglines Notifier. The notifier was a small application that put an icon in the taskbar on your PC (or someplace similar on a Mac) that highlighted red whenever one of the feeds you were interested in had new articles posted.

But some feeds are busier than others, and while I want to know every time a new post appears on, say, Pandora's Tea Room, I do not want to know every time a new post appears on, say, The Boston Globe's news feed. It's not that I wouldn't read the more active feeds, it's just that they aren't the feeds I would want to stop what I am doing to check on... especially since something new is going to appear every few minutes. Fortunately Bloglines allows you to specify which feeds will be monitored by the notifier.

Sadly, with their last update, this setting was suddenly ignored by the notifier, and it was constantly blinking at me and popping up a notification bubble saying I had three thousand articles I needed to read. Essentially it became useless at telling me exactly what I wanted to know. I notified them immediately of the problem, and here we are weeks later and notifier is still broken. I realize that Bloglines is free and therefore complaining about it may be unseemly, but if it doesn't do what I want, then I don't want it, free or not.

So the heck with it. There are other feed aggregators out there. James mentioned Google Reader to me the other day so I have been trying that and it seems to work nicely. It unfortunately has no notifier-equivalent that I am aware of, but then again, neither does Bloglines anymore.

Anyway going with Google should lead to less outages, I hope!

Minor Modifications

Abacquer — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:20:00 -0400

Since discussing topics the other day, it sounds like most readers don't even pay attention to them, so I have collapsed the topics sidebar and shuffled it further down in the list. Let me know if you want it back where it was.

Hooligan's On The Loose!

Abacquer — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:06:00 -0400

Yes, my good friend Jay (you may know him as "Hooligan" from comments here on ULev) has decided to take the plunge and start a blog. Yayyy! Check out Jay and "Stuff" when you get a chance, it's been added to the blogroll. It's brand new so it may change names or appearance as Jay settles in.

Jay is a software developer whom I worked with for several years, we were introduced by our mutual friend Brian over at Bri Wise World. He is an excellent cook and anticipates writing some about that, as well as personal stuff related to his life. Expect some technical stuff related to dotNet or whatever Jay happens to be into at the time as well. I'm looing forward to it! Welcome to the blogosphere, Jay.

BlogRoll Changes

Jay and "Stuff" added!
CuriousFrog removed, my friend Mike hasn't been blogging for awhile and the link no longer works.
AbsitInvidia removed, my friend Steve's blog also seems to have been inaccessible for a long time, and I think he's moved on to other interests.
ARTifactor modified, the URL has changed since Art has left BlogHarbor and moved to VOX.
Minor edits to the mouse-over information on PurpleCar, and ManRobotMonster.

Further Evidence That I Don't Know What The Heck I'm Doing

Abacquer — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 11:24:00 -0400

Alright you bloggers out there. I need help, and I can summarize the problem in five words: my categories are for shite.

What are Categories?

Feel free to skip this section if you already know what weblog categories are. BlogHarbor, my provider, like other providers, supports the concept of categories. Do not confuse categories with "keywords". Keywords are just that, key words that you can attach to an article for use by certain aggregators and search engines. A way of telling such an entity that "this post is about Star Trek" without ever mentioning the words "Star Trek" in the actual post. Categories are different, they are organizational.

In some ways, visiting a categorized blog is like visiting a bookstore or a library. Although all the articles are there to see, you can choose to only see articles grouped by subject matter, just as if you went to the "Horror" section in a bookstore to find the scary books, and then you went to the "Home Improvement" section to find a book about fixing your deck. So it is here.

My categories appear over in the left sidebar under the word "Topics". For example, this article is in the "Blogging" category, which is a subcategory of the "Internet" category. If you were to click the "Internet" link in the topics sidebar on the left, the list of displayed articles would change to show only the articles that have something to do with the internet. The topics list would also change to reflect the fact that there are subcategories under "Internet", of which one is "Blogging". If you were to click that category link, the topics list would disappear altogether, beause there are no subcategories under "Blogging" and the list of displayed articles would show only those in the "Blogging" category. When you first come to the blog you are on a category called "Main Page", and call categories are subcategories of "Main Page". So as you navigate through subcategories you will see a changing header at the top of the page that shows you what category you are in, and gives you links to get back to higher categories. The header only appears once you enter a category. So when you click "Internet" you will see "Main Page >> Internet" at the top of the page, just under the banner. If you then click "Blogging" in the topics list, the header will change to "Main Page >> Internet >> Blogging". Each of the displayed category names are links, so you can get back to "Internet" or "Main Page" by clicking on those links.

On a blog, there's the added advantage that an article can be in multiple categories so that it appears in multiple places. A news story about a stolen piece of artwork might appear in both the "Art" and "News" categories for example. If I go hiking in the woods and come across a bunch of trash dumped by some jerk, I might post an article in the "Science / Nature" category and the "Personal / Pet Peeves" category.

Okay So What's Wrong with Unbecoming Levity's Categories?

My list of categories isn't planned like a library's or the yellow pages, but has grown organically and haphazardly. As a result, some of the categories are in strange places. Some articles are filed under categories that really aren't the best place for them. Take "geocaching" for example. Geocaching is internet-driven--learning about new caches, and reporting finds all takes place on the internet--that's why the "geocaching" category is a subcategory of "internet". But once you are geocaching you are out wandering in the wilderness somewhere... and as an outdoor activity, maybe it belongs in the "Nature" category which is under "Science". Or perhaps it should go in the "Entertainment" category because it is something you do for fun. Ultimately the article I write might end up filed under all these categories. It just all seems very confusing.

I suppose I shouldn't feel such angst over it... this ain't no library. I write about whatever I feel like writing about, and not all of it is easily categorizable. But I regularly find myself saying "this doesn't really fit into these categories... I need a new one". So then I create a new one, and then there is a desire to go back through Unbecoming Levity's growing list of articles (2,149 and counting) to check for other articles that should go into that category. This is an expensive proposition, timewise, and I usually end up quitting before I get too far in.

Today's new category was "Justice System" and under that "Court Cases", and yes, I went back and stuck old articles into that category. I did this because I wanted to write an article about a couple lawsuits that have been in the news. Instead I spent the time reorganizing old articles and then writing this whiny dreck.

So how do you organize your blog articles into categories? Do you even bother? Is there a better way for me to organize my blog? I'll close with a hierarchical listing of my categories (which doesn't include my photo albums which is another organizational nightmare).

Art
Civics, Ethics, & Behavior
- Humanity
- Inhumanity
Entertainment
- Books
- Movies
- Music
- Video Games
- Magic: the Gathering
- Celebrities
Humor
Internet
- Blogging
- Discussion Groups
- Geocaching
- Webworking
Justice System
- Court Cases
Love, Joy, & Happiness
Media
News
- FYI
- Obituaries
Personal
- Birthdays
- Family
- Pet Peeves
- Vanessa
- Writing
  - Poetry
  - Fiction
Photography
- Photoshop
Politics
- Abortion
- China
- Creationism & Intelligent Design
- Elections
- Gay Rights
- Iraq
- North Korea
Random
- Cool
- Cute
- Gross
- Weird
Religion & Spirituality
- Atheism
Science
- Anthropology
- Astronomy
- Health
- Language and Etymology
- Math
  - Economics
- Nature
  - Climate Change
- Technology
Sorrow

Holy Moly! It's C-C-C-Cold!

Abacquer — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:18:00 -0500

Stay indoors please, the coldmeister is on a rampage. Wind chill temps reported this morning were -17°F in Fitchburg, and -21°F in Worcester. ::everyone who uses Farenheit goes BRRR!:: For you Celsius types, that's -27°C and -29°C. ::everyone else goes BRRR!::

I'm sorry I didn't write anything all week. Work has been alternatively crazy and dead (my project is in it's final throes, where I am officially off the project, but as last-minute issues are found, I get pulled back in.) At present there is no new project to put me on so I am on the bench. Which is sometimes good and bad.

On Wednesday for example I had a whole bunch of things I wanted to write about. I had my downed trees removed, some politicial issues had me pissed off, I had some xbox games I wanted to post reviews for, some new Indie music to talk about, some movies to talk about, and some other random items. I was completely unassigned at work so I figured that I would write a bunch of things.

But I barely had my desk cleaned off when I got one of those emergency calls and I was sucked back in. When I was finally freed up again, I simply was in no mood to write. Everything I had wanted to talk about seemed unimportant and all I wanted to do was relax.

Blogging doesn't relax me, apparently.

Then on Thursday my kid woke up sick and so I've been looking after her between handling issues for work and working out of the house.

Anyway, I hope things will settle down soon, and I apologize to anyone who was disappointed that I hadn't added anything. My good friends have been busy on their blogs, so I invite you to peruse my blogroll at left and read examples of interesting content, rather than my rambling pointless blather.

Best thing I read all week was an article by an atheist mother on the wonderful blog Atheist in a Mini Van. Her daughter was annoyed by a teacher who gave her class a ten-minute "pop essay" assignment. The assignment was "What do you want for Christmas?"

Why would she be annoyed? Well duh, not everyone celebrates Christmas, and it's presumptuous of the teacher to just ask all the students in the class (including the Muslims, Jews, and atheists) to write about what they want for the teacher's religious holiday.

So that is what this young girl wrote about, that and her own atheist leanings, and the sad state of the poor. It was a wonderful essay, remarkable for the kid's age, and I encourage you to read it. Needless to say, a number of wacko fundies have commented on the article to communicate their Christian love for the atheist Mom and her daughter, by telling them they are going to Hell and whatnot. Assholes, the lot of them.

The teacher is definitely a mixed bag. She had the sensitivity at least to recognize that this young lady is observant and talented, and gave her an A+ on the essay. On the other hand, though, after class she told the girl that she couldn't possibly be an atheist because the ability to care for other people's feelings was not an atheist trait, but instead was a Christian attitude. So the teacher's both presumptuous and ignorant. Not an atheist trait... what a nitwit.

What Tunage Were You Into When You Were 18?

Abacquer — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:11:00 -0500

James posted a meme on his blog which he picked up from somewhere else (which is the nature of memes, innit?) So I've decided to participate. Here are the instructions for this meme:

Go to popculturemadness.com and select the year you became 18 [from the "Hits" list on the left]. Snip the top 50 songs from the list and paste it in your journal. Bold the ones you like and strike the ones you dislike, italic the ones you know but neither like nor dislike, and the ones you don't know will stay in normal text.

Since the list given on popculturemadness is 75 songs long, James decided to include all 75, so I've done the same here. Also, as he did, I've chosen to gray out the songs I can't remember. So the list will follow these conventions:

I like the songs in bold.
~~I dislike the songs with strike-through.~~
I'm neutral about the songs in italics.
The songs in gray text are the ones I don't know.

Hits of 1985

We Built This City - Jefferson Starship
Smooth Operator - Sade
The Boys of Summer - Don Henley
Sea Of Love - Honeydrippers
Summer of '69 - Bryan Adams
Walking On Sunshine - Katrina and the Waves
Into The Groove - Madonna
You Are My Lady - Freddie Jackson
Crazy For You - Madonna
The Bird - The Time
Relax - Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Everytime You Go Away - Paul Young
Glory Days - Bruce Springsteen
I Want To Know What Love Is - Foreignor
Careless Whisper - Wham!
Axel F - Harold Faltermeyer
Material Girl - Madonna
Roxanne, Roxanne - UTFO
All She Wants To Do Is Dance - Don Henley
Say You, Say Me - Lionel Richie
You're The Inspiration - Chicago
Through The Fire - Chaka Khan
Heaven - Bryan Adams
Freeway Of Love - Aretha Franklin
Jungle Love - The Time
All I Need - Jack Wagner
Born In The U.S.A. - Bruce Springsteen
Small Town - John Cougar Melloncamp
Meeting In The Ladies Room - Klymaxx
Take On Me - A-Ha
Dancing In The Street - Mick Jagger & David Bowie
The Old Man Down the Road - John Fogerty
Just A Gigilo - David Lee Roth
New Attitude - Patti LaBelle
Private Dancer - Tina Turner
Centerfield - John Fogerty
Lovin' Every Minute Of It - Loverboy
People Get Ready - Jeff Beck & Rod Stewart
Smalltown Boy - Bronski Beat
Rockin' At Midnight - The Honeydrippers
You Give Good Love - Whitney Houston
Dress You Up - Madonna
Cool It Now - New Edition
In My House - Mary Jane Girls
California Girls - David Lee Roth
Treat Her Like A Lady - Temptations
And We Danced - Hooters
Basketball - Kurtis Blow
Solid - Ashford and Simpson
Invincible - Pat Benatar
Wake Up (Next To You) - Graham Parker and the Shot
Your Love Is King - Sade
I Would Die 4 U - Prince
And She Was - Talking Heads
Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush
Everyday - James Taylor
Money For Nothing - Dire Straites
Jesse - Julian Lennon
You Spin Me - Dead Or Alive
All You Zombies - Hooters
(Don't You) Forget About Me - Simple Minds
Some Like It Hot - Power Station
The Heat Is On - Glenn Frey
The Oak Tree - Morris Day
Fresh - Kool and the Gang
Dancing In The Key Of Life - Steve Arrington
Can't Fight This Feeling - REO Speedwagon
Can You Feel The Beat - Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam With Full Force
Suddenly - Billy Ocean
Kayleigh - Marillion
Voices Carry - 'til Tuesday
Lover Come Back To Me - Dead Or Alive
Oo-Ee-Diddley-Bop! - Peter Wolf
One Night In Bangkok - Murray Head (or Robey)
We Are The World - USA for Africa

Going over the hits of that year was a pleasant trip down memory lane I suppose. The real interesting thing is seeing where your likes and dislikes match up with or deviate from your friends'. 1985 was a good year for me. I met James in 1985, as I recall, having graduated from high school that year and bumped into him my first week at UMass North Dartmouth that year (then known as Southeastern Massachusetts University.) We seem to agree on more than we disagree on, which I suppose makes sense. James was always very nice about putting up with my music later in life when we worked together. Obviously not everyone turned 18 in the same year, but you can still run down the list and compare their tastes to yours. Pretty fun! Thanks James!

If anyone else wants to try this meme but doesn't have a blog, feel free to post your list in a comments.

Slept In...

Abacquer — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:22:00 -0500

I've been working so hard and under so much stress over the last few weeks that today I just decided to sleep in. That was nice, although my sleep ended with a nightmare about someone stealing my kid. That was awful. And now I really have to get to work. There's still so much to do on my crazy project. I had a meeting with the customer yesterday and it looks like they are at least somewhat pleased with what I've gotten accomplished, but I'm pretty sure it's not everything they wanted.

Other than that, there's not much to report in my life right now, except that when I get home in the evenings I'm so drained I have no energy for anything, and barely have time to post blog entries. By Christmastime this should be over. Looking forward to THAT.

Working Late

Abacquer — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 08:08:00 -0500

So I left work at 2:20 AM this morning. I went outside to discover that it was 26 degrees Fahrenheit and as a result my car was covered in frost. I may have been sleepy when I left but I'll tell ya one thing, that cold will wake you right up!

I don't really mind working late every now and again but it's becoming way too frequent lately. Same old story, somebody wants too much in too little time, somebody else agreed to it, and it's left to the developers to make it happen. I've been too busy to blog much as a result. Yesterday I wanted to write a brief story about a woman who was removed from a plane because she was breastfeeding her baby and refused to cover up with a blanket when asked to do so. That story pisses me off on so many levels, but I just didn't have time to put it all into words, and right now I've no steam. There's the link though, if you're interested.

Anyway the evening wasn't a total loss. While working my second monitor, I used my laptop monitor to watch Johnathan Miller's excellent three-part miniseries Atheism - A Rough History of Disbelief. It was a bit dry, and probably longer than it needed to be, but it was interesting just the same, and the whole thing is on YouTube in segments. (Here's the first one.) I learned a lot, particularly about the recent history of and ancient pre-Christian roots of atheism:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? -- Epicurus (341 BC - 270 BC)

Once I finished with that I was still working so I clicked around randomly on YouTube before finally hitting on something amazing, and by amazing, I mean I am amazed I enjoyed it. Doubtless this has probably already been covered on Aces Full, but I'm going to talk about it anyway.

I'm referring to the videoblog of the YouTube user SuttSteve. He posts a new blog video every couple days or so. It should be some indicator of how interesting the content is that each article is simply named with a date and a number. The first one I watched was the latest "Blog 169: November 19, 2006", and I don't know why but after seeing it I was compelled to watch another, and then another after that.

Steve is a 41 year old man who lives in a mobile home in Springfield, Georgia. He likes science, space, 3D modeling, and various other things. Just the same, Steve doesn't seem to have much to talk about. But he talks about it anyway. He will almost certainly tell you about the weather where he is today, and other extremely mundane minutia. He will blog while eating, and show you what he is eating. He will tell you how he slept, whether or not he took a shower, and that it is laundry day today. He will tell you what he watched on television today. He may talk about how he really can't think of anything to talk about.

But I began to like Steve, and his low key manner made it that much funnier somehow. Here's one that made me laugh. That low key manner also made it much more surprising when he did something unusual such as add animation to his videoblog or perform a rap song. He apparently has a following on YouTube who faithfully watch his video blogs. I still don't fully understand what it is that draws people in to his videos, but I was drawn in like the rest of them. I couldn't stop. I must have watched (or rather listened to) at least 20 of his articles while working.

I've been thinking I should get out more. The only times I ever go outside are to take the trash out, and um... well... to take the trash out that's the only time...

A Week Without Excerpts...

Abacquer — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:18:00 -0500

John Keegan, in addition to maintaining an interesting blog about blogging, is also "the BlogHarbor guy". In other words, whenever I need help from my blog service provider, John's the one who takes the call and helps me out. In a recent post over at BlogHarbor Community Forums, John presented some ideas about what makes for a good blog layout. I found this one particularly interesting:

...as a reader I think one of the best attributes about a blog is the immediacy of the content: the home page is not a set of links to content; full content is posted right to the home page. No need to click, just go the blog and start reading. Try posting a few articles without summaries, let the full text appear on the main page... Over time, you may find that more visitors turn into regular readers. And search engines will likely index your main page much higher...

Me, I'd always thought it would be better just to provide the excerpts so that people wouldn't have to scroll through articles they weren't interested in. Plus it cut down on my bandwidth consumption. But I find the above comment interesting and I'd like to test it out. So, for one week, ULev will go without article-excerpts--which is to say, entire articles will be available right on the main page. Be sure to let me know if you prefer it that way. What do you think of excerpts in general?

Google to the Rescue!

Abacquer — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 08:36:00 -0500

This is an important tip for you bloggers out there that just may save you some grief someday. I noticed this morning that an old article of mine had gotten a lot of hits of late. As I sometimes do, I clicked the link to skim the article (it helps me remember what I said, and what I was feeling when I said it.) Imagine my shock when I discovered the article was blank...

Grazing for Music

Abacquer — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 12:24:00 -0500

So every couple months or so I go looking for new indie music (mostly at 3Hive, which is a wonderful blog which features a new independent band every day with free music you can download.) This is what I've heard recently that I enjoyed (from most liked to least)...

Election Results -- Talking Points Memo

Abacquer — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:57:00 -0500

Talking Points Memo is a liberal blog (and a damn good one IMHO), and so any results they report will have a liberal slant until all of the precincts have reported in. But nonetheless, they have a nice scoresheet covering all the contested house and senate races that they are updating every four minutes. Check it out, and refresh it every 10 minutes or so.

Of the "seats in play" TPM is now calling 4 senate seats as Democratic wins, and 2 house seats. There's not enough information to call the other races yet. None of the "seats in play" have been called for Republicans. If only were true! Check back there regularly for updates.

Ground Rules

Abacquer — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 01:25:00 -0500

Okay, I just had to delete some comments on an earlier article here because a fight was brewing between two of my readers. This is my blog, and I don't like deleting comments here--I don't believe in censorship--but I've got to lay a few ground rules that I would think are obvious...

Too Much To Do, Not Enough Time

Abacquer — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 07:38:00 -0400

I have a new project at work which has an extremely aggressive timeline. I expect that it's going to be a lot of late nights between now and delivery day, so I'll be able to write even less articles here than the paltry few I write now. Just a heads up to those 2 or 3 of you that actually read this stuff.

What Went Around Came Around

Abacquer — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 19:22:00 -0400

Here's a strange twist of fate. Tonight I found an e-mail in my inbox from a reporter at the Sentinel & Enterprise...

Upcoming Downtime...

Abacquer — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 07:21:00 -0400

A message from BlogHarbor...

.NET Training

Abacquer — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 06:54:00 -0400

Just a quick note to apologize for not posting much of substance this week. I have been going to .NET training sessions...