Trivia that matter
The camera I used for all the daily pictures through 89/365. It may be a toy with relatively modest capabilities, but it is a surprisingly capable picture-taker. It is also small enough to conveniently take everywhere. Even though I finally have a DSLR, this one will remain in active use.
All my old websites will soon be disappearing. They’ll be gone in January, if not by October. I recently spent some time browsing my retired weblogs, copying posts that might be of interest to visitors here. I sorted them into sixteen categories and posted them as static pages. You can find the categories listed as “ancient texts” under the “more” heading in the sidebar. And here:
I also rescued the “boy or girl?” quiz and added a few more pictures, bringing the total number of questions to twenty. Those who know their traps should do well; the rest of us — well, the average score among my friends was two right out of fourteen in the earlier version.
(I may be experimenting with different themes in the near future. I don’t like the way the current one, “Gemini,” handles static pages, and I couldn’t find an obvious way to fix the problems.)
I just a note from my brother:
I’m getting a laptop tomorrow. Any recommendations?
I don’t use laptops, and if I did, they would be Macs, which I don’t think he is interested in. Does anybody have suggestions for him?
I just a note from my brother:
I’m getting a laptop tomorrow. Any recommendations?
I don’t use laptops, and if I did, they would be Macs, which I don’t think he is interested in. Does anybody have suggestions for him?
Some traditions are stupid.
I returned home a few minutes ago from renewing my driver’s license. During the time that I spent at the license bureau, at least two hundred people stood in line waiting their turns. Not a single person (other than me) brought a book to read.
Riverside Park.
Oh! Edo Rocket #5
Bears, too.
… that make them attracted to anime in the first place.
I have an untested theory that anime fans tend to be… by disposition not attached to the physical world. They get by with the education mill and then join the workforce – some of them may do extraordinarily well, some less so. Their level of participation in society at large tends to stop at earning their bread – they are just not the type who get anxious in not participating in the mating rituals, climbing the greasy pole etc. I think it is mostly because their mental life is too occupied with something else better than the real world has to offer. It is not that they are maladjusted – they tend to do this by choice.
No fair. It’s August, dammit.
Spy style. Shamus tells you how.
Central Steel, Inc. III
Doug Marlette, the artist responsible for Kudzu, one of my favorite comic strips, died recently. I’ve been going though the posts on my old weblogs to see if anything is worth saving, and I came across this link to excerpts from a commencement address Marlette gave. It’s worth posting again.
If you haven’t finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yet, don’t click here. (Language, etc., advisory.)
(While I’m on the topic of Pötterdämerung, let me point out that there is a Potter-related poll in the sidebar. There is a similar poll, worded differently, on my other weblog.)
Update: J.K. Rowling tells all (spoilers, spoilers, spoilers),
*****
You might have wondered where this site was this morning, and several other mornings recently. I wondered, too. Apparently, whenever there is emergency maintenance to be done at the hosting service, or an outage or a kernel panic, the server where my site is currently stored is always affected. I guess if you go with a cheap hosting plan you get cheap service. Still, none of the other inexpensive web hosts I’ve used were as unreliable, not even my original free GeoCities site years ago.
*****
I knew Steven has a powerful mind, but I never realized just how mighty he is. According the the “recent comments” widget in Avatar’s sidebar, “… Steven Den Beste ‘… has a temper and can toss building-shattering attack spells around.'” For your own safety, do not nitpick.
*****
While browsing around the Anime Tropes Wiki, I came across this:
When A Modest Proposal was written a lot of people thought it was actually talking about eating babies.
Some years back, a friend wanted to write a satirical letter-to-the-editor. I suggested that he read Swift’s dispassionate discussion to see how it’s done. My friend mentioned it to his literature professor. The professor said, “What do you want to read that for? It’s about eating babies!” He was the head of the honors program at Wichita State.
*****
It may be a while until Guchuko plushies are available. Until then, there’s this.
I’ve watched Shingu twice now, and it was as good the second time as the first, even though I knew all the twists. But I’m as puzzled as ever by the great mystery of Shingu: why has the series never received the attention it deserves? There has to be a reason beyond the lame opening. (The following is mildly spoilerish.)
