Veteran's Day (Facebook repost)
posted 2010.11.12 at 03:01 | comment
Respect for the service, dedication and duty of American soldiers should not be tainted or biased by the politics that shape their orders and obligations.
SO TRUE (CLEANING THE HOME DIRECTORY)
posted 2010.02.06 at 02:51 | comment
Reformatted for vertical layout. No other changes.
Good Omens.
posted 2009.11.27 at 05:31 | comment
Taken at approximately 1530 hours, Thanksgiving. Ending near either the Shadyside Whole Foods or pointing towards Philadelphia/New York, depending on the tint of your glasses.
1969.
posted 2009.07.20 at 01:35 | 2 comments
Linked to the 1999 celebration* for good reason - the only substantial changes between the 30th celebration of the Eighth Wonder Of The Race and the 40th are the Columbia disaster and one massive political clusterfuck.
That we could celebrate the 50th - or even the 60th - with {Astronauts|Cosmonauts|Othernauts} triggering fireworks from the Lunar surface, I hope for.
While I'm at it, I'd like to be published, debt-free, and receiving a massage from the women's Swedish volleyball team, snorkeling whiskey through a straw made out of compressed cocaine while floating in a in a private pool in the Himalayas. That this fantasy seems more readily achievable** than a Lunar revisit is...
... well, it is what it is.
We came. We saw. We left.
I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.--Neil Armstrong; CBS interview, 2005 (source)
NASA continues to insist we'll return, using the same tone of voice one uses when promising ones least-favorite relative that you'll call them soon. In the meantime, they continue to focus on the Good Old Days like a fifty year old four hundred pound ex-cheerleader with six kids, living a John Waters flashback to Junior Varsity, hoping she'll get to fuck the quarterback under the bleachers after practice. Some day.
* What http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/introduction.htm links to as of this posting. Last update? 2002.
** Well under a million, all-in. Quite a bit more if we're stipulating a sustainable lifestyle, as opposed to a Weekend Of Awesome. The availability of the Swedish Volleyball Team is the key concern with regards to this matter. After the passport, this fantasy can be realized with money. Getting back to the moon isn't a matter of money - it's a matter of politics.
A Sound Unlike Any Other.
posted 2009.07.19 at 17:42 | 2 comments
This afternoon, Oakland was buzzed by a B-17:
My friend Martin was aboard when it* buzzed Pittsburgh yesterday - he took photos and video and he'll be giving me copies next weekend. The above is "actual size" of my phone camera. There's a link to the big version here.
Nothing in the world sounds quite like a heavy prop-driven military aircraft.
* I assume it's the same one. It's not like there's, like, a squadron of B-17s on PIT tarmac, gearing up to bomb the Hill District back into the Jazz Age. Sticking around long enough to sit around looking pretty is rare enough for vintage aircraft - that this one isn't just airworthy - that it's actually in the air - puts it on a very short list.
CVN-71 in the UK
posted 2009.04.10 at 17:19 | 2 comments
Doesn't roll off the tongue as cleanly as "Anarchy in the UK," but there it is. Email and a picture from Jen, which she's given me permission to post:
Center : Jen. Center forward : Beer, I imagine. Center far back : Jen's work.
Living
posted 2009.03.27 at 10:32 | 4 comments
Left to right : My rig as it was at The Old Place (six months of my life I can't wait to get some distance from), said rig around the same time the next day, and My Entire Life for the early part of march.
The rig-as-it-was shot isn't entirely accurate - the scanner sat on some kind of heavy-ass moderately portable table-and-chairs thing up until a few days before the shot was taken. It now rests on a milk crate and is positioned so I can scan big stuff (read : everything, as I draw on 11x14 and scan on 8x11) by moving it across the bed, instead of rotating it.
The new place is still a work in progress, and probably will be for awhile. Hell, I still don't have internet - which these days is a lot like not having electricity, clean underwear, or teeth. I do have this, however:
And that's more than awesome enough to make up for the temporary lack of a home line, I think.
Of the highest quality.
posted 2009.02.23 at 10:00 | comment
Saturday, the lamp of one of the work projectors refused to light up. A coworker with less acrophobia and more experience pulled it this morning, revealing this:
Truly, a high quality part!
Reversible Meat Tenderizer
posted 2008.12.11 at 15:24 | comment
Williams-Sonoma moves into the sex toy market:
12:20 < mdxi> i really want to write a subversive review for the tenderizer plug
12:21 < mdxi> see if it makes it onto teh site
12:37 < mdxi> how's this?
12:37 < mdxi> Specialized tools of this sort are so hard to come by in mainstream stores, and boutiques are notoriously overpriced, so I was thrilled to find this excellent specimen in my local W-S.
12:37 < mdxi> The polished haft is cool, refreshing, and thick enough for comfort, while the tapered base provides a secure grip - always important! As you'd expect, it's heavy, so extended use can become tiring, but if you're after this bad boy then you're a pro who can take it, right?
12:37 < mdxi> Pick one up and you'll be pounding away in no time!
mdxi++
Off to a roaring start.
posted 2008.11.06 at 17:26 | comment
The National Service Act as previously proposed is a plan to reinstate the draft. About which the president-elect has said We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.
Gays in the military, it ain't.
Fortunately, two previous attempts at this have tanked horribly and the third (which came right on the heels of the second) has spent the past year floundering with only a couple of democrats backing it.
If there's ever a time to slip an NSA in under the radar, it's now.
My take? It's one thing to encourage National Service. It's another thing to mandate it - though it's been around in countries such as Germany and what used to be Yugoslavia (among other places) for so long that the concept has become integrated into their respective societies.
Personally, I'm deeply opposed to the idea and I don't think it's necessary. Several people I know enlisted for one of two reasons - they either had fuckall for options or they were up to their ass in (education-related) debt. So they walked into the welcoming arms of Uncle Sam to do some "character building." If there were other options for the economically fucked, then maybe - maybe - some kind of NSP would be viable.
As it stands now, for the people that really need the help, the military is the only game in town. Reinstating conscription (be it filling potholes or digging foxholes) at this point would be a formality - and an insult to those who've made the choice.
The vague summary on the change.gov site that went up shortly after I took the above screenshot is aimed in a different direction, more of an "encouraged community service" direction. All the new administration has to do for the next 75 days is talk a good game.
Talking a good game is easy - you need charisma and pretty words to talk a good game.
Details... not so much.
It's that time again.
posted 2008.10.09 at 15:23 | comment
This snip of Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan has been floating around the intertub for awhile now. A few centuries in internet years. This particular instance googled from here.
Sandworms
posted 2008.09.17 at 16:18 | comment
13:20 <@bda> omfg
13:22 <@rjbs> wow, there's a word I haven't heard in a while
13:23 <@rjbs> what's the label on the jar?
13:23 <@rjbs> atreides?
Harvest Time at the Chair Farm
posted 2008.09.11 at 10:49 | 4 comments
Left : Old office chair, which my ass has totally destroyed. That's, like, the third application of gaffers tape, and a couple of the casters were swiped from another chair.
Right : Sexy "new" chair rescued from another section of the office.
Crispy.
posted 2008.08.15 at 10:11 | comment
From io9 via Dark Roasted Blend (also via xeno, #loc's io9 content screener), a bunch of photos of the aftermath of Soyuz TMA-11's ballistic reentry.
A couple of my favorites:
Yes, the pod went THUD! back in April. Go, but carefully - this internet is slow.
Re : On Leave
posted 2008.07.20 at 02:28 | comment
Since the entry in question seems to suffer from the problems that plagued the previous version of the blog*, here's a bit my dad tried to insert as a comment:
Thought I'd go ahead and insert this one here for the benefit of DCR patrons. This is where Jen is at the moment....As of 7-19-08.......
I'd already relayed this to various people via IRC - though not everyone who reads DCR is in the channels I'm in, and not everyone in those channels reads the backscroll. So.
* if this persists I'll consider DCR to be Unfixable and will then have to take other measures. Measures that'll probably be some kind of serious pain.
Fact Check, Isle Three
posted 2008.06.13 at 16:31 | comment
From The Chicagoist (found by xeno on io9):
A (now ex-) guard at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh has been charged with slashing a painting on loan to the museum from our very own Art Institute. Art Institute restorers are trying to see if the painting is salvageable, but police say it's damaged beyond repair. Neither museum will comment on how much the painting is worth, but reports say Vija Celmins's "Night Sky #2" is worth around $1.2 million. Well, it was.
A few points:
1. There is no "Carnegie Museum." There are four Carnegie Museums, plural. The Science Center, the Warhol, the Museum of Natural History (MNH), and the Museum of Art (MOA). The painting is (was) on display at the 55th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, not the "Carnegie Museum." MNH and MOA share one street address (4400 Forbes Avenue), so it's an easy mistake to make if you haven't spent any time in Pittsburgh. Most people haven't.
2. The guard, Timur Serebrykov, is, according to a source who's worked for both MOA and MNH, Russian. The artist is Latvian. This probably has far more to do with the defacing than the content itself.
3. This isn't the only thing that's been defaced, broken, or destroyed on the floor of 4400 Forbes over the past few months. It just happens to be the most expensive, and the most high profile.
Hearing again its holy madness.
posted 2008.05.26 at 18:25 | 1 comment
Post title taken from this Wired article about bionic ears. I thought it appropriate, given our luck (and obsession) with The Red Planet.
Wings Over Pittsburgh (2008)
posted 2008.05.11 at 22:11 | 3 comments
Highlights of Wings Over Pittsburgh 2008, presented chronologically by maiden flight and alphabetically after that. This being my second air show (see here for the 2007 highlights), event photography was of a more tactical nature - hence the filing in the main blog instead of the pittsburgh sub-blog. Filling in blanks, shooting things I hadn't seen before or trying for new angles on things I'd shot previously, etc. The big highlight this year was attending with Martin and my longtime friend xeno - while it's a hard call as to who's the more lecherous of the two, I'm happy that the three of us got along well. That more than anything made the show (which seemed pretty scaled down from last year) all the more awesome.
I have a ton of pics that Martin took during the flight he took last year in a B-17. Given that, the images I took were mainly of the "what caught my eye" variety - no small challenge, as the plane was crawling with crew (at least one of whom was dressed in vintage flight suit and gunner kit), and the usual gaggle of proles crowded so close that I just couldn't get some of the shots I wanted. All the more reason to come back next year! I took more pictures than I'm posting - I think these are definitely the best of the lot, especially the nose and the first "storm front" image. I love the design of this plane - it has an art deco meanness to it that modern bombers are lacking. Look at those fucking machine guns!
The iconic DC-3, lovingly restored, slightly upgraded, and repainted to a nifty Piedmont Airlines color scheme by the Carolinas Historic Aviation Commission. See here for a lot of nice information and what the software world would call a "changelog," detailing the history of this aircraft. I really wish I'd paid more attention to what the crew had to say, as they were all very enthusiastic and obviously had a love for the aircraft and its place in aviation history. As it was, my attention had been stolen by the nearby B-17 and B-25 displays. I only got a few pictures of the DC-3 (and none of the Mitchell, unfortunately). I think the positioning of the aircraft against the clearing weather front and the cockpit shot are the most interesting of the four.
By far the funniest bit of the B-52 walkaround was overhearing some idiot trying to convince a lesser idiot that the C-5 Galaxy was a "better plane" than the B-52 because it was "bigger" and "faster." The flight engineer was on hand at the cockpit - the kid had to be a good five years younger than me and seemed to be looking forward to the eventual engine upgrades to the B-52, if for no other reason than four engines had to have fewer parts than eight. Boilerplate bullet point : B-52 tires weigh over 700lbs. The primary focus of this shoot was the cockpit, as it's apparently rare for them to be open for a show; and the upper area of the rear landing gear bay. I'd acquired several images of the "business end" of it last year, but for some reason had forgotten to look up.
Images in order : Starboard aft at the start of the show, what pretty much has to be a bomb/missile hardpoint, two shots of the cockpit, starboard forward right behind the cockpit, uh huh huh huh, three shots of the aft landing well (which would make nice industrial desktops), and the tail section with the Fed-Ex freighter behind it.
Unlike the rest of these birds, the URL for the P-3 Orion refuses to cache in my browser history. I have no idea why - it's probably just another one of Safari's quirks. Regardless, this was by far the highlight of the show for me, and after the F-22 demo was also the highlight of the show for xeno. Not only is this a Navy ship (go sailors!), it's on duty and the entire crew was both on site and very enthusiastic about their mission - on Saturday, that mission was talking about the P-3 and what it does in a language that civvies can understand. Amongst a number of cool points: the Sonar technician (younger than me by five years) talking about running sonar kit that's older than Disco; a couple of insanely cute Navy ladies talking about some of the kit they're responsible; and a lengthy "lecture" / Q&A session from the bird's PPC (Patrol Plane Commander) about how the command structure works aboard the Orion. He gave specific details about command instruction flow between the pilots and the flight engineer (including who's allowed to touch what), and the differences between being a PPC and a "regular" pilot (ten naval airmen under your command versus being responsible only for yourself, etc), number of flight hours (~200 hours in an Orion and you're still a Nugget. This guy said he typically logs 1,500 hours a deployment - and that's On The Job, not everything it takes to actually Run The Bird) He'd run mechanical stuff on a cruiser previously - an Ensign responsible for every machine on the boat but the engines, and he talked about how that did and didn't prepare him for command of an Orion. I asked The Stupid Question (well, what I'd considered one, but didn't know so asked anyway) about wether or not a Navy Airman is a Sailor or an Airman, and his response was (along the lines of) "I'm technically an Airman, but I was a Sailor first. In the Navy, there's no higher honor than being a Sailor - some of these guys, they're all 'I'm not a Sailor, I'm an officer :P' and my response is 'Bullshit. You're a Sailor!"
Indeed.
One of the other cool points aboard the Orion - one of the people in our impromptu informal "tour group" was a Naval veteran who had manned an Orion sonar console in the late 1960s. The techs were talking about how outdated the kit they were using was compared to upgraded Orions, and here's this guy wanting the scoop on what he considered to be the "new and improved" equipment!
Images in order : Nose, forward bomb bay (don't argue, it's plainly labeled as such), sonobuoy tubes, two images of the sonar station, four images of the area between the sonar station and the cockpit (love those keyboards!), cockpit (pilot consoles) and cockpit (flight engineer console).
A few personal-use reference shots of one of the many F-15 Eagles that hasn't suffered a structural failure. There was no being polite here - it was either barge in front of a lingering photographer in order to get the shots I wanted or loop by the display throughout the day to see if the tail was clear. Love those engines.
There were two F-18s at the show, both with canopies up, both with pilots on station. I found out quickly that the main reason the aircraft is manned on display is that there are bits of the controls that are still classified, and the military isn't too keen on the idea of anyone taking pictures of those bits. It looked like a fairly typical cockpit to me, but I don't know what to look for.... of course, it could have been a Growler or a precursor, as the bird had a mean looking electronics pod mounted under it.
Images in order : It seems the WSO has seen Supertroopers, love the tail, the only pics the driver would allow of the cockpit (note the rear view mirrors on the canopy), and two images from the demonstration.
The EC-130 - which would look like a vanilla C-130 from a distance were it not for the four transmitter pods on the tail) is one of those things I'd love to have taken more photos of and learned much, much more about... but we were heading from one end of the flight line to the other, it was in the middle, the line was enormous and glacial, and to top it off, civvies were crawling all over the thing like it was made out of money and new episodes of American Idol. Of course, this thing's designed to broadcast AM, FM, HF, VHF and UHF... so for all I know, it is. Hopefully there'll be one at next year's show - if there is I'll hit it first thing and get my nerd on, bigtime.
Sure, on the ground, the F-22 looks stubby and ridiculously overpriced. In the air, it's a completely different story - you see the Raptor in action and after changing your pants you're ready to sign on with the Air Force brass who are insisting they buy more-more-more. I stuck a few clips up on youtube - a pass and loop, a pass with an F-16 on escort, and a pass and break with the F-16. They kept the Raptors well away from the crowds - heck, they may as well have thrown a tarp over them!
Propaganda.
posted 2008.05.11 at 18:56 | comment
Portrait of the artist, taken an hour or so before the sun completely incinerated his face. Taken on the port aft optics pod of a Lockheed EC-130 Commando Solo, a PSYOP bird used by the 193d Special Operations Wing based out of Middletown, PA.
Check out the props reflecting off of the goggles.
Eljays & Gin
posted 2008.05.09 at 17:30 | 3 comments
Seagram's Apple Twisted Gin? Awesome. Awesome and cheap.
Eljay's Used Books? Awesome. Awesome and cheap. I snagged a hardcopy Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell for 12$, while xeno paid 15.95$ for the (brand new) trade paperback version at Joseph-Beth about forty minutes earlier.
Eljays++
Gin++
Josta shirt!
posted 2008.05.04 at 12:56 | comment
I'm normally not one for covert candid photography, but (a) the fucking newspaper did it to me a few months ago, and (b) Josta!. See also.
I would have complemented the guy - but he immediately manifested all of the symptoms of a paper tiger right after I sat down, and paper tigers make my brain itch.
30 Days of Neubauten
posted 2008.05.02 at 22:08 | comment
While 30 Days of Night (7/10*) is far from a masterpiece, it blows the steaming pile of shit that is AvP2 (1/10**) clean out of the water and all in all is a fairly satisfying monster movie. Even if it does have nearly the same ending as Blade 2.
One of the things that endeared it to me was the audio design, and it looks like the sound designers weren't the only ones who seem to be fans of Einstuerzende Neubauten:
Spiffy.
* I'd rate it higher but I'm fucking sick of vampires, and while this was certainly a nice take on the myth, the vamps (except for the boss) all looked like Marilyn Manson rejects. Major points off. There's also a fair-but-tolerable amount of Exposition Masquerading As Dialogue, at least one bit of which is (arguably) extraneous. But it looks good, it sounds good, and the story and premise hang together quite well. Definitely the best vampire flick since Blade 2, which was in turn the best since Coppola's Dracula. I'd say it's the best since Coppola, but Blade 2 has a few things that severely bias me - namely, Ron Perlman.
** It's like they resurrected Ed Wood, fed him every single cliched line or character archetype that has appeared in more than three B movies over the last 20 years, paired him up with Uwe Boll and told them to shit all over the franchise. AvP2 makes the moderately tolerable AvP1 look like Citizen Fucking Kane. The best thing about it is that it ends. Honestly, I'm hard pressed to think of a worse film, let alone imagine one.
Ten Thousand Miles : Inbound
posted 2008.04.29 at 18:52 | comment
Select images taken on the ride from Waukegan, IL. to Pittsburgh, PA. (approximate drive time : 12 hours)
Chicago agrees with my camera in daylight. So do portajohns.
Indiana is even more of a hole during the day. What a shock that was.
Indiana rest stops are just as crap as the rest of the area around the turnpike; you cannot escape the law of fives; ohio is still flat (damn!); and a sunset shot of the Tahoe at a rest stop on the Ohio turnpike.
Arrival in Pittsburgh : around 2245, give or take. The 'rents made it back to NCPA by 0315 Sunday.
Ten Thousand Miles : Waukegan & NSGL
posted 2008.04.29 at 18:14 | 7 comments
Waukegan, Illinois is a pornography of suburban sprawl. No sidewalks, no walk signs. If these things exist in Waukegan, they are carefully hidden from the casual observer or tourist. I found the racial mix in the service industry - Super 8, Walgreens, IHOP - of interest, if only in comparison to Pittsburgh. The employee mix in the burgh is roughly 50/50 white/black - in Waukegan it was about 50/50 white/hispanic. Waukegan's pedestrian-hostile layout prevented the usual snap-happy runaround. The town is nothing but sprawl, with no discerning features to photograph. I took no pictures of Naval Station Great Lakes, and not for lack of interest - I didn't feel like cheesing off the sailors. They've got enough to deal with!
We took a shuttle from the Super 8 to the base. This turned out to be a real convenience - the security check (such as it was) was a quick walk through a metal detector. I beeped, said "oh, that's probably my camera," tossed my jacket (with camera) to the side and passed through. The sailors on detail didn't bother to investigate the jacket - I could have easily walked onto the base with a grenade, a handgun, or some other form of nastiness. My dad did, by accident - his pocket knife (which he'd left in his pocket) is now in a basket somewhere at NSGL. They were cool about needing to confiscate that, and he was fortunately really cool about giving it up - point of fact, while the sailor who took it told him he could get it back at Drill Hall afterwards (and while I saw her heading into DH as we were leaving), he neglected to pursue the matter. While we got in with great ease, everyone who drove themselves didn't fare as easily - walking to DH, we overheard a sailor or MP on a bullhorn in the parking lot, bellowing along the lines of "PLACE YOUR IDS ON THE DASHBOARD. DO NOT STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLE NOW. YOU WILL BE SEARCHED." Or similar.
Very nearly none of the pictures I took in Drill Hall turned out, which is unfortunate. The ceremony - which we waited about two hours for - was awesome and it would have kicked ass if those images were more than unusable smears. The state flags obviously turned out, and the flag bearers were a big part of the ceremony. Fun fact - when recruits were mentioned by name, their home city and state were also mentioned. Think "San Diego, California;" "Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;" and "The Bronx, New York." That last one threw me a bit.
NSGL pushes through roughly 600 recruits a week. Every week. If the divisions I saw were any indication of the gender and racial mix of the fleet, I'd guesstimate that the Navy is something like 60/40 boys/girls and maybe 50/50 white/every other race - black, hispanic, hawaiian, etceteras. I'd venture a guess that demographically, the people of this country are very well represented by the Navy : it's hardly the sausagefest you'd expect of, say... the Marine Corps, and the women of the Navy look very sharp in uniform. I spotted a Marine in dress blues (you want to talk sharp, a United States Marine in dress uniform is the sharpest looking man on the face of the earth), and an Air Force Master Sergeant (what my dad called "zebra stripes"), also in dress blues. While there may have been other servicemen present, they were the only non-Navy military personnel I spotted while on the base.
I was the only one of our expeditionary force to peg Jen as her division marched in - mom and dad were looking for the distinctive BGCs she'd been prescribed (which she wasn't wearing) - I placed her by IDing the distinctive family nose. That's the down side of military uniforms - they make everyone look so.... uniform. After the ceremony, I was the first person to get to her - I snapped a few pics and we eventually worked our way out of DH, off the base, back to the Super 8 and then to Emily's Pancake House (we drove, but it turned out to be a whopping two minute walk from the hotel). I had my first waffle in a good long time. It compared favorably to the last noteworthy meal I ate outside of Pittsburgh.
Much of the usual family stuff happened - I made quite a few military jokes (of the awful "huh huh. seaman." variety), all of which were taken in the proper context (being "I love my sister. I'm pro military. You can't take life seriously."). I eventually developed a nasty headache I can only describe as feeling like the way butane smells, lay down, and passed out until around eight or nine Friday night. John wandered off to the Sports Bar next to Emily's and watched the Penguins take out the Rangers, 5-4. I finished up the second generation of Robotech on my ancient laptop and posted a couple of pictures to DCR.
Saturday morning, temperature 66° and dropping. John and I decided that we were going to IHOP after we picked up Jen at the base. John manages a Denny's in Selinsgrove - we joked about this being professional research on his part. For me, I just wanted to go to an IHOP - mdxi and bda have talked about them enough to wet my interest. The server took the order without a pad and got the whole thing correct, which scored some serious cool points with John and Mom. The food was good but was also unfortunately cold, which didn't score any points with me. Jen (obviously) loved the coffee - after an entire RTC period of shitty instant coffee (black only), the idea of Real Coffee with cream and sugar and everything apparently had some real appeal.
By the time we were done with IHOP, the temperature had dropped even further and the wind had picked up. There's a REASON they call Chicago the Windy City - Midwest lake wind is some serious no-fucking-around wind. It's hard, strong, and unrelenting. Not the pissy weak omnidirectional wind that Pittsburgh has - this wind could easily drive enough turbines to power Waukegan and Chicago. This area of the country already accepts the gaping eyesore they call their power lines - I don't see them having an issue with wind turbines.
After IHOP, we took Jen back to NSGL and then bopped around whatever it is they call their PX (Jen mentioned it, it was on the door, I forget) for a bit. Mom and I got into a Battle Of Nice with a fresh group of recruits and their TIs - they insisted we cut ahead in line, we insisted that doing so would be unfair (hey, they got in line first). They eventually won the battle by outmaneuvering us - one of the TIs (a stern looking guy who looked like he ate telephone booths for breakfast) waved us to a freshly opened register and that was that. The sailors I encountered were all incredibly polite - I figured my camo shorts, filthy army jacket, untied combat boots and ponytail would have drawn a few dirty looks, but they didn't. Bonus points for the Navy.
Three things struck me about Naval uniforms while I was at NSGL - (a) The Dress Blues (they're actually black, but they're still called Dress Blues, much like the King Of Sweden is called the King of Sweden regardless of his or her gender) are total hair and lint magnets. We're talking "lint from the other side of the room makes a beeline straight for them" kind of dirt magnets. Most impressive. (b) All Navy clothing - the raincoats, the scarves, the dress blues, basically everything but the shoes - seems to be very poorly made. I think this is most obvious in the case of the scarf above. It may be that these unis are just "fresh" off of the assembly line and still need to be worn in, but it doesn't seem that way to me. It's a bit of a bummer - I'd like to think the sailors deserve better, but I haven't seen their work utilities, and I haven't been close enough to get a serious look at any deployed sailor's uniform. (c) While I thought they looked silly on the internet and in A Few Good Men, I realized that actually like the lids that the women are issued. Maybe they just don't translate well to the screen.
With the Serious Wind threatening to do the job for us, the expeditionary force departed Naval Station Great Lakes at around 1130 hours. I honestly don't remember if it was EST or CST, but it was "around noon" any way you cut it.
Jen's off to Mississippi to finish her training, after which she gets an actual leave as opposed to the highly restricted Graduation Liberty she was on for parts of Friday and Saturday. She says she intends to spend a chunk of that leave in Pittsburgh, so I should see her again in about three months, give or take.
Ten Thousand Miles : Outbound
posted 2008.04.29 at 17:07 | comment
Start point for me : Pittsburgh, Thursday, around 11am. Start point for my parents and John (my sister's incredibly cool ex) : Five hours north-northeast.
The first batch of pictures : a wreck in PA, a Moose sighting on the Ohio turnpike, and one for xeno found on a trash can at one of the many identical rest stops on the Ohio stretch of the turnpike.
Through the course of the journey, it was discovered that intelligence is not a requirement for turnpike rest stop employees. It is, if anything, grounds for dismissal. I dealt with a total of four - one was a complete idiot, two were apparently recently lobotomized, and the fourth apparently had no idea he was wearing a work uniform, let alone working, let alone customer service. This wouldn't have surprised me in Indiana. Indiana is a hole. But this was in Ohio. The Ohio turnpike road is a bit crappier than Indiana's (the difference is really obvious right around the state line), but Ohio's rest stops are much, much nicer. Even if the employees aren't. The Ohio rest stops have things like huge plasma displays with weather reports and pollen count; stainless steel bathroom stalls that are actually clean and work, and look and feel reasonably modern. The Indiana rest stops, conversely, look like discarded Cold War relics with Hardee's signs stapled to them, featuring some of the nastiest public toilets I've seen (!) and country music on an ancient PA in place of Ohio's high tech constantly updated AV PSAs.
Indiana apparently elected to put its money into the road itself instead of the accommodations. The state makes up for it by being mercifully short - maybe a third of the Pittsburgh-to-Waukegan drive time, tops.
Ohio and Indiana are flat. Very, very flat. Flat enough to creep me out, flat enough to creep my mom out. The area the turnpike plows through is full of creepy crazyass power lines, cellular towers, radio towers and rotting agricultural and rail infrastructure. Eventually the environment evolves into an orgy of high tension lines and other forms of industrial nastiness as Indiana farmland gives way to pre-Chicago sprawl.
The Indiana turnpike dumps out onto the Chicago Skyway toll road/bridge - you hit it without so much as an off ramp or a turn. Chicago is the only city we pass through on the trip - the rest of them (Gary, Youngstown, Cleveland, Pittsburgh) are all well off the artery. As my camera can't cope with the idea of Urban Dark, I took a bunch of long exposure blur shots. A few of them turned out, and a couple of them actually look pretty cool. The Chicago skyline is gorgeous.
Things took a turn for the grumpy in the Windy City - the road degenerated into a morass of badly labeled construction routing, then passed on into an hour or so of unlit (!), BADLY labeled ( exit signs the size of my head way up on a pole on the right lane on a road the instructions say you're supposed to stay on the far lefthand side of) road that eventually delivered us to the End Point : Waukegan, Illinois. Home of Naval Station Great Lakes and most emphatically NOT Chicago. Waukegan is Chicago the same way Butler is Pittsburgh - everybody lumps it in because it's "nearby." Total drive time from Pittsburgh : About 12 hours. Total time-in-vehicle for the 'rents and John : About 17 hours.
Buck Rogers In The 25th Century (season 2)
posted 2008.03.06 at 15:30 | comment
12:11 < solios> man, s2 is omgsuk
12:11 < solios> not that s1 was, yanno, awesome.
12:12 < solios> though there really ought to be some gil gerard + nathan fillion slash.
12:14 <@rjbs> ...
12:15 < solios> what? they both come of as Farmhand Solos. ;p
12:17 <@rjbs> ...
12:18 < solios> it would be awesome and you know it.
The Crawling Chaos
posted 2007.11.21 at 02:40 | 3 comments
The works of Dale Chihuly at the Phipps Conservatory (Schenley Park, Pittsburgh). Gorgeous, gorgeous work.
Pumpcon 2007 (brief)
posted 2007.10.30 at 15:28 | comment
Day One : Some Terry Gilliam-grade fog on the train ride in, followed by a ride with an incredibly chatty Vietnamese cabby to the Grand View building - a few pics from the 14th floor conapt of bda's coworker, followed by a moist trudge through downtown and a cab ride to UPenn for Server Room Barbeque with bda, harry, ecronin, esch, dragorn and others. Then Total Inebriation, of which little is remembered beyond the fact that Sean showed up (!).
Day Two : Talks. Mostly law and privacy related, though I now know how to shim a masterlock with a beer can. Snapped a few pictures of pumpcon '07 shirts and pumpconners, though most of the images didn't turn out. Dinner at Ong's, then Leopard install and unconsciousness.
Day Three : Cheesesteak and Chicken Thingers at the South Street Diner with ejp, bda and esch. Then out to Somewhere (read: Harry's) with ecronin and crew, followed by some beer, some whiskey, and some killer chinese takeout.
Day Four : Breakfast at the Down Home Diner with rjbs, hunter and ejp. Okay coffee, watery eggs, fantastic pancakes. Then the shortest cab ride from Market to 30th EVER. Then a very packed Amtrak ride back to the burgh.
Center City Philly
posted 2007.10.28 at 11:36 | comment
Center City Philadelphia, October of 2006:
CCP, October of 2007:
The Comcast tower looks like a sheet metal version of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning. Only bigger and more eviler.
Workload
posted 2007.10.20 at 19:35 | comment
Batch one of two. The smaller batch.
Parsing a few hundred thousand jpegs into video for editing. It's A Kind Of Hell, but it's also (unfortunately) the best way to deal with the sheer volume of data.
The footage? Construction of Dinosaur Hall from August of 2005 through last week. A Kind Of Awesome that more than makes up for the sheer tedium.
HAH!
posted 2007.09.24 at 23:47 | comment
Fact : The gravicon "logo" (which was never actually used on a public site build) is at least five years old. Maybe six.
Attack of the Clones
posted 2007.09.02 at 16:05 | 5 comments
After the thing at the Moose, I dropped by Chris & Laura's labor day cookout. Contrary to popular opinion, there was no prior wardrobe coordination. Heck, I didn't even know that white came battle pants were available in a shorts form factor until I'd arrived.
A fun night with friends I hadn't seen in years capping off a fun day with friends I hadn't seen in years. W00t, etc.
1973 : Skylab
posted 2007.05.14 at 12:31 | 1 comment
The picture is from the fourth Skylab mission.
The Russians have totally stomped NASA for volume - they've orbited five of the seven manned space stations, and they've been primary transit for the last two. And one of 'em had a fucking cannon.
Another area the Soviet space program has kept the lead? Venus.
I <3 the space program.
WASABE!
posted 2007.05.07 at 01:22 | comment
My one pic from last week's comicon : Kristy from Noses Optional with her meme-friendly carton of Wasabe peanuts. Stronger than NyQuil!
My god, it's full of stars.
posted 2007.04.24 at 02:13 | comment
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched 17 years ago today. Wikipedia has a very nice writeup, as always. Not sure why APOD hasn't mentioned it.
The Eagle Nebula has popped up in Star Trek : Voyager and Babylon 5, and less obviously in Contact.
Hopefully next year's scheduled servicing and upgrade mission goes off on schedule.
Mistake MY ASS, you fat-lipped golem!
posted 2007.04.12 at 02:00 | 2 comments
@ Dee's Cafe :
[left, last night] The Reverend Brother 342 (aka Pimp Hat Jason) shows off his Space Invaders belt buckle; [right, tonight] Geoff (right, a southside regular) and HIS MOTHERFUCKING CLONE Ben (left, whom I've never seen before, ever) smoke cigarettes while proles photo-op their resemblance.
<
Subject line from the truly awful english dub of Trigun, now playing on a flat panel near you.
Workforce
posted 2007.04.02 at 11:58 | comment
Left to right, top to bottom:
Apple Powermac G5 : 4 gigs of ram, 2.7tb storage, Final Cut Pro.
Old SCSI Enclosure : Relic from the Media100 days. Two 36g drives, unused.
JVC BR-DV3000 : DV/MiniDV, I/O bridge between FCP and all other hardware.
Pioneer DVD-V7400 : Industrial Strength DVD player.
Sony NTSC monitor
Sony Lasermax LDP-1500
JVC BR-S800U S-VHS deck
Sony BetacamSP UVW-1800
I can capture anything but Betamax. Unfortunately, switching between decks and functions (input or output) requires a complete recabling of everything. In part because we don't have all of the necessary equipment, and in part because the equipment we do have is "quirky" (specifically the Beta and SVHS decks).
Industrial Light And Superscience
posted 2007.02.08 at 17:34 | comment
Lighting fixtures by Frank Buchwald. 17 kilos might be a bit heavy for a lamp, but it's fuckin' industrial. I want one, dammit. (src=_Lasar)
While we're on the subject, bda linked this earlier in the day:
From Jurvetson's flickr photostream description:
This is the core of a new quantum computer attached to Leiden Cryogenics dilution fridge, ready to begin a cool down to 0.005 degrees above absolute zero… about 500x colder than the coldest place in remote outer space..
There's more. Go read it, it's awesome. And unlike the Industrial Lighting, it's in english. Huzzah.
Purple And Brown
posted 2007.02.08 at 17:24 | comment
Purple And Brown, which I first encountered at Cartoon Brew yesterday. Early Henson meets Beavis & Butthead. Aardman for the win. Roflcopters.
Eye Of The Tiger
posted 2006.12.03 at 18:53 | comment
This Manifestation Of Mac OS X happened to occur on the same wall that is being pissed upon on the cover of Anticlever.
Coincidence? I think not.
pumpcon.misc
posted 2006.10.30 at 02:06 | comment
Harry and tsunami pimping the front and back of this years shirts, some billiards, and what's left of the shirtbox - we sold out, bitches. According to Adam, it's a first - I think a lot of it has to do with the fortunate production glitch - the sword/fist was supposed to be on the back. Turns out it works a hell of a lot better this way. :D
Represent!
posted 2006.10.30 at 00:40 | comment
L : bda with this year's pumpcon shirt. R : pete wielding ATC. Fo shizzle.
Fukkenüber
posted 2006.10.13 at 18:11 | 2 comments
Box of safety pins : ~$2.50 @ CVS.
New pants : $26.99 + shipping.
Tranquility Base here.
posted 2006.07.20 at 08:43 | comment
105:25:38 Aldrin: Roger. This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way. Over.
Aynor, SC
posted 2006.07.17 at 15:03 | comment
Chris Smith's own personal Ohl.
Image posted with permission.
The Dawn{ing} of Doom
posted 2006.07.04 at 06:44 | 2 comments
_of_doom_2.jpg)
_of_doom_1.jpg)
_of_doom_3.jpg)
Best of the 38 shots I took between Lamar and the Birmingham. I'd have filled up the entire card, but it started raining at 06:21.
Gorgeous.
New Roommate!
posted 2006.06.02 at 15:06 | 2 comments
Jen's first night - post-80's night with season one of Tour Of Duty on my dad's old (newly revitalized) iMac. W00tz0r.
Technicolor Smear
posted 2006.04.29 at 12:21 | 7 comments
My friend Randy (a professional photographer) says he loves the Canon PowerShot A95's color and clarity - I bought the thing on his recommendation, and I've never regretted it. Though I do sometimes wish I could pull a tripod out of my ass on command, the way Adrian Paul manifests his sword - it would have made this image (the purdiest of several) nice and clear.
============
Update, 20060503 @ 1407 : desktop version (1600x1200, 334k) by request.
BRAINSKWIRL COMMANDS PORNO
posted 2006.03.27 at 13:15 | comment
They (whoever "They" are) parked a 20' inflatable Urban Camo squirrel outside the workplace:
Daylight images later today (or sometime tomorrow).
Foamy.
posted 2006.03.17 at 14:44 | comment
Some d3wd totally failed to read the instructions. You should have seen the look on his face when he came back for his clothes and realized he'd totally hosed two washers.
Artist, Cyberpunk, Loner, Explorer, Engineer
posted 2006.03.07 at 16:48 | 2 comments
Photos by Ron Lutz for a project he's working on. Title text is also for said project. Goggles-up is the image Ron will be using.
13:51 <@ejp> you might have the vin diesel goggles, but you just look...queer.
13:51 <@ejp> and kinda cuddly.
13:51 <@solios> omgFAG
Work In Progress
posted 2006.01.18 at 16:20 | comment
Doing a few Not-Quite-Real-World objects that'll be used in both ATC and DCR. Plenty of reference for the monitor and the S-Deck, and I've learned a lot about splines, sub-object material editing, smoothing groups and reflection mapping. And the front end is even reasonably accurate*.
Much like the QAR, I'm aiming for a couple of objects a day over the course of a couple of weeks - and I wind up spending a lot of time on stuff that's just not going to be all that visible.
But hey, it's the thought that counts.
* The backs look fine, until you notice that the RCA and S-Video plugs are three different sizes. :P
Acronym of the Day
posted 2006.01.15 at 21:53 | comment
Sex
Impulse
Negation
Funny, the things that pop into your head unbidden.
The Quiet Earth
posted 2006.01.08 at 12:27 | comment
One of the better movies I've seen in awhile, despite frequent .nz dong early on. Feels a bit like a cross between The Stand, The Langoliers (the fiction, not the adaptations), and Primer. The ending rocks, and while it's not the "Planet of the Apes" zinger it's been made out to be elsewhere, it's still very satisfying.
Powerslave
posted 2006.01.06 at 18:57 | comment
Today at work, I took an ancient unused IBM deskstar and combined it with a completely unused 2ghz Athlon/1g of ram to form Powerslave, my first successful Windows 2000 install (nevermind having to download Intel NIC drivers on a separate box, or RAID card driver issues, or ATI drivers requiring DirectX or etc, etc).
15:52 <@ejp> you sir, are the god damned fag.
15:53 <@ejp> yes, THE.
15:53 <@xeno> o_o
15:53 * solios wins.
15:53 <@xeno> fagbot: doot Michael Knight
15:53 <@fagbot> SLOWLY LOWERING MYSELF DOWN TO THE TILE NOW
15:54 <@xeno> :D
15:54 <@xeno> < kelly> He...
15:54 <@xeno> < kelly> >.O
15:54 <@xeno> < kelly> EH.
15:54 <@xeno> < kelly> Er.
15:54 <@xeno> < xeno> Dan.
15:54 <@solios> he's the desktop on my ibook AND the mac mini.
15:54 <@xeno> < kelly> Oh.
15:55 <@ejp> THE GAYNESS! THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING!
15:55 <@xeno> I like how just dropping your name explains everything and now she's fine with it.
Leftovers
posted 2006.01.06 at 16:40 | comment
Some wit left a wheelchair on my doorstep.
Heck of a strange thing to wake up to.
More Trek silliness.
posted 2005.12.27 at 02:38 | comment
Timescape : Picard succumbs to "temporal narcosis," gets silly and draws a smiley on the gas plume of a warp core breach. At the end of the episode, Data experiments with relative temporal perception by watching a pot boil.
Timescape is a Bragastrosity, so despite the cute bits there's a staggering amount of bullshit that comes with it - anyone who's seen Generations, Nemesis, or more than forty seconds of Voyager knows what I'm talking about. The man (along with Berman) claims to understand Trek better than anyone - I'd argue that it's the same type of understanding a retard has of mental illness.
Much to my surprise, Benito Martinez (Aceveda in The Shield) popped up for five seconds as a transporter technician in part II of Descent (the Lorg vs. Hugh thing). Shortly after that (relatively speaking), BLAM!. Terry O'Quinn (John Locke in Lost) guests as Admiral Pressman in The Pegasus.*
* No, not THAT Pegasus. The other one. Though the commander of the current BSG Pegasus just happens to be Michelle Forbes, who played Ensign Ro in several episodes of TNG. For the win!
Point of nerdliness : The Pegasus is the same class as the Grissom, a wonky looking thing what got blowed up in The Search For Spock.
You may be able to destroy my mind...
posted 2005.12.26 at 06:38 | comment
... but you can't change the fact that I'm innocent. Or the fact that I prefer mindfuckotron episodes and movies to holodeck accidents, time travel and other Braga bonerisms (such as the injection-molded plastic Blalock/Ryan slutbeasts that get my peers all moist and gooey).
Riker's turn in the mindfuckotron, insisting he's not crazy. The Alien-Of-The-Week is Yet Another Species Of Buttheads, there's spoon-talking, and Riker's got wicked bedhead. This isn't the first time Riker's been fucked with by aliens - see also Schisms (in the same season, no less).
Battery sampled the hell out of this episode, and imagemagick seems to have issues with punctuation in filenames.
ROMULAN TROI ASS
posted 2005.12.26 at 02:49 | comment
Makes up for the flying troi ass. Hell, the episode features The Thing as a freighter captain (for about four seconds) and completely makes up for the tedious Braga embarassment that comes before it. It's a pretty decent Romulan episode - building on Unification but not as good as Balance of Terror. Bonus points for Troi being pissed and screaming I WILL HAVE YOU EJECTED INTO SPACE IS THAT CLEAR. Points off for nobody on the Federation side noticing Troi's disappearance- a line or two during a Captain's Log entry would have been more than sufficient... though crew reaction at a later point in the episode is quite satisfying.
A life of ease and reflection and intellectual challenge, or this.
posted 2005.12.26 at 02:19 | comment
Larger than a fist, less loving than a dildo.
posted 2005.12.24 at 15:03 | comment
So, when I wasn't drowning in whiskey or TNG episodes or sleeping, I spent most of the last week working on this:
Man, I'm glad that's over with. It would have been done last week, but working an 11520x8400 canvas, a full background and a dozen characters is a bit time consuming, especially considering how far the image has progressed from its starting point.
For a few years, various members of my diminished social circle have joked about being the X-men- my roommate (Ben) and I finally did something about it. He provided the initial pencils and inks, which took the form of a xerox of whiteout-heavy laser paper inked with ballpoints, which needed to be "adapted" to my coloring style. I cleaned up the inks and did everything else.
I've done cosplayish work before. There have, I think, been worse crossovers. MUCH worse. So breathe and just be happy I'm not one of those whacked-out fanboi who thinks it's a good idea to run around in long underwear and Oakleys.
Oddly enough, the fun part of this was researching and getting proper colors (and in Angel's case, corrections) of the various X-Men costumes. This French site turned out to be fantastically useful- and proof that when it comes to bad character design and crap costuming, Marvel has a huge lead on Star Trek. I'd ask loudly that somone whack these idiots in the head until they learn "proper" fashion design, but fashion designers came up with bellbottoms, afros and bling. Forget those guys.
Oh, and I'm Colossus because my Everyman* physique makes me a real pain in the ass to match up to anyone else in the menagerie.
I'm more than ready to get back to ATC now.
1. I'm not exactly good with the whole "collaborating" thing, even when it's in exactly the capacity I want to be working in. The conceptual end was fun, but cleanup was a serious drag. I theorize that if I was working comics Professionally, I wouldn't be spending as much time doing cleanup.
2. Marvel uses some retina-scorchingly bright colors.
3. Mostly due to 1., Chris Claremont and the costume collection pointed out earlier, I'm now even less interested in working for The Majors. It's not something I ever seriously considered to begin with, but when you spend two years in the same building as a legion of acned fanboys who find debating the "finer" points of McFarlane and Lee to be more interesting than classwork or girls, well... it rubs off. To the extent that anything else does (politics, street names, etc).
4. Large-scale work is now entirely a matter of patience, time, and subject matter. Much less intimidating, though I doubt I'll have an urge to do anything along these lines again any time soon.
5. If I buy anything the next time I'm at Phantom, it'll probably be more Cerebus. Doing a hero piece hasn't whet my appetite for more hero work, and I see that as a good thing. The world needs another comics artist with a superhero boner about as much as it needs another Bush in office.
* In the sense that every Tom, Dick and Asshole in Pittsburgh who has a ponytail also has a goattee and glasses. Which means I hear "you remind me of ___________" almost as often as I hear "YOU SHULD WORK FOR TEH RADIOZ!!!". I did work for TEH RADIOZ many moons ago and I'll bet ___________ wears a bigger asshat, kthks. Ben's a haircut away from Wolverine, David's got the eyebrows and you'll just have to trust me when I say that everyone else is more accurate than I am. Better Colossus than Marrow or Maggot or one of the other post-Fatal Attractions abortions.
FLYING TROI ASS
posted 2005.12.23 at 13:50 | comment
While the episode itself is decent, this particular scene is easily one of the hokiest in all of Trek. Bonus points for the Ghost Ship (a big weak spot of mine) and Guinan's assault rifle.
The problem with old Star Trek...
posted 2005.12.08 at 02:11 | comment
... is that the acting is just as horrifically uneven as the set design and the writing. For every Balance Of Terror, you've got at least one of this dude, from Dagger Of The Mind.
This guy makes Yoda's forty minute death-gargle in Jedi look like Citizen fucking Kane.
As for the rest of the episode:
Central Pennsylvania
posted 2005.11.01 at 16:30 | comment
Flatter than the rest of the state, with the occasional cow and a shitload of trees. Foliage pics refused to take in focus without having the train window for context.
Odds and Ends
posted 2005.10.30 at 22:12 | comment
The Drexel Dry-Erase Gremlin and my copy of Puzzle Fighter, back in my possession after a one-year hiatus:
Scale Comparison : Bryan's copies of the Errant Story and Mac Hall books against his copy of Primer and my current preproduction notebook:
The ES book is wee and the Mac Hall book is a behemoth, both swinging into totally non-standard ends of the spectrum. I'm hoping ATC hardcopy - if it's ever available in non-Unique form - will be the target 7.5x10 I've been building pages at since I started working on the thing.
Bryan says Primer is good stuff - I'll find out for myself here in a few minutes.
Shirts. Of. SEX.
posted 2005.10.27 at 18:34 | comment
Images shot by me and processed by bda, as my iBook is currently sitting at his place and we're chilling at Factory. This is the first shirt design I've had in the wild since the summer of 2000 and they turned out AWESOME.
15:29 <@javaman> man those are sweet.
15:29 <@bda> Seriously.
Next message saved Saturday at 9:24 p.m.
posted 2005.09.18 at 18:00 | comment
I own Empire AND Jedi sheets. How cool is that?
Slightly more detail on the Jedi sheets here.
