Apparently, one of the images I submitted to the Holga show in NYC was selected.
This was such an unlooked-for shot: I took it without really thinking much of it. Lesson learned: shoot early and often.
Technorati Tags: 120, Holga, photography
Month: November 2006
classmates.com spam scam
July 27, 2007: It really is a shame someone would do this. I suspect there is a legitimate business to be made getting people back in touch with old friends, but greed seems to have gotten in the mix somehow. There are actually a few free alumni sites out there. None of them have been around as long/have as many members as Classmates, though.
I keep getting messages from these people (a local company, as it happens) and reminded that I have email from someone in my high school class.
Well, the sender’s name they cite is not one I know and am quite sure is bogus. But how to find out? I have to pay to read the message(?!), and I’m not likely to do that. So I just dropped my free account with them. Seems like a scam to me, and I’m not playing. More here.
[update] thanks for the followup comments from everyone below. if this a scam, let’s get the information out there.
[hey!] Tell me what you think of this idea?
note to self: check warranties on failed equipment
Turns out one of the recently expired drives went casters up before its warranty expired. So that’s some good news. An RMA has been created and I just have to hope for no more disasters before the replacement arrives.
Still annoying that SMART monitoring is not available for external drives.
Now playing: Thunderbird by They Might Be Giants from the album “The Spine” | Get it
NaNoWriMo gets harder
Your current Word Count is 26875
Oof, it gets harder as you narrow down your “plot” and limit the choices you can make. And if you suspect your words are a pastiche of George R R Martin and Terry Pratchett anyway, it doesn’t help your determination.
Trouble is, you don’t really know until you’ve put it aside for awhile and that can’t come til you’re done.
Urgh.
Now playing: Dynamite by Dave Edmunds from the album “Repeat When Necessary” | Get it
no better than the worst
New father Josh Marshall introduces a recollection by an 80s era vet on survival school training and what he learned about waterboarding and the Geneva Convention.
[O]ur involvement in Vietnam remains a sobering testament to the misguided conflating of nationalism and communism. But for millions of U.S. veterans, the debate on torture stands in stark contrast to the training they received and our shared understanding of what we were fighting for and against during the Cold War.
With that long-winded introduction, here is TPM Reader BL, responding to Ed Meese’s comments in GQ:
Worth reading, and I suspect we’ll hear more on this.
links for 2006-11-18
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I think it’s answer 2: “putting money into state party infrastructure takes money out of the pockets of Washington insiders – away from Democratic consultants and key congressional party activists. That makes insiders angry.”
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great overview of the best $20 camera you’ll ever own and how to get the most out of it.
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“This is the new Democratic Party. The old Democratic Party is back there in Washington, sometimes they still complain a little bit.”
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“That is the equivalent of installing a solid steel front door to your house and then putting the key under the mat.” Great: I have one of these passports, too.
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are DSL and Cable so bad as to make this a contender?
further fascinations with fermented foods
I got some kefir grains today, and have it fermenting a small quantity of milk to see what it’s all about. According to this guy, kefir is literally the food of the gods, with links to the manna that fed the Jews on the Exodus and to Mohammed.
It’s not really a grain, but an kind of organic matrix of simple yeastie beasties that ferment dairy and non-dairy liquids into a mildly alcoholic and highly nutritious brew. If the stories are accurate, all the kefir starters alive today can be traced back to the efforts of a brave Russian girl and a couple of resourceful Russian businessmen in the earlier days of the last century, and perhaps back to biblical times.
I do have a mild fascination with living foods — yeasts, yogurts and the like — so it makes sense to look into this. Putting kefir into the Google returns a lot of pretty enthusiastic results. More info as it, er, develops.
Now he tells us.
not sure what’s more amazing, those kids’ faces or neat little hardware device
As much as I grumble about computers in schools, this negates a lot of my arguments.
My main argument has been — and is — that what is called “computer literacy” or computers in the classroom is really a kind of VoTech education, where we teach kids how to use office equipment, specifically software applications that may not exist in their present incarnations by the time they enter the workforce.
But a hardware platform that, by design, can’t support corporate bloatware but still supports the basics of information retrieval/research and basic word and numeric operations is hard to complain about. if we’re using this stuff to teach them how to think, how to organize data, how to learn, I’m on board. If we’re using it to teach the office workers of tomorrow, I’m agin’ it.
More griping, anyone?
Continue reading “not sure what’s more amazing, those kids’ faces or neat little hardware device”
links for 2006-11-17
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Scott @ LG&M tracks down the source of Carville’s frustration: he’s ugly and no one likes him (© Atrios). Narcissism and self-absorption.
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Is our presidents learning? A long fact-filled essay on empire and conquest, written by someone with some experience/published articles to his credit.
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interesting tidbit. Funny how even ideologues can’t help coming up with the right solution to a problem, even as it conflicts with their principles, provided they’re sufficiently bright in the head.
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“Good job, right wing dumbasses.” did these people ever take a civics or american government class? one of them (not the anchor baby, the other one) is a law professor.