No Cameras at Bumbershoot?

According to the Bumbershoot website:

What is the camera policy at Bumbershoot?
Cameras are not allowed at Bumbershoot—please leave them at home.

So, there’s no public photography allowed at Bumbershoot this year?

The best word I can come up with for this is ludicrous.

Anyone out there have any more info? What’s the deal here? And how are they going to be enforcing it?

(And anyone feel like getting together on one of the days and blatantly defying the ban?)

(via Seattle Metroblogging)

Happy Anniversary!

What with still being neck-deep in moving I’m a day late on this, but — yesterday was my parents’ 38th anniversary.

John and Berta

Happy Anniversary, mom and dad!

Boxes Everywhere!

Our living room is filled with boxes. Some full, some partially emptied, some waiting to be broken down and taken out to the recycling…but it’s still a lot of boxes. Most of mine are still over at my old apartment, too. Uff.

The end result is going to be nice, but man is moving a pain in the butt.

Anyway. :) A quick recap, somewhat brief because I’m hot, tired, and fighting off a cold (which I’m going to blame on my little brother):

The weekend with my family was great. We hadn’t had a chance to have the whole family together since Kev and Emily got married about a year and a half ago, this was the first chance I’d had to meet my nephew Noah, and this was the first time Prairie was around my family as a whole — while she’d met Mom, Dad and Kevin before, it had always been separately as one or another of them was stopping through Seattle on a trip.

Noah’s a great little kid, too. Thirteen months old, and out to explore everything. Pictures from the weekend are, as usual, uploaded to Flickr.

Monday morning Prairie and I got up early, hopped in the car, and came back to Seattle. I crashed out at my apartment for a few hours while Prairie went off to the first day at her new job, and then we headed out to Ellensburg that night. Got up the next morning and managed to get her entire apartment packed into her dad’s truck and a U-Haul in just a few hours. We caravanned back to Seattle with me in front driving the U-Haul, Prairie following me in her car, and her dad behind us in his truck, corralled K, H, and P into helping us unload, and dumped everything into the new apartment. While Prairie and K got a few things organized and cleared a little workspace, the rest of us went over to my place to grab a full load. Back again, another round of unloading, and then we declared ourselves done for the day.

Now we’re in the process of getting everything unpacked, sorted, assembled, and put into its proper spot. I think this place is going to be a really nice little apartment once it’s all done…but we’ve got another few days worth of work to do before it’s really going to be ready.

So, things have been and continue to be busy here. More updates as time and energy allow.

Incommunicado

The weekend from hell!

Well, not really, the next few days should be pretty good overall. They’re just going to be really busy, and probably not entirely unstressful. As such, I’m likely not going to be reachable or even online until…um…Wednesday, at the earliest. I think. No guarantees.

  • Today: After work, Prairie and I drive down to Vancouver (yes, down…the Washington Vancouver, not the Canada Vancouver) to visit her mom.
  • Tomorrow: Drive from Vancouver to Corvallis, OR for a family get together. My parents are flying down for their 37th anniversary weekend, and we’re all meeting up with my brother, his wife, and their kiddo (my nephew!) at their place for the weekend.

  • Monday-Friday: I’m on vacation for a week! No work! Yay! Not going to be resting for all of it, though…

    • Monday: Drive from Corvallis, OR back up to Seattle. Prairie’s got a class to teach that evening at one of her new jobs, then after the class, we drive out to Ellensburg to her apartment and meet up with her dad there.
  • Tuesday: Rent a U-Haul, and put everything Prairie owns into the U-Haul and her dad’s truck. Drive from Ellensburg to Seattle and put all of her stuff into the new apartment. Drive over to my apartment and grab the big stuff (bookcase, desk, dresser, futon, electronics, boxes) while her dad’s here to help and take all that over to the new apartment.

  • Wednesday: SLEEP IN! Sometime that afternoon the installer from Speakeasy will be by to hook up the DSL line in the new apartment.

  • Thursday-Sunday: Rest and relax in between trips back and forth between my old apartment and the new apartment to get all the rest of my stuff and do a cleaning sweep.

And then it’s back to the usual routine.

So…really busy, lots to do, and I’ll be electronicaly nonexistant. Analog only…meatspace all the way.

Weird.

In honor of the weekend’s family get together, though, I took a couple minutes to scan in some of the old family photos I absconded with last time I was up in Alaska. Some of these have been posted before, some haven’t, so sorry if I’m boring anyone with repeats…but if you’ve never seen ’em before, enjoy!

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Bad UI: Mozilla Thunderbird

I’m honestly not entirely sure if I should be grumbling at Mozilla’s authors or Windows’ authors, but this drives me up the wall:

badUI.png

Those last two options are way too close together. If the only places for them to go are the last two items on the contextual menu, could there at least be a seperating line between them? I’m just glad Control-Z works after delete operations, or I’d be in a world of hurt, far more often than I’d like to admit.

(Admittedly, this is somewhat compounded with my having to use a mouse on the work computer instead of the tablet that I use at home, which is far easier, more comfortable, and accurate…but I still think this is a bad thing.)

Webpage Screenshots on OS X

One of the perpetual “how am I going to do this?” questions that will pop up from time to time when working with websites is how to get a screenshot of an entire webpage. Most of the time it’s not at all easy to do, and unless you’ve stumbled across some specialized software, involves taking a screenshot of however much fits on your screen, scrolling down, taking another, repeating until you’ve captured it all, and then stitching the images together in Photoshop.

Enter Paparazzi for OS X: give it a URL and dimensions, and get a single image of the entire page. Quick, simple, and occasionally very handy.

A sample image follows behind the cut…

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It’s the little things that count

Two things that gave me a grin (for very different reasons) on my way home from lunch today:

  1. The fifty-something guy standing at the corner of 8th and Pike just outside the Convention Center wearing a bright yellow t-shirt paired with not just leopard-print parachute pants…but topped off the ensemble with leopard-print shoes as well. Obviously a very trendy thirty-something in the mid-80’s who’s never bothered to clear out his wardrobe.

  2. The lady driving the big obnoxious SUV who had to back out of the Convention Center’s parking garage because her behemoth of a car was too big and gave the “MAX HEIGHT 6’6″” sign a good whack when she tried to drive in. You spend that much money on a ridiculously impractical vehicle like that and then drive it through the city, you deserve every moment of frustration you have trying to find a place to park it.

Okay, I’m not always a very nice man. But I’m okay with that.

iTunesNot My Slave” by Oingo Boingo from the album Best o’ Boingo (1986, 4:46).

So what’s the deal with the kilt, anyway?

Update: Welcome, Utilikilt Newsletter readers! Seeing myself mentioned in the newsletter was a very pleasant surprise — good to (virtually) meet all of you! For more UK goodness, drop by the Flickr Utilikilts Group, going strong since 2004. :)

My first UKI got this via e-mail last night, and figured it was worth answering publicy as well as via e-mail.

On Aug 16, 2005, at 10:03 PM, Amy wrote:

I have a question about the utilikilt you wear. I’m sure you covered it somewhere on you blog but I wanted to know what’s the draw of the kilt? What I mean is, why is a utilikilt better than wearing shorts or pants? Do you take a lot of crap from strangers when you’re out in public?

I’ve been meaning to write you for a while now on one subject or another from your blog but this is my burning quesiton!!

(grin) Well, let’s see…

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Preparations

Much of the weekend was spent running around, getting boxes, making plans, and generally starting to get things ready for the move. We’ve got a Hanscom family get together this coming weekend, and I managed to get a week off of work for the move and a bit of vacation, so our current game plan goes something like this:

  • M-F: Work (sigh). Prairie’s heading back out to Ellensburg to finalize everything there, and I’ll spend my evenings packing things up and getting ready to move.

  • Friday: Prairie comes back out to Seattle, picks me up from work, and we drive down to Corvallis, OR to spend a weekend with my parents, my brother, his wife, and their kiddo at my brother’s place to celebrate mom and dad’s anniversary and have a family gathering.

    (Parents: Prairie and I will probably crash out at her mom’s place in Vancouver on Friday night, then continue on down to Corvallis on Saturday morning. I’ll e-mail you later today or this evening with more details and to make sure we know where to go in Corvallis.)

  • Next Monday: Drive from Corvallis to E-burg (uff-da!) and meet up with Prairie’s dad.

  • Next Tuesday: Rent a U-Haul, load it and Prairie’s dad’s truck up with all of her stuff, and bring all of her stuff into Seattle. Get the big pieces (desk, dresser, futon, bookshelves) from my place over to the new apartment while we’ve got her dad around to help.

  • Next Wednesday-Sunday: Make short trips back and forth between this apartment and the new one getting the rest of my stuff moved, and rest as much as possible.