Links for March 30th through March 31st

Sometime between March 30th and March 31st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo’s New Penguin Exhibit Almost Ready: "We got a behind-the-scenes look at the new Humboldt penguin exhibit at Woodland Park Zoo a few days ago. Construction is mostly complete, and they're finishing up some signage and plantings in anticipation of its public opening May 2. The penguins, brought in from a number of zoos, are in quarantine behind the exhibit, and are slowly being introduced to penguins outside their own groups before jumping into their new home."
  • I Invented … the Apple Logo: "'For inspiration, the first thing I did was go to the supermarket, buy a bag of apples and slice them up. I just stared at the wedges for hours,' recalls Janoff. The fruit of his labor: a simple 2-D monochromatic apple, with a healthy bite taken from the right side. Jobs loved the conceit-only he suggested it be more colorful."
  • Old Moon Images Get Modern Makeover: "Imagery gleaned from the Lunar Orbiters over 40 years ago is now getting a 21st century makeover thanks to the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP). By gathering the vintage hardware to playback the imagery, and then upgrading it to digital standards, researchers have yielded a strikingly fresh look at the old moon. Furthermore, LOIRP's efforts may also lead to retrieving and beefing up video from the first human landing on the moon by Apollo 11 astronauts in July 1969."
  • Marketing Genius, Episode II: The Camblr Strikes Back: "The leanness of the script leaves very little room for audience-directed expository dialogue. The word 'X-Wing' is only spoken when an officer must notify Darth Vader what type of ship is landing in Cloud City. The word 'lightsaber' is only used once in A New Hope, by Obi-Wan, to tell Luke what it is he's holding. And heck, of course the word 'Ewok' is never spoken — how would Leia know they were called Ewoks, when the Ewoks themselves could only talk in vowely gibberish? ¶ I now consider this to be an underappreciated stroke of genius: the characters in Star Wars are written to be familiar with their environment, just as their environment is designed to be familiar with them. Neither the environment nor the dialogue is compromised to cater to the audience."
  • Marketing Genius: "A few minutes ago, I read this post by John Gruber about this article by Dan Vebber about how the word 'Ewok' — a household term — is never actually spoken in Return of the Jedi. At this point in time — thanks to books, toys, and licensing — everyone and every in the Star Wars universe has a name, species, or designation, but what other relatively well-known Star Wars terms were never actually used in the movies?"
  • Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, 2008 the Other Half of Famous Twins: "Both Charlie Sheen and Jenna Jameson had twin boys recently, joining the growing ranks of parents with multiples like Julia Roberts and Brangelina. When these little bundles of joy grow up will they be the next Mary-Kate and Ashley? Or will one seek fame while the other chooses a more subdued life out of the spotlight. We went looking for celebrities that have an unknown twin and were surprised by the stars who have a not so famous other half."

Norwescon Tweetup

A couple months ago, I started up an (unofficial) @norwescon Twitter account as another avenue for disseminating Norwescon info to the masses. The account is mostly automated, mirroring links to anything that pops up in the norwescon LiveJournal community or in the Flickr group, but I’ll occasionally toss things in that seem to be on-topic and of interest.

Earlier this week, @EMPSFM asked if I was planning any sort of ‘tweetup’ during the ‘con. I hadn’t thought about it, but it seems like a good idea.

So, barring any unforeseen complications, I’m tentatively choosing 3pm on Saturday afternoon as a good time — early enough in the day that it won’t interfere with any of the big evening activities, late enough that most congoers should have arrived. The location is still to be determined: unless someone out there has a good spot in mind (somewhere in the public areas, this is far too last-minute, unofficial and slapdash to have an actual room available), I’ll scope out the common areas on Friday to find a decent place.

If you’re a congoer and already following @norwescon, you’re welcome to show up! If you’re on Twitter but not following @norwescon, follow and show up! If you’re not on Twitter…either sign up and show up, or just show up. It’s not like we can stop you. :)

  • 1st Annual Norwescon Tweetup
  • Saturday, April 11
  • 3 PM
  • Location to be determined

Questions, comments, words of wisdom? Fire ’em at me!

Geek and Other Holidays

I’ve just resurrected an old project, using Wikipedia’s list of unofficial observances to create a calendar file (in .ics format) suitable for download and direct import or subscription in iCal, Outlook, Google Calendar, or (as far as I know) any other reputable calendar program. Here’s the link — drop that into your calendar, and never miss another Pi Day, Yellow Pig’s Day, or Day of the Ninja again (here’s an HTML version if you just want to look at it online)!

We’ve got bikes!

Getting bikes has been one of the things on our “we’d really like to do that someday” list for a long time, and sometime over the past few months, we’d decided that that was going to be my birthday present this year: bikes for me and Prairie. As spring has been getting closer, we’ve been getting more excited about the plan, and so this morning, as a combination of early birthday present and consolation after getting word that I didn’t get a job I’d interviewed for last week, we went up to Target and got ourselves new toys.

Boy on a Bike Girl on a Bike

Prairie, being a girl who likes pink, got a Schwinn Roxie Cruiser, and as I’m not a girl and not overly fond of pink, I got a Schwinn Comfort Gridlock. Yup, both the old standard Schwinn! Obviously, neither of us are cyclists (with the capital “C” and lots of spandex), so we got exactly what we wanted: a couple of decent, sturdy cruise-along-the-Green-River-Trail bikes.

Of course, along with the bikes were helmets, bike pumps, patch kits, and a silly little pink-with-flowers horn for Prairie’s bike, plus a rear carry rack for the car so we could get them home. Not a bad haul, overall.

As soon as we got home, we took them out for a short ride along the trail. While neither of us has had a bike in years (myself around ten or so, since well before I left Anchorage for Seattle; Prairie’s closer to at least a good fifteen years since she’s had one), it’s apparently quite true that you don’t forget how to ride, as both of us were off and riding without a problem. There’s a few minor tweaks to make to ensure that both bikes are adjusted properly for us, but that won’t take much. We’re really looking forward to biking around here over the summer (and if I’m lucky enough to find a job relatively close to our apartment, that could make commuting that much easier).

New toys!

The Norwescon Outfit I Didn’t Make

…because I have been short on time, money, initiative, know-how, or various combinations of all of the above.

What I wanted to do: prove that Starfleet’s more advanced mindset extended to sexual discrimination and choices in clothing. Just because all we’ve seen so far is slacks for men and women and (mini)skirts on women, I’m sure that doesn’t mean that that’s all there is.

(Note: actually, in first season TNG, there were a few men in unbifurcated uniforms, as evidenced by this Wikipedia mention and this slightly confused fan. However, these ‘skant‘ uniforms pretty much disappeared by the second season.)

The USS Utilikilt
The USS Utilikilt
The plan: customize a TOS Starfleet tunic and an Original Utilikilt (or even Workman’s or Survival, but those were even further out of my theoretical budget) with the logo you see to the right.

In order to find a way to work in the Utilikilts logo, I figured the uniform would have to be TOS style, when the insignia within the delta shield changed depending on the ship the crewmember was assigned to and before the standardization on the Enterprise’s ‘starburst’ central insignia. I wanted to use this design to create a custom patch in color (with the traditional gold background) for the tunic, plus one in black and white to go on the rear pocket of the Utilikilt.

Unfortunately, a number of things got in the way of completing (or even starting on) this project, from simply not having the money to drop on the tunic, a new Utilikilt, or having the custom patches made (and this was before I got laid off), to the Utilikilts people being swamped with work and unable to work on a custom kilt request at that time.

Still, this is what I wanted to do for this year’s Norwescon…and, to be honest, I still think it’d be fun to do it at some point in the future. I don’t know (and, to be honest, kind of doubt) if I’ll ever get around to it, but it’s fun to have it rattling around in my head.

International Talk Like William Shatner Day

In honor of William Shatner’s 78th birthday tomorrow today, 3/22/09, I am declaring March 22nd to be “International Talk Like William Shatner Day!” Hey, we have “International Talk Like a Pirate Day”, and Shatner inspired a helluva lot more kids to be like Captain James T. Kirk than any who wanted to be some smelly, toothless, “arrr”-spouting frickin’ pirate.

Now, since talking like our hero is a bit more challenging than walking around going, “Arrr”, I’ve included the following video tutorial for your edification, filmed by producer Bill Biggar, on a loooong drive to the airport on L.A.’s fabulous 405 freeway. Enjoy, and remember, it’s pronounced “sabotaaj”, not, “sabotahj”.

The P-I is dead. Long live the P-I!

The writing’s been on the wall for some time now, but it’s just been made official: tomorrow’s print run of the Seattle P-I will be its last. I’m going to want to pick up a copy somewhere.

For me, first notification of the official announcement came via @moniguzman on Twitter: “Publisher Roger Oglesby just announced in the P-I newsroom: Tomorrow will be our last print edition, but seattlepi.com will live on.”

A “breaking news” banner went up on the P-I’s website about the same time, but now there’s an official story.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will roll off the presses for the last time Tuesday, ending a 146-year run.

The Hearst Corp. announced Monday that it would stop publishing the newspaper, Seattle’s oldest business, and cease delivery to more than 117,600 weekday readers.

The company, however, said it will maintain seattlepi.com, making it the nation’s largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.

“Tonight we’ll be putting the paper to bed for the last time,” Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby told a silent newsroom Monday morning. “But the bloodline will live on.”

In a news release, Hearst CEO Frank Bennack Jr. said, “Our goal now is to turn seattlepi.com into the leading news and information portal in the region.”

I’m sad to see the P-I go — of the two local papers, I always liked the feel of the P-I better than the Seattle Times. It’s a little hard for me to quantify just why (though I’m sure those who follow the media more closely than I would be able to make some educated guesses), they just more often seemed to be my paper of choice.

Best wishes to all at the P-I who are being affected by this, and best of luck to the P-I’s online-only incarnation.

Kent at High Flood Risk

I’m glad we’re not on the ground floor of our apartment building — as we live here in the Kent Valley, within about a five-minute walk of the banks of the Green River, we’re smack-dab in the middle of the area of South King County at high risk for flooding.

Four South King County cities face their most serious flooding risk in 40 years next fall and winter because of January damage to a flood-control dam on the Green River, authorities have warned.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which built and maintains the Howard Hanson Dam, says it doesn’t know what caused a 10-foot-wide, 6-foot-deep depression in an abutment to the rock and earthen dam.

As a safety precaution, the Corps will store less water behind the dam until engineers can figure out what caused the problem in the reservoir wall adjoining the spillway — and how to fix it.

In the meantime, the Corps will be forced to release into the lower Green River essentially all rainwater from storms, and risk overwhelming the levees that protect low-lying parts of Auburn, Kent, Renton and Tukwila, the federal agency has warned.

“We need to prepare for a long-term possibility that over the next few flood seasons we may experience anywhere from significant to catastrophic flooding, depending on the event,” said Dana Hinman, a Auburn city spokeswoman.

[…]

A larger number of homes and businesses could be hurt in flood-prone parts of Kent, where about 50,000 people work and 22,000 people live, said Mayor Suzette Cooke. She said the damaged abutment “clearly raises our level of concern” about levees downstream that haven’t been certified as meeting federal standards.

If the substandard Horseshoe Bend Levee were to fail, Cooke said, the Green River Valley could be flooded all the way to Interstate 405 in Renton, possibly severing Highway 167 and two main rail lines.

That Horseshoe Bend Levee is just over two miles upstream of where we live. While the levees closest to us were just worked on all last summer and should be in good shape, if the Horseshoe were to go, I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up in the evacuation area. Of course, I don’t know for sure, but it might not be a bad idea to have at least a nominal plan for what to do if floodwaters start heading our way.

If I’m at home and have a chance to grab anything, I think my priorities (after the real necessities, like a couple days of clothes, etc.) are going to be grabbing my camera (no big surprise there, huh?) and popping open my computer to pull out the hard drives, double-bag them in gallon-size Ziplocs, and drop ’em in whatever bag I’m carrying. The hardware can be replaced (and would hopefully be covered by insurance), but the data is what’s really important. Hooray for quick-release SATA drives!