Monthly Archives: August 2009

Magenta Sunset

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Kelson

Watched the sun set, its disc tinged almost magenta by the smoke plume from the Morris fire near Azusa stretching along the horizon.

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Tweet Cleanup in Progress

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Kelson

Following through on my thoughts on blogging with Twitter, I’ve started going through and cleaning up the imported Twitter digests made over the past 10 months. Some of the things I’m doing:

  • Rewriting titles to be more meaningful than “Line Items for YYYY-MM-DD”
  • Rewriting post slugs for the same reason. (WordPress will remember the old URL and redirect it, so it won’t break incoming links.)
  • Adding tags and categories
  • Reformatting single-item lists as very short posts.
  • Reformatting links and expanding shortened URLs (which I’ve been doing for a while now).
  • Pulling the “Powered by Twitter Tools” link from the shortest posts, generally those with only one or two items, so that it doesn’t end up dominating the related-posts data.
  • Removing redundant items. No need to keep, for instance, a link to an article when it’s followed by a post with detailed commentary on the same article. Or a link to a phone photo that’s followed by a post embedding the same photo, or one of the same subject taken with a better camera.
  • Removing really trivial items. Though I’m not always sure where to draw the line.
  • Fixing, replacing, or just dropping dead links.
  • Update: Uploading photos to show them inline instead of linked. Especially when the original link is dead.

I’ll be updating a few posts at a time for the next week or so, but it should be manageable once I’m caught up.

Meanwhile, I’ve separated my LiveJournal from my Twitter account. There’s no sense in maintaining two archives of ephemera, so I’ve decluttered my LJ: Any “Line Items” that didn’t have comments are gone, and the few that did now have proper titles, tags, userpics, etc.

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Raptors and Snow Leopard

Posted on August 26, 2009 by Kelson

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Adobe Vulnerabilities Everywhere

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Kelson

Uh-oh: 80% of web users running unpatched versions of Flash/Acrobat. These are being exploited, so check your system! #

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Bringing Back the 80s: Super Powers 25th

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Kelson

In 1984, Kenner launched a line of DC super-hero action figures under the name Super Powers. The toys were tied to the Super Friends cartoon, and each had an action: If you squeezed Superman’s legs, he would throw a punch. If you squeezed the Flash’s arms, he would run. Each figure also came with a 16-page minicomic starring the character and others from the toy line.

Today, Crisis on Earth-Blog unites fourteen sites in celebrating this landmark toy line.

Enjoy!

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Hero, Twidroid, Headlines & Spam

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Kelson

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Immortal 3G

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Kelson
  • Hah! “the only advantage of living forever is having the time to read all of TV Tropes.” #
  • T-Mobile’s really expanding 3G lately. We’ve had it for a while, but can’t get a good signal at home. I think the building is a Faraday cage. #

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Comic-Con 2009 Complete Index

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Kelson

Here’s a quick index to all of our posts about last month’s Comic-Con International in San Diego: here, at Speed Force, and on Flickr.

Around the Con

We saved most of our long-form writing for panel and costume write-ups (see below), but I made extensive use of Twitter during the convention. These are auto-generated digests of each day’s Twitter activity, presenting a view of the convention as I experienced it.

In Costume

On Friday we attended in costume as Yomiko Readman from Read or Die and Jay Garrick, the original Flash from the Golden Age (1940s). On Saturday Katie attended as Kate Austen from Lost.

Panels

Reflections

That covers all the major posts we’ve written from the start of the convention onward. There are a few minor bits, like the initial round-up that’s mostly duplicated here, or the “We’re here!” post from when we arrived in San Diego, and various posts about the build-up to the con. You can find these by looking further back in the Comic-Con 2009 category here and in posts tagged CCI 2009 at Speed Force.

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Lost Food: Panda Panda

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Kelson

Panda Express as it stands today. (Literally, today, 20 minutes before posting this.)

When I lived in Lake Forest during the year 2000, I used to frequent a place called Panda Panda. It was your basic steam table Chinese restaurant, but it was good. I remember the occasional evening on which I’d think, “Do I go to the store, buy ingredients, come home, then spend time cooking just for one person, or do I go out and grab some fast-ish food?” Panda Panda was a frequent winner of these decisions.

It was located at the corner of El Toro and Raymond, near the library. Panda Panda shared a building with a Quizno’s sandwich place and was one driveway away from a Wendy’s.

I don’t know if they were a small chain or a solo restaurant, but they were eventually bought out or otherwise assimilated by Panda Express, which I’ve never particularly liked. (Though Panda Inn, a table-service restaurant owned by the same company, has been consistently good.) Naturally they homogenized the menu as well.

That was the end of that.

A few years later, as part of the big project to renovate the area, both buildings were bulldozed to make way for a new strip mall segment. Panda Express got the prime spot in the new building, but all traces of Panda Panda are lost.

For the record: I’m currently sitting in a Wahoo’s taco place roughly where the driveway used to be.

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Rethinking the Electric Car

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Kelson

We’ve started watching the first season of Leverage on Netflix instant. Last night we watched the second episode. At one point the “good guy” character explains that yes, he really did give away most of the money he got from the last job, after buying a couple of things. Like a new car. Electric. Just being responsible. He then gets into his car, the camera pulls away, and you see that it’s a Tesla Roadster — an all-electric, high performance (and very expensive at $128,000+) sportscar.

I made some remark about how the Tesla was intended to make people rethink the electric car.

Katie’s response: “Every time a Prius gets pulled over for speeding, people rethink the electric car.”

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