K-Squared Ramblings

Trolled

Weird. Figured if I got any trolls today, they’d be on the No on 8 post, not a 3-year-old post about visiting a volcano. #

Same-Sex Marriage

Gay and lesbian couples in California have been getting married for months now. In Massachusetts, for several years. In that time, thousands of straight couples have continued to get married, and neither state has been mass-annulling straight marriages. So “traditional marriage” clearly isn’t endangered by same-sex marriage, and banning the latter isn’t going to “restore” the former.

If California’s Proposition 8 does not pass, no marriages will be ended. If it does pass, all those same-sex marriages will be wiped out. If you’re really serious about “protecting marriage,” the clear choice is to vote against the proposition.

Some other things to consider:

This is not about “activist judges.” A bunch of judges didn’t say, “Hey, let’s make it legal for same-sex couples to get married!” They heard a case, looked at the law, and determined that the only thing preventing gay marriage was a law that conflicted with a higher law: the state constitution. That’s what judges are supposed to do. At least Prop. 8 is going through proper channels by amending the constitution instead of just trying to pass another unconstitutional law. Of course, I think it’s a bad idea to inject discrimination into the state constitution.

(While we’re at it, the whole concept of “activist judges” is a smokescreen. It basically means “judges who strike down laws that I would rather stayed in place.” I imagine that most people railing against this decision would be perfectly happy if a group of judges overturned Roe vs. Wade.)

As for children: Let’s not forget that there are plenty of straight couples who can’t have children either, whether for age or medical reasons. Should they not be allowed to marry? How about straight couples who choose not to have children? Should they not be allowed to marry?

And teaching marriage in schools? Shouldn’t a child know something about marriage by the time they start school? Neither of us remembers being “taught” about marriage when we were children, it was something learned through observing and asking parents. And we both went to public school. In different districts. Katie spoke to a fifth-grade teacher recently who remarked that the only time she even talked about marriage in class was when students asked about it, and then district policy prevented her from answering most of their questions. I can only assume that the objection is that children might find out that same-sex marriage exists.

Oh, and that “classroom trip” mentioned in the latest pro-8 ad? It was their teacher’s wedding, it was a creative arts charter school, it was organized by the students’ parents (note the headline that they surprised the teacher), and it was optional. The school approved the trip because, whatever happened, it was a notable event from a civil rights perspective.

To anyone who thinks that civil unions or domestic partnerships should be enough: would you be satisfied with the state saying you could only have something that’s almost, but not quite a marriage?

NBC 3D

Caught a re-release of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D.

• Movie: Good.
• 3D: Good.
• Digital Projection: Not so good. Pixels were visible in high-contrast or fast-moving scenes. #

Ragged Clouds at Sunrise

Ragged Clouds at Sunrise, originally uploaded by Kelson.

View from our back yard this morning. I had to tweak the colors a bit to approximate what it looked like to the naked eye. It’s still not quite right — there was a bit more pink in it, and maybe a bit less purple.

Sometimes it’s worth getting up at this hour.

Holiday Seasons: Then and Now

When I was a kid, I remember the last few months of the year broke down like this:

• Back to School in early-to-mid September
• Halloween for the second half of October
• Thanksgiving for the second half of November
• Christmas in December
• New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day

These days it seems more like this:

• Back to school in August (July, really — as soon as the Independence Day merchandise goes on clearance.)
• Some weird mix of Oktoberfest, Halloween, and Thanksgiving as “Autumn” or “Harvest” or some such thing covering all of September and October, resolving into Halloween specifically for the last week.
• Christmas from November through December, with a short break for Thanksgiving
• New Year’s

Everything’s crept earlier.  There aren’t any breaks between seasons.  And Christmas has swallowed up Thanksgiving as if it were merely an appetizer for the main meal.

Seriously… can’t we let Halloween be Halloween? And let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving? And let Christmas be something special instead of taking up 1/6 of the year?

When Christmas starts showing up before Thanksgiving — never mind before Halloween! — I always find myself thinking of the story about the little girl who wished it would be Christmas Every Day, and found out why that wasn’t so appealing after all.

Line Items for 2008-10-29: Random

• If only the super high-tech jet fighters had identified, clarified & classified, they’d have seen the attack for what it really was. #
• Good grief. “Traditional marriage” didn’t go away when gays were let into the club. It doesn’t need a discriminatory law to “restore” it. #
• South coast has xmas decorations up ALREADY. Halloween doesn’t exist, I guess. Or thanksgiving. #

Hey, Kids! Sugar!

Spotted this in mid-August, during the height of Back to School sales. It’s a school bus-shaped display with shelves on the sides and back. Katie’s fairly certain that the other shelves weren’t all Rice Krispies treats — they were Pop Tarts and the like.

So, yeah, send your kids to school with a ton of these. Their teachers will just love it.

<voice=”cranky old man”>Of course, back in my day, we didn’t have those pre-made Rice Krispies Treats. We had to buy the cereal and marshmallows and make them ourselves. (And frankly, without all the extra preservatives, it was probably more healthy. Or less unhealthy, in any event.)</voice>

(Yeah, still catching up on photo posts.)

Computer Trouble, Dollhouse, Mist & Invincibility

• Laptop actually booted this morning. Prob. just overheated. Will put RAM expansion back in and run some tests tonight. #
• Got up early. Saw mist blanketing fields at old marine base. Deeper into Irvine, moved into dense fog. #
• Reading: Joss Whedon on Dollhouse status. #
• Laptop OK so far. Still testing. *crosses fingers* #
• Still fighting with computers. Oh, and yesterday I reviewed Soon I Will Be Invincible #

How do you get them to talk?

Crash

Argh. Laptop crashed. And TechTool Pro runs with the color palette messed to the point that it’s almost unreadable. Whee. #

Eclipse Ring

Eclipse Ring, originally uploaded by Kelson.

I found this while looking through a box of old photos, in an envelope marked Lunar Eclipse and developed in June 1994. Most likely the May 25, 1994 eclipse.

I’m not sure, but I think the bright splotch near the bottom is actually the moon, and the clear image of the moon up near the top is a reflection inside the camera. I have no idea whether the ring is an atmospheric phenomenon that got picked up on the film, or just lens flare.

Anyway, scanned because I thought it looked interesting.

Changelings and Vampires and Smurfs. Oh, My!

• Wow… Kenneth Turan really liked Changeling. Yay JMS! #
• Trying out LoudTwitter to send daily digests to LJ. (Thanks, andrea_wot!) #
• Announcement over phone system: “There are cupcakes in the lunch room.” 2 seconds later, loud footsteps running down the hall. #
• Smurfs are 50 years old? WTF! I thought they were creations of the 80s! #
• Public Service Announcement: it’s “for all INTENTS AND purposes,” not “for all INTENSIVE purposes.” “intensive” doesn’t even make any sense. #
• Saw “Let the Right One In.” Less horror, more twisted revenge fantasy/coming of age movie. With vampires. #
• Also: the Diedrich Coffee across from UCI is now a Peet’s #

Twittering

I’ve been using Twitter for a couple of weeks as an additional update channel and sort of an adjunct to my blog, Speed Force (you can follow it at SpeedForceOrg), and I’ve actually realized that yes, there is a point to it. It’s good for the random thought that only takes a sentence or two, but seems like it doesn’t quite warrant a full blog post.

So I’ve added a second account for general stuff, (i.e. not just comics & Flash) as an experiment, at KelsonV, and I’m tying it to this blog using Alex King’s Twitter Tools. Let’s see how this works out…

Update: Okay, so I’ve got K2R announcing posts to Twitter. I’ve got Twitter feeding to Facebook using the Twitter app on Facebook. And I’m building daily digests on K2R using Twitter Tools (which is supposed to handle loops) and to LiveJournal using LoudTwitter (thanks, andrea_wot).

I looked at ping.fm per rialtus’s suggestion, but from what little I can see without signing up, it only does instant updates, and it looks like it’s push only — i.e., I’d post to ping.fm and it would go out to Twitter, LJ, Myspace, Facebook, etc., but I’d still need something else to pull blog headlines.

So, if I’ve got all this set up right:

Twitter → Facebook
Twitter → LJ Daily Digest
Twitter → K2R Daily Digest (except for stuff that came from K2R)
K2R Headlines → Twitter
K2R Headlines → Twitter → Facebook
K2R Headlines → Twitter → LJ Daily Digest

Lightning Symphony

I was looking up the proper term for a plasma lamp and stumbled upon the Wikipedia entry for the Zeusaphone.

It’s a Tesla Coil that’s set up to modulate its discharges so that they produce specific notes. In other words, it’s a Tesla Coil that plays music using lightning!

Seriously… how can you turn down a description like that?

It’s also been called a “thoremin,” — another lightning-god-based pun, this one on the theramin,

The company that makes them has a couple of video clips on their website, but sadly they’re a little underwhelming on a 200-pixel window with computer speakers. I imagine they’d be seriously impressive in person.

Photo by Dracoswinsauer. Used per Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

The New Browser Switch Campaigns

Rather than looking at campaigns for specific browsers, I’m looking at a class of campaigns that are either promoting a group of browsers, or advocating against the current dominant player: Internet Explorer.

Browse Happy — the classic.

• Goal: Move users away from Internet Explorer.
• Target Audience: IE users.
• Promotes: Firefox.  Also Safari, Opera, and… um… Mozilla.  Hmm, someone needs to update that.
• Pitch: IE is dangerous.
• Method: Banners

Alternative Browser Alliance

• Goal: Keep multiple standards-compliant browsers viable.
• Target Audience: All users
• Promotes: Opera, Firefox, Safari.  Also Flock, SeaMonkey, K-Meleon, Camino,etc.
• Pitch: Competition is good for everyone.  See what’s out there.
• Method: Banners

End 6!

• Goal: Move people off of IE6
• Target Audience: IE6 users
• Promotes: Firefox, Opera, Safari, Flock, IE7
• Pitch: IE6 is outdated, buggy, and unsafe.  Use something modern instead.
• Method: Overlay for IE6 visitors

Save the Developers

• Goal: Move people off of IE6
• Target Audience: IE6 users
• Promotes: IE7, Firefox, Safari, Opera
• Pitch: Coding for IE6 is a pain.  Stop putting us through that.
• Method: Animated drop-down at top of page for IE6 visitors

(Yeah, I’m catching up on old draft posts.)