Success downloading new Opera! Last night I kept getting mirrors sending .rpm as RealAudio, so it tried to play the installer #

Fires

• Mt Wilson still intact for now! Status, Towercam. #
• Image from Mt. Wilson Observatory Towercam at 12:06 pm. Observatory website still up, but towercam very slow. #
• Mt. Wilson Towercam showing lots of smoke: 12:21 was the last image I could get. #
• Definitely cooler today, but humidity & smoke since the wind changed make it feel worse outside. #
• Mt. Wilson good news: smoke on towercam was from backfires. Bad: website offline, cam not updating. Status on backup server. #
• RT @ThisIsTrue: Awesome photo! Los Angeles Fires Seen From Space via @ecolady #nasa #jpl #stationfire #

From Showcase #13, it’s “Around the World in 80 Minutes,” a tale of the Flash. (Mostly he runs around the world, helps people out, and gets kissed by women. Aye, it be good to be a superhero.)

(Cover via GCD. This story appears in Showcase Presents: The Flash vol.1 and The Flash Archives vol.1.)

This day o’ pirate speak is brought to ye by the Text Filter Suite of Dougal Campbell.

I might be recommendin’ ye set course for the sea shanty, Voyage of the Fyrefawkes, or embark upon the Tall Ships of San Diego. Or if ye wish, ye might search yerself fer more pirate tales.

Ye might be findin one o’ these blasts from the past to yer likin’:

• Pirate Ships o’ San Diego
• Voyage o’ th’FyreFawkes
• Pumpkin Arrt
• Pirates Dinner Adventure
• Parrrty Weapon

Thar be more pirate postings if ye wants them.

Piratify yer blog!

• The Star of India, billed as “the world’s oldest active ship”
• The HMS Surprise, a replica of an 18th century British ship.
• The Berkeley, an 1898 steam ferry
• The Medea, a 1904 yacht
• A B-39 Soviet submarine.

The big attractions, of course, were the Star of India and the HMS Surprise. Naturally, the Star of India was closed when we got there.

The Star of India seen from the Surprise

The Surprise was fun, though. It turns out it was built in the 1970s as a replica of an 18th century British Royal Navy vessel, the HMS Rose. It was sold to 20th Century Fox in 2001 and used to film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. After filming was complete, the museum bought the ship and renamed it the HMS Surprise in honor of the fictional vessel.

Ahoy, there, cap’n! Arr, everything be shiny!

An avid sailor (well, in Puzzle Pirates, anyway), barred from the rigging.

Underneath, the Surprise was housing an exhibit on “Pirates of the Pacific.” There were display cases of maps, weapons, plastic figures that looked like they could have been lifted from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride (and for all I know, they were, during the refit), samples of pirates’ ledgers, the difference between a buccaneer and a privateer, etc.

Below decks on the Surprise

Somehow I managed not to get any full pictures of the Surprise. Here’s a view of the figurehead:

The main deck of the Berkeley was essentially turned into museum space. It housed sea charts from the 1600s to the present day, model ships, instruments used for mapping the sea floor, and so on. But the engine rooms were left uncluttered, with just a few gates to keep visitors in the main areas.

Warning lights outside the boiler room on the Berkeley

It was stuffy inside, and while San Diego escaped the worst of the heat this weekend, it was still very uncomfortable. I went below decks to look at the engine room, but didn’t stay very long.

The Medea didn’t have much visible—just the outside and a couple of cabins.

We passed on the submarine entirely, with the heat, cramped quarters onboard, my full backpack, and Katie’s full pirate costume.

Update: I’ve posted more photos of this side-trip.

After the Flash panel, I went back to my back issue hunt. Found quite a few in the $150-500 range. Unfortunately I’m looking in the $50-100 range. Dealers just haven’t brought their low-grade Golden Age books, so it looks like it’ll be back to eBay.

Quick Draw was, as promised, lots of fun. I missed the first 20 minutes or so (I’d been planning to go to the One Year Later panel, but changed my mind at the last minute—no regrets there!), but Katie caught the whole thing. Sergio Aragonés, Scott Shaw!, and Kyle Baker were directed by Mark Evanier to draw ever crazier things, sometimes competing to convey a “secret word” in a Pictionary-style game.

The Narnia/Pirates panel, expected to be the highlight of the day, turned out to be a big disappointment. Last year, the Narnia presentation was fascinating, despite the delay from the satellite link-up, because things were completely new, and because the people involved knew what fans were interested in seeing. This time they basically sent the marketing guy out to talk about the special edition DVD.

As for Pirates of the Caribbean… the talk by John Knoll was a fascinating insight into the technology that they used to animate Davy Jones, but the first half was out of place at a Comic-Con. It would have done much better with a highly technical audience—maybe at a Cal Tech Seminar Day or something. Once he started showing the before-and-after shots, and the test footage, the audience warmed up to him. And some of the joke footage, like the giant Krispy Kreme donut rolling out into the surf, or Elizabeth Swann cutting a swath through the Dutchman’s crew with a pair of lightsabers, was great.

After that fiasco, we decided to clear out instead of staying for the Spider-Man panel. Neither of us had anything we were looking at for the rest of the afternoon, so we decided to go out to see the Star of India (the ship, not the restaurant) and the other ships out by the bay. Among other things, Katie wanted to get some pictures while still in her pirate costume. Unfortunately it took us so long to get around the insanely long line for Spider-Man—which was a big surprise, since we’d just walked into the hall earlier—that we missed our trolley. Literally, we were up to the gate on the opposite side of the tracks when it pulled away. We ended up postponing our dinner reservations to make sure we had enough time.

As it turned out, the Star of India itself was closed, but the HMS Surprise (used for filming Master and Commander) was open, along with the HMS Berkeley, a ferry, and a pleasure boat called the Medea. The Berkeley had mostly been turned into the Maritime Museum, but the engine rooms were open for view. We skipped the Soviet submarine. Bulky costumes and full backpacks don’t go well in confined spaces.

We had enough time to drop stuff off at our hotel room and lie down for a few minutes, then went back to the Gaslamp district and dinner at Dussini, a Mediterranean place that replaced the old Spaghetti Factory. Once again, a great restaurant. We also saw a great demonstration of why you should make reservations: The walk-in couple in front of us had a 45-minute wait. We were shown to our table immediately.

But who comes up with these names? I mean, “Party Weapon?” By actually calling it a weapon, you’re suggesting it’s something I don’t want at a kid’s party. Well, unless I’m raising Klingons or something.

Random Addendum

Completely unrelated: while typing this, the “w” key on my keyboard got stuck. Or rather, my computer was somehow convinced that it was stuck, because it kept filling in Ws even after I unplugged the keyboard. After unplugging it and plugging it back in a couple of times, I moved my hand away from the connector and knocked over the top 3 or 4 jewel cases in a stack of CDs on my desk. They landed on the keyboard. After I put them back, the problem was fixed.

The lit picture is pretty dark, but it had to be or the “Arrr!” on the wall wouldn’t show up.

Suggestions for next year, or even out-of-season carvings for this year, are being taken……

Arrr, I be thinkin’ about it!

There were four in the box; the last is on my desk at work scaring away dust bunnies. The company that makes them, Accoutrements, also has an Anne Bonny action figure, a sort of Dilbert-Playmobil collectible playset, and a cat-headed Buddha, among boatloads of other cool stuff. They don’t sell to the public (boo) but Sterling will ship (yay!).

Yarrrrr.