![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A second week of Relative posts
Feb. 11th, 2012 05:13 pm
I've been continuing my blogging for Nablopomo over at Crazy Eddie's Motie News this past week. The entries that conform to the "Relative" theme, in terms of comparison, finding the connection between two unrelated things, or just spouting my opinion, are:
A sustainable Super Bowl?
Newt Gingrich and the Republican National Committee demagoguing Agenda 21
A moment of science
Two Super Bowl ads about Michigan
Worth 1000 words on Santorum
Two Deep Forest fan videos
Halfway though winter, it finally looks like it
Thoughts on Star Wars: The Old Republic 4
Feb. 10th, 2012 07:38 pmHere's another piece of background music for Alderaan in addition to the one I posted yesterday, This one has the benefit of showing the lovely scenery in addition to playing the music. And to think this is the planet Moff Tarkin destroyed as a demonstration of the Death Star's power. Well, he certainly got what was coming to him!
Tags:
Thoughts on Star Wars: The Old Republic 3
Feb. 9th, 2012 09:36 pmIn my previous entry, I mentioned how really beautiful Alderaan is in ST:TOR and how much my wife and I enjoy playing there. It helps that the music is gorgeous, too. Here's an embed of the theme for the planet, which is called Alderaan, the Throne.
Thoughts on Star Wars: The Old Republic 2
Feb. 5th, 2012 11:16 pmAs I mentioned in the first installment of this series.
And now, a video of Alderaan's scenery.
My wife...is a more avid gamer than I am, but I'm the Star Wars fan. I don't think she's seen more than half the films and none of them all the way through, so it's really interesting watching her reaction to the planets we've visited. She really likes Alderaan, but she was shocked to find out that it gets blown up in the far future. It only happens in first hour of the first movie filmed. To fix that, we'll be watching all the films in the order of the events. In fact, we might be seeing the 3D versions of the films as they come out.We just finished playing together on Alderaan, at least for now, and it really is a beautiful (virtual, fictional) world, especially in contrast to Tatooine, which is a real pit. My wife reiterated how pissed it makes her that it gets destroyed. I have to agree. In fact, I'm beginning to think that people who have never known any Star Wars other than the full Episodes I-VI and who have played either Knights of the Old Republic or Star Wars: The Old Republic will find the destruction of Alderaan even more traumatic than the people who saw it happen for the first time between 1977 and 1998. Back then, there was no world to know. Now, there are parts of two movies and two games set there. When I saw the Death Star blow up the planet back in 1977, I thought, "Grand Moff Tarkin is such an evil asshole," but I didn't grieve along with Leia. Now, when I see that happen in three years in the 3D edition of A New Hope, I might just cry. Imagine the reaction of someone who is seeing it for the first time and has watched all the prequels.
And now, a video of Alderaan's scenery.
Nablopomo for February: Relative
Feb. 4th, 2012 06:35 pmIt's that time again.
So what is the NaBloPoMo theme of the month?That's not really what I had in mind for this blog. If I were using my LiveJournal (not a good idea, as the service is subject to DDoS attacks, which would prevent me from fulfilling my pledge to post every day) or my Dreamwidth (I really don't want to post the name of that blog on a feminist site; I also don't want to rename it), I could do this, as both are personal blogs. Other than talking about what my relatives have done (or not done) in terms of sustainability, broadly interpreted, I think it would be off-topic.RELATIVE
Families form in hundreds of different ways -- from the brothers and sisters you are born with to the people who become fictive kin as you go through life, our relationships define us and support us. Use the month to not only explore your connections to the obvious relatives -- your aunts, cousins, or grandparents -- but your ancestors, the people who are no longer part of your family, and the ones that you wish were related to you.
...
So tell us about your siblings. If you can name at least five things about them, it means you have at least five blog posts inside of you. And if you can do five posts, you can certainly expand that and do an extra 25 or so.
However, these Nablopomo themes always have approved alternative interpretations.
This is also a month to look for connections between two unrelated concepts or objects. It's a month to get subjective, to state opinions, to examine your personal truth.I do both all the time. I find two things that on the surface appear to be unrelated, but show that they really are. I also have been stating opinions all along. Looks like this topic is just fine for this blog.
Above originally posted at Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
The other Relative posts this week include:
Groundhog Day 2012 and the climate
Driving update for February 2012
Relative: Yosemite video from Vimeo
More next week.
It's been a full month since I last summarized my campaign posts over at Crazy Eddie's Motie News. While the month isn't over yet, it's close enough. In this installment, I cover both major parties' candidates.
Last night was the beginning of the primary/caucus season for 2012
More politicians visit NAIAS plus a cameo by Bill Ford, Jr.
When Mitt Romney came to town, KB Toys closed
The New York Times on Bain Capital and KB Toys
When Mitt Romney came to town, he exposed the GOP's disrespect for its own ideas
Tom Tomorrow thinks Romney is a robot, too
Newt Gingrich throws core GOP interest group under bus while campaigning as a populist
Detroit, Michigan, and the auto industry in the State of the Union
Gingrich shoots for the Moon while campaigning in Florida
Obama at University of Michigan
President Obama speaks at the University of Michigan
And that's it for January, so far.
Happy Year of the Dragon!
Jan. 23rd, 2012 12:30 am
Mandarin: Gong Xi Fa Cai/Xin Nian Kuai Le
Cantonese: Kung Hei Fat Choi
Hokkien (Fujian/Taiwanese): Kiong Hee Huat Tsai/Sin Ni khòai lok
Source
Simplified Chinese: 恭喜发财 新年快乐
Traditional Chinese: 恭喜發財 新年快樂
Source
Above originally posted in my LiveJournal two years ago. Currently crossposted at Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
I posted the following to fandom_lounge on JournalFen. The response there is also DO NOT WANT!
Fast Company publishes an article titled The Return of LiveJournal. This should be good news. It isn't.
According to LiveJournal general manager Anjelika Petrochenko, LiveJournal's planning a major 2012 push based around attracting new users to community sites. Petrochenko told Fast Company that the blogging service was planning between 10-50 new community sites by the end of 2012. These new community sites will offer organizers and admins highly detailed metrics and statistics on user activity that appear to be more detailed than Facebook. Petrochenko also stressed that LiveJournal accounts do not have to be tied to a real name/identity and offered greater anonymity than other social networks. However, LiveJournal has been involved in numerous censorship controversies in the past.
Oh No They Didn't will be the first community site to participate in LiveJournal's initiative. The company designed custom widgets to highlight frequent commenters, instituted new metric tracking and analysis systems, and created a new, community-driven interface seemingly designed to deemphasize blog content. The next LiveJournal-hosted site to get a makeover will be the popular AnythingDisney fan site. LiveJournal is staking their continued American growth on the community model; Oh No They Didn't's Brenden Delzer was hired as an on-staff community editor by LiveJournal several months ago.
The formatting of Oh No They Didn't--which includes advertising and a commenting-heavy interface--is close to what LiveJournal has planned for other communities.
...
LiveJournal recently unveiled a complete redesign that overhauled the service's comments system, emphasized social networking, and set the stage for the upcoming communities blitz. Reaction from longtime users has been overwhelmingly negative--LiveJournal patrons slammed the redesign on the service's official blog.
LiveJournal's leadership has made it clear that their future American business strategy lies in generating new traffic rather than catering to the service's current small-but-loyal membership. The challenge for Petrochenko and other executives at LiveJournal will be redefining the brand's identity in a crowded media marketplace.
The entire article was posted over at ontd_political here. The response has been
Tags:
Thoughts on Star Wars: The Old Republic 1
Jan. 21st, 2012 07:01 amMy wife and I have a blast playing it together. She is a more avid gamer than I am, but I'm the Star Wars fan. I don't think she's seen more than half the films and none of them all the way through, so it's really interesting watching her reaction to the planets we've visited. She really likes Alderaan, but she was shocked to find out that it gets blown up in the far future. It only happens in first hour of the first movie filmed. To fix that, we'll be watching all the films in the order of the events. In fact, we might be seeing the 3D versions of the films as they come out.
As for the money involved, every penny shows up in the dialog, voice acting, music, and plot, to say nothing of the programming and world building. It makes this expensive game worth it.
Watch for more thoughts on the game in future entries. I'll be putting spoilers behind a cut.
As for the money involved, every penny shows up in the dialog, voice acting, music, and plot, to say nothing of the programming and world building. It makes this expensive game worth it.
Watch for more thoughts on the game in future entries. I'll be putting spoilers behind a cut.
The first full moon of 2012 will be tonight, the first of 13 full moons this year. Each of these moons has a name (and one of them has two names), as Space.com (via MSNBC) explains.*
How 2012's full moons got their strange names
Origins credited to Native Americans and early European settlers
By Joe Rao
updated 1/7/2012 3:07:59 PM ET
The start of 2012 brings with it a new year of skywatching, and lunar enthusiasts are gearing up for a stunning lineup of full moons. But, where does the tradition of full moon names come from?Tonight's full moon is the Full Wolf Moon which will reach maximum on January 9th (technically tomorrow) at 2:30 a.m. EST. The association of wolf with a full moon has cross-cultural connotations, particularly with superstitions about what else happens involving wolves, people, and full moons. Everyone, enjoy the light show and sing along with Warren Zevon. A-hoo!
Full moon names date back to Native Americans of a few hundred years ago, of what is now the northern and eastern United States. To keep track of the changing seasons, these tribes gave distinctive names to each recurring full moon. Their names were applied to the entire month in which each occurred.
There were some variations in the moon names, but in general, the same ones were used throughout the Algonquin tribes from New England, continuing west to Lake Superior.
European settlers followed their own customs and created some of their own names. Here is a list of all of the full moon names, as well as the dates and times for 2012: (Unless otherwise noted, all times are given in Eastern Standard Time.)
Now that the show is over, surf over to Crazy Eddie's Motie News for the rest of the full moon names, along with important astronomical events associated with some of them.
*This article is among those I excerpted for last night's Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (100 Year Starship edition) on Daily Kos. The headline article of that diary entry is one that also deserves a "Beginnings" entry of its own, especially given the science fiction slant of this blog. Like Anonymous, expect it.
A week of beginnings posts
Jan. 7th, 2012 03:21 pmFrom Nablopomo on BlogHer.
So what is the NaBloPoMo theme of the month?I have no problem popping off a post a day, as blogging about sustainability and politics in Detroit means never running out of material, so I've signed up again. I'm one of only two politics bloggers there, and the other one has already missed the goal of posting every day. Is this it? skipped the 3rd, 4th, and 6th. Yay, me.BEGINNINGS
January 1st is a blank slate, and you can make the year anything you want it to be? Leave your job and embark on a new career. Open that blank document and start that novel you always wanted to write. Join that online dating site, signup for a new class, or close your eyes and point to a place on a globe to plan your next vacation.
Beginnings can be scary, but as the adage by Lao-tzu goes, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." You can take a single step, right? And after that, it's just putting foot before foot, taking your new journey slowly and letting it unfold at its own pace. Along the way, blog about your experience, not only so readers can follow along, but so that you have a record of how far you've come any time you feel yourself falter.
...
So what are you beginning this year? If you can name at least five things, it means you have at least five blog posts inside of you. And if you can do five posts, you can certainly expand that and do an extra 25 or so.
On that note, here are the posts with the beginnings tag from this week.
Nablopomo for January 2012: Beginnings
This one has two versions of Chicago's "Beginnings" one from Chicago and Earth, Wind & Fire, and the other from the 27th Lancers Drum and Bugle Corps.
Occupy the Rose Parade, plus an astronaut on gardening in space
I love the Rose Parade, space exploration, and Occupy. I couldn't resist all three in one place.
2012: The Mayan Apocalypse? Yeah, right
Prepare for a year of DOOM!
Last night was the beginning of the primary/caucus season for 2012
And a year of politics, too.
WXYZ begins its North American International Auto Show coverage
This is a Detroit blog, after all.
Governor Snyder sued twice this week
Good going, Nerd.
New beginnings for two Metro Detroit transit projects
21st Century mass transit is "not dead yet!"
And that's it for this week.
I've been writing about how Tea Partiers are screwing up efforts at sustainable development both nationally and here in Michigan over at Crazy Eddie's Motie News, my sustainability blog on Blogspot. Here are the posts on this topic for the last month.
More paranoia about Agenda 21
The Atlantic on Tea Partiers disrupting planning commissions because of Agenda 21
Rachel Maddow on the Emergency Manager Law
Troy's City Council votes down transit center
Troy Mayor Janice Daniels shows how to be vulnerable to a scandal
Mayor Daniels, founder of the Troy Tea Party, is someone well worth watching and my friend Sharon at Keep Troy Strong is doing that full time. I highly recommend you check out her continuing coverage.
Above originally posted as Blogging about the Tea Party at![[community profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
teabagger_watch on Dreamwidth.
Bonus post: Tea Party Patriots founder Mark Meckler arrested
More paranoia about Agenda 21
The Atlantic on Tea Partiers disrupting planning commissions because of Agenda 21
Rachel Maddow on the Emergency Manager Law
Troy's City Council votes down transit center
Troy Mayor Janice Daniels shows how to be vulnerable to a scandal
Mayor Daniels, founder of the Troy Tea Party, is someone well worth watching and my friend Sharon at Keep Troy Strong is doing that full time. I highly recommend you check out her continuing coverage.
Above originally posted as Blogging about the Tea Party at
teabagger_watch on Dreamwidth.Bonus post: Tea Party Patriots founder Mark Meckler arrested
In the previous digest, I promised "global and national environmental issues, local (Michigan and Metro Detroit) sustainability issues, and Tea Party screw-ups." I'll do the first one, as I just posted an entry on that general topic.
Next Media Animation on the Keystone XL pipeline
Next Media Animation on Thanksgiving food inflation
Phil Plait on saving Earth from asteroids
Nebris and I have a conversation
A video gift from a student
Yes, I posted that one before. It's worth seeing again. Besides, I'm an environmentalist; I recycle.
The village of Wukan, China, in open revolt
The situation in Wukan escalates
More paranoia about Agenda 21
You'll see this one again, as it's about Tea Partiers screwing up.
Next Media Animation thinks low birth rates in the U.S. and China aren't all good
Next Media Animation on Canada leaving the Kyoto Protocol, plus a Rick Perry joke
With that last entry, the topics complete the circle, as the first and last are about Canadian tar sands.
Tags:
There's a new reality dating show on TLC called Geek Love, which started at New York Comic Con with "sci-fi" speed dating and continues after that, showing the geeks in their daily lives, and following them in their quest for love!I wonder if anyone has told Li Anne that she should be careful what she wishes for.
If Li Anne had been there, she would have joined that speed dating session. To find out why, watch as Li Anne gives you her top 8 Reasons Why You Should Date a Geek!
Skyrim music fan video
Dec. 29th, 2011 10:28 pmSince I've been blogging a lot about Star Wars: The Old Republic, it's time I give another video game's music some love.
An acoustic and electric violin cover of two of my favorite themes from Skyrim. Arranged and performed by Jason Yang. Original soundtrack by Jeremy Soule.In case the violinist looks familiar, it's because I've featured him before.
An ironic error message
Dec. 29th, 2011 04:31 pmJust received this in my inbox.
Your Facebook account has been disconnected due to the following error: (#100) FBCDN image is not allowed in stream:
The image in question was in the repost of Since I'm in a Star Wars mood lately.
So, I'm not allowed to post an image hosted on Facebook back to Facebook via LiveJournal. I suppose there is a good reason for this, other than LJ not wanting to cause an infinite loop--probably a copyright agreement with Facebook--but I still think it's ironic, if not downright perverse.
Now I have to reconsider reconnecting my LJ to my Facebook for autoreposts. Maybe I'll just do it by hand from now on. I'll also make sure I don't use images hosted on Facebook for my LJ posts anymore, if LJ doesn't like me doing that.
Since I'm in a Star Wars mood lately
Dec. 29th, 2011 03:21 pmI've been playing a lot of Star Wars: The Old Republic this week and posting about it to my LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, I've been looking for an excuse to post a Star Wars entry that is still on-topic for this blog.* Yesterday evening, I stumbled across not one, but two items that fit the bill.
First, from The Bad, the Ugly, and the Irrelevant: The 2012 GOP pretenders on Facebook comes this macro.
Next, Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of The Atlantic's star political bloggers, is playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. Yes, really.
If I hadn't already been a fan of Coates, I would be now. Also, read the comments. They're actually very informative.
Return of the Jedi
So how are we feeling about Star Wars: The Old Republic? I just finished installing and patching this morning. I played around with some character creation, but haven't a chance to do much else. But even in doing that little bit, I realized how dated WoW's graphics really are. I suppose that's a good thing in some ways--WoW can run on almost game PC, at this point.
Either way, I'd love to have a new game on my list. I'm a little pissed about WoW actually adding the panderan. It just feels like more comic relief.
* Above originally posted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News. The second part was also posted to fandom_lounge on JournalFen.
Set your blasters to LOL
Dec. 28th, 2011 09:44 pmNow, time for some Star Wars macros from the same source as my previous post.
