Words for the wise from the mouth of a fool.
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The weblog of Seth Johnson -------------- INKSLINGER.ORG -------------- OD ARCHIVES -------------- FEEDS Posts:  Shared Items:
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Saturday, November 23, 2002
A couple good links via MeFi today: the CIA Freedom Fighters manual and this collection of stylish web pages--which makes me want to finish overhauling this site. Like I've been promising to do for months. And still haven't done. Yeah.
I ran a few pictures through the Amelie filter I linked to yesterday:
Check out a few more trials here.
Q: How many "SNL" players have appeared in a Dan Aykroyd headlined movie?*
Just one of the questions answered in an amazingly detailed SNL FAQ.
Via the same site, the amusing Saturday Night Loser.
(The answer, by the way.)
Friday, November 22, 2002
Story for DL anthology: submitted. Now I have the pins-and-needles period of waiting to hear back. Luckily, I have a laundry list of things to keep me busy in the meantime--writing on other projects, sleep, more writing, Vice City...
Thursday, November 21, 2002
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
Excellent movies linked in this MeFi thread, whose comments have in turn become entertainingly MetaMetaFilter.
Heard around the office a few minutes ago:
"What's wrong with a mullet?--business up front, party in back!"
According to Amazon, in the Madison area these are the best selling books, CDs, DVDs, and electronics. Check it out for your own area.
I'm personally fascinated that 4 of the top 10 selling DVDs in the Madison area are Prisoner compilations.
The example sentence following the definition of "maudlin" in my copy of the American Heritage Dictionary:
"Go3ring and Hitl3r* displayed an almost maudlin concern for the welfare of animals." (Aldous Huxley)
I kid you not. Note the tail end of the quote in the dictionary.com definition of the word, with the names removed.
* Pardon the l33t speak in the names; I'm just avoiding Google hits based on them, thanksmuch.
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Thanks to Scott for passing along a link to the British Pathe Film Archive, a great collection of old news footage. You might want to bookmark the page and come back in a couple days--the Net is hammering the page pretty hard today...
What a show.
I've cross-trained with late-night writing projects, built up a nice little habit of playing Vice City, and established a solid Critic/Sports Night/Batman middle-of-the-dark TV watching block. So when the choice came to stay up or get up, there was no choice at all. I was a little worried about yesterday's rainy, cloudy weather, but around midnight the clouds blew over and the sky was crystal clear.
The upshot? 3:30 this morning found me awake and ready in a local park with a bunch of astronomy geeks waiting for the sky to fall.
I was planning on watching the Leonids in a park a couple blocks from my house until I heard an astronomy professor on public radio talking about this gathering in a park a couple blocks further away. (That's Madison for you--lots of parks.) Somehow they convinced the city to turn off all the lights in the park, so aside from the bottom one-third of the sky being obliterated by lightbleed, it was a great viewing spot. They also brought a couple telescopes so that folks could look at Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons while we waited. Neat stuff.
One of the profs had an antenna set up and explained that when the meteors started coming, they would create ionized trails of gas in the atmosphere that would allow radio signals from Ontario to reflect over the horizon to Wisconsin. While everyone spread out blankets and chairs--except me, who didn't think of such things--a speaker on a card table hissed quietly.
A dozen people quickly became two, then three, and as the expected peak at 4:30 approached there were well over a hundred people waiting. Blanket-wrapped people staring up at the sky; a nearby woman noticed that it was just like the scene near the beginning of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where the U.F.O. fanatics gathered at the edge of the highway. Looking around and seeing silohuettes framed in the light of the full moon emerging from the night fog, crunching through the dew frozen on the grass, I was reminded of the poster shot from Dawn of the Dead. She was probably more accurate.
Suddenly I started to hear pops and snippets of music from the speaker. Looking toward Leo, nothing--but in my peripheral vision, more sensitive to light, I saw faint trails beginning to appear. Finally, an ooooooo! from the crowd as a bright line crossed part of the sky. Then another. And another.
It was never quite hyperspace from Star Wars, but over the next forty-five minutes I saw more meteors in one period than I ever have before--at least a couple hundred, including a couple spectacular ones with trails colored red and green and blue. When the speaker finally fell back to a hiss, when my feet got too cold to stay any longer, when I home and got into bed and had a chance to think...I decided it was the best reason to be an insomniac I'd had in quite some time.
What a show.
(Pics and links on APOD and NASA's Leonid site for the interested. Also, a description of the Leonids as seen from the space station.)
Monday, November 18, 2002
Having discovered that the NYT has its own, bookmarkable corrections page, I'm tempted to make it a regular stop. You'd think there'd be something good eventually, wouldn't you?
Trabboldo sent along a link to this hilariously honest resume. (Check out the rest of his site while you're there.)
Usually I'm a big fan of TWOP, but this is the most useless Alias recaplet ever. What freakin' good does that do for someone who missed the show? None. I already knew that from the AICN spoilers. Damn it, who has a tape so I can find out what's going on with the Sloane storyline?
Sunday, November 17, 2002
Each and every one of you should thank whatever higher power you observe that I only share the highlights of my obsessions with you. This weekend, in case you haven't figured it out, it's Sports Night. Shutting up and moving on soon, I swear, but thought I'd toss you a link to an interesting article on ESPN.com where they compare their own Sports Center to Sports Night.
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