Dolly Parton/Broadway vs. Silicon Valley/Google.

Hm.

Via Insty.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This. Is. Where. I. Get off the bus.

God bless you all, but we went after the media pretty hard for messing with a minor in the case of Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter. If this kid is, indeed, 15 years old and troubled, I think he should be prosecuted. But I'm taking the spotlight off of him, and anyone with basic morals should do the same.

And, yes: his mental illness and his age should be taken into account when it's time for sentencing, which must be lenient.

And, yes: what was Sarah thinking? Yahoo? Wasilla High? For a Vice-Presidential candidate? The kid committed a felony, and he stepped over a big line. But Palin should have circled her wagons better than that. (I hope she did, and that she hasn't been actively using the Yahoo account; it could be that this is simply an old account she hadn't had time to delete. We know that there wasn't anything "juicy" on it, so it might be that she just ran out of time.)

UPDATE: Okay. Make that a 20-year-old, mentally unstable chess fanatic. I've been there myself, except for the chess. And the felony.

But, really—can we get away from the "lynch mob" mentality, here?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:44 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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. . . by not allowing myself to develop iPhone lust. That, plus poverty, have prevented me from getting an iPhone.

Of course, late last-possible minute adopters like me benefit directly from the struggles of the early adopters.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via Mikal, who says it's uncanny in its accuracy:

Pay an escort of your affectional preference subset to not
bathe for five days, cover themselves in glitter, dust, and
sunscreen, wear a skanky neon wig, dance close naked,
then say they have a lover back home at the end of the night.

Tear down your house. Put it in a truck.
Drive 10 hours in any direction. Put the house back together.

Invite everyone you meet to come over and party.
When they leave, follow them back to their homes,
drink all their booze, and break things.

Stack all your fans in one corner of the living room.
Put on your most fabulous outfit.
Turn the fans on full blast.
Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.

Buy a new set of expensive camping gear.
Break it.

Lean back in a chair until that point where youÂ’re just
about to fall over, but you catch yourself at the last
moment. Hold that position for 9 hours.

Only use the toilet in a house that is at least 3 blocks away.
Drain all the water from the toilet.
Only flush it every 3 days.
Hide all the toilet paper.

Set your house thermostat so it's 50 degrees for the first
hour of sleep and 100 degrees the rest of the night.

Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various
parts of your body. Forget how you did it.
Don't go to a doctor.

"Downsize" last year's camp by adding two geodesic domes,
a new sound system, art car, and 20 newbies.

Don't sleep for 5 days.
Take a wide variety of hallucinogenic/emotion altering drugs.
Pick a fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend.

Spend a whole year rummaging through thrift stores
for the perfect, most outrageous costume.
Forget to pack it.

Shop at Wal-mart, Cost-Co, and Home Depot until your car
is completely packed with stuff.
Tell everyone that you're going to a "Leave-No-Trace" event.
Empty your car into a dumpster.

Read "Dhalgren" by Samuel R. Delany.
Read "The City Not Long After" by Pat Murphy.
Cut off the bindings, throw all the pages up in the air,
and shuffle them back together.
Reread "The City After Dhalgren" by Samuel Murphy.
Burn it. Read the ashes.
Listen to music you hate for 168 hours straight, or until
you think you are going to scream. Scream.
Realize youÂ’ll love the music for the rest of your life.

Spend 5 months planning a "theme camp" like itÂ’s the invasion of Normandy.
Spend Monday-Wednesday building the camp.
Spend Thurs-Sunday nowhere near camp because you're sick of it.

Walk around your neighborhood and knock on doors until
someone offers you cocktails and dinner.

Bust your ass for a "community."
See all the attention get focused on the drama queen crybaby.

Get so drunk you can't recognize your own house.
Walk slowly around the block for 5 hours.

Tell your boss you aren't coming to work this week but
he should "gift" you a paycheck anyway.
When he refuses accuse him of not loving the "community".

Search alleys untill you find a couch so unbelievably tacky and
nasty filthy that a state college frat house wouldn't want it.
Take a nap on the couch and sleep like you are king of the world.

Ask your most annoying neighbor to interrupt your fun several
times a day with third hand gossip about every horrible thing that's
happened in the last 24 hours. Have them wear khaki.

Go to a museum.
Find one of Salvador DaliÂ’s more disturbing but beautiful paintings. Climb inside it.

Before eating any food, drop it in a sandbox and lick a battery.

Mail $200 to the Reno casino of your choice.

Spend thousands of dollars and several months of your life
building a deeply personal art work.
Hide it in a funhouse on the edge of the city.
Hire people to come by and alternate saying "I love it" and "this sucks balls".
Blow it up.

Set up a DJ system downwind of a three alarm fire.
Play a short loop of drum'n'bass until the embers are cold.

Make a list of all the things you'll do different next year.
Never look at it.

Have a 3 a.m.soul baring conversation with a drag nun
in platforms, a crocodile, and Bugs Bunny.
Be unable to tell if you're hallucinating. Lust after Bugs Bunny.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:27 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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"Yes?" I asked.

"Last Wednesday morning, someone remarked on the fact that the photo had changed on my Wikipedia page. And I looked; sure enough, there was a new pic there. One that had been taken only several hours before."

"Right," I responded. "What's that to me?"

"Because you took the picture."

"How can you be so sure?" I enquired.

"Well, let's see. It was taken at the L.A. Convention Center, on that day that I had two days' growth of beard because I hadn't shaved, and I was behind on sleep. I was clearly taken from across the table, and I remembered you snapping the camera at that moment. Is that enough?"

"Absolutely not. What if there were someone behind me, with a telephoto lens, who managed to take a photo within a split second of when I got that image?"

"I guess I'd never know."

"I guess you never will know. Anyway, you hated that other picture. Remember? This has to be better, beard or no beard."

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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After doing right by me for months, iPhoto has now decided that after I crop a picture, and tell it just how little I want it to be, I can neither:

1) have it remain small within iPhoto, nor

2) move it to my desktop, rename it, and have stay at the dimensions I've specified.

What this means is that Movable Type will not let me upload any picture I take, because they are all "too large." Even if I told iPhoto in no uncertain terms that I wanted to make the image little.

Obviously, there's something I haven't found. Anyone know the answer? This used to work just fine. Wait: not fine. I did have to re-size the photos to appropriate dimensions after placing them. But at least MT would allow me to upload them, and now it's turning 'em all down.

Still, one would think that iPhoto would respect my wishes to make an image small. I thought the computer was supposed to do the will of the human. Another naive misconception on my part? (Mandy and I have had this talk about the dog-human relationship, and have not achieved perfect accord.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:45 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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on both your houses.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 05:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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(Beyond the real "hail, Mary" of putting the Amazon Kindle on there.)

1) But I certainly don't need two of those cheap, cool video cameras. It's just that I couldn't decide whether (should I have a rich , web-savvy aunt whom I don't yet know about) I would rather have the Aiptek A-HD 720P 5MP CMOS High Definition Camcorder, or the Flip Video Ultra Series 60-minute Camcorder.

It seems that the Flip is more compact, but I like the fact that the Aiptek has a fold-out screen that allows you to monitor how the footage is coming out a bit better, without (apparently) increasing the bulk significantly.

Also, the Flip 60-minute has a one-hour limit on it. Period. If you forgot your laptop, or don't have time to download the existing vid right then and there, you're SOL. With the Aiptek (if I'm reading the specs right), if you run out of space you throw in a new card, get the rest of the footage you want, get on with your life, and download the vids that night.

2) Related question: I do want to do a bloggers' talk show with some of the SoCal folk, so does anyone have any idea how difficult it would be to electronically alter someone's fact after the footage were taken? Ideally, I'd prefer to simply repace this one deep-cover blogger with an avatar, but I realized I need a motion-capture suit and a computer-graphics lab to achieve that.

Is there cost-effective technology that would simply allow me to pixillate her face, or would I have to make her wear a stupid mask, and give her her own mike? Thoughts?

Oh, yeah: and my birthday is on July 9th. Cash works, too: or a used desktop monitor for my MacBook that I can use for watching movies thereon. Actually, my very favoritest thing would if you bought Blogads from me.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:27 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Video editing software can blur the faces. Download a free-trial version if you don't already have it. I would use After Effects. Duplicate the layer and draw a mask around the target head to be pixellated. Then apply the Mosiac or Blur effect to the masks. If you haven't shot it yet, have the guest in heavy shadows (or strong back lighting) and adjust the camera accordingly (to ignore that information).

Posted by: Darrell at June 27, 2008 07:27 PM (OAJoD)

2 Hey AG, First time reader (happened to find you via a technorati search on Kindle ;-) I have the Aiptek A-HD+ (it adds a very cool 60FPS mode tht is almost surreal to see). It's a little bulky, but the ability to throw in a cheap 8GB card and get HOURS of HD recording is pretty sweet. And in a pinch it captures semi-sorta-decent stills. The main downside to me (and this is true of all the low end stuff) is no image stabilization, so your video can come out kinda shaky. But I hear the new Adobe apps have added a mode to smooth that out. You can find reviews and info of all sorts here: http://forums.steves-digicams.com/forums/view_forum.php?id=92 Good luck o

Posted by: Richard at June 28, 2008 09:40 AM (9tDaW)

3 Woops, hit the wrong key there. Good luck on picking one out If you have any Q's, feel free to mail me (comments aaaattt richard goodwin dootttt commm)

Posted by: Richard at June 28, 2008 09:44 AM (9tDaW)

4 Thanks, Richard! Now all I need to do is find that rich aunt and bump her off. Or, you know--get one of those . . . what do you call them? Oh, right: jobs . . .

Posted by: Attila Girl at June 28, 2008 10:31 AM (1q/ac)

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Not that it's to my credit: I think it comes from having lived with OCD Girl, whose compulsiveness was often in slightly different areas from my own—and whose passive-aggressive abilities were far superior.

But it's always nice to be proven right.

The fact is, soap is very effective in getting bacteria off of one's skin. It just <>is. Even water is very, very effective if one uses enough of it.

I've always suspected that a lot of these "antibacterial soap" users were the sort of people who go on antibiotics at the drop of a hat. I've even considered the possibility that some of 'em don't even know the difference between viruses and bacteria.

Which, by the way, is one of two data any given individual needs in order to successfully negotiate the modern world. (The other being the difference between its and it's.)

h/t: Glenn.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:49 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Not so fast, Science Girl! That article proves little, mostly the bias of the author. While proper hand washing techniques may be sufficient, the fact remains that few people employ such methods. Even health professionals, and according to studies, especially health professionals. One should run water over the hands, rub, and rinse before lathering and using mechanical action--rubbing--to dislodge bacteria protected by hand oils and waxes, for fifteen to twenty seconds. That followed by a second lathering and long rinse and avoiding recontamination while shutting off the water, and generally getting yourself out of the washroom. Fact is that 90+% DO NOT do these things, unless they are being observed in those 'studies'. Triclosan makes a difference in the 3-7 second hand washing that most people DO employ. Plus it leaves a shield of protection on the skin that continues to kill bacteria and some funguses. Recent outbreaks of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections WERE ONLY BROUGHT UNDER CONTROL when hospitals went back to using antibacterial soaps containing triclosan as part of the control program. Chemicals are our friends.

Posted by: Darrell at May 13, 2008 07:57 PM (pE9Mf)

2 Of course, when one is in a hurry, one can just use hand lotion, in a North American counterpart to the "don't shower; just spray" philosophy. Conversely, no one with dry skin should work in any health-related profession. I have a friend who had oily skin, but when she trained as a nurse they washed their hands so many times a day her skin got to be as dry and thin as Kleenex--or, like my skin I have, BTW, been experimenting with harsh language as an antibacterial measure.

Posted by: Attila Girl at May 13, 2008 08:19 PM (Hgnbj)

3 Well at least you have a plan that doesn't keep chemicals out of the hands of people that rely on them. Let me know how it goes! Errrrr...by email, if you can.

Posted by: Darrell at May 13, 2008 08:50 PM (pE9Mf)

4 Actually, in a clinical setting I'd use Phisohex or Betadyne or whatever--particularly if there were superbugs roaming around. It's just that I think in the home environment--and even in some small offices--overuse antibacterial soaps, and therefore may help to create superbugs. And since I know multiple people who have been the victims of resistant bacterial strains, it's actually (all kidding aside) a bit of a concern for me. (Of course, as you know around the house I alternate between bleach solutions and alcohol on any surface that comes into contact with food. And if someone sets something "unclean" on the kitchen counter I have a tantrum!)

Posted by: Attila Girl at May 14, 2008 08:51 AM (Hgnbj)

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It now has the McArdle seal of approval, and I must say my inability to keep my reading material below a few pounds for airplane travel makes it a very seductive option, indeed: I'd love to carry one lightweight item, instead of three magazines, one paperback book, and one hardcover. (Alternatively, I could develop an attention span, but the likelihood of that is not terrific at this stage in my life.)

One potential disadvantage to the Kindle lies in my not being able to write on it (I think—can someone correct me if I'm wrong?), but it isn't as if I go a lot of places without my laptop and/or a pad of paper. And I'm certainly not going to check my laptop in on a plane. Furthermore, the Kindle is so small and so light, I can tuck it into my purse; that's pretty cool.

Of course, it costs 2-3 times what I'd want to pay for something like that, and I have a few other technological needs that come ahead of it (such as the obligatory memory upgrade for the new Mac, a basic video camera for vid-blogging, and finishing my editing/writing site). But it would certainly help me to get rid of a lot of books, and allow me to use my time better when there is an unexpected wait (say, in a line somewhere) as part of my day.

Via Insty. And I'd like to throw in a shout-out (and a bouquet of other prepositions, while I'm at it) to the incomparable Virginia Postrel, who first got me thinking seriously about the Kindle, which initially struck me as the ultimate in techno-frivolity. (It's a source of grief to me that Postrel doesn't write books quickly enough for my taste, so I find myself trawling her bibliographies and endnotes, trying to find more bitchin' reads; that's a bit pathetic, no? But there is another on the way!)

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This sounds pretty sensible:

If the reasonable reader would interpret an assertion [such as Shvarts' press release] as being literally made, then the student (or a faculty member or anyone else in the university) has an obligation to make sure that the assertion is indeed true. Perhaps in some other contexts hoaxes might be forgivable—but not in class work, unless there's some strong contextual cue that the hoax is indeed a hoax. So if Shvarts did indeed misdescribe what she did (the accounts I've seen are somewhat contradictory), she should be faulted for that, and at least required to correct the misdescription.

. . . Yet . . . it's important that the university set out pretty clear rules, and not punish students or faculty members in the absence of such rules. This is especially true, I think, for art. As I understand it, avant-garde art and academic art, for better or worse, has in recent decades heavily prized the transgressive and shocking.

Shvarts and her advisors, it seems, gave the university pretty much what academic artists are asked to give. So if the university had a preexisting no-human-blood rule, then it could reasonably enforce it. But if it didn't, then I'm not sure what sort of "appropriate action" (setting aside a good talking-to) could reasonably be taken against faculty members who saw the transgressiveness of Shvarts' project as a plus rather than a minus. In other fields, it might be possible to fault faculty and students for violating unwritten but broadly accepted rules of scholarship. But my sense is that this is hard to assert (again, for better or worse) about modern academic art.

My emphasis; h/t to Insty.

UPDATE: Apparently, Ace believes in do-it-yourself abortions; how funny. He seems, otherwise, quite bright. If those worked, we wouldn't have ended up in a national fight that culminated (or, rather, plateaued) in Roe v. Wade.

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Here. Wouldn't it be cool if the market could work this one out?

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So, I'm just scrolling along, minding my own business, when the freakin' scrollbar decides that because I'm reading, and skimming headlines, and . . . whatever . . . I must want it to go faster. So it just decides to go faster, and it skips past some text. So I have to keep going back to where I was before.

I can't find it in Safari preferences. I can't find it in the OS preferences. I just don't know how to fix it, and it's fucking pissing me off.

I do not care about being homeless. I do not care about not having time or space to wash my hair. I do not care about having to do 1.5 hours of housework, very quickly, every morning before I leave the house. I do not even care about the leftward listing "current affairs" bookshelf at my local bookstore/coffee house.

What I care about is the fucking insane turbo-scrolling that goes on in my windows, when I don't want it to. And I'm out for blood.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:00 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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"Maybe," I reply cautiously. "So. You, um . . . you read it occasionally?"

"Once every couple of weeks," he responds.

"Oh."

There is a pause, and then I announce, "you know what would be good? If you gave me, like 24-48 hours' notice before you went to my website."

"Whyyyyyyyy?" he draws the syllable out. Slowly. Deliberately.

"Because, then, um . . . then I'd be able to make sure the content was, like . . . really good. So you'd . . . um. So you'd be impressed."

I did not, of course, secure any such agreement. So either I clean up all the references to my family herein, or I find myself on a sort of psychological/electronic frontier for the rest of my life.

Probably the latter. Because . . . really—who has time to look through his/her archives?

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. . . was a sexual predator?

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. . . over at Sissy Willis' place.

I mean that in the literal, rather than the perjorative, sense—of course.

I'm starting to think cats might be okay, if I could get over the allergies. The problem is, once you have cats, allergic people can't visit you. And if all allergic people acclimate themselves to cats, it's still not a solution. After all, the CalBlog twins are allergic to cats other than their own.

I was skeptical when I heard that. "No," Caltech Girl assured me. "It's a big molecule. It's entirely possible for someone to be reacting to only a small part of it."

The only solution? Gradually replace the existing stock of cats in the world with genetically engineered hypoallergenic ones whose saliva (and therefore fur) is missing the allergen. (I originally found out about these cats from neurobiologist David Linden, so I shall go full-circle and find some photo-blogging by him, thereby cleverly bringing my post back to where it began, with Sisu's photo-blog. There. This one is perfect for a gray, Sissy Willis-like cozy day, and this is my favorite of his recent landscapes. It's almost Adams-eque.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:11 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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is that my nephews wouldn't get it at all. Kinda like L.A. Story, but completely different.

Via Bidinotto.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:09 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Not only did my local newsstand have Garage magazine this past week, but Dave is working on another story for them! (And if you ever want to go "beyond Iowahawk" in reading Dave's stuff, Garage is the go-to mag.)

I adore Garage, and I'm not even sure why. It's not about having worked on Hot Rod Bikes and Petersen's Hunting (though I certainly did work on both those books; long story, that). It's about the fact that while Garage is very, very butch, it is also a real art magazine—as much so as Flaunt or Good or Swindle. (Yeah. I read Good, despite its sometimes flagrantly lefty leanings. Wired does a better job of keeping the leftism in check, but Wired is part of the Condé Nast empire, whereas Good is a little start-up, and I have a certain affection for scrappy underdogs, even when they are staffed by the wealthy offspring of industry titans/silly politicians.)

And Popular Mechanics remains very sexy, in a hip-to-be-square sort of way.

Yeah: I'm a magazine crew slut. So sue me.

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I finally got to hug Dr. E-Sharp: he was helping his company set up its booth for Siggraph, and it was just crazy. So while Professor Fractal complained that Scanmaster clearly wasn't attending Siggraph this year, Dr. E-Sharp was only a vague rumor to me. (I did see Scanmaster, and he showed me around like he always does. If you want to meet people it's a plus to hang out with eccentric, gregarious businessmen.)

E-Sharp and I trade voice mails, but can't seem to synch up. He's available, he tells me at one point. Of course, this is during the time I'm at the Siggraph Chapter party in the basement of that cool club on 6th and Broadway, chatting up people I haven't seen in 16 years—not since I stopped living with Martin G. Naturally, there's no cell phone reception in the basement.

So it goes. I start to open my voice mails with "this is your stalker. I'll be at thus-and-such around 3:00."

I stop by his company's booth and ask after him. "He's not working right now," the receptionist tells me. "Would you like to leave a business card?"

"That's okay," I reply. "Just let him know that his stalker dropped by."

She smiles. "Are you his wife?"

"Heavens, no," I tell her. "I don't have her class. Or her height."

Fifteen minutes later I run into Martin G., and we take another stroll by the good doctor's booth. Sure enough, the jinx has run its course. The E-Sharps are just standing there. We greet them, and escort 'em to the sandwich shop. Then they head out to the Electronic Theater while Marty and I take a turkey sandwich to Professor Fractal.

This is the most fun I've ever had at Siggraph: I knew I was there for social reasons, but I'd started to get an idea of what things were the most fun, and I no longer needed a tourguide to pick out the most interactive or interesting exhibits, or the coolest technology. So other than scoring a few hugs from the E-Sharps—and catching the Electronic Theatre—I went to San Diego without much of an agenda at all.

Just a hippie girl taking in the sights.

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one of the featured filmettes was the U2/Green Day "The Saints Are Coming" video.

It's stunning on every level: in its use of computer graphics (check out that water), the sound, the hittability of the lead singers (both generations, but of course Billy Joe Armstrong in particular—mascara notwithstanding), and as a piece of propaganda.

Those who are familiar with the U.S. Constitution will now start discussing posse comitatus, giving Bono a pass because he's Irish, and wondering why on earth leftists are now advocating a return to martial law based on Presidential whim.

But, please: the video was beautiful. It was an artistic/technological achievement, and it tugged at my heartstrings. It made me want to put up one of those posters about how the Navy doesn't need to hold bake sales to buy aircraft carriers. In short, it did exactly what good propaganda does: it made me feel, rather than think.

And it was a privilege to see it on a big screen, without the loss of resolution one always experiences with You Tube.

(Professor Fractal: "I hate You Tube. What about all those people who are posting their videos to You Tube, and deleting the originals? When better quality is available, where will they be?"

Martin G.: "If they are deleting the originals, it serves them right a few years down the line if they are stuck with horrendous-quality clips.")

Anyway, if you're in San Diego for Siggraph, be sure to get a ticket to the Electronic Theatre (or the Computer Animation Festival—whatever they're calling it these days).

It's longish (even grueling, as one nears the two-hour mark), but always—always—worth it.

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