My Archives: August 2006
Next Tuesday, September 5 at 7 pm, it's the East Side Weblog Meetup! Weblog folks who live and/or work on the East side meet at Crossroads Mall. Look for us between the main area by the stage and the giant chessboard -- there will be a sign. Please pass the info along to any East Side webloggers you know!
Posted by Anita @ 07:24 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Kai Jones, as part of a series of posts about her Worldcon trip, gives details on why buying VIP passes (extra bucks) to a Universal Studios Tour was really worthwhile. (Universal site) "We did the backstage tram tour first--but not the standard one, VIP tours get their own special, smaller buses that go places the standard tram tour doesn't, including inside sound stages. [...] We also went into the sound building and into a couple of different sound rooms full of equipment, including a mixing room where there are three levels of seating (desks, sound equipment, and comfy chairs) and a hundred or more speakers, each of which adds one kind of sound. There's also a basketball hoop and a pingpong table. We asked what they were for and Mark explained as follows: The highest desks are for the producers. The middle set, with the actual equipment, are for the sound engineers. The comfy chairs are for the director (and whoever the director brings). While the producers and the director argue about the sound track (which can take hours) the engineers run down and play basketball or ping pong. [...] I really recommend spending the extra money for the VIP tour at Universal; we saved at least 3 hours of waiting-in-line. At rides we went to a special gate and got in next instead of at the end of the line, and at the shows we had reserved waiting areas close to the doors so we could get in the best seats. The tour pass (on a lanyard) also acts as a front-of-the-line pass for the rest of the day, once your tour is over."
(tags: Snippy, KaiJones, UniversalTours)
Posted by Anita @ 04:13 AM PST [Link] [1 Comment]
Monday, August 28, 2006
I didn't know that the Emmy awards were broadcast last night! Jack and I were watching various John Wayne movies on TCM and AMC. Wayne is one of Jack's favorite actors, and I can stand him. But I'm sorry I missed Conan O'Brien hosting, with appearances by Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert!
(tags: emmys, JohnWayne, TCM, AMC)
Posted by Anita @ 05:06 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Friday, August 25, 2006
A recent garage sale find for my grandson (25 cents!) is the Tomy Tutor, a toy computer that has buttons to bang on, which move a paper strip inside a screen. He loves it! And I remember my nephews had one of these also. I didn't know that there was actually a real 16-bit computer from Tomy back in the eighties. From a Tomy collector's site: "Released in 1983, the Tutor was just unlucky enough to hit in the middle of the VIC-20 and 64 craze, despite its superior graphics and its fast, efficient speed. Based around the 16-bit Texas Instruments 9995 processor, it blew away the 99/4's in both speed and efficiency (but alas is largely incompatible), implementing the fine graphics of the TMS 9918ANL chip, its earlier relative, the TMS 9918A, powering the Coleco Adam, the Sord and, of course, the 99/4 series. It even had a built-in paint program, since the graphics were so good, plus lots of fabulous games."
Posted by Anita @ 11:47 AM PST [Link] [1 Comment]
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
I've been bone lazy about creating an RSS feed for this weblog. The main reason? The blogging tool I use, Greymatter, hasn't been updated in many a year and it doesn't create a feed automatically. Inertia has kept me from switching (though I do have plans to change to wordpress RSN). But I do recognize the need for RSS so I'll go ahead and do what I did for the website I was working on for a small science fiction convention -- create the feed by hand! Maryam, you aren't stupid; there wasn't a feed here before. But now there is! Robert, thanks for the prodding!
Reading blogs via a feed reader is great -- I'm using SharpReader.
Posted by Anita @ 12:27 PM PST [Link] [2 comments]
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
My friend Geoff Duncan (he was one of my first office mates when we were contracting at Microsoft in 1993) has been studying the new IKEA catalog. Most of his post is about the vast amount of remaindered books shown filling up the shelves in the new catalog, but I was surprised by the higher prices in the Seattle edition as compared to the nation edition. Ten bucks more for a LACK coffee table! Also, why is the headline "Organize your everyday life" in Seattle, and the more cheerful "Celebrate your everyday life" everywhere else?
By the way, if you are an IKEA fan, do check out the blog IKEAhacker for lots of ideas on using IKEA stuff in different ways.
Posted by Anita @ 04:32 AM PST [Link] [3 comments]