...sarcasm_hime

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K and I are both ready to give our personal websites a redesign.

His is just a pretty straight HTML site. I've got old HTML pages, but the main site is Joomla 1.0.x and Gallery 2.

I'm not wedded to the tools I'm using right now. That said, my first path option is:

• Joomla 1.5
• Gallery 2.3

It's less than optimal, though. The Joomla/Gallery bridge module is pretty much abandoned.

So here's what I want, in order of importance:

1. Easy web-based content administration
2. Support for direct HTML formatting of content (rich-text editing not required)
3. Structured navigation
4. Easily managed user and group security
5. Easy template management and design customization
6. Fully embedded photo gallery with an upload client option (for photos I don't want to put on Flickr)
7. LiveJournal Integration
8. Twitter integration
9. Flickr integration
10. Delicious.com bookmark integration
11. Librarything integration
12. LinkedIn integration

Anybody got any tools or combination of tools they're willing to suggest?

But it's a good 'un.

The Organization for Transformative Works (read "fanfic") has started working with the University of Iowa to get fanfic 'zines into a cataloged archive.

Two days ago they announced the first collection has been received in their blog and their LiveJournal community.

Surprisingly enough, their blog comments exploded into draaaahma and the LJ comments were "Oooh, cool, here are some things that need to make it into the collection, what can I do to help?"

The funny thing?

Mariellen (Ming) Wathne's "lending library" collection is what all the stink is about. For the most part, 'zines that were either originally sent to Lucasfilm to satisfy their copyright management desires or sent to Ming for the express purpose of being part of a lending archive.

It's estimated to be about 3,000 items. A few dozen boxes.

That's a drop in the bucket, not only among the total number of fanzines published, but among the total number of fanzines in academic collections. U of Iowa and UC Riverside each have well over 200,000 fanzines already in their collections.

Even if U of Iowa and UC Riverside have half a million 'zines, that's still a drop in the bucket. Support your community archivists, public and private.

Gah. Workflow is work. Now I remember how I got the first four sets up so quickly. I had a bunch of time in the airport and on the plane where straightening and cropping photos was pretty much all I could do.

aramintamd, I just got to the girls' entry. They're too cute for words.

Farewell to minotaurs. He was a dear, sweet freak of a man.

(OK, I know this isn't twitter, but I like this hashtag-fail construct)

So, if you haven't heard yet, the DOJ has filed its brief defending DOMA in Smelt v the United States of America.

There's been a lot of screaming about it, and for good reason. It's a horrible brief.

The Justice Department claims it has to defend the law, but that's overstatement at best.

Andrew Sullivan points out that the brief was written and submitted by a Bush-administration hold-over recognized by Alberto Gonzalez for his defense of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

So, yeah.

I would have preferred the administration to decide that there were aspects of the law that were unconstitutional and choose to not defend it on those grounds.

I would have preferred the administration had already started on the legislative action to repeal DOMA that was promised during the campaign.

But, frankly, at the moment, I would have been satisfied if the Justice Department had maybe reviewed the brief before it was submitted, and not submitted such an inflammatory brief.

In the end, though, this may be a snow job on all of us: what if the Obama administration picked an attorney they knew would submit the most repugnant defense of the law possible to set up the defense to lose? It would be consistent with the Obama that the conservative pundits keep painting, and in some ways the meandering brief is practically a gift to the plaintiffs' attorney.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like it, and I'm disappointed. I would have like to see it overturned on the arguments already made.

Still, it pops the lid off a can of worms created by Prop 8. It's a very narrow judgement, and there's only one question it really answers.

On the up-side, it maintains our position of strength (sadly entirely disregarded by the "No on 8" coalition and campaign) in working to re-ammend the constitution. We have roughly 18,000 married same-sex families living their lives, working, paying taxes, raising children. We are not destroying the fabric of society in California, we're strengthening it. We are not devaluing California's spiritual life, we're celebrating it. That's what the campaign has to be about, not mealy-mouthed inoffensive unchallenging pap.

There's also the bureaucratic and business madness of supporting three different marriage and marriage-like classes of service. The RNC wants to complain that same-sex marriage will be a financial burden on small business? It's nothing compared to the burden that this balkanized judgement will place on business and government. This will have to be addressed.

Finally, there's the meat of the amendment, "a man and a woman." Wait for a spate of lawsuits to prevent or dissolve marriages since November where "man" or "woman" is debatable. Savvy divorce lawyers are going to go wild with the non-existent legal definition.

The imp of the perverse sees chaos, confusion and unintended consequences coming out of this, ideally enough that the silent center will want to repeal the amendment in disgust.

They're censoring pictures of action figures.

No, really...

No, it's not a StarTrek joke, or even a scotsman joke.

I've got a dreamwidth account. bovil. Don't know if I'll use it or not.

Kitchen clean enough to work in? Check.

Halibut fillets in olive oil, dill, salt and cracked pepper in vac bags and thawing? Check.

Scallops misoyaki in vac bags and thawing? Check.

Living room clean? Well, not really. All the carpet is the same color again, though, and it's just a matter of cleaning off the table.

Back yard clean? Surprisingly.

Just a bit more to do.

So yeah, this weekend we flew out to Timonium, MD for Costume-Con 27.

Flight was uneventful and on-time. We got to the hotel, the lovely recently remodeled Crown Plaza Baltimore North (kind of like the Crown Plaza Oakland South in Union City... what's with CP naming hotels after cities they're not in?) a bit before dark. It's an odd little atrium hotel with a large open area where once the indoor pool resided. Ricky was sitting at the reg desk, and a bunch of people were already there. We got checked in, picked up badges, got into our room and got dinner at the hotel restaurant. We ate there over and over, but it was pretty good.

When we finished dinner, quite a few more people had showed up in the lobby. Bruce and Nora and others were folding tri-folds to promote the ICG Archives. Carol and Stephanie were drinking champagne-like substance. We brought down the bottle of Agua Azul Añejo, and ended up staying up until 1-ish. The Agua Azul was almost (but not quite finished) that night.

Friday we got up early-ish. Tech was moving in, building the stages at the far end of the atrium. It looked less than promising; the stage position was limited by the bar/restaurant entrance, the risers provided by the hotel were crap and the available area for seating looked way too small. On the other hand, Technofandom is an amazing co-op of highly skilled folks who have made silk purses out of bigger sow's ears in the past.

The ICG meeting was relatively painless. There were really no reports that were surprising. There were only two items of "new business" and both could be referred to the appropriate officers and did not require votes of the membership. A new slate of officers was elected, and the previous administration will be missed.

Consuite was the main lobby (outside the area that was being changed into a stage) and a conference room off to the side (where the food and drink was). It was successful because it was a great public space for meeting and talking, but it was flawed because it wasn't immediately obvious that snackies could be found in the Timonium room.

Dealers' Room (or rooms in this case) was, well, mixed. There were several interesting dealers whom we don't see much (not getting out to the east coast very often) including Kass McGann (Reconstructing History), Devra (Poison Pen) and some interesting fabric dealers. There were also some prop and weapons dealers (odd, as someone noted, because east coast conventions tend to have very strict weapons policies).

Programming seemed to run well, and panels were generally well-attended.

There was a lot of experimentation because of the nature of the space. CC28 tried an experiment, hosting the spies' cocktail hour at the bar (since officially serving alcohol in the Timonium room or out in the lobby wasn't going to fly), bringing in several unique bottles of gin and vodka. It was a little out of the way because of where backstage started, but it was well-attended.

One of the other experiments was moving the Single Pattern Contest to the consuite on Friday night (instead of co-running with the Fashion Show on Sunday). This was a mixed success. Its location was changed at the last minute (well, earlier in the day; but the night before I had seen the BEOs for the lobby set-up that was canceled) to one of the ballrooms. I missed it. From what I heard, the day change was a reasonable success. Still, I would have liked to see it run in the social as a "cafe style" fashion show.

The social itself was well attended, with music and silly trophies provided by Thomas Atkinson. It ran very late.

Saturday, ah, Saturday. We slept in late-ish, got up in time for breakfast and K's panel. I hung out and chatted with people. Tech finished building the stage, and it started looking like a real serious operation. Tech rehearsals for F&SF ran. Tech rehearsals for Historical were rescheduled for Sunday afternoon. When things settled down, I confirmed with Larry Schroeder that I could sit up on one of the spotlight platforms to shoot pictures of the masquerade. Best seat in the house.

In the afternoon, we went to Donna's Kentucky Derby party. It was a blast. We heckled bad celebrity fashion, drank mint juleps and chatted about all sorts of costume silliness.

When it was time for the F&SF Masquerade to start, I climbed up the spot platform and talked with Talis until it was time for the show to start. Seating was a bit short, but not as bad as I expected. It wouldn't have been nearly as short if there had been a "voice of god" call asking people to scooch over and fill the empty seats between them (best seat in the house, as I said). The show ran very smoothly. Unfortunately, with an 8:30 start time, we got to see how, even when everything goes well, awards can still wrap up after midnight. I shot around 700 frames.

After masquerade, we went up to the Pretty, Pretty Princess party. It had kind of a shaky start, but eventually got rolling. Pear vodka in little tiny slippers was very popular.

Sunday morning we almost got another experiment. There was a plan to reset the stage and have the fashion show in the consuite side of the lobby, but this didn't happen; it wasn't logistically feasible. Instead we got the fashion show on the main stage (with a quickly-assembled runway). Once again, I arranged with the stage manager to sit up on the spot platform. Since single pattern ran on Friday night, after the fashion show entries ran we got a preview of Andrea Schewe's new patterns on real bodies. This worked out very nicely. I shot around 700 frames.

Sense a pattern? Yeah, the 8gb card I'm running can fit about 770 RAW files.

Sunday afternoon historical tech rehearsals ran. Again, I hung out with folks and chatted, and confirmed that I could return to the spot platform for the last show. The Historical masquerade started a little late, but not horribly late. I shot around 700 frames.

There was an "incident" on Sunday night that I'm not going to go into. It was, at the time, rather low-profile if incendiary. It's been referred to the proper folks for action. Do not ask about or comment on it here (this is your only warning). There were also drunk obnoxious mundanes (and I use that term intentionally) at the bar; one threw a drink on the bartender and they were ejected from the hotel.

Around midnight we went to the tech party. The crew was taking a well-deserved drink after making it through so many shows.

Monday we were thinking of going to the Smithsonian, but we decided to sleep in and went to the National Aquarium in Baltimore (inner harbor) instead. We packed a bit when we got back, and went down the Ridgley room for the dead dog party. I sorted pics and ran a slide show of some of the best while we sat around and chatted.

Tuesday we moved out, headed to the airport, and flew back. It was not a good day to fly; we had turbulence for most of the flight from Baltimore to Vegas. I spent a lot of time cropping photos. Vegas to SJ was much better. Got in at a reasonable hour.

So in the end?

The hotel was quirky and charming, perfectly sized for the event.

Timonium wasn't thrilling, but it would have been better if not for the rain (which made leaving the site for near-by restaurants inconvenient).

The new experiments were a qualified success, but still for the most part a success. A few that had to be aborted/modified still came off well. Some were even wildly successful in spite of execution errors.

Kudos to Technofandom. They are a well-oiled machine, and made the show directors look very good (I know about how the tech crew makes show directors look good). Big thanks to Larry, Syd and Joel for giving me the space to work during their shows.

Hall costumes were great. The competition entries were, to a one, stunning. Even the trashy ones.

Several of the Milwaukee and New Jersey folks were there, taking notes. They've got a lot of new information to work with.

All in all, a great time.

We're back from Costume-Con. I did not live-tweet as I planned to, but did post a little.

We had a good time. I shot a lot of pics. Report and photos to follow.

Why you not at Costume-Con in Baltimore?

Spread the word! On August 2, Tweet like William S. Burroughs!

So who was this Burroughs guy anyway?

Well, it depends on your perspective. Burroughs was a junky, hopped up on just about every opiate he could find on a regular basis. Burroughs was an unstable and irresponsible deadbeat, living off a trust set up by his parents (who, while well-to-do weren't fabulously wealthy). Burroughs was an on-again, off-again exile, fleeing legal problems whenever they cropped up. Burroughs was an experimental writer, a beat writer, a man with an undeniably strange flair for the English language.

But what does this have to do with Twitter?

Were Burroughs still alive, he would have taken to Twitter like a fish to water. The flowing stream of words, all mixed up, would have totally enthralled him. The 140 character limit would just be another playground to experiment int. The strangeness of tweet-language, with its compressed words and hashtags would embrace him.

OK, so how do I Tweet like Burroughs?

Well, you could go all method (or in this case methadone). Get so high that you start streaming nonsense into your tweets. Or go into rehab and tweet. Not that I can really recommend this option...

You could take the lazy option and tweet about Salt Chunk Mary, mugwumps, purple-assed baboons, Interzone and sewer commissioners. Of course you would have to read some Burroughs to figure out how to do it, so it might not be that lazy.

You could take the literary analysis option. Take a bunch of your old tweets, or a bunch of random tweets, cut them up and remix them. Recycling and remixing is classic Burroughs.

You could tweet all the things you never would tweet in public under an alias. Integrate your mother's maiden name. It's a very Burroughs thing to do.

The final thing?

In any case, close your Burroughs tweets with the "#tweetWSB" hashtag. It would be... amusing if this were to become a trending tag for a day.

This one is for marquesate (assuming she forgives me).

The Israeli Defense Force presents... well, you'll just have to see

...with Adobe Senior Systems Engineer Rick Miller (scroll down the page a bit).

At work.

So not all of this is Rick's fault. A lot of it isn't.

So the downside: The class description wasn't that great. It suggested much more Lightroom focus than Photoshop focus. It was also populated by folks with a wide range of skill levels, and a 6-hour class was already stretching things. We spent a lot of time working through things that were difficult to see on the low-ish resolution projector (Adobe software is nothing if not a screen-landscape hog). We spent a lot of time on basics that people had to be led through. I think Rick would have done better with more time or with a more advanced class.

The upside: I came out with some work-related knowledge (alas, the most important parts had more to do with the classroom than the subject of the class). I got two big answers covered. One of them isn't well (if at all, for that matter) documented. It turns out that, in the Library Module of Lightroom, keywording behaves very differently in the Grid and Loupe views. I haven't seen that explained before.

More time would have been good, mostly because there would have been time to show how so many of the neat features in Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw that Rick covered are so much easier and more flexible in Lightroom. If nothing else, this class is a good introduction so people can go buy Kelby Training books and DVDs and have a head start.

So my brain is kind of trashed, but it was worth it.