収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

Yeah bike definitely needed that second round of cleaning and I do think I like this Effetto wax more than the Rock n Roll.

I mean, this was also after realigning the rear derailleur, which absolutely didn’t hurt anything, and also I absolutely did a better job of cleaning the cartridge the second time than I did the first, even if the first time got out 90% of the dirt and crud. But still.

I guess the best way to put it is that I kept glancing at the gear display thinking I was one gear lower than I actually was. The first time made everything much smoother; after the second cleanup, it basically bought me an entire gear.

Also, the shifting was so smooth and quiet I didn’t even always hear it. I had to check a few times, that’s how smooth and quiet it was.

I did have a little noise on one gear start to show up early in the ride but a little fine tuning at the halfway point sorted it out completely and everything else was fine so that was nice.

sooooooo smoooooooth

Here, have a fall photo from the Sammamish River Trail:

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

So Elon lost his own poll, nice, nice, and a strong majority (57-43) said he should step down as CEO. There was some speculation that this was his intent, because he said at one point earlier he wouldn't be CEO long term, he'd hand it off - but no, he seems mad, and all his alt-right buds like Kim Dotcom have been goosing him with "it was Democrat and Deep State Bots" all day.

And now, also taking a suggestion from some fanboy, he's decided that only paid bluecheck votes - meaning, people who already like him - should get to vote. So the vote is invalid and he wins anyway.

If that sounds awfully familiar to how they want government elections to go, congratulations, you have found the plot.

Also, he's been chatting today with overt white nationalists about how immigration is bad, supporting their viewpoints. Apartheid Clyde gonna Apartheid, clearly.

In short, it's really, really time to leave Twitter.

Meanwhile on Mastodon, the artists have started to show up, and there's been a minor kerfluffle from some of the Mastodon Police bitching at them for promoting their work in their own toots. The cops have been told to fuck off. Some of the art is pretty good, too. Furries are making it over, photographers have already been around but it's definitely picking up. I've never seen a photograph of fireworks like this before.

I haven’t posted a flower picture in a while. I like it when flowering plants grow together like this. Click to enlarge:

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
Bandcamp (full album streaming) | Videos | iTunes | Amazon | CD Baby

I haven’t posted many leaf pictures lately, but I took a couple recently that I liked. Here’s one that really needs to be seen bigger – click on it to go to the large version on Flickr.

Have fun with Halloween!

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
Bandcamp (full album streaming) | Videos | iTunes | Amazon | CD Baby

---

Looking for the Grammy Awards Long List nominee post? Thank you for listening, and for your consideration.

I'm back! First long-range test-flight of the Raptor went well. As did the shows, I got invited a few more places, so did we-as-Leannan-Sidhe - thanks again Newport, Toledo, Glastonbury!

Not so many pictures this time. I'll post a couple later. But I did make friends with a moth.


Hello I Am Moth I Like Your Shoelaces Did You Steal Them From The President?

It was very one-sided. Mostly on Moth's side, to be honest.

Echoed from Crime and the Blog of Evil

PAX Prime tickets went up for sale while I was on the road, and by the time I could stop and add myself to the queue, it was too late. Thanks to Anna, I still managed a couple of days of tickets at face value.

This was the first time I’ve ever been nervous going to a PAX, mostly because of not just last year’s most recent round of crap (and before you ask, other than “I was here first, you fuckers,” here’s why I keep going) but because of the threatened protests by “men’s rights” misogynists.

Thankfully – and typically – they were too disorganised and cowardly to actually do anything in public. I only saw one I could even identify – he wore a “men’s rights” organisation T-shirt with a long name which makes an anti-women acronym; their logo is the venus/woman symbol with a big international NO graphic over it. I have a picture, but I’m not posting it.

But that wasn’t what the show was about; it was instead pretty awesome. I’m really disappointed I chose poorly on Saturday night and missed Abby Howard‘s feminism panel, her tweets made it sound excellent.

The queues weren’t bad this year. From this picture, that sounds like a “lol what” moment, but seriously, they weren’t. For one thing, crowd control second only to Disney. For another, even when long, the whisked right along, it was really impressive.

Welcome to Nerdvana

The big game buzz post-show this year apparently ended up being Gigantic. That surprises me, honestly, because all the buzz I was hearing Saturday night was about Lichdom, which is a lot like “we really like the magical combat and look of Skyrim, let’s turn those up to 90 and drop most of the other stuff.” I played it; if that sounds good to you, then you want this game.

Hadooooooooooooooken!

Evolve’s booth drew a lot of attention, too. Mostly because of the Big Guy here. Paul and I ended up scrappin’ with it ’cause that’s just what happens.

World of Tanks, as always, had a giant-ass tank. I’m pretty sure they bring in a bigger tank every year. Nothing will top the year they brought in an actual tank, but that had to be outside, so I get why they didn’t do that again. Plus there was this bioshock-ish angry bear next to the Gauntlet demo booth that I liked.

I did not know Lenovo had a 27″ Windows tablet! They call it a tabletop, and it’s about the size of one. This is the first Windows Tablet that’s made me go “ooooooh, I do want that, but it’s $1500. Still, that’s a lot cheaper than a “surface,” so maybe in another couple of years it’ll even be doable. I’m not picturing it as a “tablet” of any sort, but damn, as an RPG add? I hung out at the Intel booth playing Risk against the computer for 45 minutes, that’s how cool it was.

I didn’t take a photo, so I’m a bad person and should feel bad. But they had a picture on their website.

Alienware has a new high-end gaming PC that looks spectacular. I mean honestly, this is one gorgeous beast. They say that the atypical shape helps cooling by eliminating dead airflow pockets.

Frankly, I’m not convinced, particularly with the drive bay, and I’m nervous about the GPU bank. There are fans at each corner (or just offset) and I can see what they’re doing, and I’m… they know how to run airflow tests, I’m sure it works well enough. But even given that, the drive bay side smells like Bad Choices to me. And any other cooling options are kind of off the table, because of the shape. I think I want to like it more than I do.

Also, holy crow, I actually won something in a drawing! I enter all the drawings, but of course, so does everyone, so usually I just get a T-shirt or something. Or a cape. Intel did capes two years ago, that was awesome. But this year I won a gaming headset! I may do a review later. You know how I talk about headsets and amp equipment aimed at consumers trying to “help” and being terrible for mixing? Definitely that category. On the other hand, the positioning of sounds in this headset is amazing. I don’t know what they’re doing, but it’s neat.

Lots of cosplay! If I’d had a third day there I’d’ve had more pictures. But I liked Snow White playing Lara Croft, so I had to snap that, and a few others just needed photos even though I was running around so much.

Snow White Plays Lara Croft

Power Rangers!

Game of Thrones – these looked better in person than in photo. Acting!

The Best Ewok

Paul and I went to concerts on Friday night, about which I felt kind of bad later, because I was also going to go to Shubzilla and Death*Star’s big concert block off-site, but I thought that was on Saturday so I didn’t. And then OOPS SAME TIME ;_; but well, that’s how PAX works.

I wasn’t, I admit, into the Triforce Quartet that much – see, most of you people were Nintendo or Playstation people and are all up in the Zelda things, and some of us were SEGA!heads, and chasing rings with hedgehogs, and that’s just how we rolled. Still, they were good. Don’t get me wrong, they performed well and got a standing ovation – it’s just not my thing. But The Doubleclicks were definitely on, and in the last song they got Paul and Storm to join them a song early, and hilarity ensued. Those two groups together really multiply up the funny.

LOOOOOOOT. I don’t have the assortment of T-shirts or the giant balloon Gauntlet spiked hammer when I took this photo, I don’t know what was wrong with me. But HEADSET! and SHOT GLASSES! One of which I didn’t even have to pay for!

I also ran into some people I’d love to talk about and made some early possible arrangements for some other things I’d love to talk about that I can’t talk about, which is why not talking about them is all down at this end of the post because I can’t talk about them.

But if any of it comes through, it’d be awesome. And it’s definitively related to music stuff I do. And it could be pretty epic. And that’s all I can say right now.

I hate secrets. I’m so bad at them. But if they happen, these will be worth it. :D

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
Bandcamp (full album streaming) | Videos | iTunes | Amazon | CD Baby

Some photos from Clallam Bay! More are on my Flickr photostream, as usual. Plus, they’re larger, which is really good with some of the panoramas.

Come enjoy a ferry ride! Kingston-Edmonds, of course. I like Kingston quite a bit. Edmonds, too. The downtown is a lot like White Rock, even if I can’t entirely say why. Reminds me of a BC town. Which is fitting, given that it used to have a Vancouver ferry.

Small towns on the peninsula are still kind of a lot of 1959. I present you with The Bay TV Phones Motel. I’m told it used to be the Bay Free HBO Motel back in the 80s; I like the current name better, it flows nicely. But honestly, I edited out reflections of other modern cars, but otherwise? Welcome to 1959:

Fireworks was the first order of the show. I didn’t take pics of those, but here’s Shanti of Leannan Sidhe and … Linden, I think? From Project Wonderful, hanging out with pretty much the rest of town for three hours of legal and not-entirely-legal fireworks.

I didn’t take any photos during the actual convention, mostly because I was too busy! But I did get in a nice beach hike, so you’ll get photos of these. There are several more good ones on my Flickr photostream, as before, but here are some highlights.

Let’s Go Beachcombing!

Acres of Not Clams
Shanti told me what they are called but I keep forgetting. I’m bad at nouns.

Panorama of Not Clams

I’ve tried to get out to the site of the old lighthouse every year, but I’ve never made it. To get there without at least wading, you have to be there at very low tide. This year, the timing worked out perfectly.

The Abandoned Approach
(Again, lots more ruins photography on Flickr.)

Standing on the Foundation Pilings

Tide had already started to turn, and there’s no way back without swimming once tide rises much, so we headed back right away. As the sun started to set, the clouds moved in just so to make the sunset look like a binary star system.

All those pointy bits that look like rain are the not-clams you can see in the acres of not clams photos above. Tide wasn’t taking its time.

We found a bunch of really cool random things on the beach. I only posted pictures of a couple (some didn’t come out). While I didn’t keep it – I don’t tend to be much for keeping objects – I loved the deep blue of this shell:

Oh So Blue

Next year’s Comicon has already been announced, with an official convention hotel and everything. Looks like people want to make this thing succeed. I hope it works out, it’s a lovely place to spend a hot summer weekend – even if the Clallam Bay Inn no longer serves the most excellent waffle fries. (They went to wedges! They’re still good, but not that kind of good.) But I still got my cooked-fish fix, the bay is still gorgeous, and the fireworks are still insane. The important things endure. ^_^

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
Bandcamp (full album streaming) | Videos | iTunes | Amazon | CD Baby

I’ll post about GAMCON tomorrow – it was a lot of fun, thanks for everyone who came! – but today, it’s the photos from the trip back from Greenland. Large versions on Flickr, as usual.

If we did a live album of these shows, or, for that matter, of all this whole tour? This would be the album cover. Totally the cover.

Taking the High Road

Yep, it’s a desert – all these were taken from the car on the way north and west.

Westward, Ho!

I took a lot of mountain pictures, but they were all from windows and only a couple came out. But they aren’t bad:

Desert Range

Desert Range 2

Getting a decent lens flare on a phone camera isn’t easy! I didn’t even do it on purpose, it just worked out that way. I thought it was worth posting for that alone:

Arc of a Driver

I wasn’t sure whether to I took a few of these as the sun set; the colours at the edges were really interesting:

Approaching Wormhole – Confirm Destination Vector

We saw a lot of these little white plumes along fences – it wasn’t smoke, it was just some sort of vapour rise at sunset. But that’s not poetic, so I called it…

Ghosts Dancing

Yes, I was taking panoramas from a moving car. The amazing thing is that some of them actually worked!

High Tension in the Distance

I brought up the lows a bit in this shot, because it was too dark, but it’s still just dark enough to call it…

The Dark of Sunset

The sharp edges of the mountains here are so stark. I imagine trying to climb them.

The Range and Road Go On and On

But then the rendering engine decided it couldn’t keep up. Clearly I need to upgrade reality’s graphics card. Or maybe I just need a new driver. I haven’t had time to be sure.

Texture Glitch

These came out really well for being shot through a bug-splattered windshield.

Down to the River (1)

Down to the River (2)

And finally, before darkness set too far in to shoot.

Moonrise over the Desert Sunset

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
Bandcamp (full album streaming) | Videos | iTunes | Amazon | CD Baby

I've started another little specialty photo blog over at Tumblr; this one is called Oldphemera, and it's photos I take of old pieces of ephemera that I find. Typically, they're between 40 and 50 years old, but by no means always that young.

It's a companion blog to SEATTLE—July 20, 1971, a limited-time blog wherein I am posting, bit at a time, the newspaper I found being used to wrap an old Japanese-made display doll. If either of these are of interest to you, they have RSS feeds.