Wow, bedtime stories have really changed in the last couple of years.
Category: Entertainment
One of these things is not like the others
I think one of those DVDs might be misplaced…
Update: Two weeks later I was shopping at the same store, and the woman in front of me in the checkout line was buying (among other things) a Pretty Woman DVD. I had to wonder if it was the same box.
Nether Mined
Kiddo talked me into Minecraft. Today we made obsidian from a pool of lava, and gathered enough to make a Nether portal. We got back from the Nether OK, but it sent us to a new portal hundreds of blocks away, in an unexplored cavern…under the ocean.
We spent all afternoon tunneling up (slowly) and over so we could come out on dry land. A few close calls with water, but we made it!
Predictive Frameshift
I’ve been thinking a lot about Robert J. Sawyer’s Quantum Night the last few months. It links human cruelty, psychopathy, and mob behavior to the nature of consciousness, mostly focusing on the main characters but playing out against a global crisis brought on by a rising tide of xenophobia.
More recently, I’ve been thinking about Frameshift. His 1997 novel deals with (among other things) eugenics, Neanderthals, Nazis, and health insurance companies doing everything they can to avoid covering people with pre-existing conditions.
I can’t imagine why that keeps coming to mind….
Coffee-Stain Chic?
I was amused to discover that a Starbucks in Beverly Hills is decorated in coffee-stain chic.
Family Trip to WonderCon 2017
For the first time ever, we attended three days of a comic-con with the whole family. Including cosplay! (Well, one of us did)
WonderCon was back in Anaheim this year, and it felt like a homecoming. The Anaheim Convention Center is just a better fit for the con than LA. The fountain area is a better gathering spot than the LA lobby. The programming rooms are much easier to get to. Plus the food’s better, even before you add the food trucks, and the plaza in front is a better place to put them. (Speaking of food, just about every place had at least a vegetarian option, and there was a whole truck dedicated to falafel.)
Casual Cosplay
Katie broke out her Whitney Frost (Agent Carter Season 2) outfit for a second con. Since it didn’t start until afternoon, and we needed to wait for school to let out, we had the whole morning to do the effects makeup. She had much better results this time around: Lots of people recognized her, and lots of people asked for her photo. She even ran into a couple of Peggy Carters. On Saturday she went with something more low-key: Kara Danvers (aka. Supergirl), complete with a coffee cup labeled “Kira.” That one was more subtle, but when she was standing next to a Supergirl, someone would catch on every time.
Badgered Over HTTPS
I’ve been checking in on redirected & dead links lately, a few minutes here and there, updating, replacing, and removing where appropriate. And I’m happy to see that a lot of sites have moved to HTTPS. News sites, online stores, social networks, personal sites, publishers…. Not everyone, of course, but it’s a lot easier than it used to be. Now more than half of all web traffic is protected from eavesdropping and alteration when used across insecure networks.
The one that made me laugh, though: Badger Badger Badger. Now there’s a flashback!
It’s a silly animation loop that went viral back in 2003. The canonical site is still around…and even they upgraded!