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If you’re a dork like me, you love to read things like this: 15 Classic PC Design Mistakes. Note that while it says “PC,” it means this in the broadest sense; Macs and Apples are included, as are a number of old “legacy” systems. If you like that, you should also check out: the Ten Worst PC Keyboards Of All Time. The modern keyboard has become so universal (aside from minor differences in backspace keys and the like) that we forget how insane some of the early keyboards are. I had forgotten how kludgey my old C64 keyboard was.
Now that digital photography is all the rage[1], I think it’s time to stage an intervention: folks, any printer you can afford is not going to make a nice photo.
I know HP and Epson and Canon have promised you that your printers will make quality prints, but they won’t. They will make “half-decent” prints for a short while, and then things will get clogged and the pictures will be streaky. Even when they’re new, the shots come out grainy, with colors out of a cross-processing nightmare. IT’s fine if you just want a picture of your kids to go in your wallet, but here’s the thing: too many people, myself included, are hanging framed artistic shots that look like seven asses in a speedo.
There’s no reason to put up with this. Sure, you have to wait a while, but places like Shutterfly can produce fantastic, inexpensive prints and mail them straight to your door, and they charge you nothing to store your pictures (unlike Kodak, which is now asking you to cough up for that service). There are even options wherein a local pharmacy or megamart can produce them for you to be picked up later in the day! Walgreens will do it, and also Walmart, although if you’re like me going to Walmart causes me to donate vast sums to whichever political party supports eugenics.
If you’re looking at a photo printer, ignore internet advice or anything you might read in Consumer Reports. The only thing you need to know about photo printers is this: can you afford the one you’re looking at? If so, it’s a piece of crap. The only photo printers worth their salt are the ones purchased by professional printing services, which are thousands of dollars. You do not have thousands of dollars to spare, or you wouldn’t be reading this: you’d be sitting on a beach in Cabo drinking heavily. At least, I sure would.
I’m watching the situation in Iran with absolute awe. I said earlier that I’ve never seen anything like this, and I supposed that’s not true; tearing down the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR are similar, but not even half as well communicated. Even in a country where the government is continually blocking access to websites, preventing people from reporting on the situation, news is getting out. People around the world are setting up proxy servers to enable Iranian bloggers to post pictures and videos, and as has been noted elsewhere, Twitter has finally made it clear what a spectacular application it can be.
Andrew Sullivan, it should be no surprise, has taken the lead on coverage, with links to the Twitterers on the scene, commentary on how the cable news networks have just about ignored the situation, and good snarky comments on how the Neo-Conservative movement appears to be supporting Ahmedinejad. He’s even redone his blog theme in green to show “solidarity,” a strange word to hear from a conservative blogger.
I’ve added a bunch of Iranian folks to my twitter feed and the stories they send out are insane. They’ve made it possible to find things out like Basij thugs firing AK-47s into crowds and university dormitories being assaulted by government troops. There is a downside, of course; the government is opening its own Twitter accounts to disseminate fake information. If you’re interested, look at @StopAhmadi and @change_for_iran, both of which are reportedly very real.
BTW: lest we all forget, this is why we have a Second Amendment. “But this could never happen here,” you say. You keep thinking that.
This video of Iranians chanting on their roofs is simply amazing:
This actually choked me up a little. Never in my life, outside of a sporting venue, have I seen such solidarity among people. If nothing good comes of it that will be a tragedy.
(For ease-of-reading, any speech below attributed to little boys has been translated into adult English, so that you don’t have to read text like “Thaniel, can you klay wif me?”)
Charles, like many kids his age, is remarkably literal. If I have to chastise him for not eating, I will often unthinkingly say things like, “No you may not leave the table; you’ve barely touched your food, Charles.” He usually responds by pressing his hands onto his food and saying “I’m touching it! Can I be excused?” It’s amusing, even when it’s annoying.
On Saturday we had a little early Father’s Day party at my parents, since for various reasons we can’t get together next weekend. My sister brought her brood as well, featuring her son Nathaniel, who is just about 9 months older than Charles, but roughly the same size. Charles is very fond of Nathaniel; I’m not sure that the feeling is entirely mutual. Anyway, Charles has the annoying habit of tackling people that he wants to play with. (This partly my fault, since I allow him to climb all over me when we roughhouse, but I’ll be danged if I can’t wrassle my son as I see fit.) After he’d dragged Nathaniel to the ground a few times, we convinced Charles to stop, or at least to ask first. So later that afternoon, he asked:
“Nathaniel, can I wrestle you?”
Nathaniel replied, “No.”
We complimented Charles for asking permission, and someone suggested that perhaps he might have better luck asking his Daddy. So Charles looked up at me and said,
“Daddy, can I wrestle Nathaniel?”
We found this greatly amusing. Charles likes when other people laugh, even if he doesn’t get the joke, so we got a hearty guffaw out of him as well.
Mixed in with the D&D drips are a couple of guys in suits and ties who actually look out of place.
Is there a woman in this picture weighing in under about two-fitty? The redhead in the back, maybe. Also, is the bride pregnant? She might just be fat, but she’s got her right hand in the standard I’m-pregnant-and-don’t-nobody-forget-it pose, as if she’s saying “The doctor said I was too fat to get pregnant! Screw you, doctor-man!”
There is a man in the picture wearing a matching cyan shirt and puffy hat, and he’s still not the gayest man there; that title goes to the fellow in the tux with the sparkly vest, who I believe to be the father-of-the-fatty, and who needs to have a heart-to-heart talk with his wife, now that the kids are out of the house.
What sort of church would allow this, knowing that this sort of thing makes Baby Jesus cry?
