Holy crap! We just watched the season finale of The Closer more or less in real-time, not wanting to wait for TiVo to spool up. It’s not just a cliff-hanger, it’s a heart-stopper. It amazes me how an ordinary TV cop drama can make viewers care so much… or maybe that’s just good drama, as TNT likes to tout. And good characterization, and good writing, and good plotting, and good direction, and good special effects, and so on.
Dammit, they’d better start polishing up a new Emmy, or three.
I recently took another look for a Second Life IM client. There’s supposed to be something called SLim that’s official, but I bypassed it for something called AjaxLife, which I’d previously tried back when it was a light Web interface that just barely ran on my iPhone. It runs well on a normal computer, though.
Now there’s a much better iPhone interface, which allows the user to log in, IM friends, and chat locally at whatever your default login location is.
You can’t move your AV, so you should be sure you’re somewhere safe and not in the way. But you could theoretically attend a meeting if you planned ahead (and maybe added a courtesy title to explain your immobility).
About the only thing you can’t do that would be useful is send or receive group IMs. Also, you can’t read IMs that were sent to you while you were logged out. They’re still waiting for you when you log in normally, though.
It’s a curiousity; it might come in handy if you’re a landowner and need to contact someone to fix something. Also it’d be stellar for breaking up with a partner as long as they know you can’t be bothered to drop the bomb in (virtual) person. Could come in handy for establishing a cop-drama alibi, too. It works fine for what I might need – satisfying the occasional curiousity about which of my friends are logged in, or checking in with them when traveling without my laptop.
I logged in while on break today, for example; surprising how many non-Europeans were logged in in the middle of a workday.
Screenshots below. Because of course I had to post via iPhone, too.
UPDATE: Added a few links, since the iPhone doesn’t do that well, and fixed the annoying WP missing-brackets bug before publication. So at least now I know Flickr isn’t the culprit. The new version of WP definitely strips brackets if another application is actually sending the post to the server.
Anyway, the creator’s AjaxLife Blog: iPhones post explains that if you log in to http://blog.ajaxlife.net/ via iPhone you are automagically re-directed to a “secure login proxy.” It currently does not work with other cellphone Web browsers.
It amused the hell out of my virtual landlord last night when I IMed him to ask if he could see my message and told him I was logged on via an iPhone. I noted that based on the attachment messages in my local chat screen, it was likely that my AV was physically present in my little priory cell. The local chat screenshot shows something called “ZHAO” and something called “CG Facelight” loaded, some attachments I was wearing at logout.
UPDATE:AJAXLife was de-activated asas reported on Katherine Berry’s blog yesterday. It’s a sad thing, because it was a brilliant idea that was well executed. Frankly, I’ve been using the Metaverse app on the iPhone exclusively, but I’ll never forget the feeling of awe and wonder when I managed to log in to Second Life from my then-new first iPhone at a Panera.
Made it to Steve’s house to watch Stargate: Continuum and now have a Labradoodle at my feet. Polly is a lively girl but at the moment she’s being all good and calm.
Until Steve gets her riled up for “outies,” that is.
p>a href=”http://www.blogula-rasa.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/p-640-480-6c4e0c9d-970b-4392-9c71-edc249ceb748.jpeg”>img src=”http://www.blogula-rasa.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/p-640-480-6c4e0c9d-970b-4392-9c71-edc249ceb748.jpeg” alt=”” width=”225″ height=”300″ class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-364″ />/a>/p>
Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes – NYTimes.com
The NYT brings some interesting stuff to light. This article engendered 1000 comments, and notes that Alaska legislators were so annoyed at Palin’s frequent absences from the state capitol that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah” buttons.
The story on this image: David and I were doing something we rarely do – watching TV more or less “live”, and even more unusually, we were watching a network show and not bothering to zip through the commercials. This one came on for a product called Botox Cosmetic — with the tagline “it’s all about freedom of expression!” We had to pause the TiVo just to laugh. Apparently, the makers are quite proud of their product and address the troubling question of “Will I be able to make facial expressions after using Botox-Cosmetic?”
Yeah, right. Aaaaanyway.
My husband David said “there is something so wrong about a product ad that says “toxin.” I said “I thought botox gave you freedom FROM expressions.” As we looked at each other, we both made the same facial expression… the “I’m so blogging this” expression.
We both dove for a blogging appliance.
Mine got posted first but got mangled in the process. David’s was more polished but lacked the visual impact. You decide.
UPDATE:GRRR! Something about the WordPress 2.6.2 is causing WP to strip all the angle brackets, at least from posts that come in via the “Blog This Photo/Moblog” template from Flickr. And of course, my beloved drop shadows depend on the wrapped divs to make my lame photos all shiny. This behavior is similar to something WP used to do a long time ago – it would transform the angle brackets into character entities.
David thinks there should be a bugfix for this out there somewhere. In the meantime, in order to “moblog” I’ll have to do it direct from the iPhone. And as those posts tend to have unique CSS identifiers on the images, it should be possible to add a little border/white frame styling so the images are not all nekkid. I’d been meaning to get around to that anyway. For now, I have to “fix it in post.”
Ginny
I can has iPhone?
Via: Flickr Title: Botox: Freedom FROM Expressions!/> By:
Originally uploaded: 13 Sep ’08, 8.45pm CDT PST
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TPM notes that Obama’s campaign hit McCain where he lives.. on the “honor and integrity” meme that’s part of his maverick-hero image. This is after his appearance on The View, where Joy Behar told McCain that a lot of his oft-repeated campaign statements are lies. Right to his face. I love Joy.
Today on “The View,” John McCain defended his campaign’s latest ad campaign, which has been debunked repeatedly as both false and sleazy. In running the sleaziest campaign since South Carolina in 2000 and standing by completely debunked lies on national television, it’s clear that John McCain would rather lose his integrity than lose an election.
A TPM commenter noted approvingly that criticizing McCain on the meme will gar-on-tee a response, and that McCain will over-react, thus demonstrating his legendary temper.
Then over on Kos, they have a different quote by a different Obama spokesperson.
Sleazy and Dishonorable
“We will take no lectures from John McCain who is cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern Presidential campaign history. His discredited ads with disgusting lies are running all over the country today. He runs a campaign not worthy of the office he is seeking.”
There again, comparing it to the previous least honorable campaign in modern Presidential campaign history… yes, that whisper campaign in the 2000 election that Rove [click Enter Salon] ran against McCain. Actually, there was the “questions about McCain’s mental health, hot temper, and skin lesions” one first, and then there was the really nasty one about his adopted daughter in South Carolina. McCain certainly seems to have learned from these experiences… at least enough to pick up some of the same personnel that pulled this crap and put them on his payroll.
I guess you can teach the old dog new tricks, but you might not like the ones he decides to learn.
And I’d just like add an imprecatory prayer or two on behalf of good old Karl, who deserves a special place in the Afterlife for some of the other things he’s done.
One Utah » Blog Archive » McCain Caught Lying Again, Today. Yep, it turns out there are no official estimates of the size of the crowds he’s attracting to his rallies. His campaign staff cites fire marshals and Secret Service personnel, but actual fire marshals and Secret Service spokespersons contacted by reporters deny supplying the McCain people with crowd size estimates.
Meanwhile, his staff now insist it’s never been about the size of the crowds, it’s what McCain does with them that counts.
Audience envy. It’s not pretty.
First, NPR did an audio story direct from a pig farm in Virginia. Yes, they put Ruby Red lipstick on a black-and-white pig. It was a piece that left much to the imagination, and perhaps it’s better that way.
Because apparently now it’s a trend: news organizations are falling all over themselves putting lipstick on pigs. Here’s the link to the Chicago Tribune video (yeah, they do video on their website. And they prove, unequivocally, that there’s really no amount of artful makeup techniques or products that can improve the appearance of a porker.
With the possible exception of a particular shade called “Honey Glaze,” that is.
Finally started uploading photos from my very large backlog of photos to Flickr.
Via: Flickr> Title: By:
Originally uploaded: 13 Sep ’08, 1.27pm CDT PST
Washington Memorials: Photos from a morning walk around the memorials in Washington
Oh yes, it’s time to draft the Wild Party (Python Ltd.) candidate…
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