I am not sure how I missed this, oh yes I had better things to think about, but the Joo Joo is dead. After being out for less than a year, it was at "it's end of life". Its makers plan new tablet products.
With the iPad 2, palmPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Blackberry PlayBook, and any number of other tablet computers to be unveiled next year, 2011 looks like it will be the year for the tablet computer.
During dinner my son mentioned that he felt that online dating sites are lame. I am not quite sure how we got to it, but we started talking about zombie movies. Then it hit me, we need a dating site for zombies! Well, one for people like to dress up as zombies! Why limit it to one form of undead, let’s include vampires, werewolves and other creatures of the damned.
I went looking and found Zombie Harmony, but it is really an ad for a free dating service. Are there any other sites for people who want to date people who dress up like the undead? If not, does anyone want to start one?
It took watching half of Ali, all of SnL and most of Midway, but I painted all of the red panels of the second set of Deisho ships. Hopefully, a few more hours of detailing and they will be complete.
Last weekend I prep'd and primed a whole bunch of star ships from Ravenstar's Cold Navy line in a medium gray. I finally got the chance to paint the base coat on a set of six Deisho ships to complement the nine other ships I had painted.
Unfortunately, it had been about half a year since I painted, and the base color, a Floquil dark gray, proved to be darker than the previous attempt and I must have put the color on too thick. The new ships came out in a far darker and more green than the previous try. I compensated by making a wash with water and the Floquil concrete, which lightened the base color but, as expected, left more of the concrete color in crevasses. I solved that problem by painting the crevasses with a dark gray wash.
The effect will be nice once I detail the ships, but I didn't get the base color to match well enough. Hopefully, when I apply the base coat to the third group, it will look more like the first group and not the group I am working on now.
Dave Policar cited this post which I rather like and thought I would repost as well:
Today, as usual, $name_radacted got up and dressed herself in a frilly
purple dress, a delicate purple knitted sweater, and blue fleece pants
with hearts on them. Then she came downstairs and did gymnastics for a
while and then we went to daycare and tried to do chin-ups on the adult
tables. I love that. You love it. Everyone loves it. Later in life she
will face unfairness and they will tell her she can't do the rings in
gymnastics and she'll learn that women's hockey is different and that
women's uniforms are skimpy and she'll watch Olympic volleyball players
sliding across the sand in bikinis, but right now she is in a perfect
halcyon moment of freedom and joy.Here is how it is for boys.
Boys are policed for dress and behavior at two, three years old. I left
a local parent's email list because people kept writing in for advice
on how to stop their three-year-old sons from wearing dresses. It was
couched in this vile language of "I worry about him at school" but
there was not even a breath of "how can I help my son be okay at
school" or "how can I support my son's choices even if school doesn't
allow it." No. It was all "how can I make him stop." In other words:
"Help me enforce the repression I assume will come from his classmates.
Help it come from me."Let me be blunt: you must never do this.
Never. Parenting styles are different and families are different and
children are different but on this point there can be no negotiation:
you must never do this. You must never do it to your own children, to
your friends's children, to children at the park. You must never
sympathize with other parents who do it. It should be melodrama and
hysteria to say this kills children but we know, right now, that
it's not.I know it's not easy. I know it's ingrained. I know
it's uncomfortable. I know it's habit. I know other people judge. We
can talk about how and when and practice and flinching away from
conflict. Those are fine. But we are adults. It is hideous and insane
and unbearable that the stakes are this high, but we do not let
children pay our debts just because we can't believe anyone agreed to
those terms. Our embarassment is not more important than a child's
heart.
The comments are pretty interesting, but then that is what I expect of people posting on Dave's blog.
Still, the post above reminded me of one of my favorite XKCD cartoons:
From Open Media Boston: A documentary film on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict is touring campuses with message of nonviolence. You can find the screenings here.
I really cannot say it better than Paul Krugman in this case:
A great piece about Wall Street rage
by Max Abelson. Basically, they feel underappreciated [sic]. How dare Obama
talk about fat cats, or suggest that runaway finance had something to do
with the mess we’re in?Bankers are offended. They speak of betrayal. Feelings have been hurt.
Did our nation’s elite always consist of such spoiled brats? I don’t
think so. We’re in the new Gilded Age — but while the old robber barons
said “The public be damned”, the new ones say “Ma! He’s looking at me
funny!”And these are the Masters Of The Universe.
I am planning to start a gaming space in the basement (if my son doesn't beat me to it), which will allow me to setup a table on which I can run By Will Alone games. More opportunities to test the rules should hopefully lead to me finishing the By Will Alone rules by the end of the year.
If you are in the Boston, Massachusetts area, and want to help me play test the rules, just call or txt me at: (617) 863-0385