Janice got up from her chair sometime later and wandered back out to the veranda and looked down into the sooty streets. Screams had become moans and the sounds of fighting below had become the thudding of the crowds on random cars. Janice wasn’t paying attention to that anymore, she was looking up at the sky and seeing the stars. She couldn’t see a single constellation she recognized and as she strained to do so she didn’t notice that she wasn’t alone on the the deck.
“It’s not the sky”
New Desk, originally uploaded by Kevin Wardrop.
I finally have my own desk in the office, not that I really needed one. I’ve been sharing desks with people who were not in the office when I worked at night, this was fine for me. However, when I came into the office last night I found a newly constructed cube with a nice L shaped desk. Sweet! Now I have to deck it out and make it “home”
Incidentally, I have the only cube in the office, the rest of the IT area is “Open Concept” so I feel like I’ve gotten something special here.
You can check out more of my photographs at: Flickr
I’m no rock historian, I know about as much about the Stooges as the next guy, fronted by Wild Jim (Iggy Pop) and infamously awesome, The Stooges backed up one of (if not the most) explosive personalities to come out of Michigan (Fuck the Nuge) . I was not a fan of the Stooges in my youth, preferring the Mall-Ternative sounds of the Housemartins or The Sex Pistols to the “real shit” from American Artists. However, I was turned on to them by my (noticeably un-hip) room mate who made a joke about how I was hopelessly involved with a girl (You wanna be her Dog). He giggled himself stupid over how clever he was and when I didn’t get it he explained the whole Stooges connection. I liked Iggy Pop, but not as much as I did after that; because I really did want to be her Dog.
So, yeah. Dead at 60. Mr. Asheton leaves behind a catalogue of music to inspire generations of musicians and make kids want to bash themselves bloody in the name of Rock and Roll.
Friday:
Some Facebook groups that you may find helpful:
- journalspace
- js refugees (invitation only)
Friday:
From Andrew’s Blog: How to recover most or all of your journalspace posts/images using Google cache
Friday:
Hi there, Slashdotters. My blog has some more information which you may find interesting.
Tuesday:
Journalspace is no more.
DriveSavers called today to inform me that the data was unrecoverable.
Here is what happened: the server which held the journalspace data had two large drives in a RAID configuration. As data is written (such as saving an item to the database), it’s automatically copied to both drives, as a backup mechanism.
The value of such a setup is that if one drive fails, the server keeps running, using the remaining drive. Since the remaining drive has a copy of the data on the other drive, the data is intact. The administrator simply replaces the drive that’s gone bad, and the server is back to operating with two redundant drives.
But that’s not what happened here. There was no hardware failure. Both drives are operating fine; DriveSavers had no problem in making images of the drives. The data was simply gone. Overwritten.
The data server had only one purpose: maintaining the journalspace database. There were no other web sites or processes running on the server, and it would be impossible for a software bug in journalspace to overwrite the drives, sector by sector.
The list of potential causes for this disaster is a short one. It includes a catastrophic failure by the operating system (OS X Server, in case you’re interested), or a deliberate effort. A disgruntled member of the Lagomorphics team sabotaged some key servers several months ago after he was caught stealing from the company; as awful as the thought is, we can’t rule out the possibility of additional sabotage.
But, clearly, we failed to take the steps to prevent this from happening. And for that we are very sorry.
So, after nearly six years, journalspace is no more.
If you haven’t yet, visit Dorrie’s Fun Forum; it’s operated by a long-time journalspace member. If you’re continuing your blog elsewhere, you can post the URL there so people can keep up with you.
We’re considering releasing the journalspace source code to the open source community. We may also sell the journalspace domain and trademarks. Follow us on twitter at twitter.com/jsupgrades for news.
As a somewhat newly-minted overnight admin for a firm that deals almost exclusivley in important information, this story is a reminder about how important it is to keep up to date backups (something that I don’t do on my personal machines as much as I should)
I don’t imagine for a second that my customers would be happy to find out that I was not keeping a non-volatile backup of my important data like these people were, but I don’t know if their customers were even paying for the service, so this may be a non-issue in terms of cash. I didn’t look any deeper to find out.
As for my personal sites, I keep backups off site and on other mediums, but not as often as one might want or expect. In Fact, I’m doing one now just in case.
Rooster Sleeping, originally uploaded by Kevin Wardrop.
Rooster posted an image of himself in repose, I couldn’t resist.
You can check out more of my photographs at: Flickr
M. Night Shyamalan has decided to cast white actors in the main roles of the upcoming motion picture based on the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender. The problem: Avatar featured an Asian world with Asian characters, including Aang, the titular character, and his friends Sokka and Katara.
Some people are pissed, pointing to other instances of whitewashing. There’s a letter writing campaign and a Facebook group.
So now what? I’m tired of reading the LJ drama aroudn all of this; but here’s what I was going to post about this somewhere else:
I dig on the Airbender; it’s clever and funny. It’s not as smart as Phineas and Firb but what is on Saturday mornings? All that said, I don’t get this outrage at all.
Not a bit.
I’m not from North America, I come from a culture that is as old as any other, but I don’t “get” when people (who are predominantly not a member of my cultural group) both co-opt and defend my group. It’s my culture guys, if I want to defend it, let me handle the heavy lifting.
I can’t speak for the billions of Asians, no way, but I can speak for me and let me simply state what the outraged seem to fail to grasp, there is a vital and vibrant Asian film production market, Asians get to churn out all shades of asian movies all the time. If an Asian film maker wants to make a movie that resembles the Airbender story (let’s face it, it’s REALLY generic) with an all Thai cast (for example) then so be it.
In this case a Malay person is at the reigns (for the most part) and has cast some box office candy in the roles. This outrage really smacks of Otaku-Fanism, as if sharing your toy with the unwashed masses will somehow dilute the experience. I’m not grasping how this is Racist at all, it might be a bit desperate or money grubbing, but Racist? Please.
Me, I don’t know if I will pay to see a movie adaption of Avatar, why bother, right? The cartoons are out there for me to watch with the kids if I want. Why waste cash on what is bound to dilute the experience by virtue of not being the source material.
The last movie I saw that really expanded upon and made the source material pop was Trainspotting, so I don’t think any adaption cum money grab is going to shake any trees.
If you are REALLY outraged, vote with your feet and just avoid the damn thing.
I (for one) will be disappointed if they do recast the roles that have already been set; I’d hate to lose a job over my ethnicity, wouldn’t you? That kind of sums it up right there, in some way there are people out there so obsessed with their own ethnicity that it allows them to attempt to victimize others (en-masse) to somehow promote and protect that ethnicity. Imagine if there had already been a full cast of Asians in place and the reverse was now true? A bunch of European fans get together and form groups around demands for Caucasian actors in the roles of the title character and the blind girl (along with most of the people in the snow kingdom) then what?
In the end; the source material stands and the movie will be the movie. If you feel that strongly about the movie’s cast, by all means, feel strongly about it, but why impose your beliefs upon the general public? Avatar isn’t some cultural phenomenon like “Kung-Fu” it’s a somewhat well known Nick cartoon, the general public isn’t down with it, so it doesn’t have a cultural cache to pull from, it’s got a studio, some creative types and a need to make money. If we (as the general public) could have our dreams casts in our favourite movies Pierce Brosnan would have been bond right after Roger Moore and the Next Doctor might have been Joanna Lumley (or Rowan Atkinson) but we don’t get our dreams. Do we?
Fight on you crazy stars, it’s your right to complain about casting choices, but damn if I wish that the racism card wouldn’t be tossed around so quickly, and this is coming from a guy who actually profiles racists on his blog. I know that the last qualifier reads like “I can’t possibly be racist” which is the furthest from the truth, I totally can be racist and catch myself being so. It’s one of those human failings that we should recognise in ourselves.
The whole discussion of “I don’t see people like me on the screen” argument blows me away. Seriously. Outside of imported TV, I don’t see anyone like me on TV either, and when I do see someone like me on North American TV or Movies, they are buffoons (without fail). So What? Should I bitch about it and keep a blog of how offensive it is? OR have I learned one of the big lessons about life that some folks still need to learn, the prevailing culture of North America is a melange of cultures that end up in a stew or milieu that doesn’t actually reflect society instead it distorts society for it’s own entertainment, which the majority seems to like. Case Closed.
As for “I can’t Be Ang if Ang isn’t Asian on screen” what? How did you kill that kid’s imagination? Is it drugs? Seriously, that kid is having trouble seperating themselves from cartoons as fantasy.
Taking a Quick Swipe at an Easy Target
Published by NiteMayr on January 5, 2009I lived in the States for a while, Oregon to be precise. State control of the Education Budget would be a disaster there; as the people would underfund the school system to death, then blame the schools for failing to educate their kids. I overheard dozens of Walmart Butter Trolls talking about vetoing school budget increases (needed to offset cuts imposed by NCLB) because the schools were doing a poor job of educating their kids. Of course! The answer is obvious, force the schools to cut budgets for education, that’ll make them teach HARDER to survive!
I wonder if the education System in Oregon has been producing these dunderheads forever or only since the electorate got to vote on budgets?
People will vote down any tax “increase” simple as that.
Good Old Ron Paul was like Tax Panecea for some folks, stupid folks.