(Just fooling around with output from the Safety Sign Builder. Feel free to use it for anything; I uploaded it to Imageshack, so it’s not my bandwidth.)
I Do Not Feel At All Well
Reminder to self: never, ever get the Decaf Iced Mocha at Starbucks 21st and P St NW ever, ever again. Ever. The only thing keeping this heat-induced, over-flavored migraine at bay is the large quantity of acetylsalicylic acid in my veins.
Watch Repair
Just got my old watch — a 14 year old Casio Quartz dive watch I’ve had since high school — fixed and tuned up by a sociable old timepiece artisan in Downtown Washington. Full service: new leather strap, new battery, and a new O-ring, with waterproofing gasket gel, all for cheap. (Well, cheap for DC, anyway.) So if you’re in DC and need a watch fixed, check out the shoe/watch/clock repair shop at 18th and H NW, right across the street from Farragut West Metro, near the World Bank.
Update: For Dupont Circle area people, there’s also a jeweler and watchmaker at 17th and R NW, right by Steam Cafe.
(Photo taken with a Palm Zire 71.)
Never Saw the Sun…
I’ve been trying my hand at some Mars Rover color imagery, pasting pancam images into Photoshop channels and tweaking colors (with cues from some cool BABB advice and Keith Laney’s pancam calibration page) to approximate how the human eye might see the surface of Mars. The first time I tried combining channels from Spirit’s photos of the Columbia Hills, I was startled at how blue the sky turned out. I still can’t hold a candle to Keith Laney’s work on the Spirit and Opportunity pancam images.
(Title reference: Blue Skies.)
Interruptus
Pinoy troops are pulling out, and apparently Angelo de la Cruz is heading home. His family must be so happy; I wish I could say the same for the rest of the Philippines’ overseas workers in the Middle East.
Update: Oh look, he’s not heading home. But do not worry, those honorable, honorable Iraqi “militant” “insurgent” “freedom fighters” can always be trusted to keep their word, right? That’s why we’re obeying them!
- When one yields to blackmailers, they tend to keep coming back for more.
- The Philippines will reap this.
- I worry that the Philippines is about to learn a harsh lesson about paying the Dane-geld. (Actually, I wonder if the Dane-geld analogy is more applicable to the UN Oil for Food scam. And the antiwar folk wanted the UN to handle Iraqi liberation? ;)
- Mollycoddling Milksops of Manila. (Caveat: Malkin. What? Malkin is Filipina?! That’s horrible! ;)
- Nice work, Philippines. We’ll be sure to put you on speed dial right next to France, Spain and Dr. Kevorkian when we need help.
- Wala na talaga yong development aid. (Well we shouldn’t have been sending troops to Iraq with the motive of getting development aid or currying American favor; it’s supposed to be with the altruistic aim of helping to rebuild a broken country. Yup, that was it, wasn’t it? Of course. Riiight.)
- GMA’s decision may be a sign of withdrawal of confidence from the Bush government. (I’d agree if we had begun pullout as soon as it was evident that WMD presence and the Iraq-Al Qaeda link had been debunked, but to do it the way the Philippines did it cannot be interpreted in any way but as a response to terrorist pressure, and the fault for that lies squarely on the terrorists’ and GMA’s shoulders, not Bush’s or America’s.)
- Wages of Capitulation.
- Sipadan.
CVS and CSS
“Welcome to CVS Pharmacy! You can only view our website with a dangerous, buggy, unstable, nonsecure, feature-poor web client with patchy and inconsistent CSS and standards compliance, or with the outdated browser of a former AOL subsidiary with even worse standards support. Sure, we could code for all browsers with web standards and get more visitors and revenue that way, but we’d rather restrict our options with lots of stupid proprietary tag soup, then equivocate about the CSS and security ‘benefits’ in our ‘Upgrade’ Notice. You’ll have to close Safari and Opera and open up something else to get your CVS Extracare card, loser!”
Update: Hmmm, looks like it works in Firefox and Safari now. But still not in Opera.
CVS Pharmacy is not to be confused with CVS, Concurrent Versions System.
Update: Also see Waxy.org on the new Allmusic.com.
From Google to Me
Found via Kottke: Matt asks, “How many links from Google to you?” in what promises to be the next big navigational meme of the moment. Without using search fields, how many clicks does it take to get to your site from the Google home page? It’s 8 clicks for me, via the directory:
Google > More > Directory > Internet > On The Web > Weblogs > Personal > B > Me.
Conduct Among Kidnappers?
But now, a different perspective, and indeed, the perspective I should have considered first and foremost: in all roles in a hostage crisis such as this, what constitutes a proper and godly Christian response? It’s given, of course, that we should all pray for Angelo De la Cruz’s survival and safe return, regardless of how governments and terrorists react. But what about the hostage himself, or an embattled president attempting to deal with conflicting national and international opinion? Is this a proper context for cheek-turning?
It’s said of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, the Italian hostage in Iraq, that just before the terrorists killed him, he struggled defiantly, yelling, “Now, I will show you how an Italian dies!” Brave, proud words, those, but would a bible-believing Christian do well to die in like manner? The prophecied example of Christ is like sheep to a slaughter. Yet at the same time, balance this against the selfless act of rallying countrymen to bravery and denying terrorists a demoralizing propaganda tool. Christians, how should we react in such a circumstance?
Related book to add to the reading list: “AmongIn the Presence of My Enemies,” by Gracia Burnham. (Don’t know how I could have made such an obvious typo. Thanks, Cat.)
Acting Deputy
Who is Deputy Foreign Secretary Ralph Seguis, anyway? He’s all over Filipino and world news now for his obsequious statement to the terrorists, but as of now, a search for his name turns up only this: retraction of an erroneous Filipino fatality report in Kosovo, earlier this year, though as of March, he was “Acting” Foreign Sec, not “Deputy.” Looks like bungled media announcements are not new to this guy, though this older problem can be traced back to UN bungling as well. As can be expected.
(Ironically, I probably would have supported an early pullout were it not for the kidnapping. Iraq is handed over, rebuilding, and addressing its own security concerns; and the Philippines has need of its own humanitarian aid as well. Now, however, an early pullout means bowing to terrorist demands, giving them a platform and emboldening them to more kidnappings and bombings. I’ll let DJB tell the rest, though that entry dates back to just before the government caved.)
Malabo
Confusion. Are we so kalat that we can’t even get obsequious terror appeasement right? On the other hand, this might be a delaying tactic. “As soon as possible” might just be code for “the original deadline and no sooner,” and as this Scotsman report puts it, “the confusion may have been deliberate.” Not a particularly honest ploy, but hey, if it saves De la Cruz while still honoring our Coalition schedule, it’s a good thing, if a bit unctuous.
(Build your Tagalog vocabulary! Malabo: adj. hazy, blurry, unclear, incoherent. Kalat: adj. messy, or n. mess.)
Update: More from Dean Jorge Bocobo on the influence of the Filipino anti-American far-left on media perception, the challenge before President Gloria, the emboldment of terrorist kidnappers, and the threat now facing Filipino workers in the region if we do cave in to terrorist demands.