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SpamAsassin has been of great help to me on the server side, filtering out the 50-80 spam messages I receive per day so they never even touch my inbox; but their “logo,” with the plastic ninja dolls, has always left a little something to be desired, art-wise. (Sorry, Justin! ;)
That has begun to change, however: they’re having a logo contest for the release of the new upcoming SA3.0.0. Here are the current entries, and my logo entry.
What a delightful long weekend. Amy came to DC, and we visited the 2004 Folklife Festival, watched Happy Harry Potter, helped make sandwiches for the homeless after communion at church, got thoroughly drenched in record-setting thunderstorms, browsed the shops at Union Station, watched fireworks on the National Mall, drank pressed apple cider among dispensationalist hippie Christians at the Twelve Tribes’ “Rekindling The Fire” cultural event, hiked around Teddy Roosevelt Island, and got a nice big cat book.
Blessed with love and joy and rest, undeserved yet richly given. God has been good.
Happy 4th! Amy and I braved the threat of rain and thronging crowds on the National Mall to catch DC’s 9:10pm fireworks display, and we were not disappointed. Security was quick and hassle-free, and despite thousands of people, there was plenty of space to sit on the grass near the Vietnam War Memorial and watch the show.
Note the Washington Monument at lower left in the first photo; it’s barely visible through thick clouds of smoke. (Photos taken with a Palm Zire 71.)
Also a Happy “Real” Independence Day to the Philippines, which was granted freedom from Japanese tyranny and American colonial rule on this same day in 1945.
T9 predictive text input scores yet another notable SMS victory. Also see hail and pain, and Cameron Marlow on Freudian T9.
I’ve come to a decision about my photolog. You’ve probably noticed that there is no longer a “BPBP” thumbnail in the sidebar. It’s simply been too much trouble in terms of templating and maintenance to handle two separate weblogs for journaling and photography. So, effective immediately, “BPBP” is no more.
Anyway, I walked home from work a couple of days ago. It was a beautiful day: clear and breezy, birds singing, people playing softball on the National Mall as runners jogged by. I walked by the Capitol and Union Station on my way to the local grocery to get a can of Senate Bean Soup, and snapped a few photos with my Zire 71:
… And yup, that’s how it’ll work from now on. I’ve imported all the photolog data into my main archives, freely intermingled with other entries as part of a single integrated weblog experience. Images have been resized to fit, and links have been corrected. Now the photos will have comments and context, and I don’t have to worry about maintaining two sets of templates. It’s all about consolidation these days. I count Antipixel and Andy Budd among my sources of inspiration for this move.
Oh, and the Senate Bean Soup was excellent.
Have you noticed my sidebar link stream lately? Are you getting the message? Do you know what to do?
IE-users, I don’t hate you, but thus far, Internet Explorer has held back the rest of the web, and the effects of its flaws have snowballed in recent days. There has never been a more opportune time to switch to a web browsing client with better security, more frequently useful updates, closer compliance to web standards, and a non-monopolistic outlook on the web and its users. I know a lot of you are “used to IE,” and that switching takes time and effort. It’ll take a day or two to acclimatize to a new browser, but once you’re done, you’ll be free of many hidden security traps and limp standards support, and it’ll be a brighter, clearer path ahead, for you and for the rest of the web.
(Oh, while you’re at it, you should also dump Outlook Express, delete Windows, and install a stable Linux distro. Or buy a Mac. Simple, right?)
Also see MeFi.
Cassini’s closeup pictures from Saturn Orbit Insertion are coming in: here’s the full story from Spaceflight Now. The craft travels too fast for its cameras to get pretty closeups of the individual particles and fragments of rock, dust, and ice that compose the rings, but the closeups are gorgeous nonetheless, showing regular, wavelike variations in ring density and thickness from gravitational interaction with Saturn’s moons.
The Cassini staff, like the staff on their sister mission, the Mars Exploration Rovers, have been absolutely awesome about releasing raw mission images direct to the public as they arrive from the spacecraft. Probably the easiest way to get at the most recent Cassini imagery without struggling with their search form is to go through the Browse Latest Raw Images page. Right now it’s mostly unprocessed ring closeups.
In the media, corny “Lord of the Rings” references continue to fly fast and loose.
(Also on MeFi.)
Just heard a whoop from my NASA TV stream — scientists and engineers celebrating. Cassini is now in Saturnian orbit! They’ve received the craft’s high gain “phone home” signal to confirm its good health, and by morning we should start seeing the first cool photos. Whoo.
Tonight’s the night: SOI! (Saturn Orbit Insertion) Cassini has just passed through Saturn’s ring plane, and if it survived the crossing, should now be on the start of its SOI burn, a 96-minute engine firing which should slow the craft down enough for it to enter orbit around Saturn. SpaceflightNow has a Cassini SOI timetable in EDT, and a Cassini mission status center with live updates. The Planetary Society has a much more detailed timeline in UTC/PDT.
SOI burn time is the moment of truth for Cassini; this makes or breaks the mission, because if it fails to burn, the craft will be travelling too fast to enter orbit, and will fly past Saturn to be lost in deep space. (It’s not quite as easy as “Standard orbit, Mr. Sulu.”) There’s a time delay of about 80 minutes between here and Saturn, so when it starts sending back telemetry and science data again, we won’t know till the signals get here. Stupid light barrier.
(The image used above is a screenshot from my copy of Celestia, showing Cassini’s position, live, and the view of the planet and its rings. Unfortunately, Celestia for OS X is a bit out of date, so I’m not sure the downloaded Cassini orbit data is correct, and that’s definitely not what the spacecraft looks like. Still, close enough for the view.)
‘Tis truth, Valerie, a list of things I have lost would fill a weblog all by itself. Through the years, I have lost:
As you can see, loose slacks pockets are often the culprit, so I’m usually a lot more careful about what I put in my slacks nowadays.
