background-repeat

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Add to the list of CSS syntax bits I never knew about because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the documentation: the background-repeat property. I knew about the repeat and no-repeat values, but repeat-x and repeat-y are new to me, and should be quite useful for making Faux Columns and other image-backgrounded layouts without needing ridiculuously wide background images.

“Blood, I’m Afraid.”

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The Slacktivist has some excellent running commentary on Left Behind and its implications for Christianity and faith with its pulp treatment of eschatology, doctrine, and fiction. It’s not just bad writing or rapture-obsessed dispensational premillenialism that’s the issue here: there’s something wrong with LaHaye and Jenkins’ characters, the manner in which they conduct themselves, the manner in which the fictional world behaves around them, which betrays a worldview which is, at best, barely Christian. Of special note: mention of Captain Findiesen (that notorious American Airlines pilot who used the cabin PA to point out “crazy” Christians, and the only reporter on board the plane who got the story right); “don’t look in first class”; “his fully loaded 747 on autopilot”; miracles, exploding warheads, Russia, Ethiopia, and implausibility.

Glorious Appearing is out, and you can read the first chapter. Better hurry, before the sequel and the prequel come out. Myself, I’ll stick to my copy of Right Behind.

On Unitarian Ground

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Saturday night, Amy and I watched La Fenice play early baroque music — that’s the best kind of music — at Baltimore First Unitarian. Wonderful polyphonies from Monteverdi, Rossi, and others, all played on authentic instruments like the cornetto and the viola da gamba.

Various religious icons and a Last Supper mosaicIt was also our first time inside a Unitarian church. We nosed about a bit during the intermission, noting the multiple icons for various religious traditions — Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Taoism — flanking the Christian cross below a huge “Last Supper” mosaic behind the altar, the humanistic “creeds” on the walls listing the brotherhood of man above the leadership (not Lordship) of Jesus, the rainbow banner hanging from the balcony pipe organ, and the “sanitized” lyrics in the hymnbook — where anything that was too worshipful of Christ, or too brimming with religious conviction, was replaced with something praising peace, fellowship, and a more ambiguous, less offensive Divinity. Unitarian hymnal(For example, this particular hymnal’s version of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” has Stanzas 2 and 3 rewritten. Amy lamented the lack of any mention of Ebenezers. Ironically, the song’s own writer fell in with Unitarians later on in life, though it’s not confirmed that he became one himself.)

Sunday was the historic March for the Right to Kill Children, so I steered clear of The Mall after church and did little domestic things: groceries, laundry, vacuuming, strategizing a new photolog, that sort of thing.

Station Lighting

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One of many globe lamps lining the walls of the Baltimore Penn Station concourse.

Photo taken with a Palm Zire 71.

Meat

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“They’re made out of meat.”

Remember: if we ever meet extraterrestrials, they may turn out to be weirder than anything we carbon-based meat units could ever imagine. I have no idea what kind of aliens are talking here, but I like to think that they’re Blue Hooloovoos.

Speaking of which, John Malkovich will have a role in the upcoming HHGTTG film, as “Humma Kavula.” There’s no such character in the book, though; apparently the late Douglas Adams penned a screenplay which is significantly different from the book in many ways.

Zire Straits

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I’ve had a Palm Zire 71 for over a year now, and it’s been a decent multiple-use handheld. In addition to the standard Palm OS features, it also includes a digital camera and music capability, both of which function acceptably. The camera, though not drop-dead exquisite, produces good enough photos for 0.3MP; while music playback, though quite soft on the default MP3 player, can be ramped up with PTunes or AeroPlayer.

Anyway, after a year with the Zire 71, I noticed that the last batch of photos — the cherry blossoms — was looking rather hazy in places, and a close look at the handheld’s camera revealed the problem: a miniature dust bunny (or perhaps pocket lint) had gotten between the glass window and the camera lens. That’s what was causing the hazy diffusion.

At this point, I’m well past warranty, so PalmOne’s official Zire 71 repairs will set me back at least $125 — which I estimate to be about the resale value of this handheld in its current condition. Another riskier option, but also much more fun, is to take the unit apart and clean it myself: an exciting, no-holds-barred, all-or-nothing gambit.

So what’s a handheld user to do? Get it repaired at exorbitant rates, sell it as “slightly defective” for a dusty camera lens, or disassemble it? (The last option is the most tempting, I must say.) In any case, if I get rid of the Zire 71, I may opt to settle for an older, cheaper handheld for the time being, just for simplicity’s sake. (Well, in truth, to tide me over till a decent smartphone falls within my price range.)

Update: Also posted to AxMe.

CVS Brats

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About 9am this morning: four boys, early teeners, Hispanic-looking, wait outside CVS Dupont Circle, sitting on the rails near the entrance. When you exit the store, one of them will come up to you with a $5 bill and ask you, “Excuse me, sir, can you go back and buy me a patch, I can’t go in there, and I really need it,” then, as you splutter for some kind of meaningful response, his three cohort brats from the sidelines will start laughing — pretty forced, throaty, kiddy cartoony laughs, actually — at your discomfiture. They will keep laughing at you from there even as you walk away in annoyance, and they will try to make sure that their high-pitched, broken-voiced kid laughs carry as far as possible down P St.

Well, I guess it’s a bit more savvy than rocks.

Sniffing out Page 23

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Tracking the Page 23 Meme to its source, starting from where I first saw it:

OKCalvin < Tulipgirl < Thinklings < Jared < Elfin Ethicist < Limey Brit < Woodlief < Collected Miscellany < Caterina < David Chess < Long Story Short Pier < Elkins < Happy Potterer < Sternel (fails to credit, but leaves hint in comments) < Peg Kerr < Kij < Chris < Bob Howe < Silvertide < Sentimental Curmudgeon < Tully Monster’s Fair and Balanced Fossil Record < Paintbrush Sage < Cyn < Seamus D.

Deep into LJ territory, the trail abruptly ends, with Seamus D reattributing the meme back to Tully, who in turn cross-attributes it to BluishOrange, whose trail returns through the A-listers to Seamus D. This trail was also sniffed by CrushingKrisis (Wish I’d seen that earlier, *kick self*). Unfortunately, neither the Google cache nor the Wayback Archive have mirrors of Seamus D’s entry, so the source is lost to the ages.

Update: Or is it? Some LJers have been meme-tracking in plaintext, starting from Andpuff’s list, we can pick up a new trail to: Ranger Rick < Stone Mirror < Artistic Chaos, who points to Cynaguan as having taken the first question in Paigh’s survey post, and changed it to the “23/5” format.

Imagine that. It all started as one of those mundane email surveys posted to someone’s LJ.

(Oh, my results? Well, the nearest “book” to me is The Scarlet Letter, but it’s in Palm DOC format, so there aren’t any “pages” or “lines” in CSpotRun, so I’ll pass on the meme, thanks. ;)

Update 2: Duh, it was done, and researched, and concluded. Even tracking the meme is a meme in itself, I suppose.