Yahoo Buys Tumblr

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So Yahoo acquired Tumblr. This might not bode well, considering what happened to Geocities, or it might bode at least kind of well, considering that Yahoo might have saved Flickr from itself. For what it’s worth, Marissa Mayer has promised “not to screw it up.”

I moved my “tangential hilarity” weblog to Tumblr from Livejournal in 2007, early in an exodus that caught up thousands of teens and fandom communities fleeing LJ’s gradual descent into stagnation following the SUP acquisition. Tumblr offered a fresh new way to publish in “tumblelog” format via a clean and usable interface that made it quick and easy to post, discover, reblog, and host original and found content. The ability to start a blog in minutes, slap a template onto it, and effortlessly populate and share the stream by just pasting links, image and video URLs, quotes, and chat logs — each with its own specialized format — not only removed friction from the blogging process, but further bolstered the web’s naturally postmodern environment as an authorless*, curated remix culture, for better or for worse*.

That whole dialectic of ownership and curation is Yahoo’s to deal with now — along with large volumes of pornography, teenage angst, Homestuck, and poor revenue.

Tumblr’s first employee, Marco Arment (also famous for Instapaper and The Magazine) has reflections on David Karp and the past and future of Tumblr.

Do Tumblr’s Audience Analytics Support its $1.1B Valuation? — by Carson Smith, a coworker when I was at US News & World Report.

* I refer to Barthes’ work on authorial intent in a postmodern context, but remind all bloggers to always be conscientious of attribution.

Recent Reading

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Philippine political dynasties.

Al Gore.

The Great Gatsby.

Millenials.

Angelina Jolie’s mastectomy and the BRCA1 mutation.

Bird watchers.

Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey.

God and psychotherapy.

Paul Miller’s year without the internet.

The Smithsonian Castle’s red stone.

DC immigration activism

Introversion.

Neanderthal and and Denisovan ancestry.

Animal consciousness.

Los Angeles cars and transit.

Scope creep.

Biosphere II.

Mental health crisis.

Car chase suicide.

Changes in how youth consume journalism.

Cartography, geopolitics, and Game of Thrones.

Vietnamese food.

The Battle of Hoth.

Caturday!

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Amelia continues to do daily battle with the plush shark that previously drove her to Cute Overload fame. We originally got the shark at Manila Ocean Park, and it was a great travel pillow, but a much better cat toy.

Amelia with Plush Shark Amelia with Plush Shark
Amelia is fighting with the plush shark again
Amelia kitten with shark

(For some reason Martha doesn’t care as much for the shark, or for any large toys, for that matter. She prefers little rattle-mice.)

Seen at Costco

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Frivolous and surreal products in giant bulk containers at Costco: triumph of capitalism or indicator of materialistic empire in decline? I don’t know. I just want to eat hemp hearts with mandarin orange segments and follow it up with some probiotic and fiber gummies before driving off in a minivan with a fuzzy pink steering wheel cover, wacky foam on my neck for sun protection.

Seen at Costco: Hemp Hearts Seen at Costco: Mandarin Orange Segments Seen at Costco: Probiotic Gummies Seen at Costco: Fiber Gummies Seen at Costco: Coppertone Wacky Foam Nice steering wheel cover

Welcome to Costco. I love you.

We close with the Make-A-Wish bear greeting shoppers.

Make-A-Wish Foundation Bear at Costco

(THE PROBIOTIC THAT SURVIVES)

NASA Social: Antares

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This is Antares, a commercial rocket assembled by Orbital Sciences to deliver the unmanned cargo capsule Cygnus to the International Space Station for NASA:

Antares rocket at Pad 0A

Powered by two liquid fueled Soviet NK-33 engines refurbished by Aerojet and mounted into a Ukrainian-built first stage topped by a US ATK solid-fuel second stage booster, Antares A-ONE, the first test flight, would launch into orbit the Cygnus Mass Simulator to prove to NASA the rocket’s viability for launching payloads to the ISS.

Last week I was one of twenty-five NASASocial participants invited to come see the Antares rocket’s first launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, and given the same access to prelaunch and launch events as members of the media. The trip would include tours of Wallops and the launch pad, press conferences with NASA and Orbital execs, and the launch of the rocket itself. Between events I would stay on nearby Chincoteague Island and sample some of its off-season delights.

It would be my first NASA Social event since Juno in 2011.

Continue reading NASA Social: Antares

Red Shirt at Wallops

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The day before Antares launched, I was hanging around Wallops Visitor Center waiting for news on that day’s scrub, when I noticed one of the museum staff (Susan, the Educational Resources Coordinator) wearing what appeared to be a Space Shuttle Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU, or a spacesuit to put it simply). She had put it on to surprise Matthew, a young boy who frequently came to the visitor center dressed in a shiny spacesuit costume. Now, I was in my classic Starfleet engineering uniform just for the fun of wearing one to launch, and the opportunity for a group shot was too good to pass up.

Astronauts and Starfleet Engineer at Wallops

Between that and the successful launch the next day, I think we totally made that kid’s weekend.

After launch scrub I was still able to get me and my red shirt photographed with the Antares rocket from the Arbuckle Neck viewing site, later that evening.

Goofing off in Starfleet Uniform at Arbuckle Neck Viewing Site

(Also see Susan and Matthew and their spacesuits in the news, minus me.)

Antares A-ONE Launch

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I’ll have more to write about the Antares A-ONE NASASocial event later, but for now, here was my view of the rocket launch itself, recorded from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility press site, 2.1 miles from Pad 0A. I used my NEX3 on a tripod, zoomed out for a wide angle view, with an ECMSST1 microphone with foam cover for wind shielding. Also on Vimeo.

While the video was recording I got a few still shots with my point-and-shoot Powershot, zoomed way in:

Antares Liftoff Antares Liftoff Antares Liftoff

Mostly I tried to watch the launch with my own eyes. What photos and video don’t capture is how overwhelmingly bright the flame was; even in full daylight it shone with an eye-piercing fire, mach diamonds clearly visible in the launch plume. Antares runs on LOX/RP1, which burns mostly clean and doesn’t leave much of a trail like solid rocket boosters; you can see a very faint smoke trail below the rocket being blown to the right by the wind. And since we were just two miles from the pad, the sound was a deep and powerful roar that went right to your chest as well as ears. (Sadly the rocket was too far away for first stage separation to be visible.)

More Antares launch media:

Cherry Blossoms, 2013

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These young cherry trees near our apartment blossomed early, catching the last snow of the winter in late March:

Snowy Cherry Blossoms

We visited the Tidal Basin that weekend to see if the DC blossoms had started, but there were only buds.

Tidal Basin with pre-blossom cherry buds

I returned a week and a half later to find the blossoms at their peak. It was Wednesday evening at sunset.

Cherry Blossoms Cherry Blossoms

We returned again that weekend after church to see the last of the blossoms; already many had lost their petals and green leaves were gradually replacing the pink flowers, but there were still many trees in full bloom.

Cherry Blossoms Cherry Blossoms Cherry Blossoms

Full Cherry Blossom 2013 photoset here, and I have an unbroken collection of cherry blossom photosets going back to 2004.

Boston Marathon Bombing

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Explosions at the Boston Marathon. People killed, including a child; grisly injuries among runners and spectators.

May all affected find aid and comfort, and the bombers be brought to justice.

Update: Speaking of bringing the bombers to justice, a timeline of the hunt for the suspects, and profiles of the Tsarnaev brothers from NYTimes and Boston Globe.