An imaginary place in a reactionary time
The Sun is reporting the preordained demise of the current version of Doctor Who in 2008.
The BBC says it ain’t so. But they’re not saying it loudly, nor with their own mouths.
I dunno. I’d like to actually see more of the current series before it vanishes, if it vanishes–it is the Sun doing the reporting after all.
(And thanks to David Blum for the pointer.)
The Maximum Fun totally pomo post post irony The Sound of Young America public radio show has become a new fave podcast. Trip through their archives for interviews ranging from Jackson Publick (Venture Brothers) to Marty Krofft (H.R, Pufenstuff, Donnie and Marie, etc, etc). I hear Krofft wonder aloud how he snuck Lidsville past the networks, your milage may vary. Hodgman and Coulton. More great stuff then clinkers.
And they spit out the Coyle And Sharpe Podcast (more on Coyle and Sharpe here), and the Kasper Hauser Podcast (which includes samples from their Sky Maul book and the best parody/satire of This American Life ever).
Ok, we have a new forum for the last few days that it’s up 
Your regular FFEJWORLD login will work. Feel free to post your upcoming events, complaints, shout outs and what not. Use it or loose it.
Well it was bound to happen. Spend as much time as I do without sleep and your bound to cross the line. I’m now a Zombie. Last clear thing I remember was looking at my cellphone in the Skylark and seeing it was 10:30. Suddenly, I’m surronded by very angry african American males in some alley. Then the cops show up, the guys scatter, I’m explaining to the cops that I’m a photographer looking for things to shoot, being allowed to leave the alley and finding myself in the near downtown area, very close to where I was born. An area I haven’t been in in years. Next thing I know I’m being told I can’t sleep in the park by an Evanston cop. I check my cellphone for the time, and it’s over twenty four hours after I checked it in the Lark. A more thorough check indicates I’ve recieved and made calls since I last looked at the phone. I seem to have lost my shoes and winter coat. I feel like I’ve been beaten with sticks, my right ear is swollen and ringing and I’m hungry. And I’ve lost an entire day. This is like a bad episode of the Twilight Zone: all the blackout without any of the substance abuse(TM). What’s my sign? Paranoia rising! I can see where this is shaping up to be one fun summer.
The vest John got me was delivered yesterday. Like all good nerds, I immediately put it on and failed to remove the tag until 2am. The color has nothing to do with the pinkish image on the website, it’s more of a khaki with darker digital blotches. It’s still kinda ugly, and I’ve gotten a few stares. This thing rocks. It’s quite robust, made of a heavy-ish cotton canvas (8.5 oz. 100% cotton canvas). It’s much better made then the last 2 Campco/Humvee Photo Safari Vests, better made then the four 20+ year old Banana Republic/Campco vests I lost in the eviction, better made then all the other vests I’ve ever owned or tried on (i should point out that I have never tried on or held Jerry Boyle’s Willis and Geiger vest, of which the Campco is a clone–I imagine for what W&G charged before they went under it was built like Fort Knox, but I could be wrong). Some seams are quad stitched. It makes Jeff Mickey’s Doemke look like a piece of kleenex. Ok, so much for first impressions.
First off, it’s vest of pockets, not one where you can add your own pockets or pouchs via a PALS or snap mattrix. It’s pocket layout is similar to the Campco vests, although the layout is flipped. You have 2 clip bellows pockets on the bottom left, one bellows on the bottom right, one smallish zippered flat pocket center left, one similarly sized velcro flap pocket center right, and two open topped patch pockets on top, although the one on the left has a sewn divider to make it a pen holder. The outside back bottom has two elastic gathered drink holder/overflow pockets each rated for one liter bottles and a velcro flaped patch pocket between them. The inside back bottom has 2 pockets. The inside front left has one document pocket. And there’s one hidden pocket, with two openings. The bellows pockets tend to be slightly smaller then the Campco, and it lacks the supersized front center bellows pocket. But the pockets are more robust, the flapped ones have longer flaps, and the small ones are still big enough for your hand to fit in. Where it excels is the pocket placement: the water bottle pockets are perfectly placed for me to actually use, as is the back pocket the back inside bottom pockets are as worthless and unusable (unless you take off the vest) as they are on all other vests). Yes it has the mandatory hand warmer pockets. Then there is the centerpiece: a large interior hidden pocket, which takes up the entire interior of the vest between the lining and the vest front and which is fitted with removable velcro panals for adding their line of pouches or holders or making your own. I plan to use double sided velcro tape to fill the interior with custom holders and cases. If I lost some weight, I could fill the interior pocket with a few days clothing.
It’s missing the two filer pockets behind the large bellows that I use on the Campco for kleenex and odd shaped items. It has a single d-ring in a weird place for carrying your keys, instead of the 2 d-rings and dedicated key keeper. It’s missing one interior doc pocket, and the “hidden” slash wallet pocket. Unlike the Campco, none of the pockets are lined.
Next up is what they left off that I won’t miss. No epaulets (remind me to write a rant on the worthlessness of these things). No filter pocket. It has an open back panal, but no mesh. All of this sames some weight and should make the vest wick moisture better. We shall see
It’s about 3 inches shorter then the Campco, which means it looks better on shorter or normal sized people (the proportions are really good: the Campco always felt like it was designed for a 7 footer, wore like a skirt, and left my arms swimming in the huge snag on everything armholes). It also means little or no pocket bounce when you peddle a bike, and little chance of the vest lifting off your shoulders when you sit down with over sized pockets.
It’s got a velcro closed badge/radio holder that I’m experimenting with holding my sunglasses. Then there’s this wonderful sewn loop just below the back of the neck. That’s where the bike light is going 
Inside the a main bellows pocket is a sewn in strip of divided elastic for retaining/positioning odd shaped or cylindrical items. And there are two belt loops built inside the vest so you can use the vest as suspenders to hold up your belt and the pants attached to it ofcourse. Great idea, but i wish you could adjust this to account for different waist heights (maybe you can, I haven’t spent all that much time with the vest off since i got it).
15 pockets. Built like a tank. Great layout, again this is the first vest I’ve tried that I could get to the back pocket without dislocating my arm. 2 liters worth of drink pockets. A cavernous modular interior pocket. Ugly color. Great vest. I’ll post a follow up later this week, and some pictures when I get a hold of a camera. Now back to main task of figuring out what to put where. Thanks again, John!
(4:30 this morning a guy approaches the bus shelter wearing the same hat as me and a Campco style vest. I move the bag containing mine, he sits down and looks into the bag. after a while I realize I’m grining like a maniac: despite being 6 feet plus tall, when he sat down the stuff in his pockets caused the vest to lift off his shoulders. It also struck me as funny that two guys with cheap boonie hats, vests o’ pockets, beards, and large shoulder bags should share a bus shelter in the early am…)
In the who cares department, I’ll leave the forum up one more week for your drinking and dancing pleasure. No one seems to be using it.
I’d also like to thank all four of you who answered our survey. I figure since four of you noticed the survey, only four of you are looking at the sidebar. No offense to you four, but I want something more people find useful in that space, otherwise there really isn’t any reason to use a double sidebar. I don’t know what I’ll do there for now, other then remove the PPG news box. Despite everyone’s whining, once they got the keys to the kingdom they didn’t even promote their own shows (PPG members have taken part in at least 5 shows since I quit handling communication).
Ok, I now have a loaner bike. And until last night I had my bike, which was left wheel less by some bozo this winter. If you remember the story, I locked my bike with just the ulock, and it was stripped an hour later. So I’ve become quite religious about using the cable in addition to the ulock specifically to secure the wheels on all bikes I borrow, even if they don’t have quick release wheels (my bike didn’t).
So imagine my surprise last night when I came back to where I stashed both bikes and found another homeless guy straining to steal the front wheel of the loaner bike. The front wheel that was cabled to the ulock. He bolted part way down the street, parked himself on the curb pretending not to stare at me and compulsively scratching his head. The first thing that popped into my head was the old story about the traveler walking in the foods who finds a skinny ragged guy staring at a tree. The traveler asks the raggedy guy why he’s looking at the tree. The raggedy guy responds that he had once walked in the woods and when he got to this very spot he saw a rabbit run headlong into the tree and break it’s neck. So he ate the rabbit. And he settled down to wait for the next rabbit to run into the tree. It would have been funny if it didn’t involve a bike in my care.
I hastily reattached the front wheel on my loaner bike, grabbed my bike and and lit out for the bus shelter, where i set up up shop. First thing I did was properly reattach the front wheel, and repair as best I could the damage he did to the spokes trying to pry the wheel off the cable. Then I noticed he mangled the seat post quick release, so I figured now was as good time as any to strip the rack and ME* basket off of my bike, and swap the non quick release seat post bolt. Things went well for the bolt, but the loaner bike bottom frame is threaded for a non standard screw and there is no upper frame attachment point for the rack other then the now mangled and nonfunctional quick release (and the replacement bolt is too thick for the rack straps). So iI was forced to ream out the lower rack attachment holes, strip parts off of my bike’s brakes for short bolts of proper size for the loaner bike’s lower attachment holes, and kluge up a fitting involving a keyring and a spare cable tie to attach to the upper frame. It’s not stable or secure and I wouldn’t trust it hold anything, it’ s literally a Rigged Jury *.
To add insult to injury, while I was trying to ream out the rack’s lower attachment holes, a van with a utility company’s markings suddenly pulled up, a middle aged white guy jumped out of the back and grabbed my bike and jumped back in the van, which then sped off. Happened faster then it took you to read this sentence. Boom, gone.
All of this against a background of dozens of screaming sirens and madly dashing police, fire trucks, mobile ventilators, field command centers, Salvation Army Donut trucks, unmarked cars and ambulances heading over to Fisk for some kind of catastrophe.
So don’t’ leave your bicycles on the streat over night in pilsen without securing your wheels.
Good or bad, it’s been almost 10 years since the first release.
No release date set. They’re still tweaking it.
Oddly enough, I dont’ like player vs. player games (PVP, be they first person shooters or Real Time Strategy. I have no twitch responses, and hate competing for anything. I loved playing through the missions and scenarios against the AI. I also loved cheating: nothing makes you feel better at the end of a particulary bad week then a few hours torturing Zerg with nukes. But I loves me some Starcraft. I thought the story was compelling enough if not the best, a good step done the road to interactive fiction and your friendly neighborhood Holodeck. And the voice actors verred form suberb to ok. Hell the bilingual opening cinematic alone was worth the price of the game.
Hope this one is worth the wait and runs on OS X. Over all, the new look and new engine looks good, less cartoony then the original release. It sure looks like they’ve went out of their way to build weird flawed new units (for the protoss at least). Oh well.
The cd burner is screwed up on the laptop, the tumors in my breast, neck and cheek, are bigger, my right ear is plugged , I’ve got puss coming out of both eyes and i’m coughing up yellow chunks. Did I mention I haven’t slept in days?
Looks like this year is going to be exactly like 2001.
First off we’d like to thank John T. Unger for his patronage. John stepped forward and copped us the 511 tactical vest
mentioned in an earlier wishlist post. This benefits me, in that I will finally be able to stop living out out of two bags, finally have all my stuff close to hand, and remove a major source of stress from my poor blown out back. This benefits the people who’s floors and couches I sometimes sleep on, in that they get a much faster ffej extraction. And it benefits you, oh gentle readers, in that a fully equiped ffej is a more capable “small mobile intelligence unit,” (to quote Robert Fripp), better able to blog and less apt to leave the blog bag someplace. This should also cut seriously down on the Kierkegardian bandwidth or busfare dilema. This should also get me to finally throw out the hole ridden unpatchable mess, and stop forgetting about the holes and loosing stuff.
Thank You John, for making it easier to be Amerika’s least favorite nomadic technology pundit. So go to John T. Unger’s website, buy a firebowl or flambeau or mosaic. And watch patronage and even trckle down work. Or even better, drop a dime on FFEJWORLD your selves. We’re always looking for a way out of the current crisis.
