{"id":137,"date":"2009-09-30T09:57:48","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T14:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2009\/09\/30\/090930_random\/"},"modified":"2022-03-14T16:14:55","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T21:14:55","slug":"090930_random","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2009\/09\/30\/090930_random\/","title":{"rendered":"Wandering the Web"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We went to the West Texas Food Bank&#8217;s fundraiser last night, partaking of food from a variety of restaurants (including red curry buffalo from Zucchi&#8217;s), watching (but not participating) in a sometimes listless auction of goods ranging from a rocking chair to a telescope, and listening to the current incarnation of The Lovin&#8217; Spoonful. And as <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jerry_Yester\">Jerry Yester<\/a> crooned the lyrics of <i>Younger Girl<\/i> (<i>&#8220;&#8230;and the younger girl keeps rollin&#8217; &#8216;cross my mind&#8230;&#8221;<\/i>), I couldn&#8217;t help thinking of the unfortunate coincidence of Roman Polanski&#8217;s long-overdue arrest. I doubt that&#8217;s the association the band wanted to create.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway&#8230;.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What do you get when you cross a sculptor with a taxidermist and mix in a bit of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Steampunk\">steampunk<\/a>? Why, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.behance.net\/LisaBlack\/Frame\">Lisa Black<\/a>, of course. Her creations are simultaneously disturbing and fascinating.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1.25em;\">I know that riding a recumbent already puts me squarely in the category of ub\u00ebr-geeky, subcategory human-powered-vehicles, but I&#8217;m pretty sure that I&#8217;m still not willing to rock this:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R1AzailvJB0\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"padding: 1em 30px;\">It&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/gadgetlab\/2009\/09\/bike-helmet-display-for-iphone-shows-heads-up-maps\/\">heads-up navigational display<\/a> designed for use with an iPhone, featuring a little flip-down eyepiece via which your route is projected in real-time\/real-space. I confess to being taken with the concept, but in reality I pretty much never ride in unfamiliar places. Then there&#8217;s the idea of strapping a fragile device costing $600 onto something that&#8217;s designed to banged about with great force.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I haven&#8217;t been on the Google Books website much, but if I was going to commit large chunks of my discretionary time there, most of it would land on the collection of <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=R1cEAAAAMBAJ&amp;source=gbs_all_issues_r&amp;cad=2&amp;atm_aiy=1935#all_issues_anchor\">the entire library of <i>Life Magazine<\/i><\/a> in its weekly incarnation (1935-1972). The ads alone in the old editions are priceless. (But I have to confess that I had no idea that <i>Life<\/i> discontinued weekly publication in 1972. Where <i>do<\/i> the decades go?) (H\/T <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kungfugrippe.com\/post\/200443506\/systems-bauldoff-this-is-beyond-fantastic\">Kung Fu Grippe<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1.25em;\">The publishing world just got a lot scarier, with Sony&#8217;s announcement that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/epicenter\/2009\/09\/sony-opens-up-ebook-platform-to-self-publishers\/\">it&#8217;s opening its e-Book reader to self-published authors<\/a>. That means that I can, theoretically, add&nbsp; &#8220;The Best of the Fire Ant Gazette&#8221; to the mix (if there was a &#8220;best of&#8221; to begin with). Sony says it will vet submissions only for <i>hate speech, plagiarism, improper formatting or public-domain books offered by another other than the legitimate author<\/i>. They say nothing about quality, so I&#8217;m golden.Talk about abusing the Long Tail&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We went to the West Texas Food Bank&#8217;s fundraiser last night, partaking of food from a variety of restaurants (including red curry buffalo from Zucchi&#8217;s), watching (but not participating) in a sometimes listless auction of goods ranging from a rocking chair to a telescope, and listening to the current incarnation of The Lovin&#8217; Spoonful. And&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2009\/09\/30\/090930_random\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Wandering the Web<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thursday","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8789,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions\/8789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}