Category Archives: Administrative

Administrative

Light Blogging

I’m still in Savannah. The wireless doesn’t seem to be working in my room. It connects, but doesn’t provide an actual Internet connection. It was working yesterday, as long as there weren’t too many others sharing, but I haven’t been able to get it all day, even though the signal is strong. I’m posting this from the lobby, where it seems to be better. I’ll be driving back down to Boca tomorrow via Orlando, so probably not much until the evening. It’s still overcast, and there was a thick fog this morning. I took a nice buccaneery picture of the bark in the fog, but I probably won’t upload it until I get home.

Administrative, History

Old And New

3 Comments

Here’s a picture from the balcony of my room overlooking the Savannah River, of a South Korean container ship heading downriver toward the ocean (to the right in this image — the view is toward the northeast), with an old barquentine in the foreground. Well, actually, not so old. It was actually built a couple decades ago, based on concepts from the eighteenth century.

Note that it’s still overcast. Since leaving the Sunshine State a couple days ago, I haven’t seen the sun. I’m not complaining, though. Florida sun has the same depressing effect on me that rain in Seattle has on others. It would be nice to get some nice light for a few shots of the town before we leave, though.

Administrative, History

It’s Alive

Yes, we drove up to Savannah on Saturday, and spent yesterday poking around. The weather’s been ugly (literally — overcast) so I haven’t bothered to take pics, though I may have some later if it clears up. It’s actually a more interesting place than I expected (not that I had low expectations). A lot of interesting history here. I had been unaware that it was where the Georgia colony was established. I was also unaware that it was the major port of departure, and home of the global exchange, for cotton for decades. There are ships moving up and down the river outside my hotel room window as I type, but I’m seeing a lot more containers than cotton bails.

Administrative

Georgia On Our Mind

Other than lots of layovers at Hartsfield, I’ve never spent any time in the state of Georgia. Patricia has some business in Savannah next week, though, so we’re driving up there this weekend to check the place out. It should be interesting to see the antebellum architecture there. Savannah is sort of like Prague — it managed to avoid the ravages of a war that destroyed much else in the region (they surrendered to Sherman as he ended his march to the sea).

I’ll have Internet, in theory, but I also have work (and I’ll be heading off to LA the week after) so blogging may be light.

Administrative, Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

New Link Category

21 Comments

I’ve created a category called “Inadvertent Comic Relief.” It will contain links to sites that are serious, but hilariously and relentlessly stupid. The honor of the first link goes to perennial anti-military-space loon Bruce Gagnon. As an example, here he expresses his frustration that the Obama administration is going to do nothing to prevent those evil Anglospherians from colonizing the moon and terrorizing the moon people:

In Obama’s opening words he talked about the early vision of our “founding fathers”. He intends to remain loyal to the rich white men who dreamed of their own empire — one that would challenge England’s global power. An empire that would push the Native Americans from their land, ravage the Earth for its natural resources, and move overseas to terrorize and colonize people in Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Latin America, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and ultimately the moon in the sky.

End the madness.

[Update a few minutes later]

I’ve also added another of my favorite whacko conspiracy mongers — Elaine Supkis (who also happens to be L-5 Society founder Carolyn Meinel’s sister).

Administrative, Media Criticism, Technology and Society

Comment Spam Question

8 Comments

I’ve noticed a new type of comment spam showing up. It’s a link to a post, that’s aggregated with other links to other posts, which may or may not be related, in a blog that consists of nothing else but links.

Here’s an example. This seems to be a blog that is set up for free as part of a larger blog site (in this case, “localferret.com”), with no restrictions. So, two questions. What is the purpose of such a blog? And is there any harm in allowing it to provide links to my site (probably picked up by a bot that simply watches my feed — I get a lot of Russian spam this way), even though they seem pointless? It does, after all, increase my Google and Technorati (and probably other) rankings. All of them are captured for moderation, but I can’t decide whether to approve them or declare them spam.

Any ideas?

Administrative

Blogroll

18 Comments

As you can see, I’m starting to rebuild (and update) my old blogroll over on the left. It’s going to be a long, painful process, though. Also, the link widget in WordPress seems to just alphabetize both links and link categories, so I can’t get it to present the links in the order desired (does anyone know if there’s a way around this?). If you have a space web site that I didn’t have on the old one, it might be a good time to post it in comments here, where I can collect them for eventual inclusion.