A Postmodern Desi

We originally looked for names, to start, of Russian explorers. She's a Russian Blue, and the palette of nifty-sounding Russian explorer names didn't always sound right, so I was poking around and came across Novaya Zemlya, which is an Russian arctic archipelago. Arctic is totally a bonus for us.

Reading more about Novaya Zemlya, yeah, I was amused by the "nuclear test area" history of part of the area, but I also then discovered, as a fairly large coincidence, it was part of Arkhangelsk Oblast, one of the 83 federal subjects of Russia. This is interesting because Arkhangelsk Oblast, near Arkhangelsk (the city which is the administrative center of the Oblast), is the closest anyone knows to the origin of the Russian Blue breed, in fact, "Archangel Blue" is another name for "Russian Blue."

We also like "Nova" as a nick.

Franz Josef Land is another part of Arkhangelsk Oblast we're fascinated by, but we're saving "Franz Josef" for any putative male Russian Blue we might have in the future.

(There's coverage in Wikipedia of all the relevant geography.)

ETA: The Novaya Zemlya Effect also sounds very cool.

Kitten! Novaya Zemlya We have a new kitten at home. She is quite frightened yet, but I did manage to get a glimpse of her in her safe place. The name is a long story, but you can call her "Nova" for short.

DADT repeal in the House now has 162 163 co-sponsors and counting.

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network is trying to add 60 more in 60 days. Their instructions and links make it simple to find your Representative, find out their phone number, and find out if they're already a cosponsor.

From there, it's just a call and a sentence or two, suggested wording at the link.

Please pass this along. Thanks!

I had a dream that I was able to walk on my forearms and then roll up gymnastically onto my hands. I was performing this trick absently, for my own amusement, across the (surprisingly clean and smooth) stones of a piazza in Venice, and Justin Timberlake saw me and thought I was awesome.

:(

*

Kirk: I trust there weren’t any problems.
Spock: None worth reporting, Captain.
Kirk: Try me.
Spock: Only such incidents that are bound to occur when humans are involved.
Kirk: Which humans, Mister Spock?
McCoy: He means when humans are involved with Vulcans.
Kirk: Oh.

~ TOS, 3x09, "The Tholian Web"


McCoy: Just once, I’d like to beam down on a planet and say Behold, I am the archangel Gabriel.
Spock: I fail to see the humor in that situation, Doctor.

~ TOS 2x14, "Bread and Circuses"


SPOCK: ... Fascinating. Slavery evolving into an institution with guaranteed medical payments and old-age pensions.
MCCOY: Quite logical, I'd say, Mr. Spock. Just as it's logical that twentieth-century Rome would use television to show its gladiator contests or name a new car the Jupiter Eight.
SPOCK: Doctor, if I were able to show emotion, your new infatuation with that term would begin to annoy me.
MCCOY: What term? Logic? Medical men are trained in logic, Mr. Spock.
SPOCK: Really, Doctor, I had no idea they were trained. Watching you, I assumed it was trial and error.
FLAVIUS: Are they enemies, Captain?
KIRK: I'm not sure they're sure.

~ TOS 2x14, "Bread and Circuses"


Spock: Doctor... you are a sensualist.
McCoy: You bet your pointed ears I am.

~ TOS 1x19, "Arena"

I've switched over the main gallery code (gallery pages and "leaf" (e.g., single-image) pages from CGI/PERL/flat file to PHP/MySQL. There shouldn't be much of a visible difference, but if you see a problem, let me know.

What this *does* mean is that a lot of changes I've been hoping to make in the past to the site are more tractable, or will be.

I do need to write more tools to allow me to more easily hand-edit my data first, but that looks straightforwardly dull, and for now I can get by pretty well with PhpMyAdmin for small changes.

More importantly I should now be able to more easily make incremental changes I'd been sitting on for years: being to better link specific prices to specific prints, reorder galleries more easily, test that an image being in two galleries works fine, provide information on the edition size of each image, perhaps expand the "Read More About This Image" feature to be able to handle links to other sites rather than assuming that the link is to P'blog, and so on.

I also need to remove (or ... make harder to find) anywhere from 25-75% of the images on the site. There's just too much material there, and while all of it is (IMHO) good, some of it is better, editing back some of the merely good is the best way of increasing the average quality of the images that readers actually get around to viewing. Most viewers haven't looked at all four hundred and forty-two, most viewers never will, so it's critical to guide folks to the best images first.

I've been front-paged on Pam's. (Direct link to my post, which I posted here on LJ yesterday or the day before.)

I finally got some photography up on the website, specifically flower photography (it is the biggest body of work, so makes the most sense to start with it...)

I've only done *one year* (2005) and one month from a different year (August 2001, which were the first things I scanned from film after I got access to a film scanner), 16 pieces made the final cut (from 50 I deemed printworthy). I may decide in the morning to lose a few more, but the truly vicious culling will probably wait until, oh, at least a quarter of the rest of my 20 years worth of flower photography is up here.

Yipes.

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The big point of this website underpinning overhaul and data entry madness I’ve been doing this weekend was supposed to be to get my photography up on my fine art site (well, and make it easier for people to buy stuff.)

So far, no photography up, but I have added an entirely unplanned sketchbook section, removed several photoillustrations, and found a whole cache of mixed media work that I had forgotten even existed that just cried out of be added RIGHT NOW.

*blink*

And now I don’t want to do any more data entry, I want to go paint. or draw. Something messy. (And speaking of right now, I’m doing my editing live. So the additions are there to be seen right now. And yes, I know about the bug where it tempts you with a shopping cart link for not-for-sale pieces, and we’ll be fixing that soon.)

Well, it's for real now.
We just got home from committing ourselves to $$ for wedding rings. 3 rings, but we only got to bring home the 2 wedding bands today. I can't show pictures as the engagement ring has to be specially ordered, then we have to drop off the stone for them to mount it. That will be about a week to 2 weeks. They also have to order my wedding band in the right size, so I have to return the one we brought home today when that one comes in. No big deal, since that one doesn't go on my finger until the wedding day.

So sitting on my hands here. Clearly I have too much time on them, so I'll park my ass on them instead.

But I've got to ask: Is it really good form to bring something to stupid_free about a shit storm of drama when you are one of the people who threw fuel on the fire? Seriously? I mean, isn't that, well... STUPID?

Just sayin'.

I'VE LOST MY PACKING LIST.

Heading down to El Dorado park over in Long Beach today. Do some of that gratuitous nature walk stuff, and get my mind off all the bs I've been putting up with. Have I mentioned I hate web design? I really, really do. Should be nice to get out and have some time relaxing with one of the folks I've met up in the last month or so. I need more nature freaks for friends, all these lazy bums I know have no interest in random walks in nature preserves, or other entertaining things.

Sean and I are heading off to SolarFest shortly for a gawk-about and a snack. I full intend to have a severe attack of home improvement lust (wind turbines! solatube lighting! little solar garden cottages -- though solar is actually a no go in our current location, alas.)

And essays like this are part of the reason why (courtesy joedecker:

The words of God do not justify cruelty to women.