Oh, and while surfing YouTube looking at other’s SXSW videos, I found a video of me shot yesterday by the firefox browser people, giving testimonial on the browser from the trade show space. I got a discount on a Firefox T-shirt in exchange. Which just goes to show — I can talk your damn ear off, but if you stick a camera in my face, I have no idea what to say.
I took this video at the frog design party Saturday night of an interesting interactive design project they did.
Stephanie’s dad called her today to tell her that he won a free trip to Europe from some contest on PBS – one that he apparently entered with the intention of giving to us if he won. So I guess we’re going to Europe? Wow. She going to find out some more details.
Somewaterytart at Shakespeare’s Sister tackles the subject of the new DVD/Book “The Secret” that Oprah’s been touting. I’m inclined to agree with much of what she says.
I first heard about the book from my mom, who works for Barnes and Noble, where the book is apparently flying off the shelves, so I resisted blurting out “That sounds nuts!” but that’s pretty much what crossed my mind when I heard it described. Then later Stephanie watched the DVD with some friends. She thought it was over the top, but an interesting exercise in positive-thinking.
I’m in favor of optimism, but as tart points out, there’s also quite a bit of blame that gets thrown at people who don’t come from privileged backgrounds for their less than desirable circumstances, and this book does seem to play into that – it outright says that if something bad happens to you, it’s because you attracted it into your life. That’s quite a case of blaming the victim, there.
And the anti-intellectualism/anti-science is pretty annoying, too:
“”I don’t know how electricity works, do you?” Uh, yes, I do, thanks. That’s what science fair was for.
I’ve been busy getting prepared for the South by Southwest conference, and the closer it gets, the more excited I am. I am hugely lucky that we’re being sent by work – our whole web design team from both Indianapolis and New Jersey is going – which means I don’t have to foot the bill (yay!). Of course I’ll learn a lot that applies to my job, but I’ll also get a lot out of it that applies to my personal hobbies (like this website) as well. For one thing, some of the biggest, most high-profile bloggers will be there, along with the biggest website designers and developers. Also the folks who develop the content management software I use will be there, and I’ll get a chance to talk to them. And the SXSW film and music conferences are going on, too, so there will be lots of creative people converging in a small area.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself because someone said you’re going to die. I got an idea that’s gonna help us both. Now it is dangerous, and there’s a very good chance you will die. But if you don’t die, then we win. I don’t know about you, but things have really sucked for me lately, and I could use a victory. So let’s get one, dude. Let’s get this car started. Let’s look death in the face and say ‘whatever, man.’ Let’s make our own luck.”
– Hurley to Charlie on ‘Lost’
I just watched this week’s episode of Lost. I love that the car they’re trying to start is a Microbus, only with the Dharma logo in place of the VW.
All my life I have been searching for that fabled promised land,
With my sisters and my brothers, we shall walk there hand-in-hand.
Through the trials and tribulations, and the devil’s cruel temptations
I know that we’ll all get there one day!
After years and years of wandering, oh, the kingdom we shall find
and the doors might not be open, but we’ll gather in the line.
And our hearts will swell with pride the day those gates swing open wide
and we take a walk down Main Street, USA!
Oh, that Magic Kingdom in the Sky!
We will all be there together by and by!
We will all drink from the fountain and go riding on Space Mountain
When we reach that Magic Kingdom in the Sky!
Awesome – Shakespeare’s Sister posted YouTube clip of Sesame Street’s Ladybug Picnic, and I had to grab it because it’s one of Stephanie’s and my songs. She put together a great CD for me of all kinds of Sesame Street songs, including some like that this that I hadn’t heard since I was a little kid. So I had this stuck in my head, and couldn’t stop singing it on our trip to Virginia for a car show. And now I have it stuck in my head again…
Georgette Heyer Regency novels are some of my favorite guilty pleasures. I stumbled across Heyer when in junior high – which must have been about 1981 or so – and I was initially fascinated by the fact that several of her books had female characters that disguised themselves as men. At the time there were no gay teen novels like there are now, and cross-dressing female characters were one of my first identifications with my sexual orientation, so I scoured the library for books about tomboys and other gender-role breaking females.
But I kept reading Heyer long after I had read those particular books, because she wrote strong, amusing characters and entertaining plots that paid detailed attention to rules of polite society in upper-class England during the Regency period. I hadn’t yet discovered Jane Austen, but when I did, I recognized the world she lived in, because Heyer was obviously inspired by Austen’s novels, although Heyer’s work is quite a bit more comical.
Georgette Heyer, along with Jane Austen, inspired the whole sub-genre of Regency Romance, but her novels shouldn’t be confused with cheap paperbacks; Heyer did a tremendous amount of research on the Regency period of English history. Most of her novels were written in the 1920s through the 1970s – but their popularity has kept them in print fairly regularly since then, and many have been reprinted recently by modern romance publishers.