BeigeJournal

If you want to buy cooler t-shirts, you ought to read Preshrunk, the cool shirt blog. It was there that I discovered this:

The Preshrunk entry says, “But when my girlfriend said that this design from B1 Originals is ‘so adorable that it hurts,’ I put aside the shirt I was going to run in favor of this one. But don’t think I’m running it because she lets me touch her boobs. No sir, I actually think she’s on to something.”

My girlfriend also thinks it’s just adorable. She also lets me touch her boobs. That said, I doubt anyone will let you touch her boobs just because you’re wearing this great shirt. But it can’t hurt. From B1 Originals.

I read Dave Slusher’s insight about David Coursey a while ago, the one in which he says, “he is like a street whore expressing incredulity about and contempt for those who would have sex for fun,” and I finally heard the interview he was referring to a week or two ago. That is a memorable way of describing it. Coursey seems remarkably down on the possibility that people would write or talk (or presumably, sing, paint, photograph, or code) for fun, even though it’s pretty easy to find lots of examples of people doing exactly that. I think though, that he really missed the point of RSS, and that feeds into it.

I think he used the New York Times as an example, saying that, sure, you can get an RSS feed, but why not just go to the web site with your web browser? I agree: for the purpose of just plain reading, an RSS feed from the NY Times, or Boing Boing, or CNN, or any other site that gets updated constantly, is not a really a big added value. If you wake up and wonder what the Times has to say, sure, just go to the web site. I guarantee they will have something up there that wasn’t there yesterday. What the feed is really useful for are the amateurs who only write (or record podcasts…) when they have something to say, which might not be very often. If I have to remember to visit Joe Intermittent Blogger’s site to see if he’s written anything yet this month, eventually I’ll forget about him, but I can keep dozens of very occasional feeds in Bloglines, or in my podcatcher, and every now and then a nugget of goodness will appear from someone who doesn’t say much but who I always want to hear from.

The whore thinks servicing thirty-five guys every night is too much work for anyone to do for fun. The professional radio guy thinks the minimum any one person can do is four hours of morning drive-time-radio every single frickn’ day, and no one would do that just for fun. If you had a broadcast radio transmitter and only turned it on for a half-hour a week at unscheduled times, you would not have any listeners. If you put out a podcast every other week or so, it is entirely possible for people to put your feed in their software and receive your show. There have been four “Live from the Formosa Tea House” podcasts in the history of podcasting so far, but I really like them all. I wouldn’t want to miss any of the occasional “Really Learn Spanish” podcasts. The feeds are in my podcatcher, and when something new is posted, I get it automatically. It’s not some sort of terrible burden on me that happens on an infrequent, irregular basis. You don’t have to put out 12 hours a day every day just to keep people from forgetting about you.

The vision of a bright podcasting future is not a thousand insanely dedicated people each putting out 8 hours a day, it is a million normal (kind-of) people, each putting out what they can.

Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe is back for another season on the Discovery Channel. Really, they could call it Mike Rowe: Poop Expert. If something/someone shits it out, Mike cleans it up. It’s not all poop: there was demolition, which by his standards would be a fun job, but mostly, it’s poop.

The Experimental Aircraft Association’s 2005 Oshkosh fly-in (the “Airventure,” as they call it) for 2005 was last week. My photos are gradually being added to my flickr page. I’ll set up a set for them someday. I have over a thousand digital images and a hundred or so still-undeveloped frames of slide film.

I spent the week camped there in Camp Scholler in what’s now my usual location, south of the West Camp Store. They changed the schedule from the former Tuesday through Monday to Monday through Sunday. I arrived on Sunday morning, a hot but windy day. With a strong wind blowing and a lot of time on my hands, I did a seemingly excessive job of tying down the tent with many tent stakes and lots of string. When the thunderstorms hit Monday night, it didn’t seem excessive at all. There is no such thing as too many tent pegs. The winds at times during the Monday night procession of storms were pretty impressive, and it rained all night. I’ve been learning, the hard way, how to set up a tent to survive rain and wind, and my tent stayed in place and didn’t leak at all. No mosquitoes this year, and no significant rain during the day. I managed the week without blisters or sunburn, either. Also, it seems like the water heating for the showers by the West Camp Store has been improved. The water was never cold, though the pressure does drop during heavy use.

Oshkosh isn’t Oshkosh without the fresh, hot, donuts in the morning (near Aeroshell Square) and lots of soft-serve ice cream. This year you can get waffle cones, root beer floats, and, at least in one place, chocolate soft-serve. New and improved.

Staying the entire week is sort of overkill, but for me it’s a chance to get away from it all and camp in a field and watch airplanes all day, so it’s a nice vacation.

I’m not sure exactly what the organization wanted to achieve with the new Monday-Sunday schedule, but somewhat to my surprise, I like it. I always liked the quiet Sunday night in the mostly-empty campground and a day of watching departures, but Sunday, to a surprising extent, is the new Monday. Saturday night is quiet and private, Sunday is uncrowded, and lots of planes are departing Sunday. It’s a more convenient schedule for me, and I get to enjoy Saturday night and Sunday with my girlfriend, who can only spend the weekend.

Besides the experimental aircraft at the event, Camp Scholler is filled with experimental ground vehicles. Weird carts. Every kind of strange motorized bike or scooter ever manufactured. Junk bicycles. Folding bicycles. Recumbent bicycles. Motor homes, trailers, vans, cars, motorcycles, ATVs. All operated erratically in the dark. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a properly lighted vehicle at night there other than the fully street-legal regular motor vehicles. Absolutely no one on a bicycle or motorized scooter has any lights.

This was a good year for odd and famous air/space craft. The Global Flyer was there on Aeroshell Square, as was Spaceship One and White Knight. Both the Global Flyer and the White Knight and Spaceship One did flybys for us. The Dornier Do-24ATT, a 1930s seaplane that was converted into an amphibian and re-engined with turboprops in the 1980s, was there, and flew with the more conventional trimotors during the airshows. The Honda jet made its first public appearance. There were numerous B-17s. The P-38 Glacier Girl was on display and flew in Heritage Flights with a P-51, an F-4, and an F-16.

Two Eclipse jets flew a showcase flight. The Eclipse tent, the biggest and fanciest around, seems to get bigger and fancier every year. I wonder if that endless music drove the Eclipse people nuts by the end of the week, though.

Rutan, Melvill, Binnie, a bunch of other Scaled Guys, Paul Allen, Sir Richard, and some others spoke to a large crowed about Space Ship One and Virgin Galactic. I have to wonder, when a billionaire comes to Oshkosh, he doesn’t stay in a tent in the far corner of Camp Scholler, right?

Overall, it was another great year.