Chris.Weekly.org - A Web Space

That felt good. Just a 5 minute line. Took the girls (and Shawna, of course). I’ve got high hopes for this one but I won’t rest easy until it’s really over.

FYI in MA we also are voting on three initiatives, here is my take:

(1) Halving the state income tax: NO
// We need to invest in our infrastructure and schools etc.

(2) Reducing sentencing for possession of small amounts of pot: YES
// Good start, to end the waste and hypocrisy of modern Prohibition.

(3) Ending dog racing: YES
// Racing dogs leads to institutional animal abuse.

I really enjoyed this
great, brief writeup on major civil liberties issues of our modern times.

Pay attention, people!

I have to go out of my way here to plug my all-time favorite magazine, Paste (”Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture”). Every issue comes with a full CD of eclectic but excellent indie music, outstanding writing, cultural insight, reliable reviews of books, film, bands, events and even video games. These guys are neck-deep in the vibrant community of amazing artists who mostly go unnoticed by the increasingly vapid commercial mainstream. I discovered Bon Iver, The National, Beirut and countless other phenomenal artists from this magazine. There’s so much worthless noise in our lives, so finding a strong, clear signal like this is refreshing and affirming. The website is a great companion to the print version too.

I’ve given friends subscriptions and they’ve enjoyed them too. As a “VIP” member I can give away $10 annual subscriptions. Write a comment below, or email me, if you want one and I’ll be glad to oblige.

Congrats Becca (and Jason)!!! I’m excited to be an uncle on the Weekly side for the first time. Can’t wait to meet my nephew, and in the meantime looking forward to photos and details from the proud mom. This is great.

UPDATE: She named my nephew “Samuel Gordon” and he was almost 8 lbs and over 20″ tall. w00t!

UPDATE 2: A photo! Great looking kid!

Samuel Gordon Koering, day one

http://jtaplin.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/cranky-with-the-culture/ is one of my favorite discussion threads on one of my favorite blogs, read it if you haven’t!

For those who might not know this about me, I spent much of my childhood and early adolescence hoping and even preparing, via flight lessons and study, to make a career of military aviation. This was simply for the chance to fly the world’s most amazing machines, rather than out of a desire for military life — far from it (more on that in a bit). But late in high school I was bitterly disappointed when my eyesight started to deteriorate, immediately precluding me from flight school and sending me on a completely different trajectory. In retrospect, I’m very, very glad that’s not the direction my life took — my passion for independent thought and action, and anti-establishment, anti-authority, anti-dogma outlook on life has only deepened with age and there is no way I could serve in any capacity in a Bush/Cheney military under any circumstances other than literal direct home defense… but my love of flight has never waned, and this kind of video will always resonate. To someone who hasn’t spent their formative years dreaming of piloting a supersonic aircraft this video may come across as merely cheesy propoganda… but for me, especially when coupled w/ the old-school poetry, it brought me way, way back. Thanks to Boing Boing and Dailymotion.com for stirring all those old emotions.

I am a long-time supporter of Amnesty International and am posting this to support their campaign to ensure one Troy Davis is not executed without further review of his case. There is no hard evidence against him, and 7 out of 9 witnesses in his case have recanted or changed their story since his trial — there are even indications that one of the remaining two witnesses may in fact be the guilty one. Whatever your feelings on capital punishment, I think we can all agree that no government has the right to execute a citizen without a fair trial, and in this case there is serious doubt about his guilt.

Please join me in taking action and send this link to your politically conscious friends.

The Amnesty USA site has more details and instructions for taking action.

Thanks.

Last weekend my very good old friend Jason and his lovely wife Sarah and their adorable daughter Claire came to visit. Jason has a high-end DSLR and took some photos I really like down by the Plymouth waterfront. This one in particular came out just right. Abi’s the kid equivalent of about 20 feet in the air, and in typical Abi fashion is delighted by it. This is the first pic of the four of us (me, Shawna, Abi and Harper), too bad Layla couldn’t join us this time but I’m glad to have this one. Thanks again Jason for the company and the photos (and the phenomenal single-malt scotch which won’t last much longer).

"Abi's Flying!" she said as we tugged her back to earth once more...

This is an older video but I just got my NAS set up (finally) and now that I have a real media server, I’m starting to collect the videos and other digital artifacts spread over my network’s drives and put them in one place. I may actually serve them from there later but for now I put this up on youtube:

I know I’m biased but I think she’s pretty rhythmic for an 8 month old.

A small team of coworkers and I have been working around the clock (literally) to get a huge release — a project we’ve been working on for over a year — out the door. A few of the late-night email threads have generated a bit of profanity; not the kind directed AT a coworker, but the kind that emphasizes something’s importance or severity. At one point I apologized for using the acronym “WTF” in an email subject line, after the issue had been resolved. But no one had been offended, and a few other folks pointed out that they’d used stronger language (e.g. sans acronym). That conversation in turn caused some jokes and chuckles, and was a good stress-reliever. There was clearly camaraderie at play. So this 37signals blog entry I just now read really resonates.

David writes:

I’m a big fan of swearing. Not in the derogatory, directed-at-you kind of way (“hey, fuck you!”), but as verbal marker to underline key concepts, create emphasis, and express passion. It certainly doesn’t work in every environment nor should it, but there are plenty were it does.

Here’s the full post:
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1214-profanity-works