Author: Owen

Grab bag

Char loves candy, so whenever we see candy-themed grafitti she jumps with joy. One might think grafitti wouldn’t cover the candy issue, but in fact we see it a lot. One even commands us to “eat candy.” Don’t mind if I do!

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mmm candy

Sigmund seems to come out only when people aren’t around. So the best time to catch him is in the mornings, when he is usually lounging on the couch. That’s where I found him today. gotcha!

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Lounging on the couch

Rally number two

Char, Henry, and I went to the antiwar rally in Boston on Saturday. The weather was strange — it looked like rain, but never really did. It would start misting suddenly, and then stop. The rally itself was large, 25-50 thousand by various estimates. The speakers weren’t especially high quality. I was hoping for something eloquent and interesting, more than just "impeach bush." There was a group of women with husband’s in Iraq against the war, they were a good group. Otherwise there were too many highschool kids giving speeches.

That’s not to say I regret going. It was good to be there, to show that just because the war has started there are many people who want it stopped. And it was good to hear them reinforce "anti-war does not mean anti-troop."

This Boston Globe article mentions a man who climbed on top of a light pole at the rally. He shouted a bunch of pro-war garbage which I couldn’t hear. I said, "I hope he falls off", and soon enough he fell off the pole. He seemed unhurt.

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This is him

After the rally there was a march, which we didn’t do. I feel a little bad for skipping out on it, but we had done our part. We went and got Chinese food in Chinatown. Yummy and cheap!

So I hear there’s this war on tv?

I took part in the Boston antiwar protests today. The organization was quite clever: first there were walkouts at various campuses around the city, and each college had its own rally. Then they started to walk toward the center of the city and converge, forming a larger protest. From Boston City Hall we marched to Copley Square. The MIT rally was smaller than I would have liked, but it felt legitimate, unlike the protests I remember passing by at school in Madison.

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The MIT protest was already underway as Char and I got there

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Bush Head

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Professor Hugh Gusterson, who gave an excellent speech.

The microphone was very quiet, so sometimes it was hard to hear the speakers. Also the news helicopters overhead kept buzzing closer and closer, making the ambient noise very high.

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A 21st century protest — this woman is recording the speeches onto minidisc.

I saw a guy with a video camera attached to a laptop. I saw lots of cell phones everywhere. I didn’t get a shot, but often people would hold the phone up to the crowd so the other party could hear. Imagine if the US had more phone-picture infrastructure, MMS, etc? I could see talking to friends across the country, sending eachother photos. I would also like to update my blog from a phone.

I worked some, then headed to government center for round two. I got there just as the marchers reached city hall plaza

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The marchers arrive

A lot of the signs were more extreme than I would have liked: Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity, Fuck Bush, fuck all bastards(?!?), etc… Any news organization is going to have to edit around these stupid signs, making it harder for the protests to get mainstream coverage.

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Satellite uplinks sprout

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The Bush head made the trip

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There were a lot of people

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I don’t know what that line of cops with what look like lightsabers are guarding

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Everywhere we went people watched from the windows like observers of an experiment.

It was much darker marching to Copley, so I didn’t take as many photos.

p.s….

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This photo is very dynamic, but also sort of creepy. I like.

More PVR success

I have now used my mad skillz to use two infrared devices at once. This may seem arbitrary, but what it means is that I no longer have to point the remote directly at the receiver in order to change channels. It now works clear across and into the kitchen with no trouble (except that then the text on the tv becomes hard to read at that distance).

The only functionality still missing is reencoding shows to a format I can watch later or burn to a cd, but I’m fairly sure that will come around. For now the system is at a point that I feel I can recommend it to friends, as long as they keep in mind a couple things:

  • It’s still development software, and it does crash from time to time. recovering from a crash involves typing on a keyboard, but it’s not that bad
  • Channel changing is slow, about 3 or 4 seconds. This doesn’t matter if you’re just watching recorded shows, but sucks if you plan to surf channels.