9/13/99: Never Forget - Moonbase Alpha

Reminder: September 13 marks the anniversary of the Moonbase Alpha disaster, when a nuclear chain reaction knocked the moon out of orbit and into deep space:

Never Forget:

Tags: space 1999, moonbase alpha

Am I Ceiling Cat or Serious Blogger?

The Which Lolcat Are You? Test says I'm Ceiling Cat -- 27% Affectionate, 36% Excitable, 40% Hungry:

You are a master of stealth. They never see you coming. But you always see them coming. HEY-O!

But personally, I think I'm more of a Serious Blogger:

I are serious blogger. This is serious blog.

From an entry I did for the new work blog.

Tags: lolcats, cat macros, ceiling cat, serious blogger, serious blog

Wonkette Editors Are Shameless and Lazy. But We Knew That

I guess I'm the last person to notice, but there's a been high correlation lately between the blog picks that show up in DC Blogs Noted and Wonkette's Metro Section.

In fact, they've been just about identical. (Ah, but pity the poor souls who are featured on DC Blogs, but don't make the Wonk-cut. I just made that up. I'm so clever.)

I'd first noticed this on the 15th -- Wonkette and DC Blogs are just a few tabs apart in my Local folder, and 4 of the 5 featured blogs were the same. I had a moment of deja vu before I figured it out.

On the off chance that it was some sort of baroque, creditless content swapping deal, I'd asked the DC Blogs folks about this -- Pat wrote back that they'd noticed Wonkette was using the same picks, but that they didn't care and that it just drove more eyeballs to the featured blogs. Win-win-win.

It's pretty obvious that Wonkette and others watch the live feed (which is what it's there for), but cribbing from the editorially-chosen selections of DC Blogs Noted, without giving credit, is a cheeseball move.

I know I shouldn't look gift pageviews in the mouth (DC Blogs listed my 9/11 Raisin Bran entry, which was then mentioned in Wonkette, tripling my usual pageviews and validating my heretofore worthless existence), but I hate to see Pat and the rest of the DC Blogs crew not get the credit they deserve for the work that they've done.

Of course, I would hate it more if the Wonkette folks bagged the live feed and picks out of spite.

So, I'll just take my Junior G-Man badge:

Vincent Hanna says: "Well, I am over-fuckin'-whelmed. What do you want for that, a Junior G-Man badge?"

Tags: wonkette, attribution, heat, junior g-man badge

Ceiling River is watching you have sex.

Just a stupid little Serenity joke-graphic that surely someone has thought of by now:

Idea inspired by (that is, stolen from) Ceiling Cat.

Tags: ceiling river, serenity

Tattaglia's a Pimp

For some reason, I've had the phrase "Tattaglia's a pimp" stuck in my head.

I have no idea why, other than it's a line from 'The Godfather.'

So I made this:

Tags: tattaglia's a pimp, the godfather

Altering Reality for the Captain

So my friend The Captain sent me a photo of his and asked if there was anything I could do to clean it up.

Since I'm no great shakes as a photographer, I rely pretty heavily -- more than I should -- on post-processing in Photoshop. And not for cool effects or anything like that -- just basic corrections like color, contrast and levels.

Oh, and red-eye reduction. I hate the red-eye reduction flash setting (it's impossible to take candids using it), so I'd rather fix it afterwards.

I said I'd give it a shot. Here's the original photo, from a Halloween party back in 1998 (they went with a "James Bond and his bitches" theme -- thanks to the Captain for the correction):

Now, even I can see that there are some problem areas that could use a little improvement.

All I usually do is take out the red-eye, then use the auto color/contrast/levels adjustments (following up by hand as needed).

Then, I bring out dark areas and darken light areas with the Shadow/Highlight adjustment (trying not to overdo it).

Finally, I give it a nice 4:3 or 1.5:1 crop and call it a night. Which is basically what I did here:

Like I said, I'm a hack, so nothing with curves, adjustment layers or layer masks or anything else like that. But it was good enough for government work. As they say.

Still, something wasn't quite right. Something that kept the photo from being... perfect.

Oh, I know what it is:

Tags: red-eye reduction, the captain