I keep wanting to write a long entry about how the problems of the writers engaging with the fans in the current Whoniverse shows compare to problems of fannish engagement in mid-1990s comics, but the recent spoilers from the new Torchwood miniseries have put me off that train of thought, at least until I'm caught up in Torchwood.

As it is, from where I sit (midway through S1 of Torchwoord & Sarah Jane Adventures and S3 of New Who), 75% of the writing and plotting issues I perceive in the shows seem to be related to Russell T Davies' crush on the Doctor and his operating assumption that all of the characters in the universe should share his boner for/romantic fixation on the main character. Based on the spoilers I know, I'm not convinced this understanding of the problems is going to change when I get to the end of his run either.

(WARNING: Any comments may contain spoilers. Read at your own risk.)

This is working out to be a big and interesting (and good) week and month for both of the games I run.

( House of Cards/What Price? related stuff. )

So it's been a bit of a roller coaster, but overall, things are definitely looking up in my online gaming circles.

I was cleaning up playlists on iTunes and realized I hadn't posted this incomplete mix, for a game I was in last summer. It's short but covers several of the big events of the game from my characters' POV.

( Under the cut to preserve your flist. )

There are definitely some events that didn't get covered: a lot of the Snape stuff, which is a shame since I thought the Snape play in Regulation was some of the best stuff in the game; the whole Quent plotline; and the rescue from Mysteries. Like the game itself, the mix was cut short early. But it's as finished as it's going to get, so I'm finally posting it.

I'm not quite sure what I want to do with the story of items missing from the National Archives, but there are at least two campaigns in there: one where the PCs are tracking the thieves down, and the other where they are the thieves--all in the name of saving the world, of course.

I upgraded to 3.5 when the ljlogin folks announced that a new version of ljlogin that works was available. It seems to have eaten all my passwords. While I've gotten an exporter that I'll be using to back them all up the next time I upgrade, I'm wondering whether anyone else who's upgraded has had a similar experience.

We're watching The Living Daylights, the first of the Timothy Dalton Bond movies. It features a Soviet defector who crosses the Iron Curtain using a petroleum pipeline in what in these politically correct times we call a scraper. Bond is assisted by a Soviet woman who distracts the guy watching the control panel, which "lights up like a Christmas tree" when the pig is launched.

I'm pretty sure the control rooms don't look at all like the one in that movie.

In not entirely unrelated news, Corwin is looking badder-assed than usual this week in House of Cards.

Last month we did David Byrne and St Vincent (at least I made St Vincent) but the iPhone releases ate Mamma Mia. This month we're going to try to do some more small-scale things.

( Gig list under the cut to preserve your flist. )

I know there's a bunch of other local stuff that's coming later in the summer that I don't have listed. Steely Dan appears to be sticking to the coasts and the upper midwest for this tour, which means we're probably missing them because the shows I want to see are inconvenient due to other things.

On the other hand, the apparent dissolution of Wednesday night gaming means more local free stuff, which is good.

We're having another power outage here. Everything is offline, and we have no ETA to resolve. And honestly, I'm more worried about the cats in the triple digit heat than I am about the servers.

ETA: Power is back about 2:30 Central, so it was off for about 1/2 hour.

After a lot of research (mostly conducted by mcroft) and experimentation (mostly conducted by me), I've finally managed to solve the iPod problem that's been plaguing me when using my shuffle for ages. I was using it on shuffle and the library was incorrectly attributing plays when I hooked it up to my laptop. Since it was shuffling items off the list based on play date, this was proving to be a significant problem.

The answer, for my future reference, and for anyone else who may be interested or have the same problem, is that the shuffle complains if you use the shuffle feature on the phone, and you need to have it on when you attach it to iTunes. However, there's a trick I didn't know: when you autofill the shuffle and don't have it sorted, it automatically shuffles the songs for you. Since I can't tell what's on the shuffle anyway, I'm satisfied with this compromise.

If you're having the same problem with your shuffle, restore it and then turn off shuffle. That should solve it; at least it did for me.

The amusing thing is that I originally converted the shuffle to this use because the original iPhone I had set the car stereo off, and the 3G that I'm now using doesn't have the same effect on the stereo. It turns out the shuffle is better for me when I'm driving because it's much less distracting, but I'm pretty sure I could use my phone, rendering the whole problem moot.

The new Firefox is not compatible with ljlogin, so you may want to wait to upgrade it until a new version of ljlogin appears if you need that add-on.

Yesterday we upgraded mcroft to the new iPhone (the 3GS), and upgraded me to his iPhone 3G. Even though it was technically my turn to upgrade--my phone was the one with the contract that could be upgraded--he develops and I'm happy enough to have a 3G. The only killer feature in the new phone for me is the better camera; the voice control is cool, but not compelling.

Since mcroft didn't have a protector on his phone, and the form factor is different between the original iPhone and the 3G/3GS, I wanted to get one ASAP. I drop my phone on a semiregular basis because I'm a klutz. I'd seen Gelaskins art covers for phones and laptops some time ago and, on looking around, decided this was what I wanted for my iPhone.

I just bought myself this one and mcroft this one (which, given where he works, is appropriate). We should have them later this week or early next week. Until then, I just have to be careful.

The idea is to pick 15 books that are "memorable" and will always be with you in 15 minutes.

( List is under the cut to protect your flist. )

After eight years, we had to change the GM address for House of Cards. Someone was using it as a return address for spam that was getting to the HOC lists, and it was bouncing enough spam back that we decided to change the address. The old address aliases to the new, but, importantly, doesn't have posting permission to the mailing lists.

At the same time, I moved around a bunch of my own mail accounts (including ginger@whiterose) and accidentally broke my ability to send mail, which I didn't discover until I tried to send House of Cards posts. I did two failboaty things: first, I changed two things at once (bad for debugging) and then I didn't QA my own work until I had something that had to go out (posts).

Bad luser! Bad!

After about two hours of trying settings and getting increasingly frustrated, I moved my settings (preferences) file out of the Eudora directory and started from scratch. Yeah, Eudora's that old. While I was setting up my gmail account, I discovered, or rather relearned, something that led me to solve my own problem. Gmail requires you to use alternate ports for SSL, and when Eudora generates a new account, it uses the SSL settings for the dominant account. Since gmail is now my dominant account, the new sending account I set up had bad SSL settings, and fixing that solved my sending problem.

I'm recording this mostly for my own future needs, in case I find myself in the same fix again. I admit to wondering whether I'll even be using Eudora in a few weeks or months when Snow Leopard comes out. I wonder how well Eudora will continue to work with each minor OS upgrade, never mind major ones. Unfortunately, the new replacement apps aren't up to snuff for my needs yet, so I don't know what I'll do when it fails. Here's hoping they get advanced filtering ASAP!

Meanwhile, my whiterose mail now goes to gmail, so I won't miss any more emails sent to that account, I hope.

Cleaning out my links list here:

Blues on the Green: Free blues every other Wednesday evening.

Austin Symphony Concerts in the Park: Free concerts on Sunday evenings.

Austin Lyric Opera's 2009-2010 season: Looks way better than the Broadway Across America season this year.

Houston Early Music's 2009-2010 season: Not as good as previous years, but a couple of the shows look intriguing. No Baltimore Consort at Christmas.

UT Performing Arts Center's 2009-2010 season: Might make a partial season out of this, which could get us whatever Broadway shows we wanted.

Since it looks like Wednesdays are reopening for us (the gaming group seems to have faded), we may also try to catch some of the Wednesday standing gigs we blew off earlier this year soon.

A few things I did last week while follybard was in town.

( We saw David Byrne. )

( We ate at Feast. )

( We saw St. Vincent. )

We had a lot of fun last week. This week, other than seeing Mamma Mia tomorrow, I think we're mostly going to rest. We need it.

Due to some hinky problems with UPSes, we were down for a few minutes this afternoon and will be down again for part of the evening while we we rearrange our power sources. It should be over later this evening.

Rumors that the problem is a cat may or may not be unfounded.

I've found the first thing that really needs fixing in the iPhone 3.0 software. The password wifi login is badly broken.

I tried to log in to the free (login required) wifi at Bookpeople earlier today. I have a login in the system they use, but it wouldn't let me in, and I couldn't use the "reset your password" link on the login page. I ended up searching gmail to see where my login was and resetting my password on Edge so I knew I had the right password. Figuring out what I needed to do and doing it took me about 30 minutes.

Then I turned off the iPhone for a few minutes and when I tried to log in again, the login sheet failed and closed before I could type my password! This is an inelegant, ungraceful failure mode, and Apple needs to fix it in the next upgrade to the iPhone OS. I understand that part of the problem is that the small local wifi company certainly hasn't made any changes to their login page to accommodate the new OS with new requirements that came out last week. Still, it was a horrible experience, and the lion's share of the blame is firmly in Apple's camp.

I'm disappointed, and I expected better.

Technically this is a True Schlitterbahn Tale, but close enough.

We were at the Schlitterbahn yesterday enjoying the sun, and the water (and, as we later discovered, the mosquitoes were enjoying us). After riding almost all the long water coasters in the old section of the park, we settled in the hot tub and were enjoying a Shiner when a park employee came by and started filling a toddler-sized dummy with water from the pool.

This is a Bahn Boy, a lifesaving dummy that they use to test the lifeguards. They have pictures of them at the entrance and tell you that they may be testing and you may see them in the pool, but please leave them alone. The guy in charge of testing was very polite, and once he got the thing filled, he put it in the water. It took about 10 minutes to sink to the bottom of the pool.

People couldn't leave it alone. They messed with it, they moved it (mostly kids), and the adults, even once it had been explained to them, had a hard time not watching it. One woman almost had hysterics when she saw it. Every time a new swimmer got in our end of the pool, really a giant hot tub with a bar, we had to calm them down and explain what the dummy was.

It took about 30-45 minutes for the dummy to fill and sink and the new guy who was arriving for shift change to show up. Apparently a pass is spotting the dummy in 30 seconds and 20 seconds is a good pass. This lifeguard spotted the dummy in under five seconds, assisted by good luck in starting on that side of the pool, and received a round of applause for rescuing the baby and getting the creepy dummy out of the water. We stayed for the whole thing because mcroft was a lifeguard in his day and was intrigued by the testing.

I can't see it as anything but a good thing that the Schlitterbahn tests its lifeguards to see if they notice drowning children. Nor do I think it's anything but good that humans react so strongly to what appears to be a child in distress. Still, that was one of the creepiest 30 minutes I've ever spent at the Schlitterbahn.

I don’t care how good you are at programming, finding bugs, whatever. If you’re rude, or if you speak poorly to people who don’t understand your… quirks…. you will wind up being shunted to the side. No one wants to work with someone who makes them feel beat down all the time, or someone who they simply can’t understand, or someone whose reaction to every issue is to start wailing about the end of the world.
-- Catherine Powell, quoted here

Note: this home truth does not just apply to programming.

We're back from our blow-in-blow-out trip to Houston to eat at Feast (short verdict: yummy, despite the squick factor for those who have it) and see David Byrne at Jones Hall (verdict: excellent show and I'm glad we saw it even after ACL). I need to post at length about both of those things.

Also, for Austin karaoke peeps, we will be meeting at Ego's Wednesday night for off-league karaoke with a special out-of-town guest who can actually sing. It will be lots of fun.

Adjudicated according to a set of rules by which the speaker feels he or she can successfully manipulate the listener or the situation to achieve desired outcomes.