Life In The Pacific Northwest
I delight in many things geek, like science fiction, things Star Wars and Star Trek, comics, comicons, anime, technology and science. Seattle is a great place to live with those interests.
Hey Seattle area ComiCon fans, Kobekon is in full swing this weekend. Hosted at Everett Mall, you will be far from the traffic mess that Seattle will be.
You can see all that’s going on right now, as well as the full schedule, on their Facebook page.
One of the great things about Seattle and western Washington is the number of these geek-culture events hosted locally. You can explore Seattle’s geek culture more here.
Heading to KobeKon? Let me know how it went.
And this t-shirt looks pretty awesome. Just might to dedicate a smidge of my geek fashion budget to getting one.
Anyone else looking forward to this?
Renton City Comicon: September 15th & 16th
Washington State Toy and Geek Fest: June 30th & July 1stIt’s great to find fun new events to add to my list. I do my best to keep this up-to-date. If you find something, let me know!
Fret not my geeky friends, for Seattle, and the Pacific Northwest are laden with comicon delights.
In Seattle alone, you have:
And there are events in Portland, Everett, Bellevue, Spokane, Ellensburg, Boise…
There are plenty of opportunities, check them out! Here’s my list.
Things are changing all the time. If you come across something that’s not here, let me know and I’ll add.
For years I thought redoing this pivotal lightsaber dual would be fantastic. Of all the technolgoical updates that could’ve been done with the Original Trilogy, this is one I felt would give more weight to the story.
Someone else agrees, and is working on it as we “speak”. I do so hope this isn’t vaporware.
My son managed to turn on Voice Assist on his S6. Don’t do this unless you really mean to. And I recommend spending some time learning about the system before diving in. For me, coming into the middle, it was an exercise of frustration. Fortunately, I figure this stuff out.
The biggest challenge was learning to type within this system. You tap the desired key once, then two more times. So, two traps total. My frustration was getting in through the lock screen. My son does have a great password, which is a pain to enter taps per character. Fyi, that includes “shift” and “done”. Then I was able to “tap” the settings, which I needed to do with two fingers, which has made my life better.
Anyway, glad this mess is done.
So, add in the Lord of the Rings reference and you have a total geek winner for me.
When I first heard the story (not this specific article), I believed that the photos were pulled from her phone. Which is what caught my attention.
Now I’m a bit puzzled. Ok, they posted nude photos of Justin Beiber on Selena Gomez’s Instagram account. Now, was the exploit posting to her account? Were these photos randomly findable ones under a Google images search?
If the hack enabled them access to photos stored on theses celebs phones, this seriously powerful. If this is true, Instagram and its parent Facebook, have a deeper reach into our data than many realize.
Else = a data skimming tool was able to glean passwords. Which is clever and all, but not that remarkable. One that gives remote users full, or at least significant access to a phone’s data? Now that’s something. Otherwise, though this sucks for the victims, is a relatively standard hack. And the dramatic piece is that he victims are, <insert gasp here>, celebrities.
Thinking of heading to Oregon for good viewing of the upcoming eclipse? Well, you’re running behind. Hotels are booked, and traffic is expected to horrible down there. It’s important to note: this kind of traffic would be incredibly hard to predict. It’s far outside normal, so the area infrastructure isn’t set up to handle it. So, no reservations and firmed up plans? You have a serious challenge before you. I never say never, but you best be ready for compromise.
With that, the Washington Department Of Transportation has activated their AM radio network. That’s the yellow signs you see in the freeway, with flashing yellow lights, directing you to turn your radio to 510, or 1610 AM, where you can listen to a mumbling voice (good ol AM distortion). This morning we were directed to expect heavy traffic in Oregon, and to avoid trying to observe the eclipse from your car or stopping on the side of the road. Oh, and turn your headlights on when it’s dark.
I came across a couple articles about the eclipse and how it’s impacting the region:
The first looks at the expected traffic issues for Oregon (including the region’s fires right now). And the second is more good science nerdware. Which delights me but, really, isn’t too nerdy for the general population.
I’ll keep digging around to see what other info I can dig up. There’s got to be some other great science articles being created right now. I’ll keep my eyes peeled, as the adage goes.
A few days ago I stumbled upon this trailer: Kubo and the Two Strings. A stop-motion animated films of epic proportions. Yes, I know that’s a cliche, but I find it far too fitting to not use it.
Anyway, I’m deeply disappointed in myself for not noticing this film before. The trailers, by themselves, are truly beautiful. It has a stellar cast (Matthew McConaughey, Charlize Theron, George Takei, amongst the most luminary), and 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s clearly a film that needs to be seen. Just got to figure out where or how that will work out as I doubt it’s in the theaters any more (was released last year). But Kubo is on Netflix!
So, enjoy the preview below. Let me know what you think. Especially if you’ve seen it (no spoilers, por favor).