|
|
| Friday, August 21, 2009 02:16 PM |
| A Phillyist No More |
 by Fëanor |
My farewell post just went live on Phillyist. I'd been thinking about leaving the site for a long time, for reasons many and varied, and a few weeks ago I finally decided to just do it. So I won't be writing for that site anymore. But the good news is, that should leave me more time to write for this site! My hope is that anybody who enjoyed my stuff on Phillyist will come on over and continue enjoying it here. I plan to keep doing something very like Whiz of the Web, so look out for that. In the meantime, thanks for reading! |
|
|
|
|
| Thursday, May 28, 2009 08:21 PM |
| (Last updated on Friday, May 29, 2009 08:34 AM) | | That new feature I was talking about... |
 by Fëanor |
...is now live. It's Thumbs Up! It's a version of the "Like" feature on Facebook and Phillyist. I've integrated it into each entry, the main index, the sidebar, and the advanced search page. Please feel free to give it a thorough workout and let me know if you see any wonky behavior. And of course, put your thumb up for any post you like! Thanks.
UPDATE 1: Btw, I was slightly more professional about this update than I have been with previous site updates. I actually made the code changes to test pages and tested them there before moving them to the live pages. I r serious web developer! (Amusing fact: when I googled "I r serious" just now, one of the first results was a post on my friend Cyn's LiveJournal.)
UPDATE 2: While I was tinkering, I also went in and upgraded some of my old administrator functions so they'd be compatible with Chrome. That's not particularly exciting or meaningful to any of you, but it makes me very happy.
UPDATE 3: I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see all these Thumbs Up appearing on posts already. Thank you! |
|
|
|
|
| Tuesday, May 26, 2009 02:37 PM |
| A Book Review |
 by Fëanor |
One of my favorite things about writing for Phillyist is that I get a lot of cool stuff for free. Free music, free movie screenings, and now, ever since I posted about Quirk Books a while back, free books! Live on Phillyist now is my review of the latest thing they sent me, a big beautiful book called Gig Posters Volume 1: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century. |
|
|
|
|
| Wednesday, April 15, 2009 06:32 AM |
| Dreams and Other Confusing Stories |
| by Fëanor |
Recently I've had some dreams which I found interesting and entertaining, even if also a little disappointing, as their inspiration was so obvious. After reading a story in George R.R. Martin's book Tuf Voyaging which involved characters trapped on a spaceship with a cloned, weaponized Tyrannosaurus Rex, I dreamed that I was trapped in a government facility with poppy's coworker Ed, and that there was a Tyrannosaur wandering the building. Ed and I seemed pretty philosophical about the whole thing, just hanging out at our desks and laughing. Later poppy showed up with an Israeli military expert, who had been sent along to help us by poppy's friend (who, in real life, does actually work with a Jewish birthright organization and has been to Israel numerous times, although I'm not sure she actually knows any Israeli military experts).
Another night, after reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (read my review on Phillyist here!), I dreamed that I was in a house with a large group of other people, a house that every night would be invaded by zombies. We'd fight them off, sleep through most of the day (they never came during the day, so we were safe then), and then we'd drag the corpses out in the afternoon and take them into town, to a large castle where they had to be burned. Often this would take longer than we expected, and we'd have to hurry to get back to our house before nightfall (although why we wanted to get back there I don't know, as obviously it wasn't particularly safe!). At first I had the role of a lesbian woman in this dream (I was attracted to one of the other women in the house), but later on I took on the role of a new character: a man who appeared middle-aged, but was actually secretly hundreds of years old, immortal, and possessing telekinetic powers. Every once in a while I'd mistakenly let slip something that would give away the fact that I was much older than I appeared (like mentioning a time before zombies as if from personal experience, even though the zombies first came hundreds of years ago). Later it turned out that the castle in town was the secret hideout of a gang of villains - villains who I thought, in the dream, were from He-Man, even though they didn't look like any of the actual villains from He-Man. Myself and one of the women from the house infiltrated the gang of villains by masquerading as them - I pretended to be the head villain. Since the head villain was known to often brutally murder his subordinates, I began killing them off right in front of all the other villains, using a lightsaber and my telekinetic powers, and nobody said anything.
A couple of other items, completely unrelated to my dreams: as you are no doubt aware if you have watched the channel at all in the last month, ESPN recently moved its studio to Los Angeles. The folks who work there are very excited about this, and refer to it on SportsCenter constantly, even in the middle of their play-by-play. "Let's talk now about a game in LA, which took place just a few minutes from our new studio!" Now, I can sort of understand why they're excited about this. It must be a big deal, moving to a new city and all. But don't they realize that it's absolutely meaningless to us as viewers, and we don't care at all? I mean, to me, they're just in a studio. It looks exactly the same as the old studio. The studio could be on the moon. It really doesn't matter. I just want to see some great plays, hear some amusing commentary, and get the latest scores. I don't care that they're in LA now. I wish they'd stop talking about it.
Another item that comes via SportsCenter: there's an African American basketball player named Othello Hunter. Why?! Who in his/her right mind would name his/her child Othello? Or worse, choose the name Othello for himself? I mean, was he named after the board game? Had you never heard of the incredibly famous play by an incredibly famous guy named Shakespeare about a man named Othello who's tricked into murdering his own wife and then kills himself? Because if you had... what were you thinking?! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
by Fëanor
by Fëanor
by Fëanor
