Thought I’d share some pictures my father took of the lunar eclipse last night. I (almost) wish I’d stayed up to see it.
“Photo 1478 was taking at 2:50am.
Photo 1480 was taken at 2:56am.
Photo 1491 was taken at 3:35am.
All I’ve done is cropped the images a bit. I had a regular camera tripod, not a telescope with clock drive, so there is a bit of motion visible.” — My father
Recently, I’ve been following some of the discussion going on around the future direction of the Thunderbird project. Thunderbird is the email client companion to Firefox. So far, I’m liking the sound of things.
Initial call for action:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/07/email_futures.html
Initial summary report:
https://blog.startcom.org/?p=32
Hopefully, there will be some actual planning and direction for the project now, rather than just whatever anyone feels like working on this week. I really hope they’ll deal with some of the barriers to entry for new developers such as their ridiculously complicated build system. Up until now, Thunderbird has had a lot of potential, and is even a quite usable client, but it has not been pushing boundaries or expanding market share much at all.
Well, I’ve now been living in the northeast for seven weeks and working for six. I’m slowly getting used to being employed full time. I finished up training two weeks ago and have just about finished up my first real projects. I’m working prety much nine-to-five and am really enjoying having weekends and evenings to myself. (No more homework, yeah!)
Its also finely sinking in that this is “home” now. I still miss Champaign-Urbana and particularly my friends there, but I probably always will. I will be going back to visit in early September though. One of my friends is getting married, so I’m going back for the wedding. One of the engineering career fairs happened to be the next week, so I’m staying for that as well.
I have been somewhat disappointed by how difficult it has been to connect with the gay community around here. The closest center is in Norwalk and I often find myself driving either to New Haven or New York for things. I’ve only made it to half a dozen events total. Given how involved I was in Champaign, I’m feeling kinda bereft. Hopefully, I’ll make more connections as I move forward.
Neither of these warranted a post by itself, but I thought they were still worth sharing.
Lessons on Homosexuality Move Into the Classroom
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
Published: August 15, 2007
ROCKVILLE, Md.
One school district is set to take a revolutionary step this fall. They’re planning on teaching kids that its okay to be gay. God, I wish my school had had a program like this. It would have made things so much easier. While I think this (very understated) program is a wonderful thing, as you might imagine its drawing all kinds of fire. Hopefully it survives.
Feds target gay Iowan senator
By Jim Ferguson
An Advocate.com exclusive posted August 15, 2007
By the evidence, a gay state senator in Iowa is being unfairly prosecuted by a federal attorney. While realistically this type of stuff happens all the time, this is by far the most blatant case I’ve seen. I’m waiting to see what happens once this makes it to court. I would not be surprised to see the charges reversed. That would be poetic justice.
I just finished reading the article below and I thought I’d share some reflections. My perspective is that of a gay Eagle Scout, so I’m torn in both directions. I have little doubt that if I had come out while in scouts, I would have been asked to leave. Despite this, I benefited immensely from my experiences as a scout and I think others do too.
1) Overall scouts is a wonderful organization that benefits the boys who go through it immensely.
2) Without discount, a large meeting space can run hundreds of dollars per hour.
3) School/Municipal meeting spaces are often discounted to community groups. (Including LGBT groups!)
4) Scout troops are often fairly low budget operations.
Considering the above points, I think we should continue making space available to scouts and other youth groups, even if they do discriminate. I think its a shame that scouts chooses to discriminate, but the way to fix that is to work from within scouting. It is not to attack scouting as a whole.
I’m troubled by the increasing religious direction scouts has been taking over the last few years. Ever since the Mormon church took a leadership role, scouts has been heading in what I see as the wrong direction.
Activists: Rental negotiations with Scouts should be open
By Timothy Cwiek
PGN Writer-at-Large
© 2007 Philadelphia Gay News