One of my favorite blogneighbors is the oft-a-bit-exasperated-seeming Danelope, whose wit, intellect, and deadpan sense of humor frequently bring a chuckle or snort of interest from me.

Mr. Lope, as I shall refer to him here in magisterial fiction, lives in the University District and I beleive is originally of Floridian extraction. I have never encountered him in real life. He claims to be twenty-five years of age. Sometime after I began perusing his works, I came to realize that this person is also the man who contributed the catalyzing clue to the Kaycee Nicole saga.

Recently, Mr. Lope wondered if he’d overstayed his welcome in blogland. I for one, welome our … no, wait, that’s not the right catchphrase. Let me try again.

The response was the predictable outcry from Mr. Lope’s teeming audience, including yours truly. In fact, I somehow channeled the true appearance of Mr. Lope’s website, considered in avatar as a ‘low-rent comic book superhero.’

Lucky for my viewing audience, I recently uncovered a visualization tool for this avatar, featured here.

In the context of my automatic telescript delivery, the Great Scriptwriter in the Sky saw fit to put the words “I promise to gank, with credit, one a day, for an entire week, once you return to duty.” into my mouth.

Forthwith, this entry shall be the first of my dischargements of this debt.

On May 9, 2002 this entry noted an informative survey of cabbits, the cat-rabbit hybrid that promises to be all the rage in about fifteen years. This link was found by poking through the results for the search term kitten at Mr. Lope’s web site.

It should be noted that whatever Mr. Lope’s assertions regarding my sanity, he remains wholly unqualified to practice psychiatry in the state of Washington and shall remain so for the foreseeable future.

Origami Pony: for shiny pony variety, please use a tinfoil square. I reccommend a sheet about 7 inches square. The one I constructed, however, resembles some sort of dinosaur or perhaps a poodle.

Alternatively, you may visit this site.

Let’s see now, there was something about soft, soft fur, right? Howsabout The Patch?

If that’s not to your taste, how about a visit to petloss.com to read the touching tributes to beloved pets now departed. Turn those speakers down – midi music ahead!

poupou: thom’s housewarming: poupou has wildly exceeded the minimum RFC-mandated blog standard for cat pictures.

Ask MetaFilter: Can one safely eat canned, pasteurized, crab which has been allowed to reach room temperature over part of a day?

This AxMe thread definitively, entertainingly, dramatically answers this question, and many more.

So, the radio mentions a four-alarm fire in my neighborhood, and says it’s at ‘8th and Seneca,’ which is actually not quite in my neighborhood. I mapquest it and realize it’s near Michael.

A click later, and I’m reading eclecticism : More trouble at the Jensonia, Michael’s on-the-spot account, with pictures.

While I’m talking about Michael, I should note his excellent summary of the mostly-forgotten mid-1800s war between the US and Britain that took place in Washington’s lovely San Juan Islands, off shore and to the north of Seattle, due west from Bellingham.

Three-headed frog … not, says the Apothecary’s Drawer. It’s a ‘mating ball.’

Spotted via the indispensable thingsmagazine.

The Lone Hand Four Aces, – or – Equal to a Royal Flush, To be acted by
A TROUPE OF EDUCATED DOGS, IN FOUR ACTS.

Miley Pleasanton Crawford, Inventor.

This scanned vaudeville act’s script is one of a number available from the American Variety Stage archive at the blessed sweetness that is American Memory.

Here’s “At the Front Door,” a comedy act in “one”, by Sam Erlich for Gorman and West, 1910.

“I’m an actor; cross my heart and hope to die; really I am; you can’t do me anything for that; I asked the janitor to wake me so that I could catch a train; he woke me an hour too early; I can swear to that; Ask my watch; you can’t do me anything for that; I got a job to sing; can I sing? O yeah, a little bit; Only a bit. (with intro) Tra la tra la la la…” (song)

Gene Gable is Waxing Nostalgic Over Paste-Up [via The Cartoonist].

Back in the pre-DTP era, the only way to get decent-looking type and page layout (besides metal and woodtype, specialty processes since the sixties if not before) was to enlist the services and technology of a typesetter and their large, heavy, amazing computational devices known as phototypesetters (scroll down in link).

Back in those dark days I apprenticed on the AM Varityper and would occasionally help Steve out on his Compugraphic device. The Varityper ran on CP/M and stored data on 8″ square floppies; the Compugraphic model that Steve used had, to my knowledge, no long-term storage, although I beleive you could edit what was in the buffer.

These systems used lights, phtoosensitive paper, a daunting system of photochemicals and developing machines. Upon either a disk or flexible plastic strip, transparent images of each character in a font had been printed. In the typesetting process these characters were exposed, one at a time, appropriately mechanically enlarged or reduced, onto the ‘slicks,’ the rolls of phototype paper. The operator would then take the roll of exposed paper, encased within a light-tight receptacle, and feed it though the developer.

Once the type had been developed, one cut it up, waxed the paper, and laid it out on boards, using rulers, T-squares and triangles to maintain a semblance of order.

The codes used to tell the machines to make type a certain size or to tab around in a table were not at all dissimilar from HTML; the main differences being in the actual grammar and vocabulary of the codes and the trifling fact that except for the very last generation of machines there was no way to visually preview your work until you looked at the developed typesheets.

Ah, by cracky. I must be among the youngest people to be trained on these systems, having graduated high school the year the Mac was introduced. By 1987 the era was over. My friend Wes once told me how as a sailor during the Gulf War he helpd as his ship had dumped their Varityper overboard at sea when they got the new system for the ships’ newspaper.

[smacks gums, leans on cane, squints out from rocker through bifocals]

Gable’s piece includes images and discussions of a number of the artifacts of the era, including technical pens and X-Acto knives. I have some very nice technical penas that haven’t seen use in at least ten years, if anyone’s interested. A full set of Mars Stadtler and an off-brand set. The Mars nibs are a physical pleasure to use.

J. Beverley Oke, Analyzer of Starlight, Is Dead at 75 [NYT]

Now that is an obit headline.

What’s On My Pen Drive:: The Road Warriors Guide [via MeFi]: Peter Garner has assembled a list of apps that can run directly from a USB pen drive in a Wintel environment and which require no install on the host computer. He accomplishes this by going old-skool and employing many DOS apps.

Highlights include a link to a DOS version of MS-Word and (incredibly) to a zero-setup web browser that supports SSL called OffByOne.

I’m tempted to grab all of this and stash it somewhere, it seems so very useful and potentially transient.