Posted on by mwhybark

Has anyone talked to Spirit lately?

– begin messtrans –

1:48PM

NASA: come in Spirit
NASA: Spirit come in
Interplanetary Cellular has joined this chat.
NASA: Spirit come in
Interplanetary Cellular: Sorry, Spirit is away from its planet right now. Would you like to speak to somebody else?
NASA: is, um, is Pathfinder there?
NASA: hello?
Interplanetary Cellular: beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
beepbeep
NASA: I’m sorry the reception on this phone is fucking terrible
Interplanetary Cellular: Please try your call again later.

1:50PM

NASA: oh christ
NASA: (redials)
NASA: (rings for a long time)
NASA: pick up!
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Hello!
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Sorry, I was in the shower!
NASA: Yes, hi! I’m trying to reach Spirit, you know, on Mars?
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Oh…one second…
NASA: Thanks!
NASA: (twiddles thumbs)
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: [muffled] Some guy named NASA is asking for you..
NASA: (doodles, hears quiet voices on phone)
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: I don’t know, something about pretty pictures of rocks…
okay.
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: [clear] Spirit stepped out for a minute; can I take a message?
NASA: (sighs)
NASA: Uh, yeah, can you tell her that everybody back on Earth is, like, really worried about her?
NASA: We have been trying to get through to her for several days now, and when someone does talk to her, all we get is static!
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: I can put you through to her voicemail, or I can take a message?
NASA: If by some chance you see her, or her friends Beagle or Pathfinder or that nice older probe Viking, will you pass a message?
NASA: Please?
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Sure thing!
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Lemme get my pen…
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Go ahead!
NASA: Her Uncle Hubble just got some very bad news. Spirit’s sister will be there in a few days, and she can fill Spirit in on the details.
NASA: After that, we’re sending someone to get you, Spirit. It may take a while but someone will be there. Hang on – please just hang on!
NASA: (deep breath, pauses)
NASA: That’s it.
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Whew. Perhaps you’d prefer voicemail?
NASA: no, no, this is fine.
NASA: Now, I think her sister should be the one to tell her, but I can let you know –
NASA: Uncle Hubble’s not long for the soloar system.
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Um…okay then.
NASA: Brush the dust and mud off her sundial for me – for all of us.
NASA: Okay?
NASA: By the way, you’ve been very helpful and kind.
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: That’s my job, sir.
NASA: Who is this again?
Interplanetary Cellular Customer: Scott Carpenter.

– end messtrans –

Credits:

The part of NASA was written and played by Mike Whybark.

The parts of Interplanetary Cellular and Scott Carpenter were written and played by Ken Goldstein.

Posted on by mwhybark

MT + Gallery = MTG?

Integrating Gallery into MovableType – a tutorial. Another project pointer.

The discussion in the forum is about getting recent or random images from Gallery and displaying them inline on MT, a pretty cool idea but not quite what I’m looking for.

The thread originator has his tutorial here and in the body of the piece says, “The basic idea here is that we’re using the MT template system to dynamically create the header and footer wrappers that Gallery will insert around it’s content.”

To which I say, that is an approach that holds some promise. It’s still a blanket solution though; and additionally it appears to simply replace MT functionality with Gallery photo albums.

The ideal would be to have Gallery-ness apply only to specified posts or categories. hmmm.

I should note that the recent updates to Gallery include the very welcome additions of an ‘offline mode,’ which enables cold-HTML duplication of a given Gallery’s content, useful for burning CDs from Gallery (a Good Thing) and a reasonably robust skinning capability, unfortunately not directly accessible in the admin or guest UI and possibly not assignable on an album-by-album basis.