sparkrobot

I was sent this recently from a friend involved in the Dockyard Derby Dames league. If you’re interested in All-Girl, Flat-Track Roller Derby, Tacoma’s team is looking for YOU. Here’s their call to action:

The Dockyard Derby Dames (Tacoma’s ONLY all girl flat-track roller derby league) have scheduled tryouts! This means any girl, age 21 and over, that posses grit , determination, and derby desire can come out to our rink on Sunday December 3rd, from 10am to noon, and bid for a spot on our league. Tryouts will be held at the SkateN Station, at 133rd and Pacific Ave. Good exercise, great friends, and awesome fans are all things that are included in the derby experience, but we are also looking for dedicated women that can commit to our practice schedules and be positive team players. Prior experience is not necessary, but good attitudes, determination, and desire to learn are a must!

This will be the first tryout the league has held since March 2006 and open spots are expected to fill up very quickly again. If you attend try-outs you do not need equipment (i.e. helmet, skates, knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards, mouth guard, etc.), but if you have any, we encourage you to bring it along.

Pre-registration is a must, though, and can be done by contacting Elysia Smith at leashpj33@yahoo.com or Jennifer Hirst at hirstinterp@yahoo.com . They are also doing a referee clinic for anyone who is interested in being a ref… same date, same time.

We look forward to seeing you ladies soon!
– your one and only Dockyard Derby Dames

These ladies are total rock stars in other cities with Flat-Track teams. What have you got to lose?

Kirk Rundstrom, guitar player for the Wichita, Kansas alternative bluegrass band Split Lip Rayfield, was recently diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Though he endured four months of chemotherapy, the cancer spread and he was given only a few months to live. He decided best therapy would be to hit the road one last time, playing a round of shows before retiring to beat the cancer for good. They played the Tractor Tavern in Ballard on Friday, November 10th.

A couple of friends of mine, and fans of the band traveled up to Seattle from Tucson to catch the show. The Tractor was packed with fans and the band got a lot of support from Seattle. Also on hand were several family members whom I talked to briefly. I’d seen SLR once before in Tucson at the now defunct 7 Black Cats, probably 6-7 years ago. Their performance on Friday night was spirited as ever and it was good to see them giving it everything on regrettably, what may be their last tour.

Portland-via-Oklahoma’s “I can lick any son of a bitch in the house” opened the show played before SLR. I took photos of the whole show, but there was a red light shining on the stage the whole time. During ICLASOBITH, I didn’t use flash so I wouldn’t be annoying. My Nikon absolutely hates red light, and as a result, no photos of them. But I was actually encouraged to shoot photos during Split Lip Rayfield’s set, flash or not.

Here are some of the images taken at the show.

Best of luck Kirk. Hope you beat it.

Ventured up to Seattle last night to see the Little Steven’s Rolling Rock and Roll Show. On the bill were four bands, newcomers The Charms from Boston, garage rock pioneers The Chesterfield Kings, Seattle-via-Tucson’s Supersuckers and the New York Dolls. To be honest, the whole thing stunk of corporate advertising and bumptious, celebrity notoriety exploitation, but we had a get-in-free pass. What the hell, right?

The Charms were on when we arrived, but the line to get a drink was so long that I didn’t see a lick of their set. (Seriously, we were in line for 20 minutes. For beer. While a band was on. Ugh.) $13 later and two beers later, we made our way into the main room to find The Chesterfield Kings (instant audio and ridiculous, skip intro screen. You’ve been warned.) on stage doing their thing. This was the first time I’d seen them play, and they looked pretty tired. I’ll sum this up with one word: meh.

Countryfied, punkish and self-proclaimed “The greatest rock n’ roll band in the world”, The Supersuckers (instant audio warning) were up next. Say what you will of these guys. Are they breaking new ground? No. Are they gimmicky? Totally. Do I think they’re the greatest rock n’ roll band in the world. No. Do they care? Absolutely not. Will they leave at the end of the night having put on a entertaining show doing exactly what they love to do? Count on it. I’ve never left a Supersuckers show feeling slighted. Put a stamp on it and stick it in the mail. They deliver the rock.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO NEED TO WORRY. I’m rolling my own eyes at that last line FOR YOU right now.

Protopunk glam rock veterans New York Dolls (photos) headlined the show. What can I say that hasn’t already been said? In one incarnation or another, these guys have been putting on this show since before I was born. El Corazon was super crowded and I didn’t really have the vantage to bust out the camera earlier in the show. When the Dolls hit, I decided to just stick it up there and see what happened. These photos were all taken from pretty far back in the crowd. The stage was pretty well lit, but there were a ton of asshats in front of me. These shots are all digital and held overhead. It would have been nice to get up closer and actually compose the shots, but I mentioned the whole asshats thing, right? Whatever happened, happened.

Again, here are the photos of the New York Dolls.

There’s a Halloween Party sponsored by Tacoma’s Flat Track Roller Derby team The Dockyard Derby Dames this Saturday at Taboo at 100 S. 9th Ave in downtown Tacoma. Expect to see live music from Splendid Vengance (their spelling, not mine) and Seattle’s Boss Martians will headline the show. This is a costume party and will feature a kissing booth, arm wrestling (think you can take one of these girls?) and what is referred to on the flyer as “dance mayhem”. The flyer was created by el Resident of Jerk Mountain, who’s also been snapping tons of photos of the DDD and Seattle’s Rat City Rollergirls lately.

While I know absolutely nothing about Splendid Vengance (who self-proclaim to be “the greatest rock band in the galaxy!!”), I guarantee The Boss Martians are going to bring it. Are you?

Dear Quark, You had a good run—I’ll admit it. Shining star of print design for ages. All through the 90s, graphic designers everywhere sang your tune. In the height of your glory, unshakable laughter followed the mere mention of competitor products. Pagemaker? What a joke!

Let’s fast forward. InDesign arrived on the scene. You ignored her. Effectively regarded her as the young and homely sibling of failed past adventures in page layout application design. Seemingly unimpressed, you made the decision to arrive at the OS X party late—and less than fashionably so.

A couple of updates and a logo debacle later, equipped with some new features and paired with meager attempts at becoming a WYSIWYG web design application, you deliver the news today that you will now will come “complete with features for sound, movies, and animation”. Essentially, indicating you will be the de-facto, go-to application for creating swf output with “…no need to learn a new authoring environment”. Stating further that “interactivity and animation flow naturally from your existing QuarkXPress design skills.”.

Um. Excuse me? What the hell Quark? Frankly, your snake oil laced announcement will only assist in furthering the misconception that anyone that has basic desktop publishing skills can now create interactive Flash work. Not at all unlike Dio and the rest of Black Sabbath rising from ashes to create a new, improved interpretation of Heaven and Hell, you imply print designers everywhere can now produce interactive work without bothering to spend even a few minutes learning the chops that legions of Flash designers and developers spend years learning.

Best of luck to you Quark, but it could be time to get into a different, more profitable oil business. You’re kind of embarrassing yourself. Maybe it would be best to just lay down and die.

Link to the Quark Interactive Designer release.

I helped some friends of mine put together a simple website for their newly-opened, retro-themed Martini bar in Port Orchard. Located at 110 Harrison in Port Orchard, the One Ten Lounge opened earlier this year to serve specialty cocktails in a comfortable, laid-back atmosphere. I visited the place a while back on a Friday evening and a diverse crowd packed the place. Dionne created a logo and some printed materials for the lounge, and this was set as the aesthetic used to design and build the website. If find yourself out in Port Orchard and looking for a place to relax, check it out. Link to http://www.onetenlounge.com/

Nerdy stuff: WordPress was used as the cms for the site, Justin Simoni’s excellent Dada mail for the newsletter and Todd Dominey’s SlidshowPro and SlideshowPro Director for the photo galleries. All open source software that makes publishing websites so much easier than it was even just a few years ago.

For about the last year and a half or so, I’ve been using Google’s Gmail to collect and manage all my email online. I made the jump when I added a larger, faster hard drive to my Powerbook. Rather than continue using Apple Mail and downloading via pop3, I decided to move everything online and manage my email with the web interface and make multiple accounts easier to manage online.

I first noticed earlier this week a welcomed design tweak to Gmail. Previously, if i wanted to delete everything marked as spam, several steps were required to do so, and it was only possible to remove one “page” of spam at a time. Not so hot if you get hundreds of spam items per day and the intention is to keep an email inbox lean.

The recent changes reduce the effort spent on this task. The new method entails a click on the “Delete all spam messages now (messages that have been in Spam more than 30 days will be automatically deleted)” at the top of the list which triggers a javascript alert that reads: “This action will affect all xx conversations in Spam. Are you sure you want to continue?” Here’s a shot of it:

Also added is an “Empty Trash now” control. What would ultimately be nicer here are to include the said controls available from the sidebar, á-la Yahoo’s approach. I’d like to be able to kill all the Spam with one click thereby reducing the time in a day that is spent concerning junk mail.

What’s the #1 feature I’d like to see added to Gmail? It’s a four letter word. IMAP. #2? Folders. I know Google is a search company, but sometimes you just want to put stuff where you want to put it.

While not quite as poignant as a well-constructed piece from, say The Onion for example, a recent post to the Tacoma blog exit133 seems to echo the flavor of some sentiments recently noted here.

Link to Exit133.com: Carl’s Jr. Expands Into The Arts?

Here’s a shot of cnn’s homepage from this morning. It’s really great, great stuff. Very informative. Sent to me by Kevin.

what real news looks like on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Err. Well. I will be rockin’ the Biodiesel… when it’s time to fill up the tank again. After toying with the idea of buying a new car for a while, I finally caved in last weekend and purchased this 2005 VW Beetle TDI (Turbo Direct Injection) last Saturday. (This photo is from my Lomo.) It was time. My full size GMC 1500 SL was 12 years old and falling apart, and though even with a smaller 4.3L Vortec V6, it wasn’t by any means fuel efficient. After looking at all the options, (hybrids, small gasoline cars and the vw diesel) I chose the diesel Beetle because of it’s fuel efficiency coupled with safety features like full on airbags and Electronic Stability Control (ESC), but the ability to run alternative fuel also played a major role, especially since there are a couple of sources to purchase the stuff—both locally (see Tacoma Biodiesel) and regionally.

It’s no secret. America is addicted to foreign oil. If this isn’t evident, you’re actually under a rock. Call me crazy, but to me, betting on biofuels seems like a more sustainable approach to this problem than trying to beat the fuck out of some people. Or—essentially—our way into oil. This isn’t about politics, so that’s all I’ll say.

So far, so good. Though I initally had to take it back to the dealer because the check engine light came on the first day I drove it around. Proved to be no big deal as there was just a vaccuum line detached. It was a simple fix, thankfully covered under warranty. I’ve driven about 250 miles on 1/2 a tank of petroleum diesel furnished by the dealer. That’s pretty amazing right to me there. I’d barely get better than that from the ginormous 22 gallon tank in the truck. When the tank’s empty, I’ll head over to APP and give the biodiesel a whirl.

The one thing I’ve discovered I don’t like about the little guy: the cupholders suck. They’re stashed down under the dash in front of the automatic transmission and it’s pretty hard to get a drink in there. Whatever. Not a hill to die on.

Volkswagens have keys that function like switchblades. Perhaps there is a biodiesel gang I can join. Me & Willie Nelson. “Watch out, we’ll cut-choo sucker.”