Via Cosmic Laughs

Near as I can tell, it’s by Bolivar Arellano, who was covering a New York mayoral candidate that morning.

Arellano has, it would seem, a nearly perfect profile for a photographer working in the vicinity of ground zero that morning — he had experience working in war zones as a photographer. But the Big Bad Blog is introspective today; if you want to know about Arellano, you can read his account of things over at the Huffington Post.

No. I had two thoughts when I saw this photo:

a) This is an amazing photo.
b) I would never have taken this photo.

Not that it is technically beyond my means, but my limited experience of being faced with (far less drastic) emergency situations leaves me without the ability to fathom being the person who pulls out their camera and documents it.

I’m not sure how I feel about this.

One part of me — the dominant part, I suppose — cannot help but think that there are two things to do in a disaster situation: you can do everything you can to help, or get out of the way so that those people who are better prepared to help can do their thing unimpeded.

Another part of me loves photography, and thinks the “take action” part of me misses many photo opportunities. If I waited a minute, and took photographs of things as they happen, I’d have photos other than Maggie-A-Day to share with the world. And the Maggie-A-Day would be better for it, too.

But that’s not me. When the moment strikes, I can put myself in the middle of it or I can get out of the way. The part of me that thinks to document it — I guess he usually sleeps in.

It seems that my photography instincts have a weakness, after all.

Some of you may be familiar with Salvador Dalek (above), a knit Dalek created by my friend Sarah for Maggie.

Maggie loves Salvador, and so do I. In fact, if you take away the thank fuck, this is keeping her entertained and thank fuck, this is helping her to fall asleep properties of some of her other toys, Salvador comes out way on top, in my estimation. It really is the ultimate toy:

• Geeky in origin
• Based on something I love
• Made by a friend
• Amazing craftsmanship

Hard to beat, yes?

Yes. But not impossible. There is now a new generation of knit Dalek, looking to push out the old. EXTERMIKNIT!

Top photo is by me, and available in other sizes on Flickr.
Bottom photo is from Feather and Fan.

Photo from damselesque, via I am your Canadian boyfriend.

We’ve got a mouse, a keyboard, an internet connection, and a new profile picture. So strap on your helmets, folks.

Also, for my museum-loving readers, you should know that BoingBoing is doing a series titled My Favourite Museum Exhibit, which sounds like the sort of thing you might like.

Photo found at LOG. Origin unknown.

Also, cancer is an asshole.

A couple of days ago, somebody made a comment to me about how my mother had battled cancer.

“Battled”.

I disagree. While many of my mother’s treatments may have deserved the war-like analogy, there was never anything war-like about her demeanor. I never saw her so much as grit her teeth, nevermind dig the metaphorical ditch that the term brings to mind. Instead, she threw herself into projects that embraced those she loved: Knitting sweaters for her grandsons, Mischa and Johan; making a stained glass window for Maggie.

Another common expression often used regarding those who have died of cancer is “suffered”. “She suffered from cancer.”

Did my mother suffer from cancer?

There were certainly hard times over the past ten years, but suffered does not describe my mother any more than battled does. She taught herself to ski backwards, to better teach disabled children to ski. This does not seem like an action a suffering person would take.

When her hair fell out, she used it as an excuse to build what was, perhaps, the largest wig collection in Waterloo.

Faced with cancer, she did not isolate herself or lean on others. She taught herself new skills, gave herself new experiences, and helped others.

No. Rather than battle or suffer, my mother lived with cancer. She traveled the world with her husband, Tom. She doted on her grandchildren.

I have heard her give several different reasons for her early retirement, but don’t believe any of them. I think she was simply too busy living her life to spend any more time in an office. After her cancer diagnosis, she became more involved, more engaged, and more giving. All this despite already possessing all these characteristics in abundance.

She lived.

My mother never allowed the focus to rest on her, or on her cancer. Her life shone brightly for her community, her friends, and her family. Today, we are carrying on that tradition.

Marcia did not want today — a time when friends and family come together — to be about her, but about you; about the people she loved.

And I hope that a little bit of her has rubbed off on each of us. That when we experience our own hard times, we can look to her example, and rather than battle or suffer, we too can live.

While I will certainly be writing more about this later, I know that there are friends and family members who read the Big Bad Blog — at least in part — to keep up with the Topps. So for those of you who knew her, and might want to pay their respects, here is an edited version of the obituary appearing in papers today and tomorrow:

Marcia Macks Edwards passed away peacefully, at Lisaard House, on Wednesday, January 25, 2012, at the age of sixty-four years.

Friends and relatives are invited to share their memories of Marcia and celebrate her life with her family during a memorial reception in the Fireside Reception Room at the Erb & Good Family Funeral Home, 171 King St. S., Waterloo on Saturday, January 28, 2012 from 7-9 pm, with tributes and memories of Marcia to be shared at 8:00 pm.

In lieu of flowers, condolences for the family and donations to KidsAbility or the Well Fit Program at the University of Waterloo would be appreciated as expressions of sympathy and may be arranged through the funeral home.

Photo of my mother with Maggie, taken during our 2010 Christmas celebration in London, from my Flickr stream

Here at the Big Bad Blog, we predict that this will finally be the year when blogs arrive, and become accepted as a means of communication by the masses. The word “blog” might even enter the popular lexicon.

Remember: you heard it here first.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Photo from the website 2012: Are we all going to die?
Happy New Year!

Year of the blog. Remember: you heard it here first.

I even have a reminder telling me to post one of these every few weeks. I tend to ignore my reminder.

But not today. It’s the end of 2011, and we’re gonna answer the questions suggested by the most popular searches of the year!

Magnets, how do they work?

Despite the popularity of the Fucking magnets, how do they work? meme, and the existence of a website titled How Magnets Work, people asking this question still manage to find my blog.

Presumably because this photo is somehow near the top of the Google’s image search for the question.

To answer the question, we refer back to Battle of the Magnets, and will allow Dr. Feynman to refuse to answer the question.

We need you

Aw, thanks. We need you too.

(Actually we don’t need you. We’d keep on writing all this stuff anyways, and just feel a little sad when it came time to write about which Big Bad Blog articles were most popular, and discovered the answer was “none of them.”)

Do you happen to have a picture of a cat with a mustache?

In fact, we do! From the morning coffee and the mustache cat:

I’m thinking of getting a tattoo, do you have any very bad ideas?

The Big Bad Blog is the place to go if you’re looking for an awful tattoo concept.

Our vote for the worst tattoo comes from the article Tattoos: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which is one of the most popular Big Bad Blog articles of all time. We suggest that, if you’re looking for a bad tattoo idea, you can’t get much worse than this:

There are plenty more ideas at the latest in tattoo insanity. And if you’re super desperate, you can check out all the Big Bad Blog articles that have been tagged as containing bad tattoos.

Do you have any photos of a naked Felicia Day to share?

The most common reason for a person to arrive at the Big Bad Blog (due to search engine) is the eternal, unsuccessful search for Miss Felicia Day‘s uncovered flesh.

We are sorry to disappoint you, dear reader, but said flesh cannot be found at the Big Bad Blog. This will continue to be the case until Miss Day personally delivers such photos in an envelope, requesting they be published in this space, at which time we will be forced to comply with her wishes.

In the meantime, you will have to settle for BoneCraft.

How can we tell? We use a complex scoring system which tracks links back to the Big Bad Blog, comments made, and pageviews. Maybe not that complicated. However we came up with the list — and truth be told, even we are not entirely sure — this is it:

5: Google Plus: A first look

We received an early invitation to the new Social Network on the block, and dutifully gave our first impressions of it — and they were positive impressions, indeed.

While an update of those impressions are overdue — first impressions, while important, are not necessarily final opinions — this blogger still feels that Google Plus has the potential to be the best of the available networks, but it still has some way to go before it arrives there.

4: Character creation and alignment

The roleplaying area of the blog has taken a big backseat this year. While the generally haphazard update schedule has reduced the amount of content published, of all types, the roleplaying section has had to address a second deficiency: I stopped running my D&D game.

Most of the content I produced was the result of running a game myself — a weekly article was easy when I was introducing myself to the fourth edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. Running a game once a month was enough to provide ongoing monthly articles — ideas or actions would arise in planning or playing that were comment-worthy.

But a baby makes for little playing time, nevermind planning time, and the game only managed one session after Maggie’s birth in 2010 to prove itself to be too much work. It went on hiatus, and my impression now is that it is a permanent one.

Since then, I have been thinking about my next game, which will be of the more old skool D&D bent. Although actual game development has been minimal this year — maybe it will get off its feet in 2012 — I read something that triggered ideas about alignment, in terms of the next game, and voila. A popular D&D blog post.

If scheduling permits progress towards running this new game next year — by no means a necessity — we should see plenty of roleplaying goodness on the Big Bad Blog next year.

Otherwise? The 2012 edition might not have a roleplaying entry.

3: Bringing down the meme: Demotivationals

It seems that every year, I get excited about a meme. And then soon in the new year, I get tired of the meme and write about it.

In 2009/10 it was the FAIL meme. In 2010/11, it was the demotivational.

Next year? No idea. I sadly feel as though I’m not amused by any current memes — it could be the end of a Big Bad Blog tradition.

This particular blog entry makes me quite proud: the comments tend to be people stopping in to tell me that I’m unfunny or stupid. This, as you may be aware, is an indicator of blog excellence.

2: Because you’re all horny for Felicia Day

It has long been noted that Felicia Day nude, Felicia Day naked, and their ilk are popular search terms, when it comes to finding the Big Bad Blog, sending over 100 people our way on an average day.

The traffic from these search terms seemed to be spiking over the summer, when I saw this photo on Wil Wheaton’s Tumblr thingy. (I always call then “Tumblr thingies”. Calling it “so-and-so’s Tumblr” seems wrong. Calling it a “Tumblr blog”, also wrong. What to do?)

The forces of Google meant that I had to write something including that photo.

And the popularity of the search term guaranteed its place here.

1: Twitter to Facebook not working

Back in February, I noticed that my tweets had stopped automatically updating my Facebook page.

This was a concern — I disliked, and continue to dislike, interacting with Facebook directly. But I like all the people on Facebook (also known as “all the people”) to be able to follow me, if they so wish.

So … importation.

It had, for whatever reason, stopped working. So I did what one does in these situations, and starting to try to figure out how to fix it.

Once fixed, I figured that I would post the solution, as it was neither easy to find nor immediately evident. Mine was apparently well-indexed on Google, as it prompted plenty of re-tweets, Facebook likes and (for this blog) a healthy number of comments.

A bit boring, maybe, compared to previous year’s number ones, but it’s nice to be helpful sometimes.