The jury phase of the Grammy Awards process is over. Reportedly, Long List nomination ballots will be going out to members of the Recording Academy as soon as this weekend.

Everybody who made it past the jury phase – whatever that consists of, I don’t even know, all I know is I needed to make a bunch of CDs for it – is on the Long List.

If you are a member of the Recording Academy, I hope that you will give our music your consideration. If you know a member of the Recording Academy, I hope you will ask them to do so.

Thank you very, very much.

(ROUND 2: FIGHT!)

All the Apollo mission photos, all in one place.

Still sick. Less badly, though. So enjoy some photos from the only crewed missions to the moon, and hopefully we’ll be back to normal tomorrow.

Hey, everybody, sorry for going all silent like that. It’d be cool to say that I have big news, or supervillainy adventures to report, but I don’t. The best I’ve got is that a college radio station in the midwest threw me a note that they want to play some tracks from Bone Walker, so that’s definitely cool.

This video of 13,000-odd marbles flowing down many levels of a giant marble-cascade machine is… oddly soothing, actually. Enjoy.

Also, I made a custom 404 page for the website. I used the real page URL for that link, but, of course, you can use any URL you want as long as it hangs off crimeandtheforcesofevil.com. That is, after all, kind of the point. XD

Aside from the Norwescon recruitment effort, I’m up to my neck in Day Jobbe. That will go on another week before things calm down to normal. So, yeah. Not romantic or musical or creative or fun, but that’s why I’ve been kind of quiet.

Anyway, I took this picture in the main library downtown a few weeks ago. I’m not actually fond of the building from the outside – I call it the Glass Anvil – but it has some interesting things going on in the interior, particularly around the edges, up near the top. Which is where I took this.

Many Intersections
(Seattle Public Library)

Bone Walker and “Kitsune at War” are in play for Grammy awards.

I don’t mean that in some sort of abstract everything-that-gets-released-is-eligible sense. I mean as in a member of the Recording Academy has nominated both for consideration – Bone Walker for Best Folk Album, and “Kitsune at War” for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella.

These awards are given by The Recording Academy. Like the World Science Fiction Society and the Hugo Award, any voting member of the Academy can nominate any work for consideration for a Grammy. But unlike the Hugo awards, said nominations to go a jury for review, and unlike WSFS, TRA has qualifications for joining – it’s not like the Hugo awards where anyone can pony up their $40, become a WSFS member, and be involved. So there is in fact a higher bar here.

I don’t know what happens after the review jury, because I’m not a member. But six copies of CDs were requested for the jury, have been sent, and are now in the hands of the Academy. I have also seen some very strange play patterns on Bandcamp the last few days. These are probably coincidental. But they might not be.

Insert a million tiny eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee o/ here.

Don’t confuse this with being on the shortlist; it is not that. This is just one person doing a thing, albeit being a person who is a member of the actual Recording Academy tossing these into the actual ring for actual jury consideration for an actual industry award.

It is certainly true that the odds of getting past this stage are low. I mean, who the hell are we with our homebrew recording studio and $90 microphones and everything-is-DIY aesthetic, right? These are industry awards. The odds of making the next around – whatever that round might be – are very long. I know all this.

But it is also true that those odds are a hell of a lot shorter than they were a mere three weeks ago. While still very long, they have shortened dramatically. And even with those odds, it is further still true that, regardless of the probabilities involved…

…Bone Walker and “Kitsune at War” are, at this moment, actively in play for Grammy Awards.

Holy shit, you guys. Grammies! O.o

see also

Seagate and LaCie make wireless external hard drives for mobile use, so you can ‘expand your phone’ and carry around whatever external data you’d like to carry around without blowing your phone’s storage. I guess that’s useful. I imagine people also use them as ‘personal cloud’ devices, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean, and other things.

But I don’t care, really, because THEY SHIP WITH AN UNDOCUMENTED TELNET SERVER RUNNING WITH ROOT ACCESS. You can read and write anything and everything.

This is… amazing. How do you let this happen? It’s another case where I need an Industrial Espionage Inside! logo sticker. Here, have a first draft.

On a related note, this talk at Black Hat 2013 on hacking z/OS mainframes is pretty cool, and tells me that back in my part of the problem days that I could’ve been a goddamn rock star in this admittedly-small field at Black Hat, because the shit I was doing on IBM mainframes was way more complicated and subtle than this.

There are mainframe people in comments telling the presenter not to be so glib about mainframe security because they know exactly what you’re doing via their monitoring systems. I heard that shit then, too; it was bullshit at the time and I’m pretty sure it’s bullshit now given the sploits he’s outlining. Hell, I submitted some reports through trusted third parties because they were just too easy – easier than these, even, and some of this is pretty damn easy.

I mean, seriously, ever seen a security patch for an unpublicised exploit released in one day? I have. That was caused by one of my third-partied reports. (Arbitrary access to any account in 19 keystrokes, completely unlogged. It was hilarious. But also too easy, so, reported. I knew exactly what they were doing wrong and how to fix it, so it’s not like they had to work at it.)

But enough of the past. Go play skeet shooting with your wireless Seagate and LaCie drives now. It’s probably more effective than trusting them.

Supervillains get on the best ad mailing lists. I mean, honestly. We got this today. TWO titanium furnaces. Two! And a centrifugal melt unit! I’ve been saving just the right spot for these!

(Click to enlarge.)

@fozztexx on Twitter sent me this massive bundle of amazing retro stickers as thanks for me sending him a big box of antique computer chips. How many apply to you?

I didn’t even know what was in the box, really – I’d identified a few of the small ones as collections of logic elements (NAND, etc) – but it turned out to be full of things like Atari 2600 support chips and Z-80s and video chips and all sorts of stuff decades old. And so far, mostly working! Which is awesome, since he restores antique computers.

Anyway, you get this instead of the promised article on the E Pluribus Hugo award – which I swear I will get done tonight – just because I ran out of time.

If I get time this winter, I’m going to make a Radio Shack TRS-80 LDOS laptop – emulators exist! – just to have somewhere to put the black Radio Shack TRS-80 sticker. 😀

It’s a nice rainy day after a day of big thunderstorms – so desperately needed – and I thought this was a particularly nice ladder fungus. Bigger at Flickr as usual.

LET’S MOVE TO BELLINGHAM AND LIVE IN A PIRATE SHIP HOUSE!

CLICK THROUGH IT GETS EVEN BETTER BY WHICH I MEAN WORSE BY WHICH I MEAN BETTER.

I am TOTALLY SERIOUS in a not actually serious but somehow sincerely tempted way. It’s so terrible. I love it. I love it to death.

(h/t Sunnie on Facebook. 😀 )