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Some sites I’ve linked to on Twitter, Facebook & Google+ over the past few weeks.

Comic strip with two stick figures talking. 1: You should join Google+! 2: What is it? 1: Not Facebook! 2: What's it like? 1: Facebook! Pause Second figure clicks on a computer. 2: Oh, what the hell. I guess that's all I really wanted.

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Small view of the space shuttle against a blue sky.

When I was twelve, my family went to see the Space Shuttle land at Edwards Air Force Base. It was the first mission after the Challenger disaster, and the orbiter was Discovery.

I took a roll of slides using a manual SLR camera and (for the landing itself) a telephoto lens. With the last shuttle mission ending tomorrow, I decided to track down the slides and scan them. Continue reading →

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We caught the final Harry Potter movie on Sunday. It was an impressive finale to the series, and they clearly made the right decision in splitting the last book across two movies so they could actually put some weight behind the story instead of just running down the bullet points. That was one of the problems I had with the fifth and sixth films

Still, I’m most impressed that the movies finished, and didn’t stop partway through the series with dwindling budgets and audience interest. His Dark Materials couldn’t get past the first film, and based on the box office, it’s pretty clear that the current Narnia films aren’t going to continue beyond Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Eight movies over a decade, adapting a complete series, and going out with a bang? That’s an impressive feat right there!

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I’ve been an Amazon Associate for several years now. I figured if I was linking to them anyway, as I often was when I wrote about books or music, I might as well get something out of it. Though I did end up adding a few more ads over time, always trying to keep them relevant and unobtrusive.

I never pulled in a lot – maybe $10 to $15 a month on average, enough to buy an extra book or two (though recently it’s mainly been baby supplies), or counteract some of my hosting costs. That’s over now, though, because California just declared me (and other affiliates, of course) to be a local agent for Amazon, requiring them to pay local sales tax within the state. In response, Amazon has shut down the affiliate program within California so that they won’t fall under the new requirements.

I guess I’ll leave the inline links, since those are mostly the ones I would have included anyway, but there’s not much point in including those “Buy this thing I was writing about from Amazon!” ads anymore.

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Today, I watched Green Lantern at the same theater where we’ve been watching a series of special screenings of the extended-edition Lord of the Rings movies. Afterward, thinking about the two ring-focused stories and the in-progress event comic book Flashpoint, I found myself imagining: What would The Lord of the Rings have been like as a modern “event” comic book like Final Crisis or Blackest Night?

No doubt it would have tie-ins, side stories, spinoffs, and a bunch of extra tie-ins added to plug the inevitable gaps in the schedule. Check out my full list at Speed Force!