Author: Shawn K. Quinn

The biggest ego in Texas?

Most of the time, I’m proud to be a Texan, and specifically I’m proud to be a Houstonian. I have spent a grand total of around 2½ years of my life living outside of Houston city limits, and even that time was all in what most people would consider the “greater Houston area.” However, we have a few times where certain elected leaders do certain things that I refer to by the highly technical term “stupid shit.” This is one of those times, and this is the kind of thing that makes me a bit ashamed to be a Texan.

I am referring to this Houston Chronicle article on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton encouraging county clerks to ignore the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling. As you may know, judging by the number of rainbow Facebook avatars, this past Friday the Supreme Court struck down bans on same-sex marriages throughout the country (including Texas). However, it seems that Mr. Paxton thinks he and the county clerks who just don’t want to obey the law, are above the law.

As those who have read my blog in the past know, I have a rather low tolerance for stupidity. Obviously, this crosses the line, but it’s shameful because I’d expect better from someone who is in fact the attorney for the entire state when it comes down to it. There’s some consolation in knowing I didn’t vote for this idiot. A lot of us have known for a long time that love knows no boundaries. The hypocrisy of conservative religious groups protesting regarding the sanctity of marriage, yet remaining deafeningly silent on the subject of things like divorce doing far more harm to said sanctity, has completely discredited those groups in my view. It is archaic to restrict marriage based on gender.

To make matters worse, Texas’s marriage license forms went as far as to have one space for male partner, and one space for female partner. I couldn’t find the news stories covering this, but I do know this fact in and of itself got news coverage as the Supreme Court prepared to hear Obergefell v. Hodges. Has it always been like this? Did someone make this change on purpose, to make it as difficult as possible for same-sex marriages (requiring a scratch-out on the form for one gender or the other)? I’d be willing to bet it’s the latter case but it will be difficult at best to prove.

In closing, it is frustrating to me that the Supreme Court’s decision is not only getting a lack of respect, but is being flaunted on purpose by an attorney general who is doing an incredibly poor job of representing Texas. To the rest of the US (and the world): we aren’t all like this, and a significant number of us did not vote for this clown.

With new word additions, has Scrabble just jumped the shark?

I saw this recent story about Scrabble featured on the NPR website and honestly, found it quite horrifying. In essence, the maintainers of the official Scrabble word list have added quite a few words that, well, certainly aren’t what I’d call real words.

The most egregious examples include “lolz” (you’re kidding, right?), “lotsa”, “newb”, “obvs”, “pwn” (this is actually a misspelling of an existing word, “own”, not a word of its own), “wuz” (oh come on), “cazh”, “cinq” (I thought there was a rule against foreign words?), “wojus” (another foreign word), “zeda” (supposedly, this means “grandfather” somewhere, but not in the English I was taught), “ridic” (Scrabble isn’t text messaging, people), and “shizzle”. Somewhat more reasonable are a few additions like “podiumed”, “devo”, “geocache”, “hashtag”, “showrooming”, and “checkbox”. I can even see the logic behind “cakehole” making the list. But this doesn’t offset in the least the number of non-word turds that will now be tournament-legal Scrabble plays.

Look, I hate drawing letters like Q, X, or Z in a game of Scrabble as much as almost anyone else who hasn’t memorized the list of words with those letters in them. It’s one thing to put some of these words in a real dictionary, but another entirely to call them legal Scrabble plays. To me, Scrabble has always been about real English, not idiot babble, half-assed abbreviations, and obviously foreign words. Allowing “lolz”, “wuz”, and “ridic” is just the first few feet on a very slippery slope. (At least some of the time, retribution is possible given the right hand: adding “ulous” to the end of “ridic” and hitting a triple word score in the process would certainly be an appropriate response on someone who dared play it.)

There is still a small chance that WESPA (the World English Scrabble Players Association) and/or NASPA (the North American Scrabble Players Association) will veto some of the new words this coming September. I’m not holding my breath, but it is technically possible.

A new beginning: Houston’s WordPress community over two years later

It’s hard to believe that over two years have gone by since our issues with WordCamp organizers failing to award the event proceeds as a scholarship as promised on video, a year-long lapse in WordPress meetups, and an organizer with an inflated ego removing me from the Meetup.com group for what by now has been shown to be obvious personal/political reasons. I’m only linking to the past posts for completeness, and I wouldn’t even be blogging about this if I did not consider it only fair to report on the epilogue of those posts. The past posts, for those that care to read through the complete history:

Sometime in 2013 (I don’t have an exact date handy, unfortunately), Chris Valdez resigned as co-organizer of the Meetup group, and has not attended any meetups since. Mr. Valdez’s resignation was expected, and to me it was long overdue. Unfortunately, I found (and still find) it quite disturbing that his resignation was done quietly, with no explanation and no apology to the community for his dismal performance as WordCamp Houston 2010 organizer including the mishandling of the proceeds. But nevertheless, he did finally resign and get out of the way.

Even more surprisingly, Christopher Smith is no longer an organizer of the Meetup group, as of 2015 March 26 (possibly a day or two earlier). What appears to be his now former company, DesignBigger, has no tweets or Facebook page posts since 2014 September, and appears to be out of business. (Score one for the good guys.) Mr. Smith himself has relocated outside of the Houston area for whatever reasons. I’m not sure exactly when he moved (possibly weeks or months before this), and it doesn’t really matter all that much in the context of what lies ahead. I’m not sure if the city or even the state where Mr. Smith relocated to is supposed to be public information. I will simply state it’s far enough from Houston, TX, that I’m satisfied. Mr. Smith’s resignation also came far more quietly than it should have; he loved the Houston WordPress community so much that he didn’t bother to write a farewell email to the group or otherwise announce his departure, choosing instead to basically just disappear (poof!).

Also conspicuously absent from the current incarnation of the local WordPress community are Monica Danna-Garcia and Katie Laird. While still in the online Meetup.com group, I have seen neither at a meetup within the last year. So in summary, we have a great group going with no remnants of the previous leadership or any remaining organizers of WordCamp Houston 2010 as regular attendees. Which means I’m happy, and will remain happy if things stay that way.

Surprisingly, I didn’t have to wait until March to rejoin the Meetup group; I was allowed to rejoin on 2015 January 22, and the reason why it even took this long is surprising. Apparently Meetup makes it relatively easy to kick people out and ban them from rejoining a group, and difficult to lift those bans, at least according to the organizer who unbanned me. (I had been attending the meetups themselves in person, but was unable to RSVP online, or participate in online discussions. Thankfully the active organizers did not consider Meetup.com RSVPs a requirement for attendance.) Be aware of this if you run a group on Meetup.com, especially if you have co-organizers. Some organizers may call this a feature; to me, it’s much closer to a bug.

The new leadership (and this is public information accessible to anyone browsing the page on Meetup.com) consists of Rick Ankrum, Lester Buck, and John Peterson. All three of these men have proven they can be capable leaders.

The Meetup.com online group is now being paid for by Automattic’s WordPress Meetup account. With this change, it’s also highly unlikely we will ever go an entire year without a meetup or with all the co-organizers “asleep at the wheel.” I still have rather strong doubts about the wisdom of organizing WordPress meetups on a proprietary platform which does not use WordPress in any form. Nevertheless, the current state of affairs is still a huge improvement over where we were at this time in 2013 or so, and it is my hope those days are behind us for good.

There is even a WordCamp in the works for Houston in 2015. (Yes, the URL says 2014 but that will be changed soon.) Not much progress has been made as of yet, but I’m hoping that will change soon (ideally with my help). Even if I am once again only a mere attendee or volunteer, the upcoming WordCamp Houston will be an exciting day/weekend, and I am looking forward to it.

In summary, this is an exciting time all around for WordPress users in Houston. We still have a lot of lost time to make up, but I believe by the end of this year the Houston WordPress community will be much closer to where it should be in terms of activity, membership, and camaraderie.

Arrested for drinking iced tea?

I have a massive commentary post about the Ferguson situation in the works. I had thought I could write a simple post on the issue and be done with it but it’s incredibly complex and I want to do it justice. In the meantime, there’s this story from about a month ago in Countercurrent News regarding the most unusual of arrests: a man, Christopher Beatty, was arrested outside a state-owned liquor store in North Carolina for drinking an AriZona brand iced tea.

In fairness, the cans do tend to look somewhat beer-like and I once had a bus driver mistake my (empty) AriZona iced tea can for a beer here in Houston. However this does not in the least excuse the incredibly sloppy judgment on the part of ABC Officer Rick Libero, who was the one to arrest Christopher to begin with. Also, Officer Libero simply identifies himself as “the police” which is not technically true, and a probable accountability dodge as well.

It’s unsettling to know that some get a law enforcement license, get hired on by whatever agency, and then think they are God. That part shouldn’t be news to most people, especially the remaining regular readers of this blog. The twist on this story, of course, is that the charges were dismissed two years later.

The mainstream media (namely the Fayetteville Observer) did publicize the case somewhat. In fact, there were at least three articles tracking the developments of the case:

  1. 2014 March 15 – Plea agreement reached: deferred prosecution probation for trespassing and resisting arrest (“resisting a public officer” under North Carolina law). Christopher refuses the deal because he feels he has done nothing wrong, choosing instead to roll the dice at trial.
  2. 2014 November 6 – Trial postponed until February.
  3. 2015 February 5 – Case dismissed by Judge Lou Olivera, based on defense attorney Allen Rogers’ motion to dismiss based on lack of reasonable suspicion for an arrest.

First, I have to commend Christopher’s courage in his willingness to roll the dice at trial and wind up with a potentially much harsher sentence than the plea deal. It’s a move that can backfire and has backfired for a lot of people in the past. I can’t speak in depth about just how corrupt the legal system is in Cumberland County, North Carolina; I’ve never been anywhere in the state much less the greater Fayetteville area. In general, given a completely fair legal system, when one knows one is innocent, it’s the right thing to do. Unfortunately, rarely is a legal system completely fair. Even the ones that are closest to being fair have the odds stacked ever so slightly in favor of the prosecution. Prosecutors work the same courts day in and day out; defense attorneys rarely if ever see the same judge twice in a row. The grand jury system has been reduced from its original purpose, a check on overzealous prosecution, to a “rubber stamp” procedure where often even the flimsiest of probable causes get an indictment. So the courage required to press forward and see the case through to the end of the trial should not be underestimated.

Second, I have to commend Judge Olivera for having the courage to stand up to the police and prosecuting attorney and throw the case out of his court. Moves like Judge Olivera’s have the potential to cause friction between the police and the courts. The police rely on the courts to carry justice through (well, for somewhat varying values of “justice”, see above). Without judges willing to just roll over and rubber stamp anything, the police could single-handedly lock up anyone they wanted; that is not how things function in a society of decent people.

Finally, I have to wonder if the AriZona Beverage Company should consider a packaging change. The words “iced tea” are clearly legible to anyone who cares to read, but the predominantly white can color and can size does all-too-closely resemble that of, say, Budweiser or certain other beers for those who choose to rely entirely on visual cues without reading the can. Cops can only be so smart so unfortunately relying on cops to be smart enough to read is not a viable strategy.

The Predator pinball disaster

This is the first post related to pinball that I’ve made to this blog. Given what I usually post here, I’m kind of hoping it’s the last.

Pinball News, among others, broke the story of a company called Skit-B Pinball and their flagship title, Predator, based on the movie of the same name. Skit-B has been developing this game since 2011 July. I, personally, didn’t know about it until sometime in 2014, just because I wasn’t following the pinball scene. I didn’t even know there was much of a pinball scene to follow anymore; I knew Stern Pinball was somehow still in business, even after Premier Technologies (the last company to make games under the Gottlieb brand name) bit the dust, and later WMS Industries (owners of the Williams and Bally pinball labels as well as the Midway and Atari Games video game labels) exited the pinball business after releasing a grand total of two titles on the much-heralded Pinball 2000 platform. This was back in the late 1990s, and I had just happened to be on a pinball-related IRC channel when news broke of WMS leaving the industry.

Anyhow, so it was with great interest that I began following the companies trying to keep pinball alive, one of them being Skit-B of course. I had expected, any day now, to read news that this great game was going to ship. And then the above story broke, and it’s obvious now that the game in its present form is unlikely to be made commercially available at all. I’m going to keep the quotes to a working minimum, because the story is very long and convoluted.

The important crux of the story is that Kevin Kulek, one of the founders of Skit-B, did something incredibly foolish: instead of approaching Twentieth Century Fox Licensing (hereinafter Fox for brevity) and getting the proper licensing in place, he decided he would just make the games unlicensed, in a low quantity, before Fox and their lawyers found out. That’s sort of like taking a trip of some distance in a car with no license plates, and hoping nobody notices. Even if a cop doesn’t notice, someone will probably call it in.

It turns out Fox found out about it. At first nothing nasty happens, but sometime in 2013 they got their first cease and desist letter from Fox’s attorneys. As the story says:

it now appears Fox had sent Skit-B a ‘cease & desist’ notification, requiring them to remove all Predator-related materials and stop promoting or producing the game.

This was the defining moment where whatever notion of implied consent Skit-B may have thought they had was shattered. If they ever thought they had an agreement, this cease & desist proved they did not. And without an agreement from the [copyright] holder, the game could never go into production.

This was in mid-2013. As the story rolls on, things start happening, like a group of potential Predator buyers approaching Pinball News. By the time someone representing the buyers write this anonymous letter to Pinball News, Skit-B had already announced a second game, Experts of Dangerous featuring the likenesses of Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman (of the TV show Mythbusters). The buyers became suspicious, and many had paid deposits already; they requested refunds as they suspected Mr. Kulek and Skit-B had no license to make the game. This hunch would be confirmed a short time later.

The anonymous contact would make Pinball News privy to a phone call in 2015 January between himself and the senior copyright lawyer at Fox Entertainment Group. That lawyer said not only was no license in place between Fox and Skit-B, but that Mr. Kulek had been told several times to stop work on the game and that Fox was “looking to escalate matters” regarding the game, which could only refer to a lawsuit of some type (certainly injunctive relief, and quite possibly monetary damages as well).

It’s disappointing to read the story of the demise of what could have been a great pinball game, which appeared to be made in the style of the classic Williams/Bally dot matrix games of the 1990s to boot. I would hope Fox comes around, and Skit-B passes the work they have done to a reputable pinball manufacturer who can secure the licensing and finish the project. I’m not holding my breath, though, as it is entirely possible this episode has made the pinball community look like a bunch of lawbreakers, and we may not see a Fox movie licensed as a pinball theme for many years now. It’s quite likely Fox will at least refuse to license Predator for any pinball, whether the one that Skit-B started or a brand new one. I hope they don’t do this. The law-abiding pinball players and hobbyists, such as myself, don’t deserve to suffer for one rogue manufacturer’s First Class Foul-Up.

Moral of the story: when planning a licensed work, get the licenses first. Don’t expect the copyright holders to grant licenses later.