40 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/13/18 I Kicked The Cord And Broke The Board And Set My Pixels Free”

1. 7) Cherryh

   🙂

2. Ah… It is now! Appertain away!

3. My immediate thought was “oh, poor Bea Arthur, she’s gotta have a better SFnal cite than that.” So I found this on Wikipedia:

   “She made a guest appearance on the American cartoon Futurama, in the Emmy-nominated 2001 episode “Amazon Women in the Mood”, as the voice of the Femputer who ruled the giant Amazonian women.”

4. (3) I was just chatting with my friend Harry, and he told me about the article. He has told me about the mural itself a number of times over the years, but I’ve never managed to be where it is. I did visit the Cartoon Pub in Barnard Castle once, though. Just a normal old pub, but with a wall mural of various cartoon characters. The whole place is probably gone now (like the Tom & Jerry Market in Smithfield, VA, with its questionable drawing of the cat & mouse, or Wimpy’s Burgers in Virginia Beach, where I ate once before they were bought out and closed).

   (4) Mom threw out my comics a couple of times, but by the time I was really into them, she was helping me fill in collections by driving me places—A-1 Comics and Book Barter Bob’s in Denver, for instance, and any number of thrift shops and book shops in northern Colorado. Bob’s was a godsend for filling in my Ditko Spider-Man…Mans…Men… issues. They went for a base price of about 35 cents, plus a nickel a year going back, so what I could find tended to cost about 65 cents a whack. Then, around 1972, I learned that Mom had subscribed to the Chicago Tribune in the 40s, when she was working for the Map Service in DC, just so she could get the Spirit Sections, which she eventually gave to me. Thanks again, Mom!

   You scroll the pixels, and then the pixels scroll your head.

5. @2: as described, this does not compute. Global Entry costs $15 (and one’s time for a personal photo-and-thumbprint session) on top of a program that for $85 gets fast processing going through security toward an airplane (i.e., TSA) — and that applies to domestic travel, not just foreign. Also, unless the mobile passport app lets you get in a speed line (which I wonder about — why would C&I take the word of a private firm?), it’s not going to save much time over conventional processing — which took about a minute after I reached the desk the last time I returned to the US.

   Fifth!

6. Technically morning.

7. 3) I recall reading about another pub/bar in New York City with cartoon murals drawn by the original cartoonists that went back to the 1930s. That one was apparently destroyed and the mural painted over by idiotic developers, when the pub/bar closed and the building was sold. So I’m happy to hear that at leats one cartoon pub/bar survives. It seems decorating the walls of pubs with cartoon murals was a thing in New York City.

   @Kip W.
   4) My Dad famously owned a stack of Golden Age superhero comics (he clearly remembers Wonder Woman and Superman, but no Captain America or Batman), which he’d inherited from a cousin who’d gotten them from American GIs just after WWII. He apparently had them for several years, until my grandma threw them all out. We’re still mourning that particular treasure.

8. [click]

9. If All Files Were Pixels, Would You Let One Marry Your Scroll?

   {possible repeat}

10. (2) but this s basically the age old question of how to be in the shortest passport queue and that can be quite fickle. For example, it can be quicker to enter the UK at Heathrow as an Australian rather than a Brit because while the process is technically slower, the planes that have just arrived were mainly full of other Brits. That’s happened so often that I’ve been tempted to enter the UK as a random Australian rather than as prodigal Pom. The advantage of this App would dissipate quickly once it became popular and the queue becomes full.

11. The international airports that I use moderately commonly (Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney) have two sorts of queues for passport-checking on arrival – unfortunates that have to speak with people, and E-passports (only speak to a person if you raise a flag). I’ve had to wait a handful of minutes in e-passport queues twice in the last twenty or so times (and not in the last year). I’ve had one bad experience with Melbourne bio-security, where the queue for the cursory check of your what-are-you-carrying card was over 30 minutes. Auckland bio-security has a less-cursory check (backed by sniffer dogs) but multiple stations and decent multi-queuing (in categories of Kiwis/Aussies, crew/specials, other). One immigration person backs up the bio-security people, who decide who uses the green lane (80% chance a dog with check you for food) vs the x-ray (looking for food, dirt, contraband).
    Melbourne still uses a passport system where you scan your passport and answer a sub-set of the card questions at a kiosk that gives you a chit, which you use at the later gate that scans your face. Other locations have upgraded to slightly larger gates that just scan your passport directly.
    So I guess my question is why involve a chit, the app knows your passport#, so when it is scanned the C&I system can confirm that no flags have been raised by what you told the app?

    @Chip Hitchcock: They might have Pre-Check for the exit queues?

12. Biosecurity in Australia and New Zealand surprised me. I thought I was going to lose my sneakers both times…

13. Now with actual click.

14. People getting into the wrong queue at airports are also a problem. For example, I’ve seen Swiss people line up in the EU passports queue, even though Switzerland is not in fact in the EU.

    The hub that’s most convenient for me is Amsterdam Schiphol. And when I have to go through the passport control at Schiphol there are lines for EU passports and All passports. Depending on which flight to Amsterdam I get, the passport control is either full of Japanese people from a Tokyo flight that comes in at around the same time or full of Americans from a flight from Seattle. The Japanese people always queue up for “All passports” and the EU line is pretty short. Many Americans, however, either tend to miss the signs or harbour under the mistaken impression that they are EU citizens (and since they have their passports in their hands, you can see that they’re not). It got so bad (and not just due to that Seattle flight either) that they installed a sort of pre-check to direct people to the correct queues.

15. Re. all on 2) I’ve had fast experiences on my last few trips through Heathrow immigration thanks to the electronic scanners, but it’s definitely dependent on who is in front of you – I’m usually travelling alone and tend to treat airport navigation like a cardio exercise, so I generally beat the queue. It’s also useless as an overall time saving exercise if you’re travelling with hold luggage.

    Also, once I left my boarding pass stub in the passport when I scanned it, and it fell out when I removed the passport and I had to stop to pick it up and in the time it took me to do so the gates closed, and it wouldn’t scan me through again, so I thought I was going to be trapped in a tiny electronic pen in immigration for the rest of my life (until the assistant came to manually let me out eight seconds later), which would be a fitting punishment for an upstart Citizen of Nowhere like me. So that’s a barely negative experience that’s going to cause me disproportionate anxiety whenever I travel back to the UK for the rest of my life, ha ha ha…

16. @ Arifel:

    In re “useless as an overall time saving exercise”… It depends on flight, and where you land, and where you sit in the plane.

    My general experience with “flying to the US” is doing so from “not the US” and “in coach”, frequently randomly placed about as far back as you can be, while still being in the actual plane (I may be exaggerating, just a smidgen) and arriving to a lovely 45-80 minute queue-snake at Immigration.

    And, then, having to scour the luggage hall for my bags, as it’s been so long since they were dropped out that they’ve been taken off the conveyor belt, to make room for the bags for the next flight.

    But, if you’re off the plane early, it’s definitely the case that you have to wait for the conveyor to do its thing.

17. Charon D:
    My immediate thought was “oh, poor Bea Arthur, she’s gotta have a better SFnal cite than that.”

    I would argue that Bea Arthur is the best part of The Star Wars Holiday Special. Also, she shares my birthday.

18. I used the mobile passport app last year when coming home from Finland. I found out about it in SFO, and by the time I came back through three weeks later, I had it all set up and it worked very nicely. There was a special queue for mobile passport, with no one in it, so I got through without having to stand in line. The information also implied that not all US airports used the app, so it would be hit or miss. For example, I have no idea if LAX uses it.

19. @Ingvar You’re absolutely right, and eugh my sympathies for an 80 minute queue – I’ve had what felt like some pretty epic waits (Bangkok can be a nightmare, particularly if there’s more than one large plane coming in from China at the same time as your flight, as they tend to be full of large groups going through a different visa process who still take up a ton of time in the wrong queues) but nothing to rival that! I haven’t been to the US in a very long time though, is waiting for more than an hour for immigration a normal trend there?

20. @Kaboobie —

    I would argue that Bea Arthur is the best part of The Star Wars Holiday Special. Also, she shares my birthday.

    Happy birthday a day late!

21. (2) From the article, it’s only available in 24 US airports at the moment, although maybe that’s enough, given that it only matters when returning to the US from abroad.

    Because Eric is Canadian and we live near(ish) the border, we have what’s called “Nexus,” which is for people who frequently cross the US/Canadian border. It lets us use a special express lane where we just scan a card–we don’t normally need to talk to a person at all–and, for no extra charge, it automatically enrolls us in Global Entry and PreCheck. The drawback is that applying for it is a real hassle, involving multiple in-person visits to an office near the border over a period of months. They want to be sure you really live nearby!

    Since they added the iris scans, Global Entry has been very, very fast. You just walk up to a kiosk (there’s never a line), let it scan your eye (and, I think, your passport), pick up a ticket, and pretty much just walk right out. There’s essentially zero waiting.

    And while it’s true that the PreCheck lines have gotten longer, they’re still much faster than the regular lines, partly because you don’t have to take your clothes off to go through the scanner. 🙂

22. 3) The Overlook is a terrific little bar and the art work is exceptional. It’s mostly magazine and comic strip artists involved. You’ll need a solid knowledge of strips from the 60s-70s if you want to identify them all.

    Weirdly enough, it was also apparently Jack Lemmon’s favourite bar when he lived in New York. He’d come in amidst the collection of writers and artists furiously smoking away in the back of the bar (the wall is still heavily nicotine stained) and play the house piano for hours before going to get a late dinner.

23. @Camestros: honestly it would probably be quicker to take a flight to Paris then take the Eurostar into London than deal with any line in Heathrow. (Absolutely my worst airport experience ever)

24. Margot Kidder (best known as Lois Lane in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies) has died.

    https://www.irishmirror.ie/showbiz/celebrity-news/superman-actress-margot-kidder-dead-12535888

25. Never had problems in Bangkok, but I waited 2 hours in immigration queues in Hongkong. With my (back then 3year old daughter). Not fun. Adding some racist comments from the hotel stuff towards my filipina wife on the same evening sort of spoiled Hongkong for us…

26. @Joe H Yeah, just saw that news myself.

27. @Joe H: Aw, that was the only Superman movie (I and II counts as one movie) for me. I never accepted any substitutes.

28. Paul Weimer on May 14, 2018 at 5:08 am said:
    Biosecurity in Australia and New Zealand surprised me. I thought I was going to lose my sneakers both times…

    Yeah, it’s an experience! I generally find the quarantine people quite nice but you have to be ready for it. Having boots carefully inspected after hiking in the Andes* did make me feel like I was a notorious international dirt smuggler but the official was actually quite nice.

    The only time I found them rude was returning from the UK with three tins of Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls – which I had declared as food products (correctly). The bio security person first demanded to know why the tin didn’t rattle and when I explained the said mint balls were individually wrapped, they got quite snippy that I had declared them at all. But they probably had had a bad day and ‘I have three tins of Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls’ probably sounded like I was being flippant.

    *{I don’t want to give a misleading impression that I regularly hike around exotic mountains. That was out of character behaviour}

29. Oneiros on May 14, 2018 at 8:16 am said:
    @Camestros: honestly it would probably be quicker to take a flight to Paris then take the Eurostar into London than deal with any line in Heathrow. (Absolutely my worst airport experience ever)

    It’s not a nice experience at the best of times – it can feel like walking from Paris would be quicker.

    I think my favourite big airport is Changi – Singapore. Never had a bad experience there.

30. Bio-security: I should mention that there is an insect trap 30m from my front door, to detect what slips through the cracks at the airport (suburb between Auckland airport and CBD). Detected invaders (some sort of fly was the most recent one) get heavily trapped for, and parody Twitter accounts.

31. (2) GETTING BACK IN THE USA. I’m tempted by this mobile passport thing. Free and it doesn’t sound invasive – wut. Can this truly be a U.S. thing?! 😛 Honestly, I feel like there must be a catch.

    I only travel internationally once every year or two, but when I do, smoothing even one tiny part (returning home) would be nice. I get anxious about missing connections due to customs/immigration delays, so every little bit helps.

32. So this just happened:

    I check Twitter and I find out Larry C is going to be a Guest of Honor at Origins and some people have problems with him being there as a Guest of Honor given well…him being him.

    54 minutes ago, LC got bumped: https://twitter.com/the_strix/status/996162353438715904

    I expect a one-person mountain of outrage in the next 24-48 hours…

33. Lanodantheon: So this just happened

    How did the Origins chairs look at their GoH list and not think, “Hmmm, with all of the talented women game developers, how did we manage to not ask at least one as GoH?” 🙄

34. https://twitter.com/ajitgeorgeSB/status/996151908539678721

35. Being the suspicious type I am, I’m starting to think it’s a plan to make it look like the Puppies have been right all along.
    Some ‘right thinking’ person gets invited.
    Outrage occurs.
    Person dis-invited.
    Choruses of “See! Their vaunted diversity is a lie!”
    I’d be looking at just who thought it was a good idea and look for the link to the Puppies.
    Why should they get all the conspiracy fun?

36. In terms of finding out what airports have Mobile Passport – they do have a website. I see there that both airports in Houston take it, and so does Newark (where I’m entering the country this summer after going to England and France) so downloading it seemed like a good plan to me.

37. My experience getting NEXUS was much simpler than what Greg Hullender describes. In early 2012 I applied online, waited a couple of months for conditional approval, then scheduled an interview in Detroit (since I’d already planned a trip there) right before Penguicon. When we left the office (another out-of-town fan with the same plan arrived while I was waiting to be called) we had our approval emails before we got to the hotel (20 minutes away); my card arrived less than a week later.

    I did have to visit a NEXUS office in 2014 after renewing my passport (though these days you can apparently update that info online), and when I renewed in late 2016 I was approved without a re-interview at all.

    For $50 (cheaper than Precheck alone at $85 or Global Entry at $100, all for 5 years), it’s a great deal and gives you all the benefits of those plus easy entry into Canada. The NEXUS interview locations are all on/near the border or at major Canadian airports (except for two city locations in Seattle and Vancouver) so it’s more of a hassle than GE if you live in Texas or wherever, but if you travel to Canada with any significant frequency it’s worth it.

38. Meredith Moment: S. A. Chakraborty’s The City of Brass is currently $1.99.

39. I went through a short queue in Heathrow (I know! Whoda thunk they existed!) once — apparently most of the planes which had arrived the same time as ours were full of Brits. Although an acquaintance of mine with red hair and an Irish last name always got taken out of the line there and interrogated *every* time she went, so she had to schedule long layovers between. She never spent less than two hours.

    Coming back through San Francisco (in coach, of course), the line was enormous, not helped at all by the fact that *everyone from every country* got into the US only line. Many baffled Latin Americans and Asians were shunted over to the other line, and employees had to be brought out to shout instructions in Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Tagalog.

    A couple Americans tried going through the other, much shorter line just to see if it would work. It didn’t, but no harm trying and the keepers of that line didn’t mind.

    I’ve hastily disposed of fruit at airports and borders a few times, but never had to do anything with my shoes save run them through the machine.

    @JJ: Don’t be silly. Everyone knows girls don’t play video games, much less create them. ? (/s)

40. @Lurkertype

    And a good thing it is too. If you let the wimmen folks start playing video games it’s just asking for troubles. All that eye hand coordination from knitting things for the tykes, not to mention wrist strength from churning butter, gives them an unfair advantage…

    😛

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