(And to think, I’ll be out of the Northwest completely next weekend.)

I enjoyed driving there, I watched the Blue Angels practice a bit (again I have to ask, who in the world decided that closing the city’s main East-West interstate for three hours was a good idea?), walked around the Seattle Center area (Space Needle and all), had some delicious Filipino food, hung around Pike Place Market, and got a chance to see a Mariners game at Safeco Field. (Over the course of 2-3 days; there’s no way in hell I’d be hectic enough to cram that into one.)

View the slideshow or browse the photoset manually.

Select photos after the jump.

I’m pretty sure I captioned most of the photos, so click ‘em if you want some context.

No, what he did was this, according to Mike Claiborne of KTRS:

When FSN’s Brent Stover and Claiborne (KTRS) approached Edmonds after the game for a quickie on-field interview that has become standard procedure for MLB rights holders, Edmonds blew them off and said:

“I’m (censored) done with St. Louis TV and radio and I’m (censored) done with the Cardinals.”

And then he walked into the Cubs dugout.

Me, I’d love to pretend the above never happened. I’d love to pretend that Jimmy ain’t playing on the Cubs. You know, just relive 2004 all over again.

But no, that’s not going to happen.

Jim Edmonds is dead to me. He’s a Cub now. And an asshole. (I’ll admit that I’d heard similar things about him while still a Cardinal, that I batted a blind eye to.)

(Stat update: As of the third inning today, Jimmy is batting 3-for-12 2-for-15 against the Redbirds — both being home runs.)

Above photo is one of those off-highway scenic view locations, this one overlooking the Wanapum Lake / Columbia River area, just west of a little town named George. (Which is home to the legendary Gorge Amphitheatre, by the way.) I didn’t put two and two together until I saw the water tower for the town of George. Which is to say, George, WA. Which is to say, the town is named George Washington. You know, like the guy.

I mean, I guess Missouri has some pretty obnoxious place names — i.e., Versailles, MO (pronounced ver-sales).

But I’m holding George Washington high on my list of obnoxiously named towns. Right up at the top with Missouri City, Texas — a town that went so far as to even gank my fine home state’s motto and call itself “The show me city.”

And yes, after a mild hiatus, I’m taking photos again. I stopped for most of July since I left my camera battery charger in New Jersey after my trip over there and (as of yet) haven’t bothered to get it sent back to me.

A major issue we came across was the problem of multiple blog users on the single Django installation. The permissions setup was great, but wasn’t granular enough for our needs — it was impossible to filter out the admin panel to only display blogs that a particular staffer is assigned to. At least, without having to write our own blog-specific admin panel (or writing managers that plug into the existing Django admin panel — yuck!).

Anybody that’s anybody that follows Django development should have heard about the newforms-admin branch landing last Friday. Upon landing, the branch — being a big, bulky, backwards-incompatible change — brought about the big headache of having to tediously convert any Django trunk-based code.

But I’d been looking forward to it. Big enhancements in customization were the prime game-changing features.

I noticed a mention of extra hooks in the newforms-admin documentation.

• has_change_permission and the related has_add_permission and has_delete_permission bits — to specifically set up what users can do to models, based on any logic you want
• more importantly, a queryset hook that allows you to filter out what is displayed to a user in the admin panel. The idea here is that you can be as granular as you want in displaying stuff to a particular user.

Here’s a thrown-together example of how I’m planning on using these hooks, based on what I’ve played around with:

• models.py — The User foreign key and the permissions give us things to test for…
• admin.py — … and the has_change_permission and queryset functions turn that into something useful.

I’m also using extra permissions (’access_all_posts’ and ‘access_all_blogs’) in this example to provide extra permission to users and groups that might need the original (unfiltered) view — editors, for example. (I’m also providing the same logic to superusers so they have full access all the time, of course.) In both queryset cases, the logic more or less follows such: I make sure to show everything to the people that are supposed to see it all; otherwise, filter out content to blogs that the current (logged in) user owns. Simple as that.

The full list of hooks and options isn’t documented yet, but the model code can be looked at, to see for yourself.

This is a pretty rudimentary example, but the hooks are still poorly documented. For anyone with Python experience, the code itself shouldn’t be difficult to understand. I’m sure that folks will find more interesting ways to use this, in time.

Update: Forgot to mention a few particulars with the Users you create.

• The “Blog author” (lowest rank) user should receive the edit Blog permission and all (add, edit, delete) BlogPost permissions — you wouldn’t have to worry about users editing/deleting posts that aren’t theirs, since you’re limiting their view (via queryset) and limiting their permissions outside of the standard Django user permissions interface (via the has_change_permission and has_delete_permission hooks).
• An “editor” user — someone who should be able to access/change/edit all content — should receive the standard permissions (add, edit, delete on Blog and BlogPost) but also the special ‘access_all_blogs’ and ‘access_all_posts’ permissions.
• Site superusers won’t need anything special, as far as I know.

The above applies to groups, as well. Hell, the “author” and “editor” roles can be turned into groups; you know, save yourself from the individual permission-assigning gruntwork.

Some major topics discussed included the variety of modern distribution platforms — print, online, mobile phone, radio — and the use of online communities and social media to extend the idea of journalism providing a public service to the community. (We’ve discussed the duality between “journalism as a product” and “journalism as a service” many times. I’ll definitely write something on this some other time.)

That’s all speculation, though. Another thing that happened today brings up an important question: What role do existing social networks and social media tools play in journalism?

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch linked to a slain firefighter’s Facebook profile, leading to a deluge of criticism.

The arguments of whether Facebook classifies as a “legitimate source” or not, are moot. The stories and coverage regarding his death don’t source Facebook outside of mentions of mourning and a photograph taken from his profile. From my own browsing through the Post-Dispatch site and reading through the stories, I don’t believe they used the Facebook profile as coverage, as some claimed. This is not what I’m here to discuss or argue.

There are plentiful complaints that linking to the Facebook profile is disrespectful and that directing the public to view a “personal profile” is tasteless.

However, several comments to that Editor’s Note remind me of something that college professors often remind students of: a public profile is public. It is legitimate (though some may say underhanded) for an employer to browse Facebook and make decisions on your character based on the information and photographs there. (Underage drinking, anyone?) The advice often amounts to, if you’re making this public, then make sure it represents you, the way you want to be seen.

My point of view in this situation, as a person who occasionally dabbles in street photography is this: if it’s in public view — if you can get to it without jumping any hoops or trespassing on private property or otherwise breaking the law — it’s legitimate to mention. If the public can get to it, then it is within the rights of the news media to reference it.

A link to the man’s Facebook profile and a link to a memorial Facebook group — to me, this says, “this is who he was, and this is where mourners and well-wishers can leave a message for friends and family.” I don’t feel that this is in bad taste. I feel that this helps interested parties connect with others in a useful way — isn’t that part of journalism’s mission to keep the community connected and informed?

So long as the coverage does not source Facebook as a primary source and so long as the Facebook profile and group links represent a way for the community to get in touch, I honestly don’t see a problem with this.

And after finally figuring this out, the Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine both covered 4chan last week.

Don’t know about 4chan? As the Time article puts it, “You may not realize it, but 4chan has probably touched your life. Possibly inappropriately.” If you’ve heard of lolcats or if you’ve ever been Rickrolled, you’ve been touched by 4chan. If you’ve herd about mudkipz, you’ve been touched by 4chan. If you’ve noticed radical and vocal opposition to Scientology in recent months, you’ve been touched by 4chan. Says the Time article:

4chan is also very profane. A phrase from Star Wars comes to mind: It’s a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Spammers don’t even bother to spam 4chan; Google started searching it only six months ago. But it is the wellspring from which a lot of Internet culture, and hence popular culture, bubbles.

The articles covered 4chan in a much less sensationalized way than a Fox affiliate did last year. In fact, I’ll say they both did a good job in covering such a strange, strange community.

It was revealed in those articles that “moot,” the man behind 4chan, was 15 years old when he started the site. (This means that moot himself was breaking his own “no minors” rule on several boards. This also means that he’s younger than me. Weird.)

But really, the biggest bomb was the revelation of moot’s real name, which had been a well-kept secret all this time. Lev Grossman , the author of the Time article, put it thus:

Towards the end of the piece I mention moot’s real name: Christopher Poole. I figure there’s about a 5% chance that Christopher Poole is in fact not moot’s real name but some incredibly filthy 4chan inside joke. I took the chance because in person moot/Poole comes across as a really nice guy, and if he was playing me he was doing a hell of a good job. But it turns out the Wall Street Journal has the same story — had it shortly before we did, I think — so if we’re going down, at least we’re all going down together.

Me? I’m taking it all with a grain of salt. This could easily be part of an elaborate trolling, and I think it speaks to the quality of Grossman’s work that he, too, is treading lightly on it.

Avista Stadium at game time was perfect. It was 74 degrees, breezy, and clear. Over the horizon, you could see the rolling emerald hills of Spokane County. Families were all over the place. Hot dogs were affordable. The joys of minor league ball: players having fun and working hard to get to The Show, gimmicks and side attractions every inning, and the quaint surroundings of the stadium itself — the County Fairgrounds. A barn and grain silo sat directly over left field. More than anything, that defined the hometown feel.

Two families set up shop on either side of me — 10 year olds, constantly asking questions and taking the game in. I stood over the right field fence, literally standing above the players in the bullpen. I listened to a couple of the players chat among themselves, in Spanish. I, of course, understood none of it.

At the start of the game, the Indians starter threw six straight balls, a couple of those by the catcher. The second batter struck out, though the baserunner stole his way to second, advanced to third on another wild pitch, and eventually scored. I watched one of the pitchers warm up through the second inning, standing and throwing literally five feet from my face. He came in to pitch after the starter threw another wild pitch to score an AquaSox run.

The Indians scored two in the bottom of the first. The PA announcer mentioned at some point that if the Indians score six runs or more during the game, everybody in attendance gets a free chalupa from Taco Bell. The folks around me were debating whether this meant six in one inning or six for the whole game. The Indians put this to rest by scoring six in the bottom of the fourth inning, capped off by a big home run by their DH. (The promotion was six for the whole game, heh.)

I left after the fourth inning (Indians leading 10-3), when the sun started sneaking past the horizon and the temperature started veering below 65. I forgot to wear a coat — granted, I came here straight after work anyway, it’s not like I’d planned for the event. Either way, it was getting chilly, it was still windy, and I wanted to get home before it got too dark.

Indians won, 15-3. Yay for my new home team, eh? Seriously, I needed a fix of some good ol’ baseball, in-person. Fun game, good crowd, great weather, and hell — I get a free chalupa out of it. Can’t ask for too much more than that.

Photos are up. I’m particularly in love with this one and this one.

Yeah, I’ve been messing around with Photomatix Pro (for those HDR shots) and Autostitch to do the panoramic images. Gimmicky, but fun.

I’ll most likely be updating that Spokane photoset throughout the summer, so keep checking that out for updates, I suppose.

___

Also of note is that my previous post, Small World, was picked up and mentioned by the STL Hops beer blog. Pretty sweet.

Feeling sick of my small (and spartan) apartment, I wander around town tonight, looking for something to do. I’d felt a bit too much of a stranger, just wandering downtown the past few days… Most of downtown just seems a bit too upscale for me — at least, on a night like tonight — so I go a bit off the beaten path: downtown, but not quite the city center. I stumble upon the Empyrean Coffee House, this little coffee shop / bar / music venue just a few blocks from where I live…

Really reminds me of the places I used to hang out at back home. You know, the Blue Fugue, or Lakota, or the Cherry Street Artisan… Soulful music — and by that I mean your smalltime touring musicians and local artists — really nice people, and a little artsy/cultured/counterculture (that’s a weird mix, I know) feel to the establishment.

I walk up to the bar and get myself a beer. One man at the bar immediately notices the St. Louis Cardinals hat I’m wearing.

“Hey man, nice hat.”

“Thanks.”

“I love baseball. Nobody up here really seems to; hell, my bandmates usually give me crap for it, always talking about how boring it is.”

The man’s name is Luke — he’d played here solo earlier tonight, as part of a little tour he’s doing through the Northwest. He lives in Montana but cheers the Cardinals because his folks all live in St. Louis. We shoot the shit as time passes by: his folks have season tickets, he watched one of the playoff games against the Mets back during that year we won the World Series…

“So where in St. Louis are you from?” he asks me.

“Florissant, that’s up in North County.”

“I know where that is, that’s actually where my folks live.”

“No shit?”

“On Lindbergh somewhere. I used to visit them every summer.”

“Wow. I live right off New Halls Ferry, at the north part of the town.”

He mentions hanging out at Jamestown Mall throughout his summers, until he “got beat up there one day.” This is the same ol’ ghetto Jamestown Mall that I grew up going to, where I got to know some of my closest friends today. Which leads us to a conversation on the whole place becoming a hole and the white flight problem all over St. Louis.

…At some point I mentally remind myself that I’m in Spokane, Washington — I’m nowhere near Missouri. But strangely enough, it’s like home followed me straight out here, over a thousand miles away. This was a natural conversation that could’ve easily happened in Columbia, at any random bar over there. Every other person over there is from St. Louis. Right now? I’m in Washington. This is something else entirely.

He tells me he’s heading though the Midwest in September, and I mention that he should stop by Columbia if given the chance (and name drop the Fugue). He’s played in Columbia before, a few years back.

I churn through another beer and before I know it, the place is about to close. (I’ve come to notice that most places I frequent near here seem to close at like 11pm at the very very latest.) We part ways and I wish him the best as he continues touring.

I get home and I smile at the irony: the first random bar conversation I have in Washington is with a guy who knows where Florissant is and who used to hang out at Jamestown Mall — the places of my youth. The odds of such a thing are near-miraculous.

I guess I’ve found a place to frequent in Spokane. Such grand irony cannot be ignored.