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July 17, 2007
The London Luke
I use Ecto to post blog entries. Twice in the past I've had several entries pre-written and saved in draft mode and then had the program (or my computer) crash and had Ecto revert to "Welcome to Ecto Mode" at the next program start. You know, the mode a program starts in for the very first time when you have to set it up.
Both of those times I'd lost the pre-written entries.
A week or so ago, and this was during the time in which I was controlling the world, I noticed I had several things saved and wondered about the possibility of Ecto crashing. It never crashed. And yet, one time I started it up and there I was in "Welcome to Ecto Mode."
BUT! I had learned form past mistakes and was able to save the pre-written entries. One of them follows. (By the way, I love Ecto. It's great. The version I'm using is several revisions out of date. I'm not saying I'm suffering from some sort of program bug. I'm just making an observation. I'm pretty sure Ecto recently burped due to my thinking it might burp.)
This is something I thought I'd posted before. I checked; I haven't.
The Dream
The other night I dreamed that I was driving through West Virginia. Somebody was in the car with me, but I can't recall who it was. In the dream we merged right onto a ramp that would have taken us to another part of the highway. Halfway around the ramp, and just as we went around a rather large hill that had been obscuring our view, we saw the London Eye.
We were not surprised to see it there.
What was kind of surprising was the way the London Eye was set up. I'd thought it was a big Ferris Wheel with large, glass, fully-enclosed cars like you'd see on a regular Ferris Wheel. Sort of. Think of one of those Plexiglas balls you might let your hamster run around the house in, but make the glass clearer, the ball not so round, and give it pivot points. Mount these on your typical Ferris Wheel arms and make the whole thing a lot bigger. (I've obviously seen the London Eye before as my thoughts of what the cars looked like were similar to the picture here.)
In the dream the London Eye had a Ferris Wheel look but instead of the glass-enclosed cars mounted to arms you had a different setup at arms-end. The enclosures were glass but they looked more like inverted iron maidens and the occupants were in them upside down, as if they were hanging by gravity boots. The pivot points were right around where the ankles would be and there were four inverted iron maidens side-by-side at the end of each arm.
WHY?
West Virginia: Not long ago I drove through West Virginia with my sister. I noticed that the Welcome to West Virginia signs no longer say "Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia" but "West Virginia, Open for Business." I noticed one of the signs in Die Hard 4 the other day. Also, my kids had left that day (with my parents) to visit my brother in Williamsburg; the folks and I had looked the route over in the atlas.
Iron Maiden: I just picked one up at a garage sale. It had barely been used. No, really, I've no idea. I am reading a book in which a guy spends some time in a cell that is centuries old. There's no mention of an iron maiden, however.
(Pre-posting edit:I was going to link to a picture of an iron maiden. As it happens an iron maiden is not what I thought it was. I was thinking of one of those cages made of banded steel that are person shaped and that you always see hanging in dungeons in horror movies and British films).
The London Eye: Your guess is as good as mine. I'd been talking about Ferris Bueller earlier in the day with a couple of guys. I'd also been talking with a British friend. There's that mascara commercial where the woman says, "Get the London Luke" at the end; this always leaves me wondering if the typical "London Look" is a scary woman of the night.
(Another pre-posting edit: I have recently been advised that the scary British streetwalker I've been seeing on the tele is Kate Moss.)
Posted by delmer at July 17, 2007 10:15 PM
Comments
Strange. I've been using ecto since before it was ecto (Kung-Log) and have never had that problem. Other minor problems, sure, but never anything so drastic.
Posted by: Dave2 at July 18, 2007 12:36 AM
I'm using XP.
(Which is probably all you need to see in way of explanation, but let me drone on ...)
The first two times Ecto the entries vanished the PC hung and Ecto didn't recover prettily from the reboot.
This last time was odd as I simply shut it down and when I brought it back up, a couple of hours later, the entries weren't listed. I found the .xml file Ecto saved them in and backed it up elsewhere and am recovering the prewritten entries (all solid gold!, by the way ) from it.
Posted by: delmer at July 18, 2007 9:00 AM
The device you are thinking of is called a "gibbet" or "hanging cage."
Posted by: Icy Mt. at July 18, 2007 9:33 AM
Ecto sounds interesting. I'll check it out, especially for longer posts.
I sometimes write in Word, then cut and paste, or if I want tables and pictures I sometimes use www.writetomyblog.com
Posted by: Michael at July 18, 2007 9:52 AM
Mecca, old bar downtown, had hanging cages. Not quite prisoners in them though. Half dressed, or less, women dancing in them. Real nice Clark, Real nice!
Posted by: mikeo at July 18, 2007 5:05 PM
Michael: I'm a big fan of Ecto and can't say enough good things about it (despite the bit in the above post about lost entries.)
MikeO: I'd have to see them to make sure they're the same one I'm talking about. If the bar is still there maybe we could have lunch there one day.
Icy Mt: Nice work.
Posted by: delmer at July 18, 2007 11:50 PM