Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Continuing yesterday’s topic of eyes and genetics.

My maternal grandfather was red-green colorblind, as was his brother. I don’t know if either of his parents were colorblind, but since the gene expresses itself only on the X chromosome* and is therefore only inheritable to men via their mothers, my great-grandmother was a carrier of the gene if not colorblind herself. If she were only a carrier, each of her boys had a 50% chance of inheriting the gene.

Genetic probability is like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in my family: absurd, but not impossible. My grandfather had nine daughters and my great-uncle had four daughters.

So all of my aunts and their first cousins inherited a color-deficient X chromosome from their fathers. At least two of my male first cousins are colorblind, and who knows how many of us females are carrying the gene since none of us have children yet. But it turns out that my great-uncle’s wife was also a carrier of the gene—and one of her four daughters is colorblind (0.5% incidence rate in women). Both of her sons are colorblind.

Another thing I find very interesting in my family is the statistically high number of colorblind men whom my aunts have married. If only 5-8% of men in the general population are colorblind, it’s absurd, but not impossible, that a third of my married-into-the-family uncles are colorblind. (Maybe it has something to do with a genetically predisposed attraction to men who wear mismatched socks.)

I wonder if there’s a correlation between color blindness and eye color? It seems like there should be some sort of science already done on that sort of thing. I’m guessing not, since eye color is determined by a completely different set of genes. Wouldn’t it’s be cool, though, if people who were colorblind had, ironically, one green eye and one red eye? Yes, I’m also fascinated by heterochromia (each eye a different color: think David Bowie), though that doesn’t run in the family. Well, technically my hazel eyes are an example of central heterochromia (two different colors in the same iris) but that’s just not as cool. (Well, I do have a trick lazy eye that’s kind of cool. I can control it and easily weird out Ben anytime I please. Heh heh.)

So what have I learned from all of this? That I am easily fascinated.

Semi-related: At the next family reunion, I want to take close-up photos of everyone’s eyes (blood-related and not), then ask people to guess whose eyes they all are. It’ll be interesting to see how similar (or different?) they all look.

*You can learn more about the details and probability of inheritance from Causes and Incidences of Colorblindness

Saturday morning, the first film at the Sundance Screening Room was Sympathy for Delicious. I didn’t get to see much of it because I was finally doing box office stuff. But two of the principal cast members, Chris Thornton and Mark Ruffalo (who is also the director), were there early and were happy to talk with people in the lobby. I thought that was cool. Also, they were both quite handsome.

For the day’s second film, Grown Up Movie Star, the director, producer, and lead character from were there. I was still on box office and also took my lunch break. The “winter chicken salad” from the Sundance deli was amazing. Expensive, of course, because it’s a resort. But still. Yum.

My shift ended right before the 6pm film, Abel, a Mexican film was in Spanish with English subtitles for which I was able to finally use my volunteer credentials to exchange for a seat in the audience. I loved it. Though I relied on the subtitles, it was cool to work the dusty part of my brain that holds my Spanish language skills. The film was funny, interesting, and touching. There was a dramatic point in the movie when there was no sound—and the audience was completely silent. For at least a minute, we were on the edge of our seats and all holding our breath at the same time. No coughing, not wrappers, no whispering. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that absolute silence in a theater before.

That was it for my Saturday. I was tired and not really interested in driving up to Park City for the awards after-party, tempted as I was by free food and alcohol. Lots of driving just didn’t sound appealing, especially because I needed to get up early, so I went home.

It snowed overnight which made driving to my 9am Sunday shift more exciting than I would have liked it to be. I slipped a bit on the crappy roads, but still made it in safely. I was able to sneak in to see most of The Extra Man, a quirky and more light-hearted film than is typical at Sundance. I liked it. Then I snuck into the projection room (with Chris the projectionist’s permission) to take some behind-the-scenes photos.

The second film of the day, a documentary about two brothers-in-law with Al Qaeda associations called The Oath, was also the final festival screening at the Screening Room. I saw portions of it that looked really good, but I just wasn’t in the mood for it. I spent the next couple hours (after my shift was officially over) screwing around with my fancy camera. I really need to spend more time learning about everything it can do. Some of the photos turned out well, though, and that was helped by having some willing models.

These Sundance volunteers are crazy silly, let me tell you. They didn’t get mad about me shoving my camera in their face… and that’s after the several hours they spent this past week dealing with my sarcastic shit. Good people!

See more of my Sundance photos on Flickr.

The thing I’m learning about attending Comic Con is that you need to keep a pretty strict schedule to do all the things you want to do. That contradicts my somewhat laid-back approach and has resulted in a few missed opportunities. The flip side is that I’ve stayed pretty relaxed and have avoided crankiness.

Ben and I got started earlier than yesterday, though we still didn’t make it in time to see the first panel that I was interested in (Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends). We decided to go stand in line to see a panel with Shaun of the Dead stars Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, but the line was very, very long and snaked in and out of the building onto the veranda and we decided to skip it. I did get a free Stan Lee adverfan in the hallway, though. I don’t know what it’s really called, but it’s a sturdy paper cut-out of Stan Lee’s cartoon face stuck to a piece of wood that’s pimping a documentary of his life, True Believer. Advertising fan. Adverfan.

Other freebies I picked up today: a lot of button pins from various booths, a Ghost Hunters 4-inch statuette of Jason Hawes, a bright orange Nickelodeon slap bracelet, issue #1 of a comic called Burn, a paperback copy of Kushiel’s Scion by Jacqueline Carey (who signed it for me at the publisher’s booth), a Land of the Lost movie promo lanyard, an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes bag, and tons of random postcards.

I made it to three panels today. “Looking at Our World: Eye on the Present” was supposed to be about how authors use the supernatural in stories of contemporary society, but covered stuff that was sort of hit-or-miss according to my interests. Authors were Kelley Armstrong, L.A. Banks, Kate Brallier, Marjorie M. Liu, C.E. Murphy, Justine Musk, LIlith Saintcrow and Samantha Sommersby. I mostly went to that panel (with Ben in tow) so that I could squat a seat for the next panel, “The World of Graphic Novels.” Turns out that neither filled up, but oh well.

I learned a few interesting things from the author-illustrators on the second panel, but was disappointed that none of them were just writers or just illustrators. As a potential graphic novel writer, I’m interested in learning how writers can best collaborate with artists when their art skills don’t exactly fall under the umbrella of the word “talent.” The panelists were Nick Abadzis, Eddie Campbell, Rutu Modan, Alex Robinson, Adrian Tomine and it was moderated by Tom Spurgeon. I’d heard of Rutu Modan’s graphic novel, Exit Wounds, and she had a lot of interesting things to say. She’s Israeli but her book has not yet been published in Israel… the comics/graphic novel scene is almost nonexistent there and so she turned to the U.S. I recorded all these panel sessions and hope to be able to post them in some format on my website after I return home.

After the first two panels, Ben and I headed down to the exhibit hall to visit totally famous artist Katie Cook, a geek girl who we first met at Wizard World in 2004 when she drew a fun monster couple for us on the spot. I love her style, but she’s much busier these days so we settled for a signed print of her cartoony Darth Vader holding two small kitties with the caption “The Dark Side… is full of cat people.”

Then Ben and I split off and I happened to walk by the G4 tv channel booth… where Attack of the Show’s Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn were interviewing Samuel L. Jackson! I got a few crappy photos of him and my hands may have been visible in the background. I wanted to yell “Tell me more about your role in S.H.I.E.L.D.” but would have been drowned out by the retards who were just randomly screaming “SNAKES ON A PLANE!” Seriously, WTF. There was a mega horde of bodyguards surrounding him at all times.

From there, I walked around the exhibit hall and took lots of photos of cosplayers… even Barf from Spaceballs!

To be continued…

I think I need one of the Books to the Ceiling posters from Owl Square Press with the illustration of a bearded animal and stacks upon stacks of books, together with the nice little rhyme.  But where would I put it? My front room is where I keep my books, and the walls are already concealed with bookshelves…

(Follow the link to see the enormous number of books that are included in the full illustration)

I recently bought a new copy of Arnold Lobel’s other book, Fables, that I remember fondly from my childhood. I don’t specifically remember reading anything else of his, or at least nothing else was as memorable as that collection of wonderfully illustrated fables retold. I had no idea until I found this link today that he’d created such an awesome illustration that really is a book lover’s wet dream.

Books nom nom nom.

The FDA is still wishy-washy about the safety of emitted radiation levels of today’s cell phones. I would say that it’s safe to err on the side of less-is-better… and CNET has compiled a chart of radiation levels for just about every phone out there that hasn’t yet been discontinued.

The Motorola V3M that I’d been using for 2 years (and recently bequeathed to Ben) has a level of 1.14 and my new LG enV(2) has a level of 1.34.

The range for all tested cell phones is 0.135 to 1.6 so I guess we’re not doing ourselves any favors if it turns out that cell phone radiation really does increase the levels of brain tumors or warts or whatever. I don’t know… I think I’m already fairly boned because I grew up in a town that sported a nuclear power plant.

Green glowing ears, fingers and toes are normal, right?

I’m still configuring this new Wordpress blogging software to show the archives, widgets, better layout, etc. Sorry for the inconvenience, especially if you followed a link to a specific blog entry.

For now, you can still access my old blog and all of the old organization here: http://www.innergeek.us/_blog (though it doesn’t look like the search function is working).

…and you can also find my up-to-the-minute updates on Twitter. Goshdarnit I like that little microblogging application!

Ben is my hero. He found the problem spot with my database configuration and waved his magical High Programmer Geek wand and voila! I suddenly had Wordpress installed. That was after I opened a ticket with Yahoo web hosting because my database server crashed last night as I was trying to figure stuff out. Grr.

Anyway, so let me figure out how to format this new blog and to import my old posts from the crap Movable Type that I had been using. I’m sure there will be some small growing pains, but I know that it’s going to be awesome awesome!  Hooray!

I’m having lunch with former coworkers today and have some other stuff that I need to take care of this afternoon, but I’m really looking forward to having a reliable blogging system. Oh, JOY!

Working from home.

In the beginning stages of a cold. Already ate some pudding to help the sore throat.

Cat on lap.

Will write about Sundance on this blog TODAY. 

I’m at work and for some reason I thought I was archiving comments from the past few weeks that people have made on my blog. Instead, I deleted them. I am an idiot.

People whose comments I deleted: Madeleine, Monique, Liz, WithaK, Tina Kubala and ImaGeek2. Again, it’s not because I don’t love you. It’s just that I’m an idiot.

Can I blame this minor little cold that I have right now? Yes, I think I’d like to play that card. It’s not as bad as the cold I got a couple months ago, but I have been feeling a little light-headed. 

Ben and I spent some of Friday evening and all day Saturday cleaning the house. I did a pretty good job in the kitchen/dining room/living room and Ben worked some serious magic in the dungeon, I mean family room, where our big TV and his computer workspace live. I also put a couple posters/artwork in frames (didn’t hang anything yet) and hung some smaller things on the wall in the guest bathroom and hung a corkboard in my office.

I prepared a smorgasbord of sandwich fixins for dinner, for which my aunt Regina and uncle Alex joined us when they finally arrived from Minnesota. They’re staying with us for a couple days, then with some other friends around Utah, and then flying to Italy where they’ll be living for the next few-to-several years to be with my uncle’s family.

Yes, my uncle is Italian and made some fantastic aleo alio pasta for dinner yesterday. My dad came down for dinner with Prosciutto ham, pepperocinis and some Asiago cheese… so it was quite a delicious meal and the company was nice, too. Alex is also a big racing fan… not of NASCAR. Of Ferrari. And Ferrari won the championship yesterday, which made him clap his hands and do a cute, unexpected dance when he checked the score online (since we don’t get the Speed Channel on which it was broadcast). I couldn’t believe, after that, that he hadn’t seen the Pixar movie "Cars," so we watched that together after dinner.

Luigi and Guido, the little Italian cars from Radiator Springs, were even funnier given the earlier hoopla scene Alex had made about Ferrari. I also hadn’t realized how much Italian was spoken in the movie! Alex and Regina both enjoyed it. Apparently there will be partying in Italy for a month because Ferrari won the race. W007, I guess?

We had dinner early, around 5:30, so there was still time after the movie to play the Simpsons version of Clue, which I haven’t played for several years. It was fun, and I won the first round pretty quickly because I guessed the solution by chance. Then I won the second game through hard-nosed detective work. Alex and Ben were both already out of the game because they both guessed wrong before they had all the evidence. Silly boys.

I’m looking forward to pasta in a butter pea sauce for dinner this evening. Yummy food makes giving up my Saturday to cleaning a little easier to handle.