I kind of balked a little bit at this week's Geekend. The topic is which OS would be used by various SF characters such as Darth Vader, Mr. Spock, and Dr. Who, and I was a little miffed ad the choices -- until I read the analysis. Right on! A little geeky, but hilarious.
OK, I'm a geek. I get it. But check this out: Tesla Downunder. I like the Eye of Sauron, but I think my favorite is the Tesla Coil car theft protection. Hehehehehehe.
Now that I have my laptop and it's clear that I'm not going to be switching back and forth between it and the laptop, the lowest-ranking computer has been granted to the kids, but since it's in the bedroom, there will be no internet connection. But I still want them to do more than just play video games, so it was nice to find Scratch, a programming environment that lets kids build interactive games, art, etc.I haven't actually built anything yet, but from that I see, it seems pretty much like natural language programming. I may use it myself. :)
OK, I have no artisitic talent, I admit that. But every once in a while I need something that looks nice for a project, and I've always been in awe of those glassy looking buttons. Especially now, with the new Vista interfaces, I knew I was going to have to figure out how to do that, or really regret it. Fortunately, I just found a tutorial on making those glassy looking buttons.
OK, you know the genre of science fiction that's pretty much epitomized by Jules Verne? Advanced technology powered by steam? Picture Star Trek like that. Kind of a cool idea, actually. Steam Trek - Voyages of the HMAS Dauntless goes ahead and does it, combining the story with a play by email game, so if you've got the time, it should be interesting. Looks fun, anyway.
Sean sent me over to YouTube to find something specific, but I can never do that without getting sucked in. Some winners today:
God, Inc. -- Episode 1 and
God, Inc. -- Episode 2, which is like "The Office" but, well you get the idea. Very funny.
And I am just plain... disturbed... by Patrick Stewart on Extras. In case you haven't seen it, it's the new show from Ricky Gervais -- the guy who created and starred as the boss in the original British version of "The Office", by coincidence. But considering this and his "Erotic Bakery" sketch on Saturday Night Live, I am beginning to wonder if Patrick Stewart has a great sense of humor or a real need for choosing his projects a little more carefully. Once is very funny. Very, very funny. But too many times... Well, I'd just be careful if I were him.
It may sound a little silly, but that's what Time did for 2006, in choosing it's Person of the Year. The premise is that:
It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.
...
And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you.
A very nice sentiment. But for those of you worried about Time being proved wrong, they go on to say:
Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail.
So apparently with the ever-expanding Christmas season, there is beginning to be an issue with employees who have to listen to the same Christmas CDs over and over again. I can definitely sympathise. They should come to MY house. At least Sarah has hundreds, maybe thousands, of CDs to choose from.
(via open...)
Here's an interesting notion: can you be more creative by being more structured? Check out this essay on Serious Creativity.
Another gem circulating in email:
Whenever your child is out of control, take comfort from the thought
that even God's omnipotence did not extend to His own children, Adam
and Eve.
After creating heaven and earth, God created Adam and Eve. And the
first thing he said was "DON'T!"
"Don't what?" Adam replied.
"Don't eat the forbidden fruit." God said.
"Forbidden fruit? We have forbidden fruit? Hey Eve... we have
forbidden fruit!"
"No Way!"
"Yes way!"
"Do NOT eat the fruit!" said God.
"Why?" asked Adam.
"Because I am your Father and I said so!" God replied, wondering why
He hadn't stopped creation after making the elephants.
A few minutes later, God saw His children having an apple break and
He was ticked. "Didn't I tell you not to eat the fruit?" God asked.
"Uh huh," Adam replied.
"Then why did you?" said the Father.
"I don't know," said Eve.
"She started it!" Adam said.
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
"DID NOT!"
Having had it with the two of them, God's punishment was that Adam
and Eve should have children of their own. Thus the pattern was set
and it has never changed.
BUT THERE IS REASSURANCE IN THE STORY! If you have persistently and
lovingly given your children wisdom and they haven't taken it, don't
be too hard on yourself.
If God had trouble raising children, what makes you think it should
be a piece of cake for you?
My installation of Microsoft Word decided to take a dive, and i didn't have time to deal with it. Fortunately, there are really only two tools I use in Word that I can't get from WordPad: styles and the word count. For a lark, I tried out Writely, and online word processor. it's pretty slick, actually. At least at broadband speeds, it feels like an actual desktop application, but since it doesn't have styles (or word count for that matter) probably the most useful aspect of using it is that it backs up your file to an offsite servier every so often. (I'm not sure how frequently, but for some reason I want to say every 10 seconds.) also, because it's online, you can then access your files from anywhere, as well as charing editing duties with someone else. But it still doesn't have a word count, so i was able to find a Word Count tool at Writertopia. Writertopia isn't out of beta yet, but the did release two cool tools. One is the simple Word Count page, and the other is a progress meter, complete with silly graphics.
Now if only I could get Writely to automatically do a word count and update the reference to a progress meter on my site, that would be interesting.
Well, June is here, and that means hurricane season. It also means it's time for this handy list of hints that makes its way through the e-mail rounds each year. As always, if this is yours and you want me to take it down, just let me know.
****************************
We're about to enter the hurricane season. Any day now, you're going to turn on the TV and see a weather person pointing to some radar blob out in the Gulf of Mexico and making two basic meteorological points:
1. There is no need to panic.
2. We could all be killed.
Yes, hurricane season is an exciting time to be in Florida. If you're new to the area, you're probably wondering what you need to do to prepare for the possibility that we'll get hit by "the big one.''
Based on our experiences, we recommend that you follow this simple three-step hurricane preparedness plan:
1. Buy enough food and bottled water to last your family for at least three days.
2. Put these supplies into your car.
3. Drive to Nebraska and remain there until Thanksgiving.
Unfortunately, statistics show that most people will not follow this
sensible plan. Most people will foolishly stay in Florida. We'll start with one of the most important hurricane preparedness items:
HOMEOWNERS' INSURANCE: If you own a home, you must have hurricane insurance. .. Fortunately, this insurance is cheap and easy to get, as long as your home meets two basic requirements:
1. It is reasonably well-built, and
2. It is located in Nebraska.
Unfortunately, if your home is located in Florida, or any other area
that might actually be hit by a hurricane, most insurance companies would prefer not to sell you hurricane insurance, because then they might be required to pay YOU money, and that is certainly not why they got into the insurance business in the first place.
So you'll have to scrounge around for an insurance company, which will charge you an annual premium roughly equal to the replacement value of your house. At any moment, this company can drop you like used dental floss.
Since Hurricane Andrew, I have had an estimated 27 different
home-insurance companies. This week, I'm covered by the Bob and Big Stan Insurance Company, under a policy which states that, in addition to my premium, Bob and Big Stan are entitled, on demand, to my kidneys.
SHUTTERS: Your house should have hurricane shutters on all the
windows, all the doors, and -- if it's a major hurricane -- all the toilets.
There are several types of shutters, with advantages and disadvantages:
Plywood shutters: The advantage is that, because you make them
yourself, they're cheap. The disadvantage is that, because you make them yourself, they will fall off.
Sheet-metal shutters: The advantage is that these work well, once
you get them all up. The disadvantage is that once you get them all
up, your hands will be useless bleeding stumps, and it will be December.
Roll-down shutters: The advantages are that they're very easy to
use, and will definitely protect your house. The disadvantage is
that you will have to sell your house to pay for them.
"Hurricane-proof'' windows: These are the newest wrinkle in
hurricane protection: They look like ordinary windows, but they can
withstand hurricane winds! You can be sure of this, because the
salesman says so. He lives in Nebraska.
"Hurricane Proofing Your Property: As the hurricane approaches,
check your yard for movable objects like barbecue grills, planters,
patio furniture, visiting relatives, etc.; you should, as a precaution,
throw these items into your swimming pool (if you don't have a swimming pool, you should have one built immediately). Otherwise, the hurricane winds will turn these objects into deadly missiles.
EVACUATION ROUTE: If you live in a low-lying area, you should have an evacuation route p lanned out. (To determine whether you live in a low-lying area, look at your driver's license; if it says "Florida" you live in a low-lying area.)
The purpose of having an evacuation route is to avoid being trapped in your home when a major storm hits. Instead, you will be trapped in a gigantic traffic jam several miles from your home, along with two hundred thousand other evacuees. So, as a bonus, you will not be lonely.
HURRICANE SUPPLIES: If you don't evacuate, you will need a mess of supplies. Do not buy them now! Florida tradition requires that you
wait until the last possible minute, then go to the supermarket and get into vicious fights with strangers over who gets the last can of SPAM.
In addition to food and water, you will need the following supplies:
1. 23 flashlights. At least $167 worth of batteries that turn out,
when the power goes out, to be the wrong size for the flashlights.
2. Bleach. ( No, I don't know what the bleach is for. NOBODY knows what the bleach is for. But it's traditional, so GET some!)
3. A 55-gallon drum of underarm deodorant.
4. A big knife that you can strap to your leg. (This will be useless
in a hurricane, but it looks cool.)
5. A large quantity of raw chicken, to placate the alligators. (Ask
anybody who went through Andrew; after the hurricane, there WILL be irate alligators.)
6. $35,000 in cash or diamonds so that, after the hurricane passes,
you can buy a generator from a man with no discernible teeth.
Of course these are just basic precautions. As the hurricane draws near, it is vitally important that you keep abreast of the situation by turning on your television and watching TV reporters in rain slickers stand right next to the ocean and tell you over and over how vitally important it is for everybody to stay away from the ocean.
Good luck and remember: It's great living in paradise!
Those of you who aren't here yet you should come. Really!
Picture this: you're in Vegas. You just lost a lot of money. You had a few drinks. And a few more drinks. Then you lost some more money and had a few more drinks. So you decide to go to the lounge to sit it out for a little while. You get the lounge, you put your hand on the table, and it bursts into flames. Or at least, it looks like it bursts into flames, right where your hand is. Move your hand, the flame moves.
Now, I don't know about you, but I would not stick around to see how that worked. I would run, not walk, to the nearest alcohol rehab center.
But seeing as how I am not in Vegas, didn't lose a lot of money, and am completely sober, I find these Human Locator interactive tables absolutely fascinating. Apparently they shine a projector down from the ceiling for effects similar to those videogames you wave at at Walmart. Only way more trippy.
Just be advised that some of these videos will crash Firefox if you let them get to the end.
I'd hate to be Darth Vader calling home to explain that the Death Star's been blown up by ... well, just watch it:
And kudos to Techrepublic for managing to tie this into a discussion on Disaster Recovery and meeting ettiquette.
This could be a dangerous new addiction. I just discovered Current TV, an online and satellite network that airs viewer created content, as voted on by viewers. (Actually, right now about one third of the schedule is viewer content, but I can see that changing pretty quick.) The schedule is broken down into small chunks of just a few minutes, and from what I can see, those chunks look pretty interesting. Check out Firestorm, a time lapse view of 28 hours of the Simi Valley fire:
Oh, for the days when all we had to worry about were shoebox dioramas of great moments in history.
Hehehe.
I had been getting just the tiniest bit discouraged with Squidoo, but that's over now. The monthly reports came out, and it turns out that only the royalties from clickthroughs such as Amazon show up on the reports. Sarah and I both made a little bit (and I mean a little bit) of money off the general royalties! (OK, it was a very, very little bit.) But it's important because it means that there is money to be made here, even for topics that don't necessarily lend themselves to cross-marketing.
Plus, Sarah's Quick and Easy Cooking lens is now #46! Her Off the grid and Frugal Gardening lenses are doing well, but I'd like to see her Geneaology lens do a little better. Ditto for my JSON lens, which is starting to drop again, but is still doing pretty well.
All in all, a good day.
I actually found the several days ago, but the server was so overloaded it was eventually taken down. So here it is again, this time from its original source. I'm not really quite sure what to say about this particular piece. I'll just tell you it's pretty funny, and that somebody has way too much time on their hands. (And I've never considered the idea of Han Solo disco dancing.) Download Starlords, or I found a streaming version.
I do have to say that I am amused by the idea that they have taken clips that are normally seen in their entirety and sampled them, then set them to music that is normally heard sampled but is here played in its entirety. Just the kind of convoluted thinking I like.
"Some people are like Slinkies. They're really good for nothing; however, they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs."
'Nuff said.
I used to have a great poster of a single lit match poking out about an inch from about a hundred other matches. It was a parody of those motivational posters, and it said something to the effect of "Burnout: attitudes are contagious. Mine can kill you." in my former days, I kept it on my wall. Now despair.com has put out a whole series of new Demotivators
Fun stuff.
Well, Sarah and I have been fooling around with Squidoo, as you know, and we've got a few lenses up and running. Sarah's very proud of her Home Grown -- Frugal Gardening for Fun lens, and her beginner's guide to genealogy is fantastic. I didn't know there was that much to know about genealogy, much less that she knew it! She also put up an Easter crafts lens, and her Quick and easy cooking lens has a bunch of the really fast, really delicious recipes she makes around here.
Meanwhile, my Natalie Portman lens has been doing well, so I'm assuming V for Vendetta hasn't flopped, and my JSON lens also seems to have taken off.
I'll let you know how it goes...
Ever lay on the ground in the summer and watch the clouds go by? The temptation is always to make shapes out of them. Apparently that temptation doesn't go away when you grow up and become an astronomer. Check out this awesome photo of a nebula that looks like it's about to devour an entire galaxy.
That, or lice.
Like Adam Finney, I grew up on the old Batman television series, so this complete list of "KAPOW"s and "OOOOFF"s just amuses the heck out of me.
I am officially very excited to announce that Bruce Campbell's Briscoe County Jr. is coming to DVD on July 18, 2006. If you've never seen the show, it's a tongue-in-cheek western with science-fiction elements. It's also hilarious, and just plain fun.
Here's an interesting concept. Animated shorts, like animated movies, are written and drawn by teams of people. And each individual typically has his or her own style, even though the idea is for it all to look consistent. TV Squad has a link to a great blog by a teenager who has broken down individual animated shorts by artist showing what each contributes to the sequence. Very cool.
Figures that the first have time to actually sit down and look for news is April Fools' Day, where most of the information I find is simply, well, untrue. Funny, but untrue.
One site publisher I know actually said that rant (although I say that did a nice way) about it, complaining that April fool's stories should not be posted in the form that normally contains real news, even if they are clearly labeled as such. He is right that these things tend to perpetuate for a long time, and they are read long after April 1, when people aren't thinking to check the date when they read something like China buys Google, or U.S. bill to adopt Shire Reckoning calendar. he also pointed out that April Fools' Day is not celebrated everywhere in the world, which could cause problems for some international readers. But still, I'd be getting a good laugh out of a lot of the stories I've been reading today. Here are some examples:
The Truth with Jokes (which I have to admit I particularly enjoy due to the contacts I've had with the Apache Software Foundation recently)
FORGET DRAGONS! TIME FOR PONIES!!!1! (about a new My Pretty Pony role-playing game)
SQL on Rails Launched
Microsoft Buys OpenOffice.org
New Plans From Lucasfilm ("Now that the cycle of films is done, we can finally broaden the Star Wars franchise into marketing niches we'd heretofore avoided, and adult entertainment is at the top of our list." and "George Lucas has announced that Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox will offer free 'replacement DVDs' to anyone who mails in pre-Special Edition VHS and Laserdisc copies of Star Wars episodes IV, V, and VI by April 30th.")
Here There Be Dragons
Email Harvester Launches, Turns Down $750 Million Offer
Emo Programming: Beyond agile and pragmatic
Because I can't type much anymore, I use a dictation system, and sometimes it can lead to some pretty funny stuff, especially when I'm working and somebody strikes up a conversation with me. But even with the microphone on, it usually doesn't pick up anything recognizable unless I'm actually wearing the headset. But I just got off the phone from a rather heated conversation, and when I came back, I found the microphone had decided that I had said the following:
To go and he you where I seen you in on ay he lied in now he so you don't have a reworking that let you know a known as because he is so you he youe yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah he he he wanted to and from a law he he he yeah I like to I. I. unrefined type and yeah yeah yeah yeah so you see him in runs at a theater in I reeling from a zoo in Hong Kong thinking and version should not be I know I have and he's very little is is the yeah yeah yeah okay well I see him in line now you as an on the yeah actually yeah yeah yeah yeah okay for him in the who is in Italy in a & l
Go to!
Yes, yes, I know they've been talking about this since, what, before Revenge of the Sith? But today I found an article in which Rick McCallum says it'll be about Luke's childhood, and that they plan to make at least 100 episodes of it.
You know, they say a goal is just a dream until you write it down and tell somebody about it. So I'm going to say this out loud now.
I want to write at least one episode of that TV show.
OK, I recognize that finding this interesting is completely geeky, but I stumbled across LincMad's 1947 Area Code Map this afternoon, and I think it's really cool. Particularly the fact that originally, states with only one area code had a "0" as the middle digit, and those iwth more than one had "1"'s as middle digits, as well as the fact that area codes with a "9" as the middle digit are "are reserved for expansion to longer telephone numbers, some time in the 21st Century."
People actually get paid to think about how best to format phone numbers 20, 30, 50 years from now. I find that fascinating.
So mock me. I don't care. :)
I've often considered starting a really bizarre rumor just to see how far it would get. I imagine when it finally comes back to me in an email two years later and I tell the person who sent it to me, "I can tell you for sure that this is a hoax; I started it!"
Then I consider the hundreds of times after that that it comes back to me and people still believe it, and it doesn't seem so funny anymore.
But consider Alan Abel, who could be considered a professional hoax-ster. His latest was hoax that convinced a diner full of people and wiithin 15 minutes, a passel of reporters, that Bob Pagani, who participates in many of his hoaxes, was a trucker who'd won all of the $365 million Powerball jackpot. 'It's performance art," Pagani said. "You don't exactly know what you're going to accomplish."
Abel is the one who, in the 1950's, came up with "the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA), a fake campaign to clothe creatures with the slogan, 'A nude horse is a rude horse.'"
I've been doing a lot of musing lately about the future of the Internet and the future of media and how the two of them may come together, so Hollywood's evolution via 12 key solutions, which tracks Hollywood from its very beginnings -- 1 minute silent shorts that were essentially proof of concepts for motion pictures -- to today, a world in which George Lucas actually said out loud that he thinks the days of the blockbuster are over. I do think there will be a convergence, and in fact that we're already seeing it. Witness the preponderance of sites like Squidoo, which count on people to provide content that will hopefully attract "viewers" so that they can sell advertising. Doesn't that sound like television to you?
Well, almost. Squidoo has a very nice revenue-sharing model in place, so if the site does well, those who provide content will do well as well. I've got a few "lenses" up there myself, some on technology (JSON) and others on entertainment related topics. I'm still working on my Star Wars lens, but my Harrison Ford lens -- still not entirely finished -- seems to be doing surprisingly well. I'll update you as a get these things in place, and let you know how that goes.
Apparently the folks down in the Monroe County, Florida Sheriff's office have too much time on their hands.... Disney Star Runs Afoul Of Law - February 24, 2006
I've been wondering about this for a while. I'm not really a gamer, but that's only because of lack of time. (And I'm still waiting for Star Wars: Galaxies to finish downloading updates. I installed it on Sunday night, and it says it'll be done Wednesday afternoon. Damn dial-up.) But there's something about good science fiction and fantasy that's immersive, or that feels like it should be. So are video games a better forum for SF than films?
I'm so excited! Yesterday Sarah got me the Star Wars Galaxies Starter Kit. I've been dying to play this game for ages, and now I can. Well, when I can carve out some time. Which I will. Soon.
The only question is whether I can play it on my excruciatingly slow connection. Until I can get satellite, I'm still stuck with a dial-up connection that, on a good day, gets up to 33K. Anybody ever tried to play on a connection that slow? Is it even possible?
Well, things are finally starting to settle down, thank goodness. Enough for me to catch my breath a little, at least. Here's a bit of fun: The 10 Best Sci-Fi Films that Never Existed. I'd put Firefly on that list, but I'm not over Serenity yet.
Chris Pirillo points out a funny little quirk in Google's Adsense results. Interestingly, if you Google "miserable failure", they have enough sense to make their first Adsense ad Why these results?. So at least they're not oblivious. :)
I love Steve Martin. He is so straight, sometimes you forget that he's making comedy. Check out his version of Bill O'Reilly.
well, I'm actually pretty impressed. First of all, the FeedBurner version of my feed looks very nice, and includes things like the ability to e-mail individual post to people, add it to del.icio.us, and so on. Very nice. But what impresses me, perhaps even more, is the fact that in just a couple of hours, it's already got three subscribers, only one of which is me. Interesting.
OK, I've gone ahead and signed up with FeedBurner, so you can now subscribe to my FeedBurner feed. They purport to offer good publicity and easy fo use, as well as statistics. I'll let you know what happens.
Somebody submitted this anonymously to the Vanguard Science Fiction Report: The Force Is Strong In Tunisia. I knew in the back of my head that George Lucas had chosen a Tunisian hotel as the Lars Homestead, for some reason it never occurred to me that you could actually stay there.
Technorati tags: Star Wars | George Lucas | Tunisia | movies | science fiction | fantasy
Via 100 Bloggers -- email me if you want to participate -- check out Spot The Fake Smile, a psychology experiment that lets you decide which of 20 smiles are genuine or fake. The rationale is interesting. I won't give it away, but apparently they're controlled by different areas of the brain and different muscles.
Technorati tags: smile | fake smile | spot the fake smile | science | spychology
I have a goodly number of clocks in my house, so you'd think I always know what time it is. Not so. I have several clocks, but they all have different times on them. What's more, my wife and I can't seem to agree on which clock is actually correct. Now I've found the official U.S. time, a government web site that's actually kind of cool. Not only does it give you the "official time", but you can see where it's daylight, so you can avoid calling people in other places in the middle of the night.
What's neat about it to me is that it's a way to coordinate meetings and such with people who may be geographically dispersed.
Oh, and it turns out my wife is right. As always.
OK, I'm trying to place the joke that goes with this punchline:
"Rectum? Damn near killed 'em!"
(or, alternately, "Wrecked 'em? Damn near killed 'em!")
The closest I got was a reply to a blog posting that mentions the joke, saying "that's not a joke, it's a punchline that needs no joke."
ARG!
Here's something fun, or at least interesting. The USB-UIRT is an infrared reciever and transmitter that hooks up to your computer. So you can not only program your computer to do various things when you press a button on your remote control, you can also control your tv, TiVo, stereo, and so on from your computer. Nice.
Technorati tags: remote control | hardware
I love Lava Lamps. (Please forgive me, oh Lava Lamp gods, for I know you are a trademark, but do not know the proper way to cite you. [UPDATE: The proper citation is "LAVA LITE lamp", but that's just too awkward to say, I'm sorry.]) I am also incurably meddlesome. Translation: I love to shake it up and watch the little tiny bubbles of wax re-coalesce. Unfortunately, when you do that to Lava Lamp and [or to a LAVA LITE lamp, for that matter] , you get more than just little bubbles of wax. You get very, very cloudy solution. Especially if, like me, you have a tiny little fake lava lamp-type thing, which is constantly toppling to the floor. So in my search to find out how to clear the water, I found the Oozing Goo Lava Line and its thread on fixing a cloudy LAVA LITE lamp. The cool part, however, is about halfway down the page, where someone explains how to replace the water in one of these things. Very cool, especially since it means you can make your own colors with a little food coloring.
Back when I was really serious about The Vanguard Science Fiction Report (which, by the way, I have once again began to update) I always wanted to do a listing of all of the television shows now airing, even in repeats and syndication. Now About.com has done it.
Technorati tags: TV | television | science fiction | fantasy
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has started a blog. Now, I'm one of those people who loves to see what's going on behind the scenes. I watch all of the "making of" documentary site and get my hands on, even if I haven't seen whatever it is they're showing the making of. So it was with extreme pleasure that I read Dangerous Doughnuts, the first post in the category Dilbert Stuff That Got Me in Trouble. A cop, a gun, a doughnut, and an editorial board. Gotta love it.
[Update: This one is even funnier.]
Technorati tags: Dilbert | Scott Adams | comics | humor | humour
From the Onion, via Bruce Schneier: Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack, including this quote from the mayor:
If zombies were to arrive in the city tomorrow, we'd all be roaming the earth in search of human brains by Friday.
Technorati tags: humor | humour | zombie | zombies | Pittsburgh | onion |
Ever wonder how they come up with those great designs you see on pumpkins every year at Halloween? Better yet, have you ever wondered about the best way to put those designs on the pumpkin? Check out this flash movie: How To Carve A Pumpkin.
He he he.
Technorati tags: pumpkin | Halloween | humor | jack-o-lantern |
As the title of this blog implies, I am not the most organized individual on the face of the earth. Making things more difficult is the fact that my office here in the new house is somewhere between the size of a small walk-in closet and a large bathroom. I have to walk outside to change my mind or stretch my imagination. So I'm quite interested in organizing the space as effectively as possible. It won't be available until Friday, but while I've got a link to it, make a note to check out Organize Your Office in No Time by Creating Your Office Framework, which shows you all of those really obvious things that you would do if you just gave it some thought. (Of course, if you could give it some thought, your office would probably already be organized.) It's from the book Organize Your Office In No Time, which looks pretty interesting. The only thing that bothers me is that I don't like to work with my back to the wall, which seems to be the only "acceptable" configuration.
Technorati tags: books | organization
There's really not much I can say about Fear and Loathing in the Mystery Machine, "Excerpts from the never-aired 1973 Scooby Doo episode with guest star Hunter S. Thompson". (Via A Small Victory.)
Technorati tags: Hunter S. Thompson | Scooby Doo
I'm excited to report that today I received an e-mail from Amazon that a US version of the Long Way Round DVD is finally going to be released on December 13, and you can order it now. For those who don't remember my ranting about it before, this is a series that follows Ewan MacGregor (yes, that Ewan MacGregor) and Charlie Boorman as they ride their motorcycles around the world, from London to New York. It's fascinating because you not only get to see all of these remote places and see how people really live, but also because you get to see how real people react in a situation in which they attempt something more difficult than most of us would ever consider.
Also, for you Ewan MacGregor fans, don't forget that Star Wars, Episode III - Revenge of the Sith comes out on DVD November 1. (At which point I'm sure there will be dozens, or even hundreds of viewing parties, in which people watch all six films in order. I just wish Return of the Jedi wasn't such a wimpy finish. Although, now that I think about it, it might not be so bad at the end of the entire saga.)
Technorati tags: Long Way Around | Star Wars | Ewan McGregor | motorcycles | travel | DVD | movies | science-fiction | Revenge of the Sith
I took German and high school, Russian in college, and tried to learn French because my wife wanted me to. I've got a CD learning Spanish, and somewhere along the line I really should learn Chinese.
Can I actually carry on a conversation in any of these languages? No.
So the Language Exchange absolutely fascinates me. Members sign up to learn a particular language, and they're paired with native speakers, so they can actually have conversations in their chosen language. The list is actually quite extensive. It includes not only the languages you'd expect, such as English, Spanish, and so on, but also some you might not, such as Native American, Gaelic, Yiddish, and lots of languages you've probably never heard of.
This would be perfect for me, if I can still type. Unfortunately, I have enough trouble getting this dictation system to recognize what I say in English. There is an option to do voice chat but I don't think I'm up to that challenge.
Technorati tags: language | speech | foreign-language |learning
I've been doing a lot of editing lately, which has made me very aware of personal biases that I have. For example, I always use "for example" instead of "for instance", because I was taken to task on it by an editor who said that it would cause confusion based on the use of the word "instance", as this was a tutorial for people who would think of that word as having to do with an instance of a particular object. So now, I correct everybody else.
I'm also somewhat fanatic about eliminating the use of the passive voice. It's not "a list of items will be displayed by the cart", it's "the cart displays a list of items". (And not, by the way, "the cart will display a list of items" unless there's a very good reason.)
But then, these things were drilled into my head, and they stuck. At least they're not as arbitrary as some of these gems from the American Journalism Review.
Technorati tags: humor | humour | writing | grammar | journalism
I love it when advertising doesn't take itself seriously. Check out this very big ad for Carlton draft.
Technorati tags: Carlton Draft | Carlton Draught | beer | advertising | humor | big+ad | commercials
Totally swamped so i don't have time to comment, but have a look at the Ambient Orb, a glowing sphere that changes colors according to information received over a wireless network, like weather (blue for cooler, red for hotter) stock market fluctuation (green for up, red for down) and so on. You can even create custom channels, apparently. Very cool, but a bit pricey for me for the moment.
Technorati tags: Ambient Orb
My wife, Sarah, took took all of the photos for Easy HTML for Ebay. (Well, all the good ones. The crappy ones in the last chapter were "for placement only" photos I took so I could finish the code and I never replaced them. My bad. Definitely my bad.) But here's a good reason why you should never use stock photos for something like that without at least getting an exclusive: The Fishbowl: The Head First Girl's Double Life.
I'm still cracking up over this. Hehehe...
Technorati tags: Head First Girl
I have absolutely no clue what the context for this video clip is. All I know is this guy's cat got hit by a truck and lost the use of his back legs, so he built a robot platform the cat could drive. Pretty cool, actually.
Some people just have more time than brains. Check out the Stupid Crimes and Misdemeanors on Courttv.com.
There are time sinks and there are time sinks. I actually stared, mesmerized, at this through an hour long phone meeting. If the original disappears, see it at Dwight Silverman's TechBlog.
If she gets stuck, pick her up and toss her with your mouse. Truly amazing.
Technorati tags: fun | falling woman
I'm still kind of reeling here, trying to finish funeral arrangements, but I took a break and found that The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster has come to the end of its run.
I don't usually gush about blogs, but I have to gush about this one. It's basically the first three Star Wars movies -- that is, A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi -- from the point of view of Darth Vader. And a hilarious point of view it is at times, from personell problems to personal musings. The final entry is thoughtful and touching, and really wraps it all up beautifully.
I've got to find time to read all the entries in chronological order.
(Update: I found the time; there are only 30 entries, 10 for each film. It was absolutely stupendous. Hilariously funny and at the same time touching. Take the time.)
Technorati tags: The Darth Side | StarWars | Star Wars | Darth Vader
Unlike Episode II, I didn't see anything obvious in the digital version of Episode III that was different from the film version, but there's one reason to see it digitally: the trailers.
The very first trailer, not on the film version, was the first trailer for the Firefly movie, Serenity. Absolutely stunning. I'm hoping the movie lives up to it!
Now that I've had time to sit and think, I'm ready to talk about this film. The short version: yipee, yipee, yipee, it doesn't suck!!! In fact, it's excellent. Wonderful. And most importantly...
Fulfilling.
Yes, Episode III has actually managed to give me closure on this part of my life. For those non-fans among you, this may seem a bit ... odd, or even pathetic, but let's face it; Star Wars has been a part of my life since I was nine years old. You can't experience something like that, to that degree, without being affected by it. I'd been worried about how I'd react when it was done, but I feel strangely calm now. Like I can finally move on with my life.
OK, deep personal analysis done. On to the movie itself. If you want to go in not knowing anything about it, stop reading now. (Of course, if you'd wanted to do that, you've probably already seen it.)
At its heart, this film is, and has to be, one long transition from the state of affairs in Episode II to the state of affairs in Episode IV. There are no great mysteries in how it's going to end. You know that Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. You know Padme has two children, Luke and Leia, and that they're split up and hidden around the galaxy. You know that the Republic becomes the Empire, and that Chancellor Palpatine becomes Emperor Palpatine. You know that the Jedi are destroyed and that Yoda and Kenobi go into hiding.
How that all comes to pass, however, is the interesting part. And I have to hand it to Lucas. Even though we all know what's got to happen, he's done it in such a way that it's still interesting.
The story starts with the rescue of Palpatine, who's been kidnapped by General Greivous, the head of the droid army, by Obi-Wan and Anakin. (I'm not giving anything away here. The opening crawler tells you that.) From the very beginning you know this is going to be a visual film, and that part of it has been carried off beautifully. But you can also see right away that there's actually some characterisation going on here. Ewan McGregor has gone from imitating Alec Guiness to chanelling him to actually adding to the performance, and he is quite possibly the best part of this film.
Lucas reportedly brought in Tom Stoppard to perk up the script, and it shows. There's actually real dialogue that you can say, instead of just typing, and the humor is very well placed. (Keep an ear out for the droids, especially.)
As the story progresses, we see that Anakin really is loyal to the Jedi, and especially to Obi-Wan. So when he finally does turn, we'll need a good reason, and the story actually provides one. I still wish, though, that someone had tought Hayden Christensen the difference between "angry" and "whiny". Still, when he finally does turn, it's believable. And chilling. You'll see what I mean when he gets to the Jedi temple.
Natalie Portman doesn't actually have a lot to do here, but she's the catalyst for much of it, and what she does she does well. Also a standout in the cast is Jimmy Smits, as Bail Organa. We knew back in the last movie he was important to the story, but now we find out how important, and Smits handles it extremely well.
Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine. What can I say here. This is a role that practically requires chewing the scenery, but I was impressed by how well he carried it off. We find out in this film how he went from gentleman to deformed ... well ... skeevy person, and that was well handled as well. I didn't think it was possible to make the Emperor any more creepy, but they've actually done it.
And while we're on the subject, the political machinations were absolutely spot on. We see how Palpatine took the Republic into Empire, and it's believable. A lesson that I hope doesn't go unnoticed in today's times. Witness specifically Padme's comment: "So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause."
One aspect both audiences I saw it with particularly liked was when Yoda kicks butt. If you liked him at the end of Episode II, you'll love him here. (I'll take a moment to digress and say that I actually didn't like the rendering of Yoda as much in this film as the last one, but it was still excellent.) It's amazing how much characterization you can put into a character that's entirely computer generated.
Were there missteps? Sure. Some of the computer generated characters -- particularly one CG shot of Obi-Wan -- are ... less than realistic. Overall though, while there are a couple of things I'd take issue with, all of the big mysteries, and all of the big continuity errors are cleaned up, and that's one thing I was really worried about.
So while I don't know if I'd call it "the best movie ever made" I'd definitely give it at least 9.8 out of 10. Go see it.
Technorati tags: StarWars | Star Wars | ROTS | Episode+III | Sith | Revenge of the Sith | RevengeOfTheSith
I'm still trying to stay as unspoiled as possible, but there were a couple of hilarious Star Wars themed Foxtrot cartoons. Hehehehe....
Apparently the BBC has adapted the last three books for radio, and they've brought back much of the original cast, including Simon Jones! You can listen to the episodes for one week after broadcast at the Radio 4 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy site.
Technorati tags: Hitchhikers | HGTTG | humor | humour
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read.--- Groucho Marx
Technorati Tags: Humor | Humour | Groucho Marx | GrouchoMarxr | quotes
Checking my logs this morning, I noticed that I was getting an inordinate amount of traffic from Rogers Cadenhead's Workbench. Turns out Rogers has been getting a whole lot of traffic -- say, 100 hits every minute or so -- because he's registered BenedictXVI.com. He did it weeks ago, in fact, along with registering ClementXV.com, InnocentXIV.com, LeoXIV.com, PaulVII.com and PiusXIII.com -- successors to allt he papal names of the last 300 years.
I like Rogers. In addition to being a really smart guy, he's cool. And he's not planning to sell the name or use it for nefarious purposes, which is always nice.
(Update: Apparently Rogers was on the Today show joking that in exchange for the name, he'd take complete absolution, a trip to Rome, or maybe a mitre (the pointy hats). So I have to repost my favorite comment (of the more than 400 on his page, some of which are less than favorable).
CADENHEAD...THIS IS GOD. I HAVE A MESSAGE FOR VISITORS TO THIS WEBSITE TODAY.GET A SENSE OF HUMOR, MY CHILDREN. IT'S A WEBSITE. IF YOU THINK THAT THIS IS EVEN IN MY TOP 10 LIST OF WORRIES WITH WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD TODAY, YOU NEED TO NEED TO GET OUT OF YOUR HOUSE A LITTLE MORE.CADENHEAD...I'VE TOLD RATZINGER TO COUGH UP A HAT. LET ME KNOW IF HE DOESN'T COME THROUGH.--- GOD
Seriously. Lighten up folks, it's not like he pointed it at porn or anything.
Actually, Rogers is Catholic, so I'm rooting for the Vatican to give him not only a trip to Rome, but an audience with the new Pope. Now THAT would be cool.)
Technorati tags: Pope | Benedict XVI | Ratzinger | Rogers Cadenhead | Religion
My mother called me yesterday to tell me that there was a move called Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I should make sure I bring my towel. My mother's well-intentioned attempt to reconnect with my childhood aside, I've seen the trailer and not only do I not intend to bring my towel, I don't intend to bring any part of my body to the theater. Reviews are unfortunately bearing out my impression of the trailer that the movie has been turned into some kind of special effects action movie, which the story clearly is not.
Well, story is a relative term. If you've read the first couple of books, you know that plot was, well, incidental. The value was the comedy. Truly funny, thoughtful, comedy. Apparently this has, in most cases, been replaced by "jokoids", a term which the reviewer attributes to Ken Campbell as "something that has the shape of a joke but is not actually funny."
Sad, really.
Technorati tags: HGTTG | Hitchhiker's | Douglas Adams | humor | humour | movies | Science fiction | comedy
Tired of post-apocalyptic stories that use the same old end-of-the-world scenarios? I mean, how many nuclear wars and biological accicents can you read about? Check out Exit Mundi, a humorous look at lots of alternatives.
Ever wonder how much money a television show actually makes in advertising? Check out the futon critic for a list from this past tv season. Remember, though, that the network has to pay a licence fee in order to air the show.
Technorati tags: Advertising | television | tv
OK, I'm still laughing over this one. According to CNN, a group of MIT students created a program to generate a random computer science paper, and got it accepted at a conference. The paper, Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification
of Access Points and Redundancy is full of statements such as:
One must understand our network configuration to grasp the genesis of our results. We ran a deployment on the NSA’s planetary-scale overlay network to disprove the mutually largescale behavior of exhaustive archetypes. First, we halved the effective optical drive space of our mobile telephones to better understand the median latency of our desktop machines.
which, if you're just skimming, sounds like a lot of the specs I've been forced to read in my life, but is all generated by SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator. The code is GPL, by the way, so you can do your own, such as A Construction of Scatter/Gather I/O, either by downloading the code or from their website. (UPDATE: Apparently they only cache the generated papers for a couple of days, so I've removed that link and instead you can read A Methodology for the Synthesis of the Producer-Consumer Problem, which I've now saved to my own server.)
Technorati tags: Rooter | pranks | computer science | MIT | SCIgen |
I love April Fool's Day. More specifically, I love a good April Fool's Day joke. Like The Empire Strikes Back: The Lost Scene from How Stuff Works. Very funny.
It was put to me this way: From the people who brought you Lord of the Peeps: the very funny PeepHenge.
Technorati Tags: Peeps | LOTR | Lord of the Rings | Tolkien | PeepHenge | Stonehenge
Sean McGrath points out NetDisaster. I wish I could use this as a screensaver.
Technorati tags: Fun | Humor | Humour | NetDisaster | Fish
Not that I want to be booked on Oprah, mind you, I just thought that Top 10 Tips for Getting Booked on Oprah was an interesting look at how the whole process works.
[NOTE: Please remember that I have nothing to do with the Oprah show, or Oprah herself. I have just deleted several comments that included very personal stories and phone numbers and addresses. Because I can't tell whether the people at those phone numbers and addresses actually posted them or whether they were posted by scumballs playing tricks I've opted to delete them because I think it's extraordinarily unlikely that anyone involved with Oprah will ever read this page -- if I'm wrong about that, please let me know -- and the last thing I want to do is participate in someone's private information being spread across the internet for no reason. If you really do want to get on Oprah, please read the article and follow its instructions.]
Technorati tags: Oprah | talk shows | publicity
A while back, I wrote about Why Star Wars works, making the case that it's based on archetypical storytelling. Taken too far, however, you find find yourself falling into cliche. I'm almost embarrased to read the hilarious How to write a best selling fantasy novel. Almost.
This one's only a buck a piece for royalty-free web usage: istockphoto.com. Seems like good stuff there. A little closer to the collections you buy than stock.xchng, but that makes sense. Also, not quite as friendly.
Technorati tag: photography
Oh, what I wouldn't give to have time to go to Huntsville for the "Physics for the Third Millennium: II" conference at the beginning of April.
I have no idea what you're seeing when you look at it; it changes periodically. But at least I've got it here for when I figure out where to put it. Here's the code, as described by HubbleSite:
<a href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/"><img src=
"http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/latest_thumb.php" width="80" height="80" alt="Latest News from HubbleSite" border="0" /></a>
OK, one more language-related post. I just couldn't let this go. Google is available in dozens of languages. In fact, if they don't have your language, you can volunteer as a translator, and once you've translated enough of the page, they'll add it. Apparently someone has translated Google into "Bork, bork, bork!", which as far as I can tell is the language spoken by the Swedish Chef on The Muppet Show.
Hehehehe.....
Now here's a fun idea. The brain behind "A Consuming Experience", who unfortunatly doesn't have a name anywhere obvious, so I can't refer to it has figured out how to do "Automatic" translation of blog posts. Something to think about...
[Update: That would be a lady named "Improbulus", as I've since been chided. :) ]
Technorati tag: language
I've been thinking for a while -- especially after being reminded by a post of Bruce Sterling's -- that soon, if it hasn't happened already, there will be more Chinese speakers online than English speakers. (Which might explain all the Chinese-language spam I keep getting.) Scott Nance brings up the point again in a commentary on the rising Chinese juggernaught. He also reminds us of all the Chinese slang in Firefly, which as you know I loved. Interesting, I was just re-watching it this weekend, so I wish that I'd had Scott's pointer to the Firefly Chinese Pinyinary beforehand. It translates all of the Chinese in the series, which is pretty cool.
But seriously, I need to find me a good Chinese audio course for the car. I took German in high school and Russian in college, but I don't remember much of either. I've done the audio-tape route for Spanish more recently, and if I go to Mexico I'm probably at the level that I won't think everyone around me is plotting against me, but that's about it.
But if I'm going to stay competitive in this market, I suspect Chinese is the way to go...
Her'es something interesting:
Only 275 Suffolk Punches remain throughout the world, making them rarer than the giant panda. The Suffolk horse, most commonly known as the Suffolk punch, is the oldest and purest of the British heavy breeds, with records of its breeding dating back to 1506. All Suffolk Punches alive today are descended from a stallion – Thomas Crisp’s horse if Ufford foaled in 1768.
Technorati tag: horses
I have no artistic talent. I freely admit that. (Heck, just looking at this site should tell you that.) So I'm thrilled to find Stock.xchng, which offers free stock photos. And quality ones, too. I was a little skeptical, at first, thinking that they were maybe pirated photo collections, but they're not. It's a community of photographers sharing their photos, and each photo has to be reviewed before posting, so there's no crap. Very nice.
I could kill a heck of a lot of time reading Every Calvin and Hobbes ever published. I was so disappointed when Waterson stopped, but I really respect the decision. Has it really been almost a decade? (Thanks to A Small Victory for the link...)
Today's quote of the day, courtesy of Scott Gose:
"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle." - Abraham Lincoln
Quick quiz: Today, will Amazon a) sell more books that didn't sell yesterday, or b) sell more books that also sold yesterday? Answer: a. In other words, if you look at a bell curve, you will, in many (or even most) cases see more items in the long, skinny, portion of the graph on the left and right side of the bulge in the middle than there is in the bulge itself. I'm sure I'm not explaining that well; Wikipedia explains The Long Tail better.
I'm a little bit frustrated to realize that Long Way Round is almost a DVD. That is, Ewan MacGregor and Charlie Boorman's bike trip around the world has been released in Europe, but not here in the states. This series was just absolutely captivating, and I don't even like motorcycles. Please, please, go to the above link and tell Amazon you want to know when the disc will be released. You don't have to buy it, but Amazon will use it to tell the production company approximately how many people are waiting for it. In the meantime, though, if you did see the show, Ewan and Charlie (Like how I use their first names? Sorry, guys, I just feel like I know you after this. Don't worry, I know I really don't. :) ) wrote a book about it, Long Way Round : Chasing Shadows Across the World. Reviews hint that if you didn't see the show, you might not appreciate the book, but if you did, like me, it seems like a great reminder of how life changing that trip must have been for them.
And if you didn't see it, all the more reason to tell Amazon you want the DVD! (And for anybody who's got a PAL TV, you don't have to wait to buy the Long Way Round DVD!)
Here's a couple of pieces I don't have time to write up for the Vanguard Science Fiction Report: Hitchhiker's Guide becomes a film, and Stephen Fry plays the guide and Neil Gaiman and Robert Zemeckis take on Beowulf. I did get a chance to write up Spaceballs: The Cartoon.
There's nothing like a reminder that life isn't all bad to get you going in the morning. Check out The Goodness of Life. Takes a few minutes to cycle through, but it's worth it.
Java 1.5, to be released soon, has a new feature that I'm glad I learned about before I hit it in my C++ crash course: generics. I point that out because you'll laugh a lot more at madbean.com: Revenge of the <T> if you know that the <T> means. But even if you don't, funny, funny funny -- for the seriously geeky among us. You know you love it.
Hehehehe.... Tim's brother Kevin's career advice:
You're screwed. If you get in a bind and they call a meeting make sure the room has a skylight. That way you can use the 'ole Batman smoke bomb and spear gun escape. no one could ever hold poor work against someone who escapes a pressure situation in that fashion.
Can't really argue with that.
Ran across this while reading a year's worth of Simon St. Laurent's blog. The British to American dictionary. Also translates from American to British. Fun.
I've got so many events that I'm looking forward to, that I've decided to go ahead and create a custom countdown calendar. It also lets me add reminders to specific days, and sends me an email so I don't forget. And, I figured if I was doing the work, I might as well release it.
I'll also be adding other features, such as pre-populated, customizable calendars for events such as weddings, the ability to add your own images, downloadable PDFs, and eventually even the ability to order a printed version.
If you've got a minute, please check it out, and let me know if you find it useful.
Ever wonder how cryonics works? Actually, more interesting is the accompanying article, which makes the assertion that "death" is a value judgement, a continuous process, and what we call death is actually the point at which a doctor believes that the process has proceeded beyond the point at which technology can stop it.
WebMD reports that Meditation May Bolster Brain Activity. Apparently researchers took Buddhist monks who'd been meditating for decades and compared them to college students who had never meditated at all. The monks had higher gamma brain waves, associated with concentration and happiness, and when they were meditating, those levels actually surpassed any that had been previously recorded, ever. Interestingly, the article doesn't mention if the students also experienced an increase in gamma while meditating. Also interesting is that this was "compassionate meditation, which does not require concentration on specific things. Instead, the participants are instructed to generate a feeling of love and compassion without drawing attention to a particular object."
Audacity is the answer to my sound editing prayers. Not only does it enable you to edit tracks, combine different tracks into a single file, and all kinds of effects, it actually removes that incredibly annoying hum that I've always had on recordings off the phone. (The carrier tone? Possibly.)
But the best part?
IT'S FREE.
Yes, Audacity is a Sourceforge project, and I'm a happy, happy camper.
As I gear up to start doing audio, I've discovered (via a link from This American Life) Transom.org, which includes lots of information on tools and techniques for doing audio documentaries. Haven't had a chance to go through it yet, but looking forward to it...
I hate coming up with character names, especially in SF&F. DADA's Little Baby Namer is a fun little toy in which "Baby Names are generated by performing a Markov Chain analysis of the real baby names in our database, then spewing out statistically similar names based on this analysis. " I like Smaleken and Malig.
And in the "the more I know, the more I know I don't know" department, it appears that the opposite is true. A study in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments indicates that the more incompetant the study participant, the more certain they were they were doing just fine:
Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error.
That's right, folks, 3D IMAX is here. We took the kids to see The Polar Express and it was absolutely astounding. With polarized glasses (no pun intended) and manipulation of the film, you really did feel like you were in the film. The screen fills your entire field of vision (if you have enough sense to sit relatively close to the front) and buildings and objects just popped out in front of you.
Of course the fact that it was rendered on the computer probably simplified the process of generating the 3D version, but my goodness, it was incredible.
The film itself was good, and fun, and the kids loved it, but I personally was astounded by the view.
Unfortunately, it's probably too late in the process, since the live-action's already been shot, but what I wouldn't give to see Revenge of the Sith this way. I saw Attack of the Clones in IMAX, and that was fantastic enough. To add 3D, well ...
The Politburo Diktat has an interesting look at The Post-Election Blogosphere Purge, talking about how prominent bloggers are regrouping and even resigning after the election. Basically blogs have been running on political discussion for a while, so what do bloggers talk about?
We'll find something. Surely, we'll see more "cat blogging", a term which I find particularly amusing, but I also see the shakeout coming as we see splits into two camps: professionals and hobbyists. There will always be those who straddle the fence, of course, but as bloggers come into their own as news sources (and journalists) this will be an interesting time to watch.
All this thinking about Star Wars has reminded me about a little interesting historical footnote. After the release of Return of the Jedi, I was at a convention and picked up a little ditty called STAR WARS III: FALL OF THE REPUBLIC by John L Flynn. Purported to be a story treatment for what was then expected to be the next movie, it is, of course, completely bogus, and I think I really even knew that at the time. But it's the reason I have to keep reminding myself that the capital of the Republic is called Coruscant, and not Jhantor. And just to prove that as the eBay commercials say, nothing is ever lost, nothing is ever forgotten, sure enough it's now online.
Somehow that just makes me feel good.
A year or two ago I posted Things George Lucas has to remember to The Vanguard Science Fiction Report. Basically, the Revenge Of The Sith is George's last chance to clear up any inconsistencies that have crept into the saga. For example, considering that Anakin has BEEN there and is FROM there, wouldn't Tatooine in general, and the Lars farm in particular, be the worst possible place to hide a baby Luke Skywalker?
Then there's the issue of Obi Wan telling Luke that Owen was HIS (meaning Obi Wan's) brother. But unless I miss my guess, that didn't actually happen on screen, and was instead mentioned in a novelization or the comic book or something, so it doesn't count. Years ago I spoke to Lynne Hale, in charge of merchandising over at Lucasfilm, about inconsistencies in the books and things that contradicted the movies. She basically said that George Lucas reserves the right to do whatever he wants in the films. They'll try to keep things consistent, but if the movie needs to do "A" and the books say that "B" happened, the movies win. Period.
But still, I'm really, really worried about this. I've been obsessed with this series since I was nine years old. I'm just starting to recover from the midichlorians nonsense. If we don't get some consistency I'm going to be crushed.
Actually, I don't care what they do, as long as they make sure not to screw up one thing: Anakin's lightsaber. Given the way things are going, it's highly unlikely that Anakin is going to give it to Obi Wan and say, "Give this to my son, when he's old enough." I can deal with that, as long as it's acknowledged. If he says to Amidala, "Hey, don't worry, I'll give him a saber when he's old enough and tell him it came from his father," I'll be fine with that. No problem. We've established that Kenobi doesn't always tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I just don't want that particular issue glossed over.
I mean, what do you want to see wrapped up definitively?
Not earthshaking, but if you work with people all over G-d's green acre, like I do, occasionally you need to find out where the flyin' flip they are so you don't call them at 5am local time. Verizon's got an Area Code Lookup that not only tells you where a particular area code is located, but what cities use it and, more importantly, the current local time.
Check out this Solar System Simulator from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Get the view of planets and moons in our solar system from other planets and moons in our solar system on a particular day at a particular time. Decide how big you want it to be, add constellation and orbit lines, and so on.
Very cool.
Here's something interesting: Furl.net gives you a way to save permanent bookmarks that you can then share and search. Kind of like a blog without comment.
This joke isn't quite work-safe, but it does apply to software problems, IMO.
Ever since his late teens Jim had suffered from terrible headaches. Finally, in desperation after years of misery, he sought medical advice.
Many tests later, the doctor sat down with Jim to deliver his diagnosis. The doctor said, "Jim, I have both good and bad news. The good news is I can cure your headaches... The bad news is that it will require castration. You have a very rare condition, which causes your testicles to press up against the base of your spine. The pressure creates one hell of a headache. The only way medical science can relieve the pressure is to remove the testicles."
Jim was shocked and depressed. He wondered if he had anything left to live for. He couldn`t concentrate long enough to answer, but decided he had no choice - "Cut `em".
When he left the hospital, he was without a headache for the first time in 20 years, but he also felt like he was missing an important part of himself. As he walked down the street, Jim realized that he felt like a different person - he could make a new beginning and live a new life. Seeing a men`s clothing store he thought, "That`s what I need, a new suit." He entered the shop and told the tailor, "I`d like a new suit."
The elderly tailor eyed him briefly and said, "Let`s see... size 44 long."
Jim laughed, "That`s right, how did you know?"
"Been in the business 60 years!" the old tailor replied.
Jim tried on the suit and it fit perfectly. As he admired himself in the mirror, the old tailor asked, "How about a new shirt?"
Jim thought for a moment and then said, "Sure."
The old tailor eyed Jim and said, "Let`s see...34 sleeve and 16 and a half neck."
Again, Jim was surprised, "That`s right, how did you know?"
"Been in the business 60 years!" the old tailor replied.
Jim tried on the shirt and it fit perfectly. As he adjusted the collar in the mirror, the tailor asked, "How about new shoes?"
Jim was on a roll now and said, "Sure." The tailor eyed his feet and said, "Let`s see... 9-1/2 E."
Jim was astonished. He laughed and said, "Don`t tell me, I know, you`ve been in the business 60 years!"
Jim tried on the shoes and they fit perfectly. He walked comfortably around the shop and the tailor asked, "How about some new underwear?"
Jim thought for a second and then said, "Sure."
The old tailor stepped back, eyed Jim`s waist and said, "Let`s see...size 36."
Jim laughed, "Ah-hah I got you! I`ve worn size 34 since I was 18 years old."
The old tailor shook his head, "You can`t wear a size 34. A size 34 underwear would press your testicles up against the base of your spine and give you one hell of a headache."
The moral of the story? Always check the obvious first.
I can write. That's what I do. I can't draw, I can't paint (though that doesn't stop me from trying) and I can't write music. So I'm always looking for a good source of free clips, and by golly, I've found one over at Flash Kit: Loops Home. Not just a couple of sounds, but tons of them, and the few Ambient ones I sampled actually sounded pretty decent, which was nice to see. And Flash Kit itself is pretty cool, if you're into Flash. Or at least I assume it would be, from the looks of it.
I want this job. Check out Spider-Man: The Peril of Doc Ock entirely in legos. (Via A Random Act of Blogging)
I've been hooked on StreamingSoundtracks.com. I'll admit it. I listen to it constantly, and it's good writing music. Well, except when somebody requests that damned Transformers soundtrack. It's so incredibly awful that I wondered why in the name of all that is holy it was even on the playlist. Fortunately, I found the answer in Cocles' Really Mean and Condescending FAQ for SST Newbies!, which is what an FAQ is meant to be. Really. It's not really nasty mean, but it just says what every FAQ writer would love to say, if they didn't have to be so darned polite.
I bring all this up because Cocles has finally started his own blog, The CocBlog, and I feel obliged to point you to it. I feel some sympathy for him when he says he's doing it to procrastinate: "As I type this, there is a screenplay patiently waiting beside me like a dominatrix calmly wielding her horse crop and giving me that sort of smile people give only when they know they're inevitably going to have their way."
Why bring that up? Because I have four !@$%@#%#$ chapters that need to be finished up before I go to bed, and, well, one good procrastination deserves another.
Good to have you here, man! Give 'em hell!
I don't know if I'd agree that eBaum's World is "so funny you won't be able to sleep at night" but it sure is great. The site hosts "Funny movies, flash cartoons, funny pictures, magic, prank phone calls, flash games, and tons more!" But just the optical illusion on the home page tells you this is something different. Cool stuff.
I love to listen to soundtracks, particularly when I'm writing, but I have a limited collection to listen to. (Still trying to scrape together the money for Pirates of the Caribbean. Definitely a winner!) Now I've discovered StreamingSoundtracks.com and I am in musical heaven. The site has hundreds of soundtracks available to listen to, but what's cool is that you can request a particular track, and it gets queued. You can see what's in the queue, and you can see how long each piece lasts, and how much time is left on the current track. What's also nice is that tracks can't be requested more than once every five days, so you don't hear the same tracks over and over again.
I'm hooked!
Now here's an interesting piece of analysis. Garfield has been around since 1978, and we don't hate him yet. But nobody's ever going to call cartoonist Jim Davis a genious -- unless they understand marketing. In Garfield - Why we hate the Mouse but not the cartoon copycat we see that the lasagna-loving cat was specifically designed as a marketing machine, and man, has it worked. But the most interesting part is that part of the formula for success lies in not being greedy. Davis understands that if Garfield gets too popular, he'll be easy to hate; his popularity depends on his inoffensiveness.
In the late 1980s, Garfield plush toys with suction-cup feet were so popular than criminals broke into cars to steal them and sell them on the black market. Davis, protective of his creation's unobjectionable blandness, knew he had to act fast before people began to hate Garfield. "We accepted the royalty checks, but my biggest fear was overexposure," he told Entertainment Weekly in 1998. "We pulled all plush dolls off the shelves for five years."
Here's a sobering thought. Every time you look up at the stars you are, in a sense, looking back in time. After all, if a star is 100,000 light years away, you're seeing it as it was 100,000 years ago. Now the Planck mission aims to measure "first light" or the oldest radiation in the universe.
I'm a big fan of the outrageous Irish chat show host Graham Norton, and I've really missed Doggy Phone, a speaker phone that basically talks for the person on the other end of the line. Now you can buy a Panda Phone for your cell phone! Wish I could get this for my regular phone.
Oh, and Graham is coming to the US! Let's hope Comedy Central doesn't tone him down any. I mean, we're talking about a guy who once featured a guy who played a fabric piano with his ... um ... well, let's just say nobody would be talking about Janet Jackson anymore.
I've written about Craig's List before. It's a local community thing, where people can offer/look for jobs, stuff for sale (or for free, if you just want to get rid of it) and now it's come to Tampa Bay. Hooray!
I just finished watching Jane White is Sick and Twisted. It's a small, independant film that we only rented because it had Colin Mochrie in it. I was afraid it was just going to be stupid, but it was absolutely hysterical. Not fine art, and you've got to disengage your brain first. Let's just say you can't take this too seriously, but once you accept that, you will really, really enjoy it.
Every time I consider writing something about my life, I find myself thinking very carefully about whether or not I want to tell the entire universe that potentially private thing about myself. I don't even like having my picture on the web. You'll notice it's nowhere on this blog. Gene Cowan apparen't has no such hang-ups, judging from his about me page.
One of my favorite books of all time is The Postman, by David Brin. So I was thrilled (and a little nervous) when I heard Kevin Costner was making it into a movie. Still, I loved the movie. Did it follow the book? Well, not completely. In fact, it left out about half of the book. Fortunately, it was the half I didn't think belonged in the book in the first place. (Sorry, David!) I wondered what Brin thought of the film, and while searching for confirmation that I'm not losing my mind -- well, OK, that's debatable -- and he really did call the intelligent agents in Earth ferrets, I discovered that he's let us in on his thoughts about the movie. I'm glad to see that I'm in line with him. :)
I was on my way home from the Chambers Farm Gathering -- too much work to do to stay longer than it took to drop off Sarah -- when I heard a story about how the Post Office was going to follow cell phone companies' lead and offer portable ZIP codes. I thought it was ridiculous, and was trying to figure out how it would work, when towards the end, the NPR story said:
The new vanity zip code feature is only the latest addition to the Go Postal program, which began last April 1. USPS officials say Go Postal has already been a success, with millions of dollars of new revenue coming from the introduction of pop-up ads on postage stamps. They are hoping to issue the first portable zip codes by April 1, 2005.
I was pretty sure it was an April Fools' joke, so I looked it up when I got home and was pleased to find the whole Portable Zip Codes story online. According to the sidebars, All Things Considered does this every year. Previous stories include Shellac, the Sound of the Future, Universal Pet Health Care, and Projecting Ads on the Moon. I'll have to make a point of listening next year.
Talk about a mistake. Upon seeing that George A. Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead was listed as being in the public domain on the Internet Movie Archive (where a full download is now available!) I did some checking around to see if someone wasn't playing a really bad joke. According to Boing Boing,
Travis, a member of the BoingBoing tribe on Tribe.net, says: " Before 1978, any copyrighted work had to have a copyright notice on every distribution, otherwise it wasn't considered copyrighted. George A. Romero mistakenly left out the copyright notice when he distributed his 1968 film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The copyright has not recently "lapsed," but was in fact never enforcable, which is why we have dozens of "pirate" distributions of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and innumerable knock-offs."
Ooooo, now this is cool.
Martin Baker is a man after my own heart. Not only has he made his 3D World Simulation available, but also all of his notes on theory and concepts. The application works with Java3D and with .NET, and saves files as VRML, but the background information is fascinating. (OK, so you kind of have to be into this kind of thing to find it that fascinating, but that's just me. :) )
In my travels desperately searching for a 3-D to 2D converter, I ran across some helpful information for prospective 3D animators.
OK, this is another "got it via email" item. As per usual, if this is yours, let me know. I'm especially interested because I'm sure that they've got other hilarious material I'd love to see.
Another case of "this won't be active until Friday" but if I leave it until then, I'll forget. Modding your case gives you the basics in doing some cool case mods for your computer or even your cell phone. One day I'll have time for this. Even includes info on etching acrylic.
One day, after we finally move, I'm going to go back to college for my Ph.D. Before I do that, I'm going to have to take the GRE, and with my grades in college -- hey, I was supporting a family, cut me some slack -- I am going to have to really ace it. Thing is, my subject of choice is Physics, and my math is really, really rusty. Right now we're working on a tutorial that has a 3D graph in SVG, and I'm struggling to figure out how to represent it in a 2D space that adapts to the user's viewpoint. So I was very happy to find Miscellaneous Mathematical Utilities. These Javascript routines also have explanations of how the math actually works, so they're interesting to read.
OK, I've started down the eBay road. I've decided to go ahead and use SpareDollar, even though I'm perfectly capable of hosting my own images, creating my own templates, and so on, but really, this is much, much easier. I've started simple, with just Sarah's vintage mermaid lamp and the Jeff Gordon official racing shirt.
Tomorrow I'll get the Dale Earnhardt Sr. shirt up there and start on the signed English art prints.
Here's hoping.
Everybody always wonders what's selling on eBay. It's hidden pretty well, but apparently eBay maintains a list of hot categories, in which the numbers of bidders is growing faster than the number of new listings.
I've often wanted to do this to people who forget that the rest of the world can hear them too.
Well, it's not actually Robbie the Robot's birthday. Rather, it's the 90th birthday of Robbie's designer, Robert Kinoshita, and apparently he's not well. So Jupiter-2 is requesting that everyone send their birthday greetings. They'll be printed out and presented to him on his birthday, February 24th.
In response to a followup from David Bridgewater's comment on things I haven't done yet, I was looking up Sealand and discovered Googlism, a site that "will find out what Google.com thinks of you, your friends or anything! " So of course, like any good netizen, I looked up Googlisms for myself and discovered this gem:
nicholas chase is "stable and functioning at the highest possible level"
They obviously don't know me.
I've been a big Mel Gibson fan for a while. He just seems like a really, really nice guy. But I'm a bit concerned about historical inaccuracies in The Passion of the Christ. He keeps insisting that he's not an anti-Semite, but I'm wondering if he really understands what he's doing with this film.
A friend of mine once considered becoming a Catholic, and tells of hearing one student tell another that he could understand a Jewish's student challenge in becoming Catholic, because he had an even bigger change -- he was Presbyterian.
Some people just don't get it.
OK, OK, I've been taken in. Thanks to Girlygirl for pointing out that the Lee Marvin/Bob Keeshan/Mr. Rogers story is a hoax.
Mea culpa!
Today's thought for the day, courtesy of my good friend Mimi:
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming WOW---What A Ride!
I'm guessing this one comes from a radio show, though I think it's been around in one form or another for a while now. As usual, if this is yours, email me to take it down.
As Heard On Friday, January, 31, 2003: Letter to Dr. Laura from a Bob and Sheri listener!
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. For example, when someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
However, I do need some advice from you regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them.
1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev.1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15:19-24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev.24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14) I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Your devoted fan,
Jim
The thing I hate most about fiction writing is naming characters, so I'm thrilled to find BabyCenter's Baby Namer Tool. You can pick the gender, cultural origin, first letter, and even the number of syllables.
[NOTE: I'm leaving this here for historical purposes, but apparently it's not true.]
From Tony Spence, via email:
Captain Kangaroo turned 76 recently, which is odd, because he's never looked a day under 76. (DOB:6/27/27) [Note from Nick -- Bob Keeshan (his real name) just passed away last week.] It reminded me of the following story:
Some people have been a bit offended that the actor, Lee Marvin, is buried in a grave alongside 3 and 4 star generals at Arlington National Cemetery. His marker gives his name, rank (PVT) and service (USMC). Nothing else.
Here's a guy who was only a famous movie star who served his time, why the heck does he rate burial with these guys? Well, following is the amazing answer: I always liked Lee Marvin, but did not know the extent of his Corps experiences. In a time when many hollywood stars served their country in the armed forces often in rear echelon posts where they were carefully protected, only to be trotted out to perform for the cameras in war bond promotions, Lee Marvin was a genuine hero. He won the Navy Cross at Iwo Jima. There is only one higher Naval award... the Medal of Honor.
If that is a surprising comment on the true character of the man, he credits his sergeant with an even greater show of bravery.
Dialog from The Tonight Show interview with Johnny Carson:
His guest was Lee Marvin. Johnny said, "Lee, I'll bet a lot of people are unaware that you were a Marine in the initial landing at Iwo Jima...and
that during the course of that action you earned the Navy Cross and were severely wounded."
"Yeah, yeah... I got shot square in the butt and they gave me the Cross for securing a hot spot about halfway up Suribachi...bad thing about getting shot up on a mountain is guys gettin' shot hauling you down. But, Johnny, at Iwo I served under the bravest man I ever knew. We both got the cross the same day, but what he did for his Cross made mine look cheap in comparison.
That brave man actually stood up on Red beach and directed his troops to move forward and get the hell off the beach. Bullets flying by and mortar rounds landing everywhere and he stood there as the main target of gunfire so that he could get his men to safety. He did this on more than one occasion because his men's safety was more important than his own life.
That Sergeant and I have been lifelong friends. When they brought me off Suribachi we passed the Sergeant and he lit a smoke and passed it to me, lying on my belly on the litter and said, where'd they get you Lee?' "Well Bob...if you make it home before me, tell Mom to sell the outhouse!"
Johnny, I'm not lying. Sergeant Keeshan was the bravest man I ever knew.
The Sergeant's name is Bob Keeshan. You and the world know him as Captain Kangaroo."
On another note, there was this wimpy little man (who just passed away) on PBS, gentle and quiet.
Mr. Rogers is another of those you would least suspect of being anything but what he now portrays to our youth. But Mr. Rogers was a US Navy Seal, combat proven in Vietnam with over twenty-five confirmed kills to his name.
He wore a long sleeve sweater on his show to cover the many tattoos on his forearm and biceps. A master in small arms and hand-to-hand combat, able to disarm or kill in a heartbeat.
After the war Mr. Rogers became an ordained Presbyterian minister and therefore a pacifist. Vowing to never harm another human and also dedicating the rest of his life to trying to help lead children on the right path in life.
He hid the tattoos and his past life away and won our hearts with his quiet wit and charm.
America's real heroes don't flaunt what they did, they quietly go about their day to day lives, doing what they do best. They earned our respect and the freedoms that we all enjoy. Look around and see if you can find one of those heroes in your midst. Often, they are the ones you'd least suspect, but would most like to have on your side if anything ever happened.
Take the time to thank anyone that has fought for our freedom. With encouragement they could be the next Captain Kangaroo or Mr. Rogers.
Tony Spence, PE
Electrical Manager
tspence@key-eng.com
KEY Engineering, Inc.
I'm finding myself adapting to my coming "farm" lifestyle in unexpected ways, despite the fact that I was actually born in New York City. Today I walked otuside and the porch was wet -- but only under the awning. Before I could react, I actually heard myself say, "Well now, that don't make a lick a' sense."
Today's thought for the day comes from Cowboy Wisdom:
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
I'm definitely working too hard. Check out Iceman and the Penguin. Click the iceman, and as the penguin drops, click it again.
Another one from my email box, but this one asks to be distributed. It's about all the so-called "dangers" we're protected from these days, and it's kind of got a good point: where has common sense gone? On the other hand, as a kid I personally went arse over applecart when my bicycle's handlebars came off in my hand, and still have sensitive ribs from the time I was riding in the "big back" of the family station wagon when it ploughed into another car.
But hey, have we become a nation of ... wimps? Or does ignoring all of this make us barbarians?
Anyway, here's the laughs:
Can't Believe We Made It!
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's or even the early 80's, probably shouldn't have survived.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.
We had no childproof lids or locks on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.
Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors!
We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones. Unthinkable!
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.
We had friends! We went outside and found them.
We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.
We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?
We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out any eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.
Horrors! Tests were not adjusted for any reason.
Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.
The idea of parents bailing us out if we got in trouble in school or broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the school or the law. Imagine that!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problemsolvers, and inventors, ever.
We had freedom, failure, success, and responsibility --- and we learned how to deal with it.
And you're one of them!
Congratulations.
Please pass this on to others who were blessed to grow up as "kids" before lawyers and government regulated our lives "for our own good" !!!
I'm sure there are others that will post this, but it just seems too appropriate to pass up. As usual, if you're Rob or Sue (or someone from 103.2 in Ft. Wayne, Indiana) and you want me to take this down, say so.
Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2 on FM dial in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.
Hi Sue,
Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wetsuit.
This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints.
What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.
Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse.. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened.
The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.
Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt.
I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive.
I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet.
As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.
So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.
Now repeat to yourself, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job."
Today's Thought For The Day comes from Cowboy Wisdom:
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
My wife is helping a friend with a dog show at the Florida State Fair, and so he sent her an email with instructions.
... So all I need now is some signs showing the type of each breed. They should be small enough to be easily carried in the parade, but with large enough lettering that they can be easily read. Maybe a handle of some sort. And of course the lettering should be bold.
Other than that, I leave the details to you.
I've been meaning to create a favicon for this site for a while, and now that I've found Chami.com's FavIcon from Pics, I can do that. Now I just have to find that organ grinder and get permission to use the picture of her monkey.
I have some pretty significant carpal tunnel problems. Before I got a split keyboard, I looked like I had a half a golf ball under my skin. Six months later, it looks like half a grape, but I'm still in some pretty significant pain most days. So I'm intrigued by the NoHands Mouse. It's a pair of foot pedals, with one used to move the mouse, and the other for clicking. At about $300 bucks, though, it's going to have to wait for a while.
I'd be interested if anybody's used, it, or anything like it, though.
Today's SF news reports have nothing to do with the list. Rather, some items from SyFy Portal. Michael Hinman also lives here in central Florida, but he manages to spend way more time on his site than I do on mine. (Actually, years ago I spent that much time, and more. Now I have too much house to pay for.)
Anyway, today's items:
Battlestar Galactica gets 6 episode pickup?
Jake 2.0 on (permanent?) hiatus
Jake 2.0 was apparently killed by the fact that a rerun of America's Next Top Model outperformed it in its slot. I don't think that's entirely fair, since Model is kind of a soap opera and I think people are tuning in to make sure they don't miss the beginning.
I have finally updated The Vanguard Science Fiction Report. Hooray! Here's what I've got, with numbers for the list watchers:
Trailers, including Sky Captain, Van Helsing and Mark Hamill's directorial debut (34 and 35)
Pre-order the 2004 move novelizations (55)
Fearless gone, Wonderfalls to air in slot of death (37 and 38)
I'm getting ready to move (one of these years) an my wife just found a box of things that we printed off the web years ago. So far not one of the sites still exists, but in my attempt to find one I came across Cowboy Wisdom. With my pending transition from desk potato to farmer/rancher, I thought I'd take a look. There's some pretty good gems here. I think I'll feature one every day or thereabouts. Here's today's:
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
If you ask me, they should have quit while they were behind. When a Canadian teenager, Mike Rowe, registered MikeRoweSoft.com for his web design company, they offered him a paltry $10 (Canadian!) to give up the name. He told them he wanted $1000, so now they're suing. Come on, Bill, you light your cigars with bills bigger than that.
(UPDATE: Another story in The Register says that he asked for not $1000, but $10,000. Which is a different animal, unfortunately.)
I understand that there are people who read all of the blogs on their blogroll every day, or at least, every few days. And they even find time to comment on them. I want to know who these people are and how they manage to make a living.
I have, in essence, three blogs that I am supposed to be updating on a regular basis. I'm supposed to do at least three blogs a week for the XML Reference Guide, I've got this one, and I've got The Vanguard Science Fiction Report, which has been fallow so long I'm embarrassed to admit that it's mine. So today, now that the weeks of emergency room visits and surgeries in the family have settled down into the normal level of chaos, I sat down and went through my blogroll for potential posting material.
I thought it might be a little educational to document the "flow" of my surfing, and how it eventually gets turned into actual postings, so here is the list of the "first cut". These are postings that may eventually wind up on one of my three blogs:
And some XML tools mentioned on Cafe Con Leche:
Even I can't believe how long the list is.
As you can see, it's a rather eclectic group, but it also shows the pattern of how I surf. (Note that I didn't even touch Op-Ed News today, because I know I have enough material for this blog, which is the only place it belongs, or the W3C because I've adopted a "monthly" schedule for them on InformIT.)
Over the next week or so, you can see what makes the cut and what doesn't, and what leads to other things.
We've decided to open an Amazon shop. For now, I'm using AssociatesShop, and it seems to be working pretty well, at least until I can put something together for myself. The site is The Native Path, and it sells Native American books, videos, and so on. I'm pleased to see that the music listed on the home page right now is Canyon Trilogy, by R. Carlos Nakai. I have a bunch of his stuff, and it's absolutely gorgeous. They were playing this particular set over the PA at the Lowery Park Zoo and they had to put a sign in the gift shop telling people what it was because they kept asking.
Anyway, we'll see how this goes. It's in preparation for another site I'm putting together, but that one's under wraps for now.
Here's one for my wish list. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead is written by Max Brooks, who is probably getting sick of being referred to as "the son of Mel Brooks" right about now. Apparently the book (and it's PDF download version) are a tongue-in-cheek guide to ... well, protecting yourself from zombies. Apparently it's written as though it were serious, which, with a subject like this, probably makes it even funnier. But, if you've ever wondered about zombie physiology, this is probably the book for you.
Apparently Sanji, over at Greencats.com,
follows through with all those prank emails I'm always tempted to send. Kind of like a new version of The Laszlo Letters.
Now here's an interesting idea. You create a new literary format -- in this case, the "novable", a novel that is also a parable -- then invite people to "compete" for $1000 by writing their own. You charge them a $35 "processing fee," and if you like it, you pay them $1000 advance against 15% of the royalties from selling it online. The author keeps the copyright.
Interesting. Maybe I'll dust off my fiction brain cells. Not sure about that $35, though. I suppose it will do something to winnow out the serious efforts. And $1000 isn't much of an advance if you're doing this professionally. (Or at least I'd assume so from my non-fiction experience. Maybe my fiction-writing bretheren and sisteren have it even worse off.) Of course, if this is more of a personal thing than a professional thing, that's different.
I'll be interested to see how they do with this.
Apparently someone has figured out how to make WIFI antennas from paper clips. I don't see why not, of course. I must be spending too much time studying for my Amateur Radio Extra Class license, though, because when I saw this one (and, to a lesser extent, this one) my first thought was "Now there's the driven element, and that's the reflector, and .."
I just wish they weren't both in French.
My wife is a Christmas junkie. Every April it's a battle to get her to take down the tree. I'm afraid to show her Ugly Christmas Lights.com for fear of what she may do next year.
Wayne Hubert's Blog Business World is a great resource for ... well ... blog business, but I'm still laughing (and groaning) over Blog History: The Real Story.
I really don't pay much attention to search engine rankings, to be honest. I just try to product good content and leave it at that. But some people do seem to be ... well, fixated's probably the wrong word, but concerned. So as surprised as I was to see a referrer log entry for a Google search for "engineering strapless evening gown", I was even more surprised to find out that if you run that search, my posting about the IgNobel Prize actually comes up in the very top spot.
I give up trying to figure that one out.
(Update: And apparently, I'm number 3 for "blog 'federal reserve'" and number 5 (on Google) and 4 (on Yahoo) for "federal reserve conspiracy theories". Oh, and number 6 for "stop alien abductions". Well, nobody can say I'm not well rounded.)
Last night my wife and I were having an argument over whether "Thou shalt not covet" included "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife," or whether that was a separate commandment. Turns out, it depends *Which* Ten Commandments you're looking at. Apparently the Catholics felt it necessary to separate out "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" from "Thou shalt not covet they neighbor's goods", while collapsing "I am the Lord thy God" and "Thou shalt have no other god before me" into one.
Interestingly, after Moses smashed the tablets in Exodus 20, God supposedly replaced them with a new set with "the words that were on the first" in Exodus 34, but apparently the "new" set are completely different, with commandments such as "The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep in the month when the ear is on the corn," "All the first-born are mine," and "The fat of my feast shall not remain all night until the morning."
"The Emissary" is graphics intensive, but it's beautiful. Especially the last page. (And I'll save you some time. Yes, you navigate by clicking items on the page, but the order is the same no matter what you click.)
I really don't have much to say here. Just that The HisTory of Michael Jackson's face shows how he went from cute kid to inhuman ... something. Not quite sure how to describe him now. Just that he scares me.
OK, I'll bite. Kelly is running a contest to liven up her day. You gotta enter before 4:30pm TODAY, though. My guess is 302.
I'm trying desperately to get some work done, but I'm glad I took a break for the Attack Squirrel of Death. The story of a man, his motorcycle, and a very, very pissed off rodent.
Make sure you have the sound on and keep your eye on the snowman in the Holiday Snowglobe. Hehehehe.
One day I want to have the time to take on a project like Hacking Billy Mouth Bass in Linux. You remember, Big Mouth Billy Bass, don't you? He's the mounted fish that flops around while singing "Take me to the River." Well, here we have a proposal to turn Billy into a full-blown video conferencing station. Right now he's just at the point of user-definable audio clips (and pseudo- lip-synching), but it's pretty funny. Look for Billy quoting "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky..."
BlogSearchEngine.com has the Blogging Survey Results from last month. What I found most interesting is the fact that while 73.9% of bloggers would be willing to blog about a product if approached by the company, 41.8% are willing to post a negative review, if appropriate. Hear that, PR people? There's fertile ground out there, but be careful!
A lot of people don't realize that just about every space image produced by NASA is in the public domain. In other words, if I wanted to take a Hubble photo and use it as the backdrop for this blog, I could. Now I see that a couple of companies have found a clever way to make money off this little tidbit. SkyImage Lab and SpaceImages.com both provide (presumably) high quality prints of these photos, suitable for framing, or in some cases, already framed. I haven't dealt with them, but I'm thinking about that photo printer I bought my wife for Christmas last year...
Someday I'll get around to writing that novel. Writers Digest has a good article on Raising the Stakes for your character. Basically, a good story requires you to make your main character really, really miserable.
We Americans tend to think that it's just those crazy British that drive on the left side of the road, but there are a surprising number of contries that still do. And even more surprising is the reasons some fo them have stopped. Internationalization Guy (that's I18nGuy to you) has a chronology of who drives where, and why. Pointless, but fun.
I think I've discovered at least one place I'm going to get my Christmas presents from this year. subversive cross stitch is not work-safe, but I definitely want one.
I got my first email address and Internet access in 1989, before the web even broke onto the scene, so maybe I'm not a representative example, but apparently many writers hate blogs. Now if I could just get this blog to do something besides giving me an outlet in which I can write what I want, rather than what the client wants...
I'm amazed at how few words it takes to bring a song to mind. I got a 66.25 on the 80's lyrics quiz, but that was after I got docked 30% because I was born between the Twist and Woodstock.
I got a good chuckle this morning from The Bug Count Also Rises, the Imitation Hemingway Contest Winner.
My wife forwarded this truly appropriate prayer to me. As usual, if this is yours and you want it removed, let me know.
Heavenly Father, Help me remember that that the jerk who cut me off in traffic last night, may be a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.
Help me to remember Lord, that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can't make change correctly may be a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.
Remind me, Lord, that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job)! is probably a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.
Help me to remember Lord, that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress may be savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report one of them got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.
Heavenly Father, remind us each day that, of all the gifts you've given us, the greatest gift is love. It is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear. Open our hearts not to just those who are close to us, but to all humanity. Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive, show patience, empathy and love.
I swear Charlie must be in my head. Today's treatise is on being late, and I spend a LOT of time somewhere between stages 2 and 3, with the occasional forays all the way to stage 5. (And there are actually a couple of places that qualify as stage 6.) So far I've only missed one plane, but my wife is still convinced that I wrote it ...
Over on my InformIT XML blog, I've noted that XML 1.1 is almost here, and not everybody is happy about it. Elliotte Rusty Harold specifically says "Don't use it."
Also, on a more lighthearted note, I've also noted over at the Vanguard Science Fiction Report that:
I received this via email and had to save it for posterity. This is reputed to be an actual complaint letter from a customer of British cable company NTL. As always, if you're Robert Stokes and you want me to take it down, let me know.
I've often been this frustrated, but it takes some serious talent to express it this well:
Dear Cretins:
I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your four-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, telephone, and alarm monitoring. During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service
which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions. Please allow me to provide specific
details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative and seek to rectify these difficulties -- or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office.
My initial installation was cancelled without warning, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your
technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website. HOW?
I alleviated the boredom by playing with my testicles for a few minutes -- an activity at which you are no doubt both familiar and highly adept. The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools -- such as a
drill-bit and his cerebrum.
Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone calls over four weeks my modem arrived, six weeks after I had requested it -- and begun to pay for it. I estimate your internet server's downtime is roughly 35% -- the hours between about 6 pm and midnight, Monday through Friday and most of the weekend. I am still waiting for my telephone connection.
I have made nine calls on my mobile to your no-help line and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals who are, it seems, also highly skilled bollock jugglers. I have been informed that a
telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is
available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone (and then been redirected to an answering machine informing me that your
office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman. And several other
variations on this theme.
Doubtless you are no longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore and also another one of
those crucially important testicle moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care. It's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.
I thought British Telecom was crap; that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations; and that no one, anywhere, ever,
could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NT and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there?
How surprised I therefore was when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum, incompetents of the highest order. BT -- wankers though they are -- shine like brilliant beacons of success in the filthy mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.
Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any
potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver. Any such
activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief and will quickly be replaced by derision and even perhaps bemused rage.
I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cat's litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you
and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit -- they were satisfyingly moist at the time of
posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL and its worthless employees.
Have a nice day. May it be the last in your miserable short lives, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of twits.
May you rot in Hell,
Robert Stokes
OK, it's not particularly fun or interesting, but every once in a while I need a Universal Currency Converter.
I've been meaning to start dabbling in artificial intelligence for a long time, an as-yet-still-covered-by-NDA project notwithstanding. The Mind Files makes me want to dive into the world of chatbots. Very cool, and according to the background, it's accessible to just about anybody. Maybe I will add an AI bot of my own to this site...
Jitte's also got a new blog going, where he was nice enough to mention Chaos Magnet. Thanks!
So I downloaded Napster 2.0 a bit warily. I really, truly, don't mind paying for music. But I wasted an hour yesterday finding tracks only to discover that without signing up for the service I could only hear 30 seconds of them. I'd have appreciated a warning up front.
Prevailing wisdom is that a blog should only be about one thing. Obviously I don't follow that rule. Ned Batchelder doesn't either, and I'm very, very glad. Ned's an interesting guy, with interests from his autistic son, Nat, to CSS and other tech topics, to science. And anybody who can point me to the Theory of Relativity in words of four letters or less is OK in my book. Rock on, Ned!
With Napster coming back on the scene (been there yet?) it's interesting to look at what's out there for free. Kuro5hin has an interesting piece, Snubbing the RIAA, Part I that lists a goodly number of sites with free, legal music.
I love political cartoons. I'm a sucker for 'em. I love the fact that something so simple actually makes you think. I mean, really, you have to actually put out a little brain power to figure out the point a cartoonist is trying to make. Now I've discovered Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index and I'm in heaven. (Cagel also has a great cartooning blog.)
Every once in a while I'm reminded of why I'm so glad to be out of the corporate environment. Alarm Bell Phrases is one of those triggers.
I don't know whether to be intrigued or nervous at the idea of an Internet database of surveilance cameras, including not just the normal shots of the beach, but even jail bookings.
I used to work in an advertising agency, and I can vouch for the long hours and the need for tension reducers.
Stealth Disco is the act of basically dancing behind coworkers without their knowledge. Check it out.
The first significant computer program I ever wrote was in high school, and it was an analysis of the text of A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown (apparently from the book of the same name). Despite the risque nature of handing this task to high-school students -- I know I'd complain if my son had this assignment -- I was irrevocably hooked on The Journal of Irreproducable Results. The editor has gone on to found the Ig Nobel awards, presented to "honor" achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced," and now he's got a new book: The Ig Nobel Prizes: The Annals of Improbable Research. Can't wait to check this one out.
I'm a big proponent of the holographic nature of the universe, in which everything is connected, even if we can't see it or even imagine it. The Hundredth Monkey is a philosophy in which knowledge becomes universal when a certain number of people learn it. It'd be nice if a) it were true and b) we could pass along some reasonable thought to enough people to make the world a little less screwed up.
