So… a needle pulling thread.
No, wait… so, last night I'm up playing online games and watching Eddie Izzard routines on Netflix and searching for some electronic Arabic/English dictionaries I don't have to pay for just and generally being a total 21st century internet zombie. Around this time Eddie starts talking about latin. Of course, we're Americans and haven't learned latin in schools since, oh, what? What is today? Oh, right, ever. Still, we have some general background of what it would be like if we cared about anything that didn't happen on American Idol and had an attention span longer than… ooh, a butterfly!
Latin, latin, it's a fucked up kind of language. I know because some transvestite standup comic told me. But like many languages it has not only the usual past, present, and future tenses but masculine and feminine, too. But English doesn't. Alright, there's some basic his and hers, but we don't assign gender to things. Boats, yeah, I'll give you that. Cars sometimes. But not so far as to have different words for male or female cars. It's "car", not "caro" or "cara" and the like. Nobody is getting the crap beaten out of them for referring to some guy's Nike's in the feminine tense (Nika's?).
So I start wondering if that's why America really took the lead in women's rights? Well, us and the Brits. They had female rulers long before we had a Constitution. Still, English speakers. America really took the lead in giving women the vote. And I'm gonna keep believing that so long as I don't look as history books or stop writing crap like this at 1:30 in the morning.
The Brits came up with Chivalry (as far as I know). Of course, it wasn't so much about opening doors as it was about not shoving random pesant women into the mud and raping them. Yeah, it sucked to be women back in the mud ages. And pretty much anytime, for that matter. But, yeah, bad time to be a woman and a much better time to be rich, armored, and male.
Could it be that the women's rights movement got a better foothold here than in other countries because gender division isn't built right into the language. Not as much anyway. Yes "man" is still part of "woman", but we all wear jeans, not jeans and jeans.
Nah, it probably has much more to do with the fact that the whole damn country was established around freedom from oppressive ideas like religious dogma, slavery, and eventually even gender roles.
Ignore all this crap.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Yard pics
The pics from my yard.
Damn. I, uh, I guess you'll have to turn your head for some of them. I decided against using MC Escher Landscaping.
Damn. I, uh, I guess you'll have to turn your head for some of them. I decided against using MC Escher Landscaping.
Yard work
It's a safe bet that we no longer have to worry about frost in this area. That means we can start planting!
Last night I tackled my yard. I threw out the bits of garbage that blow into the yard. Any dead branches hanging out of pots got trimmed away. The orange tree in a pot got moved outside.
At the end of last year I dug up a small sand plum bush from the family farm in Kansas and brought it back to DC. The trunk snapped during the drive and I tried to splice it back together. It didn't work, but I didn't expect it to. My big hope was that the roots would grow something new. And they did. I had two good samples of root and between them I got three shoots. Yesterday I got them transplanted into a bigger pot. So long as they last the summer I shouldn't have to worry about them. If they can survive Kansas winters they can survive DC winters. I'm keeping it in a pot so they don't spread and take over the yard. They reproduce more through spreading roots than they do from seeds.
I also have a big trash barrel full of dirt. I tried to get as much dirt as I can out of it. I'll try to find temporary homes for even more this evening. I'm gonna take another swing at growing potatoes in it. As the plant grows you're supposed to keep building up the dirt until the barrel is full. When the plant dies you kick over the barrel and have potatoes.
Some of the dirt was used to top off another pot that was moved near the house. I've ordered some hops rhizomes to stick in the pot. I shouldn't expect any yield this year, but next year I should have a decent crop. I'm sending some to my brother, too. He has a lot more land to play with than I do. If our brewing efforts do well over the next few years then I may have to include a fermentation tank if we ever replace the barn. That's a huge if. That if could have wiped out the dinosaurs if collided with the Earth.
The tulips and allium Yummy planted last year are peeking up. The kale are getting tall. The mint is coming back. Buds are forming on the tree we planted last year. Still waiting for some signs of life on the sickly blackberry we planted late last season or the grape vines that started coming up wild last summer.
And we finally found a bird bath for the yard. I should have a report on the table I'm making for the yard in the near future.
But that's just my yard. Yummy got permission to plant a garden in the back yard of her place in Baltimore. We spent a good part of the weekend removing trash and raking up several years worth of fallen leaves. The ground was largely bare underneath it. Some weeds needed killing, some still do. But we got a patch churned up and planted. A couple types of tomato, some peppers, Brussels sprouts, catnip, a blackberry bush, and some birdhouse gourd plants. Marigolds were planted along the sides of the garden to drive off the grubs. There's a few other things, but I forget what at the moment.
We put a shelf outside her kitchen window with some basil and lettuce growing in it. Hopefully we can reach out and pluck some lettuce for our hamburgers.
I made her get a tray of peat disks, too. We filled them with marigold and camomile seeds. They were picked for their short germination periods and having prettyish flowers. They're needed in a couple of weeks for something the DC Guerilla Gardeners are doing with some bicyclists from New York. I think they're gonna be taking soup cans and tying them to posts with these plants growing in them.
The residents who are taking care of the front yard at her place are moving in a month. She plans on taking it over. We have a ton of seeds bought or stolen from yards. That front yard is gonna be nuts.
We have some colorful corn and more birdhouse gourds that we're gonna be sticking around town. Gonna get into some actual guerilla gardening.
Last night I tackled my yard. I threw out the bits of garbage that blow into the yard. Any dead branches hanging out of pots got trimmed away. The orange tree in a pot got moved outside.
At the end of last year I dug up a small sand plum bush from the family farm in Kansas and brought it back to DC. The trunk snapped during the drive and I tried to splice it back together. It didn't work, but I didn't expect it to. My big hope was that the roots would grow something new. And they did. I had two good samples of root and between them I got three shoots. Yesterday I got them transplanted into a bigger pot. So long as they last the summer I shouldn't have to worry about them. If they can survive Kansas winters they can survive DC winters. I'm keeping it in a pot so they don't spread and take over the yard. They reproduce more through spreading roots than they do from seeds.
I also have a big trash barrel full of dirt. I tried to get as much dirt as I can out of it. I'll try to find temporary homes for even more this evening. I'm gonna take another swing at growing potatoes in it. As the plant grows you're supposed to keep building up the dirt until the barrel is full. When the plant dies you kick over the barrel and have potatoes.
Some of the dirt was used to top off another pot that was moved near the house. I've ordered some hops rhizomes to stick in the pot. I shouldn't expect any yield this year, but next year I should have a decent crop. I'm sending some to my brother, too. He has a lot more land to play with than I do. If our brewing efforts do well over the next few years then I may have to include a fermentation tank if we ever replace the barn. That's a huge if. That if could have wiped out the dinosaurs if collided with the Earth.
The tulips and allium Yummy planted last year are peeking up. The kale are getting tall. The mint is coming back. Buds are forming on the tree we planted last year. Still waiting for some signs of life on the sickly blackberry we planted late last season or the grape vines that started coming up wild last summer.
And we finally found a bird bath for the yard. I should have a report on the table I'm making for the yard in the near future.
But that's just my yard. Yummy got permission to plant a garden in the back yard of her place in Baltimore. We spent a good part of the weekend removing trash and raking up several years worth of fallen leaves. The ground was largely bare underneath it. Some weeds needed killing, some still do. But we got a patch churned up and planted. A couple types of tomato, some peppers, Brussels sprouts, catnip, a blackberry bush, and some birdhouse gourd plants. Marigolds were planted along the sides of the garden to drive off the grubs. There's a few other things, but I forget what at the moment.
We put a shelf outside her kitchen window with some basil and lettuce growing in it. Hopefully we can reach out and pluck some lettuce for our hamburgers.
I made her get a tray of peat disks, too. We filled them with marigold and camomile seeds. They were picked for their short germination periods and having prettyish flowers. They're needed in a couple of weeks for something the DC Guerilla Gardeners are doing with some bicyclists from New York. I think they're gonna be taking soup cans and tying them to posts with these plants growing in them.
The residents who are taking care of the front yard at her place are moving in a month. She plans on taking it over. We have a ton of seeds bought or stolen from yards. That front yard is gonna be nuts.
We have some colorful corn and more birdhouse gourds that we're gonna be sticking around town. Gonna get into some actual guerilla gardening.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Book review: The Last Starship from Earth
Do I read too much sci-fi? Possibly. But most of it is old sci-fi. Does that help?
I recently read the 1968 book "The Last Starship from Earth" by John Boyd. Not one of the greats. This is his best known of his books.
This was the first book that I felt I needed to share the "about the author" section. Most science fiction authors who served in WWII served in a scientific or technical or even medical capacity. They'll talk about their service, but it's not generally part of the "about the author" section. Boyd was commissioned in the Navy in 1940, served in Russia, England, Japan, and the Philippines. He's the only junior officer mentioned in Samuel Eliot Morison's naval history of WWII.
I debated how much to tell you about the book. I'm tending toward spoilers since this isn't a book you can find electronically and isn't terribly common in the online book sellers. So it's not like you're gonna read it. I've put in a big spoiler alert marker further down. If you read that far and decide you want to find and read it you can stop there. Beyond that we get into the twists and turns of the story.
The book starts out in what appears to be the distant future. The world is divided into castes based on what your family does. If your father was a Mathematician then you're a Mathematician and you have his name but with a number increase. If I'm Doug IV then Dad was Doug III and grandpa was Doug II. We're also all part of a profession and skill level that makes us "professionals". That is we're important and we matter. Unskilled laborer aren't highly regarded. So much so that they're an underclass. It's possible to move between classes, but you have to be something special.
See, the world is run by this computer called "The Pope". It replaced human popes some many, many years back. It does the bulk of planning and thinking and running things and does a good deal of the spouse selection. It sort of narrows your options down to four or so. And they'll all be within your class and profession unless they're trying to breed for special traits.
There are other groups helping to run things. The Sociologists and Psychologists, along with the Priests, run things and have since long before they had the computerized Pope. They're not the smartest, but they know how to manipulate people in ways that the Mathematicians can't.
With all that we have the setup for a Romeo and Juliet story. Mathematician meets Poet, they fall in love, but their love is forbidden. They sneak around but are ratted out and the government comes for them.
Before I move beyond that I need to tell you how the book reads. Since she's a poet he starts studying poetry. In very short order the book becomes worded poetically. It might be crap if you're actually of sufficient poetical interest to know good from bad. It does make the book a bit more challenging to read.
To cover up their secret liaisons they come up with a cover story. First she's trying to write a poem about the Mathematician that created the Pope. When they find out that too much of his life is considered classified they start trying to build an electronic poet in much the same way an electronic pope was created.
But it wouldn't much of a story if they didn't get caught. He goes on trial. She's pregnant so there's not much doubt about his guilt. He's interviewed by the four members of the jury: one each from the three major specialties and one from his own. He thinks he's done well, so does the reader, but they determine that he has the same mental illness as the son of the guy who created the electronic pope. He's too much of an individual and they're afraid he'll start an uprising. They can wipe his mind, they can sterilize him and put him to work as a grunt, or they can fire him off to the planet Hell. Really, the only option they see is sending him to Hell so he doesn't start more shit on Earth.
Another aside - For the most part it seems like the distant future. They talk about a period of time known as The Starvation. Little is known about before. Abe Lincoln started the UN. There's others, but that's the big one that stands out. This isn't the future. This is the present with an alternate past. It's not clear what caused the big change.
There is space travel in this alternate present. Or, rather, there was. There's only two ships left and they ferry passengers to Hell. The pilots are an odd lot. Due to the relativistic effects of near light speed travel they show up on Earth for 3 days every few years and only months have passed for them. They suffer long bouts of solitude with short bouts on a world that keeps changing and passing them by.
So our hero is sent to Hell in suspended animation. They wake him after several months to check on him and he gets to talk to the pilot who also flew the son of the guy who created the electronic pope to Hell.
Once on Hell our hero finds out that his pregnant poet girlfriend arranged to be sent here as well. They find out that the ice world of Hell isn't really an ice world. The planet's orbit is an ellipse so it's a barely habitable ice world for two months of the year, tropical for four, and very pleasant the rest of the time. The guy who created the electronic Pope knew this and rigged the Pope to schedule visits by the ships only when the planet was icy so those on Earth wouldn't find out. After all, his own son was being banished here. And he's still alive. Yeah, apparently they have longevity treatments on Earth, but can't use them due to the size of the population. Hell's lesser population almost requires it even with the rapid rate of reproduction they're undergoing to try to populate this planet.
And it keeps going. The pope maker's son had worked out the same formula for faster than light travel that our hero had worked out. What the formula means is that one can go back in time. He'd created a ship based on that formula to send his own daughter back to Earth to find someone with our hero's education who has a mindset similar to his own and entrap him in such a way that would get him sent to Hell. So, yeah, the poet girl is the granddaughter of the guy who build the electronic Pope.
Why would they do this? They need someone with his brains and personality to send back in time far enough to change the whole world and prevent this repressive society from forming.
How far back? Far back enough to end the 60+ year life of Jesus Christ. In their world Jesus raised up an army and overthrew the Roman Empire to establish a theocracy that survived until the present. But instead of killing him he put a 33 year old Jesus in his ship and sent it back to Hell. That meant he had to stay on Earth. Thanks to his longevity treatment the book ends with him back in the present day at a campus protest with a history that looks remarkably like our own.
I recently read the 1968 book "The Last Starship from Earth" by John Boyd. Not one of the greats. This is his best known of his books.
This was the first book that I felt I needed to share the "about the author" section. Most science fiction authors who served in WWII served in a scientific or technical or even medical capacity. They'll talk about their service, but it's not generally part of the "about the author" section. Boyd was commissioned in the Navy in 1940, served in Russia, England, Japan, and the Philippines. He's the only junior officer mentioned in Samuel Eliot Morison's naval history of WWII.
I debated how much to tell you about the book. I'm tending toward spoilers since this isn't a book you can find electronically and isn't terribly common in the online book sellers. So it's not like you're gonna read it. I've put in a big spoiler alert marker further down. If you read that far and decide you want to find and read it you can stop there. Beyond that we get into the twists and turns of the story.
The book starts out in what appears to be the distant future. The world is divided into castes based on what your family does. If your father was a Mathematician then you're a Mathematician and you have his name but with a number increase. If I'm Doug IV then Dad was Doug III and grandpa was Doug II. We're also all part of a profession and skill level that makes us "professionals". That is we're important and we matter. Unskilled laborer aren't highly regarded. So much so that they're an underclass. It's possible to move between classes, but you have to be something special.
See, the world is run by this computer called "The Pope". It replaced human popes some many, many years back. It does the bulk of planning and thinking and running things and does a good deal of the spouse selection. It sort of narrows your options down to four or so. And they'll all be within your class and profession unless they're trying to breed for special traits.
There are other groups helping to run things. The Sociologists and Psychologists, along with the Priests, run things and have since long before they had the computerized Pope. They're not the smartest, but they know how to manipulate people in ways that the Mathematicians can't.
With all that we have the setup for a Romeo and Juliet story. Mathematician meets Poet, they fall in love, but their love is forbidden. They sneak around but are ratted out and the government comes for them.
Before I move beyond that I need to tell you how the book reads. Since she's a poet he starts studying poetry. In very short order the book becomes worded poetically. It might be crap if you're actually of sufficient poetical interest to know good from bad. It does make the book a bit more challenging to read.
To cover up their secret liaisons they come up with a cover story. First she's trying to write a poem about the Mathematician that created the Pope. When they find out that too much of his life is considered classified they start trying to build an electronic poet in much the same way an electronic pope was created.
But it wouldn't much of a story if they didn't get caught. He goes on trial. She's pregnant so there's not much doubt about his guilt. He's interviewed by the four members of the jury: one each from the three major specialties and one from his own. He thinks he's done well, so does the reader, but they determine that he has the same mental illness as the son of the guy who created the electronic pope. He's too much of an individual and they're afraid he'll start an uprising. They can wipe his mind, they can sterilize him and put him to work as a grunt, or they can fire him off to the planet Hell. Really, the only option they see is sending him to Hell so he doesn't start more shit on Earth.
[SPOILERS AHEAD!]
If you think you'll want to read this book you should stop now.Another aside - For the most part it seems like the distant future. They talk about a period of time known as The Starvation. Little is known about before. Abe Lincoln started the UN. There's others, but that's the big one that stands out. This isn't the future. This is the present with an alternate past. It's not clear what caused the big change.
There is space travel in this alternate present. Or, rather, there was. There's only two ships left and they ferry passengers to Hell. The pilots are an odd lot. Due to the relativistic effects of near light speed travel they show up on Earth for 3 days every few years and only months have passed for them. They suffer long bouts of solitude with short bouts on a world that keeps changing and passing them by.
So our hero is sent to Hell in suspended animation. They wake him after several months to check on him and he gets to talk to the pilot who also flew the son of the guy who created the electronic pope to Hell.
Once on Hell our hero finds out that his pregnant poet girlfriend arranged to be sent here as well. They find out that the ice world of Hell isn't really an ice world. The planet's orbit is an ellipse so it's a barely habitable ice world for two months of the year, tropical for four, and very pleasant the rest of the time. The guy who created the electronic Pope knew this and rigged the Pope to schedule visits by the ships only when the planet was icy so those on Earth wouldn't find out. After all, his own son was being banished here. And he's still alive. Yeah, apparently they have longevity treatments on Earth, but can't use them due to the size of the population. Hell's lesser population almost requires it even with the rapid rate of reproduction they're undergoing to try to populate this planet.
And it keeps going. The pope maker's son had worked out the same formula for faster than light travel that our hero had worked out. What the formula means is that one can go back in time. He'd created a ship based on that formula to send his own daughter back to Earth to find someone with our hero's education who has a mindset similar to his own and entrap him in such a way that would get him sent to Hell. So, yeah, the poet girl is the granddaughter of the guy who build the electronic Pope.
Why would they do this? They need someone with his brains and personality to send back in time far enough to change the whole world and prevent this repressive society from forming.
How far back? Far back enough to end the 60+ year life of Jesus Christ. In their world Jesus raised up an army and overthrew the Roman Empire to establish a theocracy that survived until the present. But instead of killing him he put a 33 year old Jesus in his ship and sent it back to Hell. That meant he had to stay on Earth. Thanks to his longevity treatment the book ends with him back in the present day at a campus protest with a history that looks remarkably like our own.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Friday Links: March 18
The Demo Knight - a Dark Knight trailer starring characters from Team Fortress 2.
Mimes that aren't mute. They just don't make sense.
Important wetware patch. [link]
CNN reporter in Japan can feel the Earth, move, under his feet. He feels the sky come tumbling down, tumbling down.
Some places in Japan got a 1 minute warning before the quake. How? Something a bit like this. [link]
How oil became known as a "fossil fuel".
I was gonna try something like this. But it was a C17 and I was gonna convert it to a home on the planes of Kansas. [link]
Ammunition insects. [link]
There's no argument possible to claim that this pharmaceutical company is motivated by anything but greed. [link]
Printable bike. [link]
"Bike" run by electric screwdrivers. [link]
Awesome new stamps from the Royal Mail. [link]
Owl wants to look at you.
Insane asylum floor plans. [link]
Minecraft chickens: are they a particle or a wave?
Here's a better explanation of what you're seeing in the previous video.
The Enterprise NCC-1701-A full Minecraft tour.
Material store for inventors. [link]
Batman: Arkham City trailer. Still with Kevin Conroy as Bats and Mark Hamill as Mr. J. The only Batman and Joker voice, in my opinion.
Marble machine with interchangeable parts.
PonyCraft 2
Interview with the guy who was Tweeting as Rahm Emanuel. I think I'll have to read his archive. [link] [the archive]
More poems by cats. [link] [even more]
Roll up any website in a Katamari. [link]
Photo history of Discovery. [link]
Great website for inventors. [link]
If you've played "Portal" you already know why you need to buy "Portal 2". If you haven't then this trailer should explain why.
Dr Who Fan Service:
Enter your homemade TARDIS into a competition. [link]
Or just look at the other entries. [link]
Mimes that aren't mute. They just don't make sense.
Important wetware patch. [link]
CNN reporter in Japan can feel the Earth, move, under his feet. He feels the sky come tumbling down, tumbling down.
Some places in Japan got a 1 minute warning before the quake. How? Something a bit like this. [link]
How oil became known as a "fossil fuel".
I was gonna try something like this. But it was a C17 and I was gonna convert it to a home on the planes of Kansas. [link]
Ammunition insects. [link]
There's no argument possible to claim that this pharmaceutical company is motivated by anything but greed. [link]
Printable bike. [link]
"Bike" run by electric screwdrivers. [link]
Awesome new stamps from the Royal Mail. [link]
Owl wants to look at you.
Insane asylum floor plans. [link]
Minecraft chickens: are they a particle or a wave?
Here's a better explanation of what you're seeing in the previous video.
The Enterprise NCC-1701-A full Minecraft tour.
Material store for inventors. [link]
Batman: Arkham City trailer. Still with Kevin Conroy as Bats and Mark Hamill as Mr. J. The only Batman and Joker voice, in my opinion.
Marble machine with interchangeable parts.
PonyCraft 2
Interview with the guy who was Tweeting as Rahm Emanuel. I think I'll have to read his archive. [link] [the archive]
More poems by cats. [link] [even more]
Roll up any website in a Katamari. [link]
Photo history of Discovery. [link]
Great website for inventors. [link]
If you've played "Portal" you already know why you need to buy "Portal 2". If you haven't then this trailer should explain why.
Dr Who Fan Service:
Saturday, April 23!!! Ah, ah, ah. Spoilers.
Enter your homemade TARDIS into a competition. [link]
Or just look at the other entries. [link]
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Watson
By now you all know that the IBM supercomputer dubbed Watson won in a three day Jeopardy game. It's finally available on YouTube and is embedded below.
This game will soon be considered of historical note. You may think I'm overstating things a bit. It's not like a war or a presidential assassination. But it totally qualifies as equal or greater than Deep Thought beating David Levy in 1989 or IBM's Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997. (I'm having some issue with that later date. I could have sworn that happened before I graduated high school.) I'm sure that as soon as next year there will be programming classes teaching this game in the history portion along with Babbage's (and Lovelace's) Difference Engine, the German Enigma Machine, ENIAC, ARPAnet, and Deep Blue. The difference being that now the class will be able to watch this historical event as homework.
Day 1 part 1
Day 1 part 2
Day 2 part 1
Day 2 part 2
Day 3 part 1
Day 3 part 2
Before you go, you'll want to read Reddit's interview with Ken Jennings. The man is a riot. [link]
This game will soon be considered of historical note. You may think I'm overstating things a bit. It's not like a war or a presidential assassination. But it totally qualifies as equal or greater than Deep Thought beating David Levy in 1989 or IBM's Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997. (I'm having some issue with that later date. I could have sworn that happened before I graduated high school.) I'm sure that as soon as next year there will be programming classes teaching this game in the history portion along with Babbage's (and Lovelace's) Difference Engine, the German Enigma Machine, ENIAC, ARPAnet, and Deep Blue. The difference being that now the class will be able to watch this historical event as homework.
Day 1 part 1
Day 1 part 2
Day 2 part 1
Day 2 part 2
Day 3 part 1
Day 3 part 2
Before you go, you'll want to read Reddit's interview with Ken Jennings. The man is a riot. [link]
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Sleepin in
Since I've been working from home I've not dealt with the alarm clock too much. What good does it do to start work at 7:00 if I have to take a nap a few hours later? If I just sleep in I'll get the work done at the same time and do a better job.
This last weekend I spent working our booth at a pediatric medicine convention. I started pulling hours like I'm gonna have to once I start working. I tried going to bed early to compensate, but did a very bad job of it. So I'd go to the convention with something like four hours of sleep. But now I'm trying to catch up and am sleeping until around 1:30 in the afternoon. That's why the post is so late. I've just finished the shower and breakfast routine.
Not that I should have been at the convention at all. Bruce was supposed to do it. It's the one thing that he still can do right. Instead he went to Florida for two weeks. When he asked for the time off nobody bothered to check the calendar. It was assumed that having agreed to go to the convention he wouldn't skip out. There was lots of "But [the managing editor] said I could go!" Yeah, just like that tone of voice you read it in. Like a spoiled kid.
Then he didn't even get to leave on his trip on time. He'd screwed up the displays bad enough for this and some other out of town event that he was forced to stay in town a few extra days to fix it. At least they held him to that level of responsibility.
This last weekend I spent working our booth at a pediatric medicine convention. I started pulling hours like I'm gonna have to once I start working. I tried going to bed early to compensate, but did a very bad job of it. So I'd go to the convention with something like four hours of sleep. But now I'm trying to catch up and am sleeping until around 1:30 in the afternoon. That's why the post is so late. I've just finished the shower and breakfast routine.
Not that I should have been at the convention at all. Bruce was supposed to do it. It's the one thing that he still can do right. Instead he went to Florida for two weeks. When he asked for the time off nobody bothered to check the calendar. It was assumed that having agreed to go to the convention he wouldn't skip out. There was lots of "But [the managing editor] said I could go!" Yeah, just like that tone of voice you read it in. Like a spoiled kid.
Then he didn't even get to leave on his trip on time. He'd screwed up the displays bad enough for this and some other out of town event that he was forced to stay in town a few extra days to fix it. At least they held him to that level of responsibility.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Movie review: Battle LA
For the Idea of March I've come to slay "Battle LA", not to praise it.
If you're looking for a good action movie this is what you want to see. If you're looking for a bout of motion sickness you'll get your $11 bucks worth here. If you're looking for a storyline you might want to go elsewhere.
I'm not sure what I was expecting. A steady-cam maybe. Seriously, this has to have been the shakiest movie I've seen that didn't try to justify it with scared people holding the camera.
The story comes down to this: Aliens are attacking Earth. Their explanation for why is total crap. The tactics the aliens use are rubbish. And how they kill the aliens pretty much comes down to applying sufficient kinetic energy (i.e. blow them up). They do try to throw in a bit about how people think that Two Face let some soldiers under his command die and he's about to retire. But it's pretty weak. As is the scared father, the orphaned boy watching his scared father die, Two Face bonding with orphaned boy, and the go nowhere sexual tension with the vet.
The one thing I credit this movie with is that their technology has the exact same vulnerabilities ours would have if we developed something similar.
Oh, and that lots of shit blows up. It's a straight up action movie.
Will not get on DVD.
If you're looking for a good action movie this is what you want to see. If you're looking for a bout of motion sickness you'll get your $11 bucks worth here. If you're looking for a storyline you might want to go elsewhere.
I'm not sure what I was expecting. A steady-cam maybe. Seriously, this has to have been the shakiest movie I've seen that didn't try to justify it with scared people holding the camera.
The story comes down to this: Aliens are attacking Earth. Their explanation for why is total crap. The tactics the aliens use are rubbish. And how they kill the aliens pretty much comes down to applying sufficient kinetic energy (i.e. blow them up). They do try to throw in a bit about how people think that Two Face let some soldiers under his command die and he's about to retire. But it's pretty weak. As is the scared father, the orphaned boy watching his scared father die, Two Face bonding with orphaned boy, and the go nowhere sexual tension with the vet.
The one thing I credit this movie with is that their technology has the exact same vulnerabilities ours would have if we developed something similar.
Oh, and that lots of shit blows up. It's a straight up action movie.
Will not get on DVD.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Movie review: Rango
There are, in my opinion, three great westerns: Blazing Saddles, Three Amigos, and now Rango. Obviously, I have a particular taste.
The main story is inspired by the old fairy tale "The Brave Little Tailor" about a tailor who kills seven flies with one blow but is recruited for the king's guard due to them thinking he killed seven people. In this movie Rango the pet chameleon is separated from his family and lost in the desert. He makes his way to a town that is suffering from a drought. He starts telling stories to earn the fear of the town goons and is soon made sheriff. Rango has to protect the town from area villains and solve the mystery of what's happening to the water.
"Rango" has a different sense of humor than you might expect if you're a regular watcher of Pixar-like movies. It has a good dose of old Warner Brothers cartoons (Bugs Bunny and the like) and Monty Python. There's lots of throw away lines that are thrown out and moved on from while you're still processing it. It mixes slapstick and dry humor. And the spirit of the west is awesome.
It works if you don't think about it too much. If you do you start to see major plot points that seem to have belonged to earlier drafts of the movie. You see how they might have tried to give it a message but messed it up. Is the villain really responsible or are the humans? Will the villain's plan work or is he starting another Cargo Cult?
Rango is made up to resemble the Hunter S. Thompson-type character Raoul Duke in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". He has the same floral shirt. He has the same actor for his voice. When Rango hits a windshield the people in the car are supposed to be the central characters from "Fear and Loathing...". When the bats come out you can't help but think "We can't stop here. This is bat country."
I will get this on DVD and may see it in theaters again.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Friday Links: March 11
Conan showing Apple's new marketing video. [link]
A touching video about an 86 year old WWII veteran sniper being honored. Turns out he's still a crack shot whether using a replica of his old gun or the latest and greatest. [link]
Punishment housing in prison for military WikiLeaker. [link]
New Hampshire Republicans trying to prevent college students from voting. [link]
I Could Pee On This - poems by cats. [link]
Soviet space capsule for auction. Dog not included. [link]
By Mike Huckabee's thinking my parents can't get married. I mean who wants to think about their parents' closed door activities? [link]
Bad for evidence collection, but you can bet these data drives will be popular among government agencies protecting top secret or simply criminal behavior. [link]
Make the show host shut the hell up. Still, listening to Shatner giving Discovery a sort of send off was more touching than I expected. [link]
A series of paintings with messages. [link]
Android users beware of these apps. They are being resold with malware installed. [link]
Wooden binary calculator. [link]
MS Paint for Windows 7 played as sound. [link] [the remix]
An animation of the ISS being assembled. [link]
Image: Read FASTER! [link]
Super Mario Brothers with updated sound effects.
Just Dance as performed by the Fallout: New Vegas dancers.
HP Lovecraft: mathematics substitute. [link]
Game: Transmover new generation. You'll figure it out. [link]
A touching video about an 86 year old WWII veteran sniper being honored. Turns out he's still a crack shot whether using a replica of his old gun or the latest and greatest. [link]
Punishment housing in prison for military WikiLeaker. [link]
New Hampshire Republicans trying to prevent college students from voting. [link]
I Could Pee On This - poems by cats. [link]
Soviet space capsule for auction. Dog not included. [link]
By Mike Huckabee's thinking my parents can't get married. I mean who wants to think about their parents' closed door activities? [link]
Bad for evidence collection, but you can bet these data drives will be popular among government agencies protecting top secret or simply criminal behavior. [link]
Make the show host shut the hell up. Still, listening to Shatner giving Discovery a sort of send off was more touching than I expected. [link]
A series of paintings with messages. [link]
Android users beware of these apps. They are being resold with malware installed. [link]
Wooden binary calculator. [link]
MS Paint for Windows 7 played as sound. [link] [the remix]
An animation of the ISS being assembled. [link]
Image: Read FASTER! [link]
Super Mario Brothers with updated sound effects.
Just Dance as performed by the Fallout: New Vegas dancers.
HP Lovecraft: mathematics substitute. [link]
Game: Transmover new generation. You'll figure it out. [link]
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Movie Review: The Adjustment Bureau
Let me tell you what I had to go through to see this movie. The theater was showing both "The Adjustment Bureau" and "Rango". I went to the theater with the plan of seeing both. I showed up in time for "The Adjustment Bureau" as advertised, half an hour after the start of "Rango", only to find out that they were installing a new projector in that theater and they'd cancelled the showings of "The Adjustment Bureau" for the day.
But "Rango" would be showing in a little over two hours. So I went to the store clearance at Borders and... well, I won't tell you what I spent, but I saved $76. They had to get me a box.
I showed up for the next showing of "Rango". It was cancelled. Too many people coming to see "The Adjustment Bureau". So if I'd just wait yet another half hour beyond when "Rango" was to start I'd finally get to see the movie that I wanted to see three hours before.
That's a pretty good description of "The Adjustment Bureau" right there. Only I'm filling the role of Matt Damon.
Ever read any Discworld books? In particular the Death centered books? No? Then making comparisons to the Auditors in the Discworld and the Adjustors in this movie won't make any sense. If you have then you'll see the parallels.
There's these guys in grey outfits who look a bit like they're wearing the wardrobe discards from the show "Mad Men". They work for someone who may or may not be God. They look and feel human. Some are programmed to think they are human. There are many copies. And they have a plan.
Sorry. I'm getting distracted. They do have a plan. They don't understand it, but they have one. They have to keep Congressional candidate and Presidential hopeful Matt Damon from falling in love with potential famous dancer and choreographer Emily Blunt who wears this necklace that draws all kinds of attention to her cleavage.
That's a very short description of a movie that is much more than that. It's like calling "Titanic" a disaster movie at sea or saying that "Jurassic Park" is a dinosaur flick. All movies may be rehashes of old stories, but sometimes the quality of the telling makes it worthwhile. And this story was well told. They take the time to tell a good love story. They also show enough of the behind the scenes stuff of the Adjustment Bureau to make them interesting characters instead of just emotionless drones. The end is a bit awkward, but not enough to ruin the movie.
I think I'll probably get it on DVD. I highly recommend seeing it.
If it matters, this movie is based off of a Philip K Dick story. That puts it in with movies like "Blade Runner", "Total Recall", "Minority Report", "Paycheck", "A Scanner Darkly", and "Next". Quality stories with varying quality of story telling.
But "Rango" would be showing in a little over two hours. So I went to the store clearance at Borders and... well, I won't tell you what I spent, but I saved $76. They had to get me a box.
I showed up for the next showing of "Rango". It was cancelled. Too many people coming to see "The Adjustment Bureau". So if I'd just wait yet another half hour beyond when "Rango" was to start I'd finally get to see the movie that I wanted to see three hours before.
That's a pretty good description of "The Adjustment Bureau" right there. Only I'm filling the role of Matt Damon.
Ever read any Discworld books? In particular the Death centered books? No? Then making comparisons to the Auditors in the Discworld and the Adjustors in this movie won't make any sense. If you have then you'll see the parallels.
There's these guys in grey outfits who look a bit like they're wearing the wardrobe discards from the show "Mad Men". They work for someone who may or may not be God. They look and feel human. Some are programmed to think they are human. There are many copies. And they have a plan.
Sorry. I'm getting distracted. They do have a plan. They don't understand it, but they have one. They have to keep Congressional candidate and Presidential hopeful Matt Damon from falling in love with potential famous dancer and choreographer Emily Blunt who wears this necklace that draws all kinds of attention to her cleavage.
That's a very short description of a movie that is much more than that. It's like calling "Titanic" a disaster movie at sea or saying that "Jurassic Park" is a dinosaur flick. All movies may be rehashes of old stories, but sometimes the quality of the telling makes it worthwhile. And this story was well told. They take the time to tell a good love story. They also show enough of the behind the scenes stuff of the Adjustment Bureau to make them interesting characters instead of just emotionless drones. The end is a bit awkward, but not enough to ruin the movie.
I think I'll probably get it on DVD. I highly recommend seeing it.
If it matters, this movie is based off of a Philip K Dick story. That puts it in with movies like "Blade Runner", "Total Recall", "Minority Report", "Paycheck", "A Scanner Darkly", and "Next". Quality stories with varying quality of story telling.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Ain't nothing but a book thing
It took us awhile to find this place. When Yummy mentioned she was moving to Baltimore I looked at a map of the area around the address she gave me. There were several book stores in her area, including a cluster of used book stores. One of them was Book Thing. The weather hasn't allowed a lot of walking around, but when we would go out I'd try to direct us in that direction. Saturday I saw a bumpersticker with the Book Thing URL on it and punched it into my phone. Sunday we stopped in.
Book Thing is a place where you get free books. People donate books. They shelve them. Other people take them. All you have to do is write on a piece of paper the number of books you're taking.
The roof leaks. Climate control was minimal to non-existant. Maps of the place were out of date. The floor was concrete. The bathroom is in a McDonalds two blocks away.
It's kinda awesome.
The neighborhood also boasts a Goodwill, a couple of pawn shops, an adult bookstore, several skeezy clothing stores, a quicky tax place, a check cashing place, a community health center, a KFC with heavy bolts on the bathroom and bulletproof glass in front of the cash registers, and a rather nice church.
I'm glad it's not as close to Yummy's place as I initially thought.
The front room seems kind of sparse. A row of plastic bins holds books for children of a wide variety of ages. One wall has books in and about foreign languages. There's a gardening and home maintenance section. One wall contains all manner of textbook about biology, genetics, engineering, welding, programming, some even in the quantities you might need for a modest classroom. A small shelf holds their sci-fi selection. Seems kinda weak just looking at this room.
Then you step through another door to their main room. It runs most of the length of the building. Their legal section rivals their whole other textbook section. The rest of the room is just labeled "fiction". A couple shelves have the romance books. If you're into books about CIA agent [insert name] there's about 20 shelves for you. A couple more for just mystery. Then another small room that I barely looked at because my arms were getting tired.
So really, what you have is a place that provides free books in a poverty stricken area for people who need them. Or people who bother to find the place. I recommend you check it out if you're in the area. If you have books they can use be sure to let them know.
More info at http://www.bookthing.org/.
Book Thing is a place where you get free books. People donate books. They shelve them. Other people take them. All you have to do is write on a piece of paper the number of books you're taking.
The roof leaks. Climate control was minimal to non-existant. Maps of the place were out of date. The floor was concrete. The bathroom is in a McDonalds two blocks away.
It's kinda awesome.
The neighborhood also boasts a Goodwill, a couple of pawn shops, an adult bookstore, several skeezy clothing stores, a quicky tax place, a check cashing place, a community health center, a KFC with heavy bolts on the bathroom and bulletproof glass in front of the cash registers, and a rather nice church.
I'm glad it's not as close to Yummy's place as I initially thought.
The front room seems kind of sparse. A row of plastic bins holds books for children of a wide variety of ages. One wall has books in and about foreign languages. There's a gardening and home maintenance section. One wall contains all manner of textbook about biology, genetics, engineering, welding, programming, some even in the quantities you might need for a modest classroom. A small shelf holds their sci-fi selection. Seems kinda weak just looking at this room.
Then you step through another door to their main room. It runs most of the length of the building. Their legal section rivals their whole other textbook section. The rest of the room is just labeled "fiction". A couple shelves have the romance books. If you're into books about CIA agent [insert name] there's about 20 shelves for you. A couple more for just mystery. Then another small room that I barely looked at because my arms were getting tired.
So really, what you have is a place that provides free books in a poverty stricken area for people who need them. Or people who bother to find the place. I recommend you check it out if you're in the area. If you have books they can use be sure to let them know.
More info at http://www.bookthing.org/.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Esperanza Spalding
Yummy's brother got us tickets to the sold out Esperanza Spalding show in Frederick, MD Friday night. I was unfamiliar with her or her work before this. Obviously, I don't watch the Grammies. From what I've seen online most people are familiar with her because of the outrage by fans of that Bieber girl for best new artist. What impresses me more is that at age 23 she was a professor at ... wait, Berklee? Not Berkeley? The Berklee College of Music. Still, impressive, just not quite as impressive as I was thinking.
Anyway, here's one of her videos. I recommend you search for some others.
After the concert we went looking for somewhere to get something to eat. The area around The Weinberg Center for the Arts has lot of restaurants and bars. They didn't seem to be interested in doing business, however. We checked several places and they had cover charges for DJs that didn't seem to be more than a guy with an iPod and a genre in mind. The kitchen were all but closed. The place we landed still had appetizers and things that could go in a frier, but stuff off the grill was off the menu.
Frederick was struggling to roll up the sidewalks, but they had people like us going around and hitting the sidewalk crew with sticks and shouting "STOP! Put down that sidewalk, dammit! We're using that! GET BACK!"
Anyway, here's one of her videos. I recommend you search for some others.
After the concert we went looking for somewhere to get something to eat. The area around The Weinberg Center for the Arts has lot of restaurants and bars. They didn't seem to be interested in doing business, however. We checked several places and they had cover charges for DJs that didn't seem to be more than a guy with an iPod and a genre in mind. The kitchen were all but closed. The place we landed still had appetizers and things that could go in a frier, but stuff off the grill was off the menu.
Frederick was struggling to roll up the sidewalks, but they had people like us going around and hitting the sidewalk crew with sticks and shouting "STOP! Put down that sidewalk, dammit! We're using that! GET BACK!"
Friday, March 04, 2011
Friday Links: March 4
If HP Lovecraft were a gardener. [link]
A very expensive, but very nifty video gaming chair. [link]
I don't normally spend long on the sites of artists, but I enjoyed this guy's stuff. Might even use his patterns to line Yummy's new cabinet. [link]
The White House and DOJ will no longer be defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court. [link]
Trails of Tarnation: Black Coffee - stick with it. I almost turned it off several times, but liked the ending. [link]
Camping in a volcano. [link]
Quotes from lesser Transformers. [link]
This quote came up in conversation the other day.
But I credited it to Duke Nukem.
And then this trailer came out.
Sorry, but we've seen trailers before. Until it's on the shelves it's still Duke Nukem: Whenever.
How to beat Watson at Jeopardy. [link]
Step 1 of the Chinese uprising. [link]
Toccatta and Fugue in D minor played on floppy drives.
Best of Canstruction this year. [link]
Strange known Windows bug. [link]
More ammo for the Terminators.
The last known American WWI vet dies. [link]
How to make a Pokebra. [link]
Man almost manages to foreclose on a bank.
Political ideologies represented with cows. Yes, we got it in an e-mail in 1995, but they've refined it since then. [link]
There's a new Thundercats cartoon coming. Looks like it doesn't suck.
If steampunk is too dated for your tastes you can try decorating with something more modern. [link]
Stephen Fry was in DC last week and dressed as a Klingon. [link]
New Simon's Cat.
It started as a joke, but here's a fleshed out version of the book "Goodnight Dune". [link]
Game: Name the movie from the silhouette of an item from the movie. Plays like hangman [link]
Lamps that you might expect from Agatha Heterodyne. [link]
A guy starts with DOS 5.0, installs Windows 1 and runs nearly every Windows update through Windows 7. Possibly only interesting to us older geeks. He tests the differences by installing DOS games and setting some colors and checks to see if they remain and run from version to version.
Teeny homes. [link]
Nifty pics from the Google car. [link]
Freaky walking cactus fossil found in China. [link]
Video of a team of horses pulling a semi out of the snow. [link]
Nifty personal "submarine" prototype. [link]
New York smokers growing their own. [link]
Why computer nerds don't date much (in theory). [link]
repost: Ant spiral
What's the difference between the Tea Party and the Taliban. [link]
The recent Discovery launch seen from a plane.
I don't care if steampunk is dying as a fashion, this house will always be awesome. [link]
This may be a repost, too.
George Carlin put to an autotuner.
Videos of wonderfully engineered moving sculptures. [link]
Dr Who fan service:
The 2011 Dr Who swimsuit calendar now available for free download. Sorry, no Amy Pond. [link]
Continuing memorial to The Brigadier. [link]
And I'm so far from finished with this weeks links.
Somehow these escaped from last week:
The alleged original recipe for Coke. [link]
A fan made trailer for The Avengers using clips from the buildup movies and trailers.
A sad piece about a mummy and the human he falls in love with.
A very expensive, but very nifty video gaming chair. [link]
I don't normally spend long on the sites of artists, but I enjoyed this guy's stuff. Might even use his patterns to line Yummy's new cabinet. [link]
The White House and DOJ will no longer be defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court. [link]
Trails of Tarnation: Black Coffee - stick with it. I almost turned it off several times, but liked the ending. [link]
Camping in a volcano. [link]
Quotes from lesser Transformers. [link]
This quote came up in conversation the other day.
But I credited it to Duke Nukem.
And then this trailer came out.
Sorry, but we've seen trailers before. Until it's on the shelves it's still Duke Nukem: Whenever.
How to beat Watson at Jeopardy. [link]
Step 1 of the Chinese uprising. [link]
Toccatta and Fugue in D minor played on floppy drives.
Best of Canstruction this year. [link]
Strange known Windows bug. [link]
More ammo for the Terminators.
The last known American WWI vet dies. [link]
How to make a Pokebra. [link]
Man almost manages to foreclose on a bank.
Political ideologies represented with cows. Yes, we got it in an e-mail in 1995, but they've refined it since then. [link]
There's a new Thundercats cartoon coming. Looks like it doesn't suck.
If steampunk is too dated for your tastes you can try decorating with something more modern. [link]
Stephen Fry was in DC last week and dressed as a Klingon. [link]
New Simon's Cat.
It started as a joke, but here's a fleshed out version of the book "Goodnight Dune". [link]
Game: Name the movie from the silhouette of an item from the movie. Plays like hangman [link]
Lamps that you might expect from Agatha Heterodyne. [link]
A guy starts with DOS 5.0, installs Windows 1 and runs nearly every Windows update through Windows 7. Possibly only interesting to us older geeks. He tests the differences by installing DOS games and setting some colors and checks to see if they remain and run from version to version.
Teeny homes. [link]
Nifty pics from the Google car. [link]
Freaky walking cactus fossil found in China. [link]
Video of a team of horses pulling a semi out of the snow. [link]
Nifty personal "submarine" prototype. [link]
New York smokers growing their own. [link]
Why computer nerds don't date much (in theory). [link]
repost: Ant spiral
What's the difference between the Tea Party and the Taliban. [link]
The recent Discovery launch seen from a plane.
I don't care if steampunk is dying as a fashion, this house will always be awesome. [link]
This may be a repost, too.
George Carlin put to an autotuner.
Videos of wonderfully engineered moving sculptures. [link]
Dr Who fan service:
The 2011 Dr Who swimsuit calendar now available for free download. Sorry, no Amy Pond. [link]
Continuing memorial to The Brigadier. [link]
And I'm so far from finished with this weeks links.
Somehow these escaped from last week:
The alleged original recipe for Coke. [link]
A fan made trailer for The Avengers using clips from the buildup movies and trailers.
A sad piece about a mummy and the human he falls in love with.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Favorite links from the archives 3
I Got Nothin' Week continues with this uncompleted post that I'm posting anyway.
Dudley Moore had been around longer than I'd imagined. Here he plays Beethoven.
Filming the invasion of Omaha Beach with only 3 guys and 4 days of filming.
Video of why you don't look at the sun through a telescope. Keep in mind, this is how long it takes to burn a hole, not how long it takes to do damage. [link]
50 lbs of Silly Putty dropped from a great height.
Game: The Eyeballing Game - how well can you manipulate geometric figures by hand? [link]
5 Comic book character that made a real world impact. [link]
Dudley Moore had been around longer than I'd imagined. Here he plays Beethoven.
Filming the invasion of Omaha Beach with only 3 guys and 4 days of filming.
Video of why you don't look at the sun through a telescope. Keep in mind, this is how long it takes to burn a hole, not how long it takes to do damage. [link]
50 lbs of Silly Putty dropped from a great height.
Game: The Eyeballing Game - how well can you manipulate geometric figures by hand? [link]
5 Comic book character that made a real world impact. [link]
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Ash Wednesday
The holiday is next Wednesday, but I'm not terribly religious.
The picture I posted Monday was kinda crap. It was taken from a phone in a car at a stoplight. And it looked better on my phone. You can just make out that the gas station is an S-Mart. That's where Ash worked in the movie "Army of Darkness".
The picture I posted Monday was kinda crap. It was taken from a phone in a car at a stoplight. And it looked better on my phone. You can just make out that the gas station is an S-Mart. That's where Ash worked in the movie "Army of Darkness".
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Friday Links: February 25
A lesson for fans of first person shooter video games.
Doctor Who fan service:
British actor Nicholas Courtney passed away Tuesday evening. Some of my readers know him better as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. [link]
Dr Who coffee menu. [link]
Meat eating clocks. Be sure to watch the video. [link] [more]
It occurs to me that they should be able to make it work with cat poop. Just give it one of those self cleaning litter boxes.
A Dilbert cartoon come to life. [link]
Nifty special effects for a stage.
I'm liking the bit of art at the top of this page. [link]
Even this vampire flick looks better than anything from the Twilight series.
Trailer for "Apollo 18".
Picture: World's teeniest fish tank. [link]
The RoboCop statue in Detroit... it's gonna happen. [link]
Nathan Fillion would buy the rights to Firefly and revive the series if he could afford it. [link]
Sigourney Weaver talks about the John Hurt Moment in Alien and they try to reproduce it.
Video: The Saga of Biorn - an elderly Viking tries to die in battle so he can go to Valhalla. [link]
Nice, but depressing. It's a home for alcoholics to drink themselves to death. [link]
Nifty geological wonders. Number 12 has been on my Bucket List most of my life. [link]
Video: 500 people each tracing the line the previous person drew. [link]
Hundreds of overlapping tourist photos of the same place. [link]
Video: Controversial magic trick. [link]
The Phelps family taunts "Anonymous". [link]
They should consider it brought. [link]
My summer job. [link]
Video: A remote controlled airplane playing chicken with wind turbines. [link]
Macaques have more self awareness than many people. [link]
ET 2: Extinction - the first visit was research. The second will be for colonization.
Doctor Who fan service:
British actor Nicholas Courtney passed away Tuesday evening. Some of my readers know him better as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. [link]
Dr Who coffee menu. [link]
Meat eating clocks. Be sure to watch the video. [link] [more]
It occurs to me that they should be able to make it work with cat poop. Just give it one of those self cleaning litter boxes.
A Dilbert cartoon come to life. [link]
Nifty special effects for a stage.
I'm liking the bit of art at the top of this page. [link]
Even this vampire flick looks better than anything from the Twilight series.
Trailer for "Apollo 18".
Picture: World's teeniest fish tank. [link]
The RoboCop statue in Detroit... it's gonna happen. [link]
Nathan Fillion would buy the rights to Firefly and revive the series if he could afford it. [link]
Sigourney Weaver talks about the John Hurt Moment in Alien and they try to reproduce it.
Video: The Saga of Biorn - an elderly Viking tries to die in battle so he can go to Valhalla. [link]
Nice, but depressing. It's a home for alcoholics to drink themselves to death. [link]
Nifty geological wonders. Number 12 has been on my Bucket List most of my life. [link]
Video: 500 people each tracing the line the previous person drew. [link]
Hundreds of overlapping tourist photos of the same place. [link]
Video: Controversial magic trick. [link]
The Phelps family taunts "Anonymous". [link]
They should consider it brought. [link]
My summer job. [link]
Video: A remote controlled airplane playing chicken with wind turbines. [link]
Macaques have more self awareness than many people. [link]
ET 2: Extinction - the first visit was research. The second will be for colonization.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Movie review: Unknown
I was a bit dubious about "Unknown". Just from the trailer it seems like a lot of other action/suspense movies out there. But I rather liked it. I probably won't get it on DVD, but I'd recommend seeing it.
The lead character and a cute blonde come to Germany for a conference. But his briefcase gets left at the airport. He turns around and goes back for it, but on the way the cab goes off a bridge and into a river. It's remarkable what shit construction goes on in movie guardrails. When he wakes up 4 days later he has a bit of memory loss, but knows he needs to get to his wife and the conference. When he gets there she seems not to know who he is. In fact there's another guy there with his ID, memories, wife, etc.
He starts to investigate and starts to believe that he really does just have some brain damage when someone starts following him and killing people. Kind of a giveaway that there really is a plot against you. As he starts to work things out he sees that someone must be trying to kill some Middle Eastern oil type person who will be at the conference. He may not know what's going on, but he has to stop the assassination.
The story is well told, for the most part. The reason someone else seems to be Liam Neeson turns out to be unique. We didn't see it coming. But the twist didn't have the impact that it could have had.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Sod Off Wednesday: February 23
Sodoff Baldrick
I recommend the whole episode and anything in the Black Adder series.
I recommend the whole episode and anything in the Black Adder series.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Book review: Mean Streets
I just finished reading "Mean Streets". It's a collection of four novellas by a variety of popular authors in the supernatural investigator genre.
It starts with an excerpt from Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. If you missed the TV show a few years back and any of my reviews on the subject then I should mention that this isn't a World War II series and has nothing to do with the shelling of a certain German city.
Butcher's story works better if you're up to date on the rest of the books in the series, but it's not strictly necessary. There are three swords that contain nails from the cross that Jesus was crucified on. These swords are used by select persons to fight monsters. In recent times two of the three books have found themselves in Harry Dresden's possession. Harry has to find the right people to wield them. But in this story someone wants to take the swords from Harry. They try to accomplish this by threatening Michael, one of Harry's friends and former sword swinger, and his family.
All that will be of interest if you're familiar with the series. We were all wondering how Michael has been doing after being torn up with gunfire in a recent book. But if you're not familiar with the series then you'll probably be more interested in the side scenes that seem like life and have little to do with the plot. At the end of the story Harry finds out what good he was doing while trying to protect Michael.
This story also appears in the book "Side Jobs" which is a collection of short stories from the Dresden Files.
Simon R. Green comes up next. His Tales of the Nightside books have gotten several reviews on this blog, too.
This story has some of what I like most and least about his books. Much like his first book, this story has lots of "That's how thing are... in the Nightside" kind of crap. Way too much, really. But it also spends a lot of time on the streets of the Nightside meeting the creatures that reside there and feeding on the mystery that is John Taylor.
The Nightside is a town inside London that is hard to find even if you know it's there. It's always night and is common ground to all manner of supernatural beings, including many from heaven or hell.
It's a simple case. It doesn't really require previous reading and doesn't feed into any of the ongoing storylines at all. A woman shows up who has lost twenty four hours and has no idea how she found herself ... in the Nightside. She was sent to John Taylor because he's great at finding things. She, Taylor, and Deadboy take a trip into one of the nastier parts of a nasty town to find her memory and what happened to her husband.
It's a story about a road trip. It introduces the reader to ... the Nightside. Not the story I'd recommend for an introduction ... to the Nightside, but not bad.
The next couple of authors I was unfamiliar with. Kat Richardson's Greywalker series is about a woman who can see the dead. She's been hired in some stranger's will to go to a grave in southern Mexico with a statue of a dog and place it on a grave overnight on the Day of the Dead. Lots happens at the end of the story to explain the who's, what's, and why's. Until then you get a nice tour of the city, it's people, and it's dead. It's an interesting exploration of the Day of the Dead and how their culture views death.
This story is different from the other three stories in the book. It may be because it's a female writer. They just approach the subject from a different direction. For one thing it's a lot less dark than the other three stories.
The final story is by Thomas E. Sniegoski. His series is about P.I. Remy Chandler, formerly known as the angel Remiel. In this world there are fallen angels and there are fallen angels. We know about the first variety, those who went to Hell. Remy is of the other variety, those who were banished from Heaven, but only to Earth. He's been trying to reject his angelic side and be more human. But the angelic side fights to come out and take over. It seems to be like a drug habit. He can also talk to and understand animals. For the most part he keeps it to just his dog.
In this story, Remy's wife recently died of cancer. He and his dog are out mourning at their cabin when another angel comes to tell him that someone murdered Noah. Remy tries to tell the angel to sod off, but that's not an acceptable answer. The investigation leads to the discovery of a third race created by God, one that was thought to have been wiped out in the flood.
I think I'll have to check in to some other books in this series.
I'd recommend the book. You're bound to like at least one of the four stories.
It starts with an excerpt from Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. If you missed the TV show a few years back and any of my reviews on the subject then I should mention that this isn't a World War II series and has nothing to do with the shelling of a certain German city.
Butcher's story works better if you're up to date on the rest of the books in the series, but it's not strictly necessary. There are three swords that contain nails from the cross that Jesus was crucified on. These swords are used by select persons to fight monsters. In recent times two of the three books have found themselves in Harry Dresden's possession. Harry has to find the right people to wield them. But in this story someone wants to take the swords from Harry. They try to accomplish this by threatening Michael, one of Harry's friends and former sword swinger, and his family.
All that will be of interest if you're familiar with the series. We were all wondering how Michael has been doing after being torn up with gunfire in a recent book. But if you're not familiar with the series then you'll probably be more interested in the side scenes that seem like life and have little to do with the plot. At the end of the story Harry finds out what good he was doing while trying to protect Michael.
This story also appears in the book "Side Jobs" which is a collection of short stories from the Dresden Files.
Simon R. Green comes up next. His Tales of the Nightside books have gotten several reviews on this blog, too.
This story has some of what I like most and least about his books. Much like his first book, this story has lots of "That's how thing are... in the Nightside" kind of crap. Way too much, really. But it also spends a lot of time on the streets of the Nightside meeting the creatures that reside there and feeding on the mystery that is John Taylor.
The Nightside is a town inside London that is hard to find even if you know it's there. It's always night and is common ground to all manner of supernatural beings, including many from heaven or hell.
It's a simple case. It doesn't really require previous reading and doesn't feed into any of the ongoing storylines at all. A woman shows up who has lost twenty four hours and has no idea how she found herself ... in the Nightside. She was sent to John Taylor because he's great at finding things. She, Taylor, and Deadboy take a trip into one of the nastier parts of a nasty town to find her memory and what happened to her husband.
It's a story about a road trip. It introduces the reader to ... the Nightside. Not the story I'd recommend for an introduction ... to the Nightside, but not bad.
The next couple of authors I was unfamiliar with. Kat Richardson's Greywalker series is about a woman who can see the dead. She's been hired in some stranger's will to go to a grave in southern Mexico with a statue of a dog and place it on a grave overnight on the Day of the Dead. Lots happens at the end of the story to explain the who's, what's, and why's. Until then you get a nice tour of the city, it's people, and it's dead. It's an interesting exploration of the Day of the Dead and how their culture views death.
This story is different from the other three stories in the book. It may be because it's a female writer. They just approach the subject from a different direction. For one thing it's a lot less dark than the other three stories.
The final story is by Thomas E. Sniegoski. His series is about P.I. Remy Chandler, formerly known as the angel Remiel. In this world there are fallen angels and there are fallen angels. We know about the first variety, those who went to Hell. Remy is of the other variety, those who were banished from Heaven, but only to Earth. He's been trying to reject his angelic side and be more human. But the angelic side fights to come out and take over. It seems to be like a drug habit. He can also talk to and understand animals. For the most part he keeps it to just his dog.
In this story, Remy's wife recently died of cancer. He and his dog are out mourning at their cabin when another angel comes to tell him that someone murdered Noah. Remy tries to tell the angel to sod off, but that's not an acceptable answer. The investigation leads to the discovery of a third race created by God, one that was thought to have been wiped out in the flood.
I think I'll have to check in to some other books in this series.
I'd recommend the book. You're bound to like at least one of the four stories.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Friday Links: February 18
Game: Kamikaze Blocks - Knock the piles of blocks off the screen. [link]
Uwe Boll doesn't understand that he has to pay people to see his movies. [link]
Why you set off firework really high.
The plural of dwarf: dwarfs, dwarves, or dwarrows? [link]
Proposed urban CO2 filters look like props from "Earth: The Final Conflict". [link]
Dr Who fan service.
Visual pun. [link]
The Dalek's arch nemesis. [link]
A spoof of "The End of Time" (David Tennant's final episode).
Part 1
Part 2
This is why your plan for a paint bomb won't work. You can't just toss one into a room and have an instant paint job.
Pluto may be gone, but there may still be a 9th planet. [link]
I'm not buying it, but not for the reasons in the article. Would we really have found planets this size orbiting distant stars, but not orbiting ours? Still... I hope it's there.
This is much closer to what a space station or space craft should look like. [link]
Some guy kayaked the Atlantic. [link]
Fish fight video. [link]
Very polite robber. [link]
Domesticated moose...es. Moosen. Mooseii? Moose. [link]
Be sure to watch the video of the moose playing in a sprinkler.
Nifty web cam cover. [link]
Snow monster. [link]
Proposed bill in South Dakota has the potential to make it legal to kill abortion providers. [link]
The Three Stooges in "The A Team".
Another video telling part of the story of the DC Universe Online game.
How to build your own telepresense robot. [link]
Game: Icy Gifts - a chain reaction game. With only one shot can you set off a chain reaction to clear all the gifts from the screen? [link]
The appearance of the computer on Jeopardy! happened. This NPR article tells how Watson thinks. [link]
If anyone knows where I can find those episodes online let me know so I can watch them.
This song has been in my head all week.
Make flowers glow under a black light.
Quick and easy room redecorating with a well placed projector or two. [link]
Hamster paradise. [link]
Letters from Muppet people. [link]
An article about slow walkers and sidewalk rage. [link]
I don't barge through, but I do get pissed at people who block halls and sidewalks. Believe me, if I could go around these people I would.
FINGER MONSTERS!
Benny Hinn, popular faith healer, is really a sith lord.
Don't you ever interrupt me while I'm reading a book!
Positive stories from Egypt. [link]
Article: Religion - the ultimate tyranny. [link]
Uwe Boll doesn't understand that he has to pay people to see his movies. [link]
Why you set off firework really high.
The plural of dwarf: dwarfs, dwarves, or dwarrows? [link]
Proposed urban CO2 filters look like props from "Earth: The Final Conflict". [link]
Dr Who fan service.
Visual pun. [link]
The Dalek's arch nemesis. [link]
A spoof of "The End of Time" (David Tennant's final episode).
Part 1
Part 2
This is why your plan for a paint bomb won't work. You can't just toss one into a room and have an instant paint job.
Pluto may be gone, but there may still be a 9th planet. [link]
I'm not buying it, but not for the reasons in the article. Would we really have found planets this size orbiting distant stars, but not orbiting ours? Still... I hope it's there.
This is much closer to what a space station or space craft should look like. [link]
Some guy kayaked the Atlantic. [link]
Fish fight video. [link]
Very polite robber. [link]
Domesticated moose...es. Moosen. Mooseii? Moose. [link]
Be sure to watch the video of the moose playing in a sprinkler.
Nifty web cam cover. [link]
Snow monster. [link]
Proposed bill in South Dakota has the potential to make it legal to kill abortion providers. [link]
The Three Stooges in "The A Team".
Another video telling part of the story of the DC Universe Online game.
How to build your own telepresense robot. [link]
Game: Icy Gifts - a chain reaction game. With only one shot can you set off a chain reaction to clear all the gifts from the screen? [link]
The appearance of the computer on Jeopardy! happened. This NPR article tells how Watson thinks. [link]
If anyone knows where I can find those episodes online let me know so I can watch them.
This song has been in my head all week.
Make flowers glow under a black light.
Quick and easy room redecorating with a well placed projector or two. [link]
Hamster paradise. [link]
Letters from Muppet people. [link]
An article about slow walkers and sidewalk rage. [link]
I don't barge through, but I do get pissed at people who block halls and sidewalks. Believe me, if I could go around these people I would.
FINGER MONSTERS!
Benny Hinn, popular faith healer, is really a sith lord.
Don't you ever interrupt me while I'm reading a book!
Positive stories from Egypt. [link]
Article: Religion - the ultimate tyranny. [link]
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Couches vs Doors
I wanna have a quick word with the furniture makers of America. It's about your couches. Unless you have invented a furniture teleporter I don't see how my girlfriend is gonna be able to invest in your product. The spiral stairway to her apartment is navigable, but I think we'll have to lift the couch over the hand rails and have one person on each side of the stairwell to get it up the stairs. The really hard part is the door. The handrail doesn't come up to the side of the door like a good sensible handrail should. It actually overlaps the door by several inches. That leaves just under 25" of clearance. So her existing couch was unable to make the trip to her new place. But that couch was kinda big. Even with the feet off I have to assume it entered the house through the sliding glass doors. We've been looking at other couches and we've been finding that very few would be able to fit in her place at all.
There are exceptions. Some stuff we found at Ikea would work. Too bad they're so bloody uncomfortable. Not all their couches, just the ones that would fit. She could get one, but it'd be spending money just to have something, not something she likes. And Ikea just kinda screams college student to her. She has a quality couch and would really like to avoid going back a step.
Other stores have had a couple that would work, but their cushions only went up as far as the back of the couch. And they cost $3,000. Picture that for a moment. How much would you like a couch that hits you in the small of the back?
I keep suggesting the shipping palette plan. Six (or possibly eight) shipping pallets in two stacks with plywood across the top. Then put the cushions from her old couch on top of the plywood. Another piece of plywood up the back would support the back cushions. It's far from ideal, but it's affordable and modular.
She's about to settle for a used futon of the CraigsList variety. She doesn't like futons, but it can become a bed and company is coming.
While I've got you, furniture people, what are we gonna do about my mattress? You know those signs that say "George Washington slept here"? I've got one of those, but mine means that he used this mattress. Really, I can't tell you how old it is. It might be older than me. It's comfortable enough, but it's a bit discolored and the fabric is failing in a few places. Changing the sheets includes vacuuming stuffing off the floor afterward.
The mattress can go down the stairs with some effort, but the box springs can only go out the bedroom window. I'm glad these windows were put in before I moved in. Otherwise my mattress would be sitting on palettes, too. From what I've seen of the mattresses for sale today you have box springs, more box springs, and then an inch or two of padding. Couldn't I just get a coffee table and one of those expensive camping pads from the camping store? Or how about that memory foam stuff?
I got off my point a little, there. What I was getting at is that these replacements are gonna be less flexible than my old mattress. They're not coming up the stairs in my place. Do you have a way of getting them in the second story window? I'd guess you do since three guys got my box springs in this way. Still, the idea of having to do that again makes me hesitant to try it again or ask someone else to do it in my place.
Maybe a needle and thread and some old jeans would solve my problem better.
There are exceptions. Some stuff we found at Ikea would work. Too bad they're so bloody uncomfortable. Not all their couches, just the ones that would fit. She could get one, but it'd be spending money just to have something, not something she likes. And Ikea just kinda screams college student to her. She has a quality couch and would really like to avoid going back a step.
Other stores have had a couple that would work, but their cushions only went up as far as the back of the couch. And they cost $3,000. Picture that for a moment. How much would you like a couch that hits you in the small of the back?
I keep suggesting the shipping palette plan. Six (or possibly eight) shipping pallets in two stacks with plywood across the top. Then put the cushions from her old couch on top of the plywood. Another piece of plywood up the back would support the back cushions. It's far from ideal, but it's affordable and modular.
She's about to settle for a used futon of the CraigsList variety. She doesn't like futons, but it can become a bed and company is coming.
While I've got you, furniture people, what are we gonna do about my mattress? You know those signs that say "George Washington slept here"? I've got one of those, but mine means that he used this mattress. Really, I can't tell you how old it is. It might be older than me. It's comfortable enough, but it's a bit discolored and the fabric is failing in a few places. Changing the sheets includes vacuuming stuffing off the floor afterward.
The mattress can go down the stairs with some effort, but the box springs can only go out the bedroom window. I'm glad these windows were put in before I moved in. Otherwise my mattress would be sitting on palettes, too. From what I've seen of the mattresses for sale today you have box springs, more box springs, and then an inch or two of padding. Couldn't I just get a coffee table and one of those expensive camping pads from the camping store? Or how about that memory foam stuff?
I got off my point a little, there. What I was getting at is that these replacements are gonna be less flexible than my old mattress. They're not coming up the stairs in my place. Do you have a way of getting them in the second story window? I'd guess you do since three guys got my box springs in this way. Still, the idea of having to do that again makes me hesitant to try it again or ask someone else to do it in my place.
Maybe a needle and thread and some old jeans would solve my problem better.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Working alone: A Bruce Story
Bruce is an ongoing event. There is no day of working with Bruce that doesn't have some kind of Bruce Story. But the daily stories aren't worth telling. It's the occasional jaw dropper that makes one worth telling. Typically we can find them amusing. This isn't one of the funny stories. This is one of the depressing ones.
We've gotten this book from a major university. It was all written and laid out and made into a PDF. They wanted a print version. That we were given the files to work on tells me that their printer probably had a fit when they saw it and turned it away. Our job was to fix it without altering the layout or appearance more than necessary.
Printers draw with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK) while computer monitors draw with Red, Green, and Blue (RGB). Their photos were all over the place. Our first job was to make them all CMYK or Grayscale.
They also had a nasty habit of resizing and cropping the art in the layout software. That can confuse the machine that makes the plates and drop or distort the art.
They liked to embed the art in the document instead of having a link to the file on the drive. That increases possibilities for corruption of the file, blows up the size of the file, and makes it hard to make corrections to the art later.
Most books have the page numbers on opposing sides of the page. Left pages have the numbers on the left and right pages have them on the right. These have them all on the right side. We haven't gotten that far yet.
Nor have we moved the contents away from the spine so they won't fall in the crack.
The way this book is being handled is that Bruce makes the corrections, I check his work, make a list of what needs to be done, and he makes the changes. We're doing it in stages. Stage one is where we make all the pictures CMYK, crop them according to how they're supposed to look, and link them instead of embedding them. At the end of this stage it should appear identical to what was sent to us.
Bruce spent several days per chapter when even the longest, nastiest chapter shouldn't take more than a day.
When you adjust the width in Photoshop it'll automatically adjust the height by the same ratio. You have to override that if you want to resize the height and width automatically. A ridiculous number of pictures came back skewed. That can only mean he was adjusting the height and width manually. That's not a goof up. It took an active, conscious effort to screw that up.
When I send him a list of things to fix they come back with half the chapters completely ignored. One batch of chapters he sent me with my corrections applied included a chapter that I hadn't even gotten to look at until about a week after he gave me the disk.
So at the last staff meeting (about two weeks ago) I took him aside and suggested he go to a neurologist and get checked for Alzheimer's. Turns out I'm the third person to recommend this.
Then a few days ago we're working on chapter 6. Possibly the nastiest of the chapters. He had ignored four of the changes. Of the several dozen other changes he had fixed the pictures that were initially skewed, but the dpi (dots per inch) had jumped by 50 to 70. They still weren't at the ideal 300dpi levels, but they were certainly higher than the dpi in the art in the previous version or even the art that the university had supplied. This means he's been artificially inflating them. Of course, he doesn't realize he's done it.
I had told him what I found and told him to fix it or explain what happened with the dpi. I told him that I could spend another two days looking this chapter over from the beginning or he could go back to the previous version of the chapter and do it again. If he needed the previous version I could give it to him on a CD.
Bruce: Want to get together and go over some of this tomorrow, I am only a few blocks away. Maybe easier?
I kinda lost it at this point.
Me: No. I don't want to hold your hand on this. I want you to do it right. I don't want to blow another couple of days looking over chapter 6 so I can tell you everything that's wrong.
Bruce: I have a suggestion.
I think just one person needs to work on these chapters, possibly you or me.
This is taking too much time and we need to get this out.
We can talk with Joan or COL if like?
Me: Bruce, you're the only person working on these chapters. My SOLE job is to follow behind you and find where you've done it wrong. I have no other role in this book. You do the work and I tell you what you missed or did wrong. I hate having to do it, but it's necessary. And the Colonel wants YOU to do it.
Perhaps a bit harsh. You should see the e-mail before I censored myself.
I did feel bad about it. For years almost the entire staff has been trying to tell him that he's a screw up. Some even refuse to work with him anymore. He's been told that the old Colonel and Managing Editor were working on firing him when they retired. He's been told that the current Managing Editor keeps trying to fire him. People have to stand over him. He's the target of more than one screaming tirade. But he always laughs it off with a "huh, huh, you guys are funny." This time I think he was actually a bit hurt.
I got a bit drunk that night. Red Rocks makes some good pizzas and great (and strong) mudslide martinis. I had three. Two usually leaves me having to pay attention to where the sidewalk is going.
The next day you'd never know the conversation had happened.
We've gotten this book from a major university. It was all written and laid out and made into a PDF. They wanted a print version. That we were given the files to work on tells me that their printer probably had a fit when they saw it and turned it away. Our job was to fix it without altering the layout or appearance more than necessary.
Printers draw with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK) while computer monitors draw with Red, Green, and Blue (RGB). Their photos were all over the place. Our first job was to make them all CMYK or Grayscale.
They also had a nasty habit of resizing and cropping the art in the layout software. That can confuse the machine that makes the plates and drop or distort the art.
They liked to embed the art in the document instead of having a link to the file on the drive. That increases possibilities for corruption of the file, blows up the size of the file, and makes it hard to make corrections to the art later.
Most books have the page numbers on opposing sides of the page. Left pages have the numbers on the left and right pages have them on the right. These have them all on the right side. We haven't gotten that far yet.
Nor have we moved the contents away from the spine so they won't fall in the crack.
The way this book is being handled is that Bruce makes the corrections, I check his work, make a list of what needs to be done, and he makes the changes. We're doing it in stages. Stage one is where we make all the pictures CMYK, crop them according to how they're supposed to look, and link them instead of embedding them. At the end of this stage it should appear identical to what was sent to us.
Bruce spent several days per chapter when even the longest, nastiest chapter shouldn't take more than a day.
When you adjust the width in Photoshop it'll automatically adjust the height by the same ratio. You have to override that if you want to resize the height and width automatically. A ridiculous number of pictures came back skewed. That can only mean he was adjusting the height and width manually. That's not a goof up. It took an active, conscious effort to screw that up.
When I send him a list of things to fix they come back with half the chapters completely ignored. One batch of chapters he sent me with my corrections applied included a chapter that I hadn't even gotten to look at until about a week after he gave me the disk.
So at the last staff meeting (about two weeks ago) I took him aside and suggested he go to a neurologist and get checked for Alzheimer's. Turns out I'm the third person to recommend this.
Then a few days ago we're working on chapter 6. Possibly the nastiest of the chapters. He had ignored four of the changes. Of the several dozen other changes he had fixed the pictures that were initially skewed, but the dpi (dots per inch) had jumped by 50 to 70. They still weren't at the ideal 300dpi levels, but they were certainly higher than the dpi in the art in the previous version or even the art that the university had supplied. This means he's been artificially inflating them. Of course, he doesn't realize he's done it.
I had told him what I found and told him to fix it or explain what happened with the dpi. I told him that I could spend another two days looking this chapter over from the beginning or he could go back to the previous version of the chapter and do it again. If he needed the previous version I could give it to him on a CD.
Bruce: Want to get together and go over some of this tomorrow, I am only a few blocks away. Maybe easier?
I kinda lost it at this point.
Me: No. I don't want to hold your hand on this. I want you to do it right. I don't want to blow another couple of days looking over chapter 6 so I can tell you everything that's wrong.
Bruce: I have a suggestion.
I think just one person needs to work on these chapters, possibly you or me.
This is taking too much time and we need to get this out.
We can talk with Joan or COL if like?
Me: Bruce, you're the only person working on these chapters. My SOLE job is to follow behind you and find where you've done it wrong. I have no other role in this book. You do the work and I tell you what you missed or did wrong. I hate having to do it, but it's necessary. And the Colonel wants YOU to do it.
Perhaps a bit harsh. You should see the e-mail before I censored myself.
I did feel bad about it. For years almost the entire staff has been trying to tell him that he's a screw up. Some even refuse to work with him anymore. He's been told that the old Colonel and Managing Editor were working on firing him when they retired. He's been told that the current Managing Editor keeps trying to fire him. People have to stand over him. He's the target of more than one screaming tirade. But he always laughs it off with a "huh, huh, you guys are funny." This time I think he was actually a bit hurt.
I got a bit drunk that night. Red Rocks makes some good pizzas and great (and strong) mudslide martinis. I had three. Two usually leaves me having to pay attention to where the sidewalk is going.
The next day you'd never know the conversation had happened.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Movie review: The Rite
I came up with some other ideas for today's post this weekend and on the way home. They're all gone now, so you have to read about this movie instead.
This trailer is the scariest part of the movie. It tries to sell the movie as an exorcism movie when it's more of a young priest struggling to find his faith. When you go expecting something with big scary exorcisms you'll leave disappointed.
A young man goes to school to become a priest because of family obligations. His faith is nonexistent. After four years of priest college he's ready to drop out because he still has no faith. They sent him to hang out with Anthony Hopkins: Exorcist to try to give him something to shore up his faith. It's too bad that he was also a psychology major. The exorcisms aren't like in "The Exorcist" or "Constantine". They're super easy to think of as just a psychological disorder or side effects of pregnancy or both. That's what the young priest thinks these people are suffering from. And your personal beliefs will influence how you view much of the movie. I think one of them Hopkins comes to believe really was a psychological disorder after the patient died.
The best part comes late in the movie when Anthony Hopkins' character get's possessed. It's the most convincing possession of the whole movie and he does it well.
I saw it at a matinee. A $9.00 matinee. That blows. Kinda wish I hadn't seen it. I'd be happier with it at $4. Will not get on DVD.
This trailer is the scariest part of the movie. It tries to sell the movie as an exorcism movie when it's more of a young priest struggling to find his faith. When you go expecting something with big scary exorcisms you'll leave disappointed.
A young man goes to school to become a priest because of family obligations. His faith is nonexistent. After four years of priest college he's ready to drop out because he still has no faith. They sent him to hang out with Anthony Hopkins: Exorcist to try to give him something to shore up his faith. It's too bad that he was also a psychology major. The exorcisms aren't like in "The Exorcist" or "Constantine". They're super easy to think of as just a psychological disorder or side effects of pregnancy or both. That's what the young priest thinks these people are suffering from. And your personal beliefs will influence how you view much of the movie. I think one of them Hopkins comes to believe really was a psychological disorder after the patient died.
The best part comes late in the movie when Anthony Hopkins' character get's possessed. It's the most convincing possession of the whole movie and he does it well.
I saw it at a matinee. A $9.00 matinee. That blows. Kinda wish I hadn't seen it. I'd be happier with it at $4. Will not get on DVD.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Friday Links: February 11
Art made by painting many panes of glass and stacking them. [link]
There's something similar hanging in the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Someone took frames from her MRI and painted them on plastic sheets. All hung together you get a 3D model of her body.
Monolith painted like "2001: A Space Odyssey" VHS cassette. [link]
Microsoft is losing HOW much online? [link]
Just wait until you see how the Chrome netbook knocks the legs out from under Windows. Then you'll really see losses.
I want one of these to live in. [link]
Short version: set up a tax that increases but only if the global weather increases.
Long version: [link]
I said SMILE dammit! [link]
22 uses for old Altoid tins. [link]
For those of you who don't know who Brad Bird is.
George Bush may have canceled a trip to Switzerland for fear of being hauled before a war crimes tribunal. [link]
Title suggestions for Bristol Palin's "memoir". [link]
Coming soon from Cracker Jack Prize Press.
Picture: Steampunk EtchASketch. [link]
Reviews of the Spiderman musical set to music.
But lets hear it from Jay Sherman of "The Critic".
Dr Who Fan Service:
Picture: Dr. Who infographic. [link]
Dead or alive, we're not making that statue. [link]
Short Superman fan film. [link]
Storyboard animation for a proposed "Wicked" animated musical. [link]
Making of the new Old Spice commercial. [link]
Sleepy cat.
Guns for vibrators. [link]
My god. It's full of keys. [link]
Arseload of Star Trek bridges. [link]
I'd totally live here. [link]
This person rules and you need to start reading her archives. [link]
Top picture: I want. [link]
I'm contemplating this map of Central Park for the long flat space over my stairs. [link]
There's something similar hanging in the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Someone took frames from her MRI and painted them on plastic sheets. All hung together you get a 3D model of her body.
Monolith painted like "2001: A Space Odyssey" VHS cassette. [link]
Microsoft is losing HOW much online? [link]
Just wait until you see how the Chrome netbook knocks the legs out from under Windows. Then you'll really see losses.
I want one of these to live in. [link]
Short version: set up a tax that increases but only if the global weather increases.
Long version: [link]
I said SMILE dammit! [link]
22 uses for old Altoid tins. [link]
For those of you who don't know who Brad Bird is.
George Bush may have canceled a trip to Switzerland for fear of being hauled before a war crimes tribunal. [link]
Title suggestions for Bristol Palin's "memoir". [link]
Coming soon from Cracker Jack Prize Press.
Picture: Steampunk EtchASketch. [link]
Reviews of the Spiderman musical set to music.
But lets hear it from Jay Sherman of "The Critic".
Dr Who Fan Service:
Picture: Dr. Who infographic. [link]
Dead or alive, we're not making that statue. [link]
Short Superman fan film. [link]
Storyboard animation for a proposed "Wicked" animated musical. [link]
Making of the new Old Spice commercial. [link]
Sleepy cat.
Guns for vibrators. [link]
My god. It's full of keys. [link]
Arseload of Star Trek bridges. [link]
I'd totally live here. [link]
This person rules and you need to start reading her archives. [link]
Top picture: I want. [link]
I'm contemplating this map of Central Park for the long flat space over my stairs. [link]
Thursday, February 10, 2011
MY CAR!
While you lot were sodding off yesterday I was getting my car's back end adjusted. It wasn't planned. It wasn't even voluntary. It was, however, not as bad as what happened to the other guy's car.
So I'm going up Connecticut Avenue toward the Beltway. This would be the Beltway referred to when someone talks about inside the beltway thinking (i.e. the thinking of Congress peoples). As I approach the first exit traffic comes to a very sudden stop. I found out later that it was a car wreck. I came down hard on the brakes1 and came just short of the car ahead of me. The guy behind me wasn't so lucky. He hit me.
An off duty police officer was there and he called in for a not off duty police officer. She took our information, gave a copy to each of us, and got a tow truck for the other guy's car. I offered the guy a ride to work since he clearly wasn't getting there in his car. He turned me down. He was getting towed to a repair place near his office.
The people whose driveway we ended up blocking let me pull in there and get out of traffic. Apparently this happens a lot. They get a constant stream of squealing brakes as people getting off the beltway meet people getting on the beltway.
I drove up some distance and turned around to head home. There was another accident on the other side of the beltway in the traffic heading IN to DC. A very popular area for fender benders, it seems.
I'm fine. Car's a bit bruised, but fine. He's at fault so his people will fix it. And got a $130 fine, too.
I didn't make the staff meeting.
1I still don't know if the car would have caught it if I hadn't. It's supposed to. I just can't bring myself to test it.
So I'm going up Connecticut Avenue toward the Beltway. This would be the Beltway referred to when someone talks about inside the beltway thinking (i.e. the thinking of Congress peoples). As I approach the first exit traffic comes to a very sudden stop. I found out later that it was a car wreck. I came down hard on the brakes1 and came just short of the car ahead of me. The guy behind me wasn't so lucky. He hit me.
An off duty police officer was there and he called in for a not off duty police officer. She took our information, gave a copy to each of us, and got a tow truck for the other guy's car. I offered the guy a ride to work since he clearly wasn't getting there in his car. He turned me down. He was getting towed to a repair place near his office.
The people whose driveway we ended up blocking let me pull in there and get out of traffic. Apparently this happens a lot. They get a constant stream of squealing brakes as people getting off the beltway meet people getting on the beltway.
I drove up some distance and turned around to head home. There was another accident on the other side of the beltway in the traffic heading IN to DC. A very popular area for fender benders, it seems.
I'm fine. Car's a bit bruised, but fine. He's at fault so his people will fix it. And got a $130 fine, too.
I didn't make the staff meeting.
1I still don't know if the car would have caught it if I hadn't. It's supposed to. I just can't bring myself to test it.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Out and about
Since I'm wandering the city today and can't do a proper post you get a picture of the ceiling fans where I had lunch.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Freak out
Yummy has a cat. For future reference I shall call him "The Claw". See, The Claw likes to hop up on the bed in the middle of the night and pat your face so you'll get up and feed him. If you ignore him he'll put his paw between your eyebrows and extend a single claw.
The Claw has made the transition to the new apartment fairly well. But he doesn't travel well so we spend more of our weekends at her new apartment than at mine.
This morning I was loading up the car to go home; Yummy already on her way to work. I took down my coat and two bags and went back upstairs for Gandolf. As I turned to leave I realized that the creature count was short by one animal. Oliver Queen was in his cage, Gandolf was on her portable perch, The Claw was... aw, shit... nowhere to be seen.
The apartment door is open. Look out in the stairwell. Nothing. Close the door.
Where else could he be?
He likes under the bed. Nothing. Not even dust bunnies yet.
Bedroom closet? Nope.
Check the empty boxes. All clear.
Under the rocking chair? In the coat closet? In the cabinet Yummy is stripping? Bathroom? The kitchen. In the new cart? On? Under? Behind the fridge? CRAP!
Did I leave the door open when I took bags down? I don't recall. Out in the stairwell again. So far he doesn't have the nerve to get past the second floor landing and that's with someone watching him. Would he really have followed me down that far? No. Check anyway. I did leave the front door open. Did he follow me outside? No. Not yet. Check again in the spring, though.
Back upstairs.
Repeat all the hiding spots in the apartment.
I'm a bit panicked at this point. I'm about 30 second from calling Yummy and telling her to come back and help me look. She's only about 15 minutes out.
As I turned to leave the kitchen and get my phone I found this.
Just chilling on top of the fridge and wondering what I'm freaking out about.
The Claw has made the transition to the new apartment fairly well. But he doesn't travel well so we spend more of our weekends at her new apartment than at mine.
This morning I was loading up the car to go home; Yummy already on her way to work. I took down my coat and two bags and went back upstairs for Gandolf. As I turned to leave I realized that the creature count was short by one animal. Oliver Queen was in his cage, Gandolf was on her portable perch, The Claw was... aw, shit... nowhere to be seen.
The apartment door is open. Look out in the stairwell. Nothing. Close the door.
Where else could he be?
He likes under the bed. Nothing. Not even dust bunnies yet.
Bedroom closet? Nope.
Check the empty boxes. All clear.
Under the rocking chair? In the coat closet? In the cabinet Yummy is stripping? Bathroom? The kitchen. In the new cart? On? Under? Behind the fridge? CRAP!
Did I leave the door open when I took bags down? I don't recall. Out in the stairwell again. So far he doesn't have the nerve to get past the second floor landing and that's with someone watching him. Would he really have followed me down that far? No. Check anyway. I did leave the front door open. Did he follow me outside? No. Not yet. Check again in the spring, though.
Back upstairs.
Repeat all the hiding spots in the apartment.
I'm a bit panicked at this point. I'm about 30 second from calling Yummy and telling her to come back and help me look. She's only about 15 minutes out.
As I turned to leave the kitchen and get my phone I found this.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Friday Links: February 4
The Comics Code Authority looks like it may be passing into history. This article talks about it's establishment and the demonization of comic books back in the '50s. [link]
Nightmare fuel. [link]
91 year old maker of spindles for stairs. [link]
Girl Scouts are cutting back on their cookie varieties. As long as I get my Samoas everyone gets to live. [link]
Dr Who fan service of the week:
Inflatable Dalek vehicle for kids. [link]
CSI: Gallifrey
In other sci-fi news, the show "Fringe" recently had Doc Brown playing a member of the defunct band "Violet Sedan Chair". They planted a record from the band in a store. It's been ripped and put online for general listening. [link]
Unique beer cup filling device.
One town that just cries for an earthquake. [link]
Bulletproof skin? How long until we get specially engineered space marines? [link]
A twisted time travel story. [link]
Destructive testing of a ski lift.
Sweet ring. [link]
This kid is a great actor. It's hard to convey those feelings without a face. With no face or voice?...
Patrick Stewart talks about his smart phone.
Nightmare fuel. [link]
91 year old maker of spindles for stairs. [link]
Girl Scouts are cutting back on their cookie varieties. As long as I get my Samoas everyone gets to live. [link]
Dr Who fan service of the week:
Inflatable Dalek vehicle for kids. [link]
CSI: Gallifrey
In other sci-fi news, the show "Fringe" recently had Doc Brown playing a member of the defunct band "Violet Sedan Chair". They planted a record from the band in a store. It's been ripped and put online for general listening. [link]
Unique beer cup filling device.
One town that just cries for an earthquake. [link]
Bulletproof skin? How long until we get specially engineered space marines? [link]
A twisted time travel story. [link]
Destructive testing of a ski lift.
Sweet ring. [link]
This kid is a great actor. It's hard to convey those feelings without a face. With no face or voice?...
Patrick Stewart talks about his smart phone.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Ernie
A few weeks back I announced the arrival of another bird in the house. A sweet little green cheeked conure named Ernesto who bonded instantly with Oliver Queen. I regret that Yummy only had one weekend with Ernie before he passed.
We hadn't really bonded, yet, but he is missed.
 |
| Ollie and Ernie sharing a nest. |
We hadn't really bonded, yet, but he is missed.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
I'd invest with this company.
Written by my friend Phong3D and reposted here with his permission.
The Super Bowl Investment Ad I Want To See
(Third quarter, Packers first down, 60 second commercial break)...
FADE IN
Montage of beautifully shot, bucolic scenes - children playing, dogs fetching, lovers running hand-in-hand down a dock.
MORGAN FREEMAN VOICEOVER
"Life has a way of sneaking up on you. The world seems to move fast and slow at a pace that we can only begin to comprehend. Sometimes the best we can do is focus on what's important. Family. Dreams. The fullness of life in all its riches.
Retirement is your reward. A life well-lived and a time well-earned. Here at Morgan Stanley, we can help guide you on that path. Help ensure that your life, and the greatest years yet to come, are as wonderful as they can be.
Why choose Morgan Stanley? Because we care about you. About your concerns, your family and your dreams. And, in contrast, Merrill Lynch..."
SMASH CUT - Skybox suite at Superbowl full of ML EVPs with escorts/trophy wives laughing it up
"... just spent $700,000 in TARP funds to rent a 400 square foot room for 2 hours and are drinking all the free champagne and lobster they can get their hands on while you sit in your basement and double-fist Coors and Fritos. Seriously."
"Merrill Lynch: Fuck Those Guys. Morgan Stanley's Got Your Back."
FADE OUT
The Super Bowl Investment Ad I Want To See
(Third quarter, Packers first down, 60 second commercial break)...
FADE IN
Montage of beautifully shot, bucolic scenes - children playing, dogs fetching, lovers running hand-in-hand down a dock.
MORGAN FREEMAN VOICEOVER
"Life has a way of sneaking up on you. The world seems to move fast and slow at a pace that we can only begin to comprehend. Sometimes the best we can do is focus on what's important. Family. Dreams. The fullness of life in all its riches.
Retirement is your reward. A life well-lived and a time well-earned. Here at Morgan Stanley, we can help guide you on that path. Help ensure that your life, and the greatest years yet to come, are as wonderful as they can be.
Why choose Morgan Stanley? Because we care about you. About your concerns, your family and your dreams. And, in contrast, Merrill Lynch..."
SMASH CUT - Skybox suite at Superbowl full of ML EVPs with escorts/trophy wives laughing it up
"... just spent $700,000 in TARP funds to rent a 400 square foot room for 2 hours and are drinking all the free champagne and lobster they can get their hands on while you sit in your basement and double-fist Coors and Fritos. Seriously."
"Merrill Lynch: Fuck Those Guys. Morgan Stanley's Got Your Back."
FADE OUT
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