Month: December 2006

Categories
Gadgetology

Delete immediately, before someone gets hurt

Alas, poor Orac. He’s dead. That PC wouldn’t voom if you put 1.21 gigawatts of electricity through it. It’s pushing up the daisies and it’s joined the choir invisible. It can’t even get to the CMOS settings. It’s dead, with a capital dead. Naturally, right now is when I happen to need to scan a lot of stuff. 🙄 Fortunately a replacement is on the way, probably in even better shape than Orac was when I first got it. Really, it’s kinda silly if you think about it – when did I start needing three different computers in close proximity? Yikes. Just go ahead and assimilate me.
Speaking of computer-related misfortunes: I. Hate. IE7. And the whole thing about how it’s supposedly easy to step back to 6 seems to have been misreported: it’s sure as hell not easy for me, and I want that digital hellspawn gone from my machine. Argh. If I wanted a browser to act like Firefox, y’know, I’d just download bloody Firefox. This one was not ready for prime time, and at least on my machine, it’s very unstable – what good is tabbed browsing if the thing crashes and takes all my tabs with it?
Ah well. It’s Friday (actually, technically speaking, it’s Saturday now). It’s the end of my work week. It’s almost Christmas. I should go look at my own kitten pics and cheer the heck up. Actually, scratch that – I’m gonna go home and look at the kitten in the pics.… Read more

Categories
Critters Music Serious Stuff

These guys just about read my mind

I woke up today at 1:30pm with the sound of dogs barking, phones ringing, and voices. Not a good combination. I went outside to see what the heck was going on, and there was a truckload of contract workers trying to cut a path through our hideously-overgrown pasture to inspect the utility poles that are out there (there are 2 or 3). The problem: Xena was alarm-barking these guys, and fiercely. That’s the second time she’s done that in a week (the last time was, amusingly enough, when my mother-in-law stopped by to borrow our Christmas wrapping paper). Xena usually presents the illusion of a Big, Mean Dog in our yard, which I’m sure – along with the unkempt exterior of the place – has kept intruders away. But apparently something has happened recently that has inspired her to act the part with gusto. Even more amusingly, Sparky showed up to back her up. These guys who were just trying to do their job were not happy. The voice on the other end of the phone was someone with the Arkansas Valley Electric Cooperative, who was also not happy. Would it have just killed them to provide us with some advance notice that this was going to happen today? Xena would’ve stayed inside, and never would’ve called her little buddy (and, undoubtedly, his little buddy) for backup.
As we’ve been getting closer to Christmas, I’ve had a bit of a rant building up in response to such things as the political correctness fervor over Christmas trees and whatnot, and lo and behold, a couple of guys have saved me the trouble, read my mind, and said almost exactly what I’ve been thinking for a few years now: What the hell happened to Christianity? Good reading. Maybe now Christianity – which is simultaneously one of the world’s largest religions, and yet many practitioners of whom are also among the first to act like they’re still victims stuck in the coliseum with the lions – might just understand why there’s a bit of a bullseye painted on their back. After years of being co-opted by a political regime that’s tried to claim they have a “Christian” agenda whilst trying to strongarm the rest of the world into thinking their way, it’s no wonder we have Rabbis demanding that Christmas trees be taken down. The wheel turns. The Christian Right has just bought those of us who, while believers, happen to be moderates or even liberals, several years of grief.
Going from there to the Ask And Ye Shall Receive department, I got the Doctor Who CD in the mail today – man, is this a Whovian Christmas or what? I’ve been tiding myself over for several weeks with the Cardiff Children In Need concert, but the CD is even better. The Tooth And Claw teaser monk music? It’s there. Original synth-heavy version of “Westminster Bridge”? Check. Doomsday music? Bingo. “Love Don’t Roam” is a damned nifty song, though I wish they’d at least included the original “Song For Ten” as a bonus track (but fear not, it can be found here for what I suspect is a limited time – I’ll be a-burnin’ that to CD, thanks to the BBC!). Turns out I got the Limited Edition version after all, though the slipcase is the only real prize there – the “bonus badge” is tiny. 😆 Great music, though, and the track-by-track commentary from Murray Gold is interesting. This has been a great soundtrack year, especially in the TV department, and just a great music year overall, which I’ll cover in a forthcoming installment. The indie labels, especially the boutique soundtrack specialty labels, have definitely earned the money they’ve gotten out of me this year. Gapporin did a top ten of 2006 in his LiveJournal blog recently, and I’ve probably got a top 20 or top 25 in me. Hell, I’ve probably got the top 20 or 25 of the year in my travel bag that goes to work with me every night. (Yeah, I admit, it’s a big honkin’ man-purse, whose contents have more to do with my sanity than my job. Deal with it.)
The stuff I got for my wife for Christmas arrived today. Good stuff! Now I’ve just gotta hide it…
By the way, for fans of “AL-TV,” this just in from my inbox: “AL-TV” will premiere tomorrow (Friday, Dec. 15) at 8 PM Eastern (check your local listings!) on VH-1. Al will be showcasing many of the videos from “Straight Outta Lynwood,” as well as “interviewing” some of his “friends” in the “music industry!”… Read more

Categories
Music Television & Movies Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Floatin’ in the ‘bay.

XLR cable problem solved. My wife stopped by a Radio Shack close to where she works, adamant that she would solve the XLR cable problem. She trudged out of the store a short while later, after I was equally adamant to her over the phone that there’s no way in hell that I’m going to pay $20+ per cable for blingy gold-tipped Monster XLR cables. We later found perfectly good new ones on eBay, four for $6. 😆 Plus adapters!
Do you ever pause for one scary moment to consider Life Without eBay? I swear the damned thing off from time to time, but I looked around my game room the other day and thought about it. No Kickman. No Avid. No arcade marquees. A much, much, much smaller number of game consoles and carts. Fewer screens in the room, LCD or otherwise. I actually shuddered. It’s scary how much shopping I do there.
It’s also scary the attitudes one runs into when one does go shopping there. My wife recently won an auction for two items from the same seller, a week apart, and had already mentioned to the lady that she’d pay once the second auction was won or lost. One day after she won the second auction and sent payment (this seller won’t accept Paypal or any other kind of electronic funds transfer), she found that a dispute had been opened and that she was being pegged as a NPB. Good Lord. Later we find out that the dispute was supposedly opened automatically (wha…??) by some program or service the seller was using because payment hadn’t been checked off as “received” from the first auction yet. Y’know, if you’re bloody fancy enough that you’re automating your eBay process (and I’m not completely sure I’m buying that story), you’re clearly fancy enough to get your own URL and stop doing business through a platform that eats a percentage of every sale you make.
So, Torchwood’s a go for season 2, only now it’s moving to BBC2. Hopefully that doesn’t force the show to lose its sharp edges, storytelling-wise. I’ve really enjoyed it so far; I’m a bit behind. Just watched Countrycide the other day, and all I have to say is: OWEN!!!????!? ICK! (Not much of a spoiler until you’re right on top of it.) I think we need Torchwood action figures. Or maybe it’s just my latent desire to have an Eve Myles sitting in the same room with me.
I’m a little miffed that my Doctor Who soundtrack CD hasn’t arrived, especially as I’m supposed to be reviewing it for theLogBook this weekend. (Fear not, there’s a fallback plan.) I ordered it the very day that it was first available for pre-order, directly from the label, and I’ve been seeing folks in Ohio and Florida talk about getting their copies direct from the label while it was still November (never mind that pesky December 4th street date). No sign of mine yet though. Given that the Doctor Who soundtrack topped the UK iTunes chart last week, one wonders if perhaps demand outstripped supply on the physical copies. Wouldn’t that be something?
The blooper reel went over like a lead balloon at the company party Saturday night. I wasn’t there (never have gone, actually), but reports are filtering through. I’ve already decided that this’ll be the last one I do anyway – I fully intend to be grazing on greener pastures by next Chritsmas. Hell, by next Groundhog Day, if I can manage it. I predict a year of upheaval at this place. As good a reason as any to bail. I bet by the end of 2007, the station might just go for a tidy little sum on eBay.… Read more

Categories
Music

If I can find absolutely nothing else to say today…

…it’s to tell you to go to my friend Mike Scully’s MySpace page and listen to “Grounded Angel” ASAP. I think the song’s gotten 40-something listens, and I’m pretty sure that about ten of those are me just sitting here listening to it over and over again, because it’s bloody catchy.
I’d love to regale you with tales of how Mike and I used to play music together, and the brief time we spent together in a local band, but the truth of the matter is that where I was much more into songwriting, and still fervently wish that I just had a neural interface where I could beam the fully-arranged music in my head directly into the brains of much more capable musicians (I mean, c’mon, my music section is loaded down with stuff done on a Playstation), Mike is exactly that: a much more competent musician than I – he can come up with catchy songs and play and sing them.
Somewhere I’ve got a CD labeled “Greenskulls” – kind of our own basement tapes. I need to figure out just how much he’d kill me if that stuff was ever heard by the public before I go there though. 😆 … Read more

Categories
Critters Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Dog Opera

Xena has a new boyfriend. He’s howling at the house outside.
Now, she’s already got at least a couple of ’em. You may remember this incident from a couple of years ago where she attracted a couple of four-legged suitors, who proceeded to bonk her silly until we had her rewired. Those dogs still come around, but they of course no longer have interest in trying to procreate with her, though I think the black dog is still just a little bit smitten with her – he brings her golf balls, tennis balls, dead animals, neighborhood children and other handy household items to play with, almost like a peace offering that he hopes might just bring those glands back whose smell he likes so much. 😆
This dog is also black, and obviously a young pup. He’s been around for about a week, and lives somewhere up around the bend on the road we live on. Tonight when I got home at around 1:00am, Xena and her new buddy came bounding down the middle of the road toward me when I crossed the street in the dark to fix our perpetually-falling-over mailbox yet again (it’s becoming a daily repair job). Now, as fast and as carelessly as people take that corner (which also happens to explain the state of my mailbox), I’m not thrilled at the prospect of any dog just carelessly playing in the middle of the street, and even more not thrilled to find that my dog is one of ’em.
I tried to pet Xena’s new friend when he stood up and tried to introduce me to his little friend. Oh dear. He then proceeded to chase Xena into the yard and tried to hump her repeatedly. Sometimes she’d stand there and let him try, other times she’d turn around and try to bite him. He’d then back off, whimper loudly, and then have another go. (I could’ve told him: this approach simply doesn’t work.) Xena was more than ready to go into the house with me. So was Mr. Red Rocket. I practically had to brain the little guy with my shoulder bag to keep him from following us into the house.
He then stood outside and the high-pitched whining began…and then he began serenading the house with full-blast Dog Opera. Xena, having just stuffed her face, laid down in the middle of the living room, covered her ears with her front legs as best she could, and went to sleep. Olivia stared at this interloper through the window and then moved on with her life. He’s gone away and come back to howl some more, and gone away again, serenading the front door, the window to my game room (as soon as lights came on in there), the back deck, and even the side of the house with the vent for the dryer when I ran a load of clothes. Xena shows absolutely zero interest.
If he’d drop the whiney routine and bring her some presents to help us keep our dog toy budget down, I’d say he’s a suitable candidate. But based on his behavior tonight, all I got a say is “not with my not-so-little four-legged girl, you don’t.”
I’m working on the blooper reel right now, actually picking out music for it. “Slag Solution” by Hot Butter is currently my favorite candidate – I like whimsical with a little edge to it, and you can’t beat early Moogs with a bit of waka-chika guitar going on in the background. (The reason I’m doing the blooper reel at home is…well…eh. I’ll explain another time.)
Speaking of editing and Avids and stuff, I did a news package tonight since I had a bit of downtime (and since I’m not supposed to edit or do anything blooperish on work equipment and on the clock…eh…), and I thought it turned out really nice – Everett shot all the video, and I just put stuff together in the order he came up with for the piece. We don’t do a lot of stuff like this, and in this case we had some excellent newsreel material to work from, and for my money I think it’s pretty darn touching. Click here to watch it. (I had to start a whole new “news packages” category in my work blog just to accomodate it – I suppose I’m now obliged to go back and find the previous news pieces I’ve edited, including one which won an AP award.) I’ve got to redo the Flash encoding because it doesn’t seem to want to show you the version with no music (and who can blame it?), but it’ll be fixed tomorrow night.
The anniversary of Pearl Harbor also falls on my maternal grandfather‘s birthday. He was an award-winning photographer (a skill which sadly isn’t genetic), and possibly the only person in my family who ever really fully “got” what I was doing, getting into the audiovisual media. I think he would’ve dug this piece, so it’s dedicated to him. … Read more