Random ramblings of minimal importance

Sam ‘n’ Ella better keep away from my peanut butter cookies. I’m a mongrel for crunchy peanut butter, so this news is rather alarming. In other news, to make a completely bizarre segue into another topic, someone’s finally cracked the Tagalong Code: if you’re craving that most delicious variety of Girl Scout Cookies during those times of the year when Girl Scout Cookies aren’t available, try out Keebler’s new peanut-butter-filled fudge cookies. I forget what they’re actually called, but OMG they’re delicious. They’re still not quite perfect – Tagalongs are thinner and I like the chocolate coating better on them – but they’re as close as anyone’s gotten. (And they’re about a buck cheaper.) That said, I’m still craving genuine Tagalongs, but it looks like I missed the bus for this year’s order. 🙁
Robin Hood: Cats On Printers. The funny picture yesterday of Obi standing proudly atop my PC is not an isolated incident, so my game room has become Off Limits To Kitties While Daddy’s Away. Sad, really, because the window in there, which is all overgrown with brush, is teeming with birds year-round – it’s like Cat TV. You can find one or both of the kittens sitting in there on top of the scanner, watching the window all glossy-eyed. But when Obi jumps on top of the printer, decides that it’s a good idea to jump up and try to tag either an arcade marquee (which is damn close to the ceiling) or the Doctor Who pinball backglass (perched in the upper pane of the window in a way that isn’t precarious until someone starts screwing with it), and then all that jumping threatens to dislodge both printer and Vectrex from their slots on the shelf…well…I suppose this is just a sneak preview of things to come. 😆 My game room is going to need quite a bit of work to make it kid-friendly. Fortunately, I already have some ideas on that front, ideas which I’ll share shortly. Gaming folks with limited space and/or concerns about keeping their consoles clean of dust and other things may want to pay close attention…
Digital Uah. Remember the post a few days ago about the DIY Doctor Who DVD menus? (I’m actually surprised there wasn’t more response from that – though at least Dave liked it!) I’m already working on its successor: a somewhat-similar-in-execution-but-not-in-style DVD menu for Jump Cut City. Y’know, just in case. Though this time I am working on a montage of JCC scenes from down through the ages, and the real challenge there is to pick the best ones for about a 1-2 minute loop. The thing about it is, I could probably keep picking until there’s about a 30 minute loop. 😆 Maybe I should post some clips here and let you guys pick the best ones, even though they’ll be about 40% more surreal just for the lack of any context! Another project I recently completed was a very simple trailer for the Star Trek: Origins fan film, combining some really simple Avid work with some 3-D animation (which I’m woefully out of practice on), but the ST:O crew seemed really jazzed by it.
ELOh boy. The ELO fan club begins shipping the club-only preorders of the remastered Out Of The Blue and Balance Of Power this weekend – complete with the OOTB tour poster replicas! Hooray! The ELO mailing list has been a fascinating thing to watch lately; there was a campaign to put Latitude 88 North on top of the UK iTunes Singles chart, similar to the campaign among Doctor Who fans to put “Love Don’t Roam” on the charts. But it seems to have stalled a bit while various list members argue over whether they should support it at all, or whether Jeff Lynne instead “owes” them some brand new music. After this series of remasters is out the door and all is quiet on the ELO front, I’m questioning whether or not to stay subscribed to that list. When there’s not a new release to anticipate, the daily digest is like a 40K bundle of fractiousness arriving in my e-mail every day, as people debate stuff like ELO vs. ELO Part II/The Orchestra, or Jeff “owing” them something. And when there is a new release, well…erm…the daily digest is like a 40K bundle of…oh, never mind. On the other hand, it is just a daily digest at least! Maybe I’m just not enough of a die-hard fan (uh, I just ordered a replica tour poster that I’m going to frame and hang next to my rescued-from-a-music-store-dumpster-in-1993 Alan Parsons Try Anything Once poster…?), but any day that I hear Jeff Lynne’s voice(s) singing a song I haven’t heard it sing before can’t be a completely bad day, y’know? It calm the beef min. By the way, just for giggles, I assembled a Winamp playlist consisting of nothing but recently discovered bonus tracks, going all the way back to Afterglow, and came up with nearly a full CD’s worth, much of which kicks ass (i.e. “Latitude 88 North,” “Love Changes All,” “Tears In Your Life,” “Everyone’s Born To Die,” “Surrender,” etc.); granted, it’s all over the map stylistically because we’re talking about buried treasures spanning 1972-1986, but maybe it’s something Sony ought to consider. And it didn’t even include stuff like the instrumental-only tracks of existing stuff from Face The Music, New World Record, Eldorado…
Off the menu? LJ friends will notice that I did a test-posting of a logbook menu last night; I dunno if I’m gonna bother, to be truthful. Getting an update done on my own site is an uphill battle every weekend; having to turn around and do major surgery to the menu code just to crosspost on LJ is something I’m not sure I’m gonna mess with. I’m sure everyone’s crushed. 😛
I’ve got a shoot this afternoon, so I need to go get some camera-battery-chargin’ lovin’ going. Have a good weekend.