Month: June 2007

Categories
Gadgetology Toiling In The Pixel Mines ToyBox

That’s no time machine, that’s a space st…no, wait. It IS a time machine, isn’t it? Never mind.

I’ll show you around my TARDIS in a moment. But first, a look at the print ad running for GreenhouseFX.tv in the July issue of Entertainment Fort Smith:

GreenhouseFX.tv ad
(The only difference is that the one in the magazine has my phone number in it.) I’m trying to make a virtue of the fact that, once I’ve got a baby boy running around, I won’t be in a position to go shooting very often (on the site, from day one, it’s said that I do shooting by special arrangement only). I’m hoping I’ll get some decent business off of this ad; as I’ve mentioned, it runs in the bridal issue, so if that doesn’t work, I clearly need to figure something else out, like renting my organs out for medical experiments. (While I’m still using them.)

And now, a fond farewell to an old friend, who, after serving faithfully for 20 years, is going to a better place. Well, if “out with the trash on Monday” is considered a better place:
Old Weather Radio
Never again will your sickly siren wail reverberate through the walls of my home, for now the sound of impending death from above is the sound of a power pellet in Coleco tabletop Pac-Man. Goodbye, old friend.

And now, click here to peer into the TARDIS. … Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Home Base Serious Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines ToyBox

TGIF x 10,000

Thank God for Fridays. And thank God that this is one of ’em. ‘Nuff said.

I’ve been meaning to post a small version of the print ad for GreenhouseFX.tv that I prepared to run in the July bridal issue of Entertainment Fort Smith. I just keep letting it slip my mind. I thought the way it was worded kind of cleverly gets around whether or not I’d be shooting video or just editing it. With Evan at T minus 86 days and counting from liftoff, I’m hoping the message comes across that I’m doing post production primarily, without that seeming like something that would count points off.

It’s rainy today, and rainy = no swimmy. And no swimmy = no happy. Maybe that’s stretching it a little bit, but I’ve really gotten to enjoy what has become the daily swim. Even if the skeeters made a buffet line out of me yesterday while my head was poking out of the water. I don’t “dunk” well in swimming pools – I can’t stand chlorine getting into my eyes – but I dunked several times yesterday.

I’ve had the misfortune this week of watching a guy I used to work with take a very public fall from grace. I didn’t work with him very long before I left the TV station, but he always struck me as a pefectly nice guy. Oddly enough, he is the second former co-worker of mine about whom something like this has come to light (the other was someone I worked with at Fox over 10 years ago), and it’s still incredibly creepy. There was absolutely no indication of anything like this from working with the guy day in and day out. It’s bad news on multiple levels – I have no wish to see the place I used to work for take this kind of a black eye, and this was the first hire for Drew after he took over as chief meteorologist. (I’m pretty sure Drew had no idea about any of this either. At least not during the hiring/auditioning process.) In short, it doesn’t make anybody look good. Dude…get some help. Please. Before you wind up like my other former co-worker who wound up with actual molestation charges and not just being a peeping tom.

The foot that I’m staying off of is still pretty slow going. Missing a day of swimming (I know, bad topic to mention after the previous paragraph…) isn’t going to help it any. There’s just a zen state that I’m able to find in the water that I think has been missing from my life for a decade or so, and I don’t seem to find it anywhere else. My wife has a hard time getting me to vacate the pool. I’ve found myself wondering lately if this site would even exist in anything resembling its current form if I’d had a swimming hole to devote this kind of time to all these years. I wonder what kind of shape I would be in. Relative weightlessness = bliss. Especially for a fat guy like me. But even then I’m trying to address that a bit – I try to do some actual laps back and forth, instead of just floating around.

And now, a Public Plea for Help: sometime back in ubikuberalles’ Livejournal, he mentioned finding the titanium collection Classic Galactica vehicles. Now assuming that all of this had happened before and all of it would happen again, I went looking for them locally, to no avail. If anyone spots these, please, please, please let me know about it, prices included. I’m not sure which ships they’ve making from the original series in that scale, but I’m after the Viper, the Cylon raider, and good ol’ clunky Galactica herself. If you can get these where you are, let me know – I can paypal you or something, or come up with some kinda trade. If anyone can finagle that, that’s very likely my last toy purchase before the baby gets here.

Speaking of the boy, I’ve been feeling him kick on a pretty regular basis here of late. I’ll put my head up to my wife’s belly and talk to him, and then PTHOOK!, right in my ear. He’s already kickin’ the old man in the head. This bodes well. 😆… Read more

Categories
Critters Music Television & Movies

I like to run like a horse. I like to swim like a fish. That’s what I like.

Okay, get a load of this. My wife says I’m not blogging enough. Heh. Sorry I’ve fallen off the blawgwagon just a little bit of late. Blame it on the swimming pool: if I’m going and spending an hour or two in the drink every day, that’s a couple of hours I’m not getting to spend on the computer. Where, between moving massive chunks of the web site to WordPress and other projects, I’ve kinda felt like I’m spending plenty of time lately, thanks very much.

I completely forgot to mention how things wrapped up with the little grey kitten. I took her up to my sister-in-law’s farm, where she was immediately set to her first task – mousing in the tack room. I think she’ll do well. So we’re back to the fearsome threesome, though I think Oberon actually missed her for the first couple of days. I don’t think there’s a single honestly mean impulse between him and Olivia.

I was watching the little mini-series spin-off thingamabob “After The Catch” tonight, where the crab boat captains from “The Deadliest Catch” sit around and tell fish stories – well, okay, crab stories – and I’m thinking we need at least a one-hour special just talking to the photogs who shoot that show. Again, talk about a gig I would not want. Yeesh.

Orac 3.0 is up and running, so far, so good. I’m still not-quite-up and hobbling. Hence all the time in the pool.

Mini music brag of the week, with a little ‘support’ from Sy the Cyberman:
Witchblade CD
…signed by Joel Goldsmith no less. Really, really trippy stuff. Memo to Warner Bros.: this show needs to be on DVD, stat.

I’ll say more when I have more to say.… Read more

Categories
Home Base

Sunday! Sunday! Someday…

Ick. Stormy day. 😛

Yesterday Jan and I went swimming; she’s got an open invite from a co-worker to use his swimming pool, and yesterday was the first chance I’ve had to go with her. I don’t think I’ve been swimming in ten years, and I forgot how much I love swimming. Okay, maybe what I really love right now, with my ouchy mutant toe and the various spots of skin problems I have, is floating in the deep end with the water up to right under my nose. I did get a bit of exercise in and do some actual swimming, but yeah, mostly floating around and just soaking it up. Literally. My foot felt so much better after spending about 45 minutes in the pool. I’m hoping this’ll blow over – despite the thunderstorm watch until 9 tonight – and we can get some more swim (or float) time in.

I’ve also been reconfiguring Orac – again – after Kent spent a week or so doing some life-saving file recovery. It now has an XP partition and a tiny 98 partition – which will hopefully not go kaflooey – just to run stuff like the scanner. I’m aiming to get the Phosphor Dot Fossils DVD project back on track now that Orac’s back in service, though I’ll go ahead and admit in public now that I’m having doubts about it being ready for CGE. I’m still aiming for that, but let’s just say I’m concerned about the crunch.

We got a nifty new microwave Saturday:
Microwave
…which replaces the replacement microwave (i.e. the one Jan used in college) that replaced our other one that died a few weeks ago. This one’s got a pretty cool feature, namely the ability to scan barcodes and somehow automagically pick out the precise cooking time from that. It can also be “taught” cooking time and power levels for new barcodes. We’ve both been wondering how much memory it has. It does, however, have this great indiglo-style light behind its display which provides enough light in the kitchen for midnight snack time. Not that such a time ever arrives in this house.

I’m also frantically preparing for the relaunch of yet another major section of theLogBook.com, this time the ToyBox archive. Work on that section has been ongoing for quite a while, and longtime fans of our nifty little sci-fi-and-space-and-video-game archive will be happy to hear that I’ve replaced a lot of the old low-resolution photos. I’m also adding more video segments to previously existing articles, including various and sundry vintage toy commercials and things along the lines of our patented extremely silly demo videos of things like R/C Daleks. ToyBox will relaunch in a week.

Just go ahead and stop, storms. I wanna go swimming again.… Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff

Giddyup

My wife woke me up this morning to make sure I could get into town in time to hobble my way to a big scale to pick up a new microwave oven that we need (our old one went kaput a couple of weeks ago). When she couldn’t get me to wake right up right then, she asked if I had taken another pain pill, and I said something to the effect of “Good Lord, no, woman. I’m still having trouble getting out from under the first one!”

Then I saw the spam subject header “posthumous pony” and instantly wrote the first verse of a country & western song in my head. If the following does not convince you that I’m not still ‘under the influence,’ nothing will.

I’m gonna be your posthumous pony
I’m gonna be your undead steed
When you go ridin’ with yer three brotherrrrs
I’m the only zombie horse you’ll need.

See if you can guess who the riders (the aforementioned brotherrrrs) are (not sure how else I’m supposed to phonetically imply a C&W drawl, sorry). Go on, guess.

And people put this kind of stuff into their bloodstreams on purpose? For fun? Drugs are bad, mmmmmmkay? I think I’m going to settle for soaking my feet and sitting still, because I’m sure as hell not taking any more of those pain pills if I can help it.… Read more

Categories
Gadgetology Music

Flat on our backs, taking the rest of the day off

I’ve had a couple of days this week where just about nothing got accomplished. My right foot, or more specifically the middle toe of my right foot, has been killing me for a couple of weeks now, and the pain got to where I almost couldn’t walk. I went to see the doctor, thinking “broken toe,” had X-rays taken…and lo and behold, no fracture.

I do, however, have funky mutant feet. I’ve always been able to pick things up off the floor with my toes and then “hand” those things off to an actual hand. Turns out there’s a reason for that. Two of the toes on my right foot are actually fingers – they have three segments and three joints, whereas your typical human toe has only two of each. The injury is an inflammation of a joint that, if you just look at the toe from the outside, doesn’t seem like it should be there. The one next to the little toe on that foot looks like a talon waiting to be deployed. So now I suppose the real question is: will my son have funky mutant feet too?

Anyway, my “sentence” is to take anti-inflammatory stuff twice a day, soak my foot a lot (and it just so happens that I’ve got a little mini-hot-tub thingy for that, something I bought for my wife for Christmas 3 or 4 years ago that never came out of the box until yesterday), and not walk any more than is necessary. I was given pain meds as well, but the first one I took – over 12 hours ago – is still just now trying to wear off. (I probably have the opposite of an immunity to pain medicine, because I don’t regularly dose myself with aspirin, Tylenol, Advil, etc. etc., and I can’t even imagine taking this stuff “every 4 hours as needed” like the label says – I’d be in a coma.)

In other news, I haven’t been checking homestarrunner.com as much as I used to, but this thing is pure gold. I must have played with that for half an hour. That has to be one of the neatest Flash apps I’ve ever seen, and it beats the pants off of a similar (well, similar in concept, certainly nowhere near this in terms of graceful execution and ease of use) thing the BBC did a while back to let people remix the original Doctor Who theme to their liking. Even if you just watch the cartoon, it’s very amusing, but don’t forget to click on “mix your own style” at the end. Even folks who aren’t Homestar fans can appreciate this one for its sheer creativity.

Speaking of making strange sounds come out of the speakers of electronic devices (I should have the equivalent of a degree in that by now), I recently tried some experiments with my cell phone to see if it would play an MP3 as a ringtone, and voila, it does. Suddenly, all those classic video game sound FX CDs that I’ve accumulated and thought “Well, that’s neat, but what possible use could anyone have…?” have become much more useful.

Oh, and one tiny little plug: if you like a bit of Star Wars, you might want to check theLogBook.com’s Monday update. 😉… Read more

Categories
Critters Funny Stuff Gaming

Pictures of a weekend

Not much to say here; just some pictures from my weekend:

Olivia snoozin'
Olivia’s entry in the Cutest Kitten In The House contest. She really cranked up the cute after seeing little grey girl’s pictures.

Fellowhip of the Ring
A mass-mailing from a local church. Holy proofreading, Batman!

Help waned at our fellowhip!
Presumably whoever put that together answered this call for help.

A nice new pile o' games
My latest influx of new (but old) games from a trade with scooterb23 of the DP forums, along with other trades and goodies I’ve picked up this year (Supercharger and Stella Gets A New Brain, among numerous other items, not shown here). Early this year, before we knew we were expecting, my wife made a comment about how much I spend on my old video game collection. I think so far this year, I’m up to about the $20 mark, most of that spent in shipping stuff out for my end of the trade. 😆… Read more