Oberon. The heart and loyalty of a lion. And sometimes…the brain of a gnat. 😆
Not that I can really say I’m much better – I was really, really late picking up what may well be my coolest Christmas gift this year. … Read more
I was watching the Doctor Who DVD Time-Flight this morning while feeding Evan, and listening to the commentary, in which Peter Davison points out a background extra who, in 1982, bore an extraordinary resemblance to our current Vice President:
As Davison puts it, “So that’s why Iraq is such a mess! Dick Cheney is in league with the Master!” And now we know. 😆 The resemblance is beyond uncanny – and I didn’t photoshop that frame one little bit except to crop and border it. Since I was watching the region 2 release, I found myself wondering if this portion of the same title as released in the U.S. has that comment intact, or perhaps an awkward silence…… Read more
The annual “Christmas tree” is getting to be something of a tradition at theLogBook; basically, it’s a “best of” collection of that year’s Toybox toy reviews and pictorials, all gathered under the tree. As they should be. It’s a very crudely programmed graphical menu that doesn’t really give you any explicit instructions – what you click on is (God and HTML willing) what you’ll see.
In 2006, I assembled the tree and its attendant presents in Paint Shop Pro, as much out of laziness as anything. But this year, I decided to take a different route – I had all of the stuff readily at hand, and one morning I had a little bit of time, so I physically assembled all of this year’s Toybox items – most of them in their original boxes no less! – in one place and took a photo. Compared to last year’s – and a work-in-progress version for this year which was wiped out in a power bump – that’s almost cheating. But I thought it’d be a real statement of geeky cool to actually have all that stuff in one place at one time.
One cheat I’ll admit to: the Voyager and other space probe models were simply too small and spindly to be seen, so I propped up the relevant patches for their missions instead. Also lost in the shuffle may be VINCENT from The Black Hole. See if you can find him – he’s there for a reason. Also a bit sneaky is the dark red gift at the lower right corner – with a Starfleet combadge on it. This is there to visualize something for which there wasn’t a physical package…well, unless I went and found an old 3/4″ broadcast videotape from the ’80s somewhere. This was a bit easier. 😆
If anything was wrong with my first draft of this year’s tree, it was that there was simply not enough going on among the tree’s ornaments themselves. Last year’s tree had a couple of things snuck in among the ornaments, so literally two days out, I added a couple of extra goodies – namely, the baby and Jet Jaguar (!). If these look like cheesily-pasted-on late additions…that’s because they were!
Anyway, hopefully everyone enjoyed this year’s tree. Now that I’ve got a kid who, in theory, should be taking up almost all of the household toy-buying budget instead of his dad, I’m not sure how the tree idea will play out in the future. But then again…I’ve still got a few trinkets here and there that I’ve been holding back on.… Read more
Before I hit the sack with the kiddo and the kitties, I just wanted to wish everyone a merry Christmas and an even better 2008. This year has been a roller coaster ride, and I’m sure I haven’t been easy to put up with during all of those ups and downs, and the fun is really just beginning. I appreciate everyone who’s stuck with me through all of this – I hope the constant barrage of baby & kitty pics (which, conventional wisdom would have us believe, is nothing less than the death knell of a blog) lifts your spirits the way that living the life behind those pictures does for me.
Thanks for being passengers with me on this crazy ride. Get ready, ’cause the kid’s in the driver’s seat!… Read more
Everyone seemed to love it last year, so here we go again:
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/podcast/mix2007.mp3]This year I decided to take the bizarre step of mixing soundtrack and non-soundtrack music together, so get ready for a wild ride. The track list (and links to the relevant CD reviews where applicable) are as follows – but don’t read the list until you’ve listened to the whole track! … Read more
A little video piece celebrating the biggest event of my life this year (with apologies to David Byrne, who came up with a tune that’s ridiculously appropriate). This is a higher-resolution-than-usual video segment, so it may be choppy while it’s first loading.… Read more
That is it. We are so gonna sue! … Read more
Astute (or, for that matter, even semi-conscious) readers might’ve noticed by now that I’ve pretty much given up the practice of cross-posting my bloggification to MySpace. LiveJournal is easy – there’s a WordPress plugin to auto-cross-post stuff there. There used to be such a plugin for MySpace, but somewhere along the way, someone changed their API, changed their mind or changed their underwear, and in that change the plugin stopped working and nobody seems to have revived the idea. Those on MySpace who want to keep up can visit my profile, where there’s a little widget there which automatically shows the latest entries – or excerpts thereof – from the blog. I also jumped ship, somewhat regrettably, from a MySpace-esque social networking site called cre8buzz, for the same reason: lack of time. (I had a few reservations about cre8buzz’s tendency to ask everyone to rate everything, from other users to their photos to their links to their blog entries…sheesh. It hadn’t quite become a popularity-contest nightmare when I left, because the invitation-only userbase was largely adult, but just the basic idea there left me a bit unnerved – I had, to coin a phrase, a bad feeling about this. My apologies to those wondering where I went. If indeed such people exist. 😆 ) When I logged into MySpace for the first time since the weekend tonight, I had a zillion private messages…from accounts that had already been deleted because they were spammers who wanted to be my friend. I just don’t have the time to do that kind of housecleaning. Good thing I’ve never even bothered with Facebook, eh? … Read more
A year ago today was quite a day – I think I’ve even said as much recently. But apparently one part of that day is becoming a tradition around here. (Ed. note: no, we did not conceive another child tonight.) No, dear friends, it looks like December 19th here at the home of the Binky Blaster is…Cat-quisition day. A day on which we seem to formally acquire yet another cat.
This time a year ago, the new addition to the family was one Mr. Oberon. Today, it’s a big grey tabby who hangs out in the back yard. I saw it sitting in the shade of the big tree in the back yard today, though at first I didn’t know if it was a live animal or some bit of roadkill upon whom Xena sought to heap further indignity by dragging it into our yard and disassembling it. (Remind me sometime to tell you about the collection of deer skulls she insists on keeping in our yard. They’re exquisite.) Anyway, as I approached, I noticed three things: this was a very live cat, it was lunching on a considerably less live mouse, and it was doing so in full view of our very live dog with no interference. Maybe they’ve compared their respective trophy cases of deer skulls and mouse skulls, but we seem to have kindred spirits.
I’ve noticed the cat prowling around the yard several times since then, always hunting something. Frankly, if he wants to rid our field of the mouse population during the winter, that’s peachy with me. But I am running out of Shakespearean names that start with the letter O. I also don’t know how compatible he is with Xena’s other pet, the possum (now officially a recurring guest star).
Happy Cat-quisition Day. Did anyone else acquire a cat today?… Read more
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