Month: July 2009

Categories
Funny Stuff

Twitizen Kane

Every couple of days I go to theLogBook.com’s Twitter account and “tweet” whatever interesting new updates there are to all of about six or seven people, roughly half of whom are folks who already write for theLogBook.com and, as such, know what’s coming up anyway. Maybe Twitter is one of these social technologies that’s just “too young for me,” but I’m not sure I’m a good… well… twit. I don’t follow other folks or spend more than a couple of minutes on the site a day (a marked contrast to my Facebook addiction), and I don’t talk 2 u in cool txt msg spk. (My old TV promo job involved packing info into a very small space – soemtimes as small as 4 seconds – so using an economy of actual words instead of bastardized abbreviations is actually a specialty of mine. I refuse 2 resort 2 txt msg spk…D’OH!

I also don’t use theLogBook’s Twitter account to blast my personal status report across the ‘net (or, as I refer to it, assisted stalking). I do enough of that on Facebook (and furthermore it’s only seen by folks who I’ve approved to be on the list), and I only do it on Facebook if I actually have something to report or some clever one-liner to throw out there. Most of my Facebook status updates have to do with taking care of the kiddo.

The plain, simple truth is that I don’t do anything interesting enough during the average day to merit something like Twitter or, arguably, Facebook. I sit at home, looking for promising job listings (and see very few because I’m not a registered nurse with a class “A” commercial drivers’ license who’s also fluent in Spanish). I scratch my butt, my nose, occasionally my shoulder. I eat stuff. I poop later. I work on video projects (literally about the most interesting thing that I do, period, and I guarantee you that you’d put it in the same category as watching paint dry if you were here watching me work on it), I write stuff, I drop the kiddo off for day care for a few hours so he can be with kids his age instead of a kid his dad’s age, I play with the cats, I watch the weather. I occasionally take a nap, and I seldom give one. Thrilling, eh?

Some days I wonder quite what I’m doing on the internet; I’m not sure anyone would notice if I suddenly wasn’t.

So maybe I’m missing the point of Twitter, and maybe it’s early days yet, but thus far, I’m really not seeing much of a benefit from theLogBook’s Twitter account. I’ll give it about another month; if, by that time, half of the “followers” list still consists of folks who already know what’s on the site, I’ll probably ditch it and save myself a little time.… Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Funny Stuff

FREEDOM!!!!

When I took Evan to day care today, he was so excited to be there that he barrelled right through the moveable barrier than runs down the middle of his classroom, and knocked it over. As you can imagine, without the barrier, you suddenly have toddlers bouncing all over the place like ricocheting pinballs. Baby stampede!

When I went to pick him up later, he did the same thing, only all the little guys and gals followed him toward the door. I guess he’s told them good things about his daddy or something; at this rate I need to paint half of his face blue every day before taking him to day care, so he can lead the charge to FREEDOM!!!

Revolutionary rebel at 22 months old? Uh…yeah, I guess that’s my fault.… Read more

Categories
Music Television & Movies

ZOMG hold me back.

Star Trek II Complete Score from Film Score MonthlyAfter 27 years, finally, the complete score, every note, of the soundtrack from Star Trek II – talk about a magic bullet that hits me right between my inner Trekkie and my inner soundtrack geek.

I’d try to get everyone to pitch in for a belated birthday gift, but nah…I gotta be sure I get this. If it’s only 3,000 copies like most of Film Score Monthly’s releases, it’ll be sold out tomorrow. ORDER PLACED. DELIVERY IN T MINUS 5.*

* very weak joke that you won’t get unless you’ve played as much Dune 2000 as I have, which is highly improbable at best.… Read more

Categories
And Beyond The Infinite

It must really hurt to continually cut yourself shaving with Occam’s Razor.

As usual, I’m observing the anniversary of the first manned moon landing with a mixture of fond reverence and not just a little bit of melancholy. With all of the technological strides that have been made since 1969, in some cases building on the technology that got us to the moon, the pinnacle of human technological genius remains something that happened 40 years ago.

The thing is, it wasn’t just technology that got us there; it was a massive effort of combined national will, and I’m not sure we’ve seen anything like it since then. In the current climate where everydamnthing is politicized, I’m not sure it’s possible to muster that kind of massive expenditure of willpower in a single direction. I really find myself doubting that I’ll see man (or woman) on the moon in my lifetime. The final lunar landing occurred when I was mere months old. Now I’m thinking my son may be my age before we go back and set up shop to stay. That pisses me off – I want to see a real live moon landing in my lifetime. I really do. It would not only mean that we’ve come closer to perfecting the technology for doing so, but it would mean that, either as a nation or as a world community, we’ve gotten off of our asses and stopped settling for an intractible standstill during which everyone blames everyone else for anything for which they have the slightest distaste.

That would mean more to me than the technological aspects of it. I might even accidentally start to hope again if I’m not careful.

What galls me almost as much as the non-motion, and the notion that America may be in for yet another vast gap in manned spaceflight (like the 6 years between Apollo-Soyuz and the first shuttle mission), is that there’s a persistent and vocal bunch of wild-eyed conspiracy nuts who are adamant that the moon landings just didn’t happen.

NASA has slyly offered up some stuff in the run-up to the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing that, by all rights, should bring that kind of rumor-mongering up short…but we’re talking about a bunch of folks who haven’t let reason stand in the way of an arm-waving, look-at-me-look-at-me! rant in the past four decades. Why should they start thinking now?

If they want to keep insisting that the moon landings were filmed in a soundstage at Area 51 (I am not joking here!), they can keep their delusions to themselves. In the meantime, I’m really, really enjoying the stuff NASA’s cranking out this week which, while it celebrates the occasion, also quietly flips a space-suit-gloved middle finger at the crazies. Here are some links:

  1. Apollo Landing Sites as seen by the new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter – possibly the coolest of the bunch. The “descent” stages of the lunar modules – an inelegant but functional octagonal box which housed the legs, the moon buggies, and of course the rocket that eased the module to the ground rather than letting it crash – remained on the moon, serving as launch pads for the upper half of each module, which carried the astronauts and moon rocks back to safety. The descent stages are still there, clearly visible, casting a shadow due to the sun being at a low angle to the ground.
  2. Apollo 11 Radio – a live, down to the minute and second, continuous stream of the radio traffic between Apollo 11 and Mission Control – the sounds of the complete eight-day mission. The good stuff will kick in on Monday afternoon around 2 or 3 o’clock eastern. It’s the complete unedited audio on a 40-year delay. Why would anyone fake eight days worth of audio?

  3. Restored video of Armstrong’s first steps – from recently recovered videotapes of the direct transmission; this is likely as good as the picture quality’s going to get, given the age of the original media, but the improvement over what we’ve had all these years is more than a little impressive. You can also watch Buzz Aldrin coming down the ladder, Armstrong and Aldrin planting the flag, and Armstrong and Aldrin reading the dedication plaque. If/when there’s a DVD of all of this video restored, I’ll happily put money on the table for it.

I can’t fathom the conspiracy theorists basking in some absurdly convoluted “explanation” that includes Area 51, brainwashing, and secret government operations involving gazillions of people behind the scenes, not one of whom has ever spilled the beans.

There is a simpler explanation: we went. We did it. Because we wanted to, and because it was an important thing to do. We accomplished something abso-fraggin-lutely amazing from sheer determination and willpower and not just a little bit of pride.

Is that actually any less plausible than secret soundstages, black ops and brainwashed astronauts?

Man, it’s gotta be a bitch to constantly cut yourself shaving with Occam’s Razor.

Now let’s cut the chatter and go back there. It’s gotta be possible, because we’ve been there already.… Read more