Mon 10/1/07 11:45pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

It's October. I need to closeout this page and create a new October page later on today. (A process on my blog, that still requires a little text editor and FTP fiddling around yet.) But until then...

• New Heroes and Journeyman tonight. Hooray for good TV! I read last week's Heroes online comic this past weekend, which was very good, but it also spoiled one of my "far fetched" theories on one of the new characters. Sort of a bummer that.

• Y'know my Hope Clock Rambling last month? I think I may be in need of reseting mine. Theory is, it shouldn't be as necessary to reset if you are aware of the reseting. Theory and Reality are two different things sometimes.

• I have a couple recent action figures that I still need to post pictures of, if you check out this blog for that, some stuff is coming.

• Speaking of Action Figures, I'm more or less out of room for those. A fact which has been causing me some self-contemplation on the topic of collectabillity recently. No change in buying for the next 6 months or so (I'm committed to somethings by preorder.) but there is contemplation going on.

• Asus has an official page up for the Eee PC 701. That's a positive happening. Latest word is a possible November 15th release. I still think this machine is a paradigm game changer. The Linux/SolidState Storage/Fast Boot Time really is something different. And the price makes this UMPC concept practical for the first time. (Despite their desire, however, to market this as general purpose machine... it's going to be a hobbiest and early adopter favorite. I sympathise with their desires for it to be otherwise, but this is going to be a geek fav.)

• Been reading some of the problems the iPhone people have been having with the recent update killing their homebrew changes. They're a real bummer, but it's too be expected. Apple has been moving away from the general purpose computer model for some time now. While I'm excited about what they've done in the space, it's the door they opened with the iPhone that is the most interesting. I think the independent small vendors that walk through that door will be the real world changers in this space.

• Elaborating on the clock comment a couple paragraphs ago. I very much like my job, my work and field. But it does trouble me of late. I look around and more and more everything is done for process. Lately I wonder if I really want to be this focussed on process and not work or people. Whether something is simply "done or not" seems to be paramount over "whether" or "how" that something should be done. That's fine I supose, (And don't get me wrong, I believe in deadlines as much as the next guy.) but if something is done to fulfill a process rather than the wants or needs of a person or a customer, then, well I don't know about that. That's assembly line work and doesn't promote a thoughtful environment.

• You think the internet provides to much knowlege about how TV, Movies and Comics work behind the scenes? Are the before-hype periods too long now? Or should I just try to avoid that news more? How many Questions can one ask in a paragraph before they're one two many? Does the voice in your head do one of those upward lilts when you see a question mark?

I'm going to go grab some lunch now.

Sun 9/30/07 7:58pm #

Random Photos of Completely Uninteresting Things.

Images to occupy your eyeballs for the next three and one half seconds. Think of all the productive things you could be doing instead of scrolling down.

Car Wash. I don't understand why the lighthouse theme is so popular in Grandville. We're at least 30+ miles away from any significant water.

Yellow Fire Hydrant\Red Nipples.
Saturated a little, but it pretty much looks like that.

The coppery brown was a pleasing color.

Eh. Traffic sign photo cliche.

Eh... picture, but Do Not Enter Signs are cool.

Random stuff on ground photo cliche.

The area has new Walk/Don't Walk boxes.

Menacing Strip Mall.
Contrast, makes that which completely lacks drama, have a little drama.

Concrete, Pond then Mall

No political statement here, I go in that Meijer 4 or 5 times a week. It's just one of those photo composition cliches where you merge one sign with a Stop sign.

Sun 9/30/07 11:59am #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Here is the Michigan Government Shut-down FAQ. I know nothing about why this stunt is happening. But it's incredibly stupid. I could see temporarilly shutting down an agency here or there... but something of this scale? What are these people twelve? Government should not take their ball and go home. Stupid.

» Ala-Carte Television is not about choice. It's not about only getting "the channels you watch", it's *about* only getting channels that already agree with your political beliefs and not being exposed to any other opinions. It's about only having Fox News, instead of having Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and PBS. It's about not having Bravo, or IFC or MTV or Comedy Central. It's about shoring up a political base that only wants safe programing that reinforces it's existing beliefs. It's an example of where choice is bad because it completely removes the posibillity of vbeing exposed to something new.

» While browsing a friend's Flickr friends, I came across a Flickr site of a former co-worker of mine. It's not someone I knew very well but he has some very nice photos, with a very nice filter effect style. Take a look at: Brookes' Photos. Good Stuff.

Let's Go Surfing

» A still from the lost Return to Krypton scene that was cut from Superman Returns.

» Mount Rushmore sings the Teddy Bear Picnic. Neat Monty Python-like Flash animation.

» Palm Centro, Touchscreen Smartphone on the Sprint Network. Available 10/14/07 $99 if you are new to Sprint, $199 if you are already on Sprint. Looks like an nice priced unit.

» TNT is going to do a drama revolving around the world of advertising, Truth in Advertising, will star "Will" from Will and Grace and "Ed" from Ed.

» Curious to see what else the letters of your name can spell? Try this Anagram Server.

Video

» Dice-Stacking Guy. Interesting Video.... I would imagine this guy will end up on Letterman or something soon.

» Miracle Beer Diet. Probably NSFW. (Nice homage to the Hoff in there too.)

Sat 9/29/07 5:49pm #

Marvel/DC After Hours

• These came out a couple weeks ago, but I just got around to watching them. What started as a simple parody series just keeps getting more and more involved. Not bad.

• Marvel/DC: After Hours #6 (1 of 2)

• Marvel/DC: After Hours #6 (2 of 2)

Sat 9/29/07 4:48pm #

Sat 9/29/07 3:37pm #

Sat 9/29/07 12:25pm #

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

About a year ago or maybe more, my wi-fi card started bluescreening my laptop every time I plugged it in. Today I was moving some stuff around on my desk, saw the card and decided to try plugging it in again. It immediately grabbed onto a neighbor's wifi and worked. Cool I thought. So I then tried to connect to my own wi-fi router. Blue Screen of Death followed.

Works fine on the neighbors' open wi-fi. Crashes on my my WEP protected wi-fi. Bummer.

Fri 9/28/07 2:45pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Things I've Watched this past week.

I saw the In Search of Steve Ditko documentary. It was good, if you have any interest in comics at all you should seek it out. I "consider" the Stan Lee stuff in it great too.

Heroes had a good first episode. They've hit the reset button a little, but that's to be expected now that the show is a hit. First rule of Hollywood, don't change it if it's not broken (of course no change eventually is what breaks these shows, but that's how it goes.) One of the best shows on TV, I'll be in front of my TV every Monday for a considerable time-frame it would appear.

The Office and Grey's Anatomy both had good season openers as well.

Grey's needs to ditch some of those interns, otherwise that show is going to have the largest number of extras is primetime. The new Lexi Grey looks to be a great character, certainly more positive than the rest, a welcome addition in my opinion. The only downside is that they have got to stop doing those last 30 second "big endings" on that show, or ABC has got to get the timing down better. My DVR stopped recording right before 'you know who' said 'you know what', if I hadn't been recording the show following that one as well, I would have missed that final scene.

The Office cast/show are just like comfortable slippers now. The "reveal" in the last minute of the first part, that was nicely done. Good show, but a half hour is probably enough each week. Ryan's new role is great too.

» EeePC now end of October, mid November, ok this is getting a bit ridiculous.

» "A moment of silence for famed French mime Marcel Marceau" I know it's in bad taste but that's one of the best starts to an internet post I've seen in a long while.

Let's Go Surfing

» Real "X-Men" Jet

» Clean Cartoonist, Dirty Drawings. Take a look a the the slideshow on this site promoting an upcomng book. Lots's of "risque" art by mainstream cartoonists. (probably NSFW)

» Interesting Article on Excercise and Weight loss

» Justice League Movie to be based on Tower of Babel and Brother Eye Arcs. John Stewart to be the GL in the movie.

Video

» Electronic "batteryless" dice.

» Well here you have it, some guy with Kirk Cameron makes an unassailable case for Intelligent Design. ;)

Sun 9/23/07 8:17pm #

Tell Me You Love Me

I watched the pilot of the new HBO show Tell Me You Love Me. It sets a new bar for including nudity and sex in HBO dramas (oddly they show more in this show than I've ever seen in any of HBO's "late night" offerings) and that would be fine if the show wasn't so depressing. Basically you follow 3 couples, each of which will bum you out. You have a couple that is going to get married, a couple that has been married and trying to have kids and a couple that is married with a couple kids. Almost every scene focuses on just those 6 actors (plus the therapist of 2 of the couples). There is almost no story, just an emotional (or lack of really) voyeristic look at the characters lives, which are no more interesting, revealing or exciting than the lives of your typical HBO's viewer's is likely to be. There's no joy in any of the characters, no humor, nothing but slow unrelenting disapointment and discouragement. Pass on it.

Sun 9/23/07 11:04pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Quote from the Mad Men pilot episode I watched a couple days ago where the lead was discussing a point of advertising:

"Advertising is based on one thing: happiness, and do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car, it's freedom from fear, it's a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you are doing, it's ok-- you *are* ok"

Let's Go Surfing

» I'm always very entertained by Ape Lad's LOL Cats.

» Photo of a Muslim TSA agent searching a Catholic Nun in an airport. Found on Boing Boing

» Pictures of a Black EeePC

The system features a 7" screen, Celeron M processor, 256MB of memory and a 2 or 4GB flash hard drive. Wireless and wired Ethernet are both supported and two models will be available, one priced at $250 and one at $350. Availability should be sometime in October, with widespread retail availability sometime by the end of this year or early next year.

Now, widespread "retail availability end of this year or early next year", *grumble*.

Videos

» Live-Action Donkey Kong. Cool.

» Scorsese Does Bert & Ernie. Language NSFW.

» Lego Darth Vader visits the Death Star Cafeteria. Language NSFW.

» If work meetings were like internet comment forums. Language very NSFW

» Creepy Razor Ad Baby. "fight for kisses"

» Tomy's $299 6.5" tall I-Sobot. Very cool.

» There's a company with software that can animate still photos of faces. Once this gets out in the open I see some tremoudous, "Conan O'Brien-moving lips" - style potential for abuse. Could be quite awesome.

Sat 9/22/07 11:02pm #

Photos

Photo from camera phone today on a walk back from the mall of some ducks in the old X-Rite Building Pond.

Bizarre Carhartt sign at Meijer. I thought it was odd that a sign, where the guy pictured was fixing a pole,14 was broke and in need of fixing.

Sat 9/22/07 5:25pm #

Marvel Comics Presents

I just read Marvel Comics Presents #1. Interesting collection of short stories. Not being a big Marvel fan or terribly knowlegeable about current Marvel continuity, I found it's self contained presentation, enjoyable, mostly for the varied art inside, but the stories were short and good for a short diversion. The weekest was the Guardian/USAgent story. Hellcat and the Spidey story were the most amusing. The Alicia Ben short was sweet, and a real visual pleasure to turn every page on. Good stuff.

Sat 9/22/07 12:33pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

» I saw an article that mentions that Apple may have a 10" or 12" Sub Notebook coming out between Thanksgiving and Christmas. No word in that article on whether the Apple Sub-Notebook would be a premium or a entry priced deviced. If it was an entry priced deviced, It could be an interesting alternative to the Open Sourced EeePC that is looking more and more like it will never arrive. I still would much rather get the EeePC, which has been delayed to October now, but if the Mac was $400 or less that could be a compelling choice as well.

» Watched the pilot for Reaper. It was pretty good. I'd call it Ghostbusters meets Carear Opportunities. The pilot definitely had Kevin Smith's imprint on it. It will be interesting to see where it goes in episode two without Smith's involvement.

Comparing Reaper with Pushing Daisies, I perfer Pushing Daisies, which seems quirkier and more original. Reaper suffers a little from the Hero/Scooby-Gang paradigm that seems to infest so many adventure action shows since Buffy. Reaper is still a good show that I'll watch more of.

In other TV watching commentary-- I saw the pilot episodes of Sci-Fi Channel's Flash Gordon and AMC's Mad Men yesterday. Flash Gordon is very Smallvillish. Not very inspired casting, Ming is an ok villian but nowhere near commanding enough to be Ming the Merciless. I may eventually watch a couple more episodes but it's nothing I'm that interested in from just viewing the first episode.

The first episode of Mad Men I liked a little more. The 1950's Golden Age of Advertising setting I find very interesting. Nothing in the show seemed forced or too televisiony. It seemed from the first episode to be on par with a Showtime or HBO original series offering. With the new Fall Season starting next week, I'm not sure when I'll start watching more of Mad Men. But I will probably watch the whole season at some point.

Almost forgot (and it would be best if I did). I watched Back to You, Kelsey Grammers' new sitcom last night too. It was lame, about 2/3rd's of the way through I pulled the plug on it. You'd be better served by watching episodes of Good Morning Miami at least that show had more charm. Back To You comes across as a watered down, less intelligent Frasier. Maybe if Kelsey Grammer was playing a character that was married or divorced with kids (or even Grandkids) it might be a more interesting show, but there does come a point where actors can get a little too old to support the single leading man workplace romance formula. maybe I'll feel differently in 20 years, but the cast and set-up didn't work for me and overall the show just felt too cliche and sitcomy with a cast too old for it's premise.

» Yesterday I played with Google's Sharing Stuff web service. It's basically Google's take on Delicious or Digg. You can place a bookmarklet on your linkbar and then whenever you find a page you want to bookmark or share, you click that bookmarklet, add some comments and viola, page is shared via a personal Google sharing page or RSS feed. I toyed briefly yesterday with embedding the RSS feed of the Google Shared Stuff links into my blog below the Blog Alert Section, but it didn't end up fitting perfectly the way I'd like. I have a similiar service running on my home web server that I wrote from scratch, I may just convert that code to something that runs on my web providers server and create my own local solution on my site in the future. For now the Google Shared Stuff seems to be a good way to bookmark pages to read later on my cellphone, and I'll use their service in that regard.

» On the topic of Google. I played around with Google Docs new Presentation/Power-point clone recently. Very nice application. Not sure how much use I'll get out of it. So far it was only useful to create a Marquee/Menu board of shows to display on my media center computer in the living room, to give friends a list of shows to pick from on our weekly TV night last night. I could see some game night possibillities for it as well. It rounds out Google's office nicely. Makes the idea of getting a nice sleek low cost EeePC or Subnotebook even more appealling, as a device like that would be ideal to use Google Documents.

» Still on the topic of online applications, I also discovered Scriblink.com, a very easy to use online whiteboard. It requires no registration for you or your viewers and makes it very easy to email or IM a link for others to join your whiteboard session. Again, it's one of those things where most people do not have alot of group whiteboarding needs, but you do, it works very well.

» Previews Solicitations for December 2007 - I'm not going to do my rundown this month, I don't think I did last month either. But below are the links for mainly my own reference for when I fill out the next Previews order form. I'm still getting a good percentage of the core DCU titles. Almost no Marvel and a smattering of Independents:

DC Comics for December 2007, DC Direct for May 2008, Marvel Comics for December 2007

Fri 9/21/07 1:54pm #

Google Docs

Nice video that explains the benefits of Google Docs

Thurs 9/20/07 7:41am #

Superman Doomsday

I saw The DC Universe, direct to DVD movie: Superman Doomsday last night. It was very very good. The first 10 minutes or so were a little slow but after that it really gets moving and holds your interest. Excellent animation, excellent fight scenes, and a really good personal drama story too. I was pleased that they deviated from the comics and crafted a similiar yet original story with enough little twists that I didn't always know where the story was going. If you are a fan of any of Bruce Timm's DC animation, you'll enjoy this DVD, and if you saw Superman Returns and were disapointed in Superman not getting to hit anything, then this is your movie too. The movie is is set in it's own pocket continuity similiar too but not exactly the Superman Adventures/JLU universe, so it's very accessable to casual fans. Go get, go see, it's good.

(BTW: There is a Kevin Smith cameo in this movie, yes a Kevin Smith cameo, that is fantasticly funny if you are a Kevin Smith fan, Non-Smith-fans won't get the cameo joke but if you do... it's falling off the couch hilarious.)

Tues 9/18/07 8:57am #

Diamond Select Thor

Nice looking Thor action figure available in March 2008 (They should be on issue 9 of the new series by then.) Diamond Select is usually a little large in scale compared to Marvel Legends, but with Thor that might be a good thing. I'll probably get it.

Sun 9/16/07 1:59pm #

2007-2008 Fall TV

So I cracked open my Entertainment Weekly Fall TV Preview Issue and looked over the upcoming fall Network shows. Below are the shows I plan on at least checking out the first couple episodes of. Shows I'm excited about are in Red.

Have I missed something? What are you looking forward too? Comment below:

Sat 9/15/07 9:14pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

• Went to Big Boy this afternoon. I felt like getting some Big Boy Spaghetti and Fries as well as one of those garlic breads that come with it. Hadn’t been to a Big Boy in 6 months to a year. Good Stuff, but man does that sit solid in your stomach.

• Saw some Haloclix at Target. $10 Booster Packs, $25 Box Set and the $25 Warthog Box Set. The Warthog is huge, too big for a clix scale if you ask me. Makes sense in scale with the pieces, but not when you think of the board.

• Pulled an Asimov short story from 1956, The Last Question, out of the great internet cloud via the web browser on my cellphone, while I was doing my laundry today. I still haven’t quiet got over having all the information from the internet instantly available on something smaller and thinner than a fictional Star Trek communicator. BTW, the Asimov story was good, if you’ve got a few minutes. Read it.

• Last week I watched all but the first 15 minutes of The Devil Wears Prada on HBO. I remember having two friends talk about that film with me back when it first came out. I have one friend that really liked the movie, the other friend didn’t like the movie. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m going to have to ask each, why the strong reactions. I thought the movie was ok, but it didn’t make much of an impression on me.

• I created a new AOL IM account. I’ve long since lost the password that is saved on my older machines. Reason being, I wanted to use GAIM on my Linux box that I have to the side of my desk. The Linux box usually keeps my Email open at all times and I thought it would be nice to have the instant messaging up on the same screen too. Frees up the other computers screens for other tasks. Anyway, GAIM shows “Away” people as offline, instead of having that little yellow sticky note that AIM has. I’m running 2.0, I guess there is a 2.2 version out there. But you have to compile it, something I haven’t gotten into on Ubuntu Linux yet. I usually just install everything through Synaptic Package Manager.

• BTW, the Plugoo in the sidebar, chats with my IM software too.

• Beautiful Fall Day in West Michigan today. Absolutely Beautiful.

• Watched the pilot for Pushing Daisies last night. Very “Big Fish” meets “Andy Barker P.I.”. I liked it. It’s got a narrator technique that will probably get old if they don’t drop it, or tone it back a little. Other than that, smart mystery show, charming characters. Good stuff.

• All I’ve got for now.

Sat 9/15/07 4:10pm #

Bionic Woman

Comcast On Demand currently has the new Bionic Woman Pilot available. I had seen the earlier internet leaked copy a few weeks ago.

The largest change between the two is the switch of Bionic Woman's younger sister from a deaf interesting character played by a good actress, to a younger, "cuter" Natalie Portman-like, computer hacker that has a court order banning her from going near computers, played by someone much more teen-neutragena-teen-people-teen-cover-girl friendly. (They also got rid of the old german next-door neighbor.)

Oh yeah, they're lame-ing it up alright.

Besides the above turn for the worse. It seems like they quickened the pace, brightened up the scenes and TV-Actioned-up the background music.

The show still has promise, but the revamp between the first and second released pilots, isn't encouraging.

Sat 9/15/07 1:48pm #

Just read the new Thor 1 thru 3. Issue 3 was pretty good. Thor and Iron Man square off in a post-katrina New Orleans. Nice hero vs. hero battle, and it certainly establishes Thor as a badass. Actually I read issue 3 first and was intrigued enough to then go back and read 1 and 2. Issues 1 and 2 are pretty slow, in fact all three issues are very decompressed. I'd recommend waiting for the trade to read this one. I think JMS's writing/pacing will flow better in the larger format. Decompressed, but good stuff.

Fri 9/14/07 7:50pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

Pretty much no blogging all week. Bummer.

I've had plenty in my RSS news feeds to look over this morning, but much of it wasn't very interesting.

TV Night tonight with some friends.

Probably this weekend, I'll do a more lengthy Raandom Non-Sequiter post where I blather on about stuff.

Let's Go Surfing

» Another EeePC Review. Hopefully these are available soon. Nice size comparison with an iBook too. The small size is my main interest in this, along with Wi-Fi and Linux.

» Mac Plus Emulator Run a Mac Plus, on your PC, from a USB Stick. Pretty slick... I can't come up with very many practical uses for this, but it is neat.

» Do you wonder why you are not famous? This article (SFW, but the site and ads probably are NSFW)

» Nice Mini-Comic Stand Template

» Transformers Autobot and decipticon Pillows $20 ea.

Video

» I know everyone has already seen it, but the Iron Man trailer is fantastic!

» Mean Kitty Song

» IT Crowd Anti-Piracy Ad. NSFW

» Some casual around the house photos of Darth Vader discovered on Flickr.

» Miniscule the Insect Race.

» How many Spider-men can you fit into a Jamba Juice?

Tues 9/11/07 #

In my experience more often than not, people tend to ask questions to hear specific answers. The word: specific is key in that statement.

Mon 9/10/07 9:39pm #

Hmmm... No blogging today, maybe blogging tomorrow.

Sat 9/8/07 5:24pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

• Short post this weekend. I went through my weekly RSS feeds but I haven't really found a lot of stuff to share. All quiet on the internet front it would seem.

• I watched a couple of new fall show pilots this past week. Cavemen and Journeyman.

Cavemen is pretty much as bad as I had heard it was on the internet. There is nothing really worth commenting about it. The premise is that Cavemen are discriminated against and that those characters will be used to explore humor arising from race driven situations. Pretty bad.

Journeyman, starring Kevin McKidd from Rome was surprisingly good. Pacing was slow at times, but overall a very good show. Think: Quantum Leap combined with Butterfly Effect mixed with Millennium (1989). I will definitely be adding this to my watch list in the fall.

• Latest word on the $199 EeePC is that it will be $260, and closer to $300 if you want the built-in camera. Supposedly it will be available in late September.

• Tobey Maguire is producing and eyeing the lead role in a Live Action Robotech.

Let's Go Surfing

» Scans from the original Macintosh User Manual. Interesting.

» Mini-fig Scale Lego Transformers

» Spelljax is a very simple site that you can type text into and then spellcheck and correct your text with.

» Alex Ross Cover for DC Comics Hardcover Release of NBC's Heroes Comics

Sat 9/8/07 10:49am #

Y'know how I can tell something is really wrong? Here's one way: I find myself agreeing with Fox News.

Paramount Pictures is making a Live Action G.I. Joe Movie. Except, G.I. Joe is now going to stand for: Global Initiative Joint Operating Entity. G.I. Joe is going to be an International Organization.

Paramount is taking "The Real American Hero" line off. Think about that for a minute.

During a time of war, albeit one we should have never gotten into as a country, when American Military are Dying and getting wounded everyday, a U.S. media company is taking the "Real American Hero" label off of G.I. Joe in order to make a couple extra bucks in International ticket sales.

Go Capitalism!

Thurs 9/6/08 11:01am #

Google finally added Search to Google Reader. This is a most wonderful thing!

Tue 9/4/07 8:27am #

For the last four weeks I've been using a website freeshare.us to host my blog images. Previously I had been using google photos and flickr and some of my own hosting. What I liked about freeshare was an extension in Firefox tthat allowed you to right click on any image and upload it directly to freeshare, then they then gave you some html you post into your blog. It worked really slick.

Anyway, today I noticed they had a message on their site that they are closing down on the 15th. Bummer. Now I have 25 images to upload to Google Photos and then relink in old posts. Not too big a deal, but I'll miss that right click, upload, browser functionality of freeshare.

Mon 9/3/07 9:02pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

• So the end of the three day weekend is rapidly approaching. Can't say that I have much to show for it, but I'm not sure that's really an issue.

• Holiday 3 Day weekends are so much better than vacation days. Why? Because everyone at my office has them off. Unlike a vacation day where you are off and everyone else is still at work, on the holidays, no one is there. That means that unlike vacation days, there's no one at work right now stuffing my inboxes (virtual or physical) with stuff. This makes holidays much much more relaxing than vacation days.

• So I've been thinking lately: "What do you need relationships with other people for?" I'm talking at the most basic human levels, outside of the world of commerce.

What do you need relationships with other people for that can't satisfactorily be done by yourself alone in today's modern society? So far I've come up with Affection(/sex) and Conversation. A friend of mine added Sports. I thought hard about that, and although it doesn't seem as big as the other two, I couldn't discount that there is a need to interact with other people in purely non-productive and non-predictable ways on occasion. I shall however, expand that category of Sports slightly and call it Games. (Computers are making great in-roads to eliminating this category, but I'm not sure we're remotely close to them eliminating the entire category, so I'm leaving it in.)

So basically I'm proposing the intellectual concept that in current society, outside of the realms of commerce, you need relationships with other people for Affection, Conversation and Games. Everything else you can probably get from the mall, or off the internet after attaining a modest income.

Beyond the three categories above, at the moment I haven't come up with anything else after a few days of thought.

Chime in, in the comments if anything I've missed occurs to you.

Update 9/4 6:42am - After some additional thought last night, Agency: someone to act as your representative when ill or unavailable, could probably be put on the list too. So that brings the list to four: Affection, Conversation, Games and Agency.

• 1500 calories is way too easy to reach.

• My birthday is next month, it's one of those that's divisible by 5. I believe that I will be old enough to run for President of the United States. At this time however I have no intention on announcing my candidacy.

Movies

» Thank You For Smoking -- I watched this movie off the DVR today. Interesting film. Not a terribly well rounded drama, not quite a "docudrama" either, but it's got some good stuff in it. It's Daily-Showesk in a lot of ways. There are a lot of points the main character makes throughout the film that I found myself agreeing with (although I'm not sure that was the filmmakers intent.) In any case, it's a charming study in manipulation and conversation, and it gets you thinking about argument, debate and negotiation.

Bonus there's some nice scenes, that could have been nicer, with Katie Holmes (who has about as much to do in this movie as she did in Batman Begins.)

Let's Go Surfing

» Carded and loose pictures of Marvel Legends Fantastic Four Wave 1.

» Summer Meter - Summer is over, and we are 3% through fall and a little over 1% through all of non-summer at the time of this writing.

Mon 9/3/07 1:25pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Two new things in the side bar, both with Google Goodness.

One, is the Grand Central Call Me Button, you can use it to leave voicemail messages to me via your cellphone, landline, whatever.

Two, is a Custom Google Search box that searches my Blogs, Forum and whatever else I add in the future.

Let's Go Surfing

» Looking for a way to search your Google Reader feeds? I was and I found this method of exporting your OMPL file into a Custom Google Search works pretty good. It's a little techy, but doesn't take too long to set-up.

» New York Times Video Interview with Jonathan Coulton about Code Monkey. (from May 13th, 2007)

Video

» Vision of the future of online shopping from 1967.
via Paleo Future

» Nice Demo on folding a standard letter sized sheet of paper into a CD/DVD case.

» Orb looks interesting. It looks to be a Stickam/Youtube style of web service that allows you to stream Videos, Photos, Webcams, Television, and what-have-you over the internet. Below is a demo of it being used on the Wii.

» Weight Loss Via Photoshop. Probably NSFW.

» Build your own ICE Bulb

Sun 9/2/07 11:00pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Britney Spears has two new songs out on the internet. Gimme More and Cold as Fire. Gimme More is pretty standard Britney pop, probably would be fine in a dance club but I can't see why anyone would want to listen to it on the radio. Cold as Fire, is just lame. I'd have to think by now the Britney brand is damaged beyond repair (at least I hope so), I find it hard to believe that it would be possible for her to "come back" after the recent tabloid shenanigans of the last couple years.

I'm not going to link to the songs, but you can find them with a search on Youtube.

» Watched Superman Returns on HBO this evening. Been awhile since I saw it. Even slower paced than I rembembered and the letterboxed version sucks. But overall good, bummed that it looks like it's going to be so long until the next sequel.

» This weekend is moving much too fast.

Let's Go Surfing

» 500 years of painted female portraits morphed together.

» The Office: Summer Vacation. The first 4 weeks of episodes will be 1 hour long. Cool.

Sat 9/1/07 8:37pm #

Let's Go Surfing

» Flickriver looks like a nice way to view peoples Flickr Streams and Photos.

Videos

» Office Space Trailer, re-cut to make the movie look like a Drama.

» Awesome Shadow Puppetry Video.

» Content Aware Image Resizing. This is an incredibly promising new technology. Can't wait to see this in Photoshop someday.

Sat 9/1/07 1:32pm #

It's September, and a long weekend, hooray.

Link posts etc. coming later today probably.