Twitters and the lols • The Twitter appears to completely down this afternoon. The fail whale says it will be down for a couple hours. How sad.

You can still use search.twitter.com (formerly called Summize) and search on your user name to see if you missed any comments or anything. I very much like that those two services are seperate, here's hoping that even though they've merged, they stay that way.

I saw that a twitter friend was making sure I made good on my promise to put up a lol picture of my cat. So here's one:

Oh sure, it's not terribly original, but there's something to be said for the classics, and at least I went to the trouble of microwaving up a mini-cheeseburger :)

Computer Woes • Now with less woe! As mentioned earlier, my main desktop computer died on Monday. I found myself a nice refurbished Dell with Windows XP Pro (Didn't want to make the change to Vista yet.) online Tuesday and it was delivered last night. I put my basic graphics suite of software on it all ready, added Firefox etc. It'll be awhile before I get it fully tricked out, but at least I have basic functionality back!

Meanwhile • Pretty straightforward weekend planned beyond that. Off to get a haircut right now. Then tackling a little organization project in my home studio. After that, we'll see what the night brings.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p667 Movie thoughts

Note: this is a reprint of an email I sent some co-workers in response to the New Christian Bale Terminator Teaser trailer that was being sent around

I’m cool with Batman now being John Conner, but isn’t there a TV series going on simultaneously with this right now?

Feels a little like prequels within rebooted prequels.

Some of that constant “retelling reboot” un-originality that has been plaguing comics for years seems to be creeping into the movies now too.

On it’s own merits the movie looks good enough. But I’m getting burned out somewhat on retreads.

(Along those lines, even though I’m looking forward to seeing the Dark Knight tonight, there’s still a little edge missing because, It’ll probably be similar to comics I’ve seen, plus I’ve seen the Joker on screen before and I’m so familiar with the characters that there are some beats, even having avoided the previews that I know they’ll have to hit.)

Pixar seems to be the only studio making original films now, and only every-other-one of those is targeted beyond the toddler set.

blah]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p666 Honesty and Openness

I sort of find myself in a world lately where everyone seems to be obscuring their feelings on even the smallest topics. It seems that honesty and directness are seen as negatives in all regards.

Has that been how it's always been? I've had that sense before of course (I've also always felt more of that current undertow in Grand Rapids than Metro Detroit.), but the last couple years it seems to have gotten even more prominent. Is it a regional thing. Is it a shift in the political climate. Is it just me?

If one has to avoid people-- or tighten your circle down to a triangle or a single individual or no one at all-- If you have to obfuscate-- If one has to abandon all honesty, directness and openness in pursuit of ones ends? What does that say more about? The environment? The circumstances or the individual?

And are the gains worth what has been given up?

It's not a thing. I can deal. But it's a little sad. I feel bad for these people that live that way.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p665
FINAL CRISIS ROGUES REVENGE #1 (OF 3) $3.99
FLASH #242 $2.99
TRINITY #7 $2.99
TINY TITANS #6 $2.25

According to Diamond Shiiping Schedule

Wow, small week.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p664 Computer Woes

I mentioned on Twitter yesterday that my main PC died. At first I thought it was the power supply, but after trying a second power supply, it doesn't look like that is the problem. The computer had been randomly restarting, and various random programs would just quit for the last few weeks. It was enough to be annoying but infrequent enough not to cause major problems as long as I hit the save button regularly. I ran multiple virus checkers, etc. but didn't come up with anything. No errors out of the ordinary when running defrag or chkdsk or any of that sort.

My running hypothesis is that having several extra cards inserted and keeping the USB ports maxed out and the box powered on 24/7 for a few years may have just been too taxing for some part of the power system or something along those lines.

Fortunately, I still have a half dozen computers-- most of which are at various stages of antiquity and have been given new life with Linux distros-- that can get on the net.

While adding a couple needed apps to one of the most recent of those "backups" I had another interesting failure. The keyboard didn't work. Random letters and cntrl keys etc, would show up on the screen when typing on it.

I plugged in a newer keyboard and no problems.

So for those keeping track at home. Minus one computer, and now strangely enough, minus one keyboard. I don't think I've ever had an entire keyboard fail before. That's a new one.

Hopefully these things don't die in threes.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p663 Attention, Channels and Twitter

I've been really enjoying Twitter. You can find some very interesting random people on it. However, some people use it differently, than I do, I have found.

Case in point, I have been following a fairly interesting young designer. Lots of enthusiam, lots of interesting links. Increasingly, lots has become the keyword. Over a dozen posts an hour. Most of them links.

I find Twitter is nice for "breaking news" and keeping in touch with how people's days unfold, but those that use Twitter as a link blog, I quickly find just annoying. I'm guessing from these Twitter link-bloggers there is an intoxication to seeing over 100 people in your follow list and knowing that when you publish a sentence it will be forced in front of 100 people. But Twitter has icons, and after awhile if someone publishes too many micro interuptions of non-urgent information in an urgent attention channel like Twitter, you start to ignore their icon. If you are busy you don't have time to click on someone's 10/12 links an hour, and it becomes annoying that your other Twitter friends have been scrolled out of the window by these "Twitter-Time-Hogs".

There comes a certain point, where you get tired of seing your Twitter scroll dominated by one person's icon too.

Basically I reached that point with a Twitter Link Blogger today and saddly I "unfollowed" her. She has some good content, and because of that I subscribed to the RSS feed of her Twitter instead. Since she was treating Twitter like a blog, I put her into the attention channel I read blogs in-- Google Reader. I can still see her content now, in my Google Reader, but unfortunately there will no longer be any of the real time conversation. And that's too bad, but really that's the best thing to do for Twitter abusers, as there is only so much attention to parse out in a day.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p662 Let's Go Surfing

» Symfony looks like a very cool way to develop PHP web apps.

» Aware A-Pad $300 Convertible Tablet PC? This could be very very cool.

If this isn't vaporware, then this could very well be ideal. processor is very light, but with linux, it should still run a web browser and GIMP very easily, and that's really all I'm interested in primarily with a device like this. (PDFs and CBZs as well but that should be easy enough to run too.)

This is supposed to be out in two months. I'll mark my calendar for this one.

From Engadget:

Aware Electronics now looks set to somewhat rectify. It's apparently now set to jump into the game with this 7-inch number, which packs an Aday5G 800MHz X86 processor (all bets are off on that one), 4GB of NAND Flash, built-in WiFi and Bluetooth (with optional 3G and GPS), an integrated webcam, dual USB ports, an SD card slot, and the LINOS Linux distribution for an OS.

» Linux Media Center Edition Demo video Slick.

» 5 minute G.I. Joe Cartoons ala Clone Wars, aimed at adults. Now you Know, and Knowing is half the battle.

» Very good analysis of Hancock on io9. Don't read it unless you've seen the movie though, as spoilers abound.

» simplynoise.com is a flashbased, configurable white noise generator. Cool.

» Colorpic is a nice freeware color picker pallet maker.

» According to this MakeUseOf article, Microsoft has some new software called SteadyState that locks down and restores your Windows PC after each reboot. Looks like a slick way to combat malware and damaged program files/settings. I might try this the next time I get a new Windows PC.

» gifmake.com, Making animated gifs couldn't be easier. This is a slick and easy to use web app.

» I haven't tried this, but supposedly you can emulate/run Windows on a Mac using this freeware program.

Video

» Eee PC modified with a touchscreen. Nice.

I'm a Marvel, I'm a DC, I'm Hellboy, by Justsomerandomguy.

I'll probably see a matinee Hellboy II this Sunday.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p660 Movies

Some quick movie thoughts on some recent catches.

Wall-E - Very sweet movie. Also terribly subversive pro-environment, anti-consumer economy for a movie produced by Disney that will be sold in Wal-marts. The opening of the movie is a little like Wil Smith's I am Legend, but if it starred the son of R2D2 and Johnny No. 5. Not a movie I'd reccomend people take little kids to, not that there is anything objectionable in it, but mostly because I think it's near-silent-film nature might be challenging for the pre-school set. I highly reccomend it to teens and adults that like good science fiction or (and I hate to use this word again) sweet movies- It's just such a sweet little movie, you can't describe it without that word. (I mean Wall-E and Eve, how cute are they *aww* ) Good Stuff Go See.

"Red's the new Blue!"

Batman Gotham Knight DVD - this is the direct to DVD anime compilation disk. It's very similiar in execution to the Animatrix DVD that came out with the Matrix sequels. It's a series of Anime shorts by different animation houses. All the shorts more or less tie-in together. Some are more complete than others. All have interesting looks, but overall, I was a little underwhelmed. The opening animation has 4 kids in a skatepark tell their interpretations of an encounter with Batman, this first short is so similiar to the famous "Dark Knight" episode of the Batman Animated Series that it just threw me off for the rest of the "film". Kevin Conroy the "Batman Animated" voice of Batman ties all the various different shorts together somewhat with his awesome vocal delivery, but there are some styles in this film that hearing Kevin Conroys' voice matched with the wildly (at times) non-traditional Batman depictions threw me off as well.

I'd reccomend this one to Batman die-hards, or fans of Animation. Casual Bat-fans might just want to rent it or skip it all together. Interesting flick, but best if you are already a fanboy.

Blood Diamonds - Flipping through the channels last night and I stumbled on the opening of this movie, it grabbed me and (once Jennifer Connlley stepped on screen) held my interest through to the end. Leo DiCaprio as a believable very awesome tough guy mans man action hero-- seriously who would have thought?

Rich backgrounds, and settings: visually, politically, and emotionally. This is a movie that manages to be both highly engaging and highly educational at the same time, no easy feat.

And then of course there's Jennifer Conlley who gives a great performance in this film too. (But take that with a grain of salt, because really-- I'd watch a sequel to Career Opportunities with Jennifer Conlley, even if it was just her dressed and riding the Penny Pony for 90 minutes.)

Anyway, Blood Diamonds, if you're like me and somehow managed to miss this one. Rent or seek it out on your premium cable channels, it's good stuff.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p659
ACTION COMICS #867 $2.99
BOOSTER GOLD #1000000 $2.99
DETECTIVE COMICS #846 RIP $2.99
GREEN ARROW BLACK CANARY #10 $2.99
FINAL CRISIS REQUIEM #1 $3.99
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #17 $2.99
TRINITY #6 $2.99
WONDER WOMAN #22 $2.99
TOYFARE #133 MARVEL SECRET INVASION CVR $4.99

GREEN LANTERN SER 3 CYBORG SUPERMAN AF
GREEN LANTERN SER 3 GREEN LANTERN BATMAN AF
GREEN LANTERN SER 3 SINESTRO AF
GREEN LANTERN SER 3 STAR SAPPHIRE AF

According to Diamond Comics Shipping List ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p658 Good Morning Monday

Let's start the week off with a Techno Chicken.

Saw the below documentary on Boing Boing. It's not intentionally funny... but it is slightly amusing in it's delivery. Two parts, each are a 5 to 6 min long.

Is it just the toy makers that require that the batsuit get progressively more intricate with each sequel?

As to the costume Batman... Why so... complicated?

Batman Begins compared to The Dark Knight

The news stations seem to be working very hard to prop up McCain right now. I don't see that as a vast right wing conspiracy however. I do see it as a desperate attempt to keep this presidential race feeling like more of a neck and neck contest, so that they can continue to milk the cheap news programing drama it contains for them. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p653 Random Babbling about Comics

Just read DC's Trinity Issues 3, 4 and 5 and also Final Crisis #2.

Both series are pretty bad.

Trinity's first couple issues were ok, but that multi-week brawl, seemed stretched out abit didn't it? And the back-up Tarot story? Blah.

Final Crisis #2. Seems like a book set in Grant Morrison's own distorted DCU shouldn't have got a Crisis label. Gives it more weight than it should have. I'm almost a year behind on most DC books, but seriously, the GL's have really been F'd up. GL's are not cops, that metaphor looks like it's been applied way to strongly the past year. It's disappointing to see an interesting mythology get trivialized to the level it appears to have gotten to from the sampling I've gotten in Final Crisis.

Bla Bla Bla, I know only comics etc. etc. but for DC's two big flagship series, these do disappoint.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p652 Hancock

I saw the 7pm "day before" screening of Hancock Tuesday night. Overall I liked the movie, but as I've seen elsewhere on the net, the movie didn't quite seem to know what it wanted to be Drama or Comedy. Basically the premise is Drunk, Asshole Superman who saves the day while generally making it even worse. He meets a do-gooder suburban PR dad type, and together they set out to reform Hancock.

There are some serious bits in this movie but they are overshadowed by the "My Ex Girlfriend is a Superhero" style gags. In a lot of ways this movie is the male version of that one.

There's also a twist toward the end that seems interesting at first but ultimately doesn't seem to go where I thought it should. The movie also suffers from a lack of a good villain.

As far as summer popcorn fare goes, this is a good movie. As cinema, probably not so much. If you are on the fence and are feeling the wallet pinch from a summer glut of Superhero movies, I'd say wait and watch this one on DVD.

The Onion Movie

I watched The Onion Movie this morning. Some friends brought it over and lent it to me last night. Liked it overall. It was a smarter Scary Movie style flick. Not as smart or snarky as the website is generally, but in a week without Stewart or Colbert, I liked it.

Let's Go Surfing

» There's a new eVite type service that the net is buzzing about. Anyvite.com. I tried it, it was dead easy simple. I liked it. I also like the way you can upload pictures, link to videos, and leave comments. I'll probably use it on the next get-together that I'll need something like that for.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p650
BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM #1 $2.25
BATMAN #678 RIP $2.99
MANHUNTER #32 $2.99
NIGHTWING #146 $2.99
SUPERGIRL #31 $2.99
TOR #3 (OF 6) $2.99
TRINITY #5 $2.99

FX #5 (OF 6) $3.99
STEPHEN COLBERTS TEK JANSEN #2 (OF 5) $3.99

According To Diamond Comics Shipping List]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0807.php#p649 Middleman

I wanted to like ABC Family's Middleman. Sadly I didn't. Couldn't really even make all the way through the first episode. Sort of Men in Black meets My Name is Earl. It just didn't work. Cast, dialogue, pretty much everything, while earnest just fell flat for me.

It's too bad really, I was hoping to have it fill an open slot on my Summer TV night schedule. *sigh*]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p648

So the first sortof Meet the Press without Tim Russert today. I say sortof because A. they weren't in the studio, and B. Half the show was an interview with two Western Govenors of the same party that really have no presence on the national stage right now.

It's understandable that Brokaw didn't play Russert style gotcha with those Governors because basically, you've got to know who someone is before gotcha is any fun.

There was a slightly more assertive interview of Governor Arnold "I'll Be Back" (I'm not going to try to spell his last name.) But I'm still pretty sure that Brokaw is going to come across as a lightweight in this format compared to Russert. Of course it just may require a little time for Brokaw to get up to speed on this style show. Time will tell. (But next week won't, because next week, if it's Sunday it's Wimbelton? *sigh*)]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p646 Ikea Lamp

Good Stuff. Click below, Watch the video.

I would totally buy one of these micro electric cars. Although they should probably make it just hair bit longer so you could stuff a second person in it, still if it was cheap enough, I'd still be game.

My only worry with something like this would be having it get stolen. They would have to have have some sort of lo-jack bluetooth gps alert thing that would call your cellphone if this thing was moving and you weren't in it, because I could totally see a couple guys in a Ford Ranger being able to steal something like this out of a person's apartment parking lot. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p644 American Batman Psycho

I watched American Psycho earlier today. It's the first time I've actually seen the whole movie. I had seen bits and pieces of it before, but never the whole thing in one sitting.

In the movie Christian Bale plays a Wall Street Hot Shot who also happens to be a serial killer. You can't help but wonder what a Batman Begins/American Psycho mash-up would be like, and lo and behold a quick Google/Youtube search revealed that a fan trailer of such a thing does exists. It's two years old according to Youtube but it's new to me, and maybe to you too.

Hmm... looking like it's going to be another light blogging weekend afterall. Flipped through the last couple weeks of starred RSS feeds. Didn't see much that excited be toward comment.

No great topics to think about this week either, well actually I have some things on my mind, 5 or 6 individuals actually that I've been analyzing my mental models of, and then sort of bumping those models together to see if there's any overlaps or collisions. But being that they are real people, it's probably best not to mentally deconstruct them in a public blog forum-- that would lack a certain decorum.

Other than that... how about we talk about the weather? Right now at this moment in West Michigan we're on that awkward edge where the air conditioning feels too cold, but when it's off, it's just a little too warm.

It's a quiet weekend once again, seems most people are out and about here and there. I would imagine that next weekend will be much the same.

Speaking of the upcoming week. I have almost all of it off, and I'm very much looking forward to that. No monumental plans but there are several movies I want to see, and I look forward to putting my alarm clock in a drawer for a good while. I always enjoy that.

Listening to Coldplay's new cd right now, I have no idea what that says about me or means. I'm about the furthest thing you can get from a musical aficionado. My interests lie firmly in the cerebral and the visual realms, the world of the auditory rarely entrances me, but I saw Coldplay on The Daily Show, and I saw earlier this week that they were a hot topic on Summizes' Twitter chart. So I'm listening to the cd-- fairly indifferently frankly. It's ok. Not a bad background CD for doing other things I suppose.

I replaced my little self made staus message at the top right corner of my blog with a Twitter feed instead. I found I hadn't been using the blog specific one much at all the last couple months and I thought putting the latest twitter up there would be a better use of that space. (yeah it's going to be duplicated on the current page, but it adds a little freshness to the archives for those people hitting the blog via the googles)

I made a slight change to my posting software for my blog today to. It'll probably encourage more frequent short posts, but time will tell.

There's way to much talk about blogging in this section isn't there? But if not talking about blogging on a blog then where should one talk about blogging?

Let's Go Surfing

» Picjuice is a nice basic picture resizer, cropper, flipper, contrast adjuster etc.

» It seems like every week there is a new music finder/search app of some sort, WorryAboutYou is this weeks apparently. It's probably the cleanest and simplest I've seen yet. Search, Play or Download. Not sure why the service is named after the 4400 theme song, but give it a try anyway.

» Played around with the iGoogle hompage a little. One useful application widget thaey have for it is "Sticky Notes". There are several Sticky Notes, but I added the one actually made by Google. This sticky note application is useful because you can quickly paste text or links to it, and you don't even have to hit save. Then you can jump over to another computer (like a work computer or a laptop and retrieve the text off your iGoogle page) Sure you could just email yourself, but that will take what 3 or 4 clicks? this just requires clicking in the box and hitting paste.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p641 Wanted

As I twittered and Flickr Video posted earlier, I saw WANTED today. It was a good summer popcorn movie and I liked it alot. I'd call it a combination of Office Space and Matrix and Jumper. The Office Space portions were unexpected and delightful. I'm thinking it would be a fun project just to edit out all the action and put together a film of just those sections. My recommendation: If you were on the fence on this one, hop off, go see, at least a matinee. I've seen mention and heard here and there that the movie is nothing like the comic. Not something I really mind, but having seen the film, I'll probably try to check the comic out now too.

Video Blogging

Haven't seen a whole lot much interesting on the net the last couple weeks, still there's bound to be quite abit of stuff in my RSS feeds, so I may try another video blog this weekend. No promises though to the 6 or 7 of you out there that might watch that if I do. ;)

Wow... I was going to blog a little more, but I think bringing the baby laptop into my bedroom and starting this post on the end of the bed was not a good idea, suddenly I'm very sleepy. So I shall Bid adieu for now. Night Internets. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p640

Fucking shame ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p639 If it's Sunday, It's Meet the Press

I watched Meet the Press today.

It was “moderated” by Brian Williams.

Given that Biden and Gramm were the guests it was pretty straight forward. Very little need for a “moderator” since you can just wind those two up and just watch them go.

Brian Williams is not, however, a good host for Meet the Press in my opinion. There are two things that Brian Williams likes to do. One: Brian Williams wants you to like him. Two: Brian Williams likes to find a way to inject himself into the story-- as he did with the “personal” story about having just came from Afghanistan. Those are fine qualities for a News Anchor, but they work poorly in the more contentious political setting of Meet the Press.

At the end of the broadcast, Williams mentioned that Tom Brokaw would be serving as Moderator of Meet the Press, starting next week, through the Presidential Campaign. Not a bad choice. It delays the “replacement” backlash situation that NBC would have found themselves in. You also can’t question the news legitimacy of a program hosted by Tom Brokaw.

Tom Brokaw might run into some of the same desire for likeability and self-involvement that plagued Williams outing today, probably to a lesser extent, but it’s hard to think of another choice within the NBC umbrella that could step up. It’s possible that 6 or 7 months ago they could have went with David Gregory but after spending the last few months turning him into Anderson Cooper, well that option seems gone.

John King from CNN might not be a bad choice. He’s used to writing on screens, has Washington street cred, and can’t possibly be enjoying being turned into a Vanna White character drawing on touch screen monitors all day.

It will be interesting to see where they go with the show.

PS: That "commercial" at the end with General Electric siphoning off good will toward Russert directly onto their GE logo, seemed tacky to me. NBC tributes are fine. Reminding us that NBC is owned by a huge part of the Military/Industrial complex that also sells toasters and that we should love GE because "they" loved Russert-- tacky. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p638 This evening’s screw around project.

I bought a cheapo Digital Camcorder by manufacturer Sakar. It’s tiny and $30. It runs on two AAA batteries and unfortunately requires those batteries to retain it’s stored images and videos (why is it all cheapo Digital Cams are like that?)

The camera mounts as a USB drive and the video files are stored on the unit as .ATX. I wasn’t able to get anything to play the .ATX directly. Now of course the camera comes with a proprietary converter program that converts the ATX to AVI, but seriously where’s the fun in using that? Plus that Windows program, when converting, seems only to read the files directly from the camera and not from the harddrive, and what if I want to copy the files to my Linux Eee PC? Anyway like I said, this is a perfect screw around project.

I did some basic hunting around Google and didn’t find anything about ATX. Then I ended up opening the ATX in a Hex Editor and saw that it is actually an mjpg. I have no idea what an mjpeg is but it certainly sounds like it would be a motion jpeg of some sort and a little more google hunting confirmed that.

While it’s cool to be able to play back the video, ideally I’m going to want to get it into a format I can edit. I tried Virtual Dub and a half dozen others and nothing worked.

Then I stumbled upon a neat feature of VLC during some googling. If VLC can play it, it will transcode a file to another file format. Hot Dog, back in business. I went through the Wizard option in VLC’s file menu and was able to convert the mjpg into a mpeg proper.

Now I haven’t mentioned that the mjpg when I played it in VLC went really really fast have I? It seems that there is no frame rate saved with this particular file. Now that it is an Mpeg though, I opened the file in Virtual Dub where I was able to set the frame rate at 10 frames per second, which is what the manual for the camera stated was the capture rate.

Lo and behold, the file played back at a normal rate! Hooray screw around project a success (well mostly a success, I wasn’t able to get the audio track to play during this particular process, but hey you can’t have everything. Maybe I’ll mess around with it further in the future and be able to discover a way to get the audio out too.)

Course, I don’t know that I’ll actually Use this cheapo camera either. I have a Flip and my cellphone shoots video, so it wasn’t exactly needed in the first place. But I do so love tinkering, so it was a fun device to play with and it gave me a chance to learn about a half dozen different things about working with video so all and all… good tinkering project. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p637 Random Non-Sequiters

Thoughts rolling around in my head today, some of this is growing out of my ruminations on beliefs earlier this week.

Ideas

Ideas may only have as much weight as the person who hears them, gives them. The idea has to play off of existing beliefs, or before presenting the idea, you need to remove the blocking belief that prevents the new idea's adoption, or find another belief that supports the idea that supercedes the blocking belief. Then the idea will be seen as good. (whether it actually is good of course is immaterial to this discussion)

Some beliefs are difficult to change and the merit of the idea will not rise to their abandonment.

To weigh an idea's merit, you need to either have training or experience to understand the idea's reasoning (ie: be predisposed to it's belief based on beliefs rising from past experience or understanding.), or you need to trust the person presenting the idea (In that instance, even if you do not believe the idea, you believe in person presenting it).

You can trust the person presenting the idea, if that person is seen as an authority, or if that person has a positive present position in relationship to the idea in question.

One can be an authority if an authority grants one authority, or if you achieve authority based on others past experiences with ones interactions on a given topic.

One can be seen to have a “positive present position” if people envy or covet things, situations, abilities or outcomes one has.

Playing to the test

I was speaking with some people at work today about why a process wasn't working. It was my position that the process wasn't working because the offending participants were “playing to the test” and that if we wanted the results to change, we needed in this instance to change “the test”.

In the situation at hand, the conflict was arising because people were playing toward a numbers (sales) test as opposed to an “aesthetic and makes sense” test. In theory the latter aesthetic/sense test has everyone's agreement, but in practice it is only the former that has metrics and accountability in any predictable way attached to it.

It is therefore the numbers/sales test that everyone focuses on, as it has well established/accepted numeric metric-- even if all would individually agree that those metrics are not based on a true reality. The Numbers/Sales metric are an “agreed” upon metric by which people can be “fairly” judged), the latter, Aesthetic/Sense has no process of accountability, no fairness standard and thereby no test for people to “play to”.

If you want to change the results, you have to change the questions asked that people are judged by. You have to change the test. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p636 Comic Picks for 6/18/08

BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #8 $2.99
BIRDS OF PREY #119 $2.99
BRAVE AND THE BOLD #14 $2.99
CATWOMAN #80 $2.99
FLASH #241 $2.99
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #22 $2.99
SUPERMAN BATMAN #49 $2.99
TANGENT SUPERMANS REIGN #4 (OF 12) $2.99
TEEN TITANS YEAR ONE #5 (OF 6) $2.99
TRINITY #3 $2.99

SHOWCASE PRESENTS SER 1 HAWKMAN ACTION FIGURE
SHOWCASE PRESENTS SER 1 Jonah Hex ACTION FIGURE

According to Diamond Comics shipping List]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p635 Beliefs

I'm thinking alot about beliefs this week. Not religious beliefs per se, but instead, beliefs of all kinds. Beliefs that say puppies are good, the sky is blue, the future will be better than the present.

I listened to a Google Talk this past week, the speaker's name escapes me at the moment. The quote that stuck in my mind from this talk centered on negotiation and persuasion was: "I'll believe your facts when your facts reflect my beliefs"

That line has really resonated with me this week. And I'm spending alot of time thinking through that concept at present.

It's especially worth contemplating in an age where people can choose to live in a world that only reflects back their beliefs.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p634 Video Blog

Mentioned Links:
Beema Video Avatars of your voice • Sumo Omni Chair • Obama Pound • Adobe Air for Linux • What Do you use to take photographs?

Poor Computer to Text Translation

I ramble on about the "cutting edge" of web applications and social networking tools etc. quite abit. To some extent I believe it becomes white noise to my friends and acquaintances when I turn on that particular topical spigot. I haven't really broken down concisely my facination with information distribution and participation on the web. Maybe that's something I should spend a little time getting succinct on.

In anycase this article on TechCrunch manages to have some of the same emotional resonance for me in this realm.

Further reflection-- maybe it's the promise of the unmediated decimation of information of all types instantly available at anytime, anywhere on any topic that is so exciting to me.

I have a vacation from work coming up. Some people have asked me where I'm going, others have asked me what projects I'm going to work on. I'm really not interested in any of those questions. At present the vacation time will most likely be a suspension of obligation and an opprtunity to tinker with and reflect on the posibillities of connected and fuly documented world.

... but basically, I'm going to think and play.

An answer most likely to be met with stares I imagine.

Let's Go Surfing

» Summize Pretty cool way to get your finger on the pulse of real time topic discussion happening over twitter. You can also do an RSS feed of the searches, which opens up exciting possibillites too.

» New York Times article about xkcd

» Snapcasa.com Easy to use Website JPEG Snapshotting service. Looks like you have to register firt to use it, which doesn't seem worth it to me for web snapshots. But if you need to do alot of these, it looks like a good site.

» Siteshooter is a freeware windows app that also does website screencaptures.

» Sortmylist.com Perform various list sortting and text replace activities on an uploaded or cut and paste file.

» Steve Jobs Papercraft and here is the download PDF

» 2D Driving Simulator on Google maps. Pretty entertaining for about 5 minutes. Needs joystick support though.

» Hotpads.com fun way to look at home and rental prices. Input your city and sate and they give you a fun, easy to use flash interface.

» Cool Little Loft

» Freesound.org has lots of free sounds you can use. Neat.

» TwitterLocal.net is a great way to find local Twitter people in your area.

» MakeUseOf has a nice round up of Free File hosts

» Gears of War Action Figures - I haven't played Gears of War, but these toys still look cool.

» Why it hurts to seel your stuff. It's all about the insula.

» Asus seems to have abandoned the entry level pricepoint position of their Eee PC but Dell seems to be taking up the torch. This September they are rolling out the Dell E a $299 8.9" Screen Mininotebook available with Linux or WinXP. Article reports that the device also has an instant on Linux on top of the installed OS as well. Nice.

» Google has alot of products

» Just noticed that Google has a Windows Desktop Client for Google Talk too it's still a Google Labs product.

Videos

» Bill Maher's Religulous

» Camspace, control any PC game with a Webcam and any object.

» Zoom, Pan, Throw, Firefox Mobile Interface Vimeo Video at the link too.

» WWDC 2008 Apple Steve Jobs Keynote edited down to 60 seconds.

Here are some random concepts I'm contemplating this morning, in no particular order or strata of importance:

What happens after you win? What is your victory plan? After you get everything you want, how will you spend your time? Will you just sit around polishing your trophies and admiring your headlines? Is that the plan? What's the “occupation” going to look like after the “war”?

When do the wars end and the peace begin? (metaphor)

What is it that is not known?

Ambition for ambition's sake? Who does your ambition benefit?

Seeking compliments and confirmation or comments and criticism?

Is there one way the world should be or are there many ways the world is? If there are many, then they are not going to be in agreement and you will have conflict.

If there is only one truth, and conflict can be eliminated through process, organization and understanding throughly that truth by all involved, then the world you are perceiving is far different from the historical record.

Manage, don't eliminate conflict.

Conflict drives change, generates ideas. Conflict is not always man against man but often man against self, and man against nature.

Gravity is gravity. But people are something all together different, they are not predictable on the timescale and numbers we are experiencing them on. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p629 Video Blogging

*Note: I learned after I made the video that the new Youtube Annotations only work on the Youtube site right now. They do not work when you embed the videos on another site (like this one) So, um all that clicking I talk about? it ain't going to work from the embeded video above.

Mentioned Links:
Kinkos is now: Fed Ex Office • Acrobat.com • Aiptek Pocket Projector • Green Lantern Movie • iCall Seamless VOIP on iPhone • Everystockphoto • Balmer Predicts Death of Printed Media • Youtube Annotations! • FYE Buy Music in store for your iPod •

Mentioned Images:

Let's go Surfing

• Very nice round up of FREE PC anti malware/spyware apllications on MakeUseof.com

• MakeUseOf.com also has a nice round-up of Opensource/freeware alternatives to the ADobe Creative Suite

• Still another great list from MakeUseOf.com this time a list of Windows Media Center alternatives ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p628 Video Blog

I once again talk about a bunch of links to random stuff I find in this week's RSS feeds.

Sound is better this time, but the excitement and production values otherwise are about the same :)

Mentioned Links:
First Sale Doctrine 100 years old • Emily chan on Plurk • Asus Digital Photo Frame also 2nd Monitor • Content Spewing • Gigabyte Budget Convertible Nettop • Asus Eee Box • Time Warner Metered Bandwidth • $70 Eee PC Touchscreen hack • Flip Mino • Pandora on Adobe Air • Goosh - Command Line Google Interface • Life in a Cube • Location Technologies Primer • MyPictr • External USB SATA Drive Dock • Qik on Windows Mobile Platform • Asus Eee Monitor • Polaroid Zink Pogo Wireless Mini Printer

Discussed Images:

Let's Go Surfing

• Katie Cook (katiecandraw) draws Muppets Animal and a sexy Cheetah too.

• Paper Windows Windows projected onto sheets of paper. (Youtube)

• John Hodgeman (I'm a PC) reviews the Kirby Fourth World Omnibus.

• Greys Anatomy's Baily: Star Wars Speech (video)

• Copy Handler Freeware program makes copying large files much easier. Good Stuff.

• Sensible Units Convert boring units to real objects as you type.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p627 Geek computer fun

I've just had a nice geeky lunch in the work cafeteria.

I made my first Linux Shell scripts just now. Pretty basic, but still fun if you haven't done one. Eon's ago I've made DOS batch files, and this is more or less the same thing, but it sound much more fun when you have the word Linux in the statement doesn't it?

I made one script that Launches another script that turns a loopback on that allows my Eee PC webcam to work with Flash video.

Then I installed cURL, which is magic I don't yet fully understand. cURL is a command line web interface thingy near as I can tell, the full scope and brilliance of which is not fully comprehended by me at the moment, I'm sure. but what cURL did let me do is make a script that submits a Formated Message to Twitter that will also be interpreted by my Websiite PHP code to put my Stickam LIVE window on the top of my blog.

So essentially I made one script/icon to click on that turns on the camera and a second script/icon to click that puts the stickam viewer widget on top of my blog. I suppose I could make it one script, but I don't always want my camera on my blog when it's on, so i'll leave it two scripts for now.

So what did you do for lunch?]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p626 » Picked up the Heroes Wave 1 at Toys R Us today. First impression, lots of messenger bags and sculpted hoods :)

Actually they are all very nice figures and also in very good scale with DCD figures. Articulation for all the figures except Claire is pretty good too.

Good stuff, I'll probably get Wave 2 as well.

Heroes Cheerleader and Dr. Suresh

Heroes Sylar and Peter

Heroes: Hiro

Heroes Back of Card

Heroes Wave 1

Heroes Wave 1

Heroes with Smallville

Buffy, Clair and Mary Jane

Geek Fav Actors

Nightcrawler and Hiro
Bamf!

Cloak and Hiro

Asian Heroes

Parasite with Sylar and Peter

Healing Factor!

Oh No-- Sylar has Captain America's Powers!

eh, What's Up Doc!
Hmm.. you try coming up with someone to picture with Suresh.

Darkseid and Thanos

There was also a request to picture the Mattel Orion with this Darkseid as well... sorry about that not being there but I have that figure boxed away at the moment. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p624
ALL NEW ATOM #24 $2.99
DETECTIVE COMICS #845 $2.99
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #16 $2.99
MANHUNTER #31 $2.99
NIGHTWING #145 $2.99
ROBIN SPOILER SPECIAL #1 $3.99
SUPERGIRL #30 $2.99
TOR #2 (OF 6) $2.99
TRINITY #1 $2.99
ASTONISHING X-MEN SKETCHBOOK $2.99
KICK ASS #3 (MR) $2.99
PROJECT SUPERPOWERS #3 (OF 7) PI

According to Diamond Comics Shipping List]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p623 Rubble

» I noticed that the Stripmall with the Familly Fare and Value City on 44th and Byron Center has been reduced to rubble.

Video below:

Check out the video below:

I'm trying my hand at a little video blogging. I think I may have found a fairly quick process to construct a video blog.
1. I'm staring RSS articles Items to comment on in my Google Reader. This let's me compile a list of topics.
2. I'm using Microsoft movie maker to capture the video, it very easily allows me to start and stop recording and creates the clips to put together.
3. As I talk about the clip, I'm copying the link that I'm talking about to notepad. This gives you something to click on but also gives you an overview of topics too.
4. I'm applying a Sepia Filter. One, it covers up the horrendous lighting in my studio, and Two the old time sepia look might make the scratchy bad audio seem to fit more in place and Three the brown matches my site.

Now of course, if my voice bugs the heck out of you, there's not a filter I can apply that fixes that.

If you find the video blogging interesting, leave a comment. If you have some constructive criticism leave a comment too. If you absolutely hate this idea-- dude, life is short find another blog to read/watch :)

Let's Go Surfing

• Dia Diagrammer like Visio.

• Youtube video of the Google Android Smartphone interface

• Asus has created a Wiimote for Pcs.

• HAL Exoskeleton let's you carry a 200 lbs. Pack. Pretty cool looking.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0806.php#p620 Video Blog

I pretty much talk about a bunch of links from my RSS feeds.

Links/Topics I talk about:
Roku Netflix • Surf Chair • Freehand Wrist Storage •Wire button • Earth Trek Mini Projector • Astak e-book reader iunder $200 • Terrafugia Airplane Car • Initex T-Shirt • Xorax Contact Sheet Freeware • Crowdspring.com, Nokia video calling a no go because of double chins • Pilot Cam • Digg - Daily Show and Colbert on Internet Legit • Adam and Comfort Cute Cat Pictures • Venture Bros.

Images I comment on:

Instead of typing out comments to random Google Reader stuff I read today. I video'd them.

Sound is kind of low, and there is a little bit of static... I'll tweak the record volume next time.

Online Ordering - A couple weeks ago I blogged my intent to switch over to purchasing comics online instead of at my local comic store. There was a snag in that concept, and it came down to Math.

Y'see, when I order comics through my local comic store, I pay for them on delivery, however, when you order them through DCBService, which I was going to use, you pay for your order at the time of the order. Since comics are ordered 3 months out, there would then be 3 months of overlap where I would be paying at the store and paying online at the same time. Also since I would be paying every month, I'd never recoup that double bill for the first three months unless I stopped ordering online. Since that isn't the plan, effectively it is going to feel like paying for 3 months extra comics.

The DCBService online pricing is at a considerable discount over the store but by my calculations it would still take six or 7 months for the savings to cancel out that initial double paying I would be doing.

Toys are even worse. There is very little discount on the toys to begin with and since the toys are ordered 6 months in advance in Previews, I'd be paying double (online and in- store) for the toys for 6 months. The toys are much pricier than the comics. So for that reason the toys are even more a no-go than the comics.

I may still go the online route in a month or two, I may also just stop pre-ordering entirely for a month or two. I mostly get DC and have been a little burned out by the constant reboots with every new creative team on every new book every 4 to 6 issues. I may cut back a little and just grab things off the rack. Current comic mood: undecided.

Apparitions - On the topic of Apparitions, my Local Comic Store, they re-layed out the store this past week. It's a lot nicer organized and much neater now. Stop in there and take a look around, it's a dramatic improvement-- I just hope Dave doesn't have a heart attack when he comes back and sees it. :)

Oh, and when I went in this week there was almost a mini intervention, the guys at the store did notice that I didn't turn in my Previews and it was sort of an awkward thing. The three guys, in Dave's absence, are doing a great job with the store , but the store has gotten alot more pushy. They're trying real hard (understandably so) to generate additional sales, but it's not as low-key as when Dave was there. Part of the fun of going t the store is it's like dropping by a friends house once a week on lunch. Lately when dropping by I feel like "the friends" have two tight an eye on how to separate my wallet from it's contents. I doubt it would be much of an issue for more casual shoppers, but I have a reputation for buying a fair amount, so I think I'm just getting hit up a little more because of that.

I do suppose it is nice to get such a warm greeting on a comic pull bag?

Final Crisis - I also read Final Crisis #1 last night. It was very much a Grant Morrison book. And although I like Grant Morrison, the way he writes DC never quite feels right to me. Morrison's DC always feels small and street level to me. DC should feel epic and larger than life. Your mileage may vary but outside of Batman and some of the more urban characters, Morrison doesn't usually work for me.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0805.php#p616
ACTION COMICS #865 $2.99
ALL STAR SUPERMAN #11 $2.99
BATMAN #677 RIP $2.99
BLUE BEETLE #27 $2.99
FINAL CRISIS #1 (OF 7) $3.99
GREEN LANTERN #31 $2.99
JSA CLASSIFIED #38 $2.99
TEEN TITANS #59 $2.99
WIZARD MAGAZINE #201 SUMMER PREVIEW CVR $5.99
According to Diamond Comics Shipping List]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0805.php#p615 Holidays and the Death of Possibilities

I like Holiday weekends, they are so much better than just taking a day off work. When I take a day off work, everyone else is still there sending me emails, putting things on my desk, and in general not noticing that I am in fact not there. You come back the next day and you almost have the whole off day's worth of work to catch up on.

Holiday weekends are nicer, because no one else is there at work. You get that bonus day without as much catch-up when you get back.

The downside and explanation of the header above. Holidays are also the Death of Possibilities. I find that most people thoroughly plan their holiday weekends, and usually with family also. The phone, IM, Twitters, Blogs, and communication devices of choice sit quiet. People are off doing their plans. There’s very little spontaneity that is going to happen on a Holiday weekend. Death of Possibilities.

Let’s Go Surfing

• Huffy Green machine H20 with built-in water cannon.

• Epson has 385 dpi A4 sized eInk ePaper.

• Netflixs Streaming box for $99 looks promising, I might pick one of these up soon. More Reviews.

• Friend Dan’s Halo 3 Lan Party Invite Postcards are pretty slick.

• Cool look at NECA’s TMNT Mousers. I still need to get the 4 Turtles they’ve put out in this series.

• James Bond Book Covers. Double Oh Neat.

• ekko.tv is pretty slick. It’s Flash based video chat for up to 3 people, no registration required, go there, log on, email or IM a friend a link, and you are all set.

• Move over Segway… this Badass vehicles does 0 to 60 in 3 seconds.

• Daniel Keys Moran now re-owns A.I. War the decade long anticipated sequel to Emerald Eyes, The Long Run and The Last Dancer. He’s going to have it up on his site for FREE soon. The Long Run is one of my favorite books of all time. You can read a RTF or PDF of it for FREE as well as all the books above--here.

• HomeCamera.com is a software and website combination that will do webcam monitoring for you. Looks interesting, Although I’m not sure I need a lot of room I’m not in (or even those I am in monitored).]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0805.php#p614 Random Non-Sequiters

» Here's a thought I'm noodling around in my head.

Advertising. You hear alot about advertising techniques, advertising strategies, advertising based business models. But advertising isn't what anyone including advertisers really want is it?

Attention. Attention is what is of value. Ideally, attention that results in productivity or a financial transaction. Advertising can grab someone's attention, that is often it's purpose. But holding attention is so much more valuable and larger in scope than advertising alone. Advertising can be the means, but the end is Attention, Production or Transaction.

» I got a new mouse yesterday. It's got a bunch more buttons on it than any other mouse I've ever had. Very slick.

Adobe Air Applications

• I tried the eBay Desktop Adobe Air app today. Very nice way to shop eBay! For those not familiar, Adobe Air is a platform in sort of the same way as Flash or Java, except Adobe Air is for running web applications in a more interactive desktop way. You download and install Adobe Air, then you can install and run Adobe Air Applications on either Mac or Pc (Linux is coming soon)

In anycase If you use ebay alot, download and install Adobe Air and then install eBay Desktop

• I also installed the Adobe Air App: Snackr. Snackr will take your RSS Feed list and scroll by the stories in the bottom of your screen. I just went to Google Reader, exported my OMPL subscription list, loaded that into the Snackr app and presto a fun little news crawl on my second monitor! It's really quite cool.

• What turned me onto Adobe Air you might ask? Twhirl the Adobe Air based Twitter client did. If you Twitter you should install Twhirl, it's so much more fun to Twitter with.

• Some other Adobe Air apps: kuler - a color palette application and RichFLV - a FLV movie editor.

Let's Go Surfing

» Dumm Comics is a neat WebComics site. Produced by a group of animators. Very Ren and Stimpiish.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0805.php#p613
BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #7 $2.99
BRAVE AND THE BOLD #13 $2.99
CATWOMAN #79 $2.99
COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY #8 (OF 8) $3.99
FLASH #240 $2.99
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #21 $2.99
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #15 $2.99
SUPERMAN BATMAN #48 $2.99
TANGENT SUPERMANS REIGN #3 (OF 12) $2.99
SHOWCASE PRESENTS GREEN LANTERN TP VOL 03 $16.99

According to Diamond Comics Shipping List]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0805.php#p612 » DCD New Gods Wave. Skipped Mr. Miracle, who was a very nice figure, but didn't seem worth replacing the older MM to me. Darkseid is fantastic!

Darkseid - Master of Apokolips, Very nice definitive figure.

New Gods Back of Card

Orion - Not a remarkable figure. His helmeted head is also a little small.

Lightray - not very familiar with the character but it a nice simple design.

New Gods - I got all three but passed on Mr. Miracle.

New Gods

This Darkseid is just a very imposing figure.

Orion, DC Direct and Mattel Versions.

Darkseid and Orion DC Direct and Mattel Comparisons. I prefer the DC Direct, but all those extras on the Mattel Orion are nice.

Darkseids, Run away, Run away now.

Darkseid Turner Version vs. Kirby Version. the Kirby version might be smaller but I think he'd kick the Turner Versions ass.

New Gods - New Wave with the older Mr. Miracle and Big Barda and Oberon.

Darkseid and Superman - These just work very well together.

I took pictures of a bunch of action figures this afternoon. Specifically: DCD New Teen Titans, DCD New Gods, DCD Smallville and DCU Superman Red and Superman Blue.

It was while taking pictures of Superman Red and Superman Blue that I had to pause and wonder to myself if the whole Action Figure thing has run its course for me. Superman Red and Superman Blue. *sigh*.

Anyway, the pictures exist on my camera card. I still have to run them through a little Photoshop for cropping and to size them down. But there might actually be some Action Figure pictures on this blog again soon. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0805.php#p606 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Shown below, upside down from how it is normally depicted)

Physiological
breathing	food	water	sex	sleep	homeostasis	excretion
Safety
security of body	...of employment	...of resources	...of morality	...of the family	...of health	...of property
Love/Belonging
friendship		family		sexual intimacy
Esteem
self-esteem	confidence	achievement	respect of others		respect by others
Self-actualization
morality	creativity	spontaneity	problem solving	lack of prejudice	acceptance of facts

The more I look at Maslow's Heirarchy the more I realize that beyond the Physiological, most of the the other listings are most efficiently accomplished by self delusion.

There are true ways to fulfill the Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem and Self-actualization needs-- but they are generally more difficult than creating and having others reinforce lies to those ends.

Saying something is so, is generally easier than having a thing be so, and if such falseness can be believed it is nearly as real.

Pressing truth against practical self delusions creates conflict within this hierarchy.

If the order of the hierarchy is accepted and generally most of the lower needs must be satisfied before the higher needs can be addressed, then it is interesting that "acceptance of facts" is so near the top of a list generally accepted that most will not climb.

There is a sadness to the fact that because of that, truth has very little real place or even use in the lives of most people.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0805.php#p605 Let's Go Surfing

» Punisher War Zone Teaser Poster. Very nice.

» Seesmic It's Twitter but for Video. Interesting.

» There will be three Battlestar Galactica TV movies (in addition to Caprica) after season 4 ends. Frak yeah! --and I have no idea why io9 doesn't see this as a good thing.

» George Clooney to play a telekinetic soldier. Cool.

Videos

» Eliza Dushku: Dollhouse Trailer. Not sure what I think about this on the one hand, you've got Eliza Dushku and Helio from BSG in a Joss Wedon show, on the other hand it doesn't look much more original than Jennifer Garner's Alias by the looks of the trailer.

» Obama addresses the Bush Hittler speach.

» Bill O'Reilly Meltdown Dance Remix. Warning NSFW.

» The web has really been feeling like empty calories lately.

Let's Go Surfing

» Comic Stip (fairly good-sized one actually) of the Cast of Seinfeld playing a rollplaying game. Funny.

» Jennifer Aniston with John Mayer Poolside with the Amazon Kindle eInk eReader.

Videos

» Transformer TV Commercial... Cute.

» Microsoft Touchwall. Supposedly cheaper than the Surface Table.

» Star Wars Fans Vs. Sports Fans. Sortof Clerks-like. You could almost picture Randall saying this, if Randall wasn't such a big Star Wars fan that is.

» Dude builds wristmounted flamethrower like Pyro from X-Men movie.

Got in early this morning and knocked off listening to a couple more Google Talks.

Lee Siegel Author of the book: Against the Machine. Interesting contrarian view of the internet-- that might not be all it's advertised to be. Good Talk.

Srikumar Rao, Columbia University Business Professor. Basically this is one of those: We're all living in the Matrix, reality is what you believe it to be talks. Hard one to play in the background as the speaker is fond of putting up slides, without commentary, for the audience to read. Lots of stuff on mental models etc. The talk comes down to, if you don't want things to suck, believe they don't suck, self delusion/reality construction is your friend. eh. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0805.php#p601 Google Talks

Spent some time at work this evening getting ready for some stuff tomorrow. Below are the Google Talks I listened to in the background.

Noam Chomsky talk at google. Interesting to see Chomsky in this type of forum. When locked down to an hour, with no moderator, you really notice how long winded he his

Mohanbir Swahney, discussion on Digital Marketing and Branding. Most of the talk revolves around "creating conversations" with your customers and not "targeting your customers". It's not a new idea, but is an idea that really upsets the historical command and control structure of business. Good stuff, well presented, worth listening to for anyone involved in marketing of any type.

Sandra Aamodt & Sam Wang Authors of "Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life." Ok to play in the background. there was a good section on the recent popular topic of the finite willpower and how some task before others impinge on the later tasks. However, if you listen to alot of talks of this type, you are unlikely to learn much new in this video.

Michael Kinsley Slate founder and a former host of Crossfire. Not a bad interview. Not terribly current as most of the topics centered on the 90s, but there you go. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0805.php#p600 Random Non-Sequiters

» Nothing quieter than a weekend with a Holiday in it. Two weeks from now should be even more *crickets*, being that it's three days with the Memorial Day and all.

Let's Go Surfing

» Vector Wars Nice Vector Style Asteroids like game.

» Office Snapshots is an interesting blog filled with photos of various company offices.

» Timetube is an interesting scrollable interface for viewing Youtube videos on a timeline.

» Here's a useful site downforeveryoneorjustme.com enter and url address and you can see if the site is down or if it's just you.

» MyTVRSS.com Neat site that let's you tick off checkboxes and create a RSS feed letting you know when your favorite shows air. You do not even need to register.

» Need to be reminded of something? do you live inside Twitter? then add timer as your Twitter friend

Need to remember something? Send timer a direct message, and they'll tweet you back. For example, 'd timer 45 call mom' reminds you in 45 minutes.

» FLVto.com converts Youtube and other FLV files to MP3. I haven't tried it but it looks useful.

» Palbee looks like a really nice free video/whiteboard/chatroom conference web software service.

» Textop.us has some nice lowercase, UPPERCASE, etc. etc. functions you can perform on a block of text. ]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0805.php#p599 Chris Karath's Blog now with improved RSS goodness!

I found and modified some nifty new PHP RSS code this morning.

Now everytime I update my blog, I can automatically update my RSS Feed!

If you want to subscribe to the main blog RSS use the feed below:

http://chris-karath.com/blog/chriskarathblog.xml

Note 1: If you are already subscribed, don't worry, the link hasn't changed.

Note 2: the above is just for the main blog stuff, if you want the Blog, Twitter, Flickr, Utterz, etc. etc. you can also subscribe to my all-in-one-friend feed:

http://friendfeed.com/ckarath?format=atom

If you want to pick and choose ala carte, see my RSS links box in the sidebar of the blog.]]> http://chris-karath.com/blog/blog0805.php#p598 speed Racer today. here was my mini Twitter review of it earlier:

Speed Racer Looked Cool, but wasn't much sto