Calling Jack Bauer, On Redial

    It may be a small deal but I still got a great sense of accomplishment finally being able to change my ring tone. Especially considering it caused me such trouble when I first tried. I had the MP3 I wanted — not some stupid song but a snazzy CTU intercom sound — which I needed to convert to an MMF. The only way I could see to do this was download some dodgy Russian software which, unsurprisingly perhaps, destroyed the Windows image drive on my Mac. (And it appears I can no longer find my Virtual PC software to restore it.)
    My sad tale of woe ended this morning however. I discovered someone had done all the heavy lifting for me: there’s a page with the CTU intercom ring already converted into all sorts of ring tones, all set to download to your phone. Just don’t trust Chloe to save your voice recordings.
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Nesting II: Feeding

    It’s official. The baby robins have hatched. I was uncharacteristicaly outside today, where I was able to capture the following video. I didn’t know robins ate so much. In the time I was out there I swear different robins were flying in a couple dozen times to feed the young ones. That kind of appetite deserves to be enshrined here at SFG.com…
    P.S.: remastered on 7/11/06 to improve aspect ratio.
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Speechless

    Forget the You Tube stuff, let’s get back to good old-fashioned QuickTime. This happened Monday, I saw it Tuesday, and got my chance to encode it on Thursday.
    Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, courtesy of an overeager NBC floor director (and CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman)…
    P.S.: I redid this on 5/22 because I got the aspect ratio wrong. It’s now a nice 1.78 HDTV shape, as it should have been.
    P.P.S: redid this again, on 6/10 (using new material from 6/5), since I cheated last time and not all of the file was from high-def elements. Now it is.
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Nesting

    We haven’t had any more ducks take up residence by the porch, but the motion detector by the deck has become a perennial domicile for some robins. Here are this year’s tenants.


Mama Bird…


…and her babies
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Another in a Long Line of Brilliant Moves

    I know! Let’s get some fleeting vindictive pleasure against Joe Wilson by revealing his wife is a CIA operative.
    Who cares that her work — and the untimely stoppage of that work — has great ramifications now.
    According to this MSNBC video, “Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs Wilson’s cover was blown, the Administration’s ability to track Iran’s nuclear ambitions was damaged as well.”
  Bravo, gentlemen. Nicely played. And it’s worked out well then that you’ve never felt the need to keep an eye on Iran’s nuclear build-up.
    Seriously, can these guys do anything right? I swear, I’m shocked Cheney was able to shoot someone in the face since they only seem capable of shooting themselves in the foot.
    All of which raises the question…can we get rid of them all at once or do we have to impeach them one at a time?
    (Video from The Brad Blog, by way of Ameratsu.com.)
Posted in News, TV, Video | 1 Comment

Contagious

    There was word last week, during Apple’s annual shareholder meeting, that there would finally be a marketing push to advertise OS X and Macs (rather than iPods). I saw the commercial tonight and was very disappointed. It was very basic, featured just a couple soft-spoken guys, and hardly touched upon anything that makes Macs so great. What I didn’t know was there is a series of commercials — and (typically) I’d seen the poorest of the bunch — as well as a whole revamp of Apple’s website, turning the old Switch campaign into the new Get a Mac campaign.
    Therein, you’ll read important and informative bon mots such as the following:
By the end of 2005, there were 114,000 known viruses for PCs. In March 2006 alone, there were 850 new threats detected against Windows. Zero for Mac. While no computer connected to the Internet will ever be 100% immune from attack, Mac OS X has helped the Mac keep its clean bill of health with a superior UNIX foundation and security features that go above and beyond the norm for PCs. When you get a Mac, only your enthusiasm is contagious.
    I feel much better now, and, remarkably, I didn\’t even mind seeing Justin Long again. But I still think the best commercial for Macs would be for Apple to actually show OS X in action (especially for those who might not have an Apple Store nearby).
    Check out all six of the commercials here. They’re showing up on You Tube, but for once I’ll pass on embedding them, since the versions at Apple’s site are much better quality. (You can even see them in HD.)
    ….Aw, screw it. Why stop embedding now!

Posted in Apple, Video | 3 Comments

His Majesty is Not Amused

    The White House Correspondents Dinner was last night — you know, the one where President Bush showed that tasteless video of looking for WMD around the Oval Office, a couple years back? I missed the live showing but watched the 5:30 AM replay on C-SPAN. The networks are enjoying replaying Bush’s routine, where he spoke in tandem with a Bush impersonator, but the event truly belongs to proud Megamerican Stephen Colbert, of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report.
    I was going to upload the video, but someone on You Tube beat me to it:
    (P.S.: I decided to revamp my write-up a bit…just because every entry apparently has to have some kind of image attached to it.)
Posted in News, Politics, TV, Video | 3 Comments

April Showers

    Late Saturday night, we had a lightning storm with no rain and no thunder. (I assume it was storming over Canada, to the east of me.) I had my camera set for five-second exposures, and took over eighty-three pictures (thank goodness for digital cameras) — but I still only managed to catch only a couple lightning bolts in action.
    Here’s probably the best shot of the night…

Click for larger size
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Happy Earth Day 2006

    I don’t mean to use the day to pimp a movie, but this trailer pretty much says everything that needs to be said…
Posted in Movies, Video | 1 Comment

Random Musings

    • Fox should become an infomercial for DVD sales
    • On of the strongest smells has to be that of burnt microwave popcorn. I was smelling it on my way out of work today. It had traveled from the snack room all the way down a hall, turned a corner and come down another long hall by my office, and was even making its way up a stairwell to another floor. Now, here I am a half hour later, away from work and in my own house, and I can still smell it. I guess the smell was so bad it has figuratively burned its way into my brain; or maybe I walked through some chemical cloud of it and it is coating my nostrils. Either way, that’s some powerful smell.
    • Why do I get the feeling “My Name is Earl” is just an ad for a soundtrack CD. Every episode is like listening to an oldies station. But then any soundtrack album from the show would have to be some thousand dollar 28-disc box set.
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