Thanksgiving with football, Coraline, World of Goo

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Coraline This month, my “Lazy man’s Thanksgiving dinner for two” post from last November has, rather appropriately, become one of this blog’s most popular.

With wins this weekend, both the Oregon State Beavers (8-3) and the Penn State Nittany Lions (11-1) stayed on track for a rematch in the Rose Bowl.

OK, now I have some random entertainment for the week, most of it sent to me by friends and family:

The trailer for the forthcoming stop-motion animation film Coraline, by director Henry Selick (of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach fame) and fantasy author Neil Gaiman, is now available. Looks awesome.

You may be interested in the addictive World of Goo game by 2D Boy. It’s an excellent physics-based puzzle/construction game. There’s a free game demo available for multiple platforms.

Here’s some classic stand-up from comedian Joe Rogan: Devolution Of Stupid People and Noah’s Ark.

Ronald McDonald Insanity These Orange TV advertisements are pretty funny: Darth Vader and Steven Seagal.

Oh yes, we have Japanese Ronald McDonald Insanity.

A&E’s Biography featured Val Kilmer awhile back. He’s an eccentric guy with an interesting career story. Watch part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6.

Lilia Stepanova seems to be a one-trick performer, but it’s an alluring trick. Lilia showed off her contortionist archery skills on America’s Got Talent (during which Hasselhoff nearly wet himself) and also starred in a commercial for a Danish financial company.

Robot Chicken’s recent “Star Wars Episode II” was pretty good. South Park’s twelfth season ended three days ago with “The Ungroundable.”

Check out the Atlanta Zoo’s Panda Cam to see a panda mom with cub.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

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Posted on November 22, 2008 | Length: 276 words
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Seven years in Oregon (and SecondLight, air cars)

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

I’ve lived in Oregon for seven years now. So, how true is the myth that all atoms in the human body get turned over, or regenerated, every seven years? Has my body become 100% Oregonian? Well, the seven-year-regeneration idea may actually be true of some cell types, on average, but probably not all. According to the foremost authority on atomic regeneration, ahem, WikiAnswers, “it seems likely that the idea of a turnover of the atoms in the human body every seven years is the result of experiments observing the turnover of radioisotopes in animals.” Following some additional explanation, this WikiAnswers user concludes that “it seems quite plausible to me that the average time for the turnover of the atoms in your body could be around seven years.” Hmm, in true MythBusters style: Plausible?

Air-powered car OK, I have many non-political bits that I’ve been storing up while otherwise preoccupied with the election. Here are a few:

In tech news, here’s a quasi-X-ray Surface table: “Microsoft SecondLight Caught on Video: It’s Like Surface, With Magic.”

In environmentally friendly news, a compressed air-powered car: “Air Cars: A New Wind for America’s Roads?”

In organically grown news, Monsanto strikes again: “Oregon’s organic farmers fight genetically modified seeds.” (Also see my post from April 2007: “Conspiratorial ramblings: Fanta, Coke, Big Pharma and Monsanto.”)

In real-life X-Files news, here’s an interesting article, exhumed from a 1995 issue of Discover Magazine: “Analysis of a Toxic Death.”

How To Poop - English Subtitles In sporting history, did you know that college football started 139 years ago this month? If you want to see how weird the rules were back then (e.g., each team had 25 players on the field) and read an account of the first game, check out this article: “FSD History Flashback: November 6, 1869.”

In nonsense YouTube cartoon news, I found these old videos a couple of weeks ago: How To Poop - English Subtitles and Snorlax.

In Flash cartoon news, David Firth released a creepy new video this month: Dog Of Man.

If you can’t get enough of funny political news, let me suggest this political comedy site: 23/6, mainly for the Get Your War On Flash cartoons (since the GYWO webcomic has apparently been retired).

That’s enough for now.

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Posted on November 11, 2008 | Length: 362 words
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Election buzzwords: Goodbye and good riddance

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Al Gore and John Kerry Looking at the bright side of the past eight years, if either Gore or Kerry had been named King of America, then the chance of the U.S. electing someone as dynamic and sophisticated as Barack Obama in 2008 – from either party – would have been greatly diminished. And we’d still be in a politics-as-usual rut. So, thanks to the Bush administration for helping ruin the country enough for it to get the chance to be reborn under a dramatically different style of leadership with Obama. Eight years of George W. Bush made this historic presidential election possible.

Fortunately, this November the majority of the country actually decided they don’t like being belittled by tiresome clichés and practiced folksiness. Am I right, all you Joe Six-Packs, all you hockey moms? Are we nauseated yet? These election buzzwords are what politicians think Americans identify with, apparently. But I’d like to think most Americans are astute enough to understand that clichés only weaken speakers’ messages and demean their audiences.

So, while Rudy Giuliani is still taking meds to recover from his 9/11 Tourette’s, the country is floundering in post-election withdrawal – as the final wave of campaign catchphrase diarrhea works its way out of everyone’s system. Thus, I’d like to bring closure to the election season with an epic, cringe-worthy, run-on sentence of trite terms and hackneyed phrases. Are you ready?

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted on November 6, 2008 | Length: 231 words
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Mr. President = Barack Obama

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Enough of the votes are in to call the United States presidential election of 2008. I don’t know if it qualifies as a landslide, but Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States. He has earned 338 of 538 electoral college votes so far.

Mr. President

Watch GOP candidate John McCain graciously concede the presidential race and congratulate President-Elect Barack Obama on a historic victory.

Watch the full Obama victory speech. Here’s are two presidential election summaries: “Obama Promises ‘A New Dawn of American Leadership’” and “Obama Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls.” This Election Day felt cathartic, significant and decisive. The country needs a calm, thoughtful, optimistic leader in power right now. (Or at least a really good actor?)

As for the most annoying and expensive Senate seat race in the history of Oregon, Democrat Jeff Merkley and incumbent Republican senator Gordon Smith may not know the outcome for days. The vote count lead has been going back and forth all evening and may continue to be too close to call tomorrow. Recount?

Florida Side note: I’m truly surprised by how smoothly the Florida election proceedings seemed to go this year. No screw-ups at all? Really? But we’ve been so conditioned to massive recounts and hanging chads and such. Oh wait, nevermind.

Congratulations to all.

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Posted on November 4, 2008 | Length: 213 words
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Halloween election and financial conspiracy theory

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Well, Halloween officially ended a few minutes ago. So, Happy Belated All Hallows’ Eve.

Barack Obama mask defeats John McCain mask With the November election imminent, I hope everyone has either voted or will be voting by Tuesday (well, unless you are a moron). If you’re an Oregon resident, hopefully you voted against all five measures put on the ballot (again) by racketeer Bill Sizemore, if only on general principle.

By the way, in a Halloween showdown, the Barack Obama mask defeated the John McCain mask in sales, 53% to 47%. See the Amazon Meter. Or check in with CNN’s Election Tracker: Candidate Polling or FiveThirtyEight.com for slightly more relevant popularity statistics. Except that we already know who’s going to win because “Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early.” I love The Onion.

What else? My “vampire electronics” post from last Halloween was kind of festive. Also, you might want to check out “The 100 most funny and unusual 404 error pages.” Many of my favorites are represented.

Wall Street during the bank panic in October 1907 All right, I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for conspiracy theories. They’re fun to think about, even if I always remain skeptical. One particular conspiracy theory from a stock message board got me thinking the other day.

What if the current problems in the U.S. economy didn’t just happen to be caused by the compounding of . . . drumroll, please . . . bad economic policy, weak regulation, irresponsible deregulation, poor incentives, massively leveraged real estate investments, record numbers of home foreclosures, frozen credit markets, and Wall Street trying to create “virtual” wealth through pyramid schemes? What if this gradually escalating financial crisis was actually part of an elaborate U.S. government orchestration to purposefully guide the markets toward failure? Something like the Panic of 1907. Having seen clear weakness in the U.S. economy years ago, perhaps high-level government administrators and economic policymakers intended to create, unsustainably prop up and then eventually fail a heavily leveraged, complex financial system. Why? Because they knew this would ultimately strengthen the position of the United States and weaken the economies of foreign countries. This nefarious Hollywood plot would ensure that the U.S. remains a world power for decades to come. Here’s the crazy message board theory:

By crashing the US markets, you bring down markets worldwide. Since the US is the first in, they will likely be the first out. This strenthens (sic) the US dollar relative to other foreign currencies. Oil (the currency of the Middle East) is also devalued since other foreign markets have a diminished demand for oil due to their economic fallout. Weakened influence of oil producers in the world is largely desireable (sic) for the US since we are the largest consumer.

Weakened foreign economies and a stronger dollar moves multinationals back into the US. This helps drive the next age in US growth. Weaker foreign currencies relative to the US dollar decreases trade gaps.

Did I mention that that this will be a windfall for the banks that are left standing?

Don’t be surprised to find out this was a planned crash, using CDS to hasten the crash. This was done similar to what happened in the early 1900s.

Halloween Dick Cheney It’s crazy enough to kind of make sense, if you don’t really think about it. Such a scheme does assume a lot of competence from a reasonably well-organized government to pull it off. Ahem. Anyway, it’s an interesting fantasy.

I’m picturing an underground lair of undead Washington vampires who run the shadow government that controls the elected government. Mwahahaha!

Which reminds me: “Revolution ‘08” by Coldcut vs. TV Sheriff is this presidential election’s “World of Evil.” Also see a similar music video of cut-up political soundbites from the UK: “Revolution ‘02.”

Meanwhile, back in reality, many small and medium-sized companies with large amounts of debt may not be able to make it through the next year or two. Mmm, death spiral financing, anyone? Delicious.

I liked the way Bill Clinton explained some of the recent financial problems and political issues on the Late Show with David Letterman on September 22. Watch the videos of his appearance: part 1, part 2, part 3. I wish all public servants could communicate this clearly and effectively to the American people . . . in bed (just kidding).

Enjoy your pumpkin-head buckets full of candy.

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Posted on November 1, 2008 | Length: 701 words
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T-Mobile Shadow’s low volume (and hardy kiwis)

Sunday, October 26, 2008

T-Mobile Shadow So, let’s say you have your new Windows Mobile 6 smartphone, the T-Mobile Shadow, and everything is almost great. The only problem with the Shadow (and it’s a big problem) is that in-call volume is absurdly low, even with the volume control maxed out. What do you do?

(By the way, following my smartphones post from last month, I selected the Shadow model because I gave up on the Shadow II coming out in a timely fashion and also refused to splurge on a G1/iPhone touch-screen phone because of the annoying mandatory data plans.)

Here’s one important (and idiotic) tip for adjusting the Shadow’s volume: Make sure you remove the plastic screen protector (or at least the top quarter-inch) the factory-sealed phone comes with, because it covers the ear piece (speaker). This was not immediately obvious to me. I was just trying to keep my screen from getting scratched up right away. I didn’t realize that the thin plastic sticker could have such a significant effect. Just peeling off the plastic from the silver speaker slot dramatically improves in-call volume. However, if the volume still seems too low when maxed out, give the following a try.

Grab your T-Mobile Shadow phone and take it over to your Windows XP computer, then follow these steps:

(Note: With ActiveSync installed, you can freely and easily drag & drop photos, music, background images, ringtones and more between your Windows Mobile phone and computer.)

Now, to turn in-call volume up, open Mobile Registry Editor and navigate to this location in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\SoundCategories\InCall\InitVol

Set the new InitVol key to a value of “10″ or so (and be sure not to change anything else). The default InitVol value for my phone was “3,” which was rather quiet when trying to hear someone during a call. Seems like going any higher than “10″ for InitVol could blow the cell phone’s speaker (or make you deaf, unless you already are). After performing this registry mod, you will need to restart your device (power cycle) for it to take effect.

(One more thing: I’d recommend buying a snap-on clear/crystal hard case and screen protector for $10 on eBay, if you want to protect your T-Mobile Shadow. Get the two-piece case that slides open with the phone. It also includes a swivel belt clip.)

Hardy kiwis Hardy kiwis

Pomegranate season just started, but I want to mention another fall fruit instead. I recently learned that you can successfully grow kiwifruit in Oregon. Smooth-skinned hardy kiwis, that is. Native to northern Asia, hardy kiwis are about the size of large grapes (about one inch long) and are often sold by the trademark name Kiwi Berries or Baby Kiwis. The ones I’ve been eating were organically grown in Eugene, Oregon. The Oregonian covered this last month: “How do you use hardy kiwis? Just pop ‘em in your mouth.” Kiwi Berries are deliciously sweet. Their packaging says they “are a nutritional powerhouse and a healthy food source containing over 20 nutrients. Kiwi Berries contain twice the amount of Vitamin E, yet only 60% of the calories of an avocado; 5 times the Vitamin C of an orange; and more potassium than bananas. Kiwi Berries are high in fiber and rich in folic acid.”

Random trivia: The vines of the hardy kiwifruit possess a catnip-like smell which can attract cats. Maybe I can try growing some hardy kiwifruit vines in my backyard next year. Until then . . . nom nom nom.

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Posted on October 26, 2008 | Length: 604 words
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