Yearly Archives: 2009

Is Ana Marie Cox wearing pants?

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Suppose you had a friend that was really smart and funny, and that friend got to cover and live-blog White House press briefings that you could watch “with” her (on  C-SPAN) and chat back and forth. Does that sound like something you might be interested in?

Okay, Ana Marie Cox isn’t a friend of mine but she feels like one. I’m one of her legion of fans that go back to the Wonkette days. She now works for Air America.

I don’t know if this is journalism or not and I don’t care. In the same way I don’t care what you call The Daily Show. I call it fun and interesting.

I think of this as the MST3K effect. Even a boring press conference is fun if you’re watching it “with” fun people.

God’s Debris

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I love the writing of Scott Adams. The Dilbert Principle played no small part in my escape from Management. His blog is one of the most thought-provoking I read. I just finished God’s Debris. Not a book for those who already have things figured out.

“Humanity is developing a sort of global eyesight as millions of video cameras on satellites, desktops, and street corners are connected to the Internet. In your lifetime it will be possible to see almost anything on the planet from any computer. And society’s intelligence is merging over the Internet, creating, in effect, a global mind that can do vastly more than any individual mind. Eventually everything that is known by one person will be available to all. A decision can be made by the collective mind of humanity and instantly communicated to the body of society.” pg 53

It is beyond the human brain to understand the world and its environment, so the brain compensates by creating simplified illusions that act as a replacement for understanding. When the illusions work well and the human who subscribes to the illusion survives, those illusions are passed to new generations. pg 34

The odd collection of molecules that make a human being will stay in that arrangement for less time than it takes the universe to blink. pg 35

What could possibly be interesting or important to a God that knows everything, can create anything, can destroy anything. The concept of ‘importance’ is a human one born out of a need to make choices for survival. pg 36

I love the writing of Scott Adams. The Dilbert Principle played no small part in my escape from Management. His blog is one of the most thought-provoking I read. I just finished God’s Debris and will post a few of my favorite bits here. Let’s start with this one:

We’re the building blocks of God, in the early stages of reassembling.

Time is a human concept of how things change compared to other things. pg 57

Morality and willpower are illusions. For any human being, the highest urge always wins and willpower never enters into it. Willpower is a delusion. pg 94

Your short-term payoff for contributing to God’s consciousness is fewer problems in your daily life, less stress, and more happiness. pg 101

Over time, everything that is possible happens. pg 102

“A replica of your mind and body will exist in the distant future, by chance. And the things you do now can either make life more pleasant or more difficult for your replica. pg 102

You can change only what people know, not what they do. pg 107

Awareness does not come from receiving new information. It comes from rejecting old information. pg 125

Why two Google Shared Stuff pages?

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I’m a regular user of the Shared Stuff feature in Google Reader. That’s the little widget in the sidebar, which feeds to a larger page. I love it.

I recently discovered another Google tool that also seems to be called Google Shared Stuff. This one works from a little icon in your menu bar. As you surf around the web you can add links and notes to a “shared stuff” page. But not the same shared page. It has to be a DIFFERENT shared page.

Why can’t the shared pages be shared? One page for stuff from my Google Reader and the “shared” button. If any of you kids in the Accelerated Class can help me out with this, I’ll be grateful.

Seven Years Before the Blog

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Every year on this date I pause to recall that it was way back in 2002 that I began blogging. Like many others, I was posting little rants on my website before we had the tools and the name, but this is the date I started “writing some stuff down.”

That post was a long quote from Carl Hiaasen’s novel, Basket Case. He described two types of journalists and alluded to the “slow-strangling dailies,” a number of which have finally strangled in the last year or so.

On the 4th anniversary of this blog I met some friends and had four beers. I’m afraid 7 beers would put me out of commission for several days, so we won’t do that.

Another thing I used to do was browse back through the earlier posts but with 4,000+ that is no longer practical. So this post will serve as another scratch on blog wall.

iPhoto 09: Faces and Places

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I only have 2,300 photos on my laptop, which has become my default computer. The other kids I play with have many, many more than that. But I don’t know how I’d keep up with a couple of thousand photos without iPhoto. I’m not saying it’s the best way to manage your images, only that it’s the best for me. And the new version includes two new features that I really like.

Faces attempts to “recognize” the people in your your photos and group them. This little video tour ‘splains it better than I can but after playing with this for an hour or two, I’m reminded that people (and places) are the way I think about my photos.

 

Sure, I could go through 2,000+ and tag photos of Barb. But I’d never get around to it. iPhoto 09 pretty much does it for you (with a little help).

I’ll talk about Places in a later post.

Re-evaluating Flip HD

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My initial impression of the Flip HD video camera was pretty positive. But the more I use it “in the field,” the more things I find that bother me. The audio is very poor when compared to my Casio EX-Z300 (a small still camera that also takes video). And in low light situations, the Flip really sucks, while the Casio is very forgiving. And if you don’t hold the Flip dead still, your video shakes like pup passing peach pits. Not so the Casio.

These cameras are comparable in price. I think you can get either for around $200. And I’m open to the possibility I’m not doing something right but these are pretty much idiot-proof cameras, so…

The 4 minute video above was shot on my Casio (by my friend Greg Perry) and edited in iMovie 09 (which I like much better than 08). He was also using the Flip. The difference was night and day. Couldn’t use the Flip stuff and the Casio came out okay. There’s some artifacts in the video above but I think that’s mostly YouTube compression. I’ll post the .mov file later if you want to download and take a look.

I still have the inauguration video I shot on the Flip HD so maybe I’ll see better results but I’m skeptical. If you I had to choose between the two cameras, it’s no contest: Casio wins hands down. And it records nice stills and audio. If you bought a Flip on my recommendation and aren’t happy with it, my apologies.

108 Sun Salutations

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Greg Perry did a nice job manning the cameras (still and video) at this morning’s Show-Me Yoga Center event. You can learn more about 108 Sun Salutations from this earlier post. This shot captures my first 108SS perfectly. A picture worth 1,000 breaths. In case you’re wondering. I did about 104 of the 108 sequences (assuming you don’t count really shitty form). I got a blister on my big toe at about 30 and it broke around 40. I missed a couple when I made a band-aid pit stop. We go again in 6 months.

Pictures from home

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Regular readers will know that I grew up in Kennett, Missouri, and lived there until 1984. A great place to be from, if you catch my drift. The landscape is so flat you can see the curve of the earth. And the crop chemicals made for spectacular sunsets. But I never thought of the area as beautiful… until I stumbled across some photos by mshhoward. It appears he has enhanced the images a bit but I could be wrong on that. Doesn’t matter. They’re really striking.

I’ve emailed asking for an interview to find out more about the photographer and his work. Watch this space.