Okay, maybe I will turn this into a “here’s what I found on YouTube today” blog, at least for a bit. Though actually GVOD found this one first.
I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a drug reference, or what (sweet smoke?), but the music is decent, and I’m amused that everyone becomes happy and dances once they get a pie. Does it make sense? No. But it’s a fun 4-minute video.
Then there’s this, which I saw just before E3. It made the Namco booth people with their pac-man hats doubly funny.
And of course, the inimitable and always funny Pablo Francisco; we have the CD where he originally does the movie preview voice bit, but this is the first time we’ve seen it live:
Okay, I promise this won’t turn into a “here’s what I found on YouTube today” blog. But here’s what I found on YouTube today.
I found The Skeletor Show a while back; I just found it again. It’s an unemployed voice-over artist doing a really good job remixing bits of old He-Man shows. The voice-acting is certainly much better than it was in that 80s cartoon kids-can’t-tell-the-difference-between-real-acting-and-crap show.
Also, I’ve really started enjoying RocketBoom. Sort of a video blog version of Boing Boing (i.e., “here’s strange random crap people sent me”). NPR’s blog of all places introduced me to it.
One of the last links for the day from The Consumerist (a fun read if you revel in good & bad tales of companies and customer service) was a YouTube video of Mr. Rogers saving CPB/PBS.
I grew up watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, so I’m not sure if it’s because of that, but every time I see video of Mr. Rogers either doing his show or otherwise (in the above clip, or on an episode of This American Life, I have to marvel. If any other person spoke with slow, deliberate tones of Mr. Rogers, I’d assume they were patronizing me. But with Mr. Rogers, you just get this feeling of caring, that he’s just a genuinely nice guy. I’ve seen comments comparing him to Gandhi, and that sounds about right.
I dunno, it’s hard to explain. Reading some of the “for parents” stuff on the Mr. Rogers web site, it looks like his philosophy was a simple, treat everyone (including kids) with respect; everyone deserves to be listened to and dealt with as a human being.
I do wish there were more Mr. Rogers’, and fewer O’Reillys and Hannitys and DeLays. The world might be a nicer place.
Except for the fact that the stupid tire pressure monitoring system doesn’t work right:
The light is supposed to come on if one of the tires has incorrect pressure, indicating either “Put some air in”, or “You have a flat, dumbass”. There’s a button you’re supposed to push and hold when the pressure is correct in all the tires to reset the system.
In our car, however, the light seems to come on whenever the system feels lonely — that is, all the time. Oh sure, we can reset it, and the light goes away, pouting, for a few minutes. But then, after half an hour or an hour of driving, there it pops up again. “Did you miss me?” it seems to say. “I had a grand time being off, but I’m here to be on for you again!”
We’ve had the car in multiple times asking about it, to no avail. One time we were told that there’s also a sensor in the spare tire, so it had to be checked too. But nope — equalizing the pressure in all the tires (even checking to make sure the pressures are still equal after it comes on again) doesn’t help. And of course nobody has posted anything about it on the net. (Or my google-fu is not wise enough to locate the proper page.)
So now it’s kind of become a game; if the light comes on, hold the reset switch in (while driving) to see if there’s a stretch of road smooth enough that the tire pressures will be constant over the 5 or so second period that the system measures the pressures. I’ve had it happen a couple of times, which is surprising given the number of potholes in this town.
At some point someone may figure it out; meanwhile, the light taunts us in its yellow glowingness.
[Update 12/2006]: As it turns out, the issue was the valve stem in one of the tires. Apparently this system works by having special valve stems that have a battery and a transmitter which send the data to the car. When the battery dies, or one of the stems goes bad, you (or the tire shop) can replace it. This turned out to be the issue; the tires wore down, we had to get new tires, and (knock on wood) the light hasn’t been on since.
I’m not sure exactly whether anyone will find this useful anymore, but I have the pictures, so might as well put them to use.
A while ago we had a use for some Playstation 2 consoles running Linux. Nothing fancy (it didn’t even take advantage of the special chips and such in the system), but they worked.
Sony used to sell but recently discontinued a linux kit for the PS2 — basically it came with the network adapter, a hard drive, mouse, keyboard, VGA adapter, and a Linux boot CD. (You supply the PS2 and memory card.) Since we had more than a couple, we decided to rack mount them.
Middle Atlantic sells custom rackmount shelves to fit almost any product; they’re the company that custom home theater installers use to acquire form-fitting rackmount
shelves for almost any electronic equipment out there — and if they don’t have a
template in stock for your item, you can ship it to them (insured) and they’ll
measure it and make you a custom shelf. We got ours locally, but SmartHome carries them too. Note that we got the clamp option; without the two clamps that go above the PS2s, they’ll slide around a bit every time you try to do something to them.
Again, I’m supposed to be doing my Japanese homework. I’ve done three questions so far (out of many, many more). But meanwhile, I went through some of the photos I took at the Wild Animal Park today, and made my first ever animated gif:
These are a couple of lorikeets (colorful nectar-eating parrots; famous for making large liquidy sprays of poop — if you get one as a pet, invest in plexiglas and make sure you can hose down their living area) from the aviary where you can buy a cup of nectar to feed them. These two were doing either a mating thing or a territorial thing, and the picture sequence actually turned out to be rather interesting. (And in only 400k!)
So here’s a meme (woohoo! Web2.0 point!) that I’ve been thinking about for a while.
There’s been a whole lot of political hoo-hah lately about trying to distill out the essence of each side (dem vs repub, liberal vs conservative, etc. etc.) and I think I might finally have something. It hit me whilst I’m supposed to be doing my Japanese homework.
The basic difference between republicans and democrats appears to be a general culture of selfishness versus a culture of generosity.
Think about it. The big themes of late of the Republican Party (ignore the ’smaller government’ stuff, it’s not happening) have been:
1) Lower my taxes
2) Make me feel secure (even if you have to screw someone else over to do it)
3) Make my friends rich (subsidies, bailouts, more tax cuts, laws that unbalance the market)
4) Immigration restriction (this land/services/whatever is mine, you can’t have any)
Whereas the Democratic platform appears to be more oriented towards generosity:
1) Invest in schools, social services, universal health care, so that those without trust funds can benefit from them and ‘move up’ in the world
2) Raise the minimum wage, expand worker safety (can anyone say “mine accident”?), do that health care thing again
3) Level the playing field between all competitors (compete on merit rather than cronyism), and remind the world what “free market” actually means.
These points are more complicated than the Republican ones, but rather than the end result being “I and my buddies get something”, the end result will be “If it’s fair, everyone has a shot at getting something”.
That’s not to say everything in the Democratic platform is good; indeed, not everything in the Republican platform is bad. But I don’t think the difference gets more basic than this.
I know I promised the PS2 rackmount how-to; it’s almost there. I’ll try and finish it tomorrow.
Lately I’ve been wanting to watch decent spy movies. None of this modern-day Tom Clancy/Tom Cruise crap; I mean the good stuff, like the old James Bond stuff, the (remarkably sexist/racist/etc. but still amusing) Our Man Flint films, and nowadays, The Avengers. Not really sure why — they’re just silly, dumb fun.
I’ve seen most of the original Avengers episodes, with Mrs. Peel and Steed. Now I’ve moved onto the New Avengers, with Patsy — I mean Purdy — Gambit, and Steed. It’s got the perfect amounts of 70s cheese, silly plots, and thinly veiled sexual innuendo.
I watched Knight Rider and The A-Team and such in the 80s; somehow none of those quite match up with this, though. Now I just need to watch a good Bond movie or two (Connnery or Moore, please), and I should be OK.
Lately I’ve also been watching clips from Brainiac on YouTube. Brainiac appears to be what you get if you cross Mythbusters with Top Gear and have Spike TV produce it. It’s a science experiment/mythbusting show like Mythbusters, but with more explosions and silly ‘frat boy’ type science. They recently discovered Britain’s most dangerous underwear (a G-string with a stuffed monkey at the front; it catches on fire and burns more readily than more normal underwear).
Which brings me to a mini-rant. We don’t have cable or satellite; we just have an antenna (no monthly fees!) for what little TV we do watch. We used to have cable, but it was the old 500 channels and nothing’s on thing, pretty much constantly. Now we just get DVDs and NetFlix; we watch what we want, when we want. Except for the stuff that either isn’t out or isn’t here.
The UK has some really good TV shows; some cable networks also have some really good shows. But I can’t get the UK ones unless someone decides to release them 2 years down the line or longer, and some of the cable network shows from the US cost an arm and a leg (*ahem* MythBusters Season 2 — $99 for 13 episodes on 13 DVDs? I don’t think so!). To coin a phrase, why do you hate DVD-watching America? I don’t mind paying for stuff I’d like to watch, but a) it shouldn’t be more expensive than say, gold, and b) I should be able to get movies and TV shows without having to either import it from another country and find a region-free DVD player and without trying to download it and risk the wrath of whoever would like to enforce copyright by lawsuit.
In closing, and in the spirit of “you should be able to find ANYTHING on the internet”, here is the music video for Fish Heads.
Not much for today. Got up at 5, went to work, had meetings most of the day, came home, made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, went to Japanese class where I did OK but not that great, and watched the last half of the season finale of Boston Legal (Denny Crane!).
I processed all the pix for the PS2 rackmount how-to; I’ll post that tomorrow at some point. I hope.
So I do a dutiful job of my Japanese homework, in both Romaji and Hiragana (granted the day before it’s due, but hey, I’m busy). Despite doing a final vacuum before the SO’s mom arrives tomorrow, walking the dogs to pick up the small one from practice, having dinner, and bathing one of the dogs (the amount of brown water that went down the drain was very impressive).
After I finish homework, I note that the still slightly damp dog is still shedding, even though I bathed her. So, in a flash of brilliance, I decide to use the air filter we have in the living room as a shed collection device.
It works decently well; a bit escapes in the updraft of the exhaust, but standing the dog in front of the filter and rubbing her vigorously does seem to do a good job of trapping the bulk of her hair detritus. Of course she’s not exactly thrilled about the idea; attention is good, but this big humming machine sounds a little too much like the vacuum cleaner for her comfort. (This is the dog whose favorite outdoor pasttime is chasing the hose when I’m watering the few plants we have, and trying to bite the stream of water. The fiftieth or sixtieth time you’d think she’d figure out you can’t bite it.)
I tried to do the same with the other dog, but she was having even less of the air filter than the first dog. A bit of her fuzz did get sucked into the air filter, but not nearly as much as the just-bathed dog.
Anyway, the original reason for me posting is because Mr. Destructoid himself commented on one of my E3 posts! I think it’s because WordPress pingbacks each URL that gets mentioned in a post.
Not that it really means anything; it gives me a teensy tiny bit of fame and ego boost and not much else. But still, it’s fun to be noticed. Plus I get a w00t point. I’m not really sure what that means. But I have one!
Anyway; I have to make katakana flashcards for the next 10, set up another E3 pix post, then get up at 4:45 AM tomorrow. Yuck, but such is life.
I have a last round of E3 pix to put up, but first — it’s My First Food Porn!
I got the idea from this article at SlashFood for a mother’s day breakfast in bed blueberry yogurt brulee. I had gotten a culinary torch several months back and hadn’t even filled it yet; I never really got up the energy to make the custard and such for a true creme brulee.
Since today was shopping day, and my SO doesn’t really like brulees, I decided to get the items for it and make it myself. With frozen berries instead of fresh (we did just buy a new fridge).
The recipe didn’t turn out quite as expected (see Out of House and Home in a bit for details), but I got to use the torch for the first time, and it was a decent dessert.
We also cleaned up the house in prep for my SO’s mom visiting. The backyard is decent and somewhat useable again (our dogs like digging, and the dirt gets EVERYWHERE); and my SO did an impeccable job in the kitchen and bathroom; I vacuumed everywhere and tried to get things as tidy as possible. Not perfect, but better.
Now, I have to get going on my Japanese homework…in a bit.
Round three of the pictures! I just had dinner at a new Thai place we tried (see outofhousandhome for the review later), and had two Thai iced coffees. So I’m a bit uh, perky.
Today we start with the meat of the PS3. The disclaimer said that this was still an in progress design, but it looks like they’ve gotten more final in terms of the design. (more…)
Another day, another set of pictures. One more post probably later tonight or tomorrow.
My nose has been running all morning; either something bloomed during the night and is blanketing the area, or I picked up a convention cold. Plus my legs are sore. Other than that, I’m doing OK.
Today I went to E3. We ended up taking the train, then the subway — much better than driving. I took a bunch of pix, with one minor annoyance. etc. But I guess a camera makes you look like the press to most people, so I got treated pretty deferentially by almost everyone.
dreamGear, however, gets a raspberry. They had a decent looking PSP car dock that embeds in the headrest of a car seat, like people install monitors for the back seat. I thought it was neat and moved to take a picture of it, when one of the exhibitors asked if I was with the press. I said no (possibly a bad move), and she said that they didn’t allow pictures:
• From those who weren’t the press.
• Of a device that was at E3, a media show.
• That was visible from all around the booth on the show floor.
• That the exhibitors were showing off.
So, no mention from me except the raspberry. I hope the two of you reading this don’t buy their PSP car thingy.
Everyone else was great; even when a security guard called me over and I thought I was going to get bawled out, it turns out he just wanted to tell me that I could get a much better shot from where he was standing. And he was right.
Also during shooting, realizing that I had a couple of 2GB camera cards, I ended up switching from my normal mode of JPG to RAW, to see if I could fix white balance and stuff after the fact, instead of trying to switch to keep up with whatever colors were happening at the time. Not entirely sure what to do afterwards, I imported them into iphoto like usual — which can fortunately do a good job converting from RAW to jpg. I figured I’d just edit in photoshop like usual.
Not so. I got Photoshop Elements with the camera; turns out I need the full version (CS2) to use the raw plugin. I can upgrade for $500, but that won’t happen for a few months, at least.
So every week lately we’ve been watching Boston Legal with some friends. It’s not really my kind of show; my SO likes things like Law and Order, and Monk is actually somewhat decent. But at least the Shatner moments provide some comic relief. You know. Denny Crane!
We played しりとり (shiri-tori), the Japanese game where you have to come up with words whose starting syllable matches the last syllable of the previous word. For instance, start with かさ、then go to さくら、then go to らいしゅ、and so on.
Decent game, plus it helps one practice hiragana.
Ungabunga. I like that word. I think I learned it from the Flintstones.
Today I went to work, watched the Sony E3 press conference event via Gamespot (in which there was a person who spoke Japanese through a translator, and I understood most of what he said without needing the translator! yay!), came home, drove around running errands, purchased birthday things for my S.O. with help from her offspring, and came home to do Japanese homework. Oh the excitement, I can barely contain myself.
Tomorrow I go to work, watch the Microsoft and Nintendo E3 press conference events, drive around running more errands, go to Japanese class, and come home.
I will leave you with a picture of the dragon skull we just re-hung (after needing to take it down to allow the new & old refrigerators to pass by). It sits on a wall against a lovely background of picture frame and asbestos popcorn ceiling treatment, wearing festive christmas bells on its horns. You know, for festive purposes.
We’ve always been big fans of eating out, especially when the restaurant in question serves really good food. (Not pretentious food, mind you, but good food.)
We’ve also always been lucky enough that eating out several times a week has been an option for us. Unfortunately, that hasn’t left us with much money; every now and then we have to put off buying luxuries like toilet paper because we ate out too much in a week. And being able to save money would be kind of nice.
So we’re going to start trying to eat in more often. Which can actually be lots of fun, if you can do it right. My usual problem is that I’ll find a recipe that needs 18 ingredients, half of which I don’t have, so I have to go shopping, end up getting twice as much as I need, a fourth of which are specialty ingredients that only go in that one dish, and the dish isn’t so amazingly good that I have to make it repeatedly, so the remaining ingredients end up going bad and having to be thrown out.
A while ago my SO and I started another site, Out of House and Home, intending to be able to post recipes and mini-reviews of our favorite eateries there. We’ve got the eateries up; now we just need to start adding recipes.
I put up the first recipe — baked onions in cream and parmesan. It’s not something we can make every night, but I’ll see if we can’t start collecting more recipes and actually making them at home, so eating in doesn’t always have to mean “what’s frozen and nukeeable?”
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