Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Sand

Interesting use of sand as art. The artist turns the composition of his art into the focal point of the performance. Fascinating.
Jungle Cruise Jokes

The Jungle Cruise at Disneyland is truly a relic. What keeps it entertaining is the myriad of jokes that the boat captains have at their disposal to use throughout the ride.



Someone has done an outstanding job of cataloging them here. Enjoy!

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Taxing Commuters

Not just no. Hell no. Let me get this straight. I'll have to pay additional tax because I get the pleasure of living in this nightmare of urban sprawl called Los Angeles? You've got to be kidding. So my $10,000 a year to the People's Republic of California isn't enough? You need more? Because you can't manage a surplus, it's my problem?
Tivo To Go

Over the weekend, my Tivo finally received the software update so that I can now transfer television programs to my PC. My first reaction to this was, um, okay neat. Then I realized I could archive as many Good Eats shows as possible!


For example, we tried to make fudge over the Christmas holiday this year using Alton Brown's recipe from Food Network. Well, the recipe is just not enough. There's some very important technique that is in the show but not in the receipe, such as not moving the pan at all so the sugar molecules don't bunch up. We ended up with a brick of chocolate at the bottom of our pan. Not good eats at all.

Hopefully, over the next few months, I'll have a catalog of all of these shows and more importantly, be able to refer to them whenever the receipes are unclear.

Monday, February 14, 2005

Best Translator Ever

I'm simply at a loss for words for this use of technology. Enjoy!
Dancing with the Devil

Good capitalist that I am, I'm giving Google AdSense a try. That's those links over to the right. I'd like to say that the motivation for this is pure geek, but hey, if someone throws some cash my way then all the better.

I will have to say that it's fairly interesting seeing which ads are run on the site. Right now, it seems that ads for Disney World are getting the most exposure. Interesting. What ads are you seeing?

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Guilty Pleasures

iTunes is probably one of the most evil creations ever. Why? Because by browsing their store, I happened across a lot of music that I absolutlely loved while in high school. And with one click, it was sitting on my hard drive and playing loudly through my speakers. Loudly.

I doubt I would have made a purchase like this browsing my local music store, or even Amazon.com. The folks at iTunes have done a great job of presenting their store in a way that you can really see a lot of various artists and of course, preview their tunes.

So, I'm throughly enjoying Caught Somewhere In Time by Iron Maiden as I'm writing this. So wrong. So very wrong. Love it.

Friday, February 11, 2005

Firefox

After originally working with the beta version of Firefox, I went back to Internet Explorer because of various formatting issues that I encountered with Gmail. I figured they'd figure out the problem for the final release, so I'm finally back to Firefox, and they have fixed those problems.



I'm glad I went back, because they have an Extension for the browser called Flashblock. Normally, I don't care if a site is using Flash or not, but I heavily use Terminal Services to access my machine. If you've ever used Terminal Services and visited a Flash enabled site, you quickly get to experience what it used to be like downloading data at 300 baud. Essentially, your session is rendered useless for several minutes while Flash runs through it's various frames.

Don't install Flash then, you say. Bah! Then everytime you visit a site with a Flash animation, you get treated to a install dialog box asked you to go find a way to install it.

I had been using a hack that just pointed the swf extension to 0.0.0.0 which stopped it from running the annoying Flash files. But the way that Firefox has implemented the solution is elegant. It will just display the box where the animation would normally play with an "F". If you hover over the "F", it will turn to a play button, and I have the option of determining if I want the animation to play or not. Very nice!



I'm a Firefox convert. Gosh, maybe I'll have to buy a Mac now and start writing a screenplay on the patio of the local Starbucks.

Nah.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Image

Two weeks and two extremes. Last week, I was at Walt Disney World for Lotusphere. Not only am I a certified Disney geek, but am also a real geek, so I felt right at home in this atmosphere. Fast forward to this week, and I’m smack dab in the middle of probably the trendiest area of Hollywood: The Sunset Strip.

My hotel is flanked by the House of Blues and The Comedy Store. Not to mention that the hotel restaurant, Chi, is partly owned by Justin Timberlake. Everyone is very, very busy trying to look hip and mostly succeeding. For my part, today I’m wearing my Mickey Mouse t-shirt, jeans and brown jacket. Tragically, woefully not hip.

I don’t think I’ve seen so many exotic cars in my life, and I’ve spotted them all within a block of the hotel. Me, I drive a dusty Honda Civic. Not even close to hip.

What’s interesting is that all this “hipness” is very inviting. I can see how people can land in this area and fall in love with it. It has its charm. This is something I never thought I’d say of anywhere in Los Angeles.