Just found out about this… Tor is giving away free fantasy and sci-fi ebooks (and some high-res wallpapers) in a variety of formats through this coming Sunday, July 27th. There are no strings attached, no registration required. The selection isn’t huge, and I am not familiar with most of the books, but I recognize a number of the authors. Free is free, so I’ll probably grab them now and check them out at some point. To me, there is no substitute for a real, paper book. . . but I’m willing to give this new-fangled electronic book thingie a shot.
If you use gmail (if not, why not?) and Firefox 3 (If you use Firefox, you should upgrade. If you use IE you should use Firefox! Why, because I freakin’ said so! Plus, it’s better.) you can set up Firefox so that mailto: links will open in Gmail, rather than Outlook Express or whatever stupid email client you probably don’t use.
So I just started watching American Gladiators this season (after watching the original series for years growing up). In this week’s episode (the 3rd) the fourth set of contestants competed. One of them was old Brick Reilly (below).
From NBC.com:
Brick Reilly is a 27-year-old tree climber from Springfield, New Jersey. He was born deaf and has always deemed athletics an important escape from the realities of life. Though Reilly recently had a cochlear implant which gave him the ability to hear, he never used his disability as an excuse in his life. He works as a mentor for deaf children in the New Jersey area.
He has already fought a congenital problem and come out on top. For that reason (and well. . . because he’s sexy) I was rooting for him. And he did not disappoint. He swung across Vertigo like he was a monkey, yanked Toa from Tilt and flew through Skytrack, becoming the first person to win that relatively new event.
Brick went into the Eliminator with a 12.5 second head start against his opponent. He breezed up the rope ladder and across the tightrope and zipped over on the hand bike like he uses one every day. Then he went down the rolling pin and dislocated his shoulder. . . and climbed the Pyramid and popped his motherfucking shoulder back into joint when he grabbed the zip line! You da fuckin’ man, Brick! He struggled a bit with the Travelator but came out victorious in the end.
I was checking the weather on weather.com, since I noticed it had gotten really windy outside and wanted to see if a storm was coming. I noticed a weather statement that said the following:
WINNEBAGO-BOONE-MCHENRY-LAKE IL-OGLE- LEE-DE KALB-KANE-DUPAGE-COOK- KENDALL- WILL-LAKE IN-PORTER- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF…ROCKFORD…WOODSTOCK… WAUKEGAN… OREGON…DIXON…DEKALB… AURORA…CHICAGO…OSWEGO…JOLIET… GARY…VALPARAISO 927 PM CDT MON MAY 26 2008
…PNEUMONIA FRONT MOVING DOWN WESTERN LAKE MICHIGAN…
A PNEUMONIA FRONT CURRENTLY IN FAR SOUTHEAST WISCONSIN WILL CONTINUE TO RAPIDLY DROP SOUTHWARD INTO NORTHERN ILLINOIS AND INDIANA TONIGHT. THIS FRONT HAS BEEN MARKED BY A DRASTIC CHANGE IN TEMPERATURES AND A STRONG WIND SHIFT. TEMPERATURES ALONG THE LAKE FRONT HAVE DROPPED FROM THE LOW TO MID 70S TO THE MID TO UPPER 40S AS THE FRONT PASSES. WINDS HAVE SHIFTED FROM BEING LIGHT AND OUT OF THE WEST TO OUT OF THE NORTHEAST AND GUSTING UP TO 40 MPH AT TIMES ALONG THE LAKE. THIS FRONT WILL BE INTO LAKE AND MCHENRY COUNTIES BY 10PM…COOK… DUPAGE..KANE…DEKALB…AND BOONE COUNTIES BY 1045PM…AND THE REST OF NORTHWEST INDIANA AND NORTH CENTRAL ILLINOIS BY MIDNIGHT CDT.
A PNEUMONIA FRONT IS A RARE… METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENA THAT IS TYPICALLY OBSERVED ALONG THE WESTERN LAKE MICHIGAN SHORELINE DURING THE WARM SEASON. THESE FRONTS ARE DEFINED AS LAKE MODIFIED SYNOPTIC SCALE COLD FRONTS THAT RESULT IN ONE HOUR TEMPERATURE DROPS OF 16 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT OR GREATER.
That is strange. So it’s a like a really bad cold front? I’d never heard of a pneumonia front, and I’ve lived on western Lake Michigan all my life. But the temperature outside has indeed plummeted. Hmm, learn somethin’ new every day, I guess.
In a frenzy of updating, I decided to update the photo gallery software I use as well. The new software is more powerful and the results are more modern-looking. However, the configuration is much more complex, and I’m still figuring it out. This blog software integrates with the gallery software rather nicely, but I’m still figuring that out as well. I can’t imagine someone who’s not computer savvy getting this stuff to work. I guess that’s why it’s good sites like blogger and flickr are in existence.
I did not yet upload my European vacation pictures, but I’m getting there. I did upload the pictures from my trip to Mexico for Thanksgiving. Clicking the image to the left will take you there.
Note: The gallery/blog integration keeps breaking the gallery links, so if you find one that doesn’t work it’s not a dead link, just a dormant one. It’s easy to fix the links once I discover they’re broken. The real challenge will be finding out how not to break them in the first place!
You may also notice the “Random Photo” to the left (unless I’ve moved it since this posting). It is just what the name implies. . . a random photo from my gallery. You can click on it to see the full image.
Disclaimer: Some images may be rated “PG” but I don’t believe there is anything blatantly NSFW.
I decided it was time to spruce things up a bit around my tired, old blog. So I changed the theme, and even renamed it to something a little less unoriginal but equally alliterative. Now I just installed the new theme last night before bed, so I haven’t had a chance to tweak it at all. Please be patient as I make the changes I want to get it lookin’ good.
Also, you may notice that RSS feeds will no longer contain the entire post. I have my reasons for doing that, and I apologize for any inconvenience it may cause. It’s not necessarily permanent; right now it’s a trial run. We shall see.
In the header I call this version 3.0 of my blog. While that may be a bit misleading, since this version entails mostly cosmetic changes, I figure that software companies do it, so why can’t I?
For anyone who cares, version 1.0 started on May 5, 2004 on easyblog. Version 2.0 made its appearance in this very spot on June 15, 2005.
I hope I’m not related to Dick Cheney. I mean, if he and Barack Obama can be cousins, anyone can be related to him. I’m trying not to hold this against Obama, but it’s hard. Family ties can be strong ones, even for eighth cousins.
This makes you wonder (well it makes me wonder, and it should make you wonder too) what other famous people could be related. Maybe Mel Gibson is a distant cousin of Mel Brooks. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump have some common ancestors. Getting back to presidential candidates, wouldn’t it be fun to discover that Hilary Clinton and Rush Limbaugh are related? Yes, it would.
This all gives me hope that I might have a distant celebrity relative. Now all I have to do is find out who it is and get in their good graces. Or at least in their will. Of course with my luck, I’ll probably find out I’m related to Karl Rove.
So Family Guy Live! was awesome! It was hilarious and very interesting at the same time. Putting faces to all the voices was fun. Even though I consider myself a fan of the show, I’ve never been a superfan and I didn’t realize that some of the voices were people I knew from other things. Like Alex Borstein, the voice of Lois, was on MADTV and played the famous Ms. Swan. The voice of Meg is Mila Kunis, Jackie from “That 70’s Show” (who incidentally seems like she really is a bit of a ditz). All the main characters were there, except Patrick Warburton (Puddy on “Seinfeld”) who voices Joe the wheel-chair bound cop. And of course we got the Seths: McFarlane and Green.
After they were all introduced, they read through an episode, complete with occasional asides and commentary. We also got several live musical numbers (”Shipoopi!”).
And then, for a real treat, we got a sneak peak at the upcoming “Star Wars” themed season premiere. It looks like it’s going to be great. They poke fun yet maintain a proper reverence. They also stepped up the animation for the space ship scenes. I can’t wait to see the whole thing this coming Sunday!
They wrapped up with a little Q&A, some of which were requests to do certain famous parts of the show.
As it turns out, Alex Borstein has a potty mouth. She likes to say “fuck”, and she sang a song (as Lois) than involved her complaining “You never eat my pussy anymore.” Of course, there was a family with three kids right in the front row. She addressed the family several times, seeming slight apologetic, but not really. It was great!
Resizing images has never been a pleasant thing. Trying to make something bigger using interpolation rarely results in good-looking results. And resizing something to be smaller can often lose important detail. And these techniques really fall apart when you aren’t retaining the aspect ratio of your image.
But apparently someone has been working on a Better Way ™.
Check this out:
This is very impressive, in my opinion. I can’t wait for this “retargeting” technology to find its way into consumer grade image editing software!
It is a red letter day here in the U.S. I think from this point forward, August 13th should be known as “End of Rove Day” and we should all get to go home and get drunk to celebrate. It’s a miracle!
In case you haven’t heard or guessed (inconceivable!) I’m talking about Karl Rove’s resignation. This is a momentous occasion. The Devil has left the White House! Politicians and political functionaries leave for one of two reasons (as far as official excuses go): to spend more time with their family or for health reasons. Rove went with the family angle. His poor, poor family, having to see more of him.
Alas, I fear it’s too soon to celebrate too joyously. We can’t really count Rove out yet. He claims that he’s going to work on a book, but if he wanted to get involved in getting the next Republican president elected in 2008, this would be a good time to free up his schedule. Even if that’s not what’s going on, I just don’t see him as going out to pasture. He’s too devious. He hasn’t been so effective with managing Bush’s popularity while in office. . but how can he? His strength lies in getting the unelectable elected. I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of Dr. Lucifer Rove, Doctor of Spinology.
But for now, I’m just going to keep on celebrating.
I decided it was time to spruce things up a bit around my tired, old blog. So I changed the theme, and even renamed it to something a little less unoriginal but equally alliterative. Now I just installed the new theme last night before bed, so I haven’t had a chance to tweak it at all. Please be patient as I make the changes I want to get it lookin’ good.
