At some point it seems that Google Maps stopped chasing waterfalls and in the process stopped sticking to the rivers and lakes (and streams) that they’re used to and pretty much gave up on naming a variety of watercourses. You’ll never guess where I had to turn to to get the information that Google couldn’t supply. Continue reading Google Stops Chasing Waterfalls
This past September a friend told me about a new ABC action series she’d started watching called “Designated Survivor” starring Jack Bauer. I mean, she didn’t say that it starred Jack Bauer, she said that it starred Kiefer Sutherland, but since I can never remember the character’s name from this new show it’s just easier for me to call him Jack Bauer.
In the first episode we find out that Jack has been serving as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and is an expert on a wide range of complex policy matters that most Americans can’t be bothered to understand because we’re way too busy blogging about television shows.
So anyway.
In the first episode some mysterious bad guys blow up Continue reading Designated Auditor: Ben Carson Discovers Secret $500 Billion! Not.
I remember when the Marriott Marquis was still shiny and new, back in the 1980s. Somewhere in my stack of sketchbooks I have a little student study I made of the hotel while I was in the architecture program at Tech. In that write-up I compared the elevator cabs to blood cells pulsing through heart of the hotel, mostly because back then the elevators were painted bright red! Somewhere along the line an interiors person must have been paid good money to come in and inform hotel management that rocketship red was Continue reading Skidmark
For those of you who’ve been reading me here (and elsewhere) you know that I’ve rather become a fan of science fiction conventions and the people who attend them. I love that there exists a safe harbor in this world for the myriad nerds and social misfits who communicate their innermost feelings via witty T-shirts and long rambling tirades regarding the inefficiency of Model 7 dilithium articulation frames. I celebrate the fact that there’s a place where nobody cares if you look (and often smell) funny… a place where sexy actresses are paid to Continue reading Dragon Hoarders
Do you know what hyperbole is?
Do you know who Kirk Montgomery is?
Do you know what you get when you mix the two?
I just heard an advertisement for the new Star Trek movie in which Mr. Montgomery is quoted as saying that the new Star Trek is “this generation’s Star Wars”. ORLY? I thought it was supposed to be this generation’s STAR TREK!!!!
Cretin.
::sigh::
Following this new variation on logic I can only surmise that:
Alls I know is that THIS generation have their heads up their collective asses and that Mr. Montgomery is leading the charge. Just like Humphrey Bogart in “Ironman 2”.
Now THERE was a classic.
Oh Netflix, you sexy little minx, you conduit to all my guilty pleasures, you must be nearly as exhausted as I am… or maybe you kids started celebrating New Years a little early this year? All I know is that after 15 hours of slinging pixels I arrived home, ready to crank open a little bit of Yu-Gi-Oh style monster-dueling before hitting the sack and five seconds into the disc I realized that you didn’t sent me Volume 8 and 9 like I requested, you sent me Volumes 9 and 10, which might seem Continue reading Yu-Gi-Oh Versus Netflix? Message Reveived!
Okay, okay, okay everybody. I get it. Seriously. I get it. It’s time for me to step up to the plate and admit that I have a problem. My phone sucks and I don’t know the rules of text messaging. But I’m not going down alone… you’re all equally to blame in this and if I’m taking the fall, I’m bringing all of you down with me.
Here’s the deal.
In 2003 I owned one of the hottest toys on the planet…. a sweet black and silver Sony Ericsson T-616 cellphone (part of their 610 series).
It had a real (albeit tiny) joystick, a sophisticated operating system and a full-color screen WAY bigger than any of my friends’ phones. This thing was so far ahead of the curve that only the dorkiest dorks in town owned one. Needless to say that no one in my circle of friends and work colleagues had a phone that could begin to match the things my phone could do.
I’m serious. This was a nifty bit of cellular overkill and I LOVED it.
The T-616 was a miniature computer. It had a camera and it used Bluetooth™ (the usefulness of which nobody seemed to comprehend regardless of how many hand gestures I used to explain the concept of controlling the refrigerator with my cellphone*). That little marvel could do SMS (simple text messages), MMS (styled text messages with images and video)… it was even capable of sending and receiving honest to goodness emails!!
This was back in 2003, people!!!
Back when Saddam was still in power, the Concorde was still in service, and New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain wasn’t just on the quarter.
After playing around with the T-616 I was certain that “texting” would be my favorite feature, a certainty which lasted less than a month as that’s exactly how long it took me to realize that the rest of my friends’ phones were as useful as a duck on wheels and that frequent texting was as expensive as a trip to the Gold Room with a stripper, please, sir, don’t touch the boobs.
There I’d be, at a restaurant, on a date, waiting for the girl to return from the powder room. With a couple of glasses of wine in me and a mind for mischief I’d whip out my T-616 and type up a message to a couple of my friends and hit the “SEND” key.
The next day I would get an angry phone call or three.
Blisteringly livid Continue reading Text Messaging Intervention
Dear Bauder College,
Thank you for your interest in the field of Graphic Design. I found your newest television commercial, in which a representative for your school cheerfully proclaims “Not an artist? It doesn’t matter anymore!”, to be particularly exciting as it helped prove a point that I’ve long been trying to convey to my colleagues in the arts. The reason I’m writing this open letter to you is to express my happiness that you’ve had the guts to take a Post-Modern leadership position on what makes a person an artist. Thank you for stating unequivocally, as an institution of higher learning, that sophisticated graphics software has finally reached a state that eliminates the requirement that the operator have even a passing knowledge of Continue reading Not an Artist? It Doesn’t Matter Anymore
Last week I finally got around to upgrading to Adobe CS3 and I love the new user interface and could go on and on about all the great improvements but unfortunately, it’s not all peaches and cream. During the production of InDesign CS3, it seems that a crucial 3rd-party plug-in called InBooklet SE was removed from the market because its maker had been purchased by Quark, Adobe’s key competitor in the document publishing market. Quark’s decision to discontinue the development of InBooklet SE was the business equivalent of kicking Adobe in the nuts.
But you came here for a way to fix your problem didn’t you?!
I’m going to give you a way to create a properly imposed PDF version of your InDesign document, without using anyone else’s plug-ins or scripts. It’s an entirely Adobe-based solution and while it doesn’t provide an editable InDesign imposition, it’s a very good solution that should benefit a good number of users. Are you ready? Continue reading EASY Solution for Adobe InDesign CS3 Booklet Problem
I care. I care a lot. About the Earth that is. You know, “The Planet” (differentiated in this discussion from “The Other Planets” by the omission of the adjective “Other”, just to be clear).
One of the specific aspects of The Planet that concerns me the most is its temperature. It keeps me up at night. No, really! It makes me wake up at 3:30am in pain and frustration…. mostly because I have a really nasty cold and can’t stop coughing because my room is too hot.
“Aha!” you cry, “then you belong to us, to our Society!”
“What society?” I stammer, unexpectedly caught in a first person narrative.
“Why, the Earth “Is Too” Getting Warmer Dammit Society,” you answer, hands on hips, caught between triumph and desperation.
Continue reading E”IT”GWDS
