Happy Valentine's Day

I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's day.

This Looks Interesting

Trailer for 'Across the Universe'

I can't tell whether this film is going to be a groundbreaking, unique experience in filmmaking or an unholy mess, but the trailer sure looks interesting. I love the idea of using the Beatles' music as a backdrop and connecting thread to a story set in the '60s, and some of the visuals look astounding.

You Give a Little Love

Bugsy Malone Finale

I miss being able to post directly from YouTube...

Subterranean Squirrel

Tonight as I was pulling into my driveway, a squirrel ran right in front of my car and ran down into the storm drain. This seemed peculiar to me, as I don't even ever remember seeing squirrels in my neighborhood before. For some reason it's striking me as an omen of some kind... of what, I'm not sure, but I hope it's something good.

The Others

I guess it makes sense, now that they've killed off the 2nd season tail end survivors, that we are getting flashback episodes centered on one of the 'others'. Overall not a bad episode, but I didn't feel that it moved the story along as much as I would have liked after such a long hiatus.

Wii!

Happy Wii-day to me!

Remember New Coke?

Almost everyone over a certain age most likely remembers the 'New Coke' fiasco, when Coca-Cola changed its classic formula to a sweeter version that tasted more like Pepsi which the marketing geniuses figured would help boost Coke's sales. An uproar followed, those responsible were sacked, and Coke went back to its classic formula (hence the 'Coca Cola Classic' now found on its labels). It seems odd to me, then, that 7up could make a fairly radical change to its taste with almost no notice or hype. I like the new 7up flavor, but I wouldn't necessarily say I like it better, and it seems different enough to me that I'm sure at least some people wouldn't like it as much. If there is any lesson to this, it may just be that some things are too much of an institution to be messed with, and for other things it may just not really matter.

Before I Forget

I wanted to keep this someplace where I wouldn't lose it...

1/3 BBQ Sauce
1/3 Honey
1/3 Soy Sauce

Before They Were (Network) Stars

I thought it was interesting to spot both Locke from "Lost" and Meredith Grey from "Grey's Anatomy" in the small roles in the movie "Old School", which aired tonight on ABC.

Favorite Superbowl Ad

The Coca-Cola "You Give a Little Love" ad, even though it wasn't new. The "Bugsy Malone" soundtrack was one of my favorites when I was growing up.

YouTube Coca Cola Ad

(Least favorite: SalesGenie.com, which was so bad I thought it had to be some sort of a parody. Alas, I think they were serious.)

Every Now and Zen...

I had run across this place last April and thought about giving it a try, and today I did. Great Boba Tea, and they had Dim Sum which looked really good. I'll give that a try next time...

http://www.zenzootea.com/index.html

Happy Blogday to me

Today is the first anniversary of my first post to this blog. A lot has happened in my life over the past year, but blogging has been one constant and it has been an enjoyable pastime throughout the year.

Go Colts

My team is the San Diego Chargers, who finished up an historic and fantastic regular season with a spectacular flameout in their first playoff game. I will be rooting for the Colts tomorrow, since I usually root for the AFC team in the Superbowl and I'd like to see the "can't win the big one" monkey tossed off of Peyton Manning's back.

Regardless of the outcome of the game, what I am probably more interested in are the commercials. Let's hope for some good ones this year -- it doesn't seem as though there have been as many memorable commercials in the past couple of years as there used to be, but maybe I am just getting more jaded.

Jetsons Time?

Commence holding breath: X-Hawk flying car could be here by 2010
Posted Jan 31st 2007 4:34PM by John Neff
Autoblog.com

The flying car is the equivalent of transportation's carrot on a stick. It's a concept that always seems to be 3-5 years down the road. According to an Isreali inventor named Rafi Yoeli, the flying car will actually be here by 2010 in the form of his X-Hawk. The X-Hawk uses a ducted fan design that allows it to have the same manueverability of a helicopter without exposed blades that prevent choppers from hovering near buildings and the like. Yoeli's own company, Urban Aeronautics, is developing the X-Hawk first as a workhorse vehicle that could be used by firefighters, rescue teams, and the military to aid in the recovery of people stranded in hard to reach places.

Like a helicopter, the X-Hawk can take off and land vertically, it will be able to fly up to 155 mph, reach an altitude of 12,000 ft and remain in the air for two hours. The size of the X-Hawks rotors, which are powere by four internal combustion engines, will be much smaller than a helicopters, which will make the vehicle quieter but also guzzle 50% more fuel. The X-Hawk only exists as a full-scale mockup right now, but Yoeli expects an unmanned Mule version to fly in 2009. A larger version capable of carrying ten people is also planned. The estimated price for an X-Hawk will make a Veyron owner blush: between $1.5 and $3.5 million, and Yoeli admits those estimates might be low.

(End Quote)

Let's see, if I save $10 a week I could get one of these by... oh well

Dell Gaming Micro-PC Possibly in the Works

PC Plus
Dan Grabham

Dell to launch gaming handheld in future?
Mini-gaming machine more likely to resemble UMPC than PSP

A senior Dell executive has admitted the company could look to make a gaming handheld in future. Global gaming chief Abizar Vakharia was speaking at Dell's European Innovation event in Marbella. There, Dell had earlier launched the XPS 710 H2C top-line gaming PC.

When quizzed about a future handheld, Vakharia looked serious as he said: "You know, that's definitely one that's on the radar screen, but we have no plans to talk about anything today."

Dell has made no secret of its desire to grow share in the gaming space, underlined by last year's acquisition of Alienware, but it would be some departure for such a major box shifter to launch a portable gaming device.

Any such handheld would be almost certainly a Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) style device because of Dell's close connections with Intel and Microsoft.

(End Quote)

This could be pretty cool, something like the PSP but enough like a real computer to justify it to geeks not quite ready to sink a couple of thousand into a toy.

Dani California

I just discovered this video (sorry, I don't watch too much MTV or VH1), and I love what they did to cover the entire history of rock. Here are my guesses of who is being spoofed / paid tribute to, in order:

Rockabilly era: Elvis Presley
British Invasion era: Beatles? Kinks? Herman's Hermits?
Acid Rock era: Sgt. Pepper Era Beatles? Iron Butterfly?
Glam Rock era pt 1: Angel
Glam Rock era pt 2: David Bowie / Mott the Hoople
Punk Rock era: Sex Pistols
Goth era: Bauhaus
Hair Metal era: Poison
Grunge era: Nirvana
Modern Alternative era: Red Hot Chili Peppers

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9kb_8LNTrpw

Short Movie Review (Retrospective Edition) -- The Notebook

Sometimes a guy can be in the mood for a maudlin chick flick. Either this was not the movie or I was not in the mood.

Murdoch: Big media has less sway on Internet

The Hollywood Reporter Online

By Georg Szalai
Jan 27, 2007
NEW YORK

Big media companies and governments ultimately can't stop or reverse their reduced agenda setting power brought about by the Internet and digital media, but must learn to live with it and embrace it as an opportunity, a panel at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland said Friday. Big media conglomerates have less influence amid the continued explosion of news sites, blogs and podcasts, News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said in the session moderated by Charlie Rose and available via Webcast. "It's so pluralistic," Murdoch said. "We all have less power, much less...(we) the big companies."

(End quote)

While this isn't actual news (who was Time magazine's Person of the Year again?), it's always interesting to hear the fact of the democratization of media admitted by a media titan. It's also interesting that this story comes out the same week as a story about News Corp. suing YouTube's owners to release the name of someone who posted episodes of 24 and the Simpsons before they were even broadcast. In some ways the current state of YouTube reminds me of the original incarnation of Napster -- it seems as thought you can find just about anything, for free, if you are willing to look. It seems silly, for example, to pay $1.99 to iTunes for a video you can almost always find on YouTube.

Moxie Dreams

I had s strange dream last night, where I was in high school and all of (us) cool kids were in a karate class. There was a submarine sandwich place next door and they sold Moxie, which of course everyone started drinking once I recommended it. Then there was a party of some kind at someone's house, and I wasn't keeping up with the cool kids enough for some reason (not rowdy or debauched enough, I think). Then I went to work where my job was to print out financial statements (pretty cool job for a high schooler I guess), and that is sort of where it ended. I remeber explaining that debt ratios had no direct effect on income tax rates, since debt incurred isn't income.

At any rate, the Moxie was as good in my dream as in real life...

P.S. From Wikipedia: "One of the key ingredients of Moxie is “Gentian Root Extractives”, which probably contributes noticeably to its unique flavor. For those without access to Moxie, the flavor can be approximated (and adjusted to taste) by adding Angostura bitters to root beer. Its bitter taste is also reminiscent of Italian chinotto soda."

T Mobile Hot Spot Wireless

I am currently posting from a T Mobile Hot Spot. These are pretty handy but my complaint is that they don't recognize returning customers automatically -- I am not good at remembering all the various user names and passwords for the accounts I have set up with assorted websites, and it seems to me that something like wireless connections at hotspots should have some sort of feature to automatically sign in if the user so desires.

Update: I know that there is a technical name for this involving Wireless Network Connections and something called a WEP key, but I was just making the more general point that once you have an account set up with a wireless provider it would be nice to have it recognize your computer the way home or other networks do. For example, once I set my WEP key at my parents' house, I haven't had to sign one once.

Amazing Amazon

I love Amazon. They ship things so rapidly that they almost always satisfy my need for instant gratification, and the prices are usually less than those at my local Borders or Barnes & Noble. I stocked up on computer books during a recent spree, and with free shipping I came out far ahead than if I had bought the same books at any bookstore. Today I received the following books, which are almost all on my reading list for 2007 (except for The Time Traverer's Wife, which I had already read but wanted my own for my library):

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life
The Time Traveler's Wife
Artemis Fowl
Me Talk Pretty One Day
The Book of Lost Things
The Secret History

My nightstand is piled high with these books, and I am excited to begin catching up on my reading list. Updates to follow.

Coca-Cola Redux

According to Wikipedia, the following are the purported secret ingredients to Coke:

Caffeine

Citric Acid

Vanilla

Lime Juice

Sugar (Lots o' sugar)

fluid extract of coca leaf, decocainized

caramel coloring (i.e., burnt sugar)

orange oil

cinnamon oil

lemon oil

coriander oil

nutmeg oil

neroli oil

No mention of the kola nut in this list, but according to rumor there is both coca and kola flavorings in the top-secret recipe. Also, Coke with real sugar is rare in the U.S. and corn syrup is usually substituted; the ingredient label itself also lists an ingredient not found above, Phosphoric Acid. Assuming at least some of the other flavorings are true, there are some surprises: I never would have guessed neroli oil, as this sounds like a new age candle scent more than a food ingredient, and coriander is a relatively obscure spice. Some of the others (such as the orange, lemon, cinnamon and nutmeg) do make sense, as you can tell that there are some citrusy flavors and spices in Coke. It's remarkable how unique this American classic truly is, with none of the dozens (hundreds?) of knock-offs really coming close, in my opinion.

Chili Recipe

From Patricia Cornwell, author of the Kay Scarpetta series (Postmortem, Body of Evidence, The Last Precinct, Predator etc.)

Miami-Style Chili with Beer

1 pound lean ground turkey or extra-lean ground beef
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups trimmed and sliced white mushrooms
1 1/2 cups chopped green, red, or yellow bell peppers
1 cup chopped yellow onions
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cans (28 ounces each) chopped tomatoes with diced green chilis
2 cans (16 ounces each) red kidney beans, rinsed and well drained
1 can (16 ounces) black beans, rinsed and well drained
1 bottle (12 ounces) Mexican beer
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano or marjoram
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
coarsely shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese for garnish
sour cream if desired
Sourdough bread, cornbread or tortillas if desired

In a large Dutch oven or 4-quart saucepan, cook the ground turkey in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, or until browned, breaking up the meat with the side of a spoon. Drain the turkey well. Transfer to a double layer of paper towels and press out the excess fat. Wipe out the pan.

In the same pan, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms, bell peppers, onions, and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, for 5 minutes, until the bell peppers are tender. Stir in the turkey, tomatoes with their juices, the kidney and black beans, beer, vinegar, oregano, basil, bay leaves, chili powder, salt and cumin. Bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, partially covered, for 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally.

Taste the chili for seasoning. Remove the bay leaves. To serve, ladle the chili into bowls and top each serving with cheddar cheese and/or sour cream if desired.

Serves 8 - 10; freezes well

ABC mulls 'Lost' wrap-up

Producers try to decide show's end date

Variety.com
Posted: Sun., Jan. 14, 2007, 10:00pm PT

By MICHAEL SCHNEIDER

ABC, Touchstone TV and the producers behind "Lost" are actively discussing how and when to retire the hit castaway drama.
According to "Lost" exec producer Carlton Cuse, picking an end date for "Lost" would help the show's creative team to map the next several seasons as they plot the show's thick mythology.
"It's time for us to find an endpoint to the show," said Cuse, speaking Sunday at ABC's portion of the TV Critics Assn. press tour. "It's a struggle for us, because we don't know if we have three years, four years or more to go. If we had an endpoint, then we could figure out where everything goes."
Such a move would placate fans of the show, who frequently gripe that they have no indication whether the show's ever-increasing mysteries will pay off. A set timetable would send a message to viewers that all of their questions will be answered eventually.

Old news by now, but I missed this story when it appeared last week. Good for them, a show like 'Lost' needs a well-defined story arc before it devolves into tedium or becomes a joke.

Mentos and Diet Coke

By way of debunking a story about the purported deadly effects of eating Mentos and drinking Coke, www.snopes.com helps to explain why dumping Mentos into a bottle of carbonated soda causes the famous fountain...

"Mentos, a candy that has a soft, chewy interior encased in a slightly hard shell, is no longer just for noshing on -- when combined with a carbonated beverage in a closed environment that has a small opening (think "soda bottle"), it serves to produce a frothy geyser that shoots many feet into the air, a secondary use of the product that has served to enthrall countless persons with a penchant for making things explode.

The combination of any carbonated liquid and mint-flavored Mentos will rapidly produce copious amounts of foam because the candy works to disrupt the surface tension of the liquid, thereby releasing all the drink's fizz (carbon dioxide) in one surprisingly speedy whoosh. The resulting effect is quick, high and explosive, yet what takes place is not a chemical reaction but a physical one."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4B88kWyaLg

http://eepybird.com/exp214.html

Congratulations Colts

Impressive comeback after having been down 21-3 earlier in the game.

Club House Games for Nintendo DS

OK, to make up for my last post whining about what I don't have, I'll review the most recent addition to my Nintendo DS game collection. Club House Games includes dozens of card games, board games and others such as darts, bowling, pool and Mah Jongg and features pretty good interfaces throughout. One twist is that you have to succeed at some of the easier games to 'unlock' other games, an approach that I've never been a fan of (this is also a feature of Sega Casino, for example). I also wonder if they are trying to be too many things to too many people by including games such as Old Maid with ones such as Texas Hold'em. Overall, though, I think the game is a good value for the money, considering how many games are represented and the relatively uniform quality of the presentation. Bowling in particular makes good use of the dual screen of the DS and is both challenging and fun.

Waa; You Snooze You Lose

Evidently quite a few Nintendo Wii units were distributed to Best Buy, EB Games, Game Stop and Target today, as advertised in inserts into the Sunday papers. I'm not much of an early riser even when I have to (such as for work), so I don't know if I could have made it down to stand in line in time to pick up one of the units. I think I'll have to lean on a connection to get me a Wii, but if that doesn't work I just may be down in front of Best Buy with my sleeping bag next weekend.

Toys 'R' Us is promising shipments 'any day now', but evidently these come during the middle of the day, which doesn't do those of us with daytime jobs much good; most frustrating for me was seeing Circuit City's inventory system which showed something like 846 units in their warehouse. At first I was told that I could put in an order for one of these, and then someone else told me all such orders are cancelled automatically.

I can understand distribution problems during the busy holiday shopping system, but I am mystified as to why it is still so difficult to pick up a $249 consumer electronics device which can't be all that difficult to manufacture and distribute. Another concern is that some of the more popular games are getting scarce themselves, which may mean that people would be well advised to pick up the games in advance of securing the actual units.

Paul Van Dyk - Nothing But You

One of my favorites in the Electronica / Trance genre; the lyrics are in Norwegian -- "jeg har ingenting men jeg har alt når jeg har deg" -- and translate as "I have nothing but I have everything when I have you."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQDZ87KrXvU

Lost

For some reason, the videos I have been trying to post from YouTube haven't been going through lately. Here's a link to one I liked, about one of my favorite TV shows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z_zVROAdLU