Jul 16th, 2008Stacy, my boss, just told me about Animoto. You can upload photos, select a soundtrack, and it generates a nice slideshow that’s sync’d to the music. Here’s an example using Interop Las Vegas pics:
We just got back from an excellent week in Tahoe. The smoke up there from the wildfires was pretty bad, but hey, it’s a vacation and we were in the mountains - how bad could it really be?
Here are pics from our trip.
Flickr balks at vids that are more than 90 seconds long, so here is a vid that didn’t make it through to the end. It’s the Brown/Donat trio, singing at the “Blue Review” (the talent show put on by Lair of the Bear campers each year).
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We just finished another fun week at the Lair. It was so nice to unwind, see our friends, let the kids run amok, and hang out in the mountains. Here are some pics, and click thru for a special vid…
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Having kids, of course, means living through a second childhood. I get to play with Legos, play catch with a baseball, and waste time on our Wii. But I just realized that fooling myself into believing I’m a kid again is a double-edged sword. The two little squirts are now on summer break, and I’m sitting here feeling like I ought to be on summer break too. I miss the old days of summer, watching hours of game shows and re-runs of old sitcoms like Gomer Pyle, going on bike rides down to the store to buy gummi bears and comic books, and complaining to my mom that I was bored. This sums it up pretty well:
So there I am at Best Buy last night, minding my own business in the videogame section. (Did I mention I bought a Nintendo Wii for myself a month ago, and gave it to Linda to give me on Father’s Day? She threw in Guitar Hero 3, God bless her.) I’m quietly perusing the Nintendo games, deciding whether to buy Tony Hawk Proving Ground or Super Mario Galaxy, when I notice a guy come towards me out of the corner of my eye. He’s taller than me by about an inch or two, wearing a Cal Bears t-shirt (a point in his favor) and shorts, and holding a video game.
“Hi, uh, this game is rated ‘M’ and the store won’t let me buy it because you have to be 18 years old,” he says, holding the game down about waist level so as not to tip off any Best Buy staffers who might be lurking around. “I’m 16 years old. Will you buy it for me, if I give you the money? Here’s seventy dollars, it only costs sixty bucks, and you can keep the change.” He flashes a wad of twenties.
It was surreal.
I felt sorry for the guy. When I was his age, I was trying to buy beer. All he wanted was some software.
So I took his dough and the game, went to the checkout counter, and bought it. We conducted the handoff at my car in the parking lot. It actually got my adrenaline pumping - I started wondering if it might be a sting operation. Would a swat team swarm me, or a reporter and cameraman from Dateline jump from a nearby van to get the nefarious M-game-buyer-upper on film? Nope, I got in my car, and the kid and his buddy walked away.
Hope he enjoys Metal Gear Solid 4 — I hear it rocks.
The thought that ISPs may start charging users based on the bandwidth they consume each month really pisses me off. Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T are rolling out trials of systems that would allow web users a certain amount of data that they could consume each month. If users exceed it, they pay more. The caps vary. It’s certainly going to cause people (including me) to think twice about what I download, and will crimp efforts to distribute video and music online. Apple TV, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube — they and others like them are all in serious jeopardy of having their traffic cut substantially. And what about rich media ads that will count against your bandwidth cap? Those will be really welcomed when metering begins. Just when the web was getting competitive with TV and terrestrial radio. Grrrrr….
I started reading about predictions about an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities a few months ago. At first I thought these stories were just tales from the rumor mill. But today one of Olmert’s deputies came out and flatly said that attacking Iran comes next. That’s laying your cards on the table, I’d say.
Could the Bush administration be so stupid and hawkish as to get involved in yet another war when Iraq has been so successful and such a hit with the public? If Israelis want to start a fight, let them do it - just don’t drag the U.S. into it. Why start a war with Iran and bog our troops down in a third conflict?
We’re in a recession and job losses are mounting. The dollar is plummeting. Oil prices are going through the roof. Russia, China and India are hugely dependant on Iranian oil, and will hardly take our side. We need to get used to the fact that nuclear proliferation is here to stay. Starting a conflict will not change that in the long run. But Israel knows that if they want any help against Iran, they need to do it while the current idiot is in the White House. So my prediction is that by November, we’ll be waging Yet Another War.
I heard a great snippet on NPR this morning on the way to work. Every Friday, NPR broadcasts “StoryCorps”, which is usually a semi-schmaltzy piece where someone tells a relative how much they love them. Today’s was different though, and made me laugh out loud. It’s about Mexican immigrants who had their name American-ified…at least some of them. On some names, it just doesn’t work. Take a listen… (Don’t read the transcript, you have to hear the guy -click “Listen Now” at top of the NPR page.)
An article in yesterday’s New York Times about the Chinese quest for gold at the Beijing Olympics game was a great read. The country’s drive to dominate the medal count at the ‘08 games will probably succeed, just like some other massive, nationwide efforts that the country has undertaken. The 119 project is the sports equivalent of the Three-Gorges Dam. To wit:
China has spent millions — perhaps billions — on personnel and infrastructure to accelerate growth in medal-rich sports in which it has had little success.
Americans (and probably other countries who fear that the Chinese will end up at, or near, the top of the medal count in August) will criticize the Chinese effort from various angles. Some will call the Chinese athletes automatons without spirit, slaves to the system, not “true” athletes for whatever reason, and so on. Some are already leveling charges that the Chinese are doping:
Mike Teti, the coach of the United States men’s rowing team, said, “We know they are cheating, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”
That is a very bold statement. Wow. What does Teti know that the rest of the world doesn’t, and why doesn’t he come forward with details to back up that allegation? If he has some evidence of cheating by the Chinese, he should present it. Otherwise, he is only looks combatitive and defensive - like’s he’s preemptively building a case to explain U.S. losses to the Chinese teams in Beijing. (For the record, I think the Chinese will do well in the sculling events, but not as well in sweep events.)
Whatever happens at this point, you can bet that the Chinese are not going to welcome Teti, nor the American rowing contingent, very warmly.
