Tuesday, September 25, 2007
An international unit of measure for pelvic thrusts.
Starbucks, Dell, Google, the list goes on: Huge business successes from meager beginnings. Today I thought of the idea which could form the basis on which to build the foundation of the next big thing to make that venerable list: The design of an an international unit of measure for pelvic pelvic thrusts. In addition to that, a way to do the measurement en masse, including location, velocity, distance, and any other relevant information. Then a comprehensive and searchable online database of pelvic thrust data could be created, which would be at one's fingertips at all times. Kind of like a Google Earth for pelvic thrusts. While I strongly believe that the pelvic thrust data itself should be free, I see no reason why it wouldn't be ok to make a little money (who are we kidding - we're talking huge bucks here) on the side with some tasteful, unobtrusive advertisements that appear whenever anyone accesses the data. If my projections are accurate, a few months after the database goes live, its bandwidth usage will put YouTube's to shame.
Monday, September 10, 2007
New Asha Ali single & Chungking's new album
The other day I noticed on Asha Ali's MySpace page that "These Months" had been deleted from the playlist and a brand new track, "A Promise Broken," had been added in its place. The new song has a quite different sound than that of her debut album. This is apparently attributable to the song being for a movie. The vocals are really strong though, and it's certainly nice to hear something new. There's a good, short review of the song, as well as a higher quality file of the song than the streaming version that plays at MySpace over at It's A Trap.
Also, it's been almost a month since Chungking's new album, Stay Up Forever, was officially released. Chungking's debut album (which was released twice: first as We Travel Fast in 2003, and then re-recorded and rereleased as The Hungry Years in 2005) was very laid back, and all about Jessie Banks' beautiful, lush vocals. Stay Up Forever, on the other hand, is pure electro-sleaze bliss. The music is now on equal footing with Banks' vocals, and the album starts off with a breakneck pace that I would have thought uniminaginable after listening to We Travel Fast/The Hungry Years more times than I can count.
The only thing I don't like about the album is track #5, "I Love You," which brings the breakneck pace of the first few songs to a dead halt 1/3 of the way through the album (is that the point?). While the tracks on the tail end of the album do slow down, this is fine since it would be disconcerting if the album were to end while still at the full-tilt pace established by the first few tracks. I think the album would be much better without "I Love You," and instead had a more gradual transition from the fast early songs to the slower songs at the end. The CD single for Love Is Here To Stay, the first single from the album, has an excellent b-side called "Jeans On." I think this song should have taken the place of "I Love You" on the album. If this were the case, this album would have been just about perfect.
Also, it's been almost a month since Chungking's new album, Stay Up Forever, was officially released. Chungking's debut album (which was released twice: first as We Travel Fast in 2003, and then re-recorded and rereleased as The Hungry Years in 2005) was very laid back, and all about Jessie Banks' beautiful, lush vocals. Stay Up Forever, on the other hand, is pure electro-sleaze bliss. The music is now on equal footing with Banks' vocals, and the album starts off with a breakneck pace that I would have thought uniminaginable after listening to We Travel Fast/The Hungry Years more times than I can count.
The only thing I don't like about the album is track #5, "I Love You," which brings the breakneck pace of the first few songs to a dead halt 1/3 of the way through the album (is that the point?). While the tracks on the tail end of the album do slow down, this is fine since it would be disconcerting if the album were to end while still at the full-tilt pace established by the first few tracks. I think the album would be much better without "I Love You," and instead had a more gradual transition from the fast early songs to the slower songs at the end. The CD single for Love Is Here To Stay, the first single from the album, has an excellent b-side called "Jeans On." I think this song should have taken the place of "I Love You" on the album. If this were the case, this album would have been just about perfect.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
My Statement
Tonight I rewatched Serenity (on the awesome new DVD), completing my little Firefly rewatching marathon that I had to do after reading xkcd's awesome comic from Monday. Afterwards I got on the computer to surf a little before going to bed. I checked my gmail and saw James Gunn had posted a new blog post, so I went over to MySpace to check it out, and it was just about the last thing in the world I expected:
"We (James and Jenna) need to announce that we have chosen to separate. We are sorry for any pain this causes family and friends. The enthusiasm we have expressed for each other's lives, spirits, and careers is real – we have been each other's cheerleader and friend during the past six years and continue to be so now and in the future.
"And a special note for our MySpace fans – We appreciate your support over the years, and would be overjoyed to have you continue supporting us both. You might be tempted to make one of us "feel better" by putting the other one down in a post. Please don't – we still have the utmost respect for one another, and we'd have to delete you. We aren't taking questions or doing interviews about this particular aspect of our lives. We're also avoiding reading any press on the subject, so don't send us any clippings or links about the split. Thank you in advance for respecting our privacy."
(Source: James Gunn's MySpace page and Jenna Fischer's MySpace page).
My first thought was that it had to be a joke. So I checked Jenna's page and saw the same statement. My next thought was that maybe their MySpace pages were hacked. Then I saw the time of the posts, about 3:30 this afternoon. If it had been hacking that would have been fixed by now. Just to make sure I googled their names and apparently it's on news sites, apparently with the MySpace messages as the source. As if that wasn't enough, if you think about it, the day after the release of a season of The Office on DVD is probably the perfect day to announce something like this for maximum privacy to keep immediate fan reaction to an absolute minimum, since everyone's spending all their free time in front of their TVs and not their computers.
Since it's real, my reaction is mainly shock. In interviews Jenna always described James as her real life Jim, and they seemed to be the perfect couple. So what happened? Were they both so busy with their mutually successful careers that they were left with too little little time for each other? Did Jenna's back injury create / exacerbate problems they were having? Did one or both of them meet someone else? It's certainly not any of my business, but I can't help but wonder. I mean, if the real Pam and the real Jim can't make it, what chance do the rest of us have?
I don't know either of them personally, but I'm a big fan of both their work, including James' Slither, The Toy Collector, Lollilove, etc., and Jenna's The Office, Blades Of Glory, Lollilove, etc.
In any case, regardless of what happened or what comes next for them, I wish them both the very best.
"We (James and Jenna) need to announce that we have chosen to separate. We are sorry for any pain this causes family and friends. The enthusiasm we have expressed for each other's lives, spirits, and careers is real – we have been each other's cheerleader and friend during the past six years and continue to be so now and in the future.
"And a special note for our MySpace fans – We appreciate your support over the years, and would be overjoyed to have you continue supporting us both. You might be tempted to make one of us "feel better" by putting the other one down in a post. Please don't – we still have the utmost respect for one another, and we'd have to delete you. We aren't taking questions or doing interviews about this particular aspect of our lives. We're also avoiding reading any press on the subject, so don't send us any clippings or links about the split. Thank you in advance for respecting our privacy."
(Source: James Gunn's MySpace page and Jenna Fischer's MySpace page).
My first thought was that it had to be a joke. So I checked Jenna's page and saw the same statement. My next thought was that maybe their MySpace pages were hacked. Then I saw the time of the posts, about 3:30 this afternoon. If it had been hacking that would have been fixed by now. Just to make sure I googled their names and apparently it's on news sites, apparently with the MySpace messages as the source. As if that wasn't enough, if you think about it, the day after the release of a season of The Office on DVD is probably the perfect day to announce something like this for maximum privacy to keep immediate fan reaction to an absolute minimum, since everyone's spending all their free time in front of their TVs and not their computers.
Since it's real, my reaction is mainly shock. In interviews Jenna always described James as her real life Jim, and they seemed to be the perfect couple. So what happened? Were they both so busy with their mutually successful careers that they were left with too little little time for each other? Did Jenna's back injury create / exacerbate problems they were having? Did one or both of them meet someone else? It's certainly not any of my business, but I can't help but wonder. I mean, if the real Pam and the real Jim can't make it, what chance do the rest of us have?
I don't know either of them personally, but I'm a big fan of both their work, including James' Slither, The Toy Collector, Lollilove, etc., and Jenna's The Office, Blades Of Glory, Lollilove, etc.
In any case, regardless of what happened or what comes next for them, I wish them both the very best.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
My ranking of Season 3 episodes of The Office
I've been meaning to make a list ranking my favorite episodes from Season 3 of The Office for awhile, but I planned to wait until after the Season 3 DVD set was released. Well, I ended up making my list today, as today marked the beginning of the OfficeTally Survivor Poll. Not wanting to have to think for a long time to pick my least favorite episode each day, I made my list today so I can just refer to it and make my pick without having to think about it (this might seem obvious, but evidently it never occurred to the Minnesota Vikings). This way I can save my mental energy for other cognitive tasks, (such as deciding whether to get Hot Fuzz through Columbia House or the 2-disc set from Walmart, deciding if I'd rather travel into the future 50, 500, or 5,000 years, or deciding if I'd rather have sex with Penélope Cruz or Monica Bellucci).
Making the list ended up being easier than I thought it would be. While the top few and bottom few episodes are pretty much set, I'm still working on the rankings of the middle 15 episodes or so (And since I originally posted this I have made some minor changes - the list below is the current version). Here is the current list (from favorite to least favorite):
01. The Job
02. Traveling Salesmen
03. The Return
04. Women's Appreciation
05. Product Recall
06. Branch Closing
07. Gay Witch Hunt
08. Beach Games
09. The Negotiation
10. Business School
11. Grief Counseling
12. A Benihana Christmas
13. The Merger
14. Safety Training
15. Cocktails
16. Diwali
17. The Convict
18. The Convention
19. Back From Vacation
20. The Coup
21. Initiation
22. Phyllis' Wedding
23. Ben Franklin
It should be interesting to see how the Survivor vote goes. I think The Job will probably win pretty easily, but it should be interesting to see how it the other episodes go.
Making the list ended up being easier than I thought it would be. While the top few and bottom few episodes are pretty much set, I'm still working on the rankings of the middle 15 episodes or so (And since I originally posted this I have made some minor changes - the list below is the current version). Here is the current list (from favorite to least favorite):
01. The Job
02. Traveling Salesmen
03. The Return
04. Women's Appreciation
05. Product Recall
06. Branch Closing
07. Gay Witch Hunt
08. Beach Games
09. The Negotiation
10. Business School
11. Grief Counseling
12. A Benihana Christmas
13. The Merger
14. Safety Training
15. Cocktails
16. Diwali
17. The Convict
18. The Convention
19. Back From Vacation
20. The Coup
21. Initiation
22. Phyllis' Wedding
23. Ben Franklin
It should be interesting to see how the Survivor vote goes. I think The Job will probably win pretty easily, but it should be interesting to see how it the other episodes go.
Northern Attack's 2007 Writing Contest - Final Voting
There were a ton of great entries every week, and the entries for the last challenge in particular were amazing. I reread all the entries a bunch of times just for fun, as I was hesitant to start the inevitable task of reading them critically and somehow picking out 3 favorites. I ended up having 2 super-favorites, and 4 others that were right behind. I couldn't decide based solely on rereading them over and over, so I had to take a step back and make a mental list of what was most important, and I was eventually able to choose #3. As was the case every prior week, if my top 5 (or in this week's case, 6) entries hadn't been submitted, or I was for some reason barred from voting for them, I would feel fine about voting for my next 3 favorite entries. For the final week's entries that was true several times over.
There were so many great entries each week, I think the 3 winnners will have gotten the most votes not necessarily because their entries were better than everyone else's, but probably because their sense of humor, things they focused on, and interests appealed the most to the other voters. I guess that's pretty obvious, though.
Regardless of who the top 3 vote getters are, I predict the following 2 things will be true:
1. Everyone will agree that the 3 winners are very deserving.
2. Everyone will agree that there are other people who were just as deserving of winning, although we'll probably disagree on who among the non-winners was most deserving.
In any event, it was an awesome contest, and I look forward to next year's contest!
There were so many great entries each week, I think the 3 winnners will have gotten the most votes not necessarily because their entries were better than everyone else's, but probably because their sense of humor, things they focused on, and interests appealed the most to the other voters. I guess that's pretty obvious, though.
Regardless of who the top 3 vote getters are, I predict the following 2 things will be true:
1. Everyone will agree that the 3 winners are very deserving.
2. Everyone will agree that there are other people who were just as deserving of winning, although we'll probably disagree on who among the non-winners was most deserving.
In any event, it was an awesome contest, and I look forward to next year's contest!
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Northern Attack's 2007 Writing Contest - Week 8
There were 24 entries for last week's challenge, so that was pretty cool. Reading all the awesome entries over the course of the entry period, I thought it would be really tough to pick 3 favorites when it came time to vote. While it was tough to pick 3 favorites, it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.
A day or two after I submitted my entry for the Jim & Pam / Dwight & Angela double date challenge I had an idea that I really liked: Beet pizza. It seemed obvious enough that surely most people had thought of it before, and it would probably be used for that challenge, but it wasn't. So going into the 8th and final challenge, I was determined to incorporate beet pizza into my entry, no matter what the challenge prompt might be. It didn't have to be in any big way or anything, just enough to use the words 'beet' and 'pizza' consecutively. To a lesser extent I also wanted to incorporate a casual Friday into my entry, including Dwight wearing a Happy Smile Patrol t-shirt. So, what was the 8th and final challenge? This:
"Pick a character and describe their childhood."
So the casual Friday / Happy Smile Patrol t-shirt idea was out, although hopefully I'll be able to use it if there's another contest next year (which would be awesome), and beet pizza would certainly be difficult. But not impossible. Here's my entry for the final challenge:
Writing Assignment #8: The Wonder Years
Angela Martin didn't have many friends growing up. Instead, she spent her free time with her cats. Concerned about this, Angela's dad Freeman decided to take action. He used to know a guy that taught lessons to misbehaving children, but J. Walter Weatherman moved to California awhile back. A friend referred Freeman to a man who recently moved to Scranton. The man, a musician, agreed to take Angela's favorite cat Daisy for two weeks, to break Angela's attachment.
Two weeks later the man went to return Daisy. Besides Daisy, he also carried on his bicycle three pizzas topped with mounds of beets that an area farmer hired him to make for his grandson, who will have to eat the pizzas in one sitting as punishment for eating the 'money beets' from their beet stand. The man rang the doorbell, but there wasn't an immediate answer. He set the pizzas down and walked around the house. Hoping a neighbor found Daisy, Angela opened the door, but instead saw the pizza boxes. There was a post-it note on top, which simply said, "Daisy." Angela was confused until she opened one of the boxes, saw some strange crimson matter, and shrieked in horror. Just then the man walked around the corner carrying Daisy to give back to her.
While her terror lasted only a moment, the damage was done. Since that day Angela hasn't eaten meat, nor has she figured out why Dunder Mifflin's quality assurance representative has always looked strangely familiar.
-------------
I think I did more revision to this entry than any of the others in the contest. Originally the first part of the story involved Angela sneaking a cat into church and it escaping and her getting in trouble for that with her parents, them talking to the pastor for help, him going to Poor Richard's for a drink, Creed playing there, and at the end of the set saying that he also played children's parties. Also, originally her parents gave her cat to another family and she didn't know, and so when she thought Daisy had been made into a pizza, she never found out it wasn't Daisy, and she buried the pizzas in her back yard. I thought that was too dark, though, so I reduced the time frames on everything, especially the amount of time she thought the cat was dead. I also tried briefly to make the entry into 2 talking heads, 1 long one by Angela explaining why she was a vegetarian, and 1 short one at the end by Creed, saying something simple like, "Back in the '80s I did a lot of odd jobs for extra money." But there was no way for Angela to know everything for the story to make sense. The other major challenge getting it down to 250 words. I had a little trouble with the double date entry, but I was able to cut some unnecessary stuff pretty easily. This one was 280 without anything obvious to cut. I remember I got really frustrated that I wouldn't be able to get it to 250 without cutting something essential, and I briefly considered trying another idea, but I took a break and when I looked at it again, I was able to trim 20 non-essential words pretty quickly, and the other 10 or so didn't take too long to get rid of, either.
Despite all the words I've used to talk about writing my entry, I haven't mentioned one simple fact: Compared to the other entries for Challenge #8 so far, mine isn't even that good. The other entries this week so far are so good, they collectively might be the best entries since Week #1. And there's only 8 entries so far!
A day or two after I submitted my entry for the Jim & Pam / Dwight & Angela double date challenge I had an idea that I really liked: Beet pizza. It seemed obvious enough that surely most people had thought of it before, and it would probably be used for that challenge, but it wasn't. So going into the 8th and final challenge, I was determined to incorporate beet pizza into my entry, no matter what the challenge prompt might be. It didn't have to be in any big way or anything, just enough to use the words 'beet' and 'pizza' consecutively. To a lesser extent I also wanted to incorporate a casual Friday into my entry, including Dwight wearing a Happy Smile Patrol t-shirt. So, what was the 8th and final challenge? This:
"Pick a character and describe their childhood."
So the casual Friday / Happy Smile Patrol t-shirt idea was out, although hopefully I'll be able to use it if there's another contest next year (which would be awesome), and beet pizza would certainly be difficult. But not impossible. Here's my entry for the final challenge:
Writing Assignment #8: The Wonder Years
Angela Martin didn't have many friends growing up. Instead, she spent her free time with her cats. Concerned about this, Angela's dad Freeman decided to take action. He used to know a guy that taught lessons to misbehaving children, but J. Walter Weatherman moved to California awhile back. A friend referred Freeman to a man who recently moved to Scranton. The man, a musician, agreed to take Angela's favorite cat Daisy for two weeks, to break Angela's attachment.
Two weeks later the man went to return Daisy. Besides Daisy, he also carried on his bicycle three pizzas topped with mounds of beets that an area farmer hired him to make for his grandson, who will have to eat the pizzas in one sitting as punishment for eating the 'money beets' from their beet stand. The man rang the doorbell, but there wasn't an immediate answer. He set the pizzas down and walked around the house. Hoping a neighbor found Daisy, Angela opened the door, but instead saw the pizza boxes. There was a post-it note on top, which simply said, "Daisy." Angela was confused until she opened one of the boxes, saw some strange crimson matter, and shrieked in horror. Just then the man walked around the corner carrying Daisy to give back to her.
While her terror lasted only a moment, the damage was done. Since that day Angela hasn't eaten meat, nor has she figured out why Dunder Mifflin's quality assurance representative has always looked strangely familiar.
-------------
I think I did more revision to this entry than any of the others in the contest. Originally the first part of the story involved Angela sneaking a cat into church and it escaping and her getting in trouble for that with her parents, them talking to the pastor for help, him going to Poor Richard's for a drink, Creed playing there, and at the end of the set saying that he also played children's parties. Also, originally her parents gave her cat to another family and she didn't know, and so when she thought Daisy had been made into a pizza, she never found out it wasn't Daisy, and she buried the pizzas in her back yard. I thought that was too dark, though, so I reduced the time frames on everything, especially the amount of time she thought the cat was dead. I also tried briefly to make the entry into 2 talking heads, 1 long one by Angela explaining why she was a vegetarian, and 1 short one at the end by Creed, saying something simple like, "Back in the '80s I did a lot of odd jobs for extra money." But there was no way for Angela to know everything for the story to make sense. The other major challenge getting it down to 250 words. I had a little trouble with the double date entry, but I was able to cut some unnecessary stuff pretty easily. This one was 280 without anything obvious to cut. I remember I got really frustrated that I wouldn't be able to get it to 250 without cutting something essential, and I briefly considered trying another idea, but I took a break and when I looked at it again, I was able to trim 20 non-essential words pretty quickly, and the other 10 or so didn't take too long to get rid of, either.
Despite all the words I've used to talk about writing my entry, I haven't mentioned one simple fact: Compared to the other entries for Challenge #8 so far, mine isn't even that good. The other entries this week so far are so good, they collectively might be the best entries since Week #1. And there's only 8 entries so far!
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