melinthropy

I just wanted to post this little  video I put together on Easter (filmed on The Flip!) that shows Bunny Cakes being assembled. But of course, I had to be difficult, and embed the video rather than posting a link (since I want to start using more video in general). My version of Wordpress was too old to use the plugin I wanted, so I decided to upgrade to the one that was released just this afternoon. Bleeding edge, baby. So, of course I had to import my tags from Ultimate Tag Warrior, and then of course, I had to pick a new theme (since it should *look* different if I bothered to go to this trouble), then I had to add random junk into the theme… And then something about the Apache configuration wasn’t allowing my plugin to work, which we spent hours looking at (literally).  And now my plugin breaks some of the new WordPress version… It always amazes me how much time you can sink into this kind of stuff.

Wordpress 2.5 seems very nice, by the way. I just noticed it is auto-saving this post as I write it. Also, I was having some problems with the visual editor stripping out all my line breaks (maybe because I’m using Safari), and that seems to be resolved. The interface in general looks very nice as well. And thanks to the SVN option, future upgrades will be very easy!

So anyways, here is the video (be sure to watch all the way to the end to see the special cameo from the Easter Bunny himself!) Click on the picture to watch it.  It’s only about a minute long.  If you click on it and you don’t see video starting up, please download the latest version of Quicktime.

So, after I read a review of it by David Pogue, I went out and bought… The Flip!  If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a video camera that’s smaller than my cell phone, runs on AA batteries, and has a little USB plug built right into it.  It was so easy — I opened the package in the car, put in the batteries, and started taking videos before we even made it home!  (And we only live 5 minutes away from BestBuy!) Then I got home, took a couple more videos, and plugged the Flip into my MacBook.  It opened up a little window where I double-clicked on the Mac software, and I could immediately see the videos I had taken, and could easily save them to disk (or even trim them down first).  Then I opened up iMovie on my Mac, which I’ve never used before (I don’t have iLife ‘08 yet — I have the old version.) and put together a little movie. The sound track doesn’t go with it at all — it’s just the first thing I could find that I had recorded in Garage Band (it’s me on the vocals).  So about 20 minutes of editing, adding in the music, and exporting to a web-friendly size, I had this little video! It was fun.  The Flip is so small, it will fit in my pocket or pocketbook, so I can take random video of things I find interesting.  (Yes, this was an uncharacteristic random purchase, wasn’t it!)

Measurably
Excellent
Literature
In
New
Technology
Having
Relatively
Odd
Ponderings
Yeah! 
Well, actually, it doesn’t really stand for anything.  That was an example of a backronym.  I recommend following that link to the wikipedia article because for some reason, I found the article highly amusing. 

I heard about Sheldon Comics from a co-worker, and I’ve been reading it ever since.  It’s got people, animals, and a character who can only say “squee.”  What more could you want?  I enjoyed a couple recent ones. First read this one: 

Sheldon Jan25 
Pretty amusing.  And I figured that was it. But, wait, there’s more! 

Sheldon Jan26
Anyways, this has been my cartoon appreciation post for the week. 

A friend of mine posted a link to this geek test.  I thought it was pretty amusing, and I got to take a stroll down memory lane of my geekiness past and present.  My score was 45.16765%, which makes me a Super Geek!  Woohoo!  One of my geekier things that wasn’t in the list was that I was nominated for “Most Intellectual” in highschool.  (I was one of three, but I wasn’t the winner.  The valedictorian won it, which kind of makes sense.  We had a photo shoot at Phipps with all the nominees.) Oh, and I like to count on my fingers in binary.  If you take the test, add a comment with your score, and something geeky about you that wasn’t on the test!

Come on, Nintendo.

The Wii has been out for OVER A YEAR. Why is it so hard to find one? Even on-line! Don’t you understand I really want to play the new Zelda game over the holiday break?

What gives?

[Update: I broke down and ordered one! I got it as a bundle with extra games and accessories, which was more than I really wanted to spend for a gaming system, but I put my fudge website money towards it and justified the rest as John and my Christmas present for each other... Wiiiii!

If you are looking for a Wii, I recommend this site: http://www.xpbargains.com/wii_locator.php I found a few other places that were out of date, but this one seems to be on top of it. They have a nice xml feed that shows you the latest availabilities. Now I'm going to immediately take that xml feed off my google page before I see one that's cheaper!]

Or as some would say, “Fudge Renaissance”

I’ve just finished a month-long project to build a website for a colleague of mine and his wife to sell fudge! Check it out here: Renaissance Fudge Company

My violin practicing got cut pretty much completely — I would work for 8 hours at my main job (instead of my usual 9 or 10!), then come home and work on the site until midnight, plus a few solid weekends. But the site went live today! And my customer was happy. And Rails is pretty darn cool.

Fudge. It’s what’s for breakfast! (and lunch and dinner.) Eat more fudge!

(Actually, I haven’t even tried the fudge, given my severe food allergies. I’m going to work with them and figure out what flavors are safe for me to eat. But I’m sure it’s good!)

I thought this was an interesting article about languages that are nearing extinction. The article talks about how “More than half of the world’s 7,000 languages are expected to die out by the end of the century, often taking with them irreplaceable knowledge about the natural world”.

I thought it was a little weird that the knowledge about plants and animals and culture would necessarily die with the language. The article talks about how the languages usually die slowly as children decide that another language is more popular to learn and don’t learn the old language. But they still learn enough of it to mostly communicate with their elders. Then the next generation learns less of the language, and so on. But it would seem to me that the knowledge of the medicines and plants would still be passed down to the generations that only “kind of” learn the language. Then those children would be able to assimilate that knowlege into whatever the more popular language is, and continue to pass it down in the more popular, surviving language.

But, I guess it just doesn’t work like that. Maybe when children reject a language as not being worth learning, they are also rejecting the culture that goes with it, so that would be why that knowledge dies with the language.

My violin teacher recommended Naxos Classical Music to me last week as a place where I could listen to recordings of the pieces I am working on. It looks like for US$19.95 (or EUR€19.95 ?? Was someone too lazy to do the currency conversion? Or do the intertubes cost more in Europe?) you can get a year’s subscription to them where you can download all the classical music you want to listen to. It sounds like they also have Historical, Film Music, Jazz/Blues, Nostalgia, and World/New Age, but I’m not sure to what extent. You can also get a free subscription where you hear 25% of each track. I’m thinking of doing that to see what kind of selection they have. I think it would be great for someone like me who has a very limited classical and jazz cd collection, but would like to start listening to more without spending hundreds of dollars.

[Update: I don't know if it will work on my MacBook, and the search capability is a little crummy. Also, maybe the service is cheaper in the US since it apparently does not include the Jazz Legends recordings, which is a bummer.]

Just a quick update on Mr. Fish (aka Shadow). Apparently he felt his little fishy life was complete after such a great song was written for him. He has left us to swim the fishy heavens. And for the record, I cleaned his tank last weekend just like I said I would.