RIP, Captain EO

Google always impresses me with the speed with which its index is updated. Still, as fast as it is, it's not actually instantaneous. This afternoon, one of the girls at work got a call from her husband saying Michael Jackson had died. He didn't have any details, so she immediately turned to the internet and googled "Michael Jackson dead", clicking the first result that came up.

After 1 minute of skimming the article, she started running around the office telling employees and patients alike, "Did you hear? They found Michael Jackson dead at his house, and he's been dead for like 20 years and the guy that's been running around saying he's Michael Jackson all the time is an imposter!"

I immediately smelled something fishy, so I followed her back to her room to check her source. Sure enough, since the Google index wasn't quite updated yet, that first Google result she followed was this article, from that bastion of sober journalism, The Onion.

Lost/Found

Next to one cupboard in our dining room is a small hole where a power outlet used to be. The hole sat uncovered for a while until we noticed that some toys were inexplicably vanishing. I discovered that by contorting my hand just right, I could get my camera in just far enough to get a picture of the inside of the wall, all the way down to the bottom between the drywall and the studs.

Before

Tonight, after a good solid 90 minutes of strategically maneuvering the shop-vac hose, I liberated the following:

• 12 Crayola Color Wonder markers
• 1 teacup
• 1 tea spoon
• 1 child's fork
• 1 Fisher Price Little People figure (the one known as Maggie?)
• 1 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (believed to be Michelangelo)
• 1 orange motorcycle thing that fits inside aforementioned Ninja Turtle
• 1 toy croissant
• 1 toy mashed potatoes blob
• 1 wooden knife from a kitchen set
• 1 Happy Meal™ car
• 2 stuffed cats (a gift from one of our exchange students)
• And, Diego, the animal rescuer. Judging by his position on the top of the toy heap, he had jumped in to try to rescue them all.

After

While You Were Out...

It seems that in most blogs, there's a flurry of posting, then a gradual slowdown, then a few months in which nothing happens and you wonder if the author died or just got lazy. That period is always followed up by an apologetic post wherein the author apologizes for not keeping up with their responsibilities to their audience and swears that they'll be more faithful in their duty in the future.

This is not one of those posts.

Christmas Video & iMovie '08 Review

Apple announced a new version of iMovie this month, and yet I had still never sat down and looked at the old one (iMovie '08). iMovie '08 was a ground up rewrite that took away a lot of the functionality that had been present in previous versions in favor of a more simplistic approach that was ostensibly quicker and easier to use.

So, to try it out, I put together a little highlight reel of the kids opening Christmas presents:



My conclusion from making this is that iMovie '08 is a piece of crap. If I had never used editing software on a computer before, iMovie '08 probably have been easier and quicker to make a simple movie like this from start to finish. But, for me, it took way longer than iMovie '06 would have because I kept looking for things that just weren't there. For example, I spent an hour trying to figure out how to change the length of an individual transition (apparently, you can't; you can change the length of all transitions in the project, though), and another hour on how to change the volume on a song that you've added (you can't do that, but you can go to every single clip in your timeline and use the "ducking" option to make sure that your background audio is appropriately muted).

I would just keep using iMovie '06 for anything, but it doesn't transcode AVCHD files from my new camcorder natively, so I'd have to transcode those in some other program first. Still, that would most likely be worth it for the extra functionality.

iMovie '09 has added a lot of features that make it seem like it might be enough for me, but I still fear it might not be all the way back to what iMovie '06 had.

Bandolier Of Carrots

There's a Woot-Off going on over at Woot right now, so I figured this is a good time to brag about my haul from the last Woot-Off.

If you're not familiar with Woot or the idea of a Woot-Off, see "What is Woot".

Usually about once every Woot-Off and at infrequent other occasions, Woot will list an item for sale called simply "Random Crap". This is an item, priced at $1.00, which entitles you to at least one item of random crap thrown in a box and sent to you. Like any Woot item, you can choose to buy up to three. Buying three and adding their fixed $5 shipping charge, you'll end up buying a mystery box with at least three items for a grand total of $8.00. This is usually how Woot gets rid of broken items, scratch and dent stuff, stuff they have too few of to actually sell in normal Woot fashion, or stuff they thought was funny but couldn't justify selling through normal means.

Woot is very up front about the idea that this stuff is most emphatically crap and really not worth the $6-8 you'll spend to get it. However, that doesn't deter the masses of Wooters from jumping on this thing whenever it's available. The appearance of Random Crap, or "Bag of Crap" as it's more affectionately known, usually foreshadows the complete meltdown of the Woot servers under the crushing load of everyone trying to get in on the crap action. Sellout is usually acheived in less than 5 minutes, and trying to get an order to go through in that time is pretty difficult considering that every single browser request times out or comes back with a server error.

I've been watching Woot-Offs closely trying to get the bag of crap for like two years now. Usually it comes on right when I step out to go to the bathroom or something. But, I've been sitting right at my screen when it comes up several times only to be stymied by the server meltdown.

Last month's Woot-Off, I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and had the bag of crap pop up right in front of me. I began clicking furiously, and was getting nowhere for about 5 minutes. I was sure that it was sold out and done, when finally, my order went through, and I got the confirmation page. Success!

To save money on shipping crap, Woot sends the bag of crap out via the absolute slowest shipping method imaginable, which probably involves loading things on an actual slow boat somewhere. It seems from checking the Woot forums that 2-3 weeks seems to be the average it takes to actually get your crap. So, even though the Woot-Off was about a month ago, I just got my crap last week.

Getting the crap is of course the highlight of the experience, because that's when you find out if you've scored anything great, or if you should be embarrassed that you wasted the eight bucks. I had the crap delivered to work, and when the delivery person brought it, I was really surprised at the size of the box. It seemed rather big for just 3 little items of crap. I was cautiously optimistic.



Opening the box showed me a lot more than three items, and the more I dug into it, the more excited I got. Here is all the crap laid out:



I got (going sort of clockwise from the far left):

• A 4 pack of iGo cigarette lighter power adapters. These are universal power adapters, the idea being that you have one adapter and just buy interchangeable tips for all the electronics you have. Well, I have 4 of the actual adapters now, and no tips, so that's kind of useless. The tips cost as much or more than cheap cigarette lighter adapters do, so I don't anticipate using these much.
  
• A RCA remote control. It doesn't appear to be universal, but has controls for VCR/DVD/TV/SAT, so it probably came with some RCA product and controls other RCA products. Well, I have an RCA TV in the bedroom, so I guess this will be a good backup remote if the three other remotes I have for that TV get lost or break.
  
• Some cheap Chinese earbuds. I thought these would be great for running. They weren't.
  
• An expansion pack of cards for some trading card game of which I've never heard.
  
• A JVC camcorder bag. I actually needed something like this a couple of months ago, but just went and bought a bag instead. I'm sure I'll find good use for this to hold something though, as it appears to be pretty durable, and has good size pockets and stuff.
  
• A ThermoHawk infrared thermometer. This is actually pretty cool. Basically, it lets you measure the surface temperature of something without touching it. It's fun to watch the pan heat up, or see how much colder the window is when compared to the wall. It has a built in flashlight as well. I don't have any serious use for this, therefore could never justify paying actual money for it, but it's nice to have.
  
• A Motorola Bluetooth headset. My car has a built-in Bluetooth handsfree speakerphone, so I don't have a lot of need for this, but it might come in handy around the house. Or, I might just start wearing it around at work so I can look like a tool.
  
• A Kodak digital camera. The camera comes with computer cable, carrying case, power adapter, and EasyShare dock adapter, but doesn't come with a battery or a crack-free LCD screen. I assume it would still take pictures even without displaying them, but I haven't a battery, and haven't broken out the power adapter to try it.
  
• Mr. T & The Mystery of the Mind Thieves, a book and record set still in the shrink wrap complete with old school Wal-Mart price tag ($2.77, if you're curious). This is quite possibly the choicest item of the bunch.
  
• The last item is definitely the highest value item. It's a white 30GB Microsoft Zune. The box is pretty banged up, but it has all the accessories, and the player itself is spotless. I don't quite have a need for this, since I've got music on my phone and would rather just carry one device. However, this could be a great gift or make a good profit for me on eBay.
  

Disclaimer: Not all bags of crap are created equal. This is not at all representative of the average haul. Your crap may vary. Don't go out wasting two years of your life expecting to get something as good as what I've got.

Let 1000 Personalized Oil Paintings Bloom

This is why I love the internet. Ever since I was a little child, I dreamed of having myself appear in a Maoist propaganda poster. I had always assumed that the only way I could get that to happen would be to move to China, become a foot soldier in the revolution, then work my way up the ranks until the Great Leader saw fit to immortalize me by having me painted into one of his many propaganda posters.

Now that we have the internet, I've discovered an easier way. Apparently there are people on the internet who will take an emailed photograph of you and send it to an actual Chinese propagandist, who will then paint a complete oil painting in the Maoist style with you as the subject. Three weeks later, your painting finishes its long march back to your home, where you can hang it to permanently commemorate your fight for the glorious solidarity of the motherland.

The examples they show are quite remarkable, and very high quality. Definitely much better than my own attempt:



We haven't finalized our home decorating and artwork budget yet, because we're still assembling our "keep the house from falling over" budget. However, once we move on to the "spend money on artwork" phase of our existence, I'll definitely be plunking down the $200-$300 it would take to get one of these.

"Is that Dave Coulier?"

Cheeth alerted me to this literal version of Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels", done by the same person that did the "Take on Me" one. Funny stuff.

"There's No (Long Pants) In Baseball!"

I was a huge baseball fan growing up. But, a combination of missteps and blunders culminating in divisional realignment and the strike caused me to turn my back on Major League Baseball in 1994.

I will occasionally catch a glimpse of a game on TV or something, but I would be hard pressed to tell you who current players are, or what teams are ahead in the (now meaningless) pennant race. Flipping through the channels today, though, I saw something that completely freaked me out.

Apparently, baseball players wear long pants now. Not just long, but hanging down past the ankles dragging in the dirt kind of long. When did this happen?

I'm going to set aside all of my rants about disrespecting tradition, because they've been falling on deaf ears all these years anyway. Instead, I'll just step right to this: Does no one realize how stupid this looks?

Oh, and in related news, apparently they have baseball teams in Florida now. Who knew?

An Open Letter to CrashPlan

This worked so well last time, I thought I'd try it again.

(cc'ed to support@crashplan.com)

Dear CrashPlan,

So, I launch the front end to CrashPlan tonight and find that suddenly everything looks a little different. Turns out from checking the log, my CrashPlan client updated itself last night. Wow! What new features/gotchas did that bring?

Hmm... There's nothing about any new release on the CrashPlan blog. The release notes on your site are still from the June release. The "User Guide" PDF on your site (the hard to find one that's only linked to from the download page and not the support page) is still from the December 2007 release.

So, now, I have a piece of software running on my computers (I bought three Pro licenses) that operates differently than it did before with different settings and options, yet I don't get any documentation about the changes? Do you plan on updating either the release notes or the "User Guide" soon? Given how out of date the "User Guide" is, I'm guessing the answer is "no".

It's not a bad thing to autoupdate software, but it's a horrible idea to do so when:

A) none of your very sparse documentation ever mentions the possibility of an autoupdate.
2) there is no setting in the application to prevent an autoupdate from happening.
d) you make available absolutely no information about the new version, or changes, or anything like that.

Bad form, CrashPlan.

Pipe Wrench Fight

a-ha is my absolute all-time favorite Norwegian pop band, so I was excited to come across this video the other day. Of course, anybody who has seen television has seen the video for "Take On Me". This little gem takes the video, and replaces the song with a... more literal version.