Archive for August, 2007

Cthulhu Ftaghn

It’s been a while since I’ve writ­ten in this cat­e­gory, mostly because I haven’t really seen any­thing worth post­ing on lately and I don’t want the damned thing to turn into a monot­o­nous whine about how movies were so much bet­ter in The Olden Days. But you know, some of them really were. I’m not talk­ing about old­school Star Wars*; […]

So Georgia flogged Japan.

That was the out­come of the Little League World Series on Sunday, any­way. You know, I’m not an MLB fan. And I don’t have any kids to get involved in Little League. Still, I like the Little League games a lot more than I do MLB fare. Photos after the flip to illustrate why.

A Joyless Decision on a Sad Case

John Couey has been sen­tenced to death. We can expect appeals, of course, and this one might test the sys­tem a bit. If there’s any­one who’s a can­di­date for state-​​​​ordered killing, though, I think he’s it.

Danger Words

There are words that we use every day to express ideas in a some­what con­densed form. An exam­ple is the cliché think­ing out­side the box, which is short­hand for approach­ing a prob­lem from an unex­pected angle or pro­vid­ing a fresh insight into deal­ing with it, which might or might not lead to an inno­v­a­tive and cre­ative solu­tion. In […]

Myths and Misinformation, or, How to Shave with a Straight Razor

…and not end up look­ing like a freshly-​​​​carved pump­kin when you’re done. A while back I reverted to straight razors for shav­ing. I’d used them before, but only with lim­ited suc­cess; there wasn’t a lot of infor­ma­tion out there on the topic at the time. That was unfor­tu­nate since I wasn’t off by much in terms of how I used […]

One in Four Supports Bush; One in Four Read No Books Last Year

From the Department of Meaningless Coincidences: One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, accord­ing to an Associated Press-​​​​Ipsos poll released Tuesday. It’s not as obvi­ous as you might think. The story goes on to detail some of the demo­graph­ics. The 25% of self-​​​​admitted annual illit­er­ates does not, in fact, […]

Disasters in the Making

Tens of Millions Dead China’s been in the news more and more lately, and not just because of con­t­a­m­i­nated pet food. That was bad enough, of course — the idea that feed­ing your dog or cat a reg­u­lar part of its reg­u­lar diet might end up killing the poor ani­mal is awful for any pet owner to […]

That Mira wasn’t my Mira

It’s pretty. But it’s not my Mira.

Morning Has Broken

I am an athe­ist. There is no god. I’m sure of that, as sure as I can be. I want to make that com­pletely clear. Still, this one makes me oogy-​​​​soft-​​​​warm-​​​​fuzzy. I remem­ber hear­ing this as a child and being deeply moved by it. I didn’t really grasp the ref­er­ences, but the music incised me and left its mark […]

Good Non-​​god, it’s Been a Year.

Today, August 16th of 2006, I took The Indigestible online once more after a multiple-​​​​year hia­tus. To me, it doesn’t seem like a year has passed. To you, of course, it might well seem much, much longer.

How to Convert a DVD VOB File to Windows-​​Playable Video

The most inter­est­ing ques­tions come your way when you’re a graph­ics geek with 15 years’ expe­ri­ence in video, mul­ti­me­dia pro­gram­ming and web design. We’ve got an inter­nal voice-​​​​command mes­sag­ing sys­tem that allows var­i­ous peo­ple to be wire­lessly con­tacted and com­mu­ni­cated with. Called Vocera, I think the sys­tem is viewed as a bit of a Morton’s fork. It’s eas­ier and much […]

Epiphanous Troubles

August 6 was the 62nd anniver­sary of the Hiroshima bomb. The sec­ond fell over Nagasaki on the ninth. So I guess this was on my mind. Well, I had other rea­sons. A cou­ple of friends who were mar­ried nearly a year ago plan to take their first anniver­sary hon­ey­moon in Japan in October. Sweetly enough, they asked if I’d like to […]