Monthly Archives: June 2006

Jun302006

Housekeeping

In the bright light of morning, my previous entry on Aaron Spelling doesn’t look like one of my better pieces, does it? I have to admit, I was forcing it. The ending especially… as if I could really sit through an episode of T.J. Hooker, even just to ogle one of my youthful lust objects. Right. No, the truth is that, while I’ve watched plenty of Spelling-produced shows over the years and felt like the man’s death warranted some comment, I honestly don’t have any deep fondness for any of his work. To extend that cheeseburger metaphor just a bit more, Spelling’s shows are more like the McDonald’s end of the cheeseburger spectrum than the huge, juicy, home-made, Jimmy Buffett “Cheeseburger in Paradise” end. They fill the hole when you’re hungry, but when you really think about it, they don’t even taste all that good. They were just there. Shows like Charlie’s Angels and 90210 were just there, a familiar and inescapable part of the pop-cultural landscape, enjoyed but not treasured. Televisual Big Macs.

Moving on to other subjects that I actually know how to discuss, I just want to point out that I’ve added a couple of new links over there in the sidebar, both related to that LibraryThing Web site I told you about a couple days ago. Under “Obligatory Narcissism,” you’ll find a link that’ll take you my personal catalog — currently consisting of 102 entries with God-only-knows-how-many to go — while the LibraryThing link under “Miscellaneous Coolness” will take you to the site’s home page so you can set up your own account. If anyone reading this does set up an account and wants to share it here, just let me know and I’ll post the link.

And finally, I noted a few days back that my photo gallery was going to be wonky for a little while in the wake of the server change. If anyone cares, here’s what’s happening: an upgraded version of the gallery software has been installed, which created a whole new directory in which to store my pictures. In other words, I’ve currently got two galleries, the old and the new. I’ve ported over all the stuff from the old gallery and am currently making sure everything ended up in the right folder, that all the captions and descriptions are there, that sort of thing. Also, as long as I’m puttering around, I’ve been uploading several all-new albums, which takes forever over my crappy dial-up connection. Long story short: I should have the new gallery up and running in a few more days. In the meantime, if you have a hankerin’ to see what yours truly looks like, I believe the link over there in the sidebar will still take you to the old gallery.

Back later…

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Jun292006

Time for Timer

From Evanier, I’ve learned of another notable death: the character and voice-over actor Lennie Weinrib.
What’s that, you say? The name “Lennie Weinrib” doesn’t ring a bell? Don’t feel bad, I didn’t recognize it, either. But I certainly recognized his best-known role: the title character from the old Sid and Marty Krofft kid’s show H.R. Pufnstuf. I wrote about Pufnstuf in this entry, and I won’t repeat myself except to note that ol’ Puffy was a pretty special part of my childhood, and I’m sorry to hear that his voice has gone silent.

Continue Reading…

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Jun292006

Tribute to Jim Baen

Jim Baen, who founded the very successful publishing company that bears his name, passed away yesterday, some two weeks after suffering a massive stroke. Unlike many of the celebrities I eulogize here, I have no personal feelings toward or about Mr. Baen. I know his name, and I’ve undoubtedly read something he published, but that’s about it. Still, I was moved by the tribute written for him by his friend, the science-fiction author David Drake:

Continue Reading…

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Jun282006

LibraryThing Takes Over the Bibliophilic World!

Yesterday, I followed a link from Boing Boing to LibraryThing, this groovy online service that lets you catalog your book collection and share it with others. It uses tags like Flickr or MySpace, so other people can easily search your personal library and you can search theirs. Thus, the system doubles as a social network based around similar tastes in reading.
I thought the idea of a non-local catalog sounded like a good one — I’ve got a database of my movie collection on my home PC, but if the house burns down, I lose the record along with the collection — so I set up an account. So did one of my three loyal readers and frequent commenters, the inimitable Cranky Robert. Judging from the sporadic outages and slowdowns the site has been experiencing, so have a lot of other people. It’s one of those full-blown Internet fads, I tell you! Everybody’s doing it… so why aren’t you? Seriously, if you own a lot of books, you ought to go check it out.

(Incidentally, if you go to my catalog, you will notice that I haven’t yet entered very many titles. That’s because, as my profile page notes, I have a huge library that’s scattered all over the house, and, as with everything else I do, it requires time, of which I have precious little these days. Now that I think about it, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. The last thing I need right now is another fracking project…)

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Jun272006

Congratulations to Steve and Jen

Just a quick one to note that Anne’s and my friends, Brozinski and Puff Bird (better known in the Real World as Steve and Jennifer Broschinsky), welcomed their second child into the world last night. It’s another boy. Steve describes him thusly:

8lbs 14oz, 21 and a half inches long. Dark hair and a Kirk Douglas cleft chin. Ian Bradford Broschinsky.

Ian Bradford… ’tis a fine Scottish name, laddie…

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Jun272006

Which Superhero Am I?

Hi, kids! Long time, no blog. Things have been hectic since the changeover to the new server. I am working on a couple of entries that I’ll hopefully be able to finish and post later today, but in the meantime, and in honor of tonight’s opening of Superman Returns, here are my results for the latest Internet quiz, “Which Superhero am I?”
Your results:

You are Spider-Man

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.
Spider-Man
75%
Green Lantern
75%
Hulk
65%
Iron Man
65%
Catwoman
60%
Supergirl
55%
Robin
52%
The Flash
50%
Wonder Woman
45%
Superman
40%
Batman
30%

Click here to take the “Which Superhero am I?” quiz…

I don’t know about the “great power and responsibility” bit — unless you count my ability to hold up production on advertising materials because of a misplaced comma — but I’ll buy the rest of it. I may not be able to climb walls and swing through the concrete canyons of Manhattan, but I do share Peter Parker’s affection for redheads. Still, I wonder why the quiz didn’t assign me Green Lantern, given that the score is the same? I don’t understand how these things work, I guess…

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Jun232006

Live and Direct… Sort Of

My three loyal readers (and you know who you are) may have noticed that Simple Tricks went unexpectedly missing yesterday. That’s because my friend and webmaster Jack was switching the site over to a new server from the broken-down old ENIAC we’ve been using. He assures me the new hardware will be faster and more efficient on the back-end; I don’t know if you folks out there in InternetLand will notice any difference, but you may see some improvements in load-up times or something.

So far, it appears that the transfer of the blog has been carried off without a hitch. Everything that was here before is here now. I think. If anyone notices any problems I haven’t seen, please let me know. The photo gallery, on the other hand, is going to be in flux for a couple of days while Jack upgrades the gallery software and I perform some housekeeping I’ve been meaning to do for a while. I’ll let you all know when that’s back, too…

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Jun202006

Quickies

Just a few of the interesting links I’ve run across today:

  • Remember that gag video about how the iPod package would look like if it was designed by Microsoft? It seems that was created by Microsoft itself as an in-house presentation about the problems of branding and packaging. Details here.
  • Courtesy of Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy Blog, a pretty nifty animated gif of Earth rising into the Martian sky. Naturally, this was assembled using photos taken by those amazing little Mars rovers. As Phil points out, “Everyone you know is in that picture, on that tiny mote of light.” I find this humbling, and really, really cool.
  • And finally, something that should come in most useful for you “workin’ for the weekend” types, a German blog that demonstrates through photographs 1,000 methods for opening a bottle of beer. Prost!

Have a good night, folks…

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