I can't imagine that it gets any better than this:
Kaiju Big Battel is a modern conflict of epic proportions. Evil villains, menacing alien beasts, and giant, city-crushing monsters threaten to destroy the planet Earth. Who will save the helpless humans from total ruin? The Heroes, of course, and the Heroines too. A few privileged humans also get in on the action, as they try to contain danger within the three-roped arena of Kaiju Big Battel.

Wow. Michael Moore is on a roll ... and that is a good thing. From his email list:
"By now you may have awakened to the news that last night, in Cannes, France, my new film, "Bowling for Columbine," was awarded the Special Prize of the 55th Cannes Film Festival. It had already made history by being the first documentary chosen to be part of the official festival competition in almost 50 years. And, last night, it was the only prize awarded that received a unanimous decision from the festival jury."
I've seen clips from this movie and it looks like it really will be a great film examining American culture and psyche. Must see.

I put up the basketball hoop this weekend, which involved lots of drilling and wrenching and other 'manly' activities involving tools and sweat ('cuz I'm all about the digital, not the mechanical) and now I can improve my skills --- all in the name of beating my 8-year-old neighbor kid! Ha ha! Well, in my dreams anyway.
The fresh homemade sorbet I made the other day (banana-strawberry) was most excellent -- a perfect blend of flavors which would dance around your mouth. Was it mostly strawberry or was it mostly banana? Mmmmmm!
This week, I attempt to repaint the living room and spare bedroom of my house. Those stencils from the prior owners have GOT to go.

Electronic Frontier Foundation Action Center - Stop CBDTPA
Stop Disney and the entertainment industry from trampling your rights to the media you consume/buy (music, movies, etc). You DO have certain rights (make a backup copy, time-shift it, etc) that should never be taken away.

One of these days (like maybe today) I plan on getting a normal amount of sleep. I've been working at work and then working on another large project of my own besides. The large project is close to being done... I hope... Otherwise I'll be dozing off at inconvenient times. Zzzzzzz...
I see a few bloggers have found my photolog template -- thanks for the links: ain't too proud to blog, delirious cool, scripty goddess and others... zzzzz....
see? there I go again...

These two guys have made few nifty utilities for OS X, including Chart-O-Mat and TuneCam-O-Mat, both of which track iTunes data and can export to HTML for inclusion on your website. Neat.

Think about this little concept:
"We d the tobacco companies. One day we will the media industry. For half a century worth of lies and violence that they've showered upon us. For what they've done to human dignity. For how they became the story, instead of just the people reporting on it. Imagine terrorism without the media--it wouldn't be half as effective."
Scripting News Mail Pages : Mail starting 5/5/02

I'm making banana-strawberry sorbet in my ice cream maker. I haven't tried this flavor before. Hopefully it will be cool, refreshing, fruity and delicious. I once tried to make vanilla sorbet (Haagen Daz used to make a really good vanilla sorbet) and it was so dang nasty I had to just throw it out. Blech!
Normally I just buy Soy Dream Organic Frozen Dessert in a multitude of yummy non-dairy flavors, but it is fun to make your own.

I saw an elderly gentleman with a cane almost get run down by a speeding car today. The man was crossing the road and this late-70's or early 80's Cutlass was barrelling down the road oblivious to the old man. The car slammed on the brakes, locking up the tires while sending the nose diving and raising the back end. Very loud screeching and tire smoke. Thankfully, the vehicle stopped about 2 feet from the man, who just stood there in apparent calm and wonderment. He just walked away. The car had killed and the driver just sat for a few moments before slowly driving off. And life went on...

So yesterday really sucked. Really. Sucked. Hard.
In the morning, I (can't believe I'm telling this) dumped over my scooter on the loose gravel. Agh. Nothing major, but a surprise and a bummer. Be careful!
Downtown at the new scooter boutique, my scooter was miraculously left on the street (I went upstairs for about 15 minutes to eat some tacos) while everybody else's scooter was moved so as to avoid the meter maids and their digital ticket dispensers. I would certainly hope that of the 30-40 people standing around watching this that none of my fellow club members were present. Certainly, in a similar situation, I would have covered my fellow member's butt and saved him/her the $30 citation.
Oh, but it doesn't end there... oh no. On my way home from work (on my scooter still), I get pulled over by a polite State Patrolman with a big wad of chew in his cheek. He proceeds to ask for license and insurance. Can't find my insurance card. He notices that my tabs are expired. I explain that I got them last week (honest) and left them on the kitchen table this morning (honest). He gives me a warning on the tabs and a ticket for the lack of insurance card. Aaaaghhh! I can take my insurance card to the court and show them and then they'll waive the ticket, though. Whew.
Also, thanks to Jim D'Aquila, owner of the boutique, who nicely stepped forward and paid my parking ticket. They didn't get a parking permit for the scooters so it wasn't entirely my fault.
Ok, go ahead and have a laugh. Be thankful it wasn't you.
On the plus side, I met a cool scooter rider from Boulder, CO, and saw the new Star Wars movie.
Today I'm hiding under the blankets on my bed (with my computer).

Apple released their new 1U server today -- the XServe. Look out, lesser boxes! Looks like a very nice server although a bit out of my personal price range. Well, maybe not completely... the more I think about it, this would completely rock for a video editing server (Final Cut Pro).

Yes! Sony cut the price on the PS2 and the PS1 today (finally) and now I think maybe I'll go get one. My PS1 broke (my fault, duh) and now I can get a brand new one for $49 or a PS2 for $199 -- sweet.

Last night I dreamt that I was living/staying in this big house (location unknown) and it fairly nice, lots of furniture, entertainment room, flowers in vases, etc. Obviously a place built with a fair sum of money. There was a hide-a-bed sofa and while everybody was gone, for some reason I pulled it open and this human arm fell out of the inside/back of the couch. I knew right away that it was the missing arm from that star football player back in the late 60's. The appendage was still in good (fresh) shape and the watch on the wrist was still working! Then I knew that this couch belonged to one of the Kennedy boys (Ted?) and there had been a big scandal about the football player mysteriously losing his forearm and then dying shortly afterwards. Nobody could prove when or why it happened, but it had something to do with a visit to the Kennedy's place and a German Shepherd dog. I took the arm and put in a clear plastic bag and taped it shut.

I can now say that I don't recommend spending ten or more hours in the hunkered-down position (ie: squatting) on a cold cement floor. You could develop major soreness in strange areas or light-headedness from lack of proper blood flow.

It seems that Aphex Twin was asking his fans to face the music when he released his Windowlicker EP back in 1999. Very amusing.
I remember playing songs backwards to find hidden messages and actually discovering a few:
Camouflage had a song that contained the sample "Who else would want to howl except for the wind? so says my father's book."
And then there is the famous(?) message in a B-52's song that says "I buried my parakeet in the backyard... hey, you're playing the record backwards! watch out, you might ruin your needle!"
I can imagine youngsters asking, "Um, what's a needle got to do with music?"

Two Czech brothers have a radical theory of how gravity really works and claim that Einstein might have been wrong.

Adam Curry (yes, that Adam Curry) has posted a most amazing article on his website. You simply must go read it right now: The Big Lie

Thanks, Adam.

I wrote up a tutorial explaining how I do my photolog (the right column of pictures) here at The Kingdom of Squirrels. Yes, now you, too, can have a snappy photolog at your blog and impress your visitors. It only takes five (ahem) easy steps and off you go!

I had my first Krispy Kreme today at work.
Um, yes, it was quite good, went down easy, was satisfying in that donut-kind of way... but I certainly would not go out of my way for one or stand in queue for hours on end. Nope. Sorry.

Like apparently everybody else this past weekend, we happened to catch the Spider-Man movie and it was... good. Enjoyable. Fun. I'd probably even see it again. Not a truly great movie, but a really good movie in the summer blockbuster realm.
I am happy to see Sam Raimi have a huge hit and it was really great to see Autolycus and Joxer, er, I mean Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi, on the big screen again. Did I give anything away there? Xena? Never heard of it. I guess Spider-Man 2 is already in the works. Why not? Better than Glitter 2, eh?

Ah, New York. The state, that is. This past 4-day weekend (for me) was spent in the trees and hills of NY state north of Poughkeepsie on the Hudson River. Very nice area that reminds me of Minnesota (well, except for the hill part, that is... and the weather). It was blue skies and 77 degrees every day and I liked it. Oh yeah. Got to spend time with my girlfriend, got to visit the town of Woodstock, got to see Spider-Man -- not bad at all. Plus I got the added bonus of having my seat over-sold to some military boys on the return flight so I got a free flight voucher for waiting two hours until the next flight out. Awesome. Funny thing is, I was only about 30 minutes late overall in arriving back in MN.
I took some nice pix, so I'll be posting those in the photolog very very soon.
My question is this: is anything north of NY city considered "upstate" New York? It rather seems so.

If you are a Mac-head, get yourself a copy of iView Multimedia Pro right now. Seriously, go ahead... I'll wait.... Ok, you've just done yourself a huge favor. Congrats! This media cataloging program will astound you with its ease and power. For pictures, fonts, videos, sounds, mp3s, pdfs, documents, etc, and it is fairly inexpensive as well.
Ok, since I'm on a new Mac software note, there is a new version of SoundStudio as well. This compliments iMovie nicely, by the way.
Speaking of iMovie, if you love making videos using iMovie, you should get yourself some Slick Effects from GeeThree, which just released some new bonus plugins.
Ok, stop reading my site and go make some media of your own!

Whoo-hoo! I've got a 4-day weekend! I need it. Glad to have it. I've been tense and high-strung lately. For no particular reason. Just because. Why clipped sentences? Dunno. Feeling goofy. Random thoughts: Can you hear me now? Good. Can you hear me now? Good. I had to eat bugles with fluffernutter. Richard Cheese. Soccer. Cooking. Vintage photography. Oh, and "hot girl in hyundai commercial" -- there's the phrase again just to reinforce the search results. whatever. thanks to LM for urging me to check referrers more often. amusing. out.

I've been told it is odd, frustrating, etc, that I often don't respond to email messages like people think I should (ie: I sometimes don't answer direct questions or continue the conversation). Just be aware that this is not intentional nor does it mean anything personal. What it does mean is that I have no concept of time and often I will intend to reply later and then never do because I've moved on to something else that is now occupying my mind. Once out of sight, well, you know the rest. Sometimes things can happen weeks or even months past and I'll think it happened within a few days. This doesn't apply to every area of my life, but definitely to messages or calendar dates. Yes indeed. Even though I have a Palm, I still can't remember to set alarms to remind me of things... I'm a poor excuse for a geek some days...
(Note: It may sound much worse than it really is).