I was greatly amused upon receiving this "fortune."

On the way in to work today I saw two majestic bald eagles flying over the city (at Cedar Lake Road and Hwy 169) and I had to do a double-take to make sure my eyes were not deceiving me. True enough, they were heading east-southeast and they looked great. I've always loved birds of prey for some reason. Wish I could've watched them for a while. I don't think I've ever seen eagles in the heart of the city before today. When I arrived at work I called the University and the Raptor Center, just in case anybody was interested in such a sighting.

Saw this a few weeks ago via a link at coudal.com (I think) and now wired.com is linking to it (and so will everybody else who hasn't by now): British Pathe has put their archives online, with free previews, all searchable, and you can order VHS or DVD of your favorite clips, too. Nice! Also, the Prelinger Archives are online.

Worked early today and then scooted out of work around 5:30 pm and picked up (home from NY for a few days) to go get some great Thai food over at Thai Express Cafe (have you been, yet? go!) and then decided we'd call Bill and Michelle, since they live in the area, and see if they were game for a movie. Yup. Don't have to twist their arms too hard. Went and saw "Catch Me If You Can" and we all enjoyed it. A light, entertaining, well-done movie. Not a lot of out-loud laughing, but very amusing, great sets and costumes, great performances from Leo (did I just say that? I did. Hey, he was great in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?") and Walken. Hanks was pretty good, too. The opening title sequence was most amazing and well-done. See this part for sure! Frank Abagnale, the true-life subject of the movie, had a cameo as a French policeman. Suddenly, I have an urge to wear a uniform and hang out with stewardesses. Afterwards, B&M gave me a little gift that was a great surprise: CQ on DVD! We all really liked this movie, even though it does show itself to be a first-timer's (Roman Coppola) feature film. Silly, campy homage to the silly, campy spy movies of the 60's.

Surprisingly lean and clean and simple yet oh so smooth and excellent: Quinn, the terrific new Mac OS X Tetris clone. Freeware, too. [Daring Fireball]

Useful bookmarklets for web developers: Beandizzy's "bookmarklets i can't do without" [webgraphics]

Hey, wow. the first beta of NetNewsWire Pro (for OS X) is now out and it supports all the normal NNW stuff, plus a notepad/outliner and a weblog editor in one slick little program. This is a test post. It appears to work. However, the "autofill" configuration of your weblog software doesn't seem to be accurate. It was a simple thing to get it working, however. I love the support for OS X goodness such as system-wide spell-checking while typing a new entry and the support for bold, italic or link buttons in the editor (for quicker posting). You can also save an entry as a draft in NNWP, which I find to be a very nice feature. Impressive.

Too much work, well, is just too much work. Dull life, yes. But we try to amuse ourselves during those 12 or 14 hour shifts day after day after day. For example, do you know the meaning of the phrase "whiskey dick"? Only two other people I work with knew. Which astounded me, as I know it and I don't even drink. The company smart-ass funny guy was claiming it was having the power to go non-stop after drinking while I claimed it was quite the opposite. "No, it's like petrified wood," he said. He was so sure of himself he challenged us all to Google it and find out. He was wrong, according to our search results. I said, "Yeah, just like petrified wood -- lying on the ground waiting for somebody to come by and pick it up."

NY Film Critics name "Far From Heaven" best movie of the year. I concur. Go see it, already!

Yet another short movie - this time on the theme of winter. This piece is performed as if from the life of a lonely bar patron with vocal dialogue ala Tom Waits (or your favorite gruff-voiced person). Also available over at WeeklyDV.com

Wow. This would be super kiff! Color mobile phones with the ability to play media in Quicktime format are coming out in Japan and a new version of Quicktime will be out by the end of the year to support them. Hmm... could they add this in to the iPod? A color screen and full media support? I'd upgrade in a second! Allowing me to load pictures or video clips from my memory stick into my iPod and viewing them would be amazing!

If you are a Twin Citizen who enjoys vegan and vegetarian foods, you'll be sad to hear that The Mud Pie (on 26th and Lyndale) is closing down. The owner is retiring after 30 years and you'd better get there fast if you want to enjoy it one last time -- we had the distinct feeling last night that it would be shut down very soon. Bummer.

Wow. Just saw "Far From Heaven" and I was duly impressed. I loved loved loved it. Julianne Moore is utterly phenomenal in her role and all other actors/actresses are superb as well. The style of a 50's melodrama is dead-on perfect, in my opinion. As one reviewer said, this movie is like a recently-found artifact from the 50's that has never been seen before. Probably not for the mass audiences as it is deliberately paced and (warning: spoiler ahead) does not have a clean happy perfect ending, but if you are not one of the masses and enjoy the craft of fine films, you'll really like this film. Moore should win big for this performance. (You may have recently seen her in The Shipping News).

Last night I went to a friend's birthday party and usually there is dancing (and an audio/DJ system). I did a little test and the results were quite impressive! I loaded up my iPod with about 1200 songs and the MegaSeg DJ software (which is very cool and flexible). I had no idea if it was possible to DJ off of an iPod using the software, but my friends would let me try.
I jacked it into the PowerBook there and launched the software - bing! That worked. I loaded a playlist of songs - bing! That worked, too. Quite well, in fact. I loaded a playlist of .mpg videos (each about 50 megs in size) and had a bunch of songs in iTunes as well - bing! bing! I was astounded -- here was a PowerBook playing mp3 audio via iTunes while also playing full-screen full-motion .mpg video out to a projector (very cool) and it was using an iPod as the drive! Sweeeeet! Now I know I can keep a huge library of music in my pocket (the iPod is about the size of a deck of cards), with the required software, and go to parties and lay down some funky beats. This is so damn cool. I mean, if you like that sort of thing.

Forget the music, just watch the footage of this crazy video about rollerskating bank robbers. High-speed mayhem on eight tiny wheels.

ooh boy. woke with a very cold nose. colder than normal. didn't hear furnace on. bad feeling about that. sure enough, it wasn't working. this is a very high quality furnace that is only a year old! aaaugggh! the service people are on the way... between 10 and noon. At least that is a bit more specific than the cable company... I guess. brrrr. brrrr. It is a frigid 3 degrees F outside, too! That's cold, baby.
UPDATE: after leaving it off for half-hour, it is now on and working. ummm, wha? I'm still letting them service it 'cuz it should NOT go off.
UPDATE2: ok, furnace still on. service guy said safety sensor was tripped so he cleaned it. seemed to take about 2 minutes. got a new air filter as well, just in case. good thing I have 10-year service -- no cost!

Dominey's got a couple links that are flippin' hilarious -- and true. Ouch. The Reel Truth, about movie-makers and When I Grow Up I Want To Work In Advertising. Hoo-boy. Too accurate.

I finished another flicker for weeklydv.com last week and it is finally online. The theme was "90 feet tall" and I went for the badly-dubbed B-grade monster movie idea. Technically, it worked pretty well (the blue-screen giant toy monster effects) but artistically, well, it is truly a B-grade movie. Watch and enjoy.

Get over to jonathanpostal.com right now and check out what a beautiful site he has ... and his cool photography, too.

I have an intense sudden interest in ipodlounge.com and ipoding.com. For sanity's sake.

If I were in the market for a new TV, this might be pretty sweet. Nice features for not-too-steep a price and it wouldn't overpower your room. Too bad it isn't a flat screen, though. And I don't need a new TV.

I went up to my little spot tonight to view the sunset (always a worthwhile experience) and then took a walk around my neighborhood. I met two interesting fellows: Drew, a man who moved into the area a year ago was out walking his two dogs, one of which is a unique little dog called a Basenji from Africa; and Tom, a former post office employee who retired in 1980, was out raking leaves and he's been in his place since 1957. He had a bout with cancer ten years ago but he's doing just fine now. On the way home I noticed a lot of other people out walking their dogs (very high dog population 'round here) and passed a couple on the path by the school and greeted them. To my surprise they turned after they passed and called my name! I turned back, curious, and found the former owners of my house! They have family in the vicinity and were just out for an evening walk. Quite amazing what you can learn and who you can meet if you just get out of the house and take a walk once in a while, eh?

Went to the Uptown last night and saw the new movie "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" about the Funk Brothers -- the standard backing band for most all of the Motown hits. A great piece of musical history that should be known by all. The technical aspects of this movie were sometimes poor (out of focus, grainy) but the story is decent and needs to be told. Great great music and interesting musicians. The audience clapped afterwards, if that gives you indication as to whether or not you should see the movie.