flip flop no-no

By Ron on March 1, 2008

editors at The Huffington Post have been doing some flip flopping -- and it showsBack to journalism 101 this morning, and this odd screen capture of the home page from The Huffington Post. In their zeal to place the candidates in a face-off position, the HuffPo editors committed an elementary journalistic faux pas: flipping a photo which contains elements that obviously give away the fact the photo has been flipped. I added a couple green arrows to point out the problems. Obama’s wedding ring is suddenly on his right hand? The flag in the background is oriented with the field of stars in the top right corner?

I understand Obama gets top billing as the frontrunner, so he is referred to first in the headline and therefore gets the top-left photo. But the AP surely has thousands of photos with Obama already facing to the right. And with a slightly tighter crop, the problem would not have been as obvious while still using this photo.

As for the campaign itself, I’m hoping for decisive wins for Obama on Tuesday. If that happens, then we’ll see if the Clintons have the best interests of the country (and the Democratic Party) in mind. Unfortunately, though, it’s looking more and more like the Clintons have only the best interests of the Clintons in mind. They’ve been wallowing in the gutter since before the South Carolina primary, and now they’re throwing everything including the kitchen sink at Obama. The shame is on YOU, Hillary.

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resist the Borg

By Ron on February 4, 2008

Microsoft’s hostile takeover bid of Yahoo certainly has some Flickr folks in an uproar: Flickr Rebellion Brews at Specter of M$ Acquisition. (Absolutely LOVE the photo that leads that story, btw) And I can’t say that I blame the Flickr-ers. If MS buys Yahoo, I expect all the Yahoo parts (including Flickr) will be shoehorned into MS technologies: Microsoft .NET Live Flickr Web 2.0 Vista Extreme Edition. I don’t see this as Microsoft buying the technology — they are buying Yahoo search and the Yahoo community/social network. I don’t think they give a shit about all the great technology Yahoo has developed. For Microsoft, it’s all about search, ads, advertising revenue, and eyeballs. Microsoft is never going to grow a tight and dynamic community of users like Google or Yahoo. In the Microsoft world, if you can’t make friends, buy them.

I’ve always looked at sites such as Flickr, Blogger, etc., like a landlord. Move in, make yourself at home. But just as in real life (and I know this from personal experience), if a landlord is going to sell, you might just have the rug yanked out from under you. I look at my own web site and note I’m happy and content with running my own open source content management systems for the blog and the gallery. No high stakes mergers and acquisitions are going to affect me — I’m my own landlord. And I’ve already managed to free my life of most things Microsoft, and I’m content in knowing I’m not going to get sucked back in through decisions that are outside my control.

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no fiesta for the Patriots

By Ron on February 4, 2008

Tom Brady spent a lot of the Super Bowl in this position - photo from The Boston GlobeThe Super Bowl seemed as though it was going to unfold similar to the 1986 Fiesta Bowl for the college football national championship. In that game, Penn State took a 14-10 lead late in the game. The Miami Hurricanes were driving down the field, late in the 4th quarter, and Miami QB Vinny Testaverde threw an interception in the red zone in the final minutes, and Penn State fans went into a frenzy. So last night when Eli Manning was driving the Giants down the field in the closing minutes, I was waiting for the interception. Or the fumble. But instead, Patriots fans were left in shock.

Since I am first and foremost a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, the Patriots are not my favorite team. But I can’t help but admire what they’ve accomplished this year, and recognize the fact they have a great team with arguably the league’s best head coach. I’m somewhat peeved that somewhere last night, Don Shula was celebrating the fact his ‘72 Dolphins team remains the only NFL squad to ever win it all without a loss. Pop that champagne cork again, you pompous blowhard.

So what’s a New England sports fan to do on this day after the shocker? The Celtics have an NBA-best record of 36-8 which, in the weak Eastern Conference, means they’ll probably clinch home court for the playoffs next week, or something like that. But I don’t follow the Celtics all that closely. For me, the day after the shocker means one thing: pitchers and catchers report on February 14.

UPDATE: I forgot to note on posting this earlier, but I’m blaming Bill Belichick’s sweatshirt. Seriously, he’s a great head coach, but has he no idea of sports superstition and karma? He’s guided a team through 18 straight wins en route to the Super Bowl, and for the big game he trades in that ratty old gray sweatshirt he’s been wearing all year for a new red one? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And in sports, if you’re winning games, don’t change your sweatshirt.

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ooh, a shadow

By Ron on February 2, 2008

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow again this morning, which means six more weeks of winter. Is it just me, or did January seem to go by in the blink of an eye? After getting clobbered by three major storms in mid-December that left us with nearly 3 feet of snow on the ground, I can see grass in the backyard and the high temperature today is forecast for near 50 degrees. Not that I expect this to continue, because mid-February to mid-March always seems to pack of worst of winter’s punches in New England. I suppose I should make my flight plans for the Key West vacation today. And groundhog day reminded me of this blog from the archives: 7 years ago today on Leather Egg: alfalfa fields and hot groundhog sex.

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sound advice

By Ron on January 28, 2008

turntable-stylus.jpgHere are a couple great links to bookmark if you’ve ever thought of hooking up a turntable or cassette deck to a computer. First off, a good concise overview of the process at Macworld: digitize your cassettes and LPs. That article hits all the major points, with one glaring exception: cleaning up the pops, crackles, hissing, etc. I’ve used two different turntables and a variety of software tools in the past for recording and editing, but I’ve never found a good tool for cleanup. So I hit the comments link to point out the article misses this important component, and the first commenter has already jumped in to recommend ClickRepair. Based on the samples posted on their site, ClickRepair looks pretty impressive. If it works as well as advertised, I may have just found the missing link to get the ball rolling on a fairly large-scale digitization project of my vinyl archives.

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Heath Ledger, RIP

By Ron on January 22, 2008

Heath Ledger as the Joker in a teaser poster for The Dark KnightI grabbed this image off the web a week or two ago to write a post about this year’s upcoming Batman movie — The Dark Knight. Watching the movie will be bittersweet, however, as actor Heath Ledger — who played the role of The Joker in this upcoming film — was found dead this afternoon in an apartment in New York City. He was 28 years old. Early reports indicated a drug overdose, but it’s unknown at this point if it was an accident or suicide and his family insists it was accidental while also revealing that he had been suffering from pneumonia.

Ledger is probably best-known for his role as Ennis del Mar, a cowboy who enjoys a long-term closeted gay relationship with another cowboy (Jake Gyllenhaal) in the film Brokeback Mountain. The role earned him an Oscar nomination, but he lost the Oscar that year to Philip Seymour Hoffman (for the film Capote). Ledger was engaged to his Brokeback co-star Michelle Williams, but they called off the engagement last fall. Ledger and Williams have one daughter, Matilda Rose, who was born in October 2005.

Any death is sad, but this is just terrible, terrible news. Ledger was an extremely talented actor, with a young daughter, and a bright future ahead of him. Godspeed.

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Ron and Top Hat battle to a stalemate

By Ron on January 21, 2008

Pennsylvania Avenue, with 4 housesAfter running some errands this afternoon (cat litter, cigarettes, Home Depot — you know, the necessities), I thought I would treat myself to a quick game of Monopoly. I just bought the game a couple weeks ago as a daily deal on MacZot. I hadn’t played Monopoly in well over 10 years, and I used to love playing it. I generally don’t play any games on the computer, but I thought this is one I might truly enjoy. I’ve been playing 1-on-1 vs. the computer in “entrepreneur” mode. I make a few changes to house rules ($400 for passing Go, $800 for landing on Go, $500 for Free Parking, etc.) because I like to play hard and fast with a lot of cash. And this has resulted in fun games where I’ve won 4 out of 6 times, usually taking between 30-60 minutes.

But this afternoon’s “quick” game turned into a long, drawn-out slugfest. Here’s a screenshot of the game board as it stands. After all the properties were purchased, there were only three natural monopolies (red properties for me, dark purple and yellow properties for Top Hat). I proposed several reasonable trades, but Top Hat stood firm on rejecting all trades that did not include Park Place. So after we both passed the $5000 mark in the bank, I relented and traded Park Place to get the crucial orange monopoly. Orange is a key of my game strategy: it’s high probability for players leaving jail, including two doubles combinations (3+3 and 4+4). And it’s adjacent to red, also playing into the current game strategy.

The slugfest continued and the money piled up. Top Hat had a costly love affair on Illinois Avenue, and I spent so much time in Marvin Gardens I got sunburned. And the money kept piling up, and when we were both over $10,000 I started proposing trades. Top Hat was a total prick, rejecting me time after time. Around and around the board we went until finally I just laid it all on the line … ALL my non-monopoly properties (Vermont and States Avenues, St. Charles Place, both utilities and 3 railroads) for Pennsylvania Avenue. And that bastard Top Hat turned me down. So I started adding cash to the offer, and after the pot was sweetened with $4000 in cash, Top Hat accepted. And with no more hotels to buy, I had to crowd four houses on each lot, but I also managed to block Top Hat from loading all his newly acquired monopolies with properties.

The trade (and subsequent building spree) knocked my cash balance back significantly, but my strategy started paying off and I closed the cash deficit with my new arch rival. Unfortunately, the cash-happy house rules continued to dump loads of cash into the game. I would go ahead by several thousand dollars only to land on Park Place ($1,500 with a hotel) and then roll snake eyes to land on Boardwalk ($2,000 with a hotel). Chump change, I tell ya! Then Top Hat would land on my hotels on 3 consecutive turns, and I’d have the lead yet again. My current balance is $34,859.00 and Top Hat’s balance is $34,915. So after 4+ hours, I’ve concluded that I have battled Monopoly to a draw.

Top Hat better watch out, though, because next time I’m gunnin’ for him. That bastard.

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my debut album

By Ron on January 18, 2008

my-album-cover-meme.jpgThis is a fun blog meme (found via Max): create your own album cover. And there’s my album cover to the right. Get your band name from a random Wikipedia entry. Get your album title from the last 4 words of the last quotation on a random quotes page. And finally, get your album cover art from the 3rd photo on a page of random photos from Flikr. And there you have it — the name of my band is Uninstaller, the album title “forgetting what might sting” comes from a quote by Mary Caroline Davies, and my album cover art comes from this fantastic photo by John© on flickr.

The album title and photo were derived exactly as the meme instructs, but I had to cheat a bit on the band name. My first “band name” was a village in Hungary: Füzérradvány. It’s certainly a cool name, but I can’t pronounce the damn thing and I figured if you can’t pronounce your band name, it’s perfectly OK to pick randomly again. My second random Wikipedia name actually turned out to be a real band name — Madball — so I ruled it ineligible. Third time was the charm: Uninstaller.

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