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Saturday, 31 December 2005
Happy New Year
This will be my last post of the year 2005.
I'll see y'all again... in the future!
Hope you all have a happy New Year and a happy new year.
Friday, 30 December 2005
Steve Jobs Killed The Video Star
I've seen exactly zero of this blog's Top 50 Music Videos of 2005, and am blogging this mainly so I can come back to it at a better time and watch a couple of them that I had heard about but never seen.
Meme Of Four
It being a slow blog day, I'm stealing a meme from Nik. So there.Four jobs you've had in your life: Lawn care company employee, getting paid by the hour while my friends were making the mad money pushing their own mowers around; Dollar Tree third-key manager; artist for a Web-based soap opera back in the heady early days of the Web; and substitute teacher.
Four movies you could watch over and over: "Star Wars," natch; "Citizen Kane"; "Holy Grail"; and, say, "Strictly Ballroom."
Four places you've lived: Huntsville, Ala.; Oxford, Miss.; Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.; Ewok Village.
Four TV shows you love to watch: Current shows now? Lessee... "Lost"; "My Name Is Earl'; sweet, sweet "Battlestar Galactica"; and, uh, maybe The 4400, assuming it's coming back for another season, which I would hope, given the way the last one ended. I also watch Smallville, but hate every minute of it.
Four places you've been on vacation: Counting trips with the folks when I was little, Orlando, Chicago, D.C. and Gatlinburg. Not counting those: New Orleans, Pensacola, Atlanta, and, uh, Tunica, I guess. I was a newspaper reporter. We don't believe in vacations.
Four websites you visit daily: Only four? Well, of course, I'll take this opportunity to pimp collectSPACE. Blogdex is another great one, and then, say, AICN, picking one at random. And, then, of course, all the ATW-family blogs in the sidebar.
Four of your favorite foods: Ribs, wings, cheese, bacon.
Four places you'd rather be: Than where I am this moment? Uh, Jackson, Miss., where I'm heading after I get done here; the International Space Station; Oakland, Tenn. and/or Oxford, Miss., visiting my nieces; and, say, Abner's.
Used tags: blog, bsg, collectspace, huntsville, international_space_station, journalism, lost, media, meme, mississippi, movies, star_wars
For Your Consideration...
Well, ballots for Oscar nominations have been distributed (I think this may have been mentioned a while back, but Steve Jobs gets to vote this year), and I never got around to mounting my big campaign to get Ian McDiarmid nominated for Best Supporting Actor.I fear he won't be considered, even despite his UNLIMITED ACTING!
Silly Trek Rumor Of The Day
So apparently Tom Hanks is going to appear in the next Trek movie. The one rumors say is being written by Erik Jendresen, not the rumored one with Shatner and Stewart that rumor has it has replaced the rumored Jendresen movie.This one I'm thankful almost certainly isn't true.
Thursday, 29 December 2005
Done And Done
Lucky you. For the first time in eight years, here's the official end-of-the-year Hatbag.
13 Things
About a year ago, I posted a link to 43 Things and started working on a list.I never did come up with 43 things, but I did list 13. Some of them were very much resolutions for 2005; but when I had trouble coming up with 43 things I wanted to this year, I broadened my list some. (The site doesn't specify a deadline for the goals.)
That said, here's where I stand on my 13 things:
- Produce a Web Comic -- Done.
- Watch a space shuttle launch -- Not done yet, at least not live. Not entirely my fault -- there weren't as many opportunities for doing so this year as I thought there might be when I did the list; and this was one that wasn't necessarily a 2005 thing. That said, I did watch a space launch in person for the first time this year, and was there for a last-minute scrub of another one.
- write more regularly -- Yeah, though not to the point I would check it off completely. Need to write even more regularly next year. That said, I've written a pretty fair amount in 2005.
- Get more exercise -- Like above, I'm doing better, but there's still room for improvement. Also in more need of losing weight.
- take a real vacation -- I came kinda close, going down to Floriday with Nicole for a long weekend, but I was there for work reasons, and it wasn't that long a trip. If all works out like I hope, 2006 will be the year for this one.
- write a book and have it published -- Not intended for completion in 2005, though I did a good bit of the writing part. Of course, if you count self-publishing, then this could be counted as done, too.
- make more friends -- Maybe. I've hung out a couple of times outside of work with people I'd never hung out with before. But don't know that I've met anyone new this year that I would call a friend. (No offense if I'm forgetting someone -- I may just be confusing years.)
- be a better husband -- Not really my place to judge.
- draw more -- Nope. Not at all. Assuming you're talking about non-computer stuff, which I was, I don't know that I've drawn anything at all.
- learn Russian -- Again, nope. Started working on at least recognizing more of the alphabet, but didn't even finish that.
- Take more pictures -- I bought a new digital camera. That's gotta count for something. Beyond that, dunno. My picture taking is still pretty subject driven, I don't do as much ambient picture taking as some people.
- put all my finances in Quicken -- For my purposes, done. I guess technically I don't have all my finances in Quicken, but I met the intent of this goal -- keeping all of my checking account transactions in Quicken for a year (well, after this weekend, at least). And I really think it's helped. It'll be interesting to be able to start doing year-to-year comparisons now.
- Save money -- Like some others, better, but not good enough. We've done better saving money this year than ever before, but that's more a commentary on how poorly we've done in the past than how well we've done this year. Again, will strive to do better.
You Say You Want A Resolution
In the year 2006 I resolve to: |
Another Nail Update
So, it's official: StarTrek.com is not shutting down.So that's something, at least.
Wednesday, 28 December 2005
Strange New Worlds
I've been checking some forums lately to figure out at exactly what point I should go from being pretty confident that I wasn't picked for the Strange New Worlds Star Trek anthology to knowing for sure that I wasn't picked.Haven't seen a definitive answer (though everything I've seen doesn't look good), but have learned that the guy that picks the winners, Dean Wesley Smith, is apparently a huge poker buff, which also doesn't bode well.
If I try it again next year, no more poker.
Editorial Note
Yeah, another redesign. Some cosmetic changes, some minor revamping of the sidebars, and a new bar under the title wherein to place some useful links (more coming).Comments appreciated.
The New Niece And I
One of the highlights of my Christmas travels:
I got to hold Bethany for the first time. And, in my unbiased opinion, she is both precious and adorable.
In The News
Hey, Mississippi made Yahoo News today: (In a story about a place I drove past many, many times, no less.)GREENWOOD, Miss. - This city's firefighters should know how to find the Best Western by now. Twice in an hour, firefighters were sent to the downtown hotel this past week after a pair of fires broke out in the same block of guest rooms.
"For so long, not once did it happen, and now it happened — in two," hotel owner Kenny Narwani said.
A Lot Of Intel Inside
So the latest Mac rumor is that Apple is so busy redesigning the iMacs, Powerbooks, iBooks and minis that it's going to farm out the design of the new Power Mac motherboard to Intel; a move that I have difficulty seeing as confidence-inspiring, for several reasons.The article also says that that the Intel versions of the other four machines are expected in "the first four months of 2006," meaning that if the new iMac is not announced in two weeks (and current rumors are indicating that it won't be), it could be coming not terribly long after that, further complicating my computer-buying decision-making.
Tuesday, 27 December 2005
Again
Not much going on online, and I've got stuff I need to do.
Later, all
Monday, 26 December 2005
Hey
In the Apple Store in Memphis.
Not buying anything... Today.
Two weeks, one day until MWSF.
Hope you and yours are doing well.
ATW will be back to "normal" tomorrow.
Sunday, 25 December 2005
Season's Greetings
We're about to embark on the travel part of our four-cities-three-states-48-hours Christmas tour.
Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas, whether you want to or not.
Saturday, 24 December 2005
Eh
You know, when you make a move that's three hours long; you're making a bit of a statement; specifically; "Hey, I'm making a movie that's worth being three hours long."I have nothing against long movies; there are several I really enjoy, and there have been several movies that I've hated were cut down to make them more appealling to the masses.
My problem with King Kong was not the length, per se. At one point I looked down at my watch, and was surprised to see that we were two hours into the film. By and large, it went by at a fair clip. My problem was more that it seemed cumbersome; that the length was necessitated by the fact that it was actually two separate movies grafted together. Compounding the problem was that the movie that had the plot seemed to run out of said plot before the film was over; after so much time being spent on characterization set-up in the beginning, that characterization was largely abandoned at the end. (I have absolutely no clue why the female lead was doing what she was doing when the final act began.)
To be fair, it wasn't all bad. The monkey-fighting-dinosaurs bit made Jurassic Park look slow and lame. In fact, the B-movie in the middle was pretty agreeable for what it was. Unfortunately, it was poorly served by all the framework that was applied trying to make it something it wasn't.
The Making Of A Hatbag
How's this for a little Christmas gift for the fans?Like sausages and laws, Hatbags are probably best enjoyed by those ignorant of how they are made. But, nonetheless, we've pulled back the curtain a little bit with a little peak into the making of this week's new Hatbag.
Today In History
On this date, 36 years ago, the Apollo 8 crew became the first human beings to orbit another world.
While there, they sent back Christmas greetings from space, which this blog would like to echo.
Friday, 23 December 2005
Space News
Hubble has discovered more rings around Uranus.Also, moons.
Fired Out Of A Canon
Interesting bit from a thread on TrekBBS about which Trek, exactly, is canon:Another thing that makes canon a little confusing. Gene R. himself had a habit of decanonizing things. He didn't like the way the animated series turned out, so he proclaimed that it was NOT CANON. He also didn't like a lot of the movies. So he didn't much consider them canon either. And--okay, I'm really going to scare you with this one--after he got TNG going, he...well...he sort of decided that some of the Original Series wasn't canon either. I had a discussion with him once, where I cited a couple things that were very clearly canon in the Original Series, and he told me he didn't think that way anymore, and that he now thought of TNG as canon wherever there was conflict between the two. He admitted it was revisionist thinking, but so be it.
iBattlestar
Hey, there's free Battlestar Galactica video on iTMS right now. Per MacNN, "The iTunes Music Store is now offering a free 'Sci Fi Inside – Battlestar Galactica' video that includes interviews of cast members, a review of the crew's past adventures, and a sneak peek at future episodes, following the launch of the series on iTunes earlier this month."Addendum: Turns out there's another free video, a Saturday Night Live short.