Chuck Jones, Genius

I saw this on some nameless early morning in the late 80s. It was one of the most amazing pieces of animation I've ever seen. I was talking about it with my boss the other day, and lo and behold, it's in a tube. For the ultimate surrealistic effect, start watching it at 1:05 in. The opening credits kinda give away a bit of the awesome.



That man was brilliant.

Bella luna obscura

Hey gang... don't forget to step outside and enjoy the view this Thursday Wednesday night. There's going to be a total lunar eclipse visible through most of the lower 48 (you PSTers might miss the very beginning).

Of course, to look at the cloud cover map for the US on Thursday, most of the eastern US is probably not going to see most of it. The DC area is forecast to be under about 85% cloud cover. The Big Apple should fare a little better, having only about a 35% cloud cover around 7:00pm, when the eclipse starts. Not to fret, however... total lunar eclipses are not terribly rare, occurring at least twice a year - although they're not always viewable from the US. The next total lunar eclipse viewable from the US will be in the early morning of December 21, 2010 EST.

For those of you more interested in the Big Show - a total solar eclipse... well, you've either got to do some traveling or some waiting. There will be one this August 1, but you're going to have to be in some of the northernmost places on the planet to see it - northern Canada, northern Greenland, northern Russia. The mainland US doesn't get a total solar eclipse until August 21, 2017. (The western US gets the tail end of a partial eclipse during the evening of May 19, 2012... but why settle for second best?)

The 2017 event will paint a total eclipse stripe from the northern coast of Oregon to the central coast of South Carolina during the afternoon of August 21. And this will be the last time you can see a total solar eclipse in the lower 48 until 2106. (The 2017 eclipse also the best chance anyone here has had to see a total solar eclipse since the last one that was centered here, in November 1834.)

If you want to get a sense of what the eclipse will look like, go get Stellarium. It's the ultimate sky-watchers' program, and is GPL'ed (which is to say, free). Set your observatory to Hopkinsville, KY (a town near the center of the 2017 event), go forward in time to about 1:25pm (as the clock reads, which I don't think is accounting for daylight savings), then watch the magic.

Or watch this crappy quality YouTube version. I tried a video capture from my desktop, but SnagIt (or, more likely, the MS codec) wasn't able to capture 7 frames per second of full-screen vid for a minute-plus. You're going to have to get Stellarium yourself, or do as Jambro and I are doing and planning a trip to Kentucky in nine-point-five years.

So funny I coughed up a lung.

It's shit like this that restores my oft-waning faith in humanity.

White House denies spying without Warrant

Happy New Year, Bitches!

[Some info: I was at the very loud and very rockin' party that Last Train Home throws at Iota when I called in this entry. It's hard to understand my commentary, mostly because of how freaking loud it was. The point, though, is clear and expressed as eloquently as I can muster in the title of this entry.]

I got tha fever. Butterstick Fever.

This town, as Wonkette will attest, has been seized by the ridiculously cute addition at the National Zoo: Tai Shan.

It's stoopid how adorable he is.

What's funny to me is how absolutely bonkers some folks have gone over this panda. I think we're all wanting to soak up as much time with it as we can, in whatever visceral way we can (PandaCam? Really?) because when he turns two, the 'Stick gets shipped back to China. Wonkette has her frequent Butterstick updates, which are probably fueling the frenzy as much as reporting on it. DCeiver's got his own particular brand of How-Fucking-Cute-Is-He-ism going on, interspersed amongst the exhaustive Lost reviews. But what I'm really enjoying, as reported in the Express today, are the advent of the rival Butterstick blogs. That is, blogs purporting to be written by the 'Stick.

They have a vast polarity difference between them. One, the newcomer, has 'Stick as a warm, meandering soul slowly discovering the little pleasures of life as a panda.

The other portrays Bandit (because "Butterstick" is verboten) as kind of a badass wannabe.

Each has taken notice of the other. It's now kind of in that awkward moment when two dogs you were hoping would walk around and ignore each other actually lock eyes, and it's only a matter of moments before the growling begins and all hell breaks loose.

At least, that's what I'm hoping for.

Find a hero

Here's a name not many of you may be familiar with: Tedy Bruschi.

Bruschi's a veteran inside linebacker for the New England Patriots. You probably saw him if you saw the Super Bowl last year. He wasn't a superstar in the game, just a solid performer. Hell, most defensive backs would kill to get the kind of minimal coverage Bruschi has received through his career. Regardless, he got a lot of things in the past twelve months: A Super Bowl ring, a Pro Bowl appearance, and $4.2 million for his time and trouble.

Except for being a large, white, 32-year old male, Bruschi and I have nothing in common.

Er... had nothing in common.

In February, just weeks after winning the Super Bowl, Bruschi had a stroke.

This past Sunday, he played in his first game since the stroke. And his stats from the game were only slightly below the averages he'd put up last year. The Pats ended up losing that game, but what the hell... dude came back from a stroke, fer the love of Pete.

My enjoyment of football occurs in a very simple, base, pure part of my brain. My respect for Tedy comes from an equally simple, pure place. There's just not a whole lot to say about it... Dude came back from a stroke to play in the freakin' NFL. I mean, come on.

[Link to news story about Tedy's comeback here.]

[CORRECTION: Dann pointed out that I was factually wrong about the outcome of the Pat's game this past Sunday. They ended up winning. I haven't the slightest idea why I couldn't read a couple of numbers and infer the correct information. Looking at the wrong week, perhaps. I dunno. Anyway, consider this mistake owned-up-to.]

Current Conditions

So, I have WeatherFox installed in my browser, which put a line of weather info at the top of the window, letting me know what I could just as easily find out by turning my head 90 degrees. But why go to all that trouble when the info's already here on the screen.

At any rate, WeatherFox tells one what the conditions are outside right now. I find what it's telling me about the outdoors right now a little odd.



That is all.

I have seen the future, and it will be... (The Italics Entry)

Part 1, Aperitif: There's yet another new thing over in the sidebar: A little button that says "Skype". If you have Skype installed, it will dial me up. Skype is sort of like Vonage, except there's no actual phone (you need a microphone attached to your compy), and it's free. If you need to know more, it's over at their home page. (Skype is one of those awesome web technologies that will eventually get bought by Google and made perfect, but it does the job pretty well right now.) Caveat: You have to be on my contact list to get through, or I won't even know you called. Email me at "s c a m p i" at gmail dot com, removing the quotes and taking the spaces out of the stuff before the at sign. Then Skype Me.

Part 2, Meat & Potatoes: Back when I was hell-bent and purposefully striding toward a career in broadcasting (circa 1988-1993), I always imagined that I wanted a radio show of my very own. How cool, I tantalized, would it be to have a microphone and studio and all the trappings of a radio show all subject to whatever whim I was harboring that particular moment. There was a certain cache to having the power of the mic at my disposal.

Heedless of any regard I had for the unique power of the voice that I had, technology has now made that power meaningless. Everyone and their mom can (and do) have their own radio shows now. They're called podcasts, and I'm just now getting hip to them.

I'd heard the term bandied about 'round about the time that the iPod started making them popular, but being the old geezer that I am I was content to let this newfangled bit of technology pass me by (as I have with other whizz-bang acronyms like PSP, HD, XM, RSS... the list goes on). Then I came across a news item on one of my chief geek-out sites that led me to this site, that led me to realize that anyone can have a radio show. I don't say that in a necessarily derogatory manner. Just stating the facts.

Anyway, at tfrollout, there's a podcast that they recently introduced where four guys (in four georgraphically disparate locations, sit around discussing stuff that may or may not interest anyone else. And there was a link to get their podcast, and it opened up this whole new world. In iTunes, it popped open the Music Store, which I generally avoid, and then popped to their Podcast section. Also, this new category popped up over where the playlists are kept, called (shockingly enough) "Podcasts". What you see when you get to the Podcast area of the Store, though, is what enthralled me...

Hundreds... nay, thousands of people with their own radio shows. As of this writing there are 417 podcast shows in the Politics category alone (with 21 categories total, like Travel, Arts, Education, Audio Blogs...). Some of the titles are awesome: 101 Uses for Baby Wipes, KCRC Airchecks, and Awful Podcast Showcase, of which I'm downloading an episode as I type.

The whole notion is actually thrilling. I mean, here's just thousands of people sitting around talking - for the most part - to their computers. Sometimes they're all by theirselves, sometimes they have friends "in studio". And as long as they have something to say, regardless of Production Values (or lack thereof), they're entertaining. That's not to say that all of the entertaining ones are my cup of tea (I probably won't be checking out the baby wipes one), but... just damn. How freakin' cool.

I heartily endorse the time wasted browsing around in the iTunes Music Store for the (largely) free podcasts.

Colorado - Day 6, Part 3a: DMB

[I'm not going to try to maintain any order to the retelling of the vacation tales. You're just going to have to deal with it, or cut and paste them, whate'er you wish. I've made some sense of the numbering scheme of how the trip happened, in case you actually want to do that once they're all written.]

At the Monday DMB show, I finally got to hear one of the two songs I want to hear live, and by far the one I'd thought I'd have much less of a chance of hearing: Old Dirt Hill.

This is going to alienate me from most DMB fans out there, but I absolutely love that track, and I absolutely love that it looks like it's going to be the next single from the album in spite of your hatred for the song, and I absolutely love that they played it twice at Red Rocks, in spite of y'all.

I loved the song the first time I heard it, and I love it every time I listen to it now, and I was just ecstatic when they started into it on Monday, and I sort of perversely enjoy that Jenn and I were the only two people within 30 rows who even game a rat's ass that they were even playing the song.

I'm baaa-aaack.

So, quick question: What's the difference between the Rocky Mountains and Washington, DC?

Answer: EVERYTHING.

Pics from the trip and tales of travel forthcoming, as-can-do.