So I really liked the idea of the TV show The Mentalist. A guy who used to do a mind reading act and talk to the dead (and all that malarky) decides to consult full-time with the CBI (California Bureau of Investigation). He’s a smart-ass with a great sense of humor. Looked to be be a show I’d really like.

But here’s the catch: in the first episode you learn that he’s really into this because his family was murdered by a killer named Red John, who did it just to taunt him (that’s the short version). So I really thought that part was going to ruin the series, I figured they’d waste ten minutes an episode on the Red John story-line and it’d just be annoying. Surprisingly, I’ve barely noticed it. There has been a few references and a few parts of the story-line tied to it (like his old psychiatrist was in an episode), but it really hasn’t consumed the season. I think there might have been some episodes where they didn’t mention it. I just watched a very Red John motivated episode and I’d say they did it right and I enjoyed it (although the hacking into the secure data-base was a little over the edge, IMHO). My thoughts of this ruining the story-line were unfounded and I’m happy it hasn’t bothered me like I thought it would.

If you’re not watching this show yet you might want to check it out.

So YouTube has three different qualities that I see quite often: Normal Quality, High Quality and High Definition (HD). Every video seems to be available in Normal Quality. Also, High Quality appears to generally be the same size as Normal and those can ben standard format (TV shaped) or wide screen formatted. But I think recently (towards the end of 2008?) the normal became wider to suit more widescreen video, as a result you get black bars on the sides for standard video instead of the tops and bottoms for the widescreen.

But the High Def video shows up as standard size video but the HD video shows up huge on the screen (about 864×480). I remember it being large before, but not that large, maybe it takes longer to convert or they approve it or something or did I just never notice before?

For example, this is the same fire dancing video I posted before and I don’t ever remember it being so big on the screen. Be sure to toggle between “Watch in Normal Quality” and “Watch in HD” to see the difference.

So it looks like some nice stuff:

• iPhoto and iMovie with some nice updates.
• The geo-tagging in iPhoto looks cool. Will someone please figure out a way to sync my GPS with my photos for the location they were taken!!!!
• iWork on-line looks great and that it’ll give GoogleDocs a run for their money.
• And a way cool app to use your iPhone or Touch as a preview remote for slideshows!
• The 17-inch MacBook Pro looks great, but 17-inches is just too much of a hassle to haul around. I still think my 13.3 inch MacBook is huge compared to my 12-inch PowerBook.
• Non-Removable battery for the MacBook 17-inch MacBook Pro. But it lasts 8 hours and 1,000 recharge cycles (triple the standard). It’ll be interesting to see how this works out…
• The new MacBook has a matte option on the display (that’s for me!) and up to 8GB of RAM!
• Looks like all music with be DRM free by the end of the year at the iTunes store (I’m not sure if by default it’ll be DRM or if you still have to buy the ‘iTunes Plus’ version or if everything is ‘plus’). And pricing will change older stuff is cheaper and some newer stuff will be more.
• But they will still have the iTunes plus at a higher bit-rate for more money (I think). Isn’t that how you got the DRM-free before, was with the iTunes Plus?

Check out the MacWorld Keynote Coverage from Engadget, start at the bottom and scroll up.

No new Mini’s, iPhone Nanos or anything that I need.

I was hoping for tethering for the iPhone (connecting the computer to the iPhone to use it’s 3G internet) and a model with more memory…

I love Indexed! It took me a second to get this one…

Yesterday’s was good too, she drew the graph and had the readers label the data points!

Jessica has a whole book of these called indexed (of course).

It was kinda gloomy out and I didn’t want to hike far and get trapped in the rain. I saw a few people gathering for the bus so I asked what time the bus was, I was told 11:30 so I grabbed my stuff from the hotel and went back to the bus stop.

I’m not sure why this looks pixelated, it’s actually way better in High Quality.

A few people showed up at 11:30 but no bus. A few more show up at Noon but no bus. At 12:10 the bus showed up and lots of people showed up by 12:30 (which was the correct time). Turns out this is the one time of day the bus is generally on-time since they stop to get lunch when they arrive here. Why all those others thought it was 11:30 and 12:00, I have no idea, they said those times with no hesitation. I really wish “I don’t know” was part of the Costa Rican vocabulary.

And now that it’s all uploaded, I realize the ocean looks kinda washed out. But I swear it’s right there…

(FYI, I am not in Costa Rica)

So Matt Smith is the new Doctor Who but we won’t see him until 2010. At 26 he’s the youngest Doctor Who although I’m guessing he’ll be a year older in 2010, but he is a time-lord so you never know…

The funny thing is that The Doctor generally uses “John Smith” when he needs a “real” name for something in his travels so the matching name is fun (funny?).

I don’t really know who he is which means I’ll have no preconceptions about him. I’ve seen him with Billie Piper (Rose from Doctor Who) in a Secret Diary of a Call Girl episode but I don’t really remember him.

I originally read about it at Neil Gaiman’s blog and I completely agree with him in that he looks at home in front of the TARDIS and I’m sure he’ll look even more so as time goes one (especially since I’m sure they took many photos to get one that looked “right”).

This is the Daily Mail article with the Matt Smith photo in front of the Tardis. He’s an article from The Guardian and the BBC article with a short video with Matt Smith.

David Tennant’s last show is supposed to be in 2010 (after a weird four episode mini-season) so maybe they’ll make an interesting transition episode?

I can’t believe I’m still doing this with 2,000 posts all over the last 5 years! Never would have thought it grow on me so much!

I was trying to come up with something monumental to blog about for this post, but that didn’t happen so I’ll give you a quick update on some tech (the new blog site) and a few personal things:

• I’m averaging more than a post a day, but sometimes I skip more than a few days, so I’m going to try and post more consistently (and more images with posts).
• I’m really liking WordPress, I’ve completely migrated all my old posts (from MovableType) to WordPress 2.7 (at least I think I’ve got all 4,000-ish archive/category/single pages) and mostly updated the “about“-type pages. I’ve been playing around with WP for a year and this interface on 2.7 version beats the interface for the previous six months (it was actually better previous to six months ago, IMHO). I’ll be posting more about my WordPress transition over the next few weeks (I’ve been making notes).
• Google has done an amazing job reindexing the updated site. It’s grabbed a good chunk of the pages and about 80% of the old pages have disappeared been replaced in the search engine. I’ll be posting more about this too.
• And I just saw they picked the new Doctor Who, but I’ll make that my 2001st post
• I’m still sick from when I mentioned it last week. The (medical) doctor thinks it’s some lower lung pneumonia on the right side so I’ve just been staying close to home and taking it easy (I’ll get x-ray results next week). Sleep has been the worse, I think maybe the drugs are keeping me up, or I’m just bored. Hopefully I won’t be posting more about this!
• Even being sick, the holidays were nice and relaxing, exactly what I needed after the last year, I’d have liked some more snow consistently on the ground, just enough to cover the grass. I wasn’t sick sick until Christmas so I made it through everything.

That’s it for now, I gotta go read up more on the new Doctor Who…

Found a simple plug-in for WordPress to chart your history of blog posts. It’s just called date-index.

Just put this little piece of PHP code () on a page somewhere and voila! You’ve got a graph with the number of posts per month in a chart! Unfortunately, there are no options other to modify the chart that I can see.

I don’t know how I would/could give up the Internet. It’s just too much a part of who I am. I could give up TV and movies (I don’t really play electronic games) if I had to, way easier than the ‘net.

I’d certainly read more. I’ve got 3 new library books sitting here all overdue! I’d definitely play more board/card games, but I need more people for that, I love games.

I’d check out more local music (which I do already) and theatre. And I should probably play outside more, but it’s so cold right now that thought doesn’t really register.

From Friday Question #51 over at ilaxStudio.com

Happy New Year!!!

Have a great 2009 everyone!!!

I know I should stop drinking bottled water, but I can’t. It’s too convenient to just grab a bottle on the go. It’s generally less than 17 cents a bottle when I purchase a case (this week it’s way on sale for 11.5 cents a bottle for an odd sized case of 35 at Meijer). I keep a case by the car in the garage and I take grab one to go all the time. I generally refill it as the day goes on. It’s just too easy to grab it and go; if I make it more inconvenient I might end up drinking less water and I probably don’t drink enough as it is (I used to hate drinking water).

And yes, I do understand that much of the bottled water is tap water.

Why am I talking about this today? Because I just read 10 Reasons To Stop Drinking Bottled Water over at The Good Human and I’m feeling a little guilty. The two statistics that really blew my mind were that it can take nearly 7 times the amount of water in the bottle to actually make the bottle itself and that on a weekly basis, 37,800 18-wheelers are driving around the country delivering water.

I will mention that at home I do drink tap water and while I prefer to run it through the Britta Filter first, it’s not a requirement. I do not open bottled water to drink in the house and I’m perfectly fine drinking non-filted ice from my freezer (hmm, I wonder if there is a filter on the freezer that needs changing?).

I just don’t see me washing out some kind of travel bottle to reuse over and over. If I drink two plastic bottles a day (and that would be a lot) we’re only talking about saving $2.50 a week (not counting purchasing and cleaning the reusable bottles and the time); wouldn’t I be better off saving a gallon of gas or two? I see me needing to get out of the house and wanting some water and the bottle isn’t clean or full or the Britta pitcher is empty or some other barrier stopping me; a few times a week I’d probably have to skip it and have to stop somewhere and buy a bottle for $1.50 which is counter productive. Maybe if I had 3 or 4 refillable bottles??

You can watch the full pilot episode of the new Showtime series The United States of Tara for free with promo code tara (pretty tricky, eh?). Toni Collette plays the multiple personality mother and John Corbett (Chris in the Morning from Northern Exposure) plays the (very accepting) dad. The semi-wild daughter is played by Brie Larson and I’m confident before the end of the series she’ll show some similar traits to her mother and Keir Gilchrist plays the smart/good son.

As you can see by the images below, Toni Collette plays a wide range of characters.

I enjoyed the episode, but it starts a little slow as they have to introduce everyone and all their issues. It definitely picked up towards the end and I was laughing out loud at the few scenes at the end. If iTunes picks it up, I’ll certainly try it for another episode or two.

So I really like playing dominoes and I don’t mean standing them all up on end and knocking them all down. Playing dominoes is like playing card games: you’ve got a bunch of “bones” instead of “cards” and an infinite number of games that can be played with the cards bones. Dominoes come in different sizes: double sixes (this would make the highest domino have a 6 at both ends), double nines, double twelves and double fifteens, think of them as playing a game with multiple decks of cards. Using double nines is my favorite for about 2-4 people and double twelves for 4 or more; double fifteens just have too many dots on them to look at. Oh, and I like the dominoes with the dots with different colors; it helps in avoiding mistakes after too many hours of play.

And of course with all games everyone has their variations; in Euchre you’ve got ‘Ace, no face’ and you get a re-deal (if they play that way) and if no one picks trump do you ’screw the dealer’ (make them pick a suit) or re-deal? And many people play Monopoly with their own rules, such as: put utility payments on Free Parking and whomever lands on it, wins the the cash. Dominoes is no different everyone plays every game slightly different.

One of the games I like is “Mexican Train” (which I’m sure has racist origins with it’s name), the nice thing about it is that it’s easy to teach, there is no math (except at the end of a round) and you’re really just (strategically) matching your dominoes from end to end. Here’s a good set of Mexican Train Dominoes instructions with some additional instructions. It’s really too complicated to explain here which is why I provided a link to the instructions. Many sets are sold as Mexican Train sets but they just include a “train station” for the starting block and little train pieces as markers, we just use the starting block as the train station and pennies for markers.

About halfway through we realized we that we forgot the mexican train part! That plus the few other parts we goofed up made me think that maybe we made up a new game?!?

So I checked out the rules, trying to remember the parts we forgot and saw some different rules:

• “In this first turn only, the player may play as many dominoes as they wish, so long as they form a valid train”, I’ve never seen anyone play it that way, we’ve always taken turns putting one down at a time per turn.
• “If any player is unable to start their train - having no domino that matches the centre double - they do not draw from the boneyard”, don’t think we’ve ever done it that way either! Always make them draw one.
• We also play that you have to announce when you are down to your last domino, if you don’t by the time the next player picks up and someone calls you on it, you pick up another piece (I don’t know if I learned it that way or accidentally transferred the rule from a different domino game).

There were some other differences too, but some seemed to be tied into the earlier differences. But as long as you all play by the same rules, I guess it really doesn’t matter.

There is another domino game game we play that I like (and don’t know the name) where you don’t score unless you add up all the ends of the pieces of the board and it’s a multiple of five, this one is a lot more confusing.

Been getting more and more sick the last few days, but (most importantly) made it through most of the holidays. The coughing got worse throughout Christmas day but the ultra-bad congestion didn’t start until nighttime and hasn’t stopped since. I’ve used my netty pot over and over; more times than I’ve ever used it in a day but it just won’t clean it all out (I use it all the time and I think it helps with my allergies and getting sick). I’d like to take a sleeping pill to help me sleep but I’m afraid I’ll drown/suffocate in all the mucus.

But other than the pounding headache, it’s really not that awful. It’s not too bad when I sit up, which is why I’m typing and not sleeping. I can eat and I’m semi-hungry so those are good things. I just don’t understand where all the snot comes from!

Hopefully you’re didn’t just read this over breakfast…

So I only thought the Santa Radar Tracker was only semi-interesting. But I brought it up for my cousins kids when I was over there tonight and they went nuts over it (from little kids to a sixth grader). They kept running in to check out where he was in the world. The fact that they give you a countdown to the next update even made it more enticing.

They’ve got photos from various sites around the world and some locations have a video such as this one from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (which includes some very mild educational bullet points in the audio).

THEY PULLED THE VIDEOS (MADE THEM PRIVATE), I’VE REPLACED THE VIDEO WITH A PROMO WITH SEVERAL CLIPS IN IT.

Here’s the direct link to NORAD Tracks Santa - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (and there is a High quality link on that page).

Here’s a little background at the Google Lat Long Blog about the Santa Tracker (and the regular Google Blog).

UPDATE: At 11:11 PM he made it to the United States. I like the video from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Everyone, please travel safe during the holiday festivities! In Michigan the roads are awful but be careful no matter how the roads are (especially if you’re drinking while celebrating).

Be thankful that you get to spend time with your family and friends. It’s a time to be nice (so don’t fight with your family about stupid things)!

And if you’re in a place that has snow, don’t forget to go for a ride and look at the Christmas lights!

 

 

 

The roads are awful right now. I’m working my way down to my neck/back doctor’s office and finishing up Christmas shopping as I pass by places. The speed of the traffic determines how many of those errands that I’ll get done. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be anywhere near enough time…

And the weather doesn’t make it look like it’s going to get any better any time soon. That’s Michigan in the center if you can’t tell…

I swear that I eat more candy and desserts more the last two weeks of December than I do the rest of the year. Plus it’s usually mixed with a few drinks. Not a good mix for my stomach any time of the year let alone the holidays.

On the other hand it’s really nice to see friends and family!!!

THIS OFFER IS OVER.

Here’s a free Christmas Album sponsored by Oprah. This is the same album from a few weeks ago.

Don’t miss the cover art links too!

Once again - It says it’s only available for 48 hours, but I don’t know when the clock started ticking…

• Faith Hill, “Joy to the World” from the album Joy to the World
• Tony Bennett, “I’ll be Home for Christmas” from the album A Swingin’ Christmas
• Il Divo, “O Holy Night” from the album The Christmas Collection
• Josh Groban, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” from the album Noel
• Brian McKnight, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” from the album I’ll Be Home for Christmas
• Amy Grant, “O Come All Ye Faithful” from the album The Christms Collection
• Harry Connick Jr., “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” from the album What a Night! A Christmas Album
• Aretha Franklin, “Silent Night” from the album This Christmas