Luna - my APOD

Full Moon - 12+ hours after the lunar eclipse

Fuji FinePix A800, 12 x digital zoom, freehand

1024 x 768 crop from 3296 x 2472 original

saved at 90% quality in IrfanView 3.97

(written 9/10/2007; back-dated to 8/28/2007)

Krr-Pop! The Popcorn Shop

While at the mall and waiting for the daughter's eyeglasses to be made, we had dinner. The wife and daughter shared Chinese food which they said was not as good as what they were used to over the summer. I wandered trying to see what looked good and opted for Subway.

After I was finished, I noticed that there was a place called Krr-Pop! The Popcorn Place and, that to my surprise, the sold not only popcorn, which I didn't want for dinner, but also Hot Dogs and other carnival fair, which would have been different. I went over and said the needed a bigger sign to show all they offered (this was printed too small) and I found that this shop is the only one of its kind. I'd thought it was a chain. Next time I'm over at the mall, I'll stop in. I wish them all the success they need.

(written 9/10/2007; back-dated to 8/28/2007)

Glasses for the daughter

The daughter, wife and I went out to the mall and the daughter was fitted for eye glasses. She can use them on the computer and for reading and if she wants to, she can where them all the time. She loves the frames and I personally think she looks like a 25 year old fashion designer. We just need to get her a show on Bravo TV and all will be complete!

In the back of my mind, her having to get glasses was something that has worried me for years. I'm afraid it will just enforce the stereotype of the brainy child. Daughter, don't read this until you're much older, okay?

(written 9/10/2007; back-dated to 8/28/2007)

Third Grade

The daughter had her first day of third grade today. Her BFF, who was in both first and second grade with her was not in her class and this was rough. But we think it will help her to grow.

(written 9/10/2007; back-dated to 8/28/2007)

First telephone call to Errol

I still have money left on my onesuite.com account and after working on Errol Sitahal's website, I decided to call him on Sunday evening. His wife answered and then we talked for about 35 minutes. I admit, I was gushing like a fan-boy at first. We went over many of the items on his resume and he provided some much needed additions. He even added one other TV program he was on that I didn't have.

The greatest amount of content is the Biography and the Resume. I think I've got he resume much closer to chronological order. The biography was greatly expaned once I found his entry in The Cambirdge Guide to African and Carribean Theatre. I need to pick one thing and work on it with him. I'd say the resume as this should be accurate and can be send to his agent to update his professional resume. Then we should concentrate on the biography. I can send him the details as I found them in the guide book. It only runs to 1994, which is a good stopping point; his film career started in 1995. Still, it's out of date by 12 years now. So much we can be doing with it.

As for calling again, I think I will put that off for at least another month if not two since Errol and I have many things to do that we should be doing via email.

(written 9/10/2007; back-dated to 8/12/2007)

Live Free or Die Hard

The wife and I went to go and see Live Free or Die Hard Tuesday night. Bruce Willis is looking old, or perhaps it was just John McClane looking old? The film was good, but could have been better. The theater was running their preview and advertisements show. Interesting things were:

• We Own the Night (a film)
• Bionic Woman (9/26/07 on NBC TV)
• Journey Man (this fall on NBC TV)

Previews were:

• The Brave One - a vigilante movie with Jodie Foster
• The Game Plan - Disney fluff
• The Kingdom - with Jamie Fox, this looks good and reminds me of Syriana
• Hitman

(written 8/8/07; back-dated to 8/7/07)

Hiroshima book

Tonight, 62 years after the atomic bombing I read Hiroshima [wikipedia] by John Hersey [wikipedia]. It follows the lives of six survivors of the bombing. It was published, in its entirety, in the August 31, 1946 edition of The New Yorker magazine. This edition is from 1983 and there are later copies that have a 5th section in addition to the original 1946 essay that detail Hersey's travels to Japan to see what became of the six people profiled in the book. Hersey died in 1993, so I'm wondering what edition, since mine is the 18th. The story is sad and graphic in places. Every August I tend to think about the bombings.

I've not gone out to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum [Official site, wikipedia] in a long time, but as I remember, the Virtual Museum was very well done.

Wife and daughter - Toronto to Columbus

My wife and daughter are flying from Toronto to Columbus today.

(written 6/21/2007; forward-dated to 8/4/2007)

Wife and daughter - Beijing to Toronto

Today, my wife and daughter fly back to Toronto, Canada from Beijing, China. Since they have an 18 hour layover, they are staying in a hotel for the night.

(written 6/21/2007; forward-dated to 8/3/2007)

Korean Zen Cinema

Last night I finished watching the 1989 film Why Has Bodhi Dharma Left for the East? [IMDB, Amazon], a film I've been wanting to watch since I glimpsed the cover in the library. It has comparisons to Ozu (whose films I've not seen) and Tarkovsky (who did Solaris [IMDB], which I love).

The Korean title is Dharmaga tongjoguro kan kkadalgun. Yong-Kyun Bae [IMDB] is the Director, Writer, Cinematographer & Editor, and took 7 years and his own funding for the film. Not entirely unlike Mike Jittlov.

Like Solaris, this needs multiple viewings.

Looking over Solaris, at the IMDB, it's soon going to be time to watch this again. I wish I had the VHS and DVD versions myself. Lots of subtile changes between them. I remember how the VHS version had both letterboxing bars at the bottom to allow a bigger area for subtitling. None of the titles were on the picture. It's funny to remember watching Return of the Jedi in the theater and seeing the subtitles over the picture. But when you watch it on DVD in widescreen, the subtitles are below the picture, in the black bar.

Methinks there is something wrong with blogger again. The photo is showing here in the edit of my post, but not on the view of the blog. Also, the bold is gone. At first, I thought that an issue with the template I'm using. Perhaps I should go back to my old tripod page after all. I've got better control there.

Make your own Venture Bros Bonus Audio CD

The Venture Bros has to be one of the best shows on TV and sadly, the new season won't be on Adult Swim until "winter" which could mean late 2007 or early 2008. I have season 1 and I still need to get the actual DVDs of season 2, even though it's been out for 3 months and a couple of days. There are quite a few extra songs and such out on the net and if you put them all together, it makes a nifty bonus CD. I was going to post this over a year ago and everytime I'd get close, I'd find something else to add. As it is I even found another person's blog entry in the same vain, but my list has a few more things. They are grouped in show order, then in order of release and the extra commentary is at the end. Feel free to choose your own order:

1. Venture Bros Open - 0:53 (ZIP file) [Adult Swim]
2. Revv Me Up - 4:09 ("Mid-Life Chrysalis", episode 8 - Brocks workout song) [Offical Site]
3. Look Away - 2:02 ("Return to Spider-Skull Island", episode 13 - end of season 1) [Offical Site] or (ZIP file) from [Adult Swim]
4. Everybody's Free - 3:32 ("Powerless in the Face of Death", episode 14 - start of season 2) [YTMND]
5. Mitre Storm - 3:04 ("I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills" - episode 23) [Offical Site]
6. Wedding Song - 3:20 ("Showdown at Cremation Creek (Part I)" - episode 25) [QuickStop]
7. Venture Bros Close - 0:33 (ZIP file) [Adult Swim]
8. Monarch Prison Phone Call to Henchmen - 3:21 [IGN]
9. Monarch Prison Phone Call to Dr. Girlfriend - 3:11 [IGN]
10. Little Drummer Boy - 4:48 (Christmas 2004) [IGN] or [QuickStop]
11. Hard Candy Christmas - 5:08 (Christmas 2005) [IGN] or [QuickStop]
12. Venture Aid - 3:07 (Christmas 2006) [QuickStop]
13. Lost Commentary (1x07) - 23:13 ("Home Insecurity" - episode 3) [QuickStop]

Yes, "Everybody's Free" by Aquagen featuring Rozalla is not actually a freebie. But I'm not telling you to save it.

There are plenty of graphics out there to make a nice cover for it. Of course, you can still go and and get your own Brock Sampson OSI ID at the official Venture Brothers website.

Westbridge Camera Club & Women Astronauts

I met David at the camera club meeting and afterward were were discussing, among other things, a picture of Kathy Sullivan. I found some links out at GRIN (GReat Images in NASA). There are 50 photos specifically on women here. I put these pretty much in chronological order. Links for the photos in various sizes are at the bottom of the pages. The two I was talking about of Kathy are numbers 4 and 7:

1. Jerrie Cobb Poses beside Mercury Capsule
2. Nichelle Nichols, NASA Recruiter
3. First Class of Female Astronauts
4. Kathryn Sullivan Sets Altitude Record
5. Ride on the Flight Deck
6. Sullivan and Ride Show Sleep Restraints
7. Sullivan Views the Earth
8. Christa McAuliffe and Barbara Morgan
9. Christa McAuliffe Experiences Weightlessness During KC-135 Flight
10. Female Astronauts

Hope Vitellas is on MySpace

I was listening to some small sample clips of Hope Vitellas and went out to see if she's added anyting new. Her official site is suspended for now. What the _? I checked and she does have a MySpace site here. I still need to get her CD from last year. She's got presence!

I'll go update my post in June 2006 and put the link there too.

Sydney Forest, where are you?

I'm surprised I've not watched Kiki's Delivery Service (Majo no takkyûbin @ IMDB) since the wife and daughter have been in China. I do need to watch A Mighty Wind and return it tomorrow, so I shouldn't be posting now, but I am. Thinking about Kiki made me think of the new beginning and ending music for the Disney VHS release back on 1 September 1998. (That version was Pan and Scan. On 29 September they released the widescreen and I should have waited. Of course there was also the subtitled widescreen VHS that I didn't get either.)

The songs Soaring, used for the opening, and I'm Gonna Fly, used for the ending, were sung by Sydney Forest. I like the songs in the original Japanese but these are good too. One of the things Disney/Buena Vista did right. (Some of the other musical changes are good too.) Back in 2000, you could order a CD from her site called "Collected Film and Television Works" for $5 that had those two songs and three others by her. The CD is listed at here at nausicaa.net at the bottom.

I went out and using the mp3 search on AltaVista, you can find very good quality (192 k) versions of these two songs:

• Soaring - you need to search the page
• I'm Gonna Fly

I'd still like the original CD. Looking over the Internet Archive, her original site http://www.sydneyforest.com/ was up from at least 9 August 1999 to 2 August 2002 - looks like it was registed for 4 years. There is an email sydmail@aol.com, but it just bounced.

Her IMDB page shows nothing since 2004. I wish I could find her site.

TV Saturday Morning

Up late last night, but up in time to talk with the wife on the phone. The daughter is not behaving as she should and so she's "in jail". That is, in her room, with nothing to do, except for meals and the bathroom.

The history channel ran "Beyond the War of the Worlds" about Mars. It featured Jeff Wayne's musical version of "The War of the Worlds" which is a 2006 computer animated movie.

Flipping channels and I see that Khaled Hosseini is on C-SPAN2's "Book TV" talking about "A Thousand Splendid Suns". It is from 5/24/07 recored in Philidelphia. He's reading the first chapter. But I've got things to do and I'm going to turn it off and either listen to the radio or to a movie that I've seen and don't need to watch. Maybe. I may just listen in, as it's not too distracting.

(Why can't I put in a title for this entry? That's weird. It's not letting me in the field with IE or Firefox.)

At the showing of Transformers there was a 7th trailer for an untitled movie produced by J.J. Abrams. There is an entry on IMDB simply called "Untitled J.J. Abrams Project". The working title or code name is "Cloverfield", "Clover" or "Parasite". The offical site seems to be http://www.1-18-08.com/, but there is only a photo there. And the "analysis" of the space between the two women in the picture is total conjecture. I say it's nothing at all of any significance.

Youtube.com has copies of the trailer but they are being taken down soon after being put up. In one comment, some pointed a much better copy here, but it has the beginning cut off. Keepvid.com won't download it. But it does look quite a bit better.

Transformers in 25 words or less

Here's my nutshell review:

Transformers is the movie I had hoped Independence Day was going to be
eleven years ago.

Sixteens words. For me, that is amazing.

In two words: "Wicked cool!"

(written 7/16/2007; back-dated to 7/4/2007)

Powerbook Screen Problems

My wife is having issues with the Mac. I think the screen is going out. Here are a couple of pictures:

It looks like we will be replacing the screen when she gets back from China.

Blogger Mods

I'm still not too happy about blogger being so narrow. I finally dug around and found where in the template code to set to width for the page and this posting column. It's screwed up some of the images, but it gives me more than an index card's width to type.

I changed to a different template so that I could get dates to stand out more. I'm torn between wanting to blog everything for a given day under an entry named for the day, or post in pieces over the course of a day.

Waterworld - ABC version

Tonight I found out that the longer version of Waterworld, the one that was on ABC years ago was on the SciFi Channel. Unfortunately, it was already an hour into the broadcast. It would be a good project to get that recorded and then to integrate it with the wide screen footage of the DVD. You could even make it so that the full screen parts were properly centered within the letter boxed area. It would look funny when it transitioned, but it would be cool.