• The most relieving sound in the world is that burp a baby makes after sucking down an ounce of formula.  Makes you feel like you’re doing the job right.

• The ickiest feeling is when the kid craps while sitting in your arm or leg, and you can feel the impact of it through her diaper.

• The most painful thing so far has been my penchant to hold her in my right arm to put her to bed at night for far too long.  My right bicep didn’t see her coming. She may only be 8 lbs., but after 15 minutes in one arm, she starts pulling you over.  Lesson to be learned: If you’re planning on having a child, start doing curls.

Tea Leoni is now on the market.
David Duchovny & Téa Leoni Separated ‘For Several Months’

David Duchovny, who recently left rehab for sex addiction, and wife Téa Leoni released a statement Wednesday saying they have been separated for some time.

Though they were very careful to point out his addiction was to internet materials and not other real world women, you can’t imagine that the marriage was long for this world once that news leaked out.  Turns out, it’s been done a while.

Today is a special vocabulary edition:

• Colostrum - The key ingredient in early breast milk

• Meconium - Baby’s First Poop (warning: there are pictures at this link you don’t want to see while eating)

• Ravenous - How everyone describes my child’s appetite. She takes after Daddy.

Welcome to a new series exploring all the craziness that has been the last week.

So let’s get straight to the first Thing I’ve Learned in the last week:
I’m glad I’m not a nurse.  For starters, 12 hour shifts are insanity. Due to staffing shortages, you might get sent to a different department on a short day. You might not get a weekend, or two consecutive days off.  And you’re dealing with sick people. By the looks of it, you’re also required to wear colorful crocs and loud Hawaiian shirts that look like scrubs.
That brings us to the second thing I’ve learned:

Hospitals are no places for healthy people.  I came back from being in a hospital room with my wife for four days with a sinus headache, a sore throat, post nasal drip, and goodness only knows what else. Antibiotics are my friend.

10/08/08

• On the off chance your website’s images are too big, Yahoo has a tool to shrink them for you. Could be worth playing with, though I don’t run any large images here so I’m not too worried.

• One video. 24 hours.  All flight patterns.  Pretty cool.

• Isn’t it kind of weird that a panel of federal judges controls music royalty rates? Don’t they have something better to do?  Like judge murderers or something?

• Memo to self: Download “Cave Story.”  If good, prepare to WiiWare download it.

• Are subtitled movies now more palatable to younger generations weened on text messaging?

• Everything you wanted to know about the iPhone SDK.  You can even grab some source code.  Or buy the book!

Did you see “90210″ on Tuesday night? Sadly, I did. And I laughed where I probably shouldn’t have.

You see, the lead character’s mother is a budding photographer and is given her big break at a fashion show in this week’s episode. Her photography skills start off strongly enough. She uses multiple bodies to switch lenses. She’s using Canon cameras with fast lenses. (They’re huge.) The hot shoe has a pocket wizard or something attached to it to remotely fire the flashes. It’s not tethered to a computer, but that’s forgivable. Not everyone likes working that way.

Then, things go downhill. First, the photographer is seen proofing pics on a light board. These are digital pictures. They’re not making film contact sheets of them. They should be reviewing them on a computer monitor, most likely an Apple Cinema Display.

Then, she’s seen holding the camera inches in front of her face as she takes pictures. She’s not looking through the viewfinder! She’s looking at the screen. This isn’t a point and shoot camera! This is a high end Canon dSLR camera, probably without Live View yet. Even if it did use Live View, that’s not the time to be using it. The lag would destroy her pics.

Also, every woman in the show is entirely too skinny. It’s skeletal looking, save maybe Shannon Doherty.

And I also think I’ve seen enough teenage melodramas now that I recognize they’re all the same show, just with slightly different coats of paint on them. “Dawson’s Creek” was the only one to attempt something different, and that was through its use of language.

• I can feel the balance starting to shift.  I’m starting to tire of all the podcasts.  At work, I’m listening to more music now.  Maybe it’s because it’s easier to do work while listening to music rather than to people talking.  Maybe the job is shifting more than the listener?  I don’t know. Maybe I just need an exciting new podcast to jumpstart me again.

• The on-going eBay Death Watch took an interesting turn this week, as eBay has finally integrated Skype.  Sorta.  They’re including a Skype link in a Firefox toolbar that very few people will want to install. If the eBay auction you’re looking at has a phone number — not yet a Skype handle — the toolbar will allow you to call up the seller to ask them questions.  Or something.  And who will be silly enough to publish their phone number with their eBay auction?  I imagine that would only be the businesses who use eBay as a side income stream.  Isn’t that the crowd eBay is catering to, to the exclusion of all others these days?

• That Apple Brick announcement I was talking about on Monday? They didn’t announce anything. Surprise, surprise.

• Speaking of Apple, congrats to The Unofficial Apple Weblog on their new design.  It’s very nice.  Someday, I’ll do the same to this blog. . .

All things TiVo:

• This new TiVO HD review makes the unit sound appealing.
• Is TiVo planning a new interface design?
• And TiVo is coming to the PC! They’ve licensed the software.

The week’s new DVD releases will be run down here tomorrow.

So, Mac fans are setting themselves up for disappointment again.

The latest thing is the “Brick” rumor. Like all the patent filings that lead to wild speculation on new product announcements, “the brick” is a rumor fueled by speculation and incorrect readings of financial reports. The lower profit margins warned by Apple at the end of the last quarter were explained by the lowered prices on the iPods. but that’s not enough for some people, who demand that the margins are falling because Apple will release an all-inclusive touch-screen tablet that will cure cancer and shore up failing banks — for free! Without Google Ads!

Or maybe it’ll just be Apple TV v3.0, complete with HDTV integration, TiVo functionality, a built-in Blu-Ray player, and a Wii built in!

It’s gotten to the point now where “The Brick” is going to excite Apple and the economy and revolutionize the computer industry on October 14th.  Really, check out all the insane predictions that have been made.

And when Apple announces a simple MacBook upgrade — maybe an aluminum case instead of white, with a moderate chip speed-up — Apple fans will whine and complain that Steve Jobs has lost his touch, and that Mac doesn’t revolutionize any thing anymore.

Can’t we just enjoy the surprise when it comes, and stop feeding into the hype machine with endless speculation that gets mistaken for fact?

I hate people sometimes.

That said, I hope it’s Apple TV 3 — but only as a software upgrade so I don’t have to buy a new one.  Mine’s only 6 months old!

• Whatever happened to Jennifer Capriati? The story is a year old now, but it’s the best I could find.
• The problem with radical compression on CDs in the music industry has hit a new low now:  the new Metallica album sounds better in Guitar Hero than on CD, due to compression issues.
• Typography can be funny, too.
• What’s the difference between film and digital photography?  Here’s one test that shows you. Interesting.
• If modern video games were made for the Atari 2600, here’s what the box art would look like.

• Am now running Leopard on the MacBook. Only a year late to this particular party.

• If you ever want to feel sorry for celebrities, watch TMZ. Those people are so obnoxious they make millionaire debutantes sympathetic.

• I’ve only lived in this complex for two months, and they’re already having their second huge garage sale. What’s with this place? 

• @Ihnatko - I think a lot of the novelty of “Talk Like a Pirate Day” has worn off. Internet memes are not annual events, generally speaking.

• It’s like I have two jobs some days. . . (CBR keeps me very busy.  Could be even busier, but I ran out of time.)

• Friggin’ Roxio was creating a backup of every video I ever burned to a DVD. Just deleted them, saving 10 GIG of space. Whoo-hoo! 

• I’m in the mood for French comics, all of a sudden.

• Number of appearances Joey Fatone made on the HD version of DWTS but not on SDTV: Too Numerous to Count 

• Boston Legal is back. I just wish I had the time for it. So sad.

• Friggin’ Tuesdays. . . One of the worst five days of the week

Kirsten Dunst is now single, though she doesn’t feel like dating anyone at the moment.  Bide your time, carefully.  Pounce at the right time, gentlemen.
Macenstein | I guess she was a PC

“They are taking some time off for now,” reveals an insider. Kirsten, who also dated Fabrizio Moretti, another of Drew’s exes, ended the relationship

She was dating Justin Long, of the “I’m a Mac. I’m a PC” commercials.

• #49 on the Billboard charts this week?  American Idol’s Katie Kristy Lee Cook.

• Want an alternative to ironing?  How about your own clothes steamer?  Looks interesting. . .  Anyone ever use one of these?

• Adobe Illustrator CS4.  My copy is still “CS.”  I don’t think I’ll be upgrading, but it certainly looks nice.

• Listen to an entire Jill Sobule concert streamed through your browser.  Pretty cool.  Her next album, by the way, has been recorded.  No word on when we’ll be able to download it, though.

• If you haven’t seen Nintendo’s ad for the new Wario Shake game, you must click this link NOW.

• “Dear Mr. Watterston” is a documentary on the creator of “Calvin & Hobbes,” as told by his fans.  Or something like that.

• Laugh Your Abs Away.  It’s stupid.  It’s frightening. But it makes me laugh. Every Time I Watch It.

I’ve been thinking a bit about the recent United Air Line stock crash.  Is it really a bad thing, though?  In fact, is it something we should work hard to duplicate?

That might be going a little too far.  Obviously, a lot of people unexpectedly lost a lot of money a little too fast, mostly due to computer errors.

But think about it — United Airlines went from $13 a share to $3 a share and back up to $11 a share, once all was sorted out.

Isn’t it possible that the stock was overvalued at $13 a share, then?  If the market rules, then isn’t the stock currently at its true level?  And isn’t that best for the economy, for investors, for everyone?

Why not zero out the rest of the stock market?  Let’s reset all stocks to $0 and let the market dictate their new prices.  Where would Google wind up if people had to start buying it again and bidding the price up as it went along?  What if the stock market wasn’t all lottery tickets and hype marketing?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an arbitrary number, composed of an arbitrary number of arbitrary companies.  Being above 10,000 is meaningless, except in the psyches of small people.  So let’s start with the DJIA and zero out all their stocks.

Problem is, it wouldn’t work on this scale. Someone would develop a computer algorithm and all the stocks would return to their pre-zeroed value.

Still, it’s a fun kind of crazy talk.

• The Love Guru

Mike Meyers continues to prove how painfully not funny he is.

• Speed Racer

You either loved it or you loathed it.

• 88 Minutes

It’s Al Pacino.

• 30 Rock: Season 2

Sarah Palin does a mean Tina Fey impression, I hear.

• Chuck: First Season

Custom made for the new Hollywood Geek Chic, and now even has a comic book spinoff.