Various and Sundry: Now Everything But Photography

Two of my favorite songs on the Wiggles concert DVD that’s stuck in perpetual replay at home are “Six Months in a Leaky Boat” and “Old Dan Tucker.”

The former is a Split Enz song from the early 80s, and quite a catchy one at that. Watch its YouTube video here.

“Old Dan Tucker” turns out to be one of those traditional songs from the old west, for which sheet music has been around for 150 years or so. The funny thing is, Bruce Springsteen has covered it.

Here are The Wiggles:

Here’s The Boss:

Last year, one of my daughter’s favorite toys was this doggie that had a mirror for a body and played lots of music.

2008 Dog Edition

This year, it’s this doggie that’s bigger, softer, and has lots of buttons that start him off singing.

2009 Dog Toy

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A conversation over at Johanna Draper-Carlson’s blog brings up the discussion of what TV shows you’d like to see on DVD, but most likely won’t. I know I discussed what’s left to put out on DVD here last year, but this is a different angle on that. And the more I think about it, the more interesting answers come to mind:

VR.5: The most obvious answer in my mind. It was released on VHS back in the day, but they replaced the soundtrack. Sadly, I bet they’d do the same thing on DVD, and this is a show that NEEDS that original soundtrack.

(Trivial tangent: The first CD I ever bought was the VR.5 soundtrack. I didn’t get a CD player until six months later, for Christmas 1995.)

Orleans: Created by one of the VR.5 creators. Starred Larry Hagman. Ensemble drama show. Don’t think it lasted past 6 or 8 episodes, but remember it was incredibly lush for a network drama of the time. Might even have aired in widescreen mode at a time when widescreen TVs weren’t yet common. (Many shows were already taped that way for futureproofing sake — “Babylon 5″ and “Adventures of Lois & Clark” amongst them — but none aired those versions.) The big brouhaha at the time the series debuted was the brother/sister who were, uhm, getting it on in the pilot. I think they were only half-siblings, but let’s not think too much about it, OK?

Two: Syndicated show. Lasted one season. Starred Michael Easton, of VR.5 fame, and now a soap opera star. He played twin brothers. One was good, one was evil. In the wake of VR.5, I hopped on board to be the FAQ maintainer for the series, got a hold of the press materials for it and everything. The show tanked.

Spy Game: Short-lived 90s show (ABC, maybe?) that was, as I recall, half comedy and half drama. I didn’t realize until I looked it up that it was created or produced by Sam Raimi. Hunh. I have an ep or two sitting on VHS tape somewhere. I should dig that out.

Time Traxx: Still in the mid- to late-1990s, this was a series on the new UPN channel. Time travelling cop comes to the past to prevent a bad future. Something like that. I enjoyed it at the time. I get the feeling it wouldn’t hold up today for me.

Viper: I want both the original expensive NBC season, and the syndicated version that aired later, filmed much more cheaply in Vancouver. The original driver from the NBC show suddenly appeared on it after a season or two.

Bonkers: Nah, I’m kidding. I never want to see this one. I was just reminded of it while watching an Animaniacs episode on DVD the other day where they made two separate jokes about the series. “Bonkers” may have been the nadir of the Disney Afternoon animated line-up, that started off so strongly with Gummy Bears, DuckTales, TaleSpin, and Rescue Rangers. Bonkers was, as I recall, a talking cat on the police force. Or his owner was a cop? I don’t know. It was awful.

You Can’t Do That on Television: I don’t want the Alanis Morisette years. I don’t care. I want the original seasons that I watched as a kid. My daughter needs to see slime in a few years, right?

Any other obscure shows you’d like to see?

10 Things I Hate About You

A modern movie, so the transfer might be good.. Stars Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles. Stiles hasn’t really done anything since the last Bourne movie. And Ledger hasn’t done anything since he killed himself.

Battlestar Galactica: Season One

I bet this looks nice. This is the show everyone told you that you had to watch and were a culture illiterate for not watching — until the new Doctor Who captured their fancy, instead.

Cheaper by the Dozen 2

I think Steve Martin is a comedic genius. He also does movies like this.

Chuck: The Complete Second Season

Sounds like fun. I’ve seen one or two episodes of the show and liked them, but never formed an attachment.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

2009 movie in CGI animation? Sounds like a lock for a beautiful Blu Ray disc. Probably the best seller for the week, too.

The Apple Tablet (”iSlate,” “iTab,” “iPhoneBigScreen”) will be released in the first half of the year. It will cost too much for widespread acceptance, though many will want one. It will launch with media partners buying in. It will have magazine or newspaper subscriptions available at a relatively low cost. You might even get The New York Times free for a month or two with purchase, just to get you hooked.

By Christmas time 2010, the price will be cut by just enough to make it attractive to about 25% more of the audience that said they wanted one, but couldn’t afford one.

In January 2011, Apple will announce the next version of the tablet, correcting many of the problems people had with the first version, but that Apple couldn’t ship on time with the first one. The price will also be cut once more, and you’ll see much wider acceptance.

Yeah, it’s a lot like the iPhone’s history. Or even the iPod’s. George Santayana said it best, kids: Study history.

Here’s my far-out prediction for the Tablet: There will be some kind of integration between the Apple Tablet and the Apple TV. If a ten inch screen isn’t big enough for you, move those files to the Apple TV, use the tablet as a remote control, and enjoy it on your home theater.

If this happens, don’t be surprised if Apple announced a new Apple TV just before announcing the Tablet at the end of this month. Cable TV-like subscription packages would be cool, but I’d be happy with podcast subscriptions on my Apple TV directly, without needing to worry about hooking it up to a computer. (That’s just me being selfish, since I can’t get my TV and my computers to see each other right now.)

In the end, I think most of the far out predictions (gesture-based interface? voice-based interface?!?) will be proven wrong and silly, just as happened with the original iPhone. At this point, we’ve all speculated on it for so long that anything Apple releases is almost guaranteed to be a little ho hum. What could Apple really surprise us all with?

If the latest rumor of a $1000 price point comes true, then we know they’re positioning this more as a laptop replacement device than an e-reader/iTunes player. Check back in three weeks and we may have most of the answers.

Last year, I dared to come up with some New Year’s Resolutions. Now, a year later, I realize why I never bother lying to myself with such things. I had nine bullet points, and I don’t think I managed to hit more than one or two. Quick recap:

* Learn More Photoshop. Nope. I hid more in Lightroom. I did pick up Photoshop Elements on sale over the summer, and never used it much. Fail!

* Learn JavaScript. Nope. I think this was the third year that was on the list, and it’s still not done. I did do some very minor JavaScript programming at work, but it doesn’t count enough. I’m signed up for a class again this year, but we’ll see if that happens or not now.

* Program an iPhone app. Yeah, I knew going in last year that this was the loooong shot, and it’s also the one I made the least progress towards.

* Redesign this blog. Nope, didn’t happen. Had some ideas, but never took the time. Right now, I concentrate more on just keeping the blog going. I get the feeling that most of my readers come through an RSS feed, so what’s the point, anyway?

Even further, I had bought two URLs for a companion site to this one that I wanted to launch mini-blogs with. I just let those URLs lapse. Not bad ideas, but I’m not a full time blogger, so it’s not like I can justify the time and energy on it.

* Get paid for my photography. That had already happened by the time I posted the resolution, so I bumped it to “Get Paid Again.” Never happened.

* Launch two successful new blogs. AugieShoots.com worked. It may not get great hits, but I set out to do what I wanted to do: I posted a pic every day for the entire year. Mission: Accomplished. The other blog got caught up in development and never happened. Might be for the best. I don’t seriously have time for it, anyway.

* Don’t waste time on-line. I’ll give myself half credit on this one. I was off Twitter for a few months, which helped. And the rest of my on-line time seemed geared towards learning something or researching something for the column or blog.

* Double my on-line income. Nope. If I analyzed it carefully, I probably made more than in 2008, but doubled? Nope.

* Get more sleep. I laughed at this idea last year, and I will again now.

So I made it halfway through four of the resolutions, and finished none. I am a loser.

For now, I say “Bah Humbug” on 2010 Resolutions. Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow if I have a sudden brainstorm.

I won’t take the elevator from the first to the second floor, even if it’s sitting there waiting for me. I’ll walk around the corner and use the stairs. It’s actually quicker that way.

What does this say about me? Am I just more impatient than lazy? Discuss.

While I’m asking random questions that just one person reading this needs to have an answer for…

I’m looking at mounting my surround sound speakers to the ceiling, at last.  The speakers are small.  They’re less than two pounds apiece.  So weight isn’t an issue.

Wiring isn’t an issue, either, since this is happening in a drop ceiling.  So snaking wires above the ceiling is the easiest part of the job.

The problem IS the drop ceiling. All the gadgets to put speakers up on the ceilings of walls give you screws to drill it into place.  I can’t screw things into a drop ceiling.  Is there a special mount for this, to hang a lightweight speaker onto the drop ceiling?  Or do I need to mount them higher and drill holes in the ceiling tiles to hang the speaker? Or, do I just take a lot of string and tie the speaker up competely.

So — any ideas?

UPDATE: My solution is to just mount the speakers on the back wall, a few feet behind the couch.  I can increase the volume of those two speakers, in particular, to make up for the distance they’ll be. Hopefully, I’ll be doing this over the coming weekend. . .

I have the Harmony Remote 880. I wrote about it a couple of years ago when I first picked it up, funded by the Amazon Associates points you find folks helped me round up.  I’ve since added a new TV to the house, and it’s turned into a nightmare to try to program the thing around it.  So let me throw this out there, on the off chance that one of the dozen of you still reading this blog have had the same problem.

The issue is in setting up the remote to automatically choose an input from the back of the TV. When I play a DVD, for example, I need the TV to look for HDMI 3 for the signal. When using the cable box, I point to Component 1. On the other TV, this wasn’t a problem.  There were eight inputs in the back and you just hit the “Input” button to cycle through them until you got to the one you wanted.

With this new TV, I can’t do that.  The TV changes the order of the inputs around so that they are in the order last used.  So if I switch from HDMI 1 to Component 1, suddenly HDMI 1 is the second item on the list and HDMI 1 — the currently used port — is first.  So there’s no set list of inputs in a given order.

So how can I program my remote around that? I’m still searching through the Harmony forums, but it’s a bit difficult. It’s a very well-trafficked forum where each search brings up 500 results, most of which are talking about a variation on what I have.

Any ideas, remote programmers?

Back in the late 1970s, one town was preparing to dome itself over. Depending on your point of view, it was a great way to score some free money from HUD, or it was the Greenest and boldest plan of all time.

Either way: Only in Vermont. . .

One night in 1979 a group of its creative young city planners went to dinner and Mark Tigan, then the city’s 32-year-old director of community development and planning, decided that not enough attention was being paid to energy conservation. Then, in the way that only a few glasses of wine can facilitate brainstorming, someone said, half tongue-in-cheek, they should put a dome over the city.

The next morning it still seemed like a good idea — or, at least, not necessarily completely absurd.

Disgruntled Star Editor Takes Constructive Revenge

Earlier this week the Toronto Star announced, among other changes, that it was planning to outsource some one hundred in-house, union editing jobs.

What do you do when you, an editor, are laid off? Why, you edit the pink slip! This is hilarious, with a picture included.

• Man, Microsoft’s push on-line isn’t making them very much money, is it?

• Could be worse.  You could be a newspaper.

• What happens in an electric car pile-up? See for yourself.

• 10 recently discovered photos. Very historic.  Very cool. Includes Florence Nightengale as a young woman, Neil Armstrong’s face (while on the moon), Lincoln’s inaugurations, and more.

I gave up waiting for Twitter to answer their help desk tickets.  So I started new, using @AugieShoots as my handle, borrowing from my photography blog name.  I’ve been on there a few days now and am getting in to the swing of things again.  Here’s a sampling of recent Tweets:

• A short list of NFL players charged with murder, or related crimes:  http://bit.ly/26fPE0
• @JAFlanagan – Baby kicking is the coolest, especially since it’s not the man’s stomach baby is kicking. :)
• Now that I’m back on Twitter, I need to decide if I’ll be judicious about blocking the spammer types, or just let it go and not waste time. [So far, I'm being all laissez faire.]
• @mikesterling ALF was always the first topic of discussion in Art Class on Tuesday mornings. But then that was sixth grade or so. Heh
• Doc says my daughter is developing normally. Too bad I’m falling apart.
• I’m getting 1 photo approved on iStockPhoto.com for every 4 I upload, I think, now. At this rate, I’ll have a portfolio there in a decade.
• Went to a Fall Festival type thing today and didn’t get any good nature shots. You have to try really hard to throw an unphotogenic event.

Wow:

Music publishers: iTunes not paying fair share

Songwriters, composers, and music publishers are making preparations to one day collect performance fees from Apple and other e-tailers for not just traditional music downloads but for downloads of films and TV shows as well. Those downloads contain music after all.

These groups even want compensation for iTunes’ 30-second song samples.

You play a thirty second clip to see if it’s the song you want to buy, and the music industry feels it’s owed money. How’s THAT for entitlement?

(Via DaringFireball)

Man, I haven’t done one of these posts in an awfully long time.  Welcome back:

Avril Lavigne and Sum 41 Husband Split

Pop-punk rocker Avril Lavigne and Sum 41 husband Deryck Whibley are separating but on good terms.

Avril will next be seen on “American Idol” as a guest judge at one of the audition stops, and might consider putting out a record for a change someday, too. You never know. . .