The end of a good year

Actually, 2007 wasn't that great of a year. I'm glad to see it go. To wrap up, for your benefit, here are a few highlights of my 2007 blogging:

Look Around You
Judging books by their covers
Birds
The IT Crowd
Shipwrecks
Windows Vista and Nostradamus
Visiting SoVA
Last-minute travel
Valentine's Day - How to stay depressed and alone
Tutorial on writing Valentines
Luck with Kitchen Appliances
New Years' Resolutions
Famous Danes
Holidays and Palindromes
UFOs
The Fashion Conspiracy
More Music
More Denmark
Staying in mansions
A new car
Computer humor
Defcon 2007 Badge
L33t hax0r on Teen Jeopardy
Fish jokes
L33t street sign
Golden birthdays
Last but not least, my birds.

Happy New Year!!

Thumbs down.

I didn't say it--Radiohead did! Something about a New Year's Eve performance of In Rainbows?

Details: http://current.com/items/88799983_thumbs_down

Hmm. I wonder if it will be rebroadcast. I already have plans to see Carbon Leaf that night!

My sister is a bad influence.

I've been in Florida for one day, and Emily has already got me playing isketch. It's like Pictionary, except totally different, because Pictionary is called Pictionary and isketch is called isketch.

Jolly fun.

A different take on...

New take on:

- Chocolate: B.T. McElrath. Delicious!

- News and information: Current.com. User-controlled content, videos, music, etc. Users can even submit their own commercials! And they update you on what's hot online--latest Google Trends (#1 right now is "Elf on a Shelf"), viral videos, and other data to help you know how to live your life.

- Charging your ipod. I make no claims as to whether or not you really can charge an ipod using a USB cable, an onion, and Gatorade. But this YouTube commentary (edited slightly for grammar) is priceless:

Comment: So when you stick that plug in the onion, will it ruin the USB port cable?
Response #1: It will with out a doubt ruin the onion
Response #2: well duh
Response #3: well done captain obvious. Dont want to wreck an onion cause they are so expensive.
Response #4: especially with absorbed gatorade

Birds and basketball

Have I mentioned that I have birds? Yeah, I do. Their names are: Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. Aw, I'm kidding. Any Dickens fans? Those are the names of Miss Flite's birds in Bleak House. If you're illiterate, you can watch this version. It's really, really good.

Anyway, one of my parakeets has recently trained himself to play basketball. I put some large wooden beads on the bottom of the cage... he picks them up, and throws them out of the cage. With gusto. Or anger. I can't tell which.

It's so exciting, I made a video just for you! Aw, c'mon, it's only 30 seconds.

mooseekah

Ah, music. That little light in our lives. Did you know that American Idol runner up Blake Lewis' CD came out today? After work I stopped and bought it. Yeah, I know, buying a physical CD... that's so 90s of me. But not many "buy music" apps or sites are supported under Linux. My sad life.

Anyway, a few thoughts re: this new masterpiece. Hmm... maybe "masterpiece" is the wrong word. On the plus side, when I listened to it I definitely didn't think, "oh, those mean producers; I can't believe they made him sing those songs." There are even a couple of songs that I could see myself listening to more than once.

BUT... there are quite a few songs that sound a bit too "boy band" for my taste. And there are a couple that I can only describe as a beat boxing Savage Garden. Listen to the CD. You'll know right away which ones I'm talking about.

Ah, well, my Radiohead CD is on the way now, too. In Rainbows is splendid! I'm always amazed by how every Radiohead album is new, innovative, and distinct from the other albums... but at the same time, they're distinctively Radiohead. Ahh, Radiohead. And OK Computer. My favorite CD of all time.

What more can I say?

All that controversy

This evening I saw the new movie The Golden Compass. As I was watching TV a few days ago I saw something about pre-release screenings in my area. Sure enough, one of the screenings was at the movie theater only a few miles from where I live. After all the brewing controversy over the books (which I haven't read), I was very curious. Plus, my brother-in-law worked on the movie.

Overall, I enjoyed it... it was much darker than I had expected, and had some surprisingly frightening parts. As for the controversy bit, as far as I could tell, the author seemed to be arguing against the 17th Century Roman Catholic church. Yaay, Galileo!

Hmm... I don't want to give anything away, since the movie doesn't officially come out until next week. But I will say that it ends with a major cliffhanger. I kept thinking, "It's gotta be ending soon, but there seems to be a lot of plot left. How will they wrap it up?" And then it ended... "Oh, that's how. A sequel."

After the movie I waited around to see my brother-in-law's name in the credits. The "Rhythm & Hues" section started, and then the picture cut out... The sound was still working, but you couldn't see any more of the credits. Nice. Sorry, Rob, I still don't know if you REALLY worked on the movie... :)

Anyway, in closing, the movie is definitely not one for young kids. The plot is creative and innovative, and visually, the movie is great. It's just a tad scary for wee lads and lassies. For grownups, though, I'd definitely recommend it.

I hope we understand one another

I don't really have anything to say at this immediate moment, but I noticed that my November blog posting count was fairly low. So I'm going to flashback, and talk about my first ever blog -- on Look Around You. OK, no I'm not. I'm just going to link to that article, and display the video for Little Mouse.



Ah, yes. That's why I love it. You rock, Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper. You rock. I'm still depressed that the screening of the Peter Serafinowicz Show (that is, the one I had tickets to see while I was in London) was canceled... Alas. Maybe someday it'll show up on BBC America...?

Little Mouse Lyrics.