| There are some good people out there. Some of them are at Pixar. |
[Jan. 3rd, 2009|03:04 pm] |
So, I haven't posted in forever.
Alex, like most kids with autism, tends to fixate on things. For the last few months, he has been fixated on the Pixar lamp. He watches the movies on Youtube. He loved the Pixar lamp. He drew it in Microsoft Paint. You knowm, Luxo Jr, the hyperactive young lamp.
And for Christmas, he wanted the Pixar lamp.
Well, you can see the snag here. To wit, the US economy has put very little resources into the production of lamps that actually dance and run around and play with balls.
So, I applied my google-fu skills and discovered that there WAS in fact a Pixar lamp toy.
Yay!
However, it was only sold at the Pixar store to Pixar employees. Not to the general public.
Boo!
That's when MT stepped in. She has a blog at www.bonbongazette.com and discusses a lot of Alex's autism issues, the gluten-free casein-free diet, and her stance on mandatory vaccinations. (Don't get her started, either.)
So she started a campaign to try and find someone who could help us get a Pixar lamp. Turns out there are still some decent people in the world. The first person was a fellow who worked for Pixar and had a child with Asperger's. Unfortunately he wasn't in California. Then another fellow stepped up and we discovered that the lamp was out of stock at the company store.
Oh, crap.
Well, apparently they brought it up to the attention of the executive team. And they found one. And they sent it to Alex along with a DVD of Pixar shorts. And in the meantime, someone ELSE at Pixar found the blog and offered to help get it.
MT's blog archive for December is chockablock full of the Story of the Lamp. She even made a video. It's here. I do want to say thank you publicly to everyone at Pixar who helped make it happen. It was definitely the high point of his Christmas; that was what he played with the most. (Oddly, he gathered his Wall-E robots and a stuffed EVE and gathered them around the Pixar lamp toy. It looks like some sort of religious ritual. "Although the robots knew that they had been manufactured by Buy and Large -- knew it deep within their ROM chips -- they could not shake the belief that there was another, greater creator." )
To everyone who helped make this happen, thank you. You made his day. |
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| On Location-Based Apps |
[Nov. 11th, 2008|10:03 pm] |
Lately I've been playing with location based stuff, stuff that tells you where other people are and where you are. I use samecell which works well but is only for blackberries. I liked that it could share proximity OR proximity and location, and that it didn't kill the battery. It also has a search function, a sort of yellow pages, which is nice. I'd like to see a version that let you pick Google Maps instead of the default BlackBerry Maps.
Tried Brightkite too. Brightkite is a microblogging site a la twitter, but with built in geolocation and picture posting. The website was able to guess my location quite accurately through Firefox. Very nice. If anybody could knock Twitter off its microblogging throne it's Brightkite. Oddly, they don't have a native Blackberry app yet which is baffling, and the BB Browser can't guess my location either. They've said one is in the works for a while. They do have one for the iPhone. Now sure, the iPhone is shiny and new but there are a lot of blackberry users out there (more than there are iPhoners) and in software like this, being first on the scene is a huge advantage. Brightkite has a lot of built in stuff (pictures, location) that Twitter doesn't, but Twitter was first. I hope they come out with something soon; I'd hate to see Brightkite settle in as a niche iPhone app.
Speaking of Twitter, Twibble is my bar none favorite Twitter client. It has geolocation and built-in posting pictures to twitpic. I can't get it to do what I want it to do though; I want a Google Maps link that I can see all my geocoded tweets with my smiling mug and where I was when I tweeted them. It seems to either overwrite past tweet locations or, as of late, insist that I am off the coast of Africa. Hmmm. It finds me just fine on the phone, but the API doesn't seem to get it right. Still, it gets good marks for having geolocation before anyone else ever even THOUGHT of it, and including twitpic integration.
I wonder if Twibble could be adapted for Brightkite. I think it would make an outstanding BK client. But that's not my call, it would be the decision of Dr. Horstmann at Spider Labs.
Loopt is very good but makes heavy demands on my battery. They have a lot of phones that work with their app. They also have Twitter integration and built-in journaling. Nicely done. Only a few things I'd like to see from Loopt. 1) Stop beating up on my battery, maybe by making the GPS polling time user-selectable. 2) The bouncy balls are a little silly and 3) please come out with a Symbian version.
I also tried Dimdix. Now maybe I'm making too much of a big deal about the name but I maintain that a social network should not want to be thought of as dim dicks. That aside, the UI was designed for mobile phones, not blackberries, and consists of software emulated softkeys. Dimdix wouldn't install on my work cell phone (sony ericsson Z310a.) The softkeys are fine for most mobile phones, but blackberry users are likely to be disappointed. Also, the 'back' button often ended up over the hang-up button -- and on a Blackberry, pressing that button while an app is running will either push the app to the background or kill it entirely! Still, Dimdix has its good points: it works with or without GPS, which is a factor for those whose phones aren't smartphones, and it's got Twitter integration. A little UI polish, maybe a blackberry version, and this app could go a long way.
Beyond411 didn't work with the GPS on my BB Curve, and from what it seems the developer has stopped work on it since about April of this year. I found Tellme filled the gap nicely. It's more graphic intensive and has more pretty UI elements, but also has built-in directions and calling right from the app, and it works with the GPS on my BB. Definitely one to try if Beyond411 doesn't work or you prefer some flashy stuff in lieu of Beyond411's focus on performance. |
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| Rock Up Your Blackberry with Free Apps |
[Oct. 11th, 2008|10:02 pm] |
So once I got the Blackberry, I discovered that there were many, many free apps for it that you could get. There's location software (GPS tracking), twitter clients, RSS feeds, and pretty much everything you can think of.
This review is the apps that I have found that work best. I have no connection with any of these apps other than as a user, and all of them are free. Your Humble Narrator doesn't like to pay for software.
So, in no particular order....
Viigo. An RSS reader, which formats well to the Blackberry. Comes with a lot of channels already pre-subscribed, and you can add your own RSS feeds. I have my wife's blog right next to USA Today. I found the already included newsfeeds to be overkill, but it does work out of the box.
Google Mobile App. Includes Google Maps (which lots of other things use anyway, Google Search, Gmail, and Google Sync to sync your Blackberry calendar to your Google Calendar, if you use it. Google Maps is generally better liked than the Blackberry Maps software, and it does include route-by-route directions, so those whose plan does not include GPS routing will find it does everything but talk to you. The Gmail client is nice and convenient to use, and the dedicated search is easier to use than firing up a browser and going to google because you don't have to fire up a browser.
Twibble. Twitter and Blackberries go together; the better keyboards (full or the SureType keyboard on the Pearl) make Twitter a much better experience than trying to type out a post on a regular phone keypad. Twibble is by far and away the most feature-rich Twitter client out there. Its main features, in addition to the regular Twitter we all know and love, are location awareness (uses the GPS to make it possible to geocode your location) and integration for Twitpic (allowing you to post pictures via Twitter.) Twibble does come with a somewhat higher learning curve than something like Twitterberry, and it seems to take longer to get a GPS lock than other apps, but the end result is worth the effort. Twibble will also run in the background if you want, fetching new tweets automatically, making Twitter into a sort of SMS-like device. It will ask constantly if you want to let it access api.twibble.de, but it's still in development and hopefully the author can address these small annoyances, since he's done a great job of including some really cool features.
Twitterberry. Why am I including a second Twitter client? Because not everyone is going to want all the bells and whistles. If you want a straight Twitter client with nothing else, Twitterberry is your client. Also useful as a baseline to see how your twitters look to the rest of the world.
Auto Lock This is a feature that is sorely necessary for the Blackberry, especially for style-less geeks like myself who carry their BB in a holster or case. Auto Lock will automatically lock your Blackberry when you set it (10 seconds after the backlights go out, upon holstering, whatever). This is something RIM should have built into it at the factory, in my opinion, but Auto Lock is an elegant and problem-free solution. No more getting out of the car to discover your seat belt and blackberry have colluded to call someone they believe to have the phone number *#**12. Thank you geekandproud.net for providing such an elegantly simple solution.
Instamapper. Location-based social networking (i.e, letting your friends know your location and knowing theirs) is apparently the latest and greatest big thing to hit mobile phones. From services like Loopt to the unfortunately named Dimdix, there are different ways to do it. Loopt is good but makes it exceptionally difficult to find friends (but that's understandable); they also had some privacy issues apparently spamming everyone in your address book. If you just want to keep track of yourself or share your location and nothing else, Instamapper is free and has a very small client to install.
Vlingo. Voice command your Blackberry; much better than the voice dialing app it comes with. You can even send text messages via voice. You can open the standard Blackberry apps (but not ones you install yourself, regrettably.) While it gets confused sometimes like all voice apps do, Vlingo is a great app to have if you are in the car a lot or just prefer to voice-command your BB. |
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| Antenna and fic |
[Apr. 11th, 2008|08:43 pm] |
About a year and a half ago, the antenna broke on the Honda. It got konged by a lowering gate. So I'd gotten a replacement off ebay. Thing was, the old antenna had broken down so low that I couldn't get it out of the motor unit. Wouldn't come up, and there wasn't enough surface area to grab onto it with pliers and get it out. And the motor assembly has four screws, two of which had rusted shut, so I couldn't disassemble it.
So for a while I just drove it; I could still get my satellite radio and my Transpod (which plays my ipod through the radio.) But it always bugged me.
A week ago I was poking around online and found an entire replacement assembly -- motor, mast, the whole nine yards -- for fifty bucks. Aftermarket rather than OEM, but who cares? So I ordered it and it got here today. Took about half an hour to get it in just right (there's not a lot of tolerance and the aftermarket unit took some jiggling. But it's in, and it works. I like it; the car looks better. And I'll just turn off my radio before going through that gate.
ALso had something I haven't had for a while; the stirrings of Lecter fic. It would basically fit a revamped version of the granddaughter fic into the Lecter universe. (A separate one from any of the other ones I've done; this would be fun, and would feature Starling trying to set things right while the GD amuses himself by working at cross purposes to her.)
I dunno. I have so many unfinished stories, but it takes a lot to get them running again -- I just feel like the urge isn't there. My Voyager fics have stalled, although I have another idea for a Voyager fic. And with Lecter fic, I found myself thinking 'Daddy's Girl' and 'Alternate Strings' were the best things I'd ever done, and didn't know if I could get there again.
Does the idea of Clarice rushing around desperately trying to track down a young woman estranged from her family (and to add to the fun, a life is at stake) while the GD plans to create a symphony of destroyed faith sound like something you'd want to read? |
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| Isabelle's birthday party |
[Feb. 11th, 2008|05:57 pm] |
was this weekend. Since her actual birthday took place over Super Bowl Sunday, we rescheduled it. Not that I cared. I am probably one of the maybe six straight men in the world who doesn't give a crap about watching sports. That's probably because I just never got into it as a kid, and then my mom dated a guy for 10 years who was a sports nut. Specifically the Mets. If the Mets lost a game, he would be impossible to live with for a few days. But I know that I am odd in this respect, so we rescheduled Isabelle's birthday party so as not to conflict with the Super Bowl, which proved to be good because the Giants won, which as you can imagine was cause for much rejoicing across the land. (This IS Jersey.)
She had a good time, of course. We had it at Baby Power. This is a baby gym. Basically it's got padded play equipment all over the place, the walls are painted retina-scarring bright colors, and it comes equipped with two (2) perky young girls who do the party activities. (Me, I think these girls get force-fed Prozac every ten minutes like I think they do with the Disney princesses. No one can be this perky naturally.)
( Kid pics! On to the kid pics! ) |
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| fun at home |
[Feb. 8th, 2008|08:43 pm] |
So we got Alex a new bed. A nice one. A bunk bed with a built in desk on one side, and a dresser and shelf on the other. And the lower bed isn't attached to the frame, so when Isabelle is big enough for a big-girl bed (she currently occupies a pink little Dora the Explorer bed with a crib mattress) we can put it in her room, buy a mattress, and voila.
We bought it online. Now that meant we had to carry it in -- they just do curbside delivery. That wasn't so bad as I might have thought -- it came in five pieces. Each of them was heavy, but not so heavy it was impossible. It was also self-assembly. No big deal there, right? As a daddy I have put together many things, and I have put together furniture in the past.
Except...they forgot to include the instructions and the bolts and screws.
Instructions were online. However, the technology to transfer screws and bolts over the Internet isn't working yet. The company is sending it, but it means Alex's room looks like a lumberyard exploded.
Even so we could deal with that.
Then one of Alex's hermit crabs died.
We got Alex hermit crabs for his birthday in December. Well, actually MT did, because I really don't want anything to do with the damned ugly mollusks. They're not exactly exciting pets; occasionally they go and eat but most of the time it looks about like you put a tank in your kid's room and filled it with shells. But they made him happy.
Well, apparently one of them got stuck molting, or maybe was horrified by the results of Super Tuesday, because it up and died. MT noticed a smell, tried to see if it was in its shell, and its leg fell off when she picked up the shell. I don't think she's making that up, because that's the sort of thing I might make up, but my wife finds much less entertainment value in severed limbs than I do, particularly rotted off severed limbs.)
She got him another one. (Another crab, not just the leg. Pet stores insist on selling the entire crab.) Alex cried when she told him. While I wasn't exactly heartbroken over the death of a hermit crab, I did feel bad about my son crying, so I didn't make any reference to Monty Python's Whizzo Butter sketch (Nine out of ten British housewives can't tell the difference between Whizzo butter and a dead crab, don't you know.) The one she got was lively enough to pinch her before she put it in the tank before I got home. So she showed it to me. Well, then she took it out and wanted me to pet it, which I refused to do (see: don't want anything to do with the damned ugly mollusks). Then it pinched her AGAIN. Methinks Mr. Hermit Crab isn't going to get paroled again anytime soon.
Isabelle turned three last weekend. Her party is tomorrow. Last week she just had cake at my mom's and got her presents. She's undergoing potty training now. A few accidents, but she'll get there. Now she's upstairs with MT baking her cake. |
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| AAAGH! |
[Feb. 4th, 2008|09:30 pm] |
Sometimes I think James Lileks and I have an abusive relationship.
Oh, he doesn't know me from Adam. He has a website that I read. I listen to his podcasts. (Even though he isn't using iTunes anymore, which means his podcasts are buried amongst my iPod's collection of 80's schlock instead of separated out with the other podcasts.) I like his sense of humor. MT got me his book 'Mommy Knows Worst' for Christmas. (Bad parenting advice from the Golden Years. As it turns out, according to this book, I should put Isabelle in a box hanging from the window and spank Alex with a hairbrush for refusing to take laxatives on command.
But then...he does things like this to me.
The Sears catalog. From 1973.
Dear God. The colors. The..."fashions". The plaid. All the nightmarish memories of my childhood...on the web.
Please, James? Not any more. I'll be good. I promise. |
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| Two milestones in 24 hours |
[Jan. 19th, 2008|06:29 pm] |
Two milestones in the past 24 hours.
The first, is that the Suburban, aka 'beeg twuck', is sold. Out of the picture. Sold last night and taken out of my driveway this afternoon.
The twuck had some battle damage over the years -- I'd had a minor fender-bender in it that bent up the bumper and grille. There was a leaky power steering tube. The ventilator controls were stuck on the 'blow on your feet and thus melt them inside your shoes' position. The one rear door didn't open. The passenger side mirror had a habit of bobbling. It needed new tires. Small things all, probably a couple hundred to take care of, but all together, more money than I wanted to spend. The Burban is on its second engine; I personally have my doubts it'll go much further.
I hadn't driven it since 2006, when gas showed no signs of coming back down, and I got the Honda. So it sat for a while -- until the insurance company started yammering about it not being registered (yes, I'd let that lapse.) So Friday morning I turned in the plates.
Fortunately, an old friend of mine is in the car biz and is good at getting a quick sale. I'd thought I might get a grand for it. He told me it was worth more, and set the price at $1800 and posted it on a few truck boards he goes on and on craiglist.
Some fellow -- Hispanic, blue-collar type, but he spoke perfect English -- showed up with his dad. His dad loved Suburbans. He wanted one 'sooner than later' he said, and he had cash in hand. He had a landscaping business, and it's possible one of his trucks died (thus explaining the sooner than later bit). Didn't even dicker; after driving it around the block (he wanted to check the tranny) he offered me eighteen pictures of Benjamin Franklin and I handed him the signed title.
He came and got it. It's weird to look out and not see it. Part of me does miss the truck; Alex loved it when he was younger, and it was just FUN to drive such a big truck. It actually wasn't as bad on gas as you'd have thought for a 350 V-8 -- it got about fourteen or fifteen miles to the gallon. I could get 40 gallons of gas and I'd usually fill up when the trip odometer broke 500 miles, but I had gone as much as 600, which would be 15 mpg. (The gas gauge was a little wonky. For the first hundred miles after a fill-up it would stay on dead full. Then once it got to 1/4 of a tank -- which should've been ten gallons -- it would drop to fumes in nothing flat.)
But it was time. I'd rather have it out of my hair. His baby now, and his problems.
The other milestone is that Isabelle got her first haircut.
Now Alex did not always take to haircuts well. Some of Alex's haircuts make for rather nightmarish memories. Isabelle had asked a few times but chickened out at the last minute. We hadn't had her hair cut yet for a few reasons.
1) Since she is a girl we were growing her hair long. This is New Jersey, yanno.
2) Her hair is curly like mine, and 'long' becomes relative. When she takes a shower it will hang down to her shoulders. Then it dries, and sproiiiing, it's back up above her shoulders again.
3) She was bald as an egg until she was about two and didn't have enough to cut.
Actually, she was pretty jazzed about getting her haircut and wouldn't shut up about it until we got there. We were early. So we went to McDonalds down the street, which the kids usually love. Oh, she ate fine, but she expressed (repeatedly) the sentiment that she wished to have her grooming ritual performed first.
Oh heck. ( Kid pics! It's all about the kid pics! ) |
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| The Time Machine |
[Jan. 11th, 2008|09:21 pm] |
I found a site that offers free audiobooks in podcast format, for my ipod. Since I spend a lot of time in the car, it helps pass the time. (I also have a Sirius satellite radio for the same reason -- but sometimes I would rather play an audiobook.)
The website is at http://www.botar.us/archives.html
Period deliberately left out there, not forgotten. ;)
I've listened twice now to H. G. Well's 'The Time Machine' all the way through. It's really an interesting tale, although there's plenty that H. G. Wells missed. The Morlocks are the result of the worker class; the Eloi are the capitalists. Except it hasn't really worked out that way. From slightly over a century later, it's more likely the Morlocks would be technically skilled; they had to keep air running into their caverns. And it's not like there aren't proto-Eloi among the users I support!
Next, I've downloaded Dracula, Frankenstein, and A Christmas Carol. Should keep me busy for a bit. |
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| Ripped from Screamie |
[Jan. 11th, 2008|08:52 pm] |
Or Smokehater, or lorraineb, or screaminglamb, or whatever she's calling herself this week.
b>66% John McCain
63% Rudy Giuliani
63% Mitt Romney
60% Chris Dodd
60% Hillary Clinton
59% Mike Huckabee
58% Bill Richardson
58% John Edwards
57% Barack Obama
57% Fred Thompson
50% Tom Tancredo
49% Joe Biden
42% Mike Gravel
39% Ron Paul
36% Dennis Kucinich
</b>
2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz
Hmmm. I'll have to look further at McCain. I liked Giuliani -- the man cleaned up New York! That took work. But he's got too much baggage to be the nominee. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 4th, 2008|10:26 pm] |
Christmas was good. The kids got...well, heck, everything under the sun. Dad went overboard as he usually does. Alex got a thing called an Eyeclops. This is a camera which attaches to your TV set and magnifies things up to 200X -- like a microscope on your TV. We put a penny on it and you can see Lincoln's ear. I tried it on my goatee and discovered that the hairs of my goatee look like very thick, spidery logs at 200X.
Isabelle got a throne. A Disney Princess talking throne. You record your name, then press the button on the included scepter. It says "Princess (your name), if only all princesses were as pretty as you." No, she's not going to develop ego issues.
She also got a Puppy Grows and Knows Your Name. This is...disturbing. Puppy Grows and Knows Your Name is a puppy that well, grows and knows your name. It has 3,000 names in its database. You plug it into your computer via USB. You run the disk, program the puppy with its name and your name. And once every 24 hours you pet it and it grows. You can hear the little servos whining.
It's fearsome. I'm convinced it's convincing her to kill us.
More work rants to come later. |
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| Out of the mouths of babes... |
[Dec. 7th, 2007|12:26 pm] |
Isabelle is very talkative these days, and is getting into opposites.
She explained it to me, unbidden. "Daddy, I'm little. And you're big."
This is, by and large, true. I was curious to see how other family members rated.
"How about Alex?"
"Alex is big!"
"What about Mommy?"
She paused for a moment. "Mommy is SHORT."
I swear I didn't teach her that.
But it's funny. |
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| Disney trip! |
[Oct. 12th, 2007|07:10 pm] |
When MaryTara and I got married, we had our honeymoon at Walt Disney World. It was 1997. There was a Democratic President and a Republican Congress. Cell phones were mostly analog and digital phones were just coming out. Microsoft was coming out with a new operating system called Windows 98. At that time, we had two cats. One was named Stimpy and the other was named Nala. Although Nala was a year older than Stimpy, he was her uncle. They were barn cats we adopted. A few weeks after returning, we adopted a half rottweiler/half lab mix we named Josie.
We went back, after ten years. Our ten-year anniversary was on September 27th. We went Oct 2-9 and returned on the 10th.
It was great. Disney is better than any other resort at 'enveloping'. We went to the Magic Kingdom the most, since our kids are little. We did Epcot and the Animal Kingdom, which was being built when we were there previously. It was a blast. It rained a lot, but it was okay -- sporadic bursts, and we didn't let it get in the way. MGM wasn't a good match -- it's mostly shows, and Alex gets upset about applause.
Alex did very well there. He didn't have any real meltdowns, and he seemed to enjoy himself. Since he was autistic we got a handicapped pass and got to skip a lot of lines. (The reason for that is that asking an autistic child to wait forty-five minutes in line is just ASKING for trouble, and Disney is sensitive to those needs.)
Isabelle about wet herself. She is old enough to differentiate between the Disney Princesses. Her pronunciation needs a little work; apparently two of the princesses are 'Sleepin' Booty' and 'Pimpess Belle'. (MT calls her 'princess' a lot, but apparently she is 'Belle' and the girl from Beauty and the Beast is 'Pimpess Belle'.
( And now, the avalanche of kid pics! )
It was great, and the kids had a blast. The plane trip back was hellish. It was raining in Newark and apparently they got pansyish about letting people land. So we landed in Baltimore to get jet fuel. And sat on the tarmac there for two hours. What should've been a two-hour plane trip took seven hours.
But we'll still go back. |
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| Autism Walk 2007 |
[Sep. 30th, 2007|11:10 pm] |
Today was the Autism Walk for 2007. We marched in it. Well, walked. Our team was called 'Alex's Army'.
Alex's Army was a group of family and friends who marched for Alex. It was heartwarming just how many people came out. We had T-shirts printed up at customink.com. MT arranged it. Alex had a bit of a temper tantrum because there were so many people but got over it.
Thirty seconds after Alex got calmed down, Darth Vader and an Imperial Stormtrooper came around. I shit you not. Someone decided it would be a good idea to walk around Point Pleasant on a warm September Sunday in a Darth Vader suit.
Isabelle screamed, planted her face against my leg, and said "CARRY ME! CARRY ME!"
So I did.
For an hour.
Alex's Army raised about $1700 for Autism Speaks, which was great. And other teams marched for the autistic children in their lives. There were a lot of people there -- a couple thousand at least.
But mostly I want to thank those who marched for Alex. It meant so much that people came for Alex, wore his shirt, identified themselves as a proud member of Alex's Army.
There is one remaining Alex's Army T-shirt. Size XL. Want it? I'll tell you what. Comment on this LJ with a bid. Biggest bid gets it. The money goes to Autism Speaks.
( Now the pics! Kid pics! Some of whom are not even my kids! ) |
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| Gluten free |
[Sep. 29th, 2007|02:49 pm] |
So we've decided to try Alex on the gluten-free casein-free diet and see if it does any good.
Some explanation here. You're never alone. In fact you have millions of friends. Millions of microbes are living right with you, in your intestines. Pleasant though, eh? A lot of austistic kids have irregular gut fauna -- they have bad microbes living in their intestines. So, the theory goes, cut out gluten and casein (a substance found in dairy products) and cut off the supply of bad microbes, then try and get a probiotic into him to kill off the ones who are already there.
Fortunately, there is gluten-free chicken nuggets, so at least Alex won't starve. He lives off the things. It's one of his favorites.
We're going to officially start the Battle to Stamp Out Gluten after we come back from vacation. But we started a few things to see how they went. Gluten-free spaghetti worked well. Alex wolfed it down like he hadn't eaten in a month and had seconds. There is also rice milk. Buying rice milk makes one feel like a hippy. I ought to get John Lennon glasses and a little peace medallion.
(Some background. I've always been somewhere between conservative and libertarian. I do not want a vast welfare state, I do not think diplomacy or respecting other cultures is the cure-all to the world's problems, I think that if we have to resort to the use of military force we ought to knock the crap out of our enemies and then the sob sisters can weep about it once the danger is removed, and I have no problem whatsoever with the death penalty. Also I think that if some tree has a compound that can be made into medicine for cancer patients, let's start chopping. I think that if I ever end up brain dead and vegetative for the rest of my life, then by all means, pilfer my body of organs and pull the plug. Or pilfer my body of usable organs and let my wife, son and daughter chop me up with chainsaws -- they deserve a chance to get their frustrations out. Or feed me to the wolves at the zoo. Any of those would be fine, because I would rather not live that sort of life.)
Oddly though rice milk is cheaper than regular milk. The other good thing about it is that I can drink it. About ten years ago I began developing lactose intolerance. Nothing serious, but, ah, well, gaseous emissions arise when I drink milk. For about twenty four hours or so. So I can have cereal in the morning with my kids again now.
So my wife got Alex All Natural Gluten Free Peanut Butter Panda Puffs. These actually taste good. It's the box that irritates me. On the back is a maze. You are supposed to 'help the Panda find the Wildlife Trust'. Um, okay. And he is going to do what, exactly, when he finds it? Get shoved in a crate and transported to a reserve? Appear in a Discovery Channel documentary? Forced to appear as a spokesanimal for a cereal company?
The rest of the box has similar ecopropaganda. Now look, they're entitled to their opinions, but does my autistic kid really need to be indoctrinated politically?
I'll find some way to subvert them though. Maybe I'll go out and find some poor people to oppress. Just to keep things balanced.
The real fun will come when we come back and switch Alex off gluten entirely. They say that for a while the kids turn into monsters. Then they get better. If it helps, all the better. |
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| A great app for Java-enabled phones |
[Sep. 17th, 2007|11:51 pm] |
I have a Java-enabled phone. (It's one of the good things about Sprint PCS -- they have Java-enabled phones.) So what does that mean? It means you can get a whole lot of free programs for your phone. You don't have to pay anything for them.
So I found Morange out there.
Morange is one app that does it all. It does email. It does chat (AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Chat, MSN feeds, Google Talk, and a few others). It does RSS feeds. It has its own friend-search function. You can access files on your PC from your phone. I don't know how they managed to get this into 400K of space, but they did. It makes any Java-enabled phone into a competitor for the ever-popular CrackBerry. And even CrackBerries can benefit from Morange -- you get free chat and RSS feeds.
Getting my email from my phone is great -- I'm always on the road, and this way I can check my email from my phone. No computer necessary. That's handy in and of itself.
Now for chat, it gets better. With a lot of cell companies, you'd have to pay individually to get Yahoo, AOL, or MSN. Usually like six bucks a month for each, so $18 total. Through Morange, it's free. You pay for data, but I have unlimited data from the phone on my plan. It's free, and it covers several IM protocols, including the most popular ones.
You can set everything up on the phone. You can also log into the website and set up RSS feeds, email, and chat from there. The phone updates the next time you log in. I find it's easier to set it up on the website.
The best part -- it's free. There is a VIP plan, but you can always go with the free version. Even so, the VIP plan is only $29 a year -- hardly breaking the bank.
There are two apps I recommend to anyone who wants to try using their phone as a smartphone. One is Opera Mini. The other is this one. For everything in one package, Morange can't be beat. |
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| Halloween |
[Sep. 14th, 2007|10:22 pm] |
So I'm a horror movie fan. MT doesn't like horror movies. One of MT's friends doesn't like horror movies. Her husband does. He doesn't have anyone to go with. See the solution here?
Yep, he and I went to check out Rob Zombie's take on Halloween.
Now the original Halloween was...an icon. It was a very low budget film for its time, and it was the original slasher movie. We didn't know a lot about Michael Myers. We knew that he snapped when he was six years old, killed his older sister, and was put into a loony bin. He escapes said loony bin fifteen or so years later, steals a mask, heads back to his hometown, and promptly begins depopulating the local teenager population.
John Carpenter is a good filmmaker, and Halloween was epic. The sequels got to be rather sucky, but the original scared the hell out of you.
So the remake couldn't be as good. And it wasn't. Rob Zombie spends about half an hour showing us the life of young Michael Myers. Instead of being from a well-to-do household, now he's a white-trash metalhead with long hair. His mom is a stripper and his stepdad (or mom's boyfriend) is mean to him. And no one will take him trick-or-treating. Oh, and he kills animals and then kills a bully. On Halloween, he snaps and kills a lot of people. Then he gets packed off to the loony bin just like in the original, except they show us that his mom still loves him and visits him (until she shoots herself, that is.)
This stuff is all interesting, and it might have made a good movie by itself. But then Zombie remembers that he is supposed to be remaking Halloween. Michael Myers in this movie is huge, the guy they have playing him is six foot eight. And he likes masks. So he kills an assload of asylum personnel and off he goes.
Back in the 80's, it was a golden age for slasher flicks. If you were a young actress who wanted to get a part in a horror movie, there was one big thing you could do to improve your chances of getting a role. Namely, display your breasts for the camera. Ta-tas were just bouncing all over the camera back then. I remember.
Rob Zombie must be in my age group and must have the same memories of chestal-unit-laden horror movies. Cuz in his Halloween we see a lot of 'em. Except they're smeared liberally with blood, which is a little disturbing. (Oddly, the jahoobies are never actually stabbed or wounded or anything, just covered with blood.)
He also violates a few horror movie rules. Laurie's adoptive parents, although they haven't done anything wrong, get dispatched with all due speed. Usually adults in horror movies have to be jerks in order to get whacked. Also, if you are a teenager in a horror movie and you have sex, your lifespan is normally measured in seconds. (See previous paragraph.) Annie, Laurie's friend, gets to break this rule. She survives. It's true that she's found topless and badly injured (by her dad, no less ...ick...) but she doesn't die. (I guess it's like the horror movie equivalent of a plea bargain -- humiliation and injury, but they take death off the table.)
All in all...it was...well, okay. It couldn't ever hope to measure up to the original. Myers is made a little more human here, but too many scenes are shot like a pro wrestler in a Halloween mask. But it won't really scare you. Hearing the Halloween theme music is nice again, but there aren't any real moments of fear or suspense. Myers hacks his way through the teenage population of Haddonfield.
I found myself wondering something: don't any of these kids have a cell phone? God knows I see teenagers all the time, and nowadays you can buy the phones at Wal Mart. Kids, if you are ever pursued by a psycho killer, you have an advantage we didn't have growing up: call 911, let the GPS find you, and the cops will come right to you. So you only have to hide from the killer for so long.
Oh, yes, and if you ever get an opportunity to shoot the killer, do so. Then empty several more rounds into him. Preferably in the head. Just on general principles, you know. Then go and get some gasoline or something and light him on fire. If there is a wood chipper handy put him in that. Killers have a bad habit of coming back from the dead, you know, and it's much harder when he's been shot, burnt, and then shredded.
Things to look out for: horror movie alums. Dr. Loomis is played by Malcom McDowell (Alex from a Clockwork Orange.) Sheriff is played by Brad Dourif (Chucky from Childs Play.) |
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