Having a cop as a best friend means that you often get to hear the wonderful stories about how folks act like idiots when they get pulled over. He’s often told me of the things that I should do if I ever get pulled over (besides handing them the PBA card). The site he references has a full article that’s worth reading as well, as he’s only giving you one portion of it.

Secret Road Tactics for American Drivers

How to react in case you do get pulled over for speeding:

(a) 90% of the cops out there are NOT assholes.
(b) 90% of the cops out there are NOT assholes.

[.. snip ..]

Current Mood:  amused

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Joi Ito has this to say about his personal style of blogging. Make sure that you understand this is written from the standpoint of “you” referring back to himself. He’s calling himself stupid and telling himself to take a point of view. Don’t misread this and think he’s calling the reader stupid. In any case, it’s well summarized and something worth considering as we write our own blogs.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about while not blogging is… blogging. A number of people have asked me to help new bloggers by giving them advice. In retrospect, I was giving people very specific advice based on my personal style. I thought I’d share some of the tips.

1 - You’re probably stupid - Well, maybe not stupid, but at least ignorant. Often you are the last one to figure out that you’re not as smart as you think. Assume that someone will think you’re stupid and will kindly point this out in the comments. Preempt that by assuming you’re stupid and uninformed. In other words, be humble and don’t try to write something conclusively smart-sounding. Start a discussion where someone smarter than you can step in easily.

2 - You need help thinking - Focus on the parts that you can’t figure out. Ask people to help you think. Most of the people who comment on my blog are helping me think. In other words, don’t say, "Blah blah blah. I’m an authority. Now talk amongst yourselves while I go pat myself on the back." Say, "Gee, I’m not that smart, but here’s something interesting I’m noodling on. I’ve gotten this far on these pieces. Help me out here… someone?"

[..snip..]

Current Mood:  pleased

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Ode to Edmund Patterson (SCA). So this weekend I heard a really dsiturbing story. This comic summarizes it very nicely. Since it’s likely to get cut off by my blog width, you can follow this link to go directly to the PVP website and see the whole comic, as well as the subsequent ones.

By the way, did you notice I spelled disturbing incorrectly in the first sentence? I did it on purpose, because *that’s* how disturbing the story was, and I wanted to emphasize it.

We had a great time this weekend, even hearing stories about Edmund’s junk. Once again we showed new people Jungle Speed and they played for a long time. Then we broke out the second “gotta-have” game, Time’s Up. These two games should be added to your personal gaming library for you and all your friends. The links above to take you to Time Well Spent, a very nice online gaming store that Steve likes to recommend people to. As always though, we encourage you to visit your FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) *first*. We need to support the local game stores if we want them to stay in business. However, not everyone has a FLGS near them, and if they don’t carry these games, then you have an alternate location to purchase you copy from. Notice that there are Expansion #1 and Expansion #2 available as well.

I can image already the number of stories that we’re going to be telling concerning those Time’s Up games. We played for *hours* and laughed until our sides hurt. Ya know what? We’d have done that even if we weren’t drinking.

Here’s to Walt Chamberlain (inside joke)…

Current Mood:  groggy

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Vividas uses a interesting technology which delivers full screen previews rather than the Quicktime or  Windows Media previews that we’re used to seeing for movies. The problem is that it suffers from a lack of quality because it is running full screen. They have to balance the size of the download against that quality, and in this case the quality suffers. I’d rather watch an in-browser Quicktime preview at a higher quality with a smaller screen. If I really wanted the full-screen experience, I’d just save the clip and full-screen the player. Someday it will get there, just not yet.

However, while I might be bashing my expected quality, I certainly can’t bash their content. They’ve got a preview of the first 9 minutes of Serenity (via TheMovieBlog.com). I’ve seen the movie, but I figured the first 9 minutes could keep me happy until I saw it again. Maybe it can be used to tease those of you who haven’t gotten to the theater yet, and won’t this weekend either.

Current Mood:  anxious

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When I started blogging, it was just a way for me to get a few thoughts down as they crossed my mind and a way to stay in touch with some friends while my life was overrun by babies. It was really intended to be a journal that others could read. To that end, I enabled the LJ links because the majority of those who I figured would be reading it were friends from the LJ community who specifically had me listed as a friend.

I don’t use Weblogs or Technorati or any other service to ping my posts when they get updated. I’ve thought about it, but in the end I realized that I wasn’t writing for others and I wasn’t really sure what the benefit was.

To that end, when I quote other sites, I haven’t been as dilligent about putting them into the pingback list. (Tech aside: this means they would be notified that I posted an item which referenced them as the original source). This takes a bit of extra time and manipulation, because I’d have to make sure that I went to each sites comment section, found the URL for the trackback and then added it to the list. For now, it was time I didn’t want to spend.

Wordpress, however, has the ability to auto-pingback. I’m not sure how accurate it is, but supposedly it can notify any site you link to in a news post that you reference them — in essence saving me a step. I enabled it, but haven’t thought more about it.

Imagine my surprise then, when I saw a comment in my post concerning Peter S. Beagle the other day from Connor Cochran, Peter’s business manager. This is my first real comment from outside my own friends community. Somehow this guy found out I made a post about the issue and took the time to come here and read about it. In fact, he mentions my wedding, so I *know* that this wasn’t just a spam bot. I can only guess that a trackback got linked back and he found it out be searching somehow. I dunno. I’m just amazed. That shows the true power of the blogosphere and how once you post something, it’s out of your control. Who knows who in turn linked back to me and vice versa. I’m glad he stopped by.

His comment mentions that the site on how to help Peter was going to be updated on October 6th. That’s today. So I’m going to mention it again.

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Every Thursday Nodwick gets updated. Every thursday Aaron has some links at the bottom that are usually “must follows”. By the way, his site is powered by LiveJournal, he just integrates it into the main site. So, you can just as easily follow his LJ Profile as a friend when you want to get updates.

So what’s worth visiting today? IMO 3 out of the 5

- A list of the "made-up words from ‘The Simpsons’. I must say I thought "craptacular" was a much older phrase…

Anything Simpsons is always good. I figured I’d rather group blog this links than to split them out individually, which means this doesn’t get a cromulent link.

Your goal is to try and use these words in conversation. I certainly have used craptacular

- Okay, this experimental brush from MIT is WAY cool. Paint with any surface texture on a video touchscreen!

He says WAY cool, I say its freakin’ awesome! That’s what I love about the boys (and girls) of MIT. They like to push the envelope. Lots of times their proof of concept ideas turn into much different products down the line. Just the idea of having a video canvas with ral life sampled brushes is something straight outta Sci-Fi.

- Some "remastered" Quicktime trailers for you: "The Shining", which is by far the best of the lot. Then there’s a new look at "West Side Story" and a much darker version of "Titanic." Amazing what editing can do, eh?

I actually didn’t follow these links initially until I heard Steve chortling in the other room. Once I watched them, I was chuckling too. It’s a great tribute to why sound design is so important in movies. When sound designers are nominated for Oscars, most people take the time to use the bathroom or refill their drinks. Yet, it’s the sound that helps drive the emotions of the movie. Whether subtle or in your face, you can totally change the feel of something by the sound. These clips also show that the isolation of certain visuals can change the theme as well, but I think the sound impact is more important here.

Current Mood:  okay

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Hey did you guys know that there was a Firefly Wiki? Might be helpful to those of you just getting into the series.

So I’m reading one of my webcomics, Real Life, this morning and guess what I run across..

Orson Scott Card reviews Serenity. Yeah - the dude who wrote Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, and a whole bunch of other books you should have read. (I’m still partial to “Pastwatch", myself.) Card is, in my estimation, one of the foremost authorities on Sci-Fi, and the things he has to say about Serenity are eye-opening. DAMN. Kind of made me sit here smiling the whole time. So, that’s sexy.

I liked the article. It’s nice to see an author’s take on a movie, as they’ll have a totally different approach on how to deconstruct it.

Current Mood:  pissed off

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"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." -Sir Winston Churchill

Funny Quote of the Day

Paula Poundstone
"The problem with cats is that they get the exact same look on their face whether they see a moth or an axe-murderer."

Motivational Quote of the Day

Horace Mann
"Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year." 

Anatole France
"It is by acts and not by ideas that people live." 

Quote of the Day

Robert Wilensky
"We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true."

Current Mood:  restless

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