June 2008
46 posts
What huh? →
Why does CostCo sell this? And WTF is it?
Even for this blog...
… that other post was lame. I just wanted to use the “post a chat” feature in Tumblr.
Only One Red Ballon Goes By →
I think in elementary school we watched The Red Ballon at least once a year. For some reason I have very angsty feelings dredge up — I think I found it creepy or sad somehow. I haven’t seen it as an adult and I’m worried about regressing in an embarrassing way if I do.
Technical Difficulties
Russ: every time i click on an mp3 link
quicktime tries to play it
pops up an upgrade dialog
and crashes firefox
it's fun.
Drew: it's like 21st century whack a mole
Russ: i blame you
Drew: how come?
Russ: you linked to an mp3 on your tweetstream
Drew: what mp3?
Russ: chu chu?
Drew: that's a mpeg
Russ: whatev
Drew: ya, that link is my fault.
sorry for crashing u
Russ: quicktime handles like all my media files
how dddo I make it stop.
Drew: uh. there's a windows way i think. but an easy way is to right click a mpeg file, say "open with", pick a different app, and then say "always use this"
Russ: huhn
Drew: but i don't know exactly how to manage your associations
Russ: i just opened the quicktime as an independent app
thinking i'd upgrade
and it crashed
Drew: lolzers
Russ: I'm reporting them to Microsoft!
Drew: sounds like you need an upgrade badly!
Russ: uninstall is your friend
Drew: it has its moments
Spork Roundup →
I had a pal who embarassed us all by coding a fully functional video game in our Programming 101 class (using TurboPascal). It was a hunt for gold and treasure with monsters and some weak combat, but it had fullscreen graphics (programmed, I believe, in Assembly) and actually worked. We dubbed it “Spork”.
Semicolon Is semi-dead →
I am a rampant abuser of punctuation, and am always trying to force the cadence I hear on the reader. Most of my editing is deleting commas; I began eliminating semicolons a few years ago but only replaced them — with the emdash.
E Dub Classique
I subscribe to one magazine. My fiancée subscribes to Harper’s, Scientific American, and Newsweek. I get Entertainment Weekly. Go ahead and judge.
EW arrived yesterday and after a couple of G&Ts we scanned and debated their latest feature — EW New Classics. I’m not sure what they held themselves to, but I feel they broke the #1 rule of defining “classics”...
Big Blues
I got an email today at 1:50pm. IBM’s Websphere Commerce platform, which I support all over my company’s clients, had a small glitch. They had an “End Date” on a “Shipping Arrangement”, and that end date was last night at 11pm.
If you still had this default date in your DB your site kept running but gave errors whenever someone tried to add an item to their...
RoboPult Beats Winnebago →
(via Rude Dawg)
Benefit Dinner at Lola @ cleveland foodie →
Looks like “Battle Olive”, the Iron Chef America episode that “pitted” Symon vs. April Bloomfield did not inspire any hard feelings. The English chef will be visiting Symon’s flagship restaurant along with a host of others for a charity dinner next month.
Bloomfield also showed up in the finale of Top Chef alongside Eric Ripert and Dan Barber (of Blue Hill), so she...
The Official The Wonderstuff The Site →
As I recall I dug into the Wonderstuff a few years ago and they had a split with lead singer Miles Hunt. Looks like the rift is mended and they put out a live album this year.
Back in the Napster days I collected a lot of Miles’ tracks and him performing Wonderstuff songs such that someone asked if I was his brother, Russ Hunt (must’ve had my first name identifying me somewhere).
I Feel I'm Not Able...
… to go see anything, ever, at Cain Park. Cain Park is a fantastic park tucked in a ravine in the old stomping grounds of Cleveland Heights. They have a great host of events and festivals every summer, but somehow in the 17years (!!) I’ve lived in this town I’ve never been. This year they have The Wiz and Harold & Maude, I really gotta check it out.
Munchy Box @ 23x.net →
Must. Have. For. Football. Season…
I'm Ready For My Close-up, Dr. DeMille @ Jezebel →
As if lady parts aren’t creepy enough. I’m sure this will inspire a new Cronenberg film.
Jazz28 takes over former Budapest Blue @ Cleveland... →
My question is answered.
Bentley Back @ Dawgs By Nature →
Sorry about all the NFL/Browns content, but this is exciting. When our line was rated 6th in the league, they identified our weakest link as the pretty-decent center Hank Fraley. We might have a 2 time Pro-Bowler to fill that gap this year. Yowza.
i got sunshine... @ Cleveland Love →
Great story from my ‘hood. I may head out to Edgewater tonight to do some disc tossing with the soon-to-be missus, who I’m forcing to play ultimate for the first time this year.
I Turned It Into a Learning Experience
Saw a nasty car wreck on the way into work this morning. Waiting to turn left across a major 3-lane road, and the car two ahead of me tried to sneak between some stopped cars in the outside lane… but a DHL van in the inside lane just barreled right down on her and connected at her back right wheel. I swear the van never touched its brakes. The driver must have been busy with to something and...
Tv Features
I just flipped over to ESPN which is showing the Cleveland-Detroit game (why, I can’t imagine), but it came up as blacked out in my area. The game is in Detroit so that seems odd, but ok, we’ll let that go.
So this popped up on my Tv — DirecTv is searching my other channels for the game. It found it up on Sports Time Ohio (657-1), and gave me the option to change there. Yeah, I...
Just How Well Did You Know This "World"?
A fascinating story over at Cool Cleveland about a student film that will screen at the Cleveland Cinematheque this weekend (June 14th, 9:30pm). The End Of The World As We Knew It is the story of WENZ 107.9 The End, a “modern rock” radio station from the 90s in Cleveland.
This kid paints it as a movement, which fascinates me. I listened to a minimum of 3 hours of the station during...
2800 Clinton
Anyone know if Budapest Blue is still operating at 2800 Clinton, the old Halite space in Ohio City? The mothership website still mentions them but when I drove by this morning it had a sign up saying “Jazz 28”, but I couldn’t find anything online.
We stopped into BB once early in its existence — very disappointing. They might not have had their legs under them yet, but the...
NFL Fan Rankings Followup
Back in May I filled out a form at fanrankings.nfl.com (my rankings). I missed the broadcast of the results on June 2nd, but I finally dug them up directly on nfl.com. I’d like to point out that I did have the top twelve the same as the fan consensus — and that people are wildly over-rating the Football Giants. On Sirius NFL Radio Peter King and his co-hosts went on about how everyone...
Cleveland Maps
My friend in Pittsburgh has some old-timey maps of the town up in her place — I must do the same for Cleveland, City of Light, City of Magic. I wonder if these will print out decently?
PS These are in a weird format, but once I downloaded a viewer they seem very pretty and high resolution.
Minimal Bitching About Gas Prices →
Anti-hybrid Drew is complaining about the cost of petrol.
I busted out the slide rule the other day, and by my calculations if a hybrid is $3000 more than a comparable compact and gets 15 extra miles per gallon, to pay off the diff in three years would require $7 or $8 per gallon gas (assumed around 12500miles per year).
And that’s like Prius vs. a (zoom zoom zoom) Mazda, nevermind...
Home Page →
A great idea — Friday night prix fixe menus at a bunch of area restaurants. The website, though… yikes. Seriously, “Home Page” is the title of the home page.
Cleveland Happy Hour Reviews @ cleveland.com →
A guide to my current yuppie lifestyle. Although that plate at the Jigsaw Tavern looks classic.
Skulls What Are Crystal
Saw the new Indy movie this week. For some reason I felt this film deserved a grade: B-. It was hard to pin-point any outright failures, but the last half of the film was fairly lackluster. It was so barely OK, I don’t want to devote a lot of time to a coherent review, so I’ll list my thoughts from the film:
The most interesting part of the film was the period. They’ve taken...
10¢ beer Night @ ESPN Page 2 →
Don’t mess with Texas… but don’t fuck with Cleveland. They’ve got nothing to lose.
What Base Did They Get To @ CNN.com →
… er… to which base did they get?
I think the real problem is that 3 hour baseballs games can’t stand up to that kind of competition for eyeballs.
Is there a word for surfing twitter?
I was doing… that… for Clevelanders, and some douche spoiled this week’s Hell’s Kitchen by telling me who got voted off. Luckily, I don’t care all that much and it’s just background Tv I haven’t purged from Tivo.
Aaron Sanchez consults at Zocalo on E. 4th@ ... →
If you watch The Next Iron Chef, you know it’s pronounced “Air Own” with a nice rolling “r”. It’s nice to see a well-known NY chef come to the area, it’s even better that the very, very average food at Zocalo is being re-worked.
Bob Mould @ Spinner.com →
I saw this guy live and solo in Cleveland a year or two ago. I knew his (and Hüsker Dü’s and Sugar’s) bigger hits, but nothing in-depth. He really puts on a good show. This show is a bit guitar-heavy, but still enjoyable. The opening front-page clip made me think he would do a great cover of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”.
Prisco Rates Browns OL at No. 6 @ Dawgs By Nature →
The only real argument for Brady Quinn, and our best argument to take the division (scary that we play 3 of the top 5 offensive lines, and #7 and #9 — that should temper some hopes for the new D).
goosh.org - the unofficial google shell. →
MM is right — way cool. Useful? We’ll see.
Become your own third person shooter @ Kanye West... →
Slugging to Sluggish @ Cleveland Scene →
It’s funny, and sad, because it’s true.
Browns Backlash
Well, it’s underway. Many people have stopped talking about Browns on the rise and the Stillers on the wane, and are projecting the Browns to miss the playoffs again. I think it’s a pretty fair objective analysis. Pittsburgh and Cleveland have two of the toughest schedules in football, and while that is all based on last year’s records the teams they’re playing...
First they take your thumbs
At The Movies (nominally with Ebert & Roeper) has apparently settled on “See It” and “Skip It” to replace the thumbs of yore. Seriously? First of all saying “two ‘see its’ from Roeper & Phillips” just doesn’t have a ring to it, and it certainly isn’t trademarkable. Very curious, and a sad but perhaps inevitable sign of the world...