Category: Personal

Stuff about me or my family.

The Best Thing about Travel: Presents!

Personal
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2013-08-18 18.04.19My family came back from visiting relatives in Houston.  I stayed home (long story), worked and, as regular readers know, watched lots of movies.  Amongst many trips, they visited the science museum and NASA.  Knowing me well, they brought me lots of goodies.

I got a spiffy NASA Ballcap, the impressively titled and insanely interesting-looking book “Red Rover: Inside the Story of Robotic Space Exploration,
from Genesis to the Mars Rover Curiosity” and some Zombie stuff I’ll be covering over at MoreBrains.com.

One item, specifically picked out my daughter, was a four pack of “Great Scientist Finger Puppets“.  Newton, Darwin, Curie and Einstein all for your fingering pleasure.  They’ve also got magnetic heads if that’s your thing.  I love them!

My one issue (click photo to embigger) is Marie Curie.  She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize (and remains the only person ever given awards across multiple sciences).  She died from complications of radiation poisoning and expanded our horizons enormously.  Yet her puppet form features horrific cheek flaps and a frog mouth.

Well, I’m sure they didn’t mean anything by it.  I’ve already mounted the collection in a position of honor on the refrigerator.  Thanks guys!  I missed you bunches!

 

RiffTrax Live: Starship Troopers!

Movies, Rants
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RiffTrax Live: Starship Troopers

We’re huge RiffTrax fans here and when they did their first KickStarter campaign back in February we backed them.  Backed them hard!  They were trying to earn enough to Riff “Twilight”.  Apparently, since the movie is still busy printing money like Guttenberg on Meth, there isn’t enough for that.  So they did “Starship Troopers” instead.

Broadcast by Fathom Events to hundreds of theaters (and, for the first time, Canada) this is the fifth live RiffTrax event and the first using a major studio film.  The prior events, “Plan Nine from Outer Space”, “Manos: The Hands of Fate”. “Reefer Madness” and the modern turkey classic, “Birdemic”, were some of the best times we’ve had in a theater and this one didn’t disappoint.

“Starship Troopers” is actually a decent film on its own.  Campy, clichéd and over-the-top, but also fun, well-paced and visually impressive.  I prefer it when the guys riff truly terrible films so I can’t say this was my favorite live event.  It was still worlds better than any of the comedies I’ve seen this year.

RiffTrax never disappoints!

Stardust Mosaic Portraiture

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Sergio Albiac’s Stardust. An experiment in generative portraiture is providing free mosaic portraiture for a limited time.  The results are generated, slowly but automatically, using a collection of images of stellar incubators captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.  In the artist’s words:

As a theme for this series of portraits, I’ve choosen the concept of nucleosynthesis or the process of creation of new atomic nuclei from pre-existing matter that takes place at cosmic scale. We humans, are believed to be novel combinations of cosmic stardust. It could be argued that the whole universe is the biggest running generative art installation today. Personal beliefs will determine who we think the artist is.

Follow the provided instructions to give the project access to an appropriate image and a few days later a completed mosaic will be delivered.  The following is a completed portrait of my daughter.

Matilda Stardust Portrait

Messing with Kids’ Heads: A Camp Phone

Humor
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If you, like we, have successfully convinced your tweeny-bopper that two weeks at sleep-away camp is something for them (as opposed to money well-spent on yourself) you may well find yourself with more free time than usual.  We would like to humbly suggest that you spend some of that time and mess, freely and joyously, with their little heads.

Our daughter, for example, is at a Girl Scout camp that prohibits electronics and, especially, phones.  So in our first letter (daily letter writing being highly encouraged) we decided to send her a “Camp Phone”.  We grabbed a picture of her phone, some screen caps of her favorite apps, sized them all in CorelDraw (but anything would do) and printed the whole mess out on card-stock.

Some highlights:

  • She has a camera app!  Her instructions are: “Frame the shot, press the button and remember what you saw.”
  • She has a YouTube App!  All she has to do is point the phone at something interesting (like a cat or a baby) and watch.  This being version one, however, there’s no rewind.  Or fast forward or pause (unless your subject is really cooperative).
  • We included the “Off” button.  So that she can save power.
  • We’re so wealthy that we included two phones!  See how good we are to her?
  • There’s plenty of games – if you flip through the cards fast enough it looks like you’re winning!

The whole project took about two hours and that includes the pre-requisite fighting with the printer about paper settings.  Pretty cheap to simultaneously let your kid know that you’re thinking about them and completely annoy them.

Max the Fixer

Humor
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I have been getting flooded with scam calls from people claiming to work for Microsoft and wanting me to give them access to my computer so that they can “fix it”.  The kids they have working the boiler room are incredibly, insanely, hilariously inept so I spent some time with one of them.  Max.  Max the Fixer.

To be clear: this is a scam.  While I do not work with Microsoft I’m sure they will agree: nobody legitimate will EVER call you out of the blue to work on your computer for free.  Nobody, at no company, ever in the history of the microchip.  If you know what you’re doing spending time with these people can make for an interesting diversion; otherwise just hang up.

Consider this a reminder to review this kind of scam with the people you love and support.  It’s painfully clear that this will overwhelmingly target the elderly.  Empower them with the ability to say “No” to these lowlifes.  Free to link or re-blog this as you like.

Personal Archaeology: Goodbye First Night Boston!

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DCP_1992

As reported by the Boston Globe, First Night Boston is shutting its doors.  While the New Year’s Eve festival itself may continue as a production of city government, the non-profit organization that’s run the event for the past 37 years will be disbanding.  While the event still attracts over a million people to the city center, bringing millions of dollars to local business and exposure to hundreds of local artists, sponsorships and contributions have declined steadily to the point where the event simply can’t support itself.

(more…)

Pants make Earth Special

Movies, Rants
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I recently caught the end of “Cowboys & Aliens” on cable again and as I watched the climatic battle I remembered the bit of my original review about how Hollywood was getting in a rut with its aliens:

Grey, hairless, oddly-bent knees, big teeth, covered in mucus  and dripping with drool.  It started with “Aliens” of course but then we got “Battle L.A.”, “Super 8″, “Independence Day”, “Skyline”, “Pitch Black” and everything from “Avatar” that you weren’t supposed to want to bang.

As I watched the sequence again I was struck by something that solidified my problem with all of these designs.  The one thing that neatly represents all my complaints and frustrations.

Where are all the pants?

These are advanced civilizations.  They’ve perfected space travel, energy weaponry and (I assume) fiscal accounting policies and practices.  Don’t any of them wear pants?  Togas?  Kilts?  Uniforms of any kind?  Even if only to tell the grey, backwards-kneed space janitors from the grey, backward-kneed space generals?  Do aliens really not have a bikini area?

Superman is 75 Years Old Today

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SupermanSuperman was introduced to the world 75 years ago today, April 18, 1938.  I was planning on writing up a heartfelt review of my personal history with the character but Kyle Orland over at ArTechnica.com did it better in his article, “Why Superman is still interesting on his 75th birthday“

My history with Superman is very similar – even if it’s clear that I have quite a few years on Kyle – although I did stick it out through the bizarre “Red and Blue” phase (really, DC, what were you thinking?!)  In my case I began to lose touch with ‘Supes when my son was born and my time just wasn’t my own anymore.  But I continued to collect the issues only having stopped a short time ago when it finally sank in that I wouldn’t ever have the time to catch up.

One of the most profound, for me, moments, is a simple sequence and I can’t even remember the story it appeared in.  Clark and Lois are cooking dinner and the overhead light burns out.  As Lois turns to fetch the step-stool Clark rises softly up to replace bulb.  When she turns back to see the job completed the look they share is priceless.  This simple exchange epitomizes how quietly powerful Superman is while also highlighting how humanly accessible Clark is.

Superman is something special.  He means something; something worth understanding.

Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2013!

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BEBE BasketToday is Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2013 (BEBE 2013!), our annual Easter celebration of everything zombie.

We’re moving all our of zombie and BEBE material to our new sister blog, MoreBrains.com!  If zombies are your thing please head over and check it out!  There’s going to be zombie movies, games, crafts and news.

All of our other stuff – work, family and way (way) too many movie reviews will remain here at DepressedPress as always.