Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Monday, March 13, 2006
Skateboarding Dog
Someone taught their dog how to skateboard. I think its a pitbull.
I know some of you won't be impressed until the dog does that trick of jumping up on a handrail.
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I know some of you won't be impressed until the dog does that trick of jumping up on a handrail.
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Pixar RenderMan Open Source Replacement.
Pixie is a RenderMan like photorealistic renderer. It is being developed in the hope that it will be useful for graphics research and for people who can not afford a commercial renderer. Pixie is an open source project licensed under Gnu Public License
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Monday, March 06, 2006
Twins legend Puckett dead at 44
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Kirby Puckett died Monday, a day after the Hall of Fame outfielder had a stroke at his Arizona home, a hospital spokeswoman said. He was 44.
Puckett died at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., Kimberly Lodge said. He had been in intensive care since having surgery at another hospital following his stroke Sunday morning.
Puckett carried the Twins to World Series titles in 1987 and 1991 before his career was cut short by glaucoma. His family, friends and former teammates gathered at the hospital throughout Monday.
"On behalf of Major League Baseball, I am terribly saddened by the sudden passing of Kirby Puckett," baseball commissioner Bud Selig said. "He was a Hall of Famer in every sense of the term.
"He played his entire career with the Twins and was an icon in Minnesota. But he was revered throughout the country and will be remembered wherever the game is played. Kirby was taken from us much too soon - and too quickly," he said.
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Puckett died at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., Kimberly Lodge said. He had been in intensive care since having surgery at another hospital following his stroke Sunday morning.
Puckett carried the Twins to World Series titles in 1987 and 1991 before his career was cut short by glaucoma. His family, friends and former teammates gathered at the hospital throughout Monday.
"On behalf of Major League Baseball, I am terribly saddened by the sudden passing of Kirby Puckett," baseball commissioner Bud Selig said. "He was a Hall of Famer in every sense of the term.
"He played his entire career with the Twins and was an icon in Minnesota. But he was revered throughout the country and will be remembered wherever the game is played. Kirby was taken from us much too soon - and too quickly," he said.
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Friday, March 03, 2006
Kids Programming Language by Microsoft
Jon Schwartz et al have created a really cool programming language for beginners, called Kids Programming Language. Here we dig into what they've come up and why. There are some really fun demos.
Check out the KPL site!
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Check out the KPL site!
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Monday, February 27, 2006
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Both were 81!
Dennis Weaver, the slow-witted deputy Chester Goode in the TV classic Western "Gunsmoke" and the New Mexico deputy solving New York crime in "McCloud," has died,
LOS ANGELES -- Don Knotts, who won TV immortality and five Emmys for playing the bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show"
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Dennis Weaver, the slow-witted deputy Chester Goode in the TV classic Western "Gunsmoke" and the New Mexico deputy solving New York crime in "McCloud," has died,
LOS ANGELES -- Don Knotts, who won TV immortality and five Emmys for playing the bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show"
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Friday, February 17, 2006
A Prairie Home Companion
By Kirk Honeycutt
Bottom line: Who says you can't do a terrific radio show in a movie?
Screened at the Berlin International Film Festival
BERLIN -- Not since Woody Allen's "Radio Days" has anyone created such a cinematic Valentine to the wonderfully imaginative medium of radio as "A Prairie Home Companion." Garrison Keillor, impresario, creator and host of one of radio's longest running programs -- 31 years and counting -- and director Robert Altman are a match made in heaven. To these two Midwesterners, the region's dry, whimsical humor, unfailing politeness and straight-shooting sensibility are as natural as their own skins. There is no artifice or slickness here, just a native, keen intelligence that slyly hides behind homespun wit and verbal slapstick.
Keillor's radio show is, of course, beloved by many and Altman's movie, as Altman movies so often do, comes heavily populated with marquee actors. So the domestic theatrical audience for "Prairie" should be wide and varied. Overseas is a tough call: So much of the movie relies on deep-grained American humor along with puns and word play in English that get lost in subtitles. Nevertheless, an audience here at the Berlinale responded favorably to the music-flavored film even if some of verbal gags fell flat.
Filmed at St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater in Keillor's home state of Minnesota, "Prairie" essentially puts a radio show much like "A Prairie Home Companion" on film. Backstage, onstage and around the aging theater, the movie (written by Keillor from a story by him and Ken LaZebnik) imagines a fateful final broadcast of a show that has been given the axe by a soulless Texas corporation. (Keillor knows how to pick his villain's state, doesn't he?)
The central musical acts belong to Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), the remaining members of what once was a four-sister country music act, and Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly), singing cowboys and rivals in one-upsmanship.
Yolanda's daughter Lola (Lindsay Lohan) distracts herself from her mom's oft-told tales of the theatrical life by penning poems about suicide. Guy Noir, a recurring character on Keillorr's show, is brought aboard here as the program's "security director." As the throwback detective, Kevin Kline mixes Chandler-esque dialogue with more than a touch of Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau.
The broadcast's harried stage manager (Tim Russell, a regular on Keillor's show) and his assistant ("Saturday Night Live's" Maya Rudolph) are given new ways to break into sweat by the unpredictable cast. And through all the delightful confusion and musical numbers drift two iconic figures: GK (Keillor himself), a benign, unruffled presence who smoothly adapts to all exigencies, and a Dangerous Woman (Virginia Madsen), an angel in a white trench coat, taking the earthly and shapely form of a woman who died listening to the show's broadcast. It was a penguin joke that done her in.
Minor attempts to introduce plot material -- such as an unlikely past affair between Yolanda and GK, the death of a performer and the arrival of the corporate axeman (Tommy Lee Jones) -- never lead anywhere. Even the filmmakers seem to forget them moments after their introduction.
No, the movie steadfastly sticks to its radio roots. The comic bits from Streep & Tomlin and Harrelson & Reilly are gems of off-the-cuff humor. Keillor's droll lyrics and jingles for fictional sponsors poke good-natured fun. The toe-tapping musical performances are refreshingly captured by Edward Lachman's mobile camera, all smoothly edited by Jacob Craycroft.
As a character remarks, this radio show is the kind of program that died 50 years ago only someone forgot to tell the performers. Thank God for that.
A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION
Picturehouse
GreeneStreet Films and River Road Entertainment present a Sandcastle 5 and Prairie Home production
Credits: Director: Robert Altman; Writer: Garrison Keillor; Story by: Garrison Keilor, Ken LaZebnik; Producers: Robert Altman; Wren Arthur, Joshua Astrachan, Tony Judge, David Levy; Executive producers: William Pohlad, John Penotti, Fisher Stevens, George Sheanshang; Director of photography: Edward Lachman; Production designer: Dina Goldman; Music: Richard Dworsky; Costumes: Catherine Marie Thomas; Editor: Jacob Craycroft.
Cast: Yolanda Johnson: Meryl Streep; Rhonda Johnson: Lily Tomlin; GK: Garrison Keillor; Dusty: Woody Harrelson; Lefty: John C. Reilly; Lola: Lindsay Lohan; Guy Noir: Kevin Kline; Molly: Maya Rudolph; Axeman: Tommy Lee Jones; Dangerous woman: Virginia Madsen.
No MPAA rating, running time 105 minutes.
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Thursday, February 16, 2006
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
How To Troubleshoot Any Networking Problem
Tech author extraordinaire Mark Minasi shares a bit over two dozen "rules of network troubleshooting."
"Every day of the year, I get a bunch of e-mails from people trying to solve network problems. And while I love to help, I'd like even more to show folks how to solve any problem on their own. So it occurred to me that I've slowly learned that there are a bit over two dozen "rules of network troubleshooting." I then put together a 90 minute talk on it, and I've had the chance to do that talk for audiences of up to a thousand people to good reception but as always, I can't get everywhere, so what follows is some of that talk. My intention here isn't to reveal any hidden Registry entries or point you to some heretofore-secret $40,000 network diagnostic device. No, I just want to offer what's worked for me in solving network troubles. I'm sure some of this will be simply a reminder of what you've already learned, but I find, at least in my case, that it's all too easy to forget a rule and have to re-learn it, painfully!
(By the way, if you'd like to listen to this talk, surf over to http://techmentorevents.com/samples/ -- they recorded me doing this once and put it up on their Web site.)"
read more | digg story
"Every day of the year, I get a bunch of e-mails from people trying to solve network problems. And while I love to help, I'd like even more to show folks how to solve any problem on their own. So it occurred to me that I've slowly learned that there are a bit over two dozen "rules of network troubleshooting." I then put together a 90 minute talk on it, and I've had the chance to do that talk for audiences of up to a thousand people to good reception but as always, I can't get everywhere, so what follows is some of that talk. My intention here isn't to reveal any hidden Registry entries or point you to some heretofore-secret $40,000 network diagnostic device. No, I just want to offer what's worked for me in solving network troubles. I'm sure some of this will be simply a reminder of what you've already learned, but I find, at least in my case, that it's all too easy to forget a rule and have to re-learn it, painfully!
(By the way, if you'd like to listen to this talk, surf over to http://techmentorevents.com/samples/ -- they recorded me doing this once and put it up on their Web site.)"
read more | digg story
Friday, February 10, 2006
PictureCloud
A picture cloud is the easiest way to make a photo come to life. By using a picture cloud you can turn still photos into images that spin 360° by uploading images you take around an object with your digital camera. Picture clouds are helping give depth to the web, and best of all - picture clouds are free.
Picture clouds can...
•Show objects and items in 360°
•Assist in consumer buying decisions
•Be created in under 5 minutes
•Be placed in your web pages, auctions, blogs, personals, emails, and more...
free
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Picture clouds can...
•Show objects and items in 360°
•Assist in consumer buying decisions
•Be created in under 5 minutes
•Be placed in your web pages, auctions, blogs, personals, emails, and more...
free
read more | digg story
John Lennon lyric sheet to be auctioned. the two-sided lyric sheet is expected to fetch more than $2 million at auction.
LENNON, JOHN. 1940-1980.
Autograph Manuscript, [A Day In The Life], n.p., n.d. [London, January 17, 1967], 1 page, recto and verso of a single A4 sheet of unlined paper (265 x 194 mm ), in black felt marker and blue ballpoint pen. A few annotations in red ink, one small 5 mm hole and some soiling to lower margin, folding creases, light foxing to lower margin verso. Matted in double paneled glass frame to 19 x 15 inches.
Two complete drafts of John Lennons lyrics to A Day In The Life, likely composed on the morning and afternoon of January 17, 1967.
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Thursday, February 09, 2006
CSS Basics
This is the best, cleanest, simplest tutorial I have found for getting started with CSS.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
"MacIndows"... Give your Windows XP an OSX Facelift
This is a guide for transforming your traditional Windows XP (SP1/SP2) into a fresh new-looking environment with a strong MacIntosh OS-X feel to it.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
"MacIndows"... Give your Windows XP an OSX Facelift
This is a guide for transforming your traditional Windows XP (SP1/SP2) into a fresh new-looking environment with a strong MacIntosh OS-X feel to it.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
uBrowser: Browsing the web in 3D
Check out this neat 3d web browser.
About uBrowser
Introduction
uBrowser is an simple Web Browser that illustrates one way of embedding the Mozilla® Gecko rendering engine into a standalone application using LibXUL. In this case, the contents of the page is grabbed as it's being rendered and displayed as a texture on some geometry using OpenGL™. You are able to interact with the page (mostly) normally and visit (almost) any site that works correctly with Firefox® 1.5.
What does it looks like?
read more | digg story
About uBrowser
Introduction
uBrowser is an simple Web Browser that illustrates one way of embedding the Mozilla® Gecko rendering engine into a standalone application using LibXUL. In this case, the contents of the page is grabbed as it's being rendered and displayed as a texture on some geometry using OpenGL™. You are able to interact with the page (mostly) normally and visit (almost) any site that works correctly with Firefox® 1.5.
What does it looks like?
read more | digg story
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Sperm Cells Turned into Eggs
Scientists have tricked male fish cells that were destined to become sperm into switching sex and becoming eggs instead. Junior Tagline: Nothing is inconceivable.
read more | digg story
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Helicopter shots of Mexico City neighborhoods -- stunning and unreal!!
A former Mexico City helicopter pilot has posted a stunning gallery of his aerial photos of the city and environs. Some of these photo's are amazing!
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Monday, February 06, 2006
Sunday, February 05, 2006
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