Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • New Television To Watch And Enjoy

    The television season is now several weeks old, but I hadn’t caught up with enough new shows to make recommendations. Now, I have, and we have some winners!!! They are:

    1. Rome – It’s different, and aside from the sex, it’s not your typical HBO Sunday night. It’s political, familial, and conniving. Like other HBO shows, there really are no heroes, which is fine with me. Heroes always disappoint, while villains are at least entertaining. The acting is top notch, and it doesn’t really feel like I thought it would. It’s done for Antiquity what Deadwood did for the Old West – it’s put the life back in the statues, and isn’t afraid to treat the legends like real people. It’s definitely worth checking out, especially for Ray Stevenson’s portrayal of Titus Pullo, fatally flawed, goofy and vicious. He’s the antihero that all other antiheros aspire to be. And, lucky you, HBO is re-running the first 8 episodes this week.
    2. Threshold – I had low expectations for this show, and I’m not sure how far they can stretch the premise, but so far so good. This is sci-fi bubblegum, with just enough creep factor to keep me coming back. It’s a little like The 4400 but with some Andromeda Strain and X-Files thrown in. Good stuff, and the cast is great fun. It’s great to see Charles S. Dutton on TV again.
    3. Invasion – Kind of slow, and sometimes the acting isn’t great, but this one is interesting enough to put make TiVo keep recording it each week. The cast is pretty stock ensemble with very few recognizable names (unlike Threshold which screams indie movie fan as casting director). It is nice to see William Fichtner, but he’s really the only cast member I recognize from anything. If you like LOST but think it moves too fast, then Invasion may be for you.
    4. Extras – It’s by the guy who did The Office. If you like your comedy extremely painful, you’ll love this show.
    5. One Night Stand – It’s back!!! YAY!!!! I frigging love this show. A new comedian every week, and it’s only 30 minutes. Had a bad day? Watch Flight Of The Conchords and all your troubles are gone.\
      It’s not really a “new” show, but this season’s Amazing Race is so much better than I thought it would be. I was afraid they wouldn’t do anything with the families, and they haven’t left the country yet (crossing my fingers for this week), but it’s a lot of fun. It’s a good mix of in-laws, siblings, parents, teenagers, and kids… and they’re all a mess in some ways. It’s guilty, but it’s too much fun not to watch.\
      Set your TiVo’s now. You’ve been warned.

  • Huh?

    Max informed me today that he has gotten in touch with his inner skeleton.

  • I’m Not A Designer

    Have you ever seen something and said, “I wish I could design like that?” Well, check out The Oddzballz. Yeah, told you.\
    I’m not a designer, but boy would I love to be one. I’m not one to say I’m one just because I can screw around with PhotoShop and make gradients. I know too many “real” designers to pretend that I could be one.\
    But, enough about that. I’m just in awe of that site, designed by the amazing Elsa Kawai. Just go look. Really.

  • The Whole Busted Up Ankle Story

    I told you how it happened a while ago. Now, I’ll tell you what I did. I just found this great explanation of what an accessory navicular is. I’ve got one of those, and my little stumble in India moved mine around where it’s not supposed to be. I’ve got illustrations for you too:

    A Normal Accessory Navicular:

    My Accessory Navicular:

    If you’re not sure what you’re looking at. The toes are right above the picture. The left side is the instep. What this all means is that I’m in a good deal of pain because this little “extra” bone is now screwing up the whole rest of my foot by moving the large tendon that controls the arch. That’s causing the arch to collapse, which is making other bones go where they don’t belong.\
    We’ve been trying the “rest” bit of the treatment plan for a while now (three months and counting), and I’m just about done (finished, finito, finis, kaput) with it. This cast sucks. And, if I have surgery (wait, not if, when…), I’ll be in a cast for six more weeks. Merry fother-mucking Christmas.

    I’ve done this before with my right knee (twice) and my left ankle (left). I’m not sure why this time is worse. It just is. It’s probably worse because it was such a stupid nothing injury. It’s worse because I didn’t think it was anything when I did it, and it’s turned out to be something.

  • Six Weeks in a Cast

    Six Weeks in a Cast

    At least it’s blue. If this doesn’t work, it’s surgery. I’m hoping the blue cast does the job.

  • Anansi Boys At The Halfway Point

    I got Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman’s latest, in the mail last week, and am about halfway through it. I love it. I almost don’t want to finish it, because that means it’ll be over, it’s so much fun.\
    Yes, this is only half a review. If you liked the humor in Good Omens, you’ll like this one. If you liked the mythology in American Gods, you’ll love this one. So far, it doesn’t really feel like a fantasy or sci-fi novel. It’s slowly building the fantasy piece, while showing us some truly funny and interesting characters. It’s a story about fathers, sons and brothers, and feels a little bit like Big Fish to me, except that Tim from the Office is the leading man this time (if that makes any sense at all).\
    Go get it. You won’t be sorry. Even if you don’t normally read fantasy or sci-fi (which I don’t), you’ll love it. Honest.

  • New Laptops

    Work just gave me a brand new Dell laptop to replace my ancient Windows machine. What’s the first thing I do – even before installing Firefox on it? Put my MY MACINTOSH RULES sticker on it. Gotta declare your allegiances, man.\
    It’s funny, but I’ve been a full-time OS X user for about three years now, and I don’t miss Windows at all. I don’t live in a Start-button world anymore. I don’t think in Windows. I think in OS X first. I know it’s weird to say that, but it’s true. My instincts have been honed. This is true of web stuff too. I had someone ask me to troubleshoot a page that was build in quirks mode, and I couldn’t do it at first. I don’t think in quirks mode anymore. I think in standards mode. My box model’s been fixed.\
    I apologize to my family and non-geeky friends for the above paragraph.

  • I just can’t stop

    From an article in the Toronto Star, Joss Whedon about Veronica Mars:\
    “I was on fire. We had just watched the last five episodes in one day and I was just freaking out,” he says, wild-eyed. “I understand Buffy fans better watching that show and so does my wife. There’s so much pain and there’s so much humour and the stories are so tight and the characters are so well-drawn and you just. Care. So. Much. And to have all of that in one package is so rare. I was a junkie. I just had to share how cool it was. And I’ve realized if you do that, people notice. It’s nice. Somebody else will go, `I just love Veronica Mars.’”\
    “When people said they’re calling this the next Buffy, for once I actually thought it was a compliment.”

  • Dear Internet

    You are upsetting me. Please stop using crappy old browsers. There is absolutely no excuse for using Netscape 6, Netscape 4.x, Safari 1.0, IE 5.5 or IE 5.0. They are all old, insecure, out-of-date, feature poor and tired. They are so so tired. Please retire them and get yourself a new browser. You know, one that renders pages correctly, that won’t crash on you, that’s actually supported by the company that released it, etc…\
    We should have a national holiday: Upgrade Your Browser Day. It could be a national day of nerd service where nerds go door-to-door offering to help people upgrade to the latest version of that person’s browser of choice. You want to use Netscape? Great! Let’s dump that ancient bug-filled copy of 6.0 and put you on 7.2 or 8.0! Opera lover? Please, let’s install 8.5! IE? No more 5.0’s or 5.5. Let’s get you a fresh (but still old, IE 7 can’t get here fast enough) copy of IE 6.\
    Yeah, I think this could work. We need browser missionaries. I could see the door approach now:\
    knock, knock\
    “Hello, ma’am, we’re the neighborhood browser missionaries. Do you have any web browsers in the house?”\
    “Yes, I think we do…”\
    “Do you know what version you have? Have you checked recently for updates?”\
    “Well, no, I just use it.”\
    “Can we come in? We’d love to help you upgrade that old thing, and we’ll do it for free!”\
    I think it would work.

  • I Love Information

    So I needed a break from thinking about markup and decided to go check out the stats for lawver.net generated by my friendly web server. I stumbled on something interesting (to me):

    • pages served in 2003: 67,492
    • pages served in 2004: 581,041
    • pages served in 2005: 1,003,530\
      I think I joined Dreamhost in about the middle of 2003, so that’s understandable. But, still, that’s almost doubling the amount of traffic every year. I think that’s pretty cool.\
      Some more stuff that’s probably only cool to me:
    • About 25% of the visitors to this site are Mac users.
    • NetNewsWire is the most popular news reader among the RSS consumers of this site.
    • Bloglines is number two.
    • Search engine bots index this site more often than they probably should.
    • The most popular search terms that get people here are:
      1. sick movies
      2. beautiful font
      3. maddenisms
      4. green snot
      5. chicken noises (holy crap, I’m number one!)
      6. nerd jokes
    • Over 25% of my traffic comes from Google if you include all the localized versions.
    • About 1% of my traffic comes from inside the AOL campus local network (which oddly enough, doesn’t worry me at all).
    • According to Sitemeter, I went from about 2,200 “visits” a month in October of last year to over 9,000 last month (which was an aberration, but July was still almost 7,500).\
      Told you I love information.