Ultranormal

  • Sick Movies

    Yes, I’m still sick. I couldn’t get to sleep until four AM this morning, and then, when I do wake up, I see that someone posted SPAM in my comments!!! Of course, it’s been deleted now, but that was not the way I wanted to start my sick day. I’m pretty tired of feeling crappy. I think that tomorrow, no matter how I feel, I’ll just deny that I’m sick and go back to work and pretend I’m fine.

    I was going to do the weekend entertainment roundup, but I’m gonna go lay down and watch an action movie on DVD (this weekend, we watched The Recruit, NARC, and The Lost World – we’re recording Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, which may be more crappy action than I can handle). I’m considering Twister. I’m not up for thinking.. so more Homicide is definitely not in order. Jen and I have this concept of good “sick movies”, of which Air Force One is probably the consensus winner for best sick movie of all time, followed closely by my personal all-time favorites, Jaws and The Great Escape. Sick Movies should be fun, full of action and should be either so rewatched that you know exactly what’s going to happen next and the story just washes over you. Right, got it? Ok, off I go. Wish me luck.

  • Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: It’s Faboo!

    Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is fab-u-lous. We watched out first episode this morning (while I languished on the couch with a headache), and it was great. Haven’t seen it? Ok, these five gay guys, each with a diffferent specialty (there’s the host/personal grooming guy, fashion consultant, food guy, and decorators) take on a poor boorish breeder (best gay insult ever) and turn them into fashion-conscious renaissance men by showing them that there are finer things in life than fast food and Wal-Mart deck chairs.

    The guy on this episode was so into it. He was trying to do something nice for his wife, who was tired of his old t-shirts, poor personal grooming and their mess of a house. She went away, and the fairy-god-queers (they call themselves the Fab Five, and they are faboo) went to work, teaching poor Adam all about spa treatments, cooking, furniture and keeping it together. While there were moments of really funny cattiness, the five guys were there to help (unlike the mean-spirited American version of What Not To Wear), and were overjoyed at the progress Adam made.

    It was funny, cute and educational… It’s definitely going on the Season Pass list! Oh, and yeah, I should probably apply to be a victim on the show. I could use the help.

  • Great Idea – A Better Browser

  • Funny Colors

    My mom watched Max yesterday. Uncle Steve played with him outside in the kiddie pool. Steve’s camera’s not so great (it’s really old). But there’s something familiar about the distorted colors that makes me think of old Kodachrome shots from the 70’s. I must still be sick (yep, still have a fever… lucky me!).

  • Sick

    Sick, I am. Sick like a dog who’s sick. Sick like a joke that’s sick. I’m feverish, fatigued and unfortunately at work. I took Tuesday off, went home early yesterday to sleep, but here I am today, like a trooper. I’m sure I’m infecting everyone. I read an article in this month’s Smithsonian about the West Nile Virus, and now I’ve got all the symptoms. Am I a hypochondriac? Was I just in line to get sick? What’s wrong with me?

    My goodness, is it hot in here? I wish I had a thermometer…

  • Another AOL Journals Demo

    I was there for this one too. It was a little weirder than the one in New York, because we outnumbered the Six Apart crew three to one, which made for a little more imposing vibe in the room than I would have liked. Aside from the technical difficulties of a constantly over-heating projector (damn you, cost-cutting!), it went well.\
    I even got to suck up a little… I’m a Typepad beta tester (I’m not sure that went over like I intended… I said it anyway).

  • Easy Meatballs for Fun and Profit

    I made meatballs tonight. I made them once before and made way too big a deal out of them. They’re frightfully easy to make (shhh, don’t tell anyone), and will impress your spouse, date, friends, boss, or whoever you have to cook for. Here’s my quick and easy recipe that leaves lots and lots of room for substitutions, replacements and deletions. There are only a couple required elements: ground meat of some kind (sausage, ground beef, veal or turkey or some combination thereof), an egg, and some fairly dry shredded cheese (parmesan, dry mozzarella, etc).

    The Directions:

    1. In a mixing bowl, add one egg, garlic to taste (1/4 teaspoon to start), a healthy dash of pepper and two shakes of salt. Whisk until egg is scrambled, but good.

    2. Now, I have a food processor, and like throwing a little veggie matter in my meatballs. For example, tonight I took some mushroom pieces and half a vidalia onion and threw them in the food processor until they were in itty bitty chunks, and then added them to the bowl. I’ve tried green peppers, but their high water content kinda screwed up the consistency o’ de balls. Play around and see what you see. If you come up with something really good, let me know.

    3. Now, add about a pound of your ground meat to the bowl, along with a handful of your cheese (tonight it was the four-cheese Italian blend from the grocery store. Last time, I did a nice mix of freshly grated parmesan and pecorino. Fancy, boring, it’s up to you.

    4. Before you mix everything up (which is coming, don’t worry), throw a large skillet on the stove and turn the fire on somewhere between medium and medium high. Dump a couple tablespoons of olive oil in the pan and let it heat up (this isn’t an exact science… should be enough to put a thin coating on the bottom of the skillet).

    5. While the pan is heating up wash your hands, then go over to your bowl o’ stuff and dig in. Mix up everything so it’s of pretty even consistency throughout and everything’s mixed in nicely.

    6. Next, take your bowl of mess over to the stove. It’s time to make meatballs!! My meatballs usually end up about the size of ping-pong balls, but hey, your balls may be larger or smaller. It’s really up to you.

    7. Fill the skillet with your balls, and let them brown almost completely on the side you put them on. Be sure to flip them over a few times to get each side of your eventually slightly lop-sided pyramids cooked. It usually takes about 15 minutes (five minutes between flippings) to finish the whole pan.

    Meatballs freeze really well but we usually make just enough for one meal. After they’re cooked all the way through and we’ve sampled one or two, we dump in our favorite tomato-based sauce (Jen makes a great one), let it simmer while the pasta cooks and then fall into a meatball-induced stupor. For something so easy to make, they’re heavenly. If you’ve got any meatball-related suggestions, I’d love to hear ’em.

  • Another Confession… Big Brother

    It’s a day of confessions. Here’s confession number two. I love Big Brother. I haven’t watched Survivor since season 2. I don’t normally like network TV reality shows. There is just something about Big Brother that makes me watch. It’s so evil, and like the MTV series The Real World and Road Rules, is an interesting look into the collision of the private and public persona. I know I’m putting way too thought into this, but I can’t help it. It’s great fun watching people try to play each other.

    The losers are those people who aren’t honest with themselves. It doesn’t matter if they’re dishonest with other people. If they’re honest with themselves, they can handle the game and the pressure. If they can’t handle themselves, they lose.

    The other great morality lesson from these shows is gossip. Everything you say in these cramped quarters could come back to haunt you. Every catty thing you say behind someone’s back is overheard by someone else, and will eventually make it back. It’s funny to see that season after season, people get caught doing it, and are shocked when things they say come back to doom their chances of winning anything.

    It’s not too late to jump in! It’s only day three! Join in my guilty pleasure! It’s not bad, it’s just silly.

  • Harry Potter Gets Picked On

    I have an admission to make. I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I’ve read the four other books too. I enjoyed all of them. I am no ashamed. I’m a little by all the rancor over adults liking the books. They’re books. Yes, they’re written simply, but the story is a lot of fun, and the characters are very engaging. What’s wrong with enjoying that? Simple stories well told are nothing to be ashamed of enjoying. Why do you think people like Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz? There’s nothing terribly complex or hard to understand in either story, yet they’re considered classics.

    Now that I’m done defending my appreciation for the series… let’s talk about the latest one. It’s dark. It’s pretty depressing, especially for a “children’s book”. One of my favorite things about the books is that they’re written for the age group equivalent to Harry’s age in the book. The author did a great job capturing the failings of fifteen year-old boys perfectly. Harry was uncouth, akward and everything else boys are at that age – trying to be manly while still being childish, exploring their limits and rebelling against authority (although that’s been a theme throughout the series). As I was reading this one, I kept thinking to myself that Ms. Rowling should just leave the poor kid alone for a chapter. Let something good happen to him. This book is obviously the ominous third act in the series.

    I enjoyed it though. Even though I kind of got tired in the third quarter of the book with all the things that happened to Harry, I kept going because the pace of the writing demanded it. It was a great ride… and better written than most “thrillers in paperback” on the market. It’s nothing to be ashamed of if you liked the books. They’re good stories. I wish there were more good stories out there.

  • Style My RSS, Please

    I suggested this on the NetNewsWire bug report list, but it really doesn’t belong there. I was poking around the RSS 2.0 spec today and saw a weird little optional tag with <item> called <enclosure>. Enclosure takes length, type and url as arguments, and says it’s for “media” files. But, like the script tag, you can pass it any MIME type and url. Here’s where the lightening struck. Why not pass in a stylesheet? Just like you use <link> to pull in your external stylesheet, why not have an RSS feed stylesheet. Why? One of the big complaints about RSS Readers is that the post is displayed outside its intended context – the designed page it originated on. If we were able to pass in a stylesheet, we could style the properties of the objects in a post to make it look more like the original page. Wouldn’t that be cool?

    Now, Brent doesn’t think enclosure’s the right place to put it, but I really didn’t see anything else in 2.0, or in the infant Echo specs about style information. I think giving designers some control over how their content is display in an aggregator would go a long way to driving acceptance of using syndication as a method of distribution of content, and not just the notification tool a lot of sites offer today.