Monthly Archives: July 2005

Olde Tyme Radio

The Websnark guy has discovered a treasure trove of old-time radio, advertisements and all. Here’s the part of his review that nearly had me spewing my afternoon coffee through my nose…

I’m within two episodes of biting the bullet and converting my apartment to coal heat — it’s so economical and healthful, and provides a steady warmth that only the finest of Pennsylvania’s anthracite could — but only if it’s Blue coal, where every carful is laboratory tested and a harmless blue coating is applied right at the mine so you and I can tell quality blue coal when we see it!

I wonder if it’s a musical…

According to CNN, Mel Gibson’s next big movie is going have all of the dialogue in ancient Mayan.

Aramaic? Sure. A biblical picture in Aramaic you can get away with. I somehow doubt that there’s as much of a built-in audience for this one. On the other hand, it’s not quite as eccentric as Crispin Glover’s “What Is It?“, a movie where all of the actors have Down’s Syndrome.

Huh?

What time is it? Six?!? Six in the morning?

Well, heck. I guess it is getting light out.

Games are over, webcast is wrapping up… Take a look at the way things look at TransWeb.

Hopefully I’m gonna get an hour or two of sleep before we head back to the U.S.
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Waxbath

Ellie brought a wax bath with her. It’s one of those standard things where you dip your hands into liquid wax and let it warm your hands as it hardens into a rose scented waxy glove. I know lots of folks who have these, and I’m sure it’s therapeutic, but to me the big point is that it’s a lot of fun.
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Pages are going up…

We’re publishing! Our first public change, the index page for the 2005 webcast, was updated at around 5:30 this afternoon. Other pages are being linked in as soon as we can add them. Of course we’re getting anxious emails from people asking where the updates are.

We’re all working as fast as we can!

Except for me, I guess. Since I’m posting something here instead.
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Bits happen

Webcast Day Two… We’re up and running on the wilds of the Canadian Internet. Took a bit of doing though. This university has pretty tight web restrictions set up, mostly to cut off people who are running illegal peer-to-peer file sharing networks and to keep anyone from grabbing huge quantities of stuff off of the web.

So when we were setting up our local copy of the remote site, which involved setting up a local file sharing network and grabbing huge quantities of stuff off of the web, we triggered pretty much all of their automated defense systems, and got frozen out of their network.
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Mace Windu’s Umbrella

Yesterday after arriving for the Transplant games, Ellie (she’s the Transweb head honco) and I zipped over to a little campus print shop across from our lodgings to pick up the little yellow “Hi we’re Transweb” cards that we hand out during the games. While we were there, I spotted something we’re probably going to need, and which none of us thought to pack. An umbrella.

Of course, it wasn’t that difficult to spot it. It’s bright purple.
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Oi, Canada…

Who gave Canada permission to be so hot and humid? Honestly, when the Webcast left Florida I thought we’d seen the last of this sort of weather.

I’m with the Transweb webcast team, all comfy and cosy in our offices on the University of Western Ontario campus in London.

And it is hot.

And it is humid.
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Beat me to it

I was going to write up an annoyed post about how too much attention is being paid to the whole Grand Theft Auto hack, but Wil Wheaton beat me to it.

All I’ve got to add is that if I were to put on an obscene puppet show with the toys from a Happy Meal, I’m pretty sure that nobody in the senate would be calling for Ronald McDonald’s head on a non-biodegradable platter. Why should the folks from Rockstar Games take the heat for somebody else’s modification?

No tiny twins…

Ok, I’ve got to get on the phone to the camera place. I pulled into the parking ramp this morning and thought I saw a tuft of masking tape stuck to the wall. I figured it had something to do with the painting project that’s going on.

Turns out it wasn’t masking tape. It was a moth. A huge moth. If you took a dollar bill, folded it in half and stuck it to the wall, that’d be about the size (and close to the right shape) of that moth.

And I don’t have a working camera with me.

Here I am, parked next to Mothra, and I don’t have a picture. Crap.