Monthly Archives: January 2007

2 Timothy Visualized

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Some may call it dorky, but when you want to see what the entire book is about, this gives you the gist of the theme:


created at TagCrowd.com

The larger the font, the more times that word is mentioned.

Here’s chapter 1.

Here’s the work that Bruce did.

Tuvalu

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Did you ever wonder about the .tv domain that is at the end of some websites? (Like the commercial that I just wretched through about flushthefat.tv.)

Well, the country of Tuvalu doesn’t use too much of its webspace, so one of their biggest moneymaking exports is renting its .tv extension.

Here’s its stats, in case you ever want to move there:

Get LOST and stuff

(don’t you expect to see some people freaking out about a hatch and then hearing a trumpet die as you go to commercial)

Size: 9 sq. mi. (26 km²)
Population: 10,441 (2005 estimate)
Location: South Pacific
An even cooler country is San Marino:

It was founded by a Christian guy (named Marino) and was hardly ever invaded. Napoleon skipped invading it because he said that it was a good model for a republic.

Here’s how their government is set up:

San Marino has a very complex government structure, based on a constitution written in 1600. The country is ruled by an elected Council of 60, who appoints 2 captain regents (from opposing political parties, no less) to administer governmental affairs for six-month term.

Eat your fight, Monaco. You no longer just have Vatican City to worry about.

In conclusion, Libya is a land of many contrasts.

Super Bowl Reflection

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I figure that with Super Bowl around the corner, I would dedicate today’s post to learning a little bit more about one of the coach’s that will command in next week’s gridiron gambit. Amidst all of the publicity, commercials about cavemen, nachos (oooh, nachos!), and multi-million dollar deals, we forget that these are real people (except for John Madden…he has been 3D rendered by EA onto our TVs since 1984. Little known fact: the first Madden game was released on the Apple II and rode on the success of the hit game Dr. J versus Larry Bird: One-on-One).
Here’s a little insight into what type of person Tony Dungy is. He spoke at the 19th Annual Athletes in Action breakfast before last year’s Super Bowl. He had the following to say about his son’s death (with regard to all of the letters and phone calls he received about the wake-up call of James Dungy’s suicide) :

If God had talked to me before James’ death and said his death would have helped all these people, it would have saved them and healed their sins, but I would have to take your son, I would have said no, I can’t do that.

But God had the same choice 2,000 years ago with His Son, Jesus Christ, and it paved the way for you and me to have eternal life. That’s the benefit I got, that’s the benefit James got and that’s the benefit you can get if you accept Jesus into your heart today as your Savior.

He later added:

Why does God allow pain in our life? Because we’re loved by God and the pain allows us to head back to our Father.

Star Wars Rocks

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I’m finding more and more of these pictures of Star Wars characters as thrash metal stars. (Perhaps they’re glam rock, but come on! Check out Vader.)

I also found the true shooting script for the first Harry Potter movie:

And my favorite part of the new Star Wars TV show:

Albino Deer

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My grandma forwarded me this (because of my obsession with albino fauna, I guess. Or just because I’m very dear to her) and now you can also bask in the awe and wonder.

It makes sense that these would exist in other animals, not just mice and boas and football commentators.

It makes me think of the White Stag and my days hunting with King Peter and King Edmund. Those were the days. It was always a melancholy trip back to the train station.

Life of a Firefighter

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Timoculus of Borg was at a 100th + 50th birthday party that In-Law Films worked.

He gave me an insight into the life of a firefighter. He got a page on his beeper that said “Man down”. The way he calmly handled the information, knowing that what was reported was sometimes not what the end paperwork would reveal, gave me some respect for the non-ladder-climbing aspects of the job.

Here’s a sample day:

You can probably guess how well water flows from that pipe in the last picture.

You never know what you’ll see, like carpet being used to fix a concrete sidewalk. I guess the business got so used to it that they painted lines on the carpet. You go with what you’ve got, right?

After fighting fires and filling out mountains of paperwork, the homefront welcomes you with:

At first you may not notice what it is, but if you click on one of the pictures to see a bigger view, you will see the local fauna: a roof rat.

And yet, being the role model of every little kid helps you keep your appetite.

Genetics Law

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I think I will learn more about genetics law. My dad asked me some questions about the legality of altering someone’s DNA and I knew the Star Wars answer but not the real life answer.

I need to learn more, because dang, dude!

I wonder what people think about making your kid more portable.

Wi-Fi With Fries

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The main site (inlawfilms.com) has been updated. (Yes, Timothy, the site does more than just host a bloggh.) The other half of In-Law Films and I had an hour break between filming sections of a woman’s 100th birthday party. We went to McDonald’s for dinner and some web-designing. (We decided that 3 Hot n’ Spicies were worth more than a small frappalattoccinomochagrande from the non-cool Battlestar Galactica “bucker of stars”. (I may be designing on a MacBook, but I’m not THAT pretentious. But I would love to see a coffee shop run by both pilots (old series and new).)
I turned AirPort on, I started Safari, and I opened my Dashboard. J mocked me for my wrestling panda icon from the San Diego Zoo webcam. The fact that the disturbing picture was still there meant that the Internet was running really slowly or was not even connecting. I swished (which you do a lot of in Mac OSX (before Vista)) back to Safari and saw www.inlawfilms.com get replaced in the URL box by a string of intense gibberish. My browser then loaded up a page about Arch Cards and deals on sandwiches.

Ronald McDonald hijacked my MacBook.

As I explored the intruding page, I realized that you had to pay to use the Wi-Fi.
Here’s my hang-up. I stayed at a Comfort Inn this past weekend. They have Wi-Fi. They let you use it whether you are a customer or not (I started sending an e-mail as we drove up to the parking lot). I don’t think that they had a lot of crazy traffic since the speed was still pretty good.

I had purchased food at McDonald’s. I was ready to work. My browser could only access Arch Cards.

I can understand having a password for paying customers. I guess it makes sense that they can charge for their own stuff. It just doesn’t make customer service sense when the Bookman’s across the street had a free, open network.

Here’s the big hang-up:

  1. Ronald does not realize how much of a benefit to society he could be. With free online applications like KBdocs , the $100 laptop is even closer to existence. Imagine every McDonald’s location having a free hotspot. Imagine that 802.11g would be everywhere the Arches were, as prolific as those littery straw sleeves are. Poverty could be decreased. Ronald McDonald does not want poor orphans to take online college courses. He wants to hold them down so that they will be content slaughtering rainforest devouring cows.
  2. I’m really not down with mega corporations overtly jacking my software, especially something so deep rooted as my Safari home page. At least have the professional courtesy to covertly jack our computers a la Neuromancer/Idoru/Count Zero.
  3. Do we have to pay for the water that we use in the bathroom?
  4. Do you think this makes Ray Kroc smile?
  5. It was raining and we were running out of time so I had to wait until after the second half to upload the site. Woe is me and all that. Faint.

My students asked me today what Firefox was. I said that it was the browser that all of the cool Internet kids use.

The intricate stats for the bloggh agree.

Casas – Day 3

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This is the final day of the build. Yes, we build a house in two days. This was the first year that I’ve been on a team where we’ve taken the group photo before the sun goes down. Gavin’s pep-talk worked.

We go from putting the frame up and onto the foundation to putting blackboard, chickenwire, then stucco onto the walls. We also put drywall on all of the inside, complete with pink insulation stuff. We even rig up the house with electricity, with a lightbulb and a ceiling fan. Most of the time they don’t have electricity, but when their part of the community finally gets wired, we don’t want them to be left in the dust.

 Here is the pastor’s blessing.
The family is always very appreciative. The guy that worked with me on the cement during Build Day 1 asked me today (in Spanish) if I was getting paid for the beautiful house. I said that it was a regalo, a gift. He then asked if I got paid by Jesucristo and I said, “Si.”

We also give the family a Bible in Spanish and the local pastor that we team with comes out and says some words and prays (with someone in our group translating for our benefit).

The family is always appreciative. This year we got the family an air mattress and some blankets, rugs, and pillows. We also got them a battery charger that plugs into the adapter in the car.

Casas – Day 1

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Casas por Cristo is a great organization to work with. The hotel where we are staying has wireless Internet, so I thought that I’d put up some photos.

Futile Ohm and I have determined that in the future, high schools will put flashing arrows on the dancefloor to encourage more people to attend prom.

We hang out at the food court to get organized (because we have 40+ people on our team) on the first night. We hang out with one of the guys from Casas to review what the two days will look like.

A tradition of food court Chinese food (Sweet and Sour chicken and General Tso) gives me enough protein to build a house. A little known fact is that El Paso, Texas, has decent Chinese food.

The road trip is always fun. My wife and I have a crazy time.

cZe gave us a present when we stopped at BK.

I see some similarities.

My wife got in on the fun.

iPhone 2.0 Reviewed

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My VCR is from the future. I bought it in a back alley in SoHo from an old Chinese man who smoked a pipe while working at his collection of curios. The wise old man told me to never get my VCR wet and to never feed it Dancing with the Stars after midnight. (Okay, so my dad got it for me for Christmas…but it does have a hard drive. Clear evidence of its future origin.)
One day when I plugged it in I got a program from January of 2008. It was a review of MacWorld 2008. Since Apple is so forward-thinking (when I say ‘forward-thinking’, insert the words ‘Howard Rheingold‘), it only makes sense that my VCR picked up a segment on the iPhone from 2008.
Here are some of its features:

  1. Instead of using an on-screen touchpad like the one from 2007 (which looks FF: Spirits Within-ish), it would connect to your very soul. Sure, it’s really cool to browse your playlists by flipping through album covers, scrolling through alphabetized lists, or the usual iPod standards, but I think it would be better to play what you were truly craving. As part of the iTunes EULA, they would have you sign an agreement to use Barry White for good and not evil. The 2008 iPhone has that.
  2. The 2007 model sorts and color codes your text message conversations so that you can follow the threads. The 2008 model rips your friend out of their current space-time continuum and imports them into a vCard in your iPhone. This Pokephone dimensional pocket helps bring worlds together. And then smash them apart with matter/anti-matter anamolies.
  3. The 2008 iPhone also searches for Zune networks of users, because Steve Wozniak has always been a fan of charity.
  4. The 2007 iPhone has built in sensors to determine how much display energy is needed based on lighting, sensors to determine whether you’re viewing a webpage horizontally or vertically, and even a sensor to turn off the display if vertical motion matches the action of putting the phone up to your ear. The 2008 iPhone has an additional sensor to zoom in if you are not annoyingly close enough to the camera for a YouTube vlog.
  5. Running off of the new version of OSX, the 2008 Zune Virus, which uses MapQuest to track your position and make purchases for H0T St0c4 in your area, is never an issue. Instead you can let the NSA track you voluntarily with Google Earth. You just have to enter your system password every time they want to intrude.
  6. In 2007 ‘Apple Computers’ became ‘Apple’ because of all of the peripherals. In 2008 ‘Apple’ became ‘The Illuminated Majestic-12 Fruit of the Templar’ because of the world domination.
  7. Each 2008 iPhone is hand-delivered to your doorstep by a clone of Captain O.W. Pappy Henderson to ensure the utmost customer service. You can pay additional shipping charges to have it delivered by Leroy Jenkins.

*An example of forward-thinking: Howard Rheingold would meet the Internet-inventing Al Gore in an abandoned factory, do his thang, and Steve Harvey would declare that the robot got served. Rheingold would then get a reality show on MTV called ‘The Mobile Life’, where he would open suitcases full of SMS devices until he made a deal and he would hook up with a South Korean girl to play Guild Wars into the wee hours of the morning.

From the eyes of the MacBook

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As a fun part of the site (for the people in Macedonia, really), we will now be holding a contest called “From the eyes of the MacBook”. Add a comment with the best caption to this picture:

To see it full size, click on the picture or on this link.

The winner (as judged by the Realm’s best judge of comments, my wife) will win a place in the Hall of Mayhem and/or Destruction.
Leave your comments on this post:

http://www.booyor.inlawfilms.com/bloggh

/2007/01/09/from-the-eyes-of-the-macbook/

An Experiment: The Squish Time Machine

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The HoMedics brand Squish Therapy Device contains mystical powers.

To sort through these abilities, we will perform a qualitative analysis of, what I like to call, The Squish Time Machine.

Squish Time Machine

When I first put the Squish Time Machine around my neck, I lost my connection with the world around me. My eyes expanded to the infinite details of the greater environment. Dolphins sang to me, “Enforce fishing legislation and canning proprietary rights.” (They pronounced it, “Eckeck eck eek eek eck eck.” Once they were done, one waved farewell and thanked me for all of the fish.)
Here is another observer’s thoughts, now typing at the keyboard.

Description of Phenomena

When you put it on your head TV screens, computer screens, and the screens of digital clocks start wiggling.

Cause for Phenomena

  1. The squish time machine squishes your brain and makes pictures on screens look like they’re shaking.
  2. The thing mobob tells your brain, “make that thing shake like mad”.

Possible Benefits to Society from Phenomena

  1. The squish time machine may help read the screens of crashing computers, watch the TV when its not geting good reception, and read digital clocks that wiggle because they’re defected.
  2. To have sssssssssomething for your bored kids to do. And something to show your teacher/class.

- Demetria, Lead Quantum Scientist of the Realm
5th Grade Student

- Abigail, The High Tech Math Student
Third grade

I’m serious, though. When you put it on your head, sure, everything kinda buzzes. But when you look at a TV, the picture waves. When you look at the clock on a microwave, the ones-place minute number rotates clockwise and the other numbers rotate counter-clockwise, and at different rates.

That’s weird.