This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.
When the scary hook-handed pirate insists that you wash your hands before returning to work, by Davey Jones you’d better pay attention! I mean, look what happened to him:
I’ve been amused by this sticker on the bathroom door at work for years now, and finally I could no longer resist snapping a picture…
Searching through the archives here I see that I haven’t related the backstory behind a comment I make from time to time in conversation. I joke about setting my “thousand dollar alarm clock,” and most people shrug it off as just another weird thing Karel says.
But I’m not actually joking. My alarm clock cost $1000… after upgrades. I didn’t pay for it, of course.
The HP 620lx “palmtop” computer hit the market in 1998. I was the newly-appointed, albeit still-part-time, wrangler of all things computerized for Entercom Portland. We were just beginning a wave of hardware purchases and expansions that would see us, eventually, in a new building and three major expansions projects thereof. At the time, however, my boss decided that I should have a PDA of some sort. After a bit of research I settled on the 620lx. Color screen! PCMCIA slot! Infrared! Windows CE 2.0! (I didn’t realize at the time that banking on a nearly-new Microsoft OS is a foolhardy endeavor at the best of times. I was young and new to the gig; cut me some slack!) Price tag, with extra-life battery: $850.
A few months later HP released an upgrade to Windows CE 2.1 but you had to buy a ROM chip rig to get it. Another $150 later, and the machine was just a bit more useful than before… which is to say, sadly, still not all that much.
(My friend Ben got his hands on one of the successors to the 620lx a few months later. Known as the “Jornada” something-or-other, it featured a big touch screen but only a tiny bit more processing power and memory capacity. Neat toy, ultimately useless.)
Over time, the HP “palmtoy” simply didn’t work out for anything more useful than taking notes in meetings, scoring family Scrabble games (oddly enough, I did recently use it to score a game with the kids… Pocket Excel to the rescue, saving us all from my sloppy penmanship and questionable math skills…), and as an alarm clock. Here it is, shortly after once again performing its primary function over the past decade:
Hey, it has five programmable alarm options! This means that I can switch between my two different wake-up times (“Am I riding public transit or carpooling tomorrow?”) and have custom alarm times for special events.
Yes. I know. There’s another clock sitting right next to the really expensive one. The Totoro Clock is used for actual checking of the current time, not for alarms. Would you want to wake up every morning to a strident, chirpy rendition of the “My Neighbor Totoro” theme song?
I didn’t think so.
I was going to pout and moan about how depressing today is, given that it’s the third anniversary of the beginning of the end of the old job, the beginning of arguably the worst Spring season of my entire life.
“To hell with that,” I decided. “Let’s show off some more ducks instead.”
You’re thanking me for this stroke of wisdom and genius. I know you are.
And before anyone mentions it: Yes, they need dusting… perhaps a bath…
Only one post a week so far this month? I’ll have to see what I can do about that… aided by a birthday present from Dad: He gave me his “old” Pentax *ist DL camera! My “price” for this boon is that Dad wants pics of his grandkids and June wants pics of the cats I live with. I didn’t have working batteries by the time Erica visited Saturday afternoon and my attempts to snapshot the kitties didn’t turn out so well, but I did get one semi-decent photograph yesterday while trying to get the hang of using a “real” camera again.
Meet Rusty. I picked him up a few months ago at one of the local knick-knack shops on NE Broadway. I’m not sure why someone decided to make a bunch of cast-iron “rubber ducks,” but who am I to complain? He’ll probably figure prominently in the upcoming photography project since he’s unlikely to get blown out of frame by an errant breeze…
(I should go back and see if the shop has more of them, ’cause I wouldn’t be surprised if Wonderduck wants one. Heh.)
(Also: Pay no mind to the layer of dust upon my desk. Ahem.)
Recently I Twittered (tweeted, whatever) about the sudden disappearance of the JamesBurkeFan collection of videos on YouTube containing the entirety of “Connections” (1, 2 and 3) as well as “The Day The Universe Changed,” my favorite educational series of all time. Turned out that YouTube pulled the videos at the request of the publisher of the upcoming new boxed set of “Universe Changed.”
Oh, by the way? My birthday is coming up…
Alan Carre, the man behind the JamesBurkeFan collection, stopped by a couple of days ago to let me know that he’s back on YouTube. Awfully nice for a guy to follow me back here from Twitter, I think! Check out his page, say something nice, and patronize the folks offering the boxed sets if you can. I particularly recommend the original “Connections” and, of course, “The Day The Universe Changed.”
Fourteen. This is it. Summer is at a close, and so is this silly little project.
I didn’t save a particular artist for last, but I sort of like the way things ended up. For all of the mindless pap you find before, during and after your average bit of anime, sometimes you get lucky and hear something from Yuki Kajiura. Her style definitely isn’t for everyone. This project hasn’t been about what everyone likes, though, has it?
Since we’re wrapping this up, and because your typical soundtrack cut is shorter than most regular songs, I threw in an extra track. I hope you enjoy “Key of the Twilight,” “Liar You Lie,” “Nowhere” and “Melody (Salva Nos version).”
That’s all, folks.
